Greece

[Daniel Quinn]

If people create society , try putting a new born baby in a room on his own , put food under the door every day and come back in 15 years and see what you have .

you make the mistake most right wingers make and that is to primitise the individual other social context humans act in .

And you also miss the subtlety in respect of loyality

loyal is a word is it not a thing , it is as no meaning outside of social relations , it is not an aspect of our personalities it is a word given to describe various aspects of our behavior,behaviour that neccessarily takes place in a social context , there is no such thing as a persons loyalty , it is not measurable entity ,it is defined by others in various contexts , those contexts depend on society and social relations .

loyality is a word in the word games that human play in order to make sense of their lives and regulate theirs and other behaviour .

you may say such and such a person is loyal , that in effect means nothing to me , it is a word I simply ascribe to someone and I may or may not use it to inform how a interact with that person .

Invariably it will be used to cluster a series of actions and behavior , but the actions and behaviors of one loyal person will rarely be the same as another also described as loyal and more importantly the very notion of loyalty will be dependent upon the social relations . To be loyal , connotates freedom to act otherwise .

thus are more regimented societies less loyal because they have less freedoms and much of their behavior is because of duty or honor ?

Also if you have no other choice , does this mean you are disloyal ?

It makes no sense at all to talk of a loyal person as if loyalty resides within them , as if it is a trait like blue eyes ,though we do it because of ideology of the individual .

this is why you are forced in to your people are dicks arguement , people are not dicks , the world makes some people dicks .

in capitalist socities An ideology of loyality is important to some organisations to ensure they survive - the army , family

[Macca]

You misunderstand my point about loyalty, I took that as one example as it was offered. I agree it is not a trait like blue eyes.

Society would not exist without people therefore people create society but they do not do it consciously it has evolved. Or more to the point it hasn't and doesn't except in a very superficial way.

We are machines in that our purpose, if it can be called that is to survive and reproduce. This is true of your child growing up in complete isolation as it is of me or you. It is also true of any animal or plant life, or indeed a bacteria or a virus. We cannot escape those basic drives and they dictate much of what we do, including the creation of a society since that enables us to co-operate to survive and to obtain a mate or mates. Personality is simply a superstructure that sits atop that.

It might be said that there are many different societal structures today in the world, and in history but the successful ones tend to be only superficialy dissimilar.

So society is simply a side-effect of what we fundamentally are. And since society cannot exist without people it is true to say that people create society. But we do not create it consciously, nor can we. Attempts to artificially construct societies that are designed to eradicate or ameliorate the fundamentals of what we are results in disaster and suffering far worse than that caused by the issues they attempt to cure. There is much empirical evidence of this in the present and in history. Essentially you cannot fit a square peg into a round hole.

[Daniel Quinn]

You are playing semantics .

societies are of course nothing more that aggregate intended and unintended consequences of humans interacting with one another on a daily basis .That is a trite truism . If nobody woke up tommorow we would have no society , that does not mean ala thatcher there is no such thing as society only people and thier families

you may remember a advert for a fiat car which was handbuilt by robots , that did not mean the robots created the car .

I am not saying we are robots , but this is a discussion as to how much of the way we live is determined, you appear to want to say it is the way it is is the way it is because of as humans we have fixed traits and characteristics that stay the same throughout history and thus we have what we have .

before you can put a square peg in a round hole , you have to define what a peg , a square , round and hole mean .

it is the learning what definitions are that we become human and obtain the knowledge that informs our wants , desires and needs and these all reside in society not the human .

once again i refer to the african concept of unbuntu . I am me because of all of you .

you have now moved on to a curious form of biological determinism and your basic drives argument is niave , how on earth do you suppose your basic drives determine the distribution of income or power .

I do not deny the element of basic drives even if it been bastardised by ideas of survival of the fittest and selfish gene , but these have little influence on how societies are .

for instance lets say sex is a basic drive . This drive however does not determine sexual relationships . Monogomy is a social construct that serves a social and legal function , the existence of prostitution pre supposes an exchange economy in which some people need to make money by selling it . the fact you cannot beat a women over the head and have your way with her , presupposes a particular cultural and legal context .

sexuality , sexual relations and the organisation of sex are radically different throughout the globe , yet as humans you would argue that we have the same basic drives .

All of an individual thoughts ,emotions and experiences of sex are determined not by a innate sex drive or desire to reproduce , but by the narrative of sex present within the society they grow up in .

[Macca]

Good response which I will reply to however currently it is me on the train and I can't do proper answer on this bloody smart fone thing.

[Daniel Quinn]

three sentances is my limit on my smartphone

[joe]

'Some is rich, and some is poor
And that's the way the world is
But I don't believe in lying back
And saying how bad your luck is'

As The Clash sang.

[Firebug1]

DQ and Macca have a good debate going on. Unfortunately I can't understand half of it because of my poorly English skills

[Daniel Quinn]

it could be my spelling

[Firebug1]

Maybe sometimes but mostly not...

[Fretless]

The Greek prime-minister is due to make a statement this afternoon

With the crucial referendum coming on Sunday.