I know, I know. I said I was gonna go over some political philosophy. Real life, and the misplaced boxes of all my philosophy books in storage are making that difficult.
One thing I can do is ask questions I think about all the time, and many folks throughout the centuries have also asked. The first question seems to be rather fundamental, but a question I almost never hear discussed by liberals: why do people (and animals for that matter) tend to gravitate to organized society?
Libertarians and extremist "market" folks I talk to (though perhaps not all) seem to suggest that its because people want to make money. Of course primates and "lower" animals (evolutionary) also form societies that show no apparent signs of monetary systems. And money has no meaning without society so its hard to accept the desire for money as a prime motivator for society formation. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise with a convincing argument.
I know my answer to this question. What is your answer? Does it even matter?
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For fun
It's no fun always being by yourself. In fact, it can be downright scary.
Maybe it's just because once there are offspring, a society automatically forms - or does it?
OK, so what's your answer?
Shainzona
Survival
A group of people working together to survive, is more likely to, than a solitary individual or reproductive unit.
I think that kind of meshes with what the libertarians think, except they think that they need money to survive, so of course people come together to make money.
The problem then comes in, of course, when there is a scarcity of resources amongst a society.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
I Always Thought
that a good rationale for the formation of our particular society (USA) was the one Andrew Bacevich cited to, the preamble of the Constitution. While it's not a perfect encapsulation, it's pretty close to one and it's one we've drifted ever farther from over the course of time.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Because there is more access to the resources
necessary for survival in a group, and a lower energy demand on each individual. Greater ability to keep warm, gather a variety of food and more sex. Much more sex. After childbirth, there is community resources to help keep the child safe.
Everything we do now, is a variation on the above.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Beer
Both before and after the sex.
Sem-serious. No cities, no agriculture, no beer.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Beer. The cause of and solution to all of life's problems
Sometimes the beer helps you tolerate the society. But that's too much chicken and egg, I s'pose.
It is hard to imagine large societies without serious agriculture. I do remember reading in 1491 the possibility that an early South American society was based more on seafood/fishing. Also, if you look at "lower" species, they often exhibit complex social structures without much agriculture involved. And what about hunter-gatherer societies. In addition, an article recently came out in Science magazine (I'll have to find it for you later) showing differences mitchondrial DNA between farming and hunter-gathere societies.
Given all this, I'm not convinced that societies came about for the purpose of agriculture. Did it aid in the development of large, complex societies? Seems hard to deny. But was it the central impetus behind small groups forming societies?
Sciencemag article
'Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe’s First Farmers '(subscription required)
is reviewed here. Abstract is that the European clammers and beachcombers were outcompeted mostly out of existence.
"The study identifies the Carpathian Basin as the origin for early Central European farmers. "
Waves of invading pastoralist vampires, evidently. You cant make this stuff up..
It's in our nature
We're social animals who are descended from social animals. It must have provided survival advantages, long before there was money to be made. But to ask the question as though a group of human beings decided one day to join up for some specific purposes - as libertarians do - is already wide of the mark. It's part of who we are on the deepest level. We never were a disconnected bunch of individuals, and never will be.
Libertarians, like other fundamentalists, are people who take philosophy way too seriously, in my opinion.
The Hobbesian state: all against all
If I had my books I could quote extensively. But I'm sure you can all Google "Hobbes" and "state of nature" for more. In a simple minded reading, the state of nature where everyone is only out for themselves would be such that everyone would be fighting against each other for personal gain. This would lead to people thus entering into agreements that curtail liberty in order for self preservation by avoiding a state where people always had to watch their backs.
In my younger days I was definitely a Hobbesian believer. I'm older and more tempered these days. I'm also less cynical when it comes to my fellow men and women. I'd like to expand more on this at some point, particularly how appeals to interpersonal tensions through appeals to the Hobbesian state can be used to perpetuate class warfare and pit the lower classes against each other. (I may sound like I have a lesson coming, but I'm thinking out loud here. Interested in other's thoughts. Particularly if you aren't a crusty old whie man.)
:)
about those crusty old white men... i have always wondered what hobbes was like irl.
I'd like to expand more on this at some point, particularly how appeals to interpersonal tensions through appeals to the Hobbesian state can be used to perpetuate class warfare and pit the lower classes against each other.
this is related to one of the reasons that i object to philosophers and philosophizing. i'm all for observing the world one lives in, and drawing conclusions from those observations, but i want well-designed replicable experiments, with the results examined by people of all stripes [cf wise latina supreme court justices...]. a lot of evil has been perpetrated for instance, whether intentionally or unintentionally, just because a few people thought they understood everything there was to know about life in a wolf pack.
more generally though, i've always felt that philosphizing lends itself too well to the problem of mistaking beauty for truth. not that science is entirely free of the problem, including the rather hobbesian aspect of public-or-perish and the competition and collusion that can lead to.
I'm also less cynical when it comes to my fellow men and women.
one of the things that i learned in my volunteer training some years ago [and had long suspected anyway] -- humans are natural-born rescuers [and that actually we have to temper this quality in ourselves, lest it get out of hand].
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[i'm not going to tell you how long some of my books have been packed away in boxes, but it can be measured in years]
You can't have a controlled experiment with a sample size of one
See here. So I'm not sure there's such a thing as a controlled experiment in the socio-political realm -- though I suppose our pluralistic system affords more opportunities than I might have thought.
Is philosophizing the same as doing philosophy? The framers of the Constitution were well versed in the philopophy of the day; should they have not been?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
crusty old person, unfortunately
This brings up a thought I have had about American society.
We always seem to admire the rugged individualist in this country. But, really, such a person is rather anti-social, and society would not function with everyone this way. Man survived by learning how to cooperate, ie, by forming societies, not by competing or fighting.
Also, people do not reproduce if they live alone.
Another thought i have had, is that it really takes a fairly complex group to get beyond primitive living. Witness some of the communes, etc. (Now I am dating myself. But, I am not a crusty old white man; I am a crusty old woman. However I am quite independent and consider myself no different in that regard.)
btw, gq, I used to read your comments all the time somewhere - I forget now - someplace I stopped going along the way. But I was always interested in what you had to say.
"We're social animals who are descended from social animals"
I agree with that.
I dunno—with regard to a Hobbesian "state of nature," maybe we're more like bonobos than we usually think?
Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sidney Wolin
Survival
It is always about survival.
We gather in groups because the group radically increases the chance of survival by making the accumulation of food easier, including the ability to "gather" foods that an individual can't, as in larger prey animals, and it offers greater protection from those things that would prey on man.
Those who cooperate end up with a better diet, a longer life span, greater opportunity to pass on genes. a group memory [no need to reinvent the wheel in every generation] and opens the possibility of specialization.
The survival advantages of the group over the individual are enormous.
I have always felt that the appellation "rugged individualist", was just an euphemism for a royal pain in the ass that no one wanted to deal with.
SNERK
Perfect.