Society
Chapter 2 - Society
Society - Next page: State of our world
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Welcome to the Society page
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Fire
"I found this incredible and discovered it when I was writing about the beginning of humanity: in Greek mythology, Prometheus - the Titan - makes us out of clay because Zeus is bored. He is the supreme god and has already done everything. He has defeated the Titans and made the world perfect. What else can he do every day?
He wants pets, little creatures to play with, who will worship him, love him, and obey him. He orders Prometheus to make us, the people. Zeus says, "Do what you want." They can travel all over the world, but there is one thing they are not allowed to have: fire.
With fire, Zeus really means fire, which gives us technology to make iron and bronze, cook, and make pots. But he also means the divine spark, the fire that makes the gods gods, that makes us creative. Humans possess this spark because Prometheus disobeyed and gave us that spark.
Zeus was furious because, with that spark, humanity would no longer need gods. Then, they would no longer worship him but be autonomous without them."
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| Content source |
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| Stephen Fry - Leuven - March 28th 2025 |
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Core ideas
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Etymology
Society (n.)
| 1530s, "companionship, friendly association with others," from Old French societe "company" (12c., Modern French société), from Latin societatem (nominative societas) "fellowship, association, alliance, union, community," from socius "companion, ally," from PIE *sokw-yo-, suffixed form of root *sekw- (1) "to follow."The meaning "group, club" is from 1540s, originally of associations of persons for some specific purpose. The meaning "people bound by neighborhood and intercourse aware of living together in an ordered community" is from 1630s. The sense of "the more cultivated part of any community" is recorded by 1823, hence "fashionable people and their doings." |
| Content source |
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| Etymonline |
| Etymology of society by etymonline] |
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Long term thinking
Thomas More's Utopia (1516) exemplifies the political debate about what is unchangeable or changeable in our social life.
Hunger and poverty cried out for explanation. Utopia was neither a denial of nor an escape from social reality but its representation. From this perspective, a utopia is a realistic understanding of the structures of social needs rather than an abstract fantasy of heights.
More's Utopia remains an essential work for understanding whether a utopia is, in principle, contrary to realism.
Is it fair to limit Utopia to the play of our imagination? There may be something liberating in recognizing the limitations of reality and finding joy in creating impossible worlds.
Utopian images tend to create new needs that are incompatible with our present. These new needs transcend the immutable limitations of our current moment.
The denial of Utopia in the name of a supposedly known and predefined reality causes conversations, thoughts and questions to close down. It is as if politics can finally escape the pressure to wonder about the limits of possibility and impossibility and reduce everything to the governance of the status quo.
But if it is true that politics must start with the world as it is, man will always be concerned with utopian needs. Utopia is not the place where all our problems are solved. It is the place where we can clarify them and gain a position on how the current arrangement of life creates problems.
As social life is increasingly threatened by problems of health care, the environment or war, all of which seem to exceed the problem-solving capacity of the status quo politics, we must dare to proclaim new utopias and explore what forms social life can take. If we want to be realistic, we have to do this.
| Content source |
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| Utopian thinking prompts us to get real about society’s needs - W. Paris - Aeon - 2022 |
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Deep dive
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Intro
The Great Simplification
Greatly recommended to watchː
| The Great Simplifcation - Film on energy, Environment and our future |
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| https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/animations |
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The current sensitivities (2024)
Our current society did not come about by itself. Humanity has come a long way in living together.
We already know the central tensions and issues that confront the society and organisations:
- The tension created by the community’s need for stability and the organisation’s need to destabilise.
- The relationship between individual and organisation and the responsibilities of one to another.
- The tension arising from the organisation’s need for autonomy and society’s stake in the Common Good.
- The rising demand for socially responsible organisations.
- The tension between specialists with specialised knowledge and performance as a team.
All of these will be central concerns, especially in the developed world, for years to come.
In the current era, we experience many social problems: shocks in the areas of climate, biodiversity, wealth inequality, polarisation and social instability, globalisation, inflation and recession risks, etc. Each element and the connections between these elements cause specific problems: scarcity, forest fires, floods, population movements, wars, etc.
| Content sources |
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| The New Society of Organizations - P. Drucker - HBR - 1992 |
| Five Global Trends in Business and Society in 2023 - Insead - 2023 |
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Palaeolithic and Neolithic society
We assume that the prevailing form of society among hunter-gatherers was one of 'inverted hierarchy'. In concrete terms, this meant that the best hunters, or those who showed the most 'action', were kept subordinate to the general mores of the community.
