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I read, as some of you do, everyday and see economies of for example Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and recently even China, not to mention the U.S., sputtering. Sputtering isn’t a technical term, but means increasing percentages of respective populations in riot and turmoil as unemployment increases, pensions reduce or are eliminated, tax-funded social, educational, and medical services reduce; and politicians who are, after all mostly pandering to their constituents which they must do to remain in office, busy blaming someone else. The implication being that of course if the evil “others” would somehow comply, all would be well. So the “left” blames the “right,” and the other way around; neither as social tension increases, seem able to compromise.
I do not pretend to have the answers, but I assume that any society requires some basics to the true in order to sustain and increase the well-being of its citizens. Included in these prerequisites are:
1. Sufficient exploitable resources such as arable land, water, minerals and energy producing substances available. Absent those, countries such as Haiti have a dismal future unless supported by some outside country.
2. A sufficiently educated population to sustain the infrastructure in terms of the required skills to do so in a technological society.
3. A political system that maximizes individual competency-based efforts in order to address evolving problems.
4. The lack of a political ideology that imposes order, constrains, and definitions of reality prior to justifying evidence; either secular or theological.
5. The existence of a surplus of basic survival requisites such as food, water, shelter, and security from depredations from threats, in order to research and develop means of dealing with threats to general welfare.
So my question on this OP is what do you think are essential requisites for a human society to function?
I read, as some of you do, everyday and see economies of for example Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and recently even China, not to mention the U.S., sputtering. Sputtering isn’t a technical term, but means increasing percentages of respective populations in riot and turmoil as unemployment increases, pensions reduce or are eliminated, tax-funded social, educational, and medical services reduce; and politicians who are, after all mostly pandering to their constituents which they must do to remain in office, busy blaming someone else. The implication being that of course if the evil “others” would somehow comply, all would be well. So the “left” blames the “right,” and the other way around; neither as social tension increases, seem able to compromise.
I do not pretend to have the answers, but I assume that any society requires some basics to the true in order to sustain and increase the well-being of its citizens. Included in these prerequisites are:
1. Sufficient exploitable resources such as arable land, water, minerals and energy producing substances available. Absent those, countries such as Haiti have a dismal future unless supported by some outside country.
2. A sufficiently educated population to sustain the infrastructure in terms of the required skills to do so in a technological society.
3. A political system that maximizes individual competency-based efforts in order to address evolving problems.
4. The lack of a political ideology that imposes order, constrains, and definitions of reality prior to justifying evidence; either secular or theological.
5. The existence of a surplus of basic survival requisites such as food, water, shelter, and security from depredations from threats, in order to research and develop means of dealing with threats to general welfare.
So my question on this OP is what do you think are essential requisites for a human society to function?
Dennis,
You framed it the way Fox news would do it. Particularly #4
As much as I would like it to be elements of 1,2,3 and 5, The reality of the world suggests (at least to me) that one does need a political (or religious) ideology that imposes order and constraints, even if these constraints are not completely reality based.
I read, as some of you do, everyday and see economies of for example Greece, Spain, Italy, France, and recently even China, not to mention the U.S., sputtering. Sputtering isn’t a technical term, but means increasing percentages of respective populations in riot and turmoil as unemployment increases, pensions reduce or are eliminated, tax-funded social, educational, and medical services reduce; and politicians who are, after all mostly pandering to their constituents which they must do to remain in office, busy blaming someone else. The implication being that of course if the evil “others” would somehow comply, all would be well. So the “left” blames the “right,” and the other way around; neither as social tension increases, seem able to compromise.
I do not pretend to have the answers, but I assume that any society requires some basics to the true in order to sustain and increase the well-being of its citizens. Included in these prerequisites are:
1. Sufficient exploitable resources such as arable land, water, minerals and energy producing substances available. Absent those, countries such as Haiti have a dismal future unless supported by some outside country.
2. A sufficiently educated population to sustain the infrastructure in terms of the required skills to do so in a technological society.
3. A political system that maximizes individual competency-based efforts in order to address evolving problems.
4. The lack of a political ideology that imposes order, constrains, and definitions of reality prior to justifying evidence; either secular or theological.
5. The existence of a surplus of basic survival requisites such as food, water, shelter, and security from depredations from threats, in order to research and develop means of dealing with threats to general welfare.
So my question on this OP is what do you think are essential requisites for a human society to function?
I think I need a more detailed account of what this functioning entails. Some model or description of how a society or culture ought to look like at baseline.
