Good point. There's a reason that the skull is hardest bone in the body. The brain is more important than the pinky. If we think of societies as organisms, they too are subject to natural selection.

My friend; you are clumping together a bunch of ideas and drawing a conclusion from them that is more emotion than thought...

For example, forms, concepts, and possession are the same as attributes, qualities, abilities, or talents...All these notions is each a facet of form, or concept...Human beings find it is necessary to make distinction which naturally exclude the middle -in the search for truth...We define reality with our forms, and that definition must be true as a matter of survival...Then, of course, we build social forms out of our understanding...And there it is essential to have forms that tell truth...It is possible we may have as much justice as we can define and unlikely that we will have more that we can define...Same with truth and all the virtues...We must judge our own material condition against our conception of reality as a whole... If for all our labor and sacrifice, and for all the accumulated sacrifices of mankind we are no better off than slaves, and if our dreams and desires are no more than dirt to those who would walk on them, then clearly, our social forms are not working, or are not built with any acceptable difinition of truth... Truth is the only fact powerful enough to bring down a failed social form... And we should return to natural social forms in our relationships...

Here, what I was trying to do was to bring the level of debate to a common understanding and to the root of the problem. Bringing inequality, distribution of resources etc are side issues. The main issue for this thread, should be, whether mankind can take steps to be in harmony with nature.

For which, i agree with one of the poster who said to the effect that it is not a question of returning back to raw nature. But move towards nature.

Being in harmony with each other is part of being in harmony with nature. Our environmental concerns will never be fully addressed without addressing our political and especially our economic system.

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An unanimus Climate Agreement will indicate harmony. Lets work for it.

I do hear you and I especially like the idea of moving towards nature rather than back to it.

How would you move to and from nature? What is not nature? Or, what do you mean by nature?

Whatever is artificial. Like an artificial waterfall, as contrasted with a waterfall. Of artificial flowers, as contrasted with flowers. Or false teeth. In general, what is made by man rather than what just exists.

Economics is a post facto analysis. It evolves according to times. The world doesnot evolve according to economics. Politics does chang ethe worlds outlook. And today, and our future politics will be focussed on Climate, Earth and Nature.


edit: .....and yes, i forgot..... about harmony.
An unanimus Climate Agreement will indicate harmony. Lets work for it.

But it can be argued that even those things man made, are part of nature. It will be tough, in the coming decades, to even distinguish what is man made from what is not, on many accounts.

And why is a natural state lost only when have humans have say in the matter? Suppose a gorilla inadvertantly mixed chemicals, and something in a puddle formed. Would this be natural? If a man digs a hole, it is an unnatural hole in the earth, but if a groundhog digs a hole, it is a natural hole in the earth.

I suppose I missed the lesson where it was explained that we are the only creature who's actions have the ability to change the natural, and create the unnatural.

Good point. There's a reason that the skull is hardest bone in the body. The brain is more important than the pinky. If we think of societies as organisms, they too are subject to natural selection.

To begin with, I don't think the premise is true. For another, I think Rawlsianism is just another argument for coercive utopianism. What this country is now saddled with for the next three years (and no more, I hope).

I'm a big fan of the concept of harmony and also the concept of sustainability. ..................
............ But NO! That attitude has become far too unrealistic childish, cliche even a little dimwitted or rather willfully ignorant. It is time to put away childish things.

We need a mature outlook. We need to live life well but we need to live within our means. No more of this constant mad striving for the "*****-goddess success" just good habits. Tend to the garden every day and take pride in that. We need to move from the aesthetic stage to the ethical stage. We don't need to be leaders or heroes all we need to do is to learn to live in a mature and sustainable way.

I like your sentiments. You have also touched upon...... attitude. The attitude of human beings needs a change. There are tectonic shifts taking place in the world of ideas, concepts and outlooks. We need to elect the right leaders, with the right mind, with the right New Attitude.
Lets keep our fingers crossed till Mexico happens.

