Eclectic Views

    
I belong to a trio of armchair philosophers (me, Bob and Bob) that
convene in the mornings at Dunn Brothers Coffeeshop on Lake Street in
Minneapolis. We'd hoped to have everything figured out by the end of
last year but we had to move our goal ahead a ways because of a few
knotty problems. Several different people move in and out of the
deliberations and we're always happy to have newcomers around to
receive our wisdom. And if they should happen to challenge our profound
thinking, well, then things can get really interesting.

Anyway, I thought it possible for a similar kind of dynamic to occur
here, so ...
  

    
(settling in with a cuppa) 

Ah, this sounds promising!
  

    
Lately I've been taken with a great little book called "Finite and
Infinite Games" by James P. Carse.

One interesting dichotomy that he sets up is the difference between
"power" and "strength." Power is a sort of socially sanctioned
authority bestowed on a few so they can impose boundaries on others.
Strength is more of an ability or willingness to express one's "genius"
and allow others to express theirs. To quote:

  "Power will always be restricted to a relatively small number of
selected persons. Anyone can be strong.
  "Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others
to do as I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can
allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them."
  

    
slippage already
  

    <scribbled by kyee Fri 30 Dec 05 10:22>
  

    
Power, in the political sense, is a concentration of sovereignty.  The 
more concentrated the more "power", but also they fewer wielders.

Democracy seeks to concentrate sovereignty while keeping the number of 
wielders large and the power of each in check.

But power resents being in check, and finds ways of subverting that 
state of affairs.
  

    
I like Foucault's treatment of power in advanced democracies and the notion
of power as "discipline".  I'm not sure I go along with the notion of power
as "sovereignty" and sovereignty as wielded by an elite few.  I definitely
think there is such a thing as an "elite few" and that they have and use a
great deal of power.

But I don't think the notion of sovereignty works as a description of the
kind of power they have.  Theirs is a power of influence -- not as blunt as
sovereignty might suggest.  But then I subscribe to the social theory that
depicts sovereignty as something that passed from monarchs to the abstracted
notion of "the people".  In our society, which is hinged on advanced
demoncracy and market capitalism, I think that translates into "the
individual-as-sovereign".
  

    
Power is a strange beast.  At the basic level one can say political
power is the ability to get others to do what you want, or silence in
some manner those who might oppose you. It seems that the power that
people or organizations wield depends largely, if not entirely, on the
willingness of individuals to give up at least a portion of their
sovereignty.

A warlord has power to the extent that a group of people with weapons
is willing to obey him. If his army of willing soldiers is large enough
to maintain an effective monopoly on violence, the warlord can rule a
country through fear and force. In a republic, people give up their
sovereignty to the Law which in turn maintains an effective monopoly on
force (i.e. the police). It strikes me as kind of paradoxical and
gets, I think, to (satyr)'s "concentration of sovereignty," the agents
of which tend to resist the restraints of the Law and serve their own
interests instead of those of the people who invested them with the
power.

I don't know where I'm going with this, just thinking out loud.

>power as "discipline"

I don't follow but it sounds interesting. (Admittedly, I haven't read
much Foucault although "The Order of Things" is sitting on my shelf
waiting for me to get around to it.)
  

    
>zombie phenomena of Haiti

I remember reading something about it but don't recall much.

>enforcing social structure

I think this is how Carse views power. It's the attempt to impose
finite boundaries on the infinite game, make it a finite game you can
"win." Whereas the "strong" are not interested in winning but
continuing to play. He sees culture as the playground of the infinite
game. Society is equated with power and emerges from culture but,
paradoxically, society represents the effort to limit and restrain
culture.
  

    
There's a great poem by C.K. Williams in a book called Tar about some 
coffee shop philosophers....

Here's the beginning of it:

The Regulars

In the Colonial Luncheonette on Sixth Street they know everything there
        is to know, the shits.
Sam Terminadi will tell you how to gamble yourself at age sixty from
        accountant to bookie,
and Sam Finkel will tell you more than anyone cares to hear how to
        parlay an ulcer into a pension
so you can sit here drinking this shit coffee and eating these overfried
        shit eggs
while you explain that the reasons the people across the street are going
        to go bust
in the toy store they're redoing the old fish market into-- the father and
        son plastering,
putting up shelves, scraping the floors; the mother laboring over the
        white paint,
even the daughter coming from school to mop the century of scales and
        splatter from the cellar--
are both simple and complex because Sam T can tell you the answer to 
        anything in the world
in one word and Sam F prefaces all his I-told-you-so's with "You don't
        understand,, it's complex."
"It's simple," Sam T says, "where around here is anyone going to get
        money for toys?" The end.


