Eclectic Views

    
Yes, but they evolve very SLOWLY.  ;-)
  

    
Remember, the ants you actually see are sterile female workers.  The
queen and the drones are the only ones that get to pass on their genes.
 If one of them has a mutation, and they breed successfully, half the
colony could have that mutation.
  

    
In some ways an ant colony is better viewed as a single organism; it's
just that many of its organs are not connected by tissues. Human
groups can't be seen in the same way because individuals are much more
autonomous and nearly all people are potentially queens or drones.
  

    
The problem with individualism is that if one starts out thinking of
oneself as a completely distinct and autonomous individual, there is no
rational way to conceive of any but the most selfish and transient
relations with others. If one wants to give any adequate account of
personal relationships, one has to build them into one's thinking from
the beginning.

A long time ago, badly disaffected and alienated, I asked myself "Why
should anyone's feelings count as much as mine do? Mine are present,
immediate, and vivid. Other people's are only inferred. Why should I
give them any weight?" My conscience troubled me for thinking so, but I
knew that my conscience was not always reliable and that some of it
had been put in place for purposes I despised.

I could not think my way out of that box for a long time. Two things
happened. First, I found that the longer I stayed in that state, the
more distant, slow, and faint my own feelings became. Second, I read a
comment by a primatologist on the then-prevalent custom of studying
chimpanzees caged in isolation: "There is no such thing as one
chimpanzee." It occurred to me that I had caged myself in isolation,
and that perhaps there was no such thing as one human either.

So, John, I agree that sovereignty is not in kings or states, but in
the smallest stable social entities, but maintain that these are not 
single persons, but bands, fluctuating groups of family and friends.
  

    

>> "Why should anyone's feelings count as much as mine do? Mine are present,
    immediate, and vivid. Other people's are only inferred. Why should I
    give them any weight?"

A reasonable and interesting question, one that deserves thought. My own 
reaction to this conundrum is that I've that other people's feelings 
affect my own feelings, inference or not. I can't turn myself into an 
island, even though I have tried many times. So because I can't find a 
workable border between me and others -- especially those I care about -- 
the question above doesn't much come up for me. Except in conversations.
  

    
I try to live by two axioms:

1. My needs are as important as other people's needs.

2. As an adult, I'm the primary person responsible for meeting my own
needs.
  

    
3. I am the boss of me.
  

    
4. So I am taking tomorrow off then.
  

    
> The problem with individualism is that if one starts out thinking of
> oneself as a completely distinct and autonomous individual, there is 
> no rational way to conceive of any but the most selfish and transient
> relations with others.

Possibly, but that's not the brand of individualism I'm selling.  What
I'm saying is that individuals are the most integral (stable, coherent, 
thoroughly interconnected) units available, and that all social units 
are compounded out of binary relationships between individuals.

Individuals ARE distinct, but not completely so, and generally far from
being completely autonomous.

> "There is no such thing as one chimpanzee."

A very good point, but even chimpanzees can be very individualistic, 
within the context of their groups.

> So, John, I agree that sovereignty is not in kings or states, but in
> the smallest stable social entities, but maintain that these are not 
> single persons, but bands, fluctuating groups of family and friends.

We could go on knocking heads about this for some time, or agree to 
disagree on what turns out to be a relatively minor distinction.

"Sovereignty" has no meaning without a social context, because it 
requires the tension of asserting self-determination in the face of 
external competition for control, whether the entity so asserting is
an individual or a group or a nation.

But (if you want to continue this thread) I would maintain that the
source of it can only be the individual.  Note the word "source".
I'm not saying that it can only be invested in the individual, not
at all, only that the individual is inescapably the source.
  

    

Interesting comment, smorse, about boundaries.  In my experience they
fluctuate wildly, especially in intimate relationship, but even in wild 
career, serve me best if stable, secure, and balanced and we can talk 
together from the heart about the shifts.
  

    

And in a good, stable, trusting relationship, you sometimes forget that 
there's such a thing as a boundary.
  

    
Myself, I never tend to drink coffee after 3:00 in the afternoon for
fear that philosophy will keep me awake at night.  But based upon the
strength of the first few cups of coffee I have early in the morning
and close to noontime, I can philosophize way into the evening.

Earlier in the thread when power was discussed as concentrated
sovereignty, I couldn't stop thinking of concentrated orange juice and
then of how homeless people pee in the streets and how rainstorms
reconstitute the pee.  This all has something to do with the
Constitution and something someone said earlier about demonacracy, but,
I'm running low on coffee fumes and am not sure I'm going to make it
over this next hill.

Notwithstanding, back in 1880 a novelist named Machado de Assis penned
(no doubt while sipping a heady brew of Brazilian coffee):  "I
consider public opinion an excellent solder not only in domestic
matters but in politics as well.  Some bilious metaphysicians have
taken the extreme position that public opinion issues from the
irresponsible minds of the dull and the mediocre; but obviously, even
if so radical a concept did not carry with it its own refutation, the
most superficial consideration of its salutary effects of public
opinion would suffice it to establish it as the supremely superfine
product of the flower of mankind, namely, the greater number."

