We play, not IN, but AT society

[coberst]

We play, not IN, but AT society

Sapiens are a species that has lost many of their animal instincts and our “soul” replaces these instincts. I use the word ‘soul’ to signify what many might call consciousness, spirit, conscience, mind, reason, etc. We are thus thrust out of the arms of Mother Nature and onto our own ability to adapt and survive. We are forced into replacing the natural selection process, which has led to our evolution, and we are thrown upon our own abilities to adapt or to be extinguished. It is our ‘soul’ that creates the games we play. These games replace natural selection; and determine our survival as a species.

Socrates was an intuitive genius, who may have been the first to understand that man needs to function in a shared social fiction before he can earn his own social honor, and social approval. But even Socrates could not intuit the degree to which this need was rooted. He could not see how deep ‘social performance’ goes and the degree that it is rooted in the anxiety of all sapiens. Humans cannot recognize their own self-worth without the word from their own social group.

We have successfully struggled against Mother Nature to gain great material wealth only to discover that, as Pogo might say, ‘we have met the enemy and it is us’. The enemy is our great material play-form itself; it is our own profit-and-loss economy, our money-over-the-counter game that is defeating us. We have lost all relationship with our nature. Our created fiction has crippled our ability to rationally adapt to our world we have created. We run as fast as we can from school to shopping center to the bank and back home in our new SUV only to discover that the gods have already made us mad. Our own fictions are killing us.

War itself is a fiction, it is a game, and it is a play-form. Roman civilization itself was a great “potlatch spirit” (a ceremonial feast of the American Indian of the northwest coast marked by the host’s lavish distribution of gifts or sometimes destruction of property to demonstrate wealth and generosity with the expectation of eventual reciprocation). What begins as simple contests, develop into complex play-forms. “Poetry, art, law, philosophy, war—all are contests or play-forms.”

To call them play-forms is not say that they are not serious. In our great game of society we create meaning; fictional meaning but nevertheless these fictions are life-meaning fictions. Me and Earnest agree, our problem is that we must create better fictions to live by, because our present fictions are killing us.

What is the difference between playing a fictional role in life versus a non-fictional role?

Ideas and quotes from “Beyond Alienation” by Ernest Becker

[Matt]

1. You don’t understand natural selection if you think it’s been stopped.
2. You claim we play at society, but this just sounds like you’ve redefined the meaning of society to fit your own word play. The statement feels meaningless, but without your shaping arguments I cannot say for certain it is.

man needs to function in a shared social fiction before he can earn his own social honor, and social approval

This is a perfect example of word redefinition to fit an argument, the phrase ‘shared social fiction’ is meaningless, social interaction cannot be fictional and by very definition social interaction must be shared.

What you seem to be saying is man need to socially interact to gain social honor and approval, which would seem to me to be glaringly obvious and not even worthy of mention in an argument?

[coberst]

Let’s think about our role as a parent. Is this parental role fiction or non-fictional?

I would say that insofar as feeding, clothing, and furnishing shelter and security our role is non-fictional. But what about driving kids to volley ball practice, or violin lessons, or cheerleader camp, etc.; are some of these fictional? Isn’t there a division between what all mammals do as a parent versus what some of us consider to meaningful, i.e. fictional that others consider differently?

[matthatter]

I disagree with many of your ideas in your first post (Matt brought a few of them up); since I take your second post as a response to his issues with your introduction to this thread, I’llstart by responding to that.

Let’s think about our role as a parent. Is this parental role fiction or non-fictional?

I would say that insofar as feeding, clothing, and furnishing shelter and security our role is non-fictional. But what about driving kids to volley ball practice, or violin lessons, or cheerleader camp, etc.; are some of these fictional?

I have to say that I don’t like your use of the words fiction and nonfiction to describe words that, if I am interpretting you correctly, refer to innate (natural, in touch with “mother eath”) behaviors, as opposed to those made in order to try to meet a desired fictional (in terms of the actual current “objective”/outside-the-person present situation)/imagined scenario in the future.

As Matt said, “You don’t seem to understand natural selection if you think it’s been stopped.” Either that or you altered your definition of natural selection to fit your argument, another point Matt brought up.

Isn’t there a division between what all mammals do as a parent versus what some of us consider to meaningful, i.e. fictional that others consider differently?

