The "Oldest" Organization

The Encyclopedia Foundation has long said that “for the books to last, the library must last”. We’ve also said that for a library to last (as more than an abandoned building) the librarians must always be there. More exactly, there must always be librarians.

Which implies that besides seeing to it that the books are on metal plates that will last 10,000 years, and besides designing a vault or structure that can last 10,000 years, that we must have an organization that can last 10,000 years.

Of all the tasks, that is the hardest. The Encyclopedia Foundation has explained, in previous articles, the ways of preserving data on metal plates. That one is pretty much solved. What we have not gone over is long term buildings and long term organizations.

Long term buildings and/or vaults will be another article, in this one we examine long term organizations.

Is it possible to have an organization last 10,000 years? The honest answer is “No one knows”. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You see, no one CAN know. We’ve never had one last that long. We don’t even have that many years of recorded history.

How long has a human organization lasted? What’s the record? That’s also hard to say. Part of it is the problem of “What counts as an organization?” and another is “When is an organization so different then it’s origins as to not be that same organization any more?”

The Encyclopedia Foundation, purely for purposes of this article and the discussion, are defining an organization as a group of people who have come together and contracted (written or verbally) to engage in certain activities. This could be an office soft ball team, a local non-denominational church, a mom and pop diner…or a government, an international church or a global mega-corporation.

Corporations, as specific entities with government sanctioned rights and privileges are not very old. While a loose definition could speak of corporations of ancient Rome and India, and many east Asian nations like Japan, Korea and China claim corporations going back to the 8th century, the 14th century is when they really got their start.

So 600 years is the maximum age, by one way of thinking, and even granting the title to questionable cases, 1,300 years is the oldest in continuous operation. The one we found from the 8th century, by the way, was an “inn” in Japan. A problem we have with classifying it as a continuously in existence corporation is that it was “just” an inn. A building. Presumably when it failed, some other group took it over, some other family moved in, some others decided to run it. There is not – sorry to modern hoteliers out there – a lot to running an “inn” that is little more than what we’d call a “boarding house”.

It could be said that each owner agreed with the same idea of hospitality providing. But we feel that more likely than a specific person to person agreement that the idea just naturally came to each new person, like a series of unrelated people deciding that a well is a good place to draw water from.

Governments have endured longer. But there’s problems with that. The British government goes back to 1066. Or does it go back to only 1660 as there was a break in the monarchy for some decades back then? Or does it go back further than 1066, as the Normans could be said to have “inherited” it from the native monarchy?

What counts as a continuous government is tricky. Oddly, the United States has a somewhat serious claim, it being governed by the same “operating instructions” since the adoption of the Constitution over 200 years ago. We hear also of the Icelandic Althing, a parliamentary style body that has met continuously – almost – since the 10th century. No instructions though, at least not written.

What of China? Well, there have been Chinese people governing Chinese people for several thousand years. But it can be doubted that such counts as a “continuous” entity when the only commonality in three thousand years is that they were Chinese.

The Encyclopedia Foundation brushes aside then, all claims of entities that have no organizing charter or “operating instructions”. Be it government approved or not. Without some kind of guiding charter, loosely adhered to, an organization cannot be said to be the same, just for occupying the same small boarding house or the same empire.

By this standard, the United State’s claim is better. But there is a dodge – it’s the same operating document, but they’ve an agency that can “interpret” it so that one stage of government in one era can bear little resemblance to another stage in another era. But it’s a “loose adherence”, so it counts.

By this standard, the United Kingdom could make a claim, less plausible though. The Magna Carta of 1215, a loose adherence to most stages of government since have paid lip service to.

What of religions? Do they last longer than governments? Actually, yes. The Catholic Church has lasted far and away longer than any government now operating. And in a sense is a government itself. They have an organizing charter, “operational instructions”, writings that say how things are supposed to go. They have maintained a loose adherence to it since325CE, though would claim to have originated in 33CE at the death (and ascension) of Jesus Christ.

Another contender would be Judaism. If we take their “Torah” as “operating instructions” and the Ten Commandments from Yahweh as their “charter”, then they are far and away the oldest continually existing organization on Earth. If we count from the time of Abraham, their founder, then they are about 4,000 years old. If we count the Rabbinic Judaism practiced now as distinct, then they still go back a couple of thousand years.

The Encyclopedia Foundation credits them with 4,000 years, though. The first five books of the Bible are instructions, and a charter. It matters not whether some believe a god or God organized them or that they made it up, the fact is that they did organize, cited authority, wrote down their intentions, and have had adherents busy pursuing the same goal for four millennia.

It would seem to us then, that if one wishes to learn how to have a long term organization that will last ten thousand years, that studying the how and why of the success of Judaism should be a priority.

There are many pros – and some cons – to the style of doing things that seem to have been adopted over the millennia by the practitioners. But perhaps the number one reason for the continued success seems to be that they are not burdened by an overarching central authority – other than the very book that is the “operational instructions”.

Thus “Judaism” as an “organization” is pretty much anywhere a single practitioner is. So long as he has the book in his hand or in his head, and strives to follow it.
That tip alone has been invaluable to our thoughts on long term stability. And we note that various Christian “organizations” have adopted this. We suspect that for any organization to last over the long haul, that this must be an element. After all, if an organization has a central authority well in command, then there can be a schism which shatters the organization, or a hijacking of leadership that shifts it so greatly that it is not the same organization.

Adherence then to written words of precise and legalistic meaning, as opposed to loyalty to a given leader or leadership, seems more stable. Over the long haul.
Organizations that give loyalty to leaders instead of a concept can last a long time – Catholicism, for instance – but they seem, from a historical vantage point, to shift more in mission, so that they either become noticeably different than the original, or one can extrapolate that they will in time shift enough to be too different.

When you see then a corporation that has “existed” 500 years, but one era it is hauling tea in wooden boats, another doing banking, another producing widgets for rockets , then one can see that its “continued existence” is that of the Japanese Inn. There is an infrastructure and available pool of capital and human workers that lend themselves to a variety of purposes that the corporation decides on. And each new generation of leadership controls those resources as they feel best. The infrastructure of the corporation is lasting, the name may well be the same, but the idea of hauling tea from India is long lost.

This idea, that of adherence to an idea not a man, is key. We also note that the Long Now Foundation has something they call “Layers of Time”. In this model, a very fast changing time is “fashion and art”, next is “commerce” which changes less quickly, then “infrastructure” which is yet slower to change, then “government” which is even slower to change, then “culture”, very slow…then “nature” which is the slowest to change of all.

Note the absence of religion. Nothing wrong with that, for it is subsumed in two categories. “Government”. And “Culture”. Many religions are organized on a hierarchical model. Thus are more like governments, and expected to last as long as government usually do. Or a bit longer, as they also, to varying extents, adhere to an idea, usually wrote of in a book. And the more irrelevant the leadership is, and the more they adhere to a specific book, the longer they’ll last.

When hierarchical leadership and centralized authority are the exception, not the rule, as in the case of Judaism, then they are more in the “Cultural” classification, as they do not act as a government, but entirely give allegiance to an idea that is wrote of in a book, and that must be followed with some degree of exactness.

There are more factors in long term organizations. Other articles will address them. But focus on this – they need to be “cultural” as opposed to “governmental”. They need to give allegiance to the idea, not the man. And so that a man does not corrupt the idea, it needs to be wrote down. And so that the sophistries of men don’t corrupt the plainly wrote words, an emphasis on education is a must.