[zamfi]

This is a very western perspective on the role of the individual. Not to say that it is wrong or others are better or anything, but there are other ways to interpret the interrelatedness of actions by individuals within a collective, that maybe don’t result in a feeling of “being controlled by others” in healthy circumstances (of course, there are cases of toxic environments, workplaces, communities, etc., and this isn’t meant to minimize any of that).

One way to perceive the impact of community desires and needs on the individual is “control” but alternate framings include support, belonging, mutual aid, etc. — again not saying any is “better”, but I do think the singular conceptualization of the individual as being solely responsible for his/her own decisions and ultimately outcomes might cause a lot of the friction as reality doesn’t quite support that notion.

Dan pink’s “autonomy, mastery, purpose” trifecta is enlightening here, as it illustrates how “autonomy” doesn’t mean “free from control” but is ultimately about the respect an individual feels, regarding their decisions, from others.

Just some food for thought.

[coldtea]

>This is a very western perspective on the role of the individual. Not to say that it is wrong or others are better or anything

No, it's also wrong, as the whole luxury of choice the parent pretends to be the ideal situation, is based on a whole lot of other people supporting them (from parents throughout childhood, to social structures, technology, resources, and infrastructure, security, to healthcare, someone else whipping their ass in some nursing home when they're 80 and so on).

[wahnfrieden]

not sure what you're saying, that you can only imagine support networks in societies through this current system - seems like both a limit of the imagination and a lack of looking at where that's been demonstrated (in likewise post agriculture, large scale society). I didn't elaborate in my OP on solutions, I only offered some ways of evaluating how healthy/"advanced" a society is (not just looking at individual potential)

[coldtea]

>seems like both a limit of the imagination

Imagination of some future utopia is a dime a dozen. Scenarios that actually work are much less easy to find.

>in likewise post agriculture, large scale society

I don't see any post agriculture "large scale society". I see an even more increased role of agriculture, amidst food and resource wars, and society dropping in numbers (and scattering to smaller dwellings), what with climate change, and all.

[wahnfrieden]

lol goodbye

[rtpg]

Perhaps its a western perspective, but I think you might be oversubscribing this as individualism.

A common phrase is about how you don't choose your family. But you often choose your friends, and many can choose certain communities to actively be in.

I think that you can have a sense of community, of some sort of greater good, of buy in, when you have that choice. For example, someone who has the choice of moving across the country to go to a school that interests them, to help out with an organization that aligns with what they are interested in, to work in an industry that they appreciate.

When society is built in a way to provide people the ability to move around, then those inside it will understand the value of it, and will be active participants in the societal effort. and they will be way more onboard with the "demands" from the society as a whole as a result. Though of course this is a question that can come up at every scale.

At least that has been my experience. I care a hell of a lot more about society when it has given me the opportunity to be part of communities that make sense to me, and to see how others get this opportunity as well. And so I gladly pay my dues, even if I might complain a bit.

[zamfi]

Okay, and as a counterpoint: being able to up and leave your community on a dime to choose another one leads to filter bubbles, mutual distrust, easy "othering" of communities not your own, and makes more challenging any work to improve dialog, communication, and mutual understanding and respect across society and across class because: why bother repairing or bettering your community when your BATNA [1] is "I'll never have to see these people again"?

I'm not advocating for the alternative, in the slightest -- being forced to be part of a community that doesn't respect you the way you are (as was true for MANY pre-internet, including anyone who wasn't part of the heteronormative or neurotypical hegemony) is horrible, toxic, abusive, etc., and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. But the dramatic filtering of American society into factions that mirror political parties with shockingly separate information worlds that frankly describe completely different realities is made much easier because it is so easy to silo yourself.

There is no easy answer here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...

[wahnfrieden]

the thing is we've had societies, at large scale (beyond dunbar number nonsense), post discovery of agriculture, where those freedoms I listed were much greater than today. current conditions aren't inevitable or the only realistic option. these usually involved cooperative society (a focus on collective, without severely limiting these freedoms in the name of so-called necessary bureaucracy and hierarchy), I'm not talking about a libertarian utopia. I'm talking mostly about modern research on indigenous societies (before europeans arrived or other cases)

[zamfi]

The freedoms you list: whether you can relocate, disobey community orders (norms?), or “keep” most of the value of your labor, are fundamentally rooted in a notion of the individual as separable from the community or society they exist in.

It sounds like you are saying that these values are very important, and that missing them is a “severe … social illness”.

I’m not making any historical claims here, nor any claims of relative correctness or value (though plenty of others in this thread are) — I’m just noting that these are a specific set of values and not universal ones, and I’d caution you about universalizing your notion of individual by characterizing the lack of these freedoms as a “social ill”. For example, one might easily value connectedness, belonging, mutual aid, and social support above the ability to relocate, etc. — in most societies the freedom to relocate is not the freedom to relocate your social support — and giving up social support by relocating in order to “keep” more of produced value is a big trade-off that many don’t choose to make.

And as you note, other societies have had other notions of the individual across history throughout the world.

[wahnfrieden]

yeah these are not traditional ones, I'm paraphrasing from ones that graeber/wengrow suggest we use over other measures of societies we've used traditionally (such as how economically successful they are, how much production, etc - the types of measures that obviously favor capitalism as the measure of success)

> (I) the freedom to move away or relocate from one's surroundings; (2) the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others; and (3) the freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones.

these are proposed as more meaningful ways of evaluating how "advanced" a society is in its liberties. which is interesting for reevaluating current conditions, (post agriculture, large scale) human societies of the past (that may have been dismissed as primitive before), and for imagining where we can go from here.

