Guybrush

I wanted to make a thread where we can discuss the potentially huge topic of society, what it is, how it should be and so on. What inspired me was the current discussion going on in the recreational drug thread. Since I considered the discussion there off-topic, I started this thread.

Anyways, I would say that a community is something you can be inside or outside and so there has to be something governing that difference. It is a kind of social contract which is this : people that are part of a community agree to give up certain freedoms. Those who do not give up these freedoms are not considered part of the community and should not gain the same priveleges of those who are. This description is a bit basic, but in most cases it works. In the recreational drugs thread, I mentioned that I happily give up the freedom to do heroin because I consider the drug to have an overall negative effect not just on an individual level for suffering addicts, but also on society as a whole. I also happily give up my freedom to kill and rob other members of my community. From this comes laws (don't sell heroin, don't kill, don't rob) and those who break them are removed from society -> f.ex put in jail. Freedoms are given up to governing bodies (police, government, law courts etc.) that are ultimately made up by or subject to people from the community so that they represent the will of the people and are able to change when that will changes.

Aside from possible changes to the above scenario like making it a dictatorship rather than a democracy, what I wrote should be fairly basic and is roughly how most democratic societies work.

For me, looking at those basics carries with them immediate implications. A society is something made by the people for the people. On the whole, it should be beneficial (otherwise, why do it?) and being a part of it should be better than being outside it. However, I feel like I see a lot of anti-government thinking and I tend to think of some of those ideas to be anti-society. Some might think that rather than a group of people lifting eachother up, a society should be made up by people competing against eachother for the largest piece of the cake. However, I think a society should be made in such a way that basically, everyone gets a large piece of cake - there's a chance of getting a bigger or smaller, but at least there should be a nice piece in it for you and noone else should steal the whole cake to themselves.

Here's an example of how I think society should benefit me : I think if I get sick, I should be taken care of by the society. In principle, I agree that if it goes for me, it should go for all other members of society. Since I'm rational, I know that medical care costs money (despite the term "free health care") and so I agree that everyone including me should pay taxes so that we can all stay healthier.

Some people think you can get stuff for free, for example : "Less government!! Less taxes!! Better schools!! Better health care!!"

I'm prepared to give to everyone as long as everyone gives something back to me. What do you think?


( This thread is not specifically about USA by the way .. just so you know. )

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7gaugejames

I am in agreement on some points Tore, but what do you think about living off the grid, solar power, wind driven, deep wells, hydroponic nurseries, barter and trade skill for skill, building your neighbors house so he provides you with fresh meat for a couple years, farmers who can trade veggies for eggs, or fruit for blankets, that kinda stuff? I daydream about self sufficiency because it's hard to see a future that doesn't end up in chaos. Corrosion of Conformity said, Free dope and fu@king in the streets; a possible utopia exists almost instantaniously, (best forest gump voice),now i don't know about all that Jen-ny. would your society have a code of ethics that must be followed, how will you deal with those that don't? If my life depended on you i'd help you as much as i could. Society, what it should be....... benefiting, to whom? All. I think i'll lace up my vans and go for a skate in my little fantasy land, i'll say high to the unicorns for you, and when i see the Yukon, I'll stop.

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I don't care who you are, Gunslinger, shmunslinger, everyone needs a good purse.

BoopieJones

Unfortunately the existance of a perfect society will never be, for it is prone to human vices such as selfishness, greed, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. Society does not exist for the whole but for the part, each part has some idea of what they desire (Which is most likely driven in them subconsiously or consiouly by society and furthered by selfishness and ignorance) and will follow that path, whether or not it strays them from what is good for the people as a whole. I'd like to believe communist, socialist, or other simular systems work because they are there to help all equally (as all humans are of equal worth and deserve equal treatment) however even the creators of these societies might have slant or ulterior motives, or the people within them are unable to live outside their self in order to preserve it (from the Tao Te Ching)

I'll think more about this and get back to you. But if people were ideal then there could be an ideal society. But since perfection is subjective, what even is an "ideal" society? I for one don't think a Capatilist economy is the way to go. But thats not the idea for all

Guybrush

Well, if you were totally self-sufficient, I think you would find it hard to reap the benefits of solar power, wind, deep wells, nurseries, everything that has to do with trade and neighbours etc. Basically, you'd be on your own. What you write about looks more like a crude form of society to me.

There wouldn't be specific ethics. People would be expected to follow the law and in a democratic country, the law is ultimately an expression of the will of the people. To illustrate : If you wanna play, you're free to come and have a good time, but you gotta play by the rules. If you don't like the rules, you can try and change them, but you have to do so by the rules. If you're unwilling to even accept that, then you should consider leaving the society. If you break the rules, you might get punished and depending on severity, you might get removed.

Again, this is really basic and generally how things work in the western world. It doesn't really say much about what the politics would be like, just a little bit about some core rules and the concepts they are based on.

edit :

I agree that society can't get perfect because it should make it as good as possible for everyone rather than every individual. It will be best for the majority and not the minority, although in a good society, the minority should of course not have it bad since again it lifts everyone. About the human vices, a society should have an ability to deal with those. It won't be perfect, but at least it should be better than it would have been in an anarchy where consequences for your actions, good or bad, are much more uncertain.

