Is the concept of Society more abstract than the concept of the Individual? i think they’re equally abstract.
i look at it as trees and forests, cells and bodies, constituent parts and wholes (which are themselves constituent parts of larger wholes).
People often presume and or imply that society is an abstraction whereas the human organism is a concrete reality. i contend that they are equally real, equally concrete things. Or equally conceptual, abstract things, depending which angle you take. The point being it’s a two way relationship, a mutual dependency - each owes its existence and meaning to the other. We have a tendency, at least in the USA, to arbitrarily hierarchize them such that the individual is more important, and tend to think that, as a rule, personal rights and freedoms trump social interests. In one popular American ideal, the only restriction on personal freedom is that the individual is not free to impinge upon the entitlements of other individuals - i doubt whether it’s actually possible to have a functioning society built around such views.
Not clear what you’re getting at James . . . are you suggesting that examples like that are the result of placing the interests of society on an equal par with the interests of the individual?
No. Examples like that display puting society on a higher level than the individual.
No individual should accept a concern for any society that doesn’t reciprocate the concern for the individual.
The individual was the inspiration that formed the society. The individual can exist, although poorly, without the society, the reverse is not true. A society without regrd for the individuals who form it becomes a mechanism soon not needing homosapian at all. Now for what purpose would an individual choose to create such a mechanism that might at any time, decide to do away with that individual and have plenty of power with which to do it?
A society, without a government, is a mindless entity quite likely to destroy itself along with all people. If the governance doesn’t understand or care about the very point and purpose of a society (which they seem to not), the society becomes more insane with power and eventually does away with anything and everything that gets in its way, never realizing that it is undermining its own existence.
The governors believe that they are personally getting rich and powerful by getting rid of anything in their path. Their excuse is that society is more important than the individual. Of course, they ARE individuals and it escapes them that the mechanism that they build, eventually has no need for them any more than anyone else. They believe that they have their fingers on the buttons of control, but that is an illusion/delusion.
Thus never agree to a group mindset that isn’t making the same agreement back to you.
1.) I just mean that individual Societies, in and of themselves, exist to do nothing more than to suggest certain behaviours within which the members of the society are to be bound. It remains a suggestion, as opposed to an actuality, simply because it is non-binding. [A] Society may hold punishments for those who do not behave within the parameters suggested by the society, and those punishments may either be Social, Civil or Criminal, but those are only as binding as the imposition of the punishments allows.
Further, an individual may extricate himself/herself from Society, though some are harder than others from which to extricate oneself and can come with greater risks per the above. In any event, an individual is always free to behave in an oppositional manner to the behaviours dictated by society, but then the people who choose to comply with the Society may also take revenge in one form or another.
In any event, absent any methods of pre-enforcement of behaviour, it remains nothing more than a suggestion of how an individual should conduct him/herself.
2.) No, because a society doesn’t believe anything. Individuals that identify with a certain society do.
i don’t think that’s true - or at least, you’re using a different manner of speaking. Societies are identified, characterized and held together, at least in part, by systems of belief - particularly beliefs regarding the makeup and constitution of the individuals the society contains. American society, for instance, believes that individuals qua individuals have various rights - without those beliefs, and without those rights, what it means to be an individual would be radically different. In this way, it’s a society’s beliefs are central to determining what individuals are.
Oh, i think it’s much more than that. But in any case, in the first place, what constitutes opposition, rebellion, non-conformity or whatever, is determined largely by the makeup of the society that is being opposed. In that sense, the individual never really escapes the society that produced him/her - just like the teenager rebelling against mom and dad never really escapes his or her upbringing.
Societies generally have a great many shared, common, and presumed beliefs that help shape the individuals the society contains. i realize societies don’t have any single, physical brain that generates and contains those beliefs, but that’s really beside the point.
In order for that to be true, it would have to have been in the interest of American society that the activist be arrested - but i don’t think that’s the case - i think the activist’s individual interests simply clashed with the individual interests of the police officers that arrested him.
Ok.
i think society does more to form any single individual than that individual does to form society - society is generally much bigger and more powerful than any single individual.
Once you accept that society is the higher priority, the police own you.
That is a straw-man and false dichotomy.
