Comments on HERAKLITES: Such a thing as society

Your commenters seem to have forgotten the context...

2007-09-15T00:12:00.000+01:00

Your commenters seem to have forgotten the context in which Thatcher's remarks were made-even though she reiterates themn briefly in the preamble to the famous one-liner.

Her point, and it's a vital one (completely forgotten in the academic environment where I work, and where her name is still only ever hissed), is that for society to act it's the individuals who compose it who must act. They may do so in the midst of and at the behest of some collective; nevertheless to think that society acts without the instrumentality of a human action is to live in cloud-cuckoo land. The sort of cloud-cuckoo land which is where all failings, ills and evils are laid, like foundlings, at the
door of society.

Her point that `people look to themselves first' has begun to sound quite strange. In 21st century Britain a large proportion of society does not look to itself first, it looks to Government and here, more than anywhere we see the real thrust of her remark: Governments may act only through individuals and only with the connivance or complicity of
individuals. In Thatcher's youth, people cut out the middle man where possible.

Thatcher knew perfectly well that society existed and she valued it. Her statement was addressed to the majority and she was making a fairly sinmple point which clever people (on the whole) still fail miserably to understand.

There is always tension between individuals and so...

2007-09-09T18:19:00.000+01:00

There is always tension between individuals and society. To say that society doesn't exist is merely a stupid way to try to resolve that tension. It indicates a weakness of mind, an inability to hold concepts from different ontological levels and think about the relations between them. Anyone who can't perform this rather simple mental feat has no business pontificating.

Thatcher was right - there is no society. Just li...

2007-09-08T15:58:00.000+01:00

Thatcher was right - there is no society. Just live here and watch this in action. Therefore, moves by those appointed to take care of administrative details of the collective, i.e. democracy, are not honest when they interpret that to mean to administer the well-being of that collective, i.e. to legislate against certain of its citizens who, by definition, do not exist.

The moment we began to enter the agricultural revo...

2007-09-03T19:38:00.000+01:00

The moment we began to enter the agricultural revolution, a major shift in our species existence occurred. We began to become independent of purely wild natural forces for our existence. Only a tittle of humans exist as families/tribes without the aid of societies collective knowledge and technology. Those tribes are destined for death because no group of people exist in complete physical isolation. Therefore every homo sapien must become a member of society because humankind has reached a population where disease can and will spread pandemically without the counter of technological and cooperative measures. The importance of "our" leaders and The people who foster them, being rational is also an essential element to the continuing existence of society.

Natural selection balances the populations with brutal deaths. But when partial societies began to emerge this negated natural selection. "Isolated" societies will then ether merge into one diverse yet unified community, the Human society, or destroy each other with capacity collective mental activity enables. Society does indeed exist and is greater than the sum of it's parts. What other name could be given to a thing that has the power to remove nearly all want and suffering from humankind and at the same time could will it's own existence extinct.