A Matured Society

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

An immature society needs a Bible in order to believe in God
Saviors to idolize
Preachers to interpret it
A written Constitution in order to behave lawfully
representatives in order to state their case
leaders to follow and bow before
printed money in order to be motivated to work
and text book instruction on how to raise and educate their children

A mature society graduates beyond all of those childish learning modes
leaves behind all the arguments of interpretation and policing they engender
acknowledges the collective responsibilities and cooperation of a matured society
trusts in the personal honor and integrity of each of their fellow citizens
and relies on its natural evolutionary abilities to navigate successfully
through the adult stages of a Nation’s life

2

I think really you’re talking about size rather than maturity.

A society of under 200 people needs no book, nor a constitution to maintain cohesion and mutual support. And once it goes over that natural limit, it tends to calve off a portion of its populace, who form a second ‘daughter’ colony, at a suitable distance away.

Our problems today stem from a) trying to maintain cohesion within a groupsize bloated monstrously beyond natural limits. b) having no real places for societies to ‘calve’ to, mankind now having for the most part saturated the earth and its environs.

3

Maturity is an evolved state of mind that regulates responsible adult parental behavior
it is a commonly shared attitude towards life that our entire specie is evolving into
and once there leaves behind childish things
it has nothing to do with numbers
and everything to do with the commonalty of the human experience

Our problems today
are all related to immature behavior in the primary school yard

4

It has everything to do with numbers.

For example. Someone dies, someone fat. Someone has to carry the coffin, but it’s too heavy for anyone to carry alone.

Two strong men volunteer, and just about manage to stagger it to the graveyard. The crowd agrees they are fine examples of society, and buys them cigars.

The next time a fat guy dies, the two men are accompanied by two others, each shoulder a corner, and, huffing and puffing just a tad, bear the box with some decorum to boot hill. Everyone pats them on the back, and tells them what splendid fellows they are.

One final fat guy chokes on a chilli-dog, and needs a lift to the cemetary. This time there are six volunteering, eager to attract a little applause when the guy’s successfully in the ground. The four at each corner put in an honest pall-bearer’s work, however, unnoticed, the two in the middle slack off, and barely get a dent in the shoulderpads of their somber black jackets.

No-one notices however, because the coffin reached the graveyard just as usual, and none of the corners drooped or tilted - and all the pall-bearers get free booze and chips regardless.

Do you see…? To support a society, it only requires a certain number of individuals within that society to be responsible - to bear their full share of the weight. Once that number is overreached, the opportunity for slack appears, and is unsurprisingly - and completely naturally - filled.

5

You espouse a nice ideal except you couldn’t name a single society with a thousand people that could be considered “mature” within that ideal.

6

Agreed
not a single person on this planet has ever arrived at adulthood
let alone an entire society
we are all in various stages of evolving maturity
the most advanced societies are teenage protesters
playing Russian roulette with nuclear bombs
and gambling on the market with natural resources
still hellbent on selfish aggrandizement
and to hell with the consequences

all I am espousing is the criteria needed
for us to grow up and become responsible adults
I do believe it must happen eventually
and the sooner the better
we are running out of resources
we may be crazy
but we are not stupid

7

I’m sorry, which humanity are you talking about again…?

8

You realize your mature society is just an anarchist state or a totalitarian state where all dissenters are executed and the rights of the individual are unwritten?
Just saying

We aren’t stupid, we are greedy. The greed just makes us do stupid things

9

Ah, but totalitarianism is soooo attractive if you get to be the totalitarian! :wink:

Lessee… We are greedy. Greed makes us do stupid things. Therefore, we are stupid. You may have defined a cause of stupidity, but you didn’t make it go away… :unamused: :unamused:

10

Tremendously astute post, my friend. That’s probably my personal favorite post of yours ever.

11

It’s all in the wrist.

