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sociopolitical musings
I've found myself thinking about this, off and on, over the past year or so, and today my shower thoughts put it to me this way:
The political divide of our current culture can be boiled down to two opposing beliefs:
To no one's surprise, I lean toward 1. Setting aside the fact that I find 2. morally repugnant, here's why I also find it untenable:
No one gets by on their own. No newborn human can survive without outside intervention.
To which I expect some Two-Believers to say Well Yes Of Course But®. It can be argued that there are other creatures that need to be nurtured at first, but once they are able to leave the nest, then they get by on their own. Only natural.
But humans are social creatures, which by their very nature continue to function within their society for their entire lives. And the fact that human society is so exceedingly complex compared to other creatures, seems to suggest that humans the most inherently and deeply social of all creatures on earth. We aren't really built to leave the nest. So, to argue that at some point in our lives, we are suddenly able to function completely independently... well, that strikes me as not just completely arbitrary, but also naive.
[At which point we could go on to argue about what kinds of social help, and how much, are Right® and which are Wrong®.... which is also arbitrary. And hair-splitty.]
The political divide of our current culture can be boiled down to two opposing beliefs:
- If people need help to get by, then they ought to get that help.
- If people can't get by on their own, then they don't deserve to get by, and they should fail [and possibly die].
To no one's surprise, I lean toward 1. Setting aside the fact that I find 2. morally repugnant, here's why I also find it untenable:
No one gets by on their own. No newborn human can survive without outside intervention.
To which I expect some Two-Believers to say Well Yes Of Course But®. It can be argued that there are other creatures that need to be nurtured at first, but once they are able to leave the nest, then they get by on their own. Only natural.
But humans are social creatures, which by their very nature continue to function within their society for their entire lives. And the fact that human society is so exceedingly complex compared to other creatures, seems to suggest that humans the most inherently and deeply social of all creatures on earth. We aren't really built to leave the nest. So, to argue that at some point in our lives, we are suddenly able to function completely independently... well, that strikes me as not just completely arbitrary, but also naive.
[At which point we could go on to argue about what kinds of social help, and how much, are Right® and which are Wrong®.... which is also arbitrary. And hair-splitty.]
Thoughts
It is possible for humans to live alone once they are big enough with sufficient skills, and a few humans choose to do that -- hermits and such. But most humans do not want to live in isolation where they have to do everything for themselves.
All humans experience times of dependence: infancy, illness, injury, old age if they last that long, and whenever they urgently need something that they can't readily do for themselves. For people who have had unpleasant experiences with vulnerability and neglect or abuse, this is nerve-wracking, so they crave independence to minimize future risk. Thus one reason for insisting that people should not need or get help is the prior experience of no or bad help that sours the whole concept.
The belief that help should be readily available when needed is more likely to come from experiences where help was indeed available and effective. It builds a higher level of trust and a sense of sufficiency. Though occasionally you see "I've got mine, screw everyone else" or "What happened to me shouldn't happen to anyone else" patterns.
The more people cooperate and help each other, the bigger things they can accomplish as a group, whereas individual achievements are more limited in scope. But that only works if you have team members who are competent and have some teamwork skills. Inept or begrudging team members not only don't do a good job, they can make other people resist working in teams because taking up other people's slack is harder than just doing it yourself.
So increasing the proportion of people who believe that help should be readily available requires a lot of rootwork to fix problems caused by no or bad help, which is difficult at best and impossible at worst.
Re: Thoughts
Re: Thoughts
My Saturday recurring post is currently Philosophical Questions.