Quote:
Originally Posted by TimMason
Only if you are indifferent to the reactions of others. If you decide that wealth should never be allowed to become concentrated in the hands of the few - a respectable ethical principle, which has probably been the most consistently applied moral rule in human history (see Pierre Clastres, 'Society Against the State', or listen to James Scott's LSE lecture on Why States Can't Climb Hills), and if you act upon this notion, you will find that, in state societies such as those we live in, you quickly find yourself of interest to the policeman.
Note here a difficulty for those that hold a naturalistic view of ethics: we usually think of private property as a given: humans instinctively hold what is theirs, and if possible, accumulate. Yet, as Clastres shows, in many prestate societies this point of view was regarded as dangerous and to be avoided.
Similarly, most of the things that we think of as universal rules or principles simply do not hold up to scrutiny. We are in the grip of a very strong social formation that, from an early age, shapes and processes the ways we think about good and bad. In reality, these ways are local, both in time and space, and are contingent upon the existence of something like a nation state.
We manage to construct stories about how these rules "help us live in society" because we're very good at constructing stories. Different rule-sets would - and do - give rise to very different stories. Now, you and I would probably not like to live according to rule-sets that are very different from those we have been trained to hold to - but that does not take away their legitimacy. We, after all, have been domesticated, and just as a dog would be unable to find its place in a pack of wolves, so we would have a hard time among the hill peoples of Zomia. |
This is very true. However, I don't personally think that these rules are necessary to live in society. But I do think that rules are necessary to live in society
