[From Bruce Nevin (980513. EDT)]
Rick Marken (980513.1345) --
Crumb is a fine artist and a complete sicko. What in the world does
he think he is "smashing" when he "smashes the state". As that
great follower of Mr. Natural, Timothy McVeigh, discovered after
blowing up a piece of it, the "state" is _people_; people controlling
for system concepts like "USA", "motherhood" and "apple pie"
You do like to hang your buttons on your sleeve for daws to push, don't you.
I always assumed Crumb had an ironic and derogatory stance toward that bit
of Trotskyite jargon; I know I did when I quoted it.
There is no such thing as a state; these are
just individuals who control for somewhat similar system concepts.
Does this mean that in your view there are no coercive systems? There are
no social contingencies in our environment, created and sustained just as
buildings and roads are built and maintained by people?
Bill Powers (980513.1437 MDT) replying to Mike Acree (980513.0955 PDT)
I don't like coercion, but that's only one thing I don't like: there are
other things I like far less. One of the things I like less is the callous,
indifferent, and brutal way some people treat others simply to get what
they want.
You're making a distinction between coercion and callous, brutal coercion?
I want these people out of the human game, so the rest of us can
play it differently. If they have to be killed, I say kill them
I assume that you have an ironic and derogatory stance toward that bit of
familiar jargon.
... , provided
you're sure that doing so wouldn't make things worse (when you figure out
how to be sure about that, please tell me immediately, because I have a
little list ...).
Ah, I thought so. It's so easy to keep a straight face in email.
When you said to Tim,
for example, "Somebody else is using your body," I interpreted this (and
would still interpret it, and assume others do likewise) as appealing to
a presumed shared preference for not having one's body used by others
without consultation.
Right. But how do you deal with that someone else who is using your body?
Suppose you complain to that person, and the person says, "Of course I'm
using your body. That's my right, I like to do it, and anyway there's
nothing you can do about it." What do you do then?
Not to put too fine a point on it, in one degree or another you're talking
about rape.
There's no problem in getting agreement with Tim or you or most people on
this net about a preference for not having others using us like tools or
toys. But the social problem is not with those who agree with me or you or
Tim or the others -- it's with those who don't. It's with those who listen
to us saying "You're interfering with my rights, my life," and who reply,
"So what?"
Would you make it illegal to use coercion?
This seems to me precisely the idea of the state. The state is then
legally the only agent that can coerce. It may be the best idea there
is (for a goal, let's say, of minimizing overall coercion), but it still
seems to me worth trying to come up with alternatives.
Of course. But until the alternatives are invented, and until they work
with everyone and not just those who already agree about what is right and
wrong, you're going to use coercion or become a martyr. And if you become a
martyr, only the people who were already on your side will care.
On the one hand, there have been alternatives in various societies. I refer
you (again) to
Maslow, Abraham, and John J. Honigmann. 1970.
Synergy: Some notes of Ruth Benedict. _American Anthropologist_ 72.320-333.
Introduction by Margaret Mead.
"Abstract: Excerpts from 1941 lectures by Ruth Benedict call attention to
the correlation between social structure and character structure,
especially aggresiveness. Social orders characterized by high or low
synergy, by a siphon or a funnel syustem of economic distribution, are
compared for their different capacities to support or humiliate the
individual, render him secure or anxious, or to minimize or maximize
aggression. Religion, and institution in which people apotheosize the
cooperation or aggression their cultural life arouses, differs between
societies with high and low synergy."
"Now, more than ever, we need data on the consequences for human life of
different human social inventions. We need to know how different inventions
have worked--inventions like the absolute state, or inventions like wars
for conquest, or inventions like money. We no longer have the normative
faith that social problems can be solved by a philosophical appeal to the
eternal values. Eternal values themselves are suspect. Normative theories
of society, we know only too well, have always reflected the special and
local culture of the theorist and stated cosmic conclusions drawn from
special temporary conditions. The conditions change ever so slightly and
the "laws" of the earlier day no longer hold." (p. 322)
"Aggression is behavior in which the aim is to injure another person or
something that stands for him; it may be angry or resentful, combative or
secretively malicious, but its object is to expel or humiliate another
painfully. [...]
"From all comparative material the conclusion that emerges is that
societies where nonaggression is conspicuous have social orders in which
the individual by the same act and at the same time serves his own
advantage and that of the group. The problem is one of social engineering
and depends upon how large the areas of mutual advantage are in any
society. Nonaggression occurs not because people are unselfish and put
social obligations above personal desires but because social arrangements
make these two identical. Considered just logically, production--whether
raising yams or catching fish--is a general benefit, and if no man-made
institution distorts the fact that every harvest, every catch, adds to the
village food supply, a man can be a good gardener and be also a social
benefactor. He is advantaged, and his fellows are advantaged.
"Let me give a simple example from the relations between a chief and his
band. They may be set up for mutual advantage--the chief needs adherents to
have chieftainship at all, the adherents want to belong to an outstanding
band. Even if the chief must be exaggeratedly generous to be a "good"
chief, it advantages him and his adherents, both in the same act. On the
other hand, in another part of the world, a chief may hold his group by a
rod of iron and exploit them for his private advantage." (p. 325)
It appears that the bullying coercion that we have been discussing is
encouraged and cultivated in some human social arrangements, and in other
social arrangements its dysfunction is patent from even an individual's
self-interested perspective. This is a most encouraging answer to the
question "How, in fact, can people get along with each other, if not
through some kind of coercive system?", an answer that is not obvious from
within a competitive, low-synergy culture with its mythos of individualism,
competition, and dominance, an answer that may appear (from within that
perspective) to be an appeal to weaken ourselves as a people, our laxness
inviting conquest in our turn; but an answer that grows more appealing as
we ask ourselves what is the point of living after all, and what is
rewarding in it. The rapist is greatly to be pitied.
Bruce Nevin