12

Dissenters are teenagers striving for a necessary transitional state of independent self-awareness
this is best done via self-aggrandizing (aka greedy) competition among their peer group

Adulthood is a state of self-awareness related to a profound understanding
that existence itself is meaningless without compassionate and constructive inter-dependence
that without responsible cooperation and mutual respect among peers
endless competiton is no longer creatively productive but also destructive
This state of adult mind is clearly realized as a parent seeking future security for its children
where the welfare of the next generation
is more important than the present one

In an adult state of mind
anarchy is moot
all parents desire precisely the same sharing and caring family values
which are founded on equality of resources and of opportunity

In a society of adult peers
the mind of the parent and that of the State
are one and the same

Freedom. Fraternity and Equality
then become the existential democratic realities of a matured society
not merely the precocious idealistic slogans
of a prior rebellious, self-determinant teenage consciousness

13

Ever been on a plane MM…?

Sometimes when my boredom has peaked I read the emergency instructions. The one for the drop-down oxygen masks always struck me. It says something like: “Please attach your own mask before attempting to secure the masks of any minors you may be responsible for.”

The logic is quite sane, if a little heartless. It’s no good trying to save your children if in doing so, halfway through, you pass out.

And it is this reality that damns your rather beautiful:

The welfare of the present generation is always of prime importance. Because without it, the future doesn’t exist, our primitive minds realise this, and act accordingly. I think you lack enough neighbors out there in your desert my friend. Say you bring up your children sparingly, tightening belts, and practicing thrift in light of the long haul of winter months ahead, indoctrinating them with the ideals of sacrifice for a better future. Your neighbor however, burns through his resources like there’s no tomorrow, buying every advantage money can buy right now.

He himself is bigger, fattened on his high-octane diet, and his children equally sleek, like racehorses tracking brief moments of conquest at the risk of broken legs. And there you are stuck on your dependable donkey, praying that somewhere along the line his over-confident brood will snooze, allowing yours to catch up.

Damn I seriously mixed a lot of metaphors there, sorry.

The moral of the stories are however, that for every successful tortoise, there are many more hares all laughing. Those that sacrifice for the future will always be overwhelmed by those who slash and burn. Until of course it is too late and everything is consumed - at which point the fat boys, with nothing left to eat, will eat you instead.

14

Yes
and while looking down from 30.000 feet
I realize a basic reality
that if I live my life reacting to the selfish morals of the teenagers below
as you suggest
and not my own
there would be no one to set an adult example ](*,)

15

I ain’t suggesting anything compadre, just telling you the way it is. If you wanna go around saying “Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were a little more considerate and well, me-like, then everything would be just fine and dandy…” that’s just sooper.

The only way to create a perfect society is to create a society within which the perfect are rewarded, and the imperfect find reproduction and the furtherence of their beliefs and strategies difficult if not impossible. ie. we have to find a way to make the long-term pay-off, pay-off now.

16

why would you want to do that
when we all know the problems of the moment all too well?

I am explaining that teen acne is a developmental phase
which is why things are necessarily the the way they are
and why it is now necessary to grow up and change the way it is

why do you not try to address that argument directly
and explain, if you can, why you disagree?

you first said it was a matter of numbers
I disagreed and explained why and how
an adult consciousness
is a step up from a protestant teen consciousness
for every single one of us

it is not a matter of being nice
change it is an evolutionary imperative
nothing can stop it
we can make the transition from teen to adult willingly and responsibly
or be soberly shocked into a more mature state of awareness
the choice is ours
so why go the painful way?

17

I’m not just telling how it is, but why it is as it is.

And you see, we are grown up. This is as grown up as we get.

Why change…? When as far as evolution is concerned, we work so well just as we are.

We as sentient beings, with one foot in the past and another in the future, can predict. Evolution can’t. You are talking about cultural and governmental evolution, a different critter altogether. And remember, those with the power to change things drastically for the ‘better’ are examples of a socio/political phenotype best adapted to the very cultural enviroment they are considering changing.