I’m inclined to minimize the significance of ‘global financial meltdown’ because I’m unable to separate the power-serving rhetoric from the real life consequences to the folks who actually draw the water. I know a lot of folks who had to downsize from a large house to an apartment and I feel for them but this simply doesn’t compare to the plight of failed states where citizens live in constant fear and squalor. The line of this so-called ‘function’ probably divides these two groups. In other words, if your affliction simply means a reduction in non essentials you are not really afflicted. This is a tangent but I think its really important when considering issues of global communities. Consideration for human rights should not, in my view, be relative to circumstance.
To give a cursory answer… I must confess I’m pretty cynical about this… I suspect we are too immature as a species to create a functioning culture without demonizing another culture. The ‘success’ of nations in our recorded history seems to show a disturbing correlation between imperialism and progress. There are nations that thrive without foreign expansion but its unclear to me whether they could do so without the benefit of allies that do. Or without the recent gains that their more ambitious predecessors achieved. I think legitimate social functioning would entail a model of statehood that was truly statesmanlike and didn’t shelter or apologize for warmongers. And I don’t think human culture has achieved that yet. But I’m hopeful.
Tolerance of the illusions/delusions of others as long as those illusions/deusions do not prevent others from maintaining theirs. Once we get past air, water and food, I think this one is fundamental to a functional, non-violent society and world in which progress both material and moral is possible.
So my question on this OP is what do you think are essential requisites for a human society to function?
More than anything else, a shared illusion.
More than a hierarchy?
Are we talking about fundamental desires or fundamental predispositions? I think that in order for individuals to form a society, they will first question the group’s integrity by way of attempting to establish a hierarchy.
after all, how can any knowledge be shared without the formation of groups?
(89):
More than a hierarchy?
Are we talking about fundamental desires or fundamental predispositions?
An illusion of heirarchy is usually step one.
I refer to fundamental predispositions meeting fundamental desires.
(Rob):
Tolerance of the illusions/delusions of others as long as those illusions/deusions do not prevent others from maintaining theirs.
If there were others, it wouldn’t be a shared illusion.
I refer to the archtype of an original society. Obviously the only remaining opportunity for such isolation is Newt’s Moon Colony.
Indeed. But the archtype of an original society can no longer have any meaning in reality. On earth today no society, no nation, is separate. But as yet there is no globally shared illusion. The ascendant illusion is the one to which I refer.
I tend to agree that currency fluctuations are very much secondary to more basic issues as exploitable resources and/or services such as listed. Njoh’s illusions are what I call cultural mores, and while critical, they must have some correspondence to the resources available to a society; Easter Island when occupied, must’ve had shared illusions, but they also denuded island that of trees, and may have contributed to the population vanishing. Haiti did much of the same thing, so that while Haiti has a huge population of poor, ignorant and barely existing people dependent on continual imports of charity, the Dominican Republic on the same island has good tree growth and a much higher standard of living.
The nature of the governing ideology (illusions, mores) is to me quite open to debate. Democracies are perhaps better, but they also depend on an educated populace, absent which they seem to tend toward mob rule; dictatorships can be very efficient, but also centralize power into too few hands and are subject to gross corruption. Religion has been a shared illusion, and not always with negative consequences, but as far as I gather, religion has never been all that useful in promoting the science and technology needed to exploit, develop, and distribute basic resources. Whatever the illusion, I am unable to conjure up a social paradigm that isn’t, at root, predicated on basic resources and population use of those resources. On another thread, I asked for ideas concerning a society that was not was not based on continual growth, and that was not stagnate; none were suggested, or if so I missed them.
Dennis: Easter Island when occupied, must’ve had shared illusions, but they also denuded island that of trees, and may have contributed to the population vanishing.
Instead of tolerance of others’ illusions, first on my list should have been knowledge and its creation. Progress there requires openess and a culture of criticism and tolerance of other ideas.. The despoilation of the island was no doubt the proximate but not the ultimate cause of that people’s ruin. A ruin which ensued even though they may have had a shared illusion. The ultimate cause of that society’s demise (and all others) was the inability of a static society with its static illusions to create new knowledge to overcome problems. It is the same for us with global warming and all other types of threat. We can survive if we create the knowledge.
So my list would go:
1. food
2. water
3. openess to new ideas, to criticsm and the valueing of freedom of expression. These shared values are essential to:
4. the creation of new knowledge that will enable us to overcome problems
In this successful society that I envisage, (a global society for that is the only type that can now ultimately ensure our survival) there is only one moral imperative for sane people: Do not do to others what you would not like done to yourself.
