ZerkonX
X.net> wrote in news:pan.2008.08.22.14.02.00@X.net:
>> 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?
Oh, yes. The metamorphosis of villages into cities is just a gloss on a
variety of related mechanisms. The advent of agriculture, however, with
the ensuing increase in population and the establishment of permanent
settlements, was the chief catalyst.
> Basically though, I believe your premise for 'individuality' isn't
> solid. No one develops 'on their own' outside of some social context.
I made no claim to that effect. The claim is that in cities, that social
context is a diverse, polythemic, pluralistic, somewhat chaotic and
unpredictable one, as opposed to the coherent, harmonious, and
predictable one of the tribal village. The inhabitants of cities are
exposed to a bewildering variety of influences and examples to follow,
from which they must try to assemble a consistent identity and worldview
of their own. That is how they become individuated (something every
parent understands).
> 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.
Size alone does not account for the central characteristic of politics,
which is disagreement. Politics is a set of strategies for managing
disagreement. Size accounts for disagreement only indirectly; what
remains to be explained is why disagreement appears when communities
reach a certain size.
Paine is reiterating Hobbes' and Locke's social contract theory. Social
contract theory imagines a group of fully individualized humans who
discover that they are not alone in the territory they inhabit. The
behavior the theory proposes they will exhibit is plausible, but the
theory does not accurately depict the actual origins of civilized
societies --- their emergence from earlier social forms --- and the
human condition prior to the appearance of those societies.
>> ...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.
You have largely supported my point, except that most insular tribes did
not have chiefs, in the sense of a governor or other "officer" who could
compel obedience. See, e.g.,
http://www.crystalinks.com/aboriginals.html
But tribal people certainly must make decisions from time to time, for
the reasons you cite and others. And when that is necessary, the
decision falls upon certain recognized "wise men," usually elders,
within the tribe. What does *not* happen, as it would in modern
societies, is that members would gather and debate the question, or that
some members would follow one course, and others another: "Well, you
guys do what you want. I'm heading south. See you all next season."
>> 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.
No. Tribal people are almost never exogamous between tribes. They may be
exogamous between clans, or villages, of the same tribe.
>> 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.
There are no cross-cultural influences until the insularity of tribal
life has broken down.
> 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.
Change certainly does occur among tribal people. If it did not,
civilizations could never have emerged from them. But the rate of change
is glacial. Differences among spear points and pottery made by the same
tribe 1000 years apart are slight, as are differences in diets,
technologies, etc.
>> 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'.
History --- the written record of human experience ---- is itself a
product of civilization. The presence or extent of compassion among pre-
civilized people can only be determined by archeological investigation
or observations of the few such societies remaining. Most of them do not
display much compassion for humans not of their own tribe. Quite the
contrary.
>> 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.
Sure it is. So is any other point of commonality. Every wave of
immigrants to the New World encountered hostility, simply because they
represented yet another "alien" presence in the natives' midst.
> An 'alien culture' is not at all the same as being 'alienated from
> culture'.
Most people in civilized societies do not feel alienated from their
societies; they are just discomfited by the diversity within it,
especially diversities of religion, ethnicity, opinions and habits, and
wealth. So they form factions in order to impose their preferred forms
on the rest, via politics.
>> 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'.
Apart from biology, what commonalities (extending across the whole of
modern civilized societies) do you have in mind here?
