CONCEPT
Self-Assertive Tendency
Koestler's term for the holon's drive to maintain its own identity and autonomy—the counterweight to participatory absorption, and the source of the specificity that genuine bisociation requires.
The self-assertive tendency is one of the two complementary forces governing every holon. It is the drive to maintain the integrity of the holon's own identity, to defend its boundaries against assimilation into the larger system. In biological systems, self-assertion manifests as the cell's maintenance of its membrane, the organism's immune response, the species' reproductive isolation. In cognitive systems, it manifests as the mind's specific matrix—the particular configuration of frames, commitments, and investments that gives one thinker a perspective distinct from every other. In human-machine collaboration, the self-assertive tendency is what keeps the human's matrix specific enough to collide productively with the machine's universal range.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Koestler insisted that the self-assertive tendency is not selfishness or aggression, though it can degenerate into both when unchecked. It is the structural condition without which holons dissolve into the larger system and emergence becomes impossible. A cell without self-assertive tendency is not a cell but a blur of chemistry. A mind without self-assertive tendency