rEvolutionist wrote:Anyway, all this law of the jungle is one thing, but we aren't lower animals anymore. We have higher order cognition and rationality.
Correct. This is why we create philosophical notions like "rights" and use them to guide social interactions. But the roots of the guidance come from identifiable and ubiquitous natural behavior.
Sure, most people struggle to be rational much of the time (and all of us struggle to be rational some of the time). So when we come across rational ideas and solutions to problems we codify them in laws and regulations.
Yup. Law of the Jungle civilized as combat through other less violent means.
Now that doesn't mean all laws and regulations are rational, but some importantly are. What this means is that we have to leave behind this backwards barbaric notion that we need to respect the base irrational emotions of individuals (or the species as a type).
When you fail to account for "base irrational emotions of individuals" in constructing your social structures and laws you are trying to buck Mother Nature and ordinary human behavior, which is generally a bad idea because in most cases when pressed to the limit all human beings will revert to natural behavior in order to survive. Constructing social systems that recognize (not respect) such base instincts and creating laws that account for the potentials of such behavior and strive to reduce the impetus towards such base behaviors in a rational way is far more effective than creating a social system that will inevitably trigger those base responses on a regular basis, which creates an inevitable conflict between the individual and the society that destabilizes all of society because a collective is nothing more or less than a group of individuals who, as I say and you seem to agree, will in the end revert to individual survival behavior when pressed to do so.
In other words, each time you compel someone to act against their own interests and act instead in the interests of other abstract, unconnected groups, you are setting the stage for a primal conflict between one's basic survival instincts as an individual and one's desire to be part of a larger group. The key here is the word "compel."
Humans are, despite their base instincts for individualism, quite routinely charitable, altruistic and willing to go out of their way to help others BECAUSE of their ability to act out of outcome-based rational self-interest where they can suppress individualistic urges in favor of collective action leading to a better result for everyone.
Coercive force by others however demonstrably reduces and eventually destroys the individual's willingness to engage in actions that are not immediately beneficial to that individual. We see it all the time in young children, who have less developed altruistic and charitable impulses. When a child is allowed to build his or her own micro social structure with playmates in most cases we see evidence of a deeply-seated altruistic behavior that allows them to make up their own rules of social interaction that leads to mutual satisfaction. However, when something intervenes and imposes some different micro social structure on the relationship using coercive force we see immediate effects when one child feels shorted or slighted in the social balance with a more or less immediate primitive individualistic response of " No! Mine!"
Thus, it is generally thought to be better to let children build their own micro social structure as much as possible and limit outside coercive force in imposing rules as much as possible so as to appeal to and allow the natural rational self-interest instincts of the child to mature. Having adults set rigid micro social structures and enforcing them with rules that do not appeal to the child's natural instincts for charity and altruism short-circuits their natural impulses and caused the child to revert to basic individualistic survival behavior.
We need to respect well reasoned and rational thought and then attempt to codify these rational actions.
Yes, we do, and we need to recognize that there are basic instincts and behaviors that drive all humans and account for those in the creation of social structures and laws.
Of course, there will be friction between what's rational for any one individual vs most individuals, and that's just something different societies have to work out for themselves.
Well, yes and no. The theoretical social structure argument is always frustrated by those individuals who don't play along and are atavistic in their behavior who also have to be accounted for. If everyone were unfailingly altruistic, charitable and driven by rational self-interest we wouldn't need traffic signals and stop signs because people would always act in favor of rational self-interest even when it means being slightly delayed in the gratification of their transportation needs and desires. So every society has some coercive element as a natural part of controlling irrational behavior, but the question is what is the proper and necessary balance of coercive regulation of irrational behavior and recognition and honoring of the individual's right to individual liberty in his or her actions that are not harmful to others.
I mean, how else would you have it? Running society along any strict ideological lines, whether it is strict socialism or libertarianism or anarcho-capitalism or authoritarian conservatism is always going to lead to failure. No ideal is ever going to be lived up to with such a complex collective of higher order cognitive animals.
Yes, it's a difficult proposition to construct a successful social system. My argument is that the most successful social systems are those that limit the use of coercive force on the part of the collective against the individual as much as is possible consistent with ordered liberty and peaceable social interactions while maximizing the ability of each and every individual to satisfy their individualistic urges for individual liberty and freedom of action to the extent that such activity does not harmfully interfere with the equal exercise of such liberties and freedoms of action (rights) by others.
And I do not believe that the fundamental socialist principle that the individual's needs, desires or rights are ultimately subject to coercive control by the collective without regard to the impact that such coercive regulation has on triggering the individual's basic instincts for individual liberty and freedom of action, is a rational model for creating a long-lasting, peaceable social structure. Socialism by definition holds that the right of the collective to impose its judgment regarding what social structure is best by force on the individual, and that squarely conflicts with individual organic behavior and sets up a simmering conflict that tends to damage and destroy such societies relatively quickly.
It is recognition of (not necessarily unconstrained "respect" for) basic observable human behavior that drives my Organic Rights structure. By observing natural evolved behavior I have come to the conclusion that in forming any advanced social structure there are certain freedoms of action on the part of individuals that are fundamental to each and every person, and that constructing a social system that minimizes interference with these fundamental behaviors leads to the least amount of conflict and tension in the social structure.
These individual Organic Rights include the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to property, the right to self-defense, and the right to procreate. None of these rights is absolute and all may be regulated to one degree or another in the interests of a peaceable society, but the fundamental principles that apply I derive directly from observable organismic natural behavior.
In the case of socialism versus individualism these rights most often come into conflict in socialist societies due to the tension between individual interests and collective interests, particularly with respect to the individual rights to liberty, property and self-defense.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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