On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:58:17 -0500, Publius wrote:
> ZerkonX
X.net> wrote in news:pan.2008.08.20.13.06.39@X.net:>> How does one just acquire individuality?
>
>
> Individuation begins as soon as the villages give way to cities ---
> communities so large that most of their members do not know most of the
> others. The tribal resonance is now no longer possible; everyone's
> developmental experience has been slightly different.
The tribal resonance, as you put it, ends before 'city' it ends with
contact between tribes; marriage, migration, war, trade.. etc.
Very few tribes were or are as cocooned as is needed in your premise, I
think.
You are saying that individuality depends on a social alienation, or "one
member does not know most of the others". What happens when two tribes
meet? Neither looking alike or knowing one another? Don't individual
characteristics or differences then emerge?
Basically though, I believe your premise for 'individuality' isn't solid.
No one develops 'on their own' outside of some social context. The city
is as much a place for melding as it is for a display of difference, I
would suggest 'melding' being the stronger trend. But this is really
beside you main point, which might be generalized with:
Politics emerge as groups grow.
you place emphasis on the quality of a group (strangers) but I believe
the more basic element is the size, irregardless of quality and that
tribal 'politics' is directly related to city politics.
Here is Paine's take on the matter:
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/sense2.htm
See: Of the Origin and Design of Government... Third paragraph.
>
> The process accelerates once several cities have emerged within reach of
> one another, perhaps originally settled by different tribes. ..
Tribes will merge, cities will go to war!
....
> ...Free will is
> something experienced by any individual placed in a choice situation,
> where the consequences of the choice are foreseeable or imaginable. It
> is the wellspring of innovation, but also a source of stress. Persons in
> civilized societies constantly face choices members of tribal societies
> do not --- even the trivial ones.
I do not understand your absoluteness here. Tribal societies most
certainly do need to make choices, very important ones at that. Where to
go next, what to plant and when. What to do if some 'usual' way isn't
working out. This is why age is revered, not for it's own sake but
because people who lived longer had seen more. so when something
different occurred, like irregularities in animal migration or weather,
they had lived through what many had not.
A chief is a political position. He or she makes decisions. There is some
form of council the chief relies on. 'Elders' and the 'shaman' being
typical. All are political positions and aid in making life/death
choices.
> Leaving her community to join a neighboring tribe
> would be literal unthinkable. The only way she would ever become
> associated with another tribe is if she were captured in a battle.
Or marriage. Again your definition is too brittle.
...
>
> The extent to which a society is confining or liberating is directly
> measured by its rate of innovation.
This needs an addition. Innovation never 'just comes'. There is always a
cross cultural, cross group influence. Europe would not be Europe without
Greece. Greece would not have been Greece without north Africa. The
United States would not be without most of the rest of the world.
With tribes, let's take the American Sioux. Their history, it is
believed, began in Asian antiquity. By the middle of the 1800's they were
a 'nation' and diverse in sub-groupings or tribes. The amount of change
they had gone through, even on a base genetic level is stuff for science
but safe to say there were many.
> People indeed take interest in one another's welfare when the welfare of
> another intrudes into their personal space. They may also take an
> interest in an abstract way, e.g., by supporting various charities. That
> is hardly innate,
'Compassion', as a moral principle, has a history. It permeates, not to
be mistaken with 'dominates', human history. This consistency I see as
evidence for 'innate'.
..........
>
> We have left tribal life when we have consented to living among
> strangers. Families and other kinship groups remain, and continue to
> provide many of the comforts of tribal life, but they cannot relieve the
> unease induced by the surrounding "alien" culture.
You trip on the subjective here, I believe, or you have never been in a
real 'alien' culture. I hate to pull this crap on you but it's true.
People in the military, the Navy traditionally, can be literally plopped
down into an 'alien' culture. You just have to take my word for it that
even the kinship of language is a immense comfort.
An 'alien culture' is not at all the same as being 'alienated from
culture'. Two very different things. Goths/Emos, as an example, despite
huge insistence to the contrary, seek difference as a personal statement
of individuality. It is a reaction. I understand that the belief is that
this difference, or alienation, comes only from within but it does not.
IMO, nothing, in fact, comes only from within.
A person who 'feels' alienated, feels. That's it and not much more.
Kinship relationships may be the very reason for this as is typical in
cases of abuse or even normal (gasp!) social development.
> The compromises themselves foster unease. No one wants to compromise;
Yes they do! You buy something. You may not really WANT to pay for it but
you do. All traffic laws are a compromise. Life is compromise.
> First, by recognizing the inescapable diversity of interests and values
> among the members of civilized societies, and then designing
> institutions which permit the greatest possible number of those diverse
> values and interests to be realized.
OK. I myself think today the exact opposite direction is needed more:
"recognizing the inescapable commonality" but this is really a matter of
personal opinion. We both can be 'right'.