Me and Earnest agree, our problem is that we must create better fictions to live by, because our present fictions are killing us.

What is the difference between playing a fictional role in life versus a non-fictional role?

This is where I also agree with Matt… the things you say seem obvious, and it seems that there is an obvious answer–humans can think symbolically; they can think of something that isn’t actually present in the current (outside the body) environment. This creates alternatives, which creates a “better” choice between multiple possiblities of action; the human illusion of a good or bad/evil, right or wrong.

You say we “play” AT society, not IN it, which I understand as an expression of the human disposition of not being OF nature/the earth, but a seperate entity that has to overcome it. We aren’t at peace with the present situation, we are never even totally experiencing it; out mind restlessly travels through mind-created universes deciding which currently nonexistent behaviors will result in the most desirable nonexistent universe (again, I am tlaking about existence in terms of the physical, “objective” outside-the-body world).

Yet, I can’t help but find irony in your attempt to describe this human condition by putting it in a seperate category from natural selection, and nature itself.

Sapiens are a species that has lost many of their animal instincts and our “soul” replaces these instincts.

I don’t think we’ve lost our animal instincts at all, they just take a different form. You seem to have the idea that human consciousness is SEPERATE from nature, and this is the human problem itself!

You must have seen some of the free-will arguments on these forums. Many argue that there is no such thing as free-will (an objective free-will, there is still the subjective illusion of free-will). It’s simple… although after making an action you might thinj of a better alternative, and wish you would hage made that choice instead, it was impossible for at the time you made your choice! You could only have made the choice you made, because that is the choice you made.

It seems ridiculously obvious, I know, but the point is that every moment up to that moment you made your “choice” weighed in on what you were going to do. If you could have thought about some other vital piece of information that would have made you act otherwise you would have, but that just didn’t happen. And what could you have done? Nothing!

It makes me think of Nietzche’s concept of the Eternal Recurrence. Whatever actions you make will be recurring forever. It reminds us of the importance of all our actions, and this kind of importance, this kind of thoughtm and consideration, although very simple, can make a major difference for humans. The idea that each action you make will impact all of your future moments, will return to you over and over and over through affecting your future moments, puts us in the habit of taking an extra moment to consider if what we are doing is right. At this moment new concepts/principles (such as, for example, “do unto others” ) which are not yet practiced into “instinct-like” reactionary behaviors to current stimuli, can be exercised.

It’s not that man is SEPERATE from natural selection, or that a “soul” has REPLACED instincts, but that humans can use their unique way of thinking to not let animalistic/instinctual reactions drive them to make “choices” that conflict with a desired “fiction”.

The goal, in my opinion, is for humans to exercise actions conducive to undeniable ethical standards until, finally, everyone in the society performs the behaviors automatically (as children will be brought in a “perfectly” harmonious environment in which there are no models exhibiting unethical behaviors).

At this point humans will be more in tune with nature again (meaning, they will be aware that they are nature, and they will not suffer from the endless attempt to improve the present, as their present moments will be accepted as they are). There will be no illusion of conflict. Humans will again live the simplicity of animals–they will be back in the Garden of Eden, and they will be using the human mind for good–they live secured in the present, secured in the future.

[coberst]

Wo/man is an animal distinguished from other animals by having a ‘soul’. I do not wish to give a religious connotation to this word but it is one I have settled on because we have so many different words used to exemplify this distinction. I wish to say that men and women are part body and part soul, part material and part ‘other’. Soul means spirit, consciousness, etc; all the words that are used to distinguish humans from all other animal species.

How does the ‘self’ develop after birth? We are born within a social world and the self is developed within this milieu. At birth we enter into a specific culture and in response to that culture we develop a self that becomes an accepted actor within this society.

We know why we allow social fiction to dictate our lives. We recognize that some cultures will starve before eating certain foods. We would rather tighten our belts than eat the forbidden fruits. The heart of the matter is that to change our social fictions is to change all that we are accustomed to. To change our habits and customs means to arouse the “anxiety of the unfamiliar”. It seems that the higher primates will sacrifice their very lives rather than change the habits of a life time inherited from our birth. “The terrible truth is that the coin of the fiction is flesh-and-blood; and this is the way it must be for a symbolic animal.”