It isn’t a comparison between a single individual and the entirety of all society.
It is a concern of society having total authority and no individual having any at all, without society’s arbitrary approval.
But society, having no actual mind of its own or objective to seek, ends up being a conspicuously false priority. Thus a government makes the decisions, not the society.
So in the end, it is a comparison between government whim and individual rights.
The basic agreement that must be made is that the individuals (plural) agree to uphold the society/government as high as possible as long as it does not cost them their lives. And the society/government must make the agreement that it will uphold the individuals as high as possible as long as it doesn’t cost it its existence.
Of course reality isn’t that simple. Risks and probabilities get involved and make such agreements hard to assess on an moment by moment basis. But all of that can be worked out as well. The initial step is merely to balance the agreement concerning survival; “I will do my best to ensure that nothing destroys you, if, and only if, you agree to do your best to ensure that nothing destroys me.”
Again, realize that you can only agree with a government, not a society. A society is not a sentient being capable of making promises or even making decisions.
The police are not synonymous with, or necessarily representative of, society’s interest. IF the police own you, they own you regardless of where you place society on your list of priorities.
Without society, and without government, there are no individual rights.
What about a democracy wherein society chooses who governs?
Quite the contrary.
Without a law saying that you cannot carry a gun, you have the right to carry a gun.
And then what “rights” you have are up to how wise you are in using it.
Not true. Without laws saying i have the right to carry a gun, anyone who’s capable can take my gun away or prevent me from getting one in the first place. The “right” to carry a firearm only exists as an instantiation of the law.
The idea that the rights are inherent and exist wherever intelligent beings do is a way to legitimize and reinforce those rights. However, I do agree with you, in part. When you are the oppressed, however, it looks a bit different. Before the UDHR, there were human rights violations. So you could say that not only does country X have rights outlined by law, but society has them unwritten but known. So it still falls in line with your thinking even though it might be legal in one country.
The problem comes in when the law contradicts a claimed right, and no larger societal body will disagree. Take Slavery in the U.S. for example. People were, at times, saying things like “we have a right to be free” despite there being no such thing written or even agreed upon by those with the power to enforce or bestow them. It wasn’t even religion, as there were slaves in the Bible. So to them, rights were clearly something that existed at all times, not just something bestowed. And I have to agree with them as well. If you ask me “Did the slaves have a right to be free” I cannot in good conscience say they didn’t, because I’ll admit that I’ve said the same thing. Looking at what we mean when we say that, you might say it’s a small language mistake, instead we should say “we ought to have the right to be free” which changes it. But even that implies there’s a standard that isn’t being met that “ought to” be.
Sure, that’s one way we can think about it, and a workable way for societies to justify systems of rights in the abstract. But it’s really all got to be part of a broader social agreement and consensus in order to function. A person alone on an island can have the idea that s/he has certain rights as an “intelligent” being, but that doesn’t translate into actual practical, exercisable rights, until you put that person in a social context. Nature itself (the island) has no regard for, say, that person’s right to private property.
i thoroughly agree with you here. When people who are not actually free to do something make the claim that they “have a right” to do it, they are essentially saying that they OUGHT to be free to do it - it’s just a less precise way of talking.
i wasn’t trying to imply that rights are just arbitrary artifacts of the law - there are reasons rights are invented - often very good reasons - but what i am saying is that those reasons are primarily social reasons, and not, say, God or nature’s reasons.
Less precise but much more powerful way of speaking. and because language reflects reality and not the other way around, I think this abstract “inherent” right and the socially constructed concept might be two extremes and the truth somewhere in the middle
Ah see - i think language does far more than merely reflect reality - it shapes it for us - so we kind of talk and think these rights into existence as reactions to our social experiences, and then we justify them using the “abstract and inherent” approach. It works pretty well, except in using this much more powerful way of speaking we thereby sort of “brainwash” ourselves into thinking these rights are somehow intrinsic to the universe, rather than just the product of our own needs and desires.
But thinking about what i just said, i suppose it’s still possible to make the case that rights are inherent to some extent, at least insofar as they are reflections of our inherent needs and desires. But that’s still different from the idea that we are cosmically or existentially endowed with entitlements such as the right to free speech, private property, etc . . .