Are collective efforts necessary?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 21:59
VIEWED: 5226
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I'm told by friends that speak Hindi that English isn't a great language and that it lacks subtlety. It won out not because it was perfect or because people voted on which was nicer. It won as latin did because it was the first language of a global empire.
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Dreamtrove,
I come from near Buffalo. I don't know if you're willing to say, but OOC, where abouts are you?
In the very general sense, we agree on the concept 'it either works or it doesn't'. Destructive wave forms cancel each other out, constructive ones add. Universal constants either lead to stable phenomena and existance, or they don't. Certain biological variations are advantageous, or they are not. Projecting that forward to a philosophy of society, however, is where we part.
The first difference I see is calling the process 'competition'. Competition implies striving against another for dominance. Other more general, neutral terms work better to describe the process.
The second is the emphasis on internal characteristics of specific entities, either individuals or groups, rather than the varied processes that can be employed individually or in combination. A biological example - it's not always the better hunter that survives, it may be the one that hunts but is also the more cosmopolitan feeder, or the more prolific breeder, or with the more efficient metabolism.
The third is the value judgement that anything that has any kind of survival advantage is necessarily better (in human society). There are new studies which elucidate human responses and show how they are adaptive to humans living in cooperative groups - an essential evolutionary condition for human survival. A sense of fairness is one, rewarding neurochemicals for cooperation is another, profound hormonal drives for caregiving (oxytocin) is a third. There are others.
By your logic, a monopoly, which works well enough to amass complete control over a market, is a great thing simply b/c it works well enough to continue near indefinitely. By the measure of human values, though, it is not nearly so good.
Anyway, I really, really have to go for now.
Later, then. 
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Sygnim,
Actually it is. This is a very long and involved discussion though. But I did mean this litterally. It's not strict kill or be killed evolution, but signals which reproduce effectively do dominate the subatomic world, and so one up the line, it forms a sort of scalar evolution. But evolution, as a branch of statistical mathematics is a major force in the underpinnings of our universe. I guess the point here is that the idea is far broader than just its application to biology.
English could have been abandoned by people but wasn't. Latin was not accepted with the same level of adherance. I think that the large number of words, the speed of learning for children and the large amount of material composed in english are certainly contributing factors towards its success, but it is certainly, in whatever fashion, in competition with other languages. Words too, may individually fight for their place in a language by some means of evolution. But this wasn't my main point. My main point was society with a decent language has a superior form of communication, making it more efficient, and increasing that societies chances of defeating its competition. Thus a general expected rule would be that better communication languages would foster greater empires, but there are other societal factors which may be simultaneously having an impact on a societies survival.
But it was simply a study of the effectiveness of the language as a brute competing force, not a measure of quality. The Franch would also undoubtedly argue for the particular merits of their language. I of course am a fan of competition, so the more the merrier, by all means. Just trying to say, yes, in many ways, language is involved in evolution.
Rue,
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In the very general sense, we agree on the concept 'it either works or it doesn't'. Destructive wave forms cancel each other out, constructive ones add. Universal constants either lead to stable phenomena and existance, or they don't. Certain biological variations are advantageous, or they are not.
I'm from the middle of nowhere north of binghamton. I'm 6 hours from Buffalo. We get almost as much snow as you do, I think we're second highest in the state, but you do have us beat :)
Anyway, this stuff about waveforms etc. is what I was eluding to. It's very long and involved and I could carry it through, and I'm sure you could too, but that would become the whole conversation for a very long time.
About social phenomenon, here's my short scenario.
2 peoples live in a forest. They never see the sun, and their eyes have evolved to be very sensitive to light. Suddenly, a plague strikes, destroying the complete cover trees, and the niche is quickly replaced by a less covering foliage. The increase of light is blinding to both peoples. People A evolve a resistance by an alteration of the genetic structure of the eye. People B invent sunglasses. Who survives? The answer is most certainly people B. People A requires 20 generations to make the physical alteration, whereas people B completes its modification in a matter of weeks.
This sort of thing echoes all through history. Many things may effect social evolution. By no means is it simple kill or be killed. The society of perpetual AIDS may turn out to reproduce at such a young age that it reproduces faster and then replaces the other societies even if it has a maximum life span of 15. There can be many many possibilities. The same applies to organizations which compete on a level of their own. IBM competes with SUN whether either company has workers or not. Robocorp may someday rule the world without even a human CEO.