The poem is actually a lot longer and great!  I always think about it when 
I think about Coffee shop philosophy.
  

    
I think thoughts along those lines every time I log on. I'd love to see the
whole poem.
  

    
Due to copyright restrictions, I didn't put it on.

Couldn't find it online either.

The book is called Tar, and it's also in a book called Poems 1963-1983, 
which is out of print.

That book (which I took it from) is available for between $6-$15 dollars 
on amazon.com (used books)

ISBN:   037452204 (PAPERBACK)
        0374235163 (HARDCOVER)

I'm sure it will be available at the library.
  

    
could someone fix the spelling in the topic title before we "go public"?
  

    
My bad. Dope slap administered. Email request sent to confteam.
  

    
(topic title adjusted by request of topic starter)
  

    
To reach back a bit...

> "the individual-as-sovereign"

The individual is a sovereign as s/he cares and can manage to be, from
ceding all choices to others to making others' choices for them, but, yes,
I take it as a given that sovereignty stems from the individual, not from
the strongest locus of control, and that it is collected (voluntarily or
otherwise) in various social aggregations...which I see as being
compounded out of pairs of individuals (binary relationships).

And sovereignty is more often involuntarily collected by stealth and craft
than by present force, although maintaining the option of resort to force 
is one hallmark of the elite.

Power in the push-button sense of having the wherewithall to dictate much 
to many is illusory, disintegrating quickly with capricious use.
  

    
<saytr>

I read your above post twice and while I understand it on a conscious
level, I can see that my unconscious brain has much to absorb
concerning "individual as sovereign".  Thank you for the food for
thought.  I may curse you later for putting suchs thoughts into this
tiny brain, but for now I can appreciate it.
  

    
I read it too and haven't had the time and attention I'd like to really
engage it.  But let me take a start at it.  When I talk about the
"individual as sovereign" I am talking about the~construct~ of the
individual.  This is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment when sovereignty
began moving from the domain of monarchs and feudal lords to "the people".
This was the beginning of rationality, when persons were regarded as able
and entitled to form their own opinions based on their own interpretations
of things such as holy texts, etc., rather than the assumption being simply
that wisdom and judgement was received from holy men or persons appointed to
interpret reality for the masses.

What I'm most fascinated with currently is the form western -- particularly
American -- individualism has taken from that point.  Particularly where we
find ourselves today, in an advanced liberal democracy and a market-driven
capitalist economy.

What do you think about all that, satyr?
  

    <scribbled by picospan Thu 16 Jan 03 10:59>
  

    
Sorry to be so slow to reply...

> the ~construct~ of the individual...an outgrowth of the Enlightenment 
> when sovereignty began moving from the domain of monarchs and feudal 
> lords to "the people"

One might better say "when sovereignty began moving BACK from the domain
of monarchs and feudal lords to the people", since a mere few (6-10)
thousand years earlier no such grandiose societies could have existed, 
due to a lack of population density and a lack of surplus production.
There may have been petty examples earlier than that, but the stark
differentiation of classes is a relatively recent (and shortlived)  
phenomenon, dependent on the societal scale made possible by agriculture.

> What I'm most fascinated with currently is the form western -- 
> particularly American -- individualism has taken from that point.  
> Particularly where we find ourselves today, in an advanced liberal 
> democracy and a market-driven capitalist economy.

Well, I wouldn't characterize America as an advanced democracy, nor
particularly liberal.  What we have is a couple of steps up from
feudalism, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

But what I mean by saying that sovereignty stems from the individual
applies equally to any societal form.  Think of it in terms of knowledge
and degree of control.  We each know more about ourselves than we know
about those around us, and have far more direct control of ourselves than
we have of others.  Even when we don't behave just as we wish, it's
because we've chosen not to accept the consequences of doing so, a choice
that remains reversible even after becoming long habit.  Others may apply 
coercion, but the choice is always, finally, our own.

Or think of it in terms of bandwidth -- the communications among the 
parts of ourselves that tie us together as integral individuals, versus 
the relatively paltry communications that us together in various social
aggregations.
  