Civilization is derived from the Latin word civitas, which means city. Hunter-gatherers may have built sanctuaries in the Neolithic period, such as the one found at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. To stay close to the gods, they had to abandon their traditional lifestyle slowly and convert it into an agricultural community.
Although farming is more physically intensive than hunter-gatherer methods, agriculture has the enormous advantage of supporting larger communities. In terms of health, the hunter-gatherers had an advantage, but in terms of group size - even if in poorer conditions - the sedentary lifestyle cannot be beaten.
Whether it concerns warfare or more social projects such as building irrigation canals, roads, or large farms, size and number matter, and it is a force and power multiplier supporting hierarchical discipline and chain of command.
Cities hold some powerful cards. Agriculture creates surpluses (in the good years), creating stocks that form the basis for economic trade. The shrines create a caste of people who populate and govern these shrines, and the transfer of power from the gods worshipped is quickly transferred to the people who lead the worship.
The human population multiplied after the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. This was another domino to fall, creating larger, stronger, more structured groups of people who could achieve victory over other rival groups.
Urbanization, agricultural economics, population growth, and a religious caste were the perfect ingredients for creating centrally planned nations that fought among themselves to acquire wealth and empires and build a top-down structure internally because power received its legitimacy from the gods.
| Content source |
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| Equality - D. McMahon – Itaka – 2024 – Chapter 2, Loss (of equality) |
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Gilgamesh, king of Urk (Situated in the late 2nd millennium BC)
Gilgamesh became the hero par excellence of the ancient world—an adventurous, brave, but tragic figure symbolising man's vain but endless drive for fame, glory, and immortality.
| When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash the glorious sun endowed him with beauty, Adad the god of the storm endowed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wild bull. Two thirds they made him god and one third man. |
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Axial Age
The millennium before Christ must not have been a great time for human rights. Despotism and slavery took many forms. Perhaps in response to this (or by chance), an ethical counter-movement arose throughout world society.
Most current world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) originated in a specific period of antiquity around 800 to 300 BCE. This period is the first in human history in which thinkers appeared who are still a source of inspiration for contemporary religious and spiritual movements: Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Buddha, Mahavira, Confucius, Lao Tzu, the Hebrew prophets, etc.
Karl Jaspers has called this period the Axial Age.
- During the Warring States period (5th to 3rd centuries BCE), an era in ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, bureaucratic and military reform, and political consolidation, Taoism and Confucianism emerged.
- In Ancient Israel, the prophets made their appearance from Elijah by way of Isaiah and Jeremiah.
- Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, lived around the 5th century BCE in India. Buddhism spread through China towards Japan.
- Platonism (c. 4th century BCE) would significantly influence the Western world through Christianity and secular thought throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
The axial age corresponds almost precisely to the period coinage was invented. What's more, the three parts of the world where coins were first invented were also the very parts where those sages lived; in fact, they became the epicentres of Axial Age religious and philosophical creativity. The ultimate effect of introducing coinage was an "ideal division of spheres of human activity that endures to this day: on the one hand, the market, on the other, religion.
| Content source |
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| What changed during the axial age: Cognitive styles or reward systems? - Nicolas Baumard |
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Old testament (From 500 BC onward)
God creates the world and humans. The humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. From there follows the promise to the Patriarchs (children of Abraham), which has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land.
| Genesis
[1:1] In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, [1:27] So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. [1:28] God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." [5:1] This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. [5:2] Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them "Humankind" when they were created. [12:2] I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. |
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Greek Olympians (From 900 BC onward)
The Olympians were a race of deities primarily consisting of a third and fourth generation of immortal beings. They were worshipped as the principal gods of the Greek pantheon and so named because of their residency atop Mount Olympus. The Olympians gained their supremacy in a ten-year-long war of gods, in which Zeus led his siblings to victory over the previous generation of ruling immortal beings, the Titans.