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The third is the value judgement that anything that has any kind of survival advantage is necessarily better (in human society).
This isn't what I meant. I make no value judgement. More likely to survive and reproduce effectively is just that. In many ways it may not be superior. The only value judgement I make is that I am sure, over the long haul course of time, an evolutionary mechanism
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The problem with this world view is that it's too simplistic.
First, you assume that the "advanced" feature of society A is what makes it triumph over society B. That isn't always the case. For example, democracy is a better system than Nazism, but the things that won world war two was the untouchable production capacity of the US, targeting of German production by allied airforces and the almost unlimited man power of the Soviet Union.
Had Germany had the manufacturing resources of the US it would have been a close thing. You could argue that western democratic principles built the US industrial base, but the US's raw material and land advantages are purely geographic and independent of its form of government.
Superior doesnt give you an advantage UNLESS you compete directly with your opponent. A badly organised tyranny can crush a well organised democracy if luck just isnt on the democracy's side. Athens fell to Sparta because Spartans had a better army and Athens had a plague. Any advantage that Athenian democracy may have had in organization, manpower and resources were destroyed by sickness. The world didnt see another democracy like it for over 1000 years. From a long view monarchys and tyranny's are the most successfull political systems in terms of longevity. If you are saying that what works should win out America should be a dictatorship.
My other problem is that it means there is no benefit to virtue within a society. In fact the baser a society gets the more opertunities for profit there are. Why would anyone outlaw slavery? From a purely financial POV it's a fantastic system that reaps untold commercial benefits and has been in use thousands of years. Why become less competative by not employing it?
Why clamp down on drugs, prostitution or porn? These are products for which there is a ready market which people are willing to supply. What's the difference between them and tabacco or alcohol? What right do you have to stop someone making a business selling crack on your street corner?
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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I posted on another thread a long thing about how this cooperative governance led the nazis and commies to kill hunrded million plus people, that wouldn't have been possible if the same a**holes had been in our competitive individualistic society.
I'm not one for political debates and such, but there are many studies that show that what happened in Nazi germany can happen ANYWHERE to ANYONE!
There was a school, which had a book written about them, but I can't remember the name, where the history teacher decided to start a little project where he had all the kids join a group and they were to shun anyone that did not join this group. It quickly ecalated and got out of hand as children were beatn up and ridiculed for not joining the group. What started as a small history lesson in class turned into frightening cliche, and then soon after into a regime of cruel children. Deciding it was enough, the teacher decided to call an assembly, and said 'It's time to meet the leader of our group.' He then put a picture of Hitler up on the big screen on stage. All the kids were shocked and when asked why they did what they did, almost all said "It's what everyone else was doing."
There was also a study done on US soldiers, where one would be brought into a room and told by an official to shock this man in another room whenever the lie detector said he'd told a lie, and to increase the voltage gradually. This man being shocked was an actor and eventually the voltage was high enough that it would have seriously hurt or killed the man. The soldier kept on shicking the man, even after the acting man started to plead for it to stop, and after that, even after the man was laying unconcious on the floor. If the man didn't answer the question the soldier was told to shock him anyways.
This study did show however that when the official left the room the soldier would quit shocking the man, but as soon as he came back he'd start again. This test hasn't been done since around the 80s if I recall correctly, since it often traumatized the patients.
I would not blame only 'cooperative socialness' for the kind of behavior that led to the Nazis. I beleive it has more to do with peer pressure and authority than anything else.
Outside of that snipet I will run from this thread forever, as I figure everyone ends up wanting something different in a government anyways, and once they get it, all they do is complain about how it's all wrong.
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::waves:: HI!!!
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Quote:
The problem with this world view is that it's too simplistic.
First, you assume that the "advanced" feature of society A is what makes it triumph over society B. That isn't always the case. For example, democracy is a better system than Nazism, but the things that won world war two was the untouchable production capacity of the US, targeting of German production by allied airforces and the almost unlimited man power of the Soviet Union.
Had Germany had the manufacturing resources of the US it would have been a close thing. You could argue that western democratic principles built the US industrial base, but the US's raw material and land advantages are purely geographic and independent of its form of governmen
I think you're still missing my point. It's the evolutionary value of the society, not the goodness of it.
