Society is a collection of individuals. Mitigated against each other when the aim is to survive within the picture and the cave.
People interact with each other to fulfill their aims, but this is not a simple utilitarianism, or a world of additive utilities.
People are dependent in such a way as to not allow a release from responsibility, something to which they contribute.
It is responsibility that defines us first, responsibility stands prior to rights.
There is a social corpus that stands prior to the individual.
The individual is completely dependent in that they cannot be released from the vital accompaniment, neither of themselves nor of the group in which they share and inhabit.
In a fully relational environment, to define the individual as the complete totality is folly.
So it is not individual rights that are explanatory of how we should act socially. Socially, it is better to consider the group, which means a discourse on responsibilities, of individuals to the other individuals to which they relate.
This is radical, as it situates questions of how we should act in questions of how I should act.
While we can only imagine how society functions at a greater level of stratification, this does not disavow us of responsibilities, since from observation we can tell that it is changeable, for the better, and for the worse.
So as you are not released of yourself from your very life, as you are your life, nothing else, so it is that you are not released of your presence in relation to others.
This set of relations, through shared idea, leads to the ontology of the social. And I say this with intuition in a time of myth.
In one sense, one is always functioning blind, one is living a myth, their myth.
And this is why responsibility is so important, or attention to that which allows individuals equal access to the corpus, to potential.
In moving so far to individualism, we are damaging the world, the corpus, and today is the best example of what this looks like.
9 comments:
responsibilities before rights.
and how "we" should act vs. how "I" should act.
good call.
reminds me of the "Seventh Generation" principle that some native tribes had, where the idea was that every action needed to be weighed in terms of how it would impact your grandchildren seven generations down the line.
for e.g., if i kill all the fish in this river, or if i go over and bonk the leader of the neighboring tribe on the head, how will that affect my grandkids in SEVEN generations?
to put that in perspective, you could argue that somewhere in the neighborhood of seven generations have passed since the founding of America in 1776.
(maybe more like nine, but still...)
"intuition in a time of myth" - excellent stuff.
The philosopher's twist on the lost meaning behind the day.
How is anyone supposed to understand this??
you understand by waiting.
c-dog. enjoying reading these over and over and waiting, as they say more than I can understand in one sitting.
this moment: the last piece about individualism really resonates for me today, what would happen if we switched to wholism, groupism or what some might consider co-dependence which might actually be a misdiagnosis after all.
word verification: godsty
I like this too. But it also makes me think of that old "it is and it isn't" thing. We are bound together AND separate. Being conscious of this is important while we enter into the greatest convergence of crises humans have ever known. A tricky part is deciding on a group level what are the right and wrong decisions. For most things, the discrepancy among opinions is a serious obstacle. If I don't actually believe shopping is the remedy to the economic downturn, I might just not go shopping, even if it's suggested I do.
mmmm, yes, and my word verification is "yoking"
the connections between people are non-important compared with the connection to nature.
beware, ive finnally begun reading WALDEN
People are nature.
Everything is connected and when we start to see ourselves as apart we start to cause damage to everything including ourselves (think of a web: if all the pieces of the web were separate, there would be no web). Of course, one could argue the significance of the web in the first place, but perhaps those conversations would be easier held while the web is in tact, as opposed to after it is broken.
Needless to say, I really like this because I'm discovering that "sheepism" and individuation do not serve me well, and thus I'm willing to collaborate, explore together, and utilize the individual's strengths to formulate a greater whole.
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