Hellenism in a religious context refers to the modern pluralistic religion practised in Greece and worldwide by several communities derived from the beliefs, mythology and rituals from antiquity through and up to today. It is a system of thought and spirituality with a shared culture, values, and common ritualistic, linguistic and literary tradition.
The values that govern and guide are Eusebia (Piety) in our relationship with the Gods:*Organikotis (Kinship) in our relationships within the community;
- Dikaiosyne (Justice) in terms of members' relations within the community and also as a guiding principle in the conduct of the community as a whole towards third parties, achieving Eudaimonia [happiness] through attaining freedom, autonomy and self-sufficiency.
Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece. Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history. They used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace the descent of one's leaders from a mythological hero or a god.
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The Athenian democracy
The Athenians tried to keep the mighty small to protect the people from the misdeeds of a few. The power for this came from group solidarity, honesty, and the discouragement of excessive showiness. The ethics required for this are perhaps the most important but the least tangible. The Greek word "idiôtès" means someone who does not care about the general interest and puts his interests first.
In contrast, there is "demos-kratia," the power of the people, democracy. In origin it is a composite of demos and kratos. Since demos can be translated as “the people” (qua “native adult male residents of a polis”) and kratos as “power,” democracy has a root meaning of “the power of the people.” is an important concept here: the ability of everyone to speak in the "ecclesia," the popular assembly. Cosmology (and Plato's formality) inspire this, in which balance, harmony, and order are paramount. The original Greek meaning of “democracy” in the context of the classical (fifth and fourth centuries B.C.) terminology for regime-types is that democracy originally referred to “power” in the sense of “capacity to do things.”
It is right to treat equals as equals, but it is wrong to treat unequals equally. This ethical paradox lies at the heart of the Athenian system.
| Content source |
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| Equality - D. McMahon – Itaka – 2024 – Chapter 4, Justice |
| Josiah Ober - The Original Meaning of “Democracy' |
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New testament (From 50 AD onward)
The church teaches that man is a sacred and social person, and families are the basic units of society. It advocates a complementarian view of marriage, family life, and religious leadership. Full human development takes place in relationships with others.
- The family is a sanctuary for the creation and nurturing of children.
- Every person has a fundamental right to life and to the necessities of life.
- The church supports private property and teaches that "every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own".
- According to natural law, freedom is the empowerment of good. Free people have responsibilities.
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The Roman (Stoic) empire
Cicero: “The Stoics hold that the universe is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are members, and each of us is a part of this universe. However, we may define man, a single definition will apply to all.”
Roads and rules brought together inhabitants of many different kinds, metaphors of humanity as a great collective body comprising different members. Some cultivated their potential more aptly than other, employing their reason, tenacity, and will to better effect. That way of thinking opened the door to assertions of a “natural aristocracy, an aristocracy of cultivated accomplishment as opposed to title, birth, and blood.
Nature has provided that those men who are superior in virtue and spirit should rule the weaker. In that reckoning, social distinction owed less to birth than to what individuals did with their lives. Power and success were earned; poverty and abjection were deserved. Although the principle of equality was strong, it only applied to free men. Slaves, women, barbarians, ... were excluded from this.
The equality of the free citizen existed before the law. In practice Roman citizenship was subject to numerous gradations, divided among “orders” (ordines}-senators and knights, tribunes and scribes, freeborn and freedmen-and distinguished by “classes”, each with their own legal prerogatives and privileges.
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Science
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Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)
At the time of Galileo's conflict with the Church, most educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the centre of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies, from biblical passages, implying the fixed nature of the Earth. According to popular legend, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase, "And yet it moves" after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun.
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Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
Darwin's book 'On the Origin of Species' was published on November 24, 1859. It described the principle of natural selection and made credible the common descent of all life.
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Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)
Although several of Freud's theories and methods are controversial, he is considered the founder and one of the most influential psychologists and thinkers of the 20th century. According to Freud, the human mind consists of a complex web of events and processes, only part of which is accessible to consciousness. The mind is divided into two departments, which are more or less independent of each other.