There is a flawed way of thinking that if we can't make it perfect, there's no point. If you think about it, that doesn't make much a lot of sense, just like "if I can't live the best possible life ever, I might as well die" doesn't make much sense.

I think that in a good society, people would be free to pursue their desires and happiness in many ways as long as it doesn't conflict with the laws. Actually, having a high diversity of interests, meanings, pursuits and so on would be healthy and I don't see why different desires have to conflict with society .. unless they are of the illegal sort, but giving up a little for a lot is kind of part of the idea.

I think the far left end where you find communism crushes people by being too controlling. I don't think that the communistic idea of "fair for all" is necessarily best. There's a point between right and left where, in a broad sense, everyone is contributing to everyone and everyone has the freedom to live the lives they want within reasonable limits (criminals aside).

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7gaugejames

You have replaced my last favorite pirate as my new favorite pirate, Kneel down, I make you profiteer. Rise and go forth, make yer society matey and we will visit. I can change your title 'cause I'm da King, of my crude society. and here in Unicornia you will be remembered as a friend, the bards will write songs about you and little children will look upon your statue with awe.

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I don't care who you are, Gunslinger, shmunslinger, everyone needs a good purse.

Guybrush

So far, I've written that a society should be as good as possible for everyone in it. That should make sense and so people may find it hard to argue with that.

To perhaps induce a little more argument here, the reason I wanted to write a little about basics of society is because in my mind, a social democratic society is the best way to approach the ideal and I feel like the basics of what a society is help explain why.

(But please, should you want to argue with this statement, read what I wrote in the first post first so you know where I consider my argument to be coming from)

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Fruitonica

Not so much, generally anti-government sentiment is fuelled by legitimate issues. The problem with government is that as society grows larger, they are forced to regulate to their citizens benefit with less and less precision. When you are representing many different groups with conflicting interests, someone is bound to be disappointed.

Guybrush

Well, the way I've been arguing here means that absolute freedom is something you can only approach the most when you are totally by yourself and no other person can control you. Living with others means giving up some freedom because you have to relate to other people, either by your own will or because they are able to influence or force you.

Don't laugh at me :p but I made this handy little graph to illustrate what I believe the general situation is like.



This shows Control -> Freedom on the X axis and a rough measure of the quality of life for every member of society on the Y axis with the optimal being in the middle. This is of course grossly simplistic and aside from exclusion of potentially important factors, I'm prepared to accept that the relationship between control vs. freedom and life quality may not be quite so linear. Possibly, the lines should bend a bit and meet somewhere to the right of the sweet spot, but for illustrative purposes, it does an okay job.

I'll get to a problem with being on the freedom side of this graph soon.

You have a good point here which I want to discuss, but I just wanna point out a potential problem with "freedom" and right-wing thinking first. In a good state, the government will be made up by the people and will represent it's wishes. This works best in the political middle ground. Here's a reason why : I think in a society, important things that should benefit all should be controlled by the government. Health care and education are good examples. If you introduce market interests into that, you're gonna change the priorities "giving the best health-care" or "giving the best education" into secondary priorities with "making money" as number one. This turns it into a society of winners and losers where some recieve better health care and better education than others. In that society, the winners will rise to the top and the losers will drop to the bottom.

Now, in that society, there's a bias where the winners will form the government and that drives a wedge between the government and the people because the winners who are a minority are no longer representing the interests of the people. The people start to mistrust the government (it becomes "them" and not "us") and that creates a wish for less government, less control. This wish again expressed as rightist thinking promotes the winners and losers society - something that in turn drives the wedge between government and people only deeper so it's a positive feedback loop. Problems potentially caused by rightist thinking leads to more rightist thinking.

So you see, Fruitonica, while you are correct - a more rightist way of thinking may only make the problem worse and keep a society away from the overall life quality optimum.


There are other things that can separate a government from it's people. Obviously, if you have a state made up of 60% cowboys and 40% indians, the cowboys would rule the indians and the indians would not be happy about that. Thus, it's important that the culture of the people in a society is a little more homogenous. In this respect, having a large number of people may not be a problem if those people all live the same way of life. However, nowadays we have a lot of immigration in and out of societies. Everyone knows integration of immigrants into a country's culture is important, but things can be done in the country as well.

Since you live in USA, think about how christianity may act as a barrier between people. Separation of the church and state could help a little into easing these barriers between groups within the society.

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Fruitonica

I actually live in Australia, which is a much more secular country, our separation of church and state is pretty much complete. For which I am very glad.

Yeah, the best compromise is a political middle ground. Which is an advantage of compulsory voting. In Aus there isn't nearly the polarisation that I see in the American voting system, we are cushioned by a large amount of apathy from people who only vote because they have to.
When someone isn't emotionally invested in a decision they can be a little more rational. Of course, the downside is that someone with no political awareness is easily influenced by scaremongering and ridiculous arguments.

Sorry for cutting out the bulk of your points, but I agree with pretty much everything you said. But, I'm not really sure how you linked them to my previous point, which sort of stood on its own and I didn't want to extrapolate from. If it came off as 'rightist', it was unintentional, I'm a fair way left of centre.

Guybrush

Dur, that's the second time I assume someone is an american when they are not. What the hell? I'm a schmuck! Sorry about that.

The line you quoted from me was a direct response to this :

Which I think you are absolutely correct in saying, but tells only part of the story - which I then elaborated a bit on.

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