Saying that we are all part of the same society is not the same as saying that we should all live the same and that that society does not need to change.
But it does require you to acknowledge that those who could not flee Katrina did not, for the most part, do so out of choice or free will.
Is there?
It does?
The only consensus I see is the lack of consensus.
And this is where we disagree on what we as physical agents may do, but we agree on the overall societal system. For example:
I may not acknowledge money. You may.
I may not acknowledge ownership. You may.
I may not acknowledge trivial laws. You may.
That isn’t consensus–disagreement about whether rules exist at all can’t be consensus. And it doesn’t need to be.
I am totally gonna go off on a tangent, but it’ll take a few minutes.
I just don’t think anyone is saying that. And living in a state or country ain’t the same thing as a society.
I lived in a society that had their own rules, exceptions, autonomy, and economy. It was called a small town.
Yes, if I committed a crime I could be repremanded by a neighbor for being an ass, be arrested by a local cop, get hauled in by the FBI, or be tried for human rights violations.
But there are layers, and if I wanted to be a society of One I could have. Or of a hundred, or a thousand. Happens literally all the time.
But if my actions influence another group, all the way up to $ARBITRARY-SIZE I don’t get to choose how they interact with me.
Thus, you make an ass of yourself at a public event and you get thrown in time out for a bit.
Perhaps not, but as I was saying, what you put forth is a fairly recent take on the word and concept. I am extremely mistrustful of some people’s desire to make social interaction a monolithic totality. Monoculture in other domains can be easily demonstrated as a disaster, in ecological and biological terms. It is the tendency of expansion and assimilation for its own sake, with little consideration for the diversity requisite for long term survival.
Larger groups require more suppression of individuals, which needs to be more or less voluntary to work. The slight-of-mind in practice is that contemporary western cultures suggest the possibility of multiculturalism and a degree of personal autonomy - yet, to achieve this, require participants to use the same protocols. But the protocols are not truly neutral. A given set of protocols to facilitate one way of living, may well prevent or prohibit another. This is often intentional!
To extend the idea of social protocol along a computer network analogy, the notion of one Society of all people seems not dissimilar from mandating the same network protocol for all people. Is one protocol really good enough or necessary for all people? Does every user and device truly need to be networked to every other? And for what purpose? There are many protocols people can use based upon their needs, individual or collective, to use the right tool for the job at hand.
I don’t know how this or the other discussion suddenly became about Katrina. You mentioned “the hurricane”, and I have been in other hurricanes. Since we are both in CT, I thought you might be talking about a local one. That storm represents a gap in my knowledge, so I will need to learn more about it. What I can say is that it seemed to demonstrate that a big centralized bureaucratic hierarchy can drop the ball, and be more trouble than it is worth. Also, states and municipalities tend to be extremely naive with regards to basic ecology and climate matters. If people choose to live in a certain environment, they might well try to make accommodations for the full range of weather which is likely to happen. Such as living on a river delta in hurricane country. Or my town, which is on Lon Guyland Sound, much of it at sea level, or within 15 feet of sea level.
Since we have not had a disaster here, I won’t be accused of victim-blaming. I have talked with people here, and nobody takes the ecology of the area or expected weather into any consideration when deciding how to live, there is no voluntary adaptation. There isn’t even discussion about it. How many consider that within a few decades, the water might be up to or inside their house? How many make aquatic homes, such as stilted or floating designs? How many have waterproofed their cars or home electrics? This town floods, and floods badly, yet it seems as if nobody is supposed to point out that is a poorly-thought out tract of suburban prefab homes.
You mean like how our legal system works in the country in which you were born, are a citizen, and find yourself still embedded?
You are conflating two distinct orders of conceptual abstraction here:
A legal system is a structure, while making assumptions is one possible model of a thing or event. These are different kinds of concepts.
So, no, that wasn’t what I meant. Also, your question was phrased with presumptions. I have never told anybody here where I was born. But your question can seem to illustrate that you assume nationalism to be universal, that anybody born anywhere must naturally do so within the jurisdiction of a country. This is what I was actually talking about, not an actual legal system, but some people’s tendency to put those who they don’t know into default hierarchies. I am curious as to what precisely this process does for you, or anybody else.