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Social-cultural
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Catholic social doctrine
Catholic social doctrine is rooted in the social teachings of the New Testament, the Church Fathers, the Old Testament, and the Hebrew scriptures. The church responded to historical conditions in medieval and early modern Europe with philosophical and theological teachings on social justice, which considered the nature of humanity, society, economy, and politics.
| Pope Francis |
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| Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. |
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Agricultural Revolution
The Agricultural Revolution in other countries was a turning point too. In the agrarian societies, four families produced enough food for five families, that is for themselves and one more family. Not much manpower was available for non-agricultural activity. In the course of the revolution, one family began to produce enough food for five families. Much manpower was liberated from agriculture and became available for industry. Thus the Agricultural Revolution made possible the Industrial Revolution.
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Industrial Revolution
The First Industrial Revolution, was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution, starting from Great Britain and spreading to continental Europe and the United States. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes; the increasing use of water power and steam power; the development of machine tools; and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth.
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Neo-Liberalism
Neoliberalism refers to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers", and reducing state influence in the economy primarily through privatization and austerity. It is also commonly associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States. Some scholars note that it has several distinct usages in different spheres:
- As a development model, it rejects structuralist economics, favouring the Washington Consensus.
- As an ideology, it denotes a conception of freedom as an overarching social value associated with reducing state functions to those of a minimal state.
- As a public policy, it involves the privatization of public economic sectors or services, the deregulation of private corporations, a sharp decrease in government budget deficits and a reduction of spending on public works.
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The Washington Consensus is a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D.C.-based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and United States Department of the Treasury. The term was first used in 1989 by English economist John Williamson. The prescriptions encompassed free-market promoting policies such as trade liberalization, privatization and finance liberalization. They also entailed fiscal and monetary policies intended to minimize fiscal deficits and minimize inflation.
| F A Hayek - Individualism and Economic Order (1948) |
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| If the individual is to be free to choose, it is inevitable that he should bear the risk attaching to that choice,’ further noting that ‘the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice. |
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Social theory of the 20th century
Reinhart Koselleck (1923 – 2006)
Koselleck argues that contemporary understandings of politics have become dangerously depoliticized by Enlightenment utopianism as a reaction against absolutism (the Hobbesian state), which was itself a reaction against the religious wars of the Reformation period in Europe. Koselleck follows Carl Schmitt's argument from The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes by arguing that the absolutist state had made morality a matter of strictly private and individual judgement, disallowing moral conscience any role in political decision-making. This overcame religious civil war and gave rise to the early modern, centralized state, which had a clear, narrow and authoritarian conception of politics as the monopolization of legitimate violence and the guaranteeing of obedience, security and order. Consequently, within the absolutist state, the private realm grew in power, enabled by the degree of civil liberalism the regime provides toward private life. The Enlightenment nurtured the private moral sphere, consolidating itself around a self-conception as an emergent bourgeois "Society" during the 18th century. "Society" constituted a countervailing power which, by upholding the legitimacy of "critique" against existing political authoritarianism, eventually challenged the state in an apolitical, utopian way.
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Jurgen Habermas (1929 - )
His social theory advances the goals of human emancipation while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework. This framework rests on the universal pragmatics argument - that all speech acts have an inherent telos (the Greek word for "purpose") - the goal of mutual understanding and that human beings possess the communicative competence to bring such understanding.
Habermas's works resonate within the traditions of Kant and the Enlightenment and democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society through the realisation of the human potential for reason, in part through discourse ethics. While Habermas stated that the Enlightenment was an "unfinished project," he argued that it should be corrected and complemented, not discarded. He distances himself from the Frankfurt School, criticising it and much of postmodernist thought for excessive pessimism, radicalism, and exaggerations.
Habermas perceives the rationalisation, humanisation and democratisation of society in terms of the institutionalisation of the potential for rationality inherent in the communicative competence unique to the human species. Habermas contends that communicative competence has developed through the course of evolution. Still, in contemporary society, it is often suppressed or weakened by how major domains of social life, such as the market, the state, and organisations, have been given over to or taken over by strategic/instrumental rationality so that the logic of the system supplants that of the lifeworld.
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Do you want to know more?
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| Phenomenal World |
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| Phenomenal World is a publication focused on political economy. We aim to publish rigorous and innovative writing on economics, history, finance, policy, and politics. |
| https://www.phenomenalworld.org/ |
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