Germany was very advanced, technologically speaking. What caused it to fail was not the inferiority of Germany, it was the inferiority of Naziism. It was the Nazi world view that put them at war with Russia and the United States and virtually everyone else. Clearly a society that the very nature of leads you to attack everyone is not an evolutionary winner because you might lose any one of those wars. Another similar example is Saddam Hussein, a govt. that continually attacked it's neighbors. And this is not a random characteristic of the Nazis, it's essential. Anything that is appallingly oppressive of its own people needs to be at war with an enemy in order to survive to prevent its own people from turning on it.
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Athens fell to Sparta
I think this is an oversimplification. Athens was not a well ordered democracy. It was a corrupt tyrannical democracy that was roundly hated. It funded its efforts by looting the delphic defense fund and overtaxing its allies. Sparta by contrast was a well ordered socialist state. Spartas allies were more or less willing partners rather than imperial possessions. These were very stong factors in Athen's defeat.
But in a longer view, a society must evolutinarily be able to survive and reproduce. To survive it must not collapse under its own weight, as both sparta and the soviet union did, and to reproduce it must spawn other successful states that follow the same model. There were many more Athens copies than sparta copies, and they succeeded better because of those democracies, the ones which were not corrupt, oppressive and roundly hated, tended to do better following the democratic model than their socialist spartan counterparts, all other things being equal.
And yes, there is no benefit to virtue within a society, unless that virtue is connected to human nature in some way. If the people are randomly killed by their own govt. the society will not survive because it will not have the support of its people. If the Nazis had not been genocidally anti-semitic, they would have had the atomic bomb. Whether they would have had it before being defeated is hard to say. If they had still been agressive in invading their enemies, then no, they probably wouldn't have had it in time.
But ultimately, a lot of virtue is subjective. Virtue to you and me is not the same as Virtue to the Soviets or to Osama Bin Laden.
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What right do you have to stop someone making a business selling crack on your street corner?
This issue really isn't one of virtue, it's one of survival. Crackhead society does not compete effectively with Korea. I think that it's our main problem personally. At the risk of offending everyone, I would humbly suggest that actually the main reason, though there are many, for the United States failure in competition with Korea, is marijuana abuse in this country. And BTW if anyone doesn't recognize our failure to compete with Korea as a fact they're deluding themselves, plus bear in mind that this is a country of 48M people, about the size of Indiana.
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Superduck,
I really disagree. I read these studies too in college and a great many more. But they don't prove your point. All they prove was that there was nothing particular to the German people, racially, genetically or culturally, that cause Naziism.
I never implied there was. There was something about the German governmental structure that failed to prevent Naziism. The US is really structure with far more checks and balances. It's set up in more of a competitive and less of a cooperative manner. True, Hitler made some changes to that system to make it MORE cooperative, but then Bush has attempted to make those same changes here, with less success.
The Bush administration has manipulated elections, gerrymandered districts to create an artificial republican majority. I'd like to believe that this happened naturally, but I know that we on the right don't really have this kind of dominance in the country, or we would always be in the majoirty. In reality, Bush cheated.
As a result, he's created a Republican shut-out govt. Democratic say is more or less reduced to zero. But such is the nature of our govt. that Bush is opposed at every turn by his own party, and they, because of failsafes such as separation of powers, can oppose him and win, something that dissenting Nazis could not do in Germany.
Now I'm not saying Bush is Hitler, that's nonsense. He doesn't have genocidal designs on his own people, or anyone else for that matter, but Bush is the worst president we've had since Clinton ;) I guess my point is, Bush has the will, not to be a Nazi, but to be a much worse president than he is, but checks and balances stop him, or at least slow him, and will ultimately take him down.
Finally, I think you're missing something about peer pressure. Peer pressure is a FACT of cooperative societies. Peer pressure rules our jury system for example, and many other non-competitive designs, peer pressure is not a fact of competition. Giving in to peer pressure is cooperation in action.
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I wish I had more time to this thread. I just wanted to toss in an observation: I alos used to believe in the perfectibility of society by competition between societies- until I read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. In essence, he points out a number of societies that manage to compete themselves into non-existance by ignoring fundamental environmental and technological problems. I no longer believe that competition automatically evolves the "fittest" societies, and I no longer believe in the ability of the collective to "eventually" learn from experience. Ideology has in the past trumped reality- until reality trumps the entire society. The many cases of societies running headlong into extinction was distressing.