Imagine if a government of sharks had a bunch of lung-fish scientists saying to them, yeah well - this water stuff, it’s all well and good, but another 50 years of it and we might all be dead. So, like, it would be really cool if you guys could see fit to implement a program of radical drainage, you know… For the greater good… :-k

18

How did we get to where we are
without and entire sequence of evolutionary changes taking place over the past 10 million years?
who are you to say that the evolution of human consciousness has reached its peak
and has now come to a grinding halt?
what is your basis for thinking that?

if change is unnecessary
how does an introspective intellect factor into survival?
We worked just fine as apes for 200 million years
as all other primates still do
Why did one of the 255 primate specie undergo such drastic change?
What for?
Why did a self-reflective consciousness need to emerge out of Nature?

Are you indeed a philosopher?
If you are doing fine
why bother philosophizing in a philosophy forum
do you have no objective but to regurgitate old wine?

Do you have a philosophy of your own?
or just one you adopted?
I have not heard you say anything
we have all heard for centuries

19

All exciting questions that will have to wait until the morrow.

20

Fairly sound actually. Look, evolution is not a magical force, nor is it omniscient. All evolution is a differential of death rate. Driven by:

a) Maladaptations resulting in early death. Particularly death prior to sexual maturity.
b) Maladaptations resulting in reduced fertility/reproductive performance/mate attraction.

And that, by and large, is it for ‘fast evolution’ - the other, even slower kind, is the micro-tweaking involved in shaping and perfecting facets of our organs and general performance - these having lesser overall impact on fitness, at least in a relatively stable enviroment.

But with excess human populations every ugly slacker dumbass can reproduce with someone, those with errectile problems can viagra their troubles away, infertile couples have any number of therapies available. Diseases don’t stay deadly for long enough, technology reduces the wear and tear on our bodies resulting in longer lifespans. etc. etc. etc. Evolution’s sole method of quality control, death, has had most of its claws pulled.

Evolution, of the genetic driven type, has all but stopped. We are what we are, and have been pretty much so for millenia. Don’t expect genetic drift to save us. We’ll all be dead by then.

Our conscious minds effect only cultural change, not evolution in a strict sense.

Chance, and changes in enviromental circumstance. Right place, right time, no other pressing engagements.

No reason at all.

Need…? Need…? There’s no ‘need’ involved. It just did, because at that point its platform - our brains - had complexified enough to support it. Need, reason, purpose - forget them with relation to evolution and nature they are purely subjective bullshit human constructs.

I’m not anything - what is a ‘philosopher’ anyway…? And it seems regurgitating old wine is necessary sometimes, to keep people’s flights of fancy in check.

Pragmatism. Inevitabilism. We all adopt perspectives. Nothing is new under the sun.

Look, the real question is “Why am I trying to burst your bubble…?” And the answer is because I like you. You’ve lived a very interesting life and stuck by your principles throughout it. And I hate to see you waste your time in the realm of ‘should’ and ‘ought’ and ‘it would be better’.

I mean, sans bells and whistles, this thread is basically based on the observation that “people should grow the fuck up” - And you are berating me for being hackneyed…? :laughing:

I mean Jesus.

The vast majority of people will not grow up until some imperative drives them. That imperative will have to be provided externally by society as a whole, incrementally - like electric/petrol hybrids - rather than all at once. Eco-economy will slowly make advances and public/politic opinion slowly come round as incentives are gradually introduced to make them change their minds. There will be early adopters, band-wagon jumpers, and then the crowd joining en-masse, as with any new fashion. Some facets of eco-economy will only become viable after a certain threshold of mass-acceptance has been crossed - just like mobile phone networks and fax machines.

But it has its own speed, and it is frankly a toss up as to whether it will come in time to save the planet from major disaster.

Now stop telling people to grow up, and start lobbying the internet masses about that cheap bio-fuel doo-dah you have in your back garden, because that’s a tactic that may bear fruit, and not just piss people off.