Which is to say, that when I am running low on coffee fumes, I have a
very difficult time not reading "solder" as "soldier."
  

    
One can break bands into individuals by making sure that family
members never work together, that everyone moves often, that most
pleasurable pursuits are solitary or non-communicative, that terms of
discourse are so polarized that pleasant argument is impossible, and
that no love relationships except closed binary relationships are ever
discussed. Then, indeed, the individual will be the most stable social
unit, and then, indeed, the public and its opinions will be good
soldiers. Um, solder.
  

    
Heh.  As good a working definition of America as I've ever heard...
  

    
Over in the spirituality topic, someone mentioned the "sovereignty of
the soul." I think Coleman's post touches on an alternative view, that
the burning light of the individual may be more of a construction than
a necessity. Think of what it must have been like to live in some
prehistoric culture where there were no mirrors, where you didn't
really have a strong idea of what you looked like. People's sense of
self must have been very different than what mine is now.

I think (satyr) is mostly correct when he talks about individuals as
being a kind of primary nexus of autonomy but the boundaries are blurry
and shifty.
  

    
I suspect that a notion of the autonomous individual in prehistoric
cultures would have been horrifying, felt as exile from the group which
most likely provided safety.  Even those odd shamans who lived on the
periphery of their societies were still part of those societies.
  

    
There's a book called The World We Have Lost, a social history of the
17th century, that says that to introduce oneself to someone in the
17th century one had to tell all about one's extended family. There
would follow a long discussion to determine whether some member of
one's extended family could possibly know some member of the other's
extended family. If not, one wasn't quite established as present.
People were conceived of as elements of extended families.

The world would not be magically all better if our society were
organized to promote, rather than discourage, banding together. We
would be more insular, more given to feuding between bands, and more
troubled with nepotism. There would be more injustice of the sort that
goes on in families and between old acquaintances. But we would be less
isolated, insecure, and easily frightened, and thus harder to
manipulate. 
  

    
Let alone that we'd end up with six fingers or six toes, like some of
the dynasties of my beloved Maya.
  

    
> a kind of primary nexus of autonomy but the boundaries are blurry
> and shifty

No contest.  Humans come pre-equipped for participation in and investing
ourselves in groups -- primarily family groups.  Witness our facillity 
for acquiring language.

But tear an individual loose from the group they're born into, and, with 
a bit of luck and ingenuity, they'll survive and go on to form other
relationships and participate in other groups.

The hooks are reassignable.  Individuals tend to be part of groups, but 
the groups in which they participate fluctuate.  Life goes on.
  

    
Yes, but we like to forget how much of ourselves we tear loose when we
leave a band behind. This is sometimes all to the good, like the
alcoholic who takes the geographic cure or the criminal who flees to 
another town, and walks the clean and narrow from then on. But
sometimes what we leave behind is the capacity for a particular kind of
humor, a particular kind of happiness, or a particular kind of
thought. One changes bands, yes; but the individual in the new band is
seldom really the same individual.
  

    
That's an interesting comment, Coleman.  I like the tip of the hat to
the values of the past, even as we knowingly, if not willingly, give
them up to proceed towards the values of the present.

Reminds me of advice I was given by an instructor, Ed Collins, when I
was in my late teens and struggling with my sexuality or, more
accurately, struggling with others knowing about my sexuality.  I had
fallen in love with Ed, wrote him a love note which he liked and kept
and which his wife found and used as grounds for divorce.  I felt so
horrible about that.  But Ed was so gracious.  He assured me that there
were rocks in that bed long before I came around and that Janet was
just waiting for an excuse.  I ended up being the excuse.  But he told
me not to worry, neither about him or myself, or what people think,
because if you get kicked out of one group, he said, it automatically
means you're in another group.  Just adapt.

I always loved that advice and it has proven true time and time again.
  

    
I'll grant that the 'individual' that remains unchanged through being torn
from (or remvoing themselves from) one context and planted into another is
an illusory construct.  We are not so self-contained as that.
  

    
I will grant that since individuals can remove themselves from the
groups that in some sense form their larger selves, though at a cost,
certain kinds of moral responsibility reside in individuals
exclusively. But it is a disaster if people regularly have to tear
themselves loose of their fellows to live right.
  

    
> certain kinds of moral responsibility

Memory, among them.  To recapitulate and remember where we have come
from, who has affected us, who taught by kindness, who taught by
fierceness; it is we and we alone who tell the stories of our lives
that, in retrospect, weave the tapestry of our times.

Ken Burns capitalized on this when he reconstructed his vision of the
Civil War.  It was through the voices of many many individuals that the
breadth and depth of that event shone through.

And Joe Campbell taught me that it was through the execution of our
everyday lives that our brilliance shone through, no matter from where
we are torn or where we become situated.
  

    
> But it is a disaster if people regularly have to tear
> themselves loose of their fellows to live right.

Which, in an time when most receive more effective reinforcement for 
their roles as consumers than for any other aspect of their lives, is
all-too-frequently the case.