For the record, counselor, were you born within the borders that the United States claims as its own? Also, were you issued a birth certificate and, later, a social security number within the United States?
As to what it does “for me,” I have no idea what you mean. As I’ve said before, quoting Dick, reality is that which doesn’t go away when you quit believing in it. Just because you don’t “believe” in the US government, money, taxation, etc. doesn’t mean you won’t be subject to its effects if you live in the US (and we both know you at least live here). I’m not sure what pretending that you are some kind of hunter-gatherer in an urban landscape gains you either.
Well, he is attempting to engage in an act or acts of active resistance to the predominant social paradigm - but acts of resistance doth not a non-member make. Indeed, the very act of resisting affirms ones own awareness of membership, so the denials are that much more dishonest.
You apparently do find nationalism meaningful, since you drop it as an all-purpose tactic to try explaining away discussions of many diverse topics. Sure, those things exist. But, apparently, I do not attribute to them the same significance that you do.
The way you frame this is deceptive. ANY social structure, made by anyone, exists only so long as people believe in it. Whenever I try participating in discussions about social issues, people instantly resort to framing it as being all about me, personally, when it isn’t. Reality is not that which exists when PopoBawa quits believing in it, reality is that which exists when anyone quits believing in it. As I struggled to explain to millifink, it is sloppy to conflate the fluid, participatory nature of social reality with the more objective reality of the universe at large. The constant diversions of “What is “reality” (LOL)” are only evasions some seem to use to make some kinds of social reality appear more objective and less scrutable than others.
So what? Those are simply the beliefs and social structures of other groups of people. It cuts both ways. If I live in the borders of the US as an infiltrator, then that too is a reality which the US is subject to. Influence is not a one-way phenomenon, and your blind insistence upon hierarchy being “real” - so long as it is devised by someone else - prevents you from considering or accepting this. It’s why many forms of government strike me as being antisocial, they are only ever just so long as accountability is symmetrical. If it isn’t, you’re being taken for a ride.
What it does gain me? I never claimed to be doing any such thing, nor pretending to it. But if you paid attention when reading my posts, you would know my position on this.
I don’t believe in “dominance”, it’s a tired reduction of primitive behaviors. For the Nth time, I am not resisting nor reacting to anything. What I am trying to do is entirely pro-active, to establish the social structures needed to go about my daily life. Fortunately, I socialized by internalizing egalitarian rather than hierarchic principles and practices for living. This is just what I do.
Personally I don’t believe in belief, which makes it difficult for me to parse this topic.
Unfortunately I also don’t believe in fortune, difficulty, parsing or topicality…
…or this post.
No, I find a legal system meaningful because I exist in one. That isn’t “nationalism” though. I’m also not an anarchist and believe in the rule of law and the ideas of democracy and, to some extent, republics with their representational designation of people to act as the agents of the citizenry. If I didn’t believe in these things, I certainly wouldn’t be living in the United States.
And the point people make over and over to you, time after time, is that hundreds of millions of your fellow citizens believe in it and participate in it and you don’t really get to opt out of it, even if you pretend it isn’t there.
Except the US doesn’t consider you an “infiltrator.” It considers you a “citizen” and expects you to follow its laws. If you choose not to do so, they aren’t going to deport you because you are a citizen here. They’re just going to arrest you and put you through the legal system, whether you believe in its validity or not.
Sorry, like many others, I find much of your content nearly incomprehensible (and convoluted) much of the time, at least in its ability to be understood in any meaningful way. Hell, I could understand Schopenhauer* but I still can’t figure out what you’re going on about most of the time.
I’m not even sure what you expect the rest of us to do with the “wisdom” you share here. Walk away from our homes or jobs and squat someplace while dumpster diving for free food?
* Schopenhauer sucks, by the way.
Damn straight, my crusty friend. You and I are going to drink too much beer, puke in the alley behind Dunkin Donuts at 2AM and see how many doughnuts we can stack on your gavel of power.
Now we are getting somewhere 
I don’t agree this is a fortunate line of thought.
