Societies is a subject that mattered for humans a lot throughout the history. Because society is a human-related concept and it basically emerges when people get together. Animals usually get together and live as hordes. Most sophisticated ones may impose some responsibilities to individuals but they wouldn't or couldn't have processes to keep law or economy running. In this post, i will ponder on the concept of society, which has been investigated by many philosophers before. Then i will ask, why a society would collapse. Even though i don't have an exact proposal in this post, since the concept is way bigger than i can comprehend, i think we would understand the world of today a little bit.
As i said, philosophers thought and wrote about it, youtubers thought and recorded it. I will try to find my own ideal of a society from my own perspective. But first, i need to ask some questions. I need to bring some puzzle pieces together. First question, what is a society?
At the first glance, i think i can say it is a commune which is consisted of humans who are gathered around material or moral benefits and conserve them. We need to notice the word "benefits" here, i will touch upon it later. Let's ask, how many people are required for a society? 2? 3? 50? 1000? Of course this is a bit irrelevant question. But here is why i ask: When or under what conditions a society emerges? For example, you may not call an African tribe a society. Also, you may not call a vilage a society. So would you say there is a society in a city or a whole country?
At this point, you would realize that it is not just numbers that makes up a society. We need unity too. The people must be able to live together. There must be reasons for them to stay together. Maybe they can have the motivation to develop their own city in technology. Or they may just need each other to stay alive. Some folks might be producing food in the fields and some are producing machines for them. So they can have common interests or a common values.
I am sure people who pondered on this topic have already categorized societies according to their functions or structures already. But i don't think labelling would help us clarify the subject now. In the end, there is a dynamic here. As i said, it is usually an interest or a common value here, which is perfectly normal. But the resulting society may not always be a normal one. For example, the motivations of a barbaric society may be conquer the whole world or enslave others for their own comfort. In the end, this is also a society right? Our subject is not what is a good or a bad society here. Because there might be a common goals that keep them together. When it comes to interests, there is usually not bad interest or benefit, so there is not much problem there. You can't except ill intentions when food producers and machine producers get together.
Well, a society can have good or bad nature but what keeps a society going? I have given you a definition above and said that society is a group of people who agree on material or moral benefits and keep them as priority. As long as you embrace those benefits, the society stays strong. This actually kind of sounds like selfish. Let's take a look at the situation from needs or morals perspective. If everyone in a society depends on another one, usually no one means any harm to another. So basically everyone is protecting their own comfort. And even though this is kind of selfish, this is acceptable and agreeable. But what if they have common values or morals instead of needs? As long as the individuals, at least half of the society, have the same values they don't bother each other. Because in the end, the majority is serving and living for the same purpose. If you lose this common purpose, the society collapses figuratively.
Do we mean people to break apart when we talk about a collapse? No it is not just that. If you get together around your needs, yes the individuals will have to look for new places if they end up being unable to provide for each other. But if you are gathering around values and purposes, if you destroy moral values, you turn into a mass of population where individuals don't mean anything special for each other. As a matter of fact, a society can collapse itself. If you start hurting others who provide needs for other, society starts struggling. Don't ask me if humans can be that dumb, you wouldn't like my answer :) In the societies with common values or purposes, some individuals can take the wind out of the society if they start affecting others because of not embracing the same values, regardless of having good or bad intentions.
We can talk about what is a society and how does it keep going for a long time and have ideas about it. But my main question is this: Why a society would collapse? Why people start behaving stupidly in a need based society? Why people start destroying the common purpose of values in a morally bound society? Why sometimes moral common ground just disappears? There is a strange inconsistency here. It is likely that the term society consists of more complex and intricate elements. But i still think we can move towards a conclusion with a simple clue.
Back when in covid outbreak, people started wearing masks. We used to think we are using the masks for our own good, due to our lack of knowledge. But in reality, we were wearing masks to prevent the viruses to spread from our mouth into the air. We were basically protecting others. But there were lots of people to didn't care. There emerged millions who doesn't even lift a finger for anyone other then themselves. Now you will ask what does it have to with the society.
As i said in the beginning, there is not concept of society in the animal kingdom. Because they are not that much social. This is probably related to brain development. We humans know facts and can distinguish things. We can develop rules to live with others and can obey these rules. We realize our needs are satisfied when we humans get together and we can have common moral grounds. But also, we are prone to stupidity.
After the covid, we were heading into normalization and i have mentioned that people are not normal. Todays world created a new kind of people, which is a mixture or egoism, narcissism and indifference. I don't know who thinks what about individualism. Also, i don't think it is a beneficial term either. I also don't know what we call a kind of live being who can't live together! This weird 20th century personality of people are leading them to make blind mistakes. For example, some people can declare war against others or try to suppress them, just because their own needs are satisfied and they think they no longer need others. They focus solely on their own needs like they forget the dynamics of a need base society. They start slacking or not caring about the benefits they provide to others. If majority starts behaving this way, the society inevitably collapses.
The developments in the world and globalism yielded into moral values based societies, more than needs based societies. So we usually don't have societies with people producing food in the fields and others producing machines for them. We usually have common purposes. OR do we? Now, every individuals have their own benefits and purposes. Actually even more so, they have the urges to suppress or destroy the others who don't have the same purposes with them around. If they are not able to take action, they don't feel they belong to any society at all. Also, there are lost of people who don't even have any purpose other than prioritizing their own needs and comfort. Therefore we have soulless populations who lives as a stash of humans and can't act as a society.
The main thing that destroys societies is that people forgetting the motto of "all for one, one for all" mentality. Now you might ask this: Shouldn't anyone question the common values in a barbaric society and ask why are we barbaric? Of course they should. I am only pointing out that societies can collapse due to individualism. So does that mean everyone should turn into worthless objects in a society by being a slave for the common values? Of course not. As i said, my intention is not to question how a good society can or should be.
I still have my own thought of an ideal society. I said material or moral benefits, so i wonder what could be our most primal benefit? It could be a beyond human benefit i guess. The god who sent you to this world knows that you can't survive on your own and expects you to be able to live with others as humans. We can also think of a society as a human body, with its organs and existential purpose. In an ideal society, every individual holds a part of the organism (humanity), just like cells carrying DNA. And the ideal human is the one who doesn't think about harming others, avoids harming others and also tries to create benefit for others too. This way, one can find peace in both this world and the other world which they believe in. So both the need and the purpose is combined here.
Humans are inevitably pragmatic. Or we can say we at least have to avoid the harms. When this individual desire outweighs creating benefit for others, the society starts shaking. We can apply this conclusion of mine to any kind of society. Whether it is good intentioned or ill intentioned society, i think this dynamic is the same. And the world is a society of societies. When you say there are only interests when it comes to state relationships, you basically mean that the world will never have peace.
By the way, i know there is a belief based society too. People may come together around a belief system, not just for needs or common purposes. But there is a chicken - egg situation there. Because belief systems usually tell how a society should be. So usually people don't get together only based on their religious or political beliefs. They sought for comrades to spread their religion or live according to it. This is kind of a purpose actually. Or you can be a communist and look for others to defend communism together. This is again a purpose.
In the end, just like many other things, it is easy to destroy societies and hard to build them. Unfortunately, living together is hard. Actually, it is not that hard but we are making things complicated. There are others in the world, other than you, and everyone needs everyone else. See you at the next post.
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