society

I can follow that
Reminds me of "the sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath."

But...might not be related to this forum...

*shrugs*

Re: society


Agreed. Or at least, this is something to have in the back of one's mind at all times.

Re: society


But you cannot simply keep using something without giving something back.

Doesn't work long term.

Universe doesn't work like that.

Unless your last name is Bush (oops)

Unfortunately our plutocrats think that society exists solely for their personal use, an institutionalized opportunty for the exploitation of others. It should be a two-way process. I use society and society uses me. It's a matter of exchange. Societies exists by virtue of cooperation; even economic competition is an agreed-upon and regulated process, ultimately a matter of cooperation.

Re: society
Ray

It goes both ways. You are in society, you are part of it. Without society you don't exist as human being.

Re: society


As long as society leaves me alone I don't mind giving.

Re: society
roverroad

But how could society leave you alone? You are part of society. You are nothing - from an human point of view - without society.
Even if you go to a desert island and live there alone, you take society with you. In your language, rules, technics.
Robinson Crusoe took with him the european society of his time. See how quickly he found a slave.

You are either thief or beggar. You can either take and lose, or give and thus keep what it is to recieve. A thief cannot give. He can only spare. But not without terms. Prices and bargains are his totems, and what he has paid for in sweat and blood he will not easily part with. Thus, the world ownes him.

The beggar, on the other hand, has little love for trinkets. He holds out his hand, and whatever falls into it he recieves with gratitude. Thus, he ownes the world.

Val, I may disagree with your ontology of the self, but I share your sociology. Well put. We are in society and society is in us.

Oh, and see how quickly Friday found Crusoe.

Re: society

if thats true then whos you...we cant all be you because then we're all using eachother therefor your wrong

Re: society


There is no such thing.

Merely billions of people who all act according to what they feel, want and believe. The "existance" of society is in the actions of those who believe in it.

Watchmakers...your statement, that "There is no such thing [as society]" and that in reality there are merely "Merely billions of people who all act according to what they feel, want and believe. The "existance" of society is in the actions of those who believe in it. " reflects the views of a number of social theorist, i.e., those known as "methodological individualists" and "symbolic interactionists". They oppose the traditional view that society exists as a reality, sui generis (Durkeim and Radcliffe-Brown). The methodological individualists agree with you that society is merely the sum of individual orientations and actions. I see both perspectives as the two sides of a single coin. How can we deny that the actions and feelings of people are not influenced by their socialization. Just compare a Mongollian sheperd with a Manhattan merchant and tell me that culture and society have no more than epiphenomenal reality. Conversely, observe the tremendous variability among individuals within any society and try to deny that individual psychology and biography have no reality at all, that individuals are merely expressions of cultural and social systems.

Am I a cloud of Atoms, a variation in energy values, a group organism of cells, a human, the expression of my phenotype or one "cell" in the "body" of society? There are different levels to look at things, no one level is better than another though sometimes one is more relevant for the particular discussion.

Okay, so yeah, society does exist if you "zoom out" from an individual view as a grouping of people. Yet there is a tendency to grant society its own seperate existance as a monolithic function. People think of society as this godlike force which grants rights to leaders, transforms normal actions into crimes and which you can find in the town hall. As though a society will continue existing should all of its component members vanish, or that by dying your hair blue you've suddenly seperated yourself from it.



That's a different meaning of the word that I wasn't referring to. I have nothing against culture and group socialisation.

Good point about levels, that each has relevance depending on the task at hand. When someone examines the many levels of his existence, i.e. social identity, physical body with personality and instinctive drives, "down" to constellations of molecules, then atoms, then sub-atomic processes and "objects" (or events) like quarks, strings, etc., it is hard to say that "I" exist in any absolute sense. Add to this complexity of "levels" the fact that I have no fixed substance; I am always changing; I am a process rather than a thing. Then there is the problem of the boundaries of this process.

Our gifts and talents are given to us by evolution. By evolution's grace we talk and think and form alliances and name them society. But what was it prior to all this? A mob of primates?
Society has always existed, it is not a human invention.



There is a logical string of thought that ends up with the conclution that we are all one. Inexorably linked and separated only by the misguidance of our egos. I for one hold this to be true, but it's hard to say so without having some scien-theist starting to ramble about hallucinogenics.

Cryacuz, interesting term, "scien-theist" (a follower of Scientism).

Let me suggest that, while I, too, cannot imagine humans (including the precursors of homo sapiens sapiens) living as individuals without the protection of some kind of "society", societies have changed in their form or organization. In this they are inventions: hoards and bands (based on immediate kinship ties), tribes (based on lineages of related kinship groupings), chiefdoms (based on a hierarchical arrangements of linages), kingdoms (based on mythologically originated "sacred lineages"), the state (based on extra-kinship constitutional-legal principles). Each so-called level is the product of human invention, not biological evolution. Nineteenth century anthropologists referred to this as the process of "social evolution". I think that was an unfortunate designation. To me, evolution is a term best reserved for biological processes.

Why? Evolution acts on almost everything. Star systems, thought processes, radioactive metals...

Yeah, I'm with watchmakers, JLN. I'd say "evolution" is a very appropriate term to describe what's happened to society, culture, religion, morality, technology, and everything in between.

"The evolution of humanity," for example, is not at all a phrase reserved exclusively for biology, it may embody everything that comes along with humanity and how it has changed over time. Case in point, one could say anthropology itself is in fact the study of the evolution of humanity.