In fact, the most durable societies are those the cooperate internally AND pay attention to reality.
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Please don't think they give a shit.
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Quote:
I wish I had more time to this thread. I just wanted to toss in an observation: I alos used to believe in the perfectibility of society by competition between societies- until I read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. In essence, he points out a number of societies that manage to compete themselves into non-existance by ignoring fundamental environmental and technological problems. I no longer believe that competition automatically evolves the "fittest" societies, and I no longer believe in the ability of the collective to "eventually" learn from experience. Ideology has in the past trumped reality- until reality trumps the entire society. The many cases of societies running headlong into extinction was distressing.
In fact, the most durable societies are those the cooperate internally AND pay attention to reality.Quote:
I haven't read the book, but I do have some ranting response.
1. Sure, societies without environmental conscience exinct themselve repeatedly, it's part of evolution, but it's damaging to the planet. I think we as a planet can agree that certain things are proven failures and prevent them from resurfacing. It's like if there was an eat-everything bug, and all the other bugs realized that the eat-everything bug was going to destroy the food source and then extinct everyone including itself, and so they ganged up on the eat-everything bug. But past that,
2. This "success of cooperative societies" is not the case. Cooperative societies collapse all the time. The most extensive cooperative societies, such as the Soviet Union tend to be disasters in the long run. A russian woman I knew who worked in a govt. research lab in the Soviet Union. She said that everyone some time ago had agreed on the right way to do things, and then they cooperated towards that effort, until she got very advanced in the field, which was information theory, she thought they were right. As some point she realized that they were all, cooperatively, doing it wrong. But the organization was large, and had a vested interest in the wrong way, and so became unshakeable on the point. It was much easier to simply end the conflict by pushing her out, than by changing the way of doing it. Since there was no competition, there was only one way to do it. Sometimes there is more than one way to do something, and you don't know what is best. This is why compeition is essential to survival. So, she quit, and as such, the lab lost it's most educated member, and she went to work for the only competitor that she knew, which was of course, us. Now she works for the US Navy.
From the point of view of the Soviet society, this is a clear evolutionary failing, because if there is no competition within your society, there is always competition outside of it.NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You can't have it both ways. Athens can't be a tyranical democracy one minute and an admired and copied democracy the next. Sparta cannot be a well run socialist state and a system that collapsed under it's own weight.
Sparta was not socialist, now I know that you use that term in place of tyranny for any system you personally disagree with but I can't see how a militaristic elite supported by a enslaved underclass not of it's own racial group has any similarity to "socialism" other than you dislike it.
Sparta was good on the battlefield, but it had big problems at home. Athens too had big problems many of it's own making. It could be argued that the nature of Athenian democracy was a weakness in itself. That is subjective, which is why I didn't argue it. Instead I made one point, that any advantage a society has can be outweighed by factors outside it's direct control and so success or failure becomes hard to judge.
On the topic of crackheads not competing with Korea. The role of society isn't to compete with Korea it's to create an environment for the safe raising of children. THAT is the reason that we choose to outlaw some commercial activities and allow others. The ones we outlaw are the ones that society decides weaken our ability to create stability long enough to raise offspring. I would argue that if you get so good at competing that you don't raise your children, then you lose, irrespective of success in any other area.
We talked at length in the other thread about your fetishistic love of your mythical "1955 world." That world could exist because the economics that supported it existed at that time. America had come out of a war with excess industrial capacity recently converted from war use. There had been 5 years where people hadn't been able to replace customer items. GI's came home and started new families at about the same time. Pretty much every other industrial nation, including most of the US's international competitors were in ruins.
I would argue that that world doesnt exist today because those conditions no longer apply. It isn't because Americans got lazy, output per worker is higher now than in 1955 the size of the economy is much bigger as is the population. The conditions that made that world possible simply don't exist and will probably never exist again. So if that's what you want, tough, you lost it. That world didnt exist to "compete with Korea" and to compete with Korea you have to make the changes that destroy that world. So is that competition worth it?
You could of course move to Switzerland, or Sweden where a lot of the things you like about America in the '50's do exist but only because they put society over the needs to compete at any cost.
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