    
Hmmmmm....I would take a contrasting -- although not contradictory -- view
to yours.  My own thinking is influenced largely by the writing of Nikolas
Rose (for example see "Inventing our Selves: Psychology, Power and
Personhood").  The perspective he articulates -- and that I share -- is that
we, as a society, are essentially SOLD the expectation that individuals will
know and control themselves and will be ever-evolving into ever-improving
selves and that this is, in fact, a requirement of citizenship.

Another interesting book on the shrinking of civic participation is
"Downsizing Democracy" by somebodyorother and somebodyelse.

Without getting into whether or not America counts as an "advanced
democracy", I'm pointing to the way people are governed in societies such as
ours.  It's not by coercion or force, but rather by persuasion to govern
ourselves, control ourselves and to see doing so as in the best interests of
the polity.  (This is a decidedly Foucauldian analysis, obviously)

The IDEA and the EXPECTATION that our society would be populated with
atomized "selves" that are always improving their knowledge and mastery over
those "selves" is at the very heart of our economic culture.  I don't think
it has too much to do with "bandwidth", personally.  I think it's a
political apparatus that is designed to maintain certain power arrangements.

But, y'know, that's just me.
  

    
> we, as a society, are essentially SOLD the expectation that 
> individuals will know and control themselves

Apples and oranges.  The control I'm speaking of may or may not be 
advantageous to the society at  large; it's a matter of 
self-actualization, not discipline according to any external metric.
Just about any infamous person you might care to name could be said
to have been highly self-controlled, nevermind that the ends to which
they exercized that control were inconvenient for the rest of us.

> the way people are governed in societies such as ours.  It's not by 
> coercion or force, but rather by persuasion to govern ourselves, 

I can just imagine someone from what used to be called 'the wrong side
of the tracks' responding incredulously to that assertion.  How we are
governed varies considerably according to whose children we are and
the circumstances in which we happen to be living.

But, as an ideal, yes I suppose what you say is true.  Allow me to
point out, though, that it being so adds substance to what I've said
about sovereignty stemming from the individual and being accumulated
in the society.

> I don't think it has too much to do with "bandwidth", personally.  
> I think it's a political apparatus that is designed to maintain 
> certain power arrangements.

We're certainly coming at this from very different directions.  What 
I'm talking about is a state of affairs that I believe _just_is_, 
irrespective of how society is organized or whether its leaders see
some advantage in individual self-determination (another way of saying 
sovereignty).

Whereas you seem to be talking about a social valuation of the idea
of individualism.

It's like the difference between breathing and being of the opinion
that breathing is a good thing.
  

    
Ah!  But which is of us is doing the "breathing" and which is doing the
"opinion"-making?

I would say that I'm the one "breathing".
I'm guessing you would say that YOU are.

It boils down, don't you think, to what you hold to be most primary and
fundamental -- the indivdiual or the society/culture/social system.

I'll get back to this tomorrow with more bloviations.  Are you at all
wondering what the others are thinking?  Do you think perhaps everyone but
you and I have forgotten this topic???
  

    
<mulling>

Philosophy takes time.
  

    
Respond (r), pass (Return) or help (?): bio mulling
finger: mulling: no such user.

;-)

> I would say that I'm the one "breathing".
> I'm guessing you would say that YOU are.

Me personally?  More like perpetually gasping for breath, but I'd say 
that those who point to the individual as being the source of all that 
makes any (human) society worth preserving are onto something.  Maybe if 
we'd evolved from bees instead of primates the converse would be true.

> It boils down, don't you think, to what you hold to be most primary 
> and fundamental -- the indivdiual or the society/culture/social system.

Which, frankly, is something of a chicken-and-egg problem, because
individuals are conditioned by the societies in which they develop, and
may be (initially) incapable of conducting themselves outside of that
context, but societies have no substance except what individuals bring 
to them.

Again, an historical viewpoint helps.  Our kind evolved in a social
context, but one composed of small numbers (on the order of fifty) of
other individuals, in which it was quite possible for every member of 
the band to develop a one-to-one relationship with every other member.  
Had this not been the case -- had our ancestors massed together by the
thousands -- we would probably still be swinging through the trees.

Imagine a society composed of instances of the class Citizen, each of 
which ("whom" would not apply) had exactly those characteristics defined 
in the class, nothing more, nothing less.  It might chug along for quite 
a long time, but how could it ever evolve without at least one of its 
members developing what, from within that context, could only be seen as 
anomalous behavior?
  

    

You just described an ant colony, seems to me.  And ants do evolve, so
clearly now and again an anomolous one comes along and prospers.