Clusters of dialectical development: each connecting two individuals having exchanges with one another, influencing each other. They are then overlapped by other connecting individuals so that the entire social web develops each individual's character. The smaller the web, the more idiosyncratic each member will be as an individual. Further, the more social people are, the more traits are spread into their character, so that they all resemble each other and move about each other freely. And that is on top of cultural influence! TV, cinema, music, video games, all these inputs amassed from a centralized popular culture, an over-web filled with smaller units of organization, each one containing more units themselves, complete with individuals developing with one another.
Modern civilization is incredibly complex.
And so this is what they mean by interlocking systems. Activation thresholds become more understandable. Changes to a culture can spread throughout interlocking systems very rapidly, exponentially maybe, until there comes a point where there are major changes taking place simultaneously across different systems, marking a quality change.
Just imagine the interlocking systems in American civilization! The entire web is being pulled tighter and tighter every day: food prices, gas prices, rude behavior, bad entertainment, crummy jobs, dwindling jobs, the flamboyancy of the rich, mean politics, xenophobia, you name it; everything is self-reinforcing, building more tension, pulling people apart, stretching and straining the web. We will reach a point where we are at a system-wide critical threshold, an activation threshold where the entire population is primed and one pertinent event could throw the entire civilization into a massive quality change.
