What do I mean by basis

Fri, 23 May 2008 09:35:08 +0100

In comments, on my post about the basis of society, Martin asks me:

I am not sure that I understand what you mean by 'basis' -- Like a basic' unit of society?

Indeed. I must have been unsure myself because, some hours later, I felt the need to define basis more clearly.

When I wrote the original post I checked in the Apple dictionary that basis meant what I thought it meant. It did, and more. Here are the relevant definitions:

the underlying support or foundation for an idea, argument, or process
the system or principles according to which an activity or process is carried on
the justification for or reasoning behind something

The society around is partly something we co-create but mostly something we inherit. At 36 I look around and ask how much of society is by my choosing and how much of it exists because that's how it's always been. About the latter category I would have to say "a lot."

Part of the problem I think is that, for most people, most of how society works is a given and, as a given, not to be thought about too hard. Since it is so hard to change things that's probably a good self-defence mechanism against the kind of despair I often feel when contemplating society and my fellow man.

So in thinking about the basis of society I guess I am interesting in surfacing the assumed principles that we hold that allow our society to work.

For example I think there is a principle about the body being inviolate that is surfaced in laws about murder, rape, assault, and robbery. Although in some states this is totally corrupted by the states legal (or quasi-legal) ability to kill or inflict pain (e.g. torture) so maybe it isn't a principle but a comfortable illusion?

I think it would be useful to try and tease out and define the underlying principles of society.

An effective business defines it's overall goals and aligns its strategy with them. A good business takes into account principles in how it chooses goals and executes strategies. So a good and effective business has principled goals and executes principled strategies.

Society has no obvious goals, no obvious principles, things are seemingly choosen at random based upon which hot button of mass-man has been pushed today.

My tentative theory is that this is a demonstration how little intelligence our society is operating with right now. I'm not saying societies IQ = 0 simply that it's lower than it could be and I have some kind of feeling for how it might be raised by understanding what our principles, as a society, are and trying to align what we do more closely with those principles.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on philosophy

What do I mean by basis