I like your sentiments. You have also touched upon...... attitude. The attitude of human beings needs a change. There are tectonic shifts taking place in the world of ideas, concepts and outlooks. We need to elect the right leaders, with the right mind, with the right New Attitude.
Lets keep our fingers crossed till Mexico happens.

I think 'Mexico' is a reference to the next climate conference.

Perhaps psychologically 'nature' is a metaphor for 'the unconditioned'. Psychologically, unconditioned is the state of wholeness (=holiness), the condition of at-one-ment, prior to the Fall and our subsequent state of division, multiplicity and labour. This is perhaps what nature is supposed to represent.

Society as an organism makes some kind of sense. And i suppose suspetable to natural selection as well as life cycles of rises and falls. However, it doesn't make much sense to assume that society's body would be analogous to the human body. Plants make a little more sense I think. And I would prefer it to be a rhizomatic rather than arboreal.

I don't think the differences in talents quite justify calling one group of people the equivalent of the pinky and another group of people the equivalent of the brain. Hey, Pinky and the Brain. Very funny.

It is funny that the brain thinks other wise, that the guts are more important, and it is there we feel and suffer our emotions...The Celts could have been brain surgeon... They took heads because they realized it was the source of a man's power...

Great. I can't wait.

"The state of nature" is, so far as I understand it, a group of people without society or any of the benefits of civilization. When, according to Thomas Hobbes, "the life of Man is, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Hobbes described the natural state of mankind (the state pertaining before a central government is formed) as a "warre of every man against every man."

Could we return to a state of nature?

I have been reading Rousseau's Social Contract recently and his belief that we are equal and more or less better of in the state of nature experienced before civilised society was created. It is important to remember that the human population in Rousseau's state of nature would be very small, there would be little human contact, nothing like we experience today.

Is there anyone here who would actually prefer to return to a state of nature? Not necessarily Rousseau's state of nature... No government, each person would be able to do what they wanted, we would no longer be 'wage-slaves', no mobile phones or internet! We'd have to catch and make our own food. Belongings wouldn't be much of an issue.

Totally out the question or would this be a good challenge? I'm in belief that if we were born in such a state, it would be pretty simple. But to come out of the society we're in now and to enter such an atmosphere would be difficult for most human beings. More to the point, would people have total equality???

Whence arise all those abuses, unless it be from that fatal inequality introduced among men by the difference of talents and the cheapening of virtue? This is the most evident effect of all our studies, and the most dangerous of all their consequences. The question is no longer whether a man is honest, but whether he is clever. We do not ask whether a book is useful, but whether it is well-written. Rewards are lavished on with and ingenuity, while virtue is left unhonoured. There are a thousand prizes for fine discourses, and none for good actions.

No, for two reasons. First, there would have to have been a time when there was Rousseau's "state of nature" in order to return to it, which there was not, as it is a romantic fiction rather than an actual description of anything. And second, it is something that could never be, because people and the world are not as Rousseau's fictions would have one believe.





If you want the closest approximation you can get, you can go out into the wilderness, away from all others, and see how you fare. And, of course, if you want to do it as close to Rousseau's ideal as possible, you will not take any manufactured goods with you, such as a knife or clothing, as that would involve your experience being corrupted by civilization. I'll let you imagine that for yourself and let you consider how desirable that would be.




No, people would not have total equality in an approximation of a state of nature. It would be much more like Hobbes' ideas on the subject (which he acknowledged to be a useful fiction to examine as a thought experiment), where everyone you did encounter would be a potential rival for whatever you wanted. Your life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

The words of Rousseau are quite apt in a discussion of him:


Online Library of Liberty - THE SECOND PART - The Social Contract and Discourses

About that, Rousseau was correct. Rousseau was clever, not honest or virtuous, and that is why some hold him in high esteem. His clever words seduce the unwary into believing all sorts of nonsense.