[zamfi]

Yes, my point is that using those as a measure of liberties is a particular definition of liberties that makes assumptions about what humans value most.

Not everyone values these — nor even liberties in general — and describing their lack as a “social illness” as you did originally universalizes them in a way that may not be warranted. I have no doubt that other cultures have these values — the point is that not all cultures do, and not everyone does even within cultures that do.

[wahnfrieden]

yeah they are proposing them as values to adopt, and they are standing them up in contrast to existing conflicting values

[coldtea]

>I'm not talking about a libertarian utopia. I'm talking mostly about modern research on indigenous societies (before europeans arrived or other cases)

And how are these revelevant to a modern, much more elaborate, society, if it wants to also keep certain things (like production, technology, education, infrastructure, etc.)?

[wahnfrieden]

you can go read a book for the answer, dawn of everything, I won't try to discuss with you

[coldtea]

Just because an anarchist leaning professor wrote some ideologically driven ideas in book form, doesn't mean it's the way things are.

>I won't try to discuss with you

I figured as much

[wahnfrieden]

you're free to dismiss the research material and form your own judgment of it without reading based on politics

[alexalx666]

"without severely limiting these freedoms" - I think that they will be devalued automatically by collective, which will lead to the stagnation and demise of that society.

[wahnfrieden]

well, I submitted a new article on the research that elaborates if you're interested to learn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32127961

[zamfi]

I’m extremely confused by how the lesson you drew from Wengrow and Graeber is that the notions of freedom to relocate, disobey your community, and keep the value of your labor are actually universal and not based in a specific notion of individualism.

It seems like you’re making an argument about hierarchy, rather than individualism. Yes, hierarchy is not universal. But I’m not sure what that has to do with the above freedoms you describe? Taxation? The existence of laws? Please enlighten me.

If anything the lesson from The Dawn of Everything is exactly that there are no universal or even “native” notions of society, collective, hierarchy, etc.

[wahnfrieden]

sorry for paraphrashing sloppily, I wrote the OP hastily because usually this kind of anti-capitalist stuff is unwelcome here and gets downvoted lol, I didn't expect this attention

this is the specific passage of what they suggest as new measures of social liberty:

> (I) the freedom to move away or relocate from one's surroundings; (2) the freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others; and (3) the freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones.

[Dracophoenix]

> “autonomy” doesn’t mean “free from control” but is ultimately about the respect an individual feels, regarding their decisions, from others.

How is respect defined here? One man's definition of respect will clash with another's. Some define respect as cult-like devotion, some as a recognition of one's boundaries, some as a transaction at a specific price, some as engaging in an expected cultural performance, etc. Freedom from control or, more precisely, imposition and interference is well-defined. Desires for respect can balloon into wishful thinking, if not self-delusion.

[chongli]

Respect is defined by the respecter, not the respectee. How someone shows respect is up to them as an individual, mediated by societal norms. On the other hand, if someone feels disrespected it’s because they have detected either insincerity or outright hostility/antagonism directed towards them.

Of course, some people may have more or less difficulty detecting sincerity in others but that’s no different from other social skills.

[Dracophoenix]

So in short, your view is that respect is simply the sum of the subjective expectations of countervailing forces (i.e. respector, respectee, and society)? If so, that doesn't provide a clear definition for the term. Instead it leaves the act of defining to interpersonal power plays.

[wahnfrieden]

there’s plenty of power play mind game “respect” abuse that doesn’t neatly fit into your categorization imo, which unravels the rest of what you’re talking abt

[coldtea]

>How is respect defined here? One man's definition of respect will clash with another's.

Respect shouldn't be entirely up to the invididuals to define what action (note: what action/stance/etc, not which person) deserves it -- otherwise it's not respect, it's just a personal whim.

[Dracophoenix]

That is the point I am trying to get across. As a side note, whim isn't limited to mere individuals. Whole societies can and do build their morals on cargo cults and arbitrary delineations of what are and aren't respectable practices.

Given our agreement that whim should not define respect, then what is it defined by exactly? If the individuals themselves are not the ones to determine what constitutes a "respectful act", then where does one obtain the ability or authority to draw the line as to what qualifies as respect and what doesn't?

[EUROCARE]

I really dislike calling these kinds of attitudes "western". Asia has plenty of hyper-individualistic behavior, even (or especially?) where nominally socialism or communism rules.

[uoaei]

It is a philosophical framework that grows directly out of Western culture per philosophical tradition during the Enlightenment era. Western culture had much more of an effect on this tradition than Eastern cultures did.

It's not about where the philosophy exists in individuals, but about what socio-systemic forces brought those modes of thinking into being. Ironically this mirrors the point above about how the framing of this issue itself is rooted in individualist perspective.

[wahnfrieden]

it’s a misreading, they’re projecting something onto societies they evidently haven’t read up on

[krisrm]

Somewhat orthogonal to your point, but it is interesting to me how easily some will dismiss perspectives or ideas by referring to them pejoratively as "western".

[zamfi]

I think you’re projecting. I’m not sure how I could have caveated my statement more than I did — I am not dismissing the perspective I describe as “western” at all, merely noting the existence of alternatives that may offer other perspectives on the question at hand.

[weakfish]

It’s not perjorative in GP’s case, simply an observation IMO. It’s valuable to assess ideas from varying cultural standpoints

[zamfi]

I’m all ears if you have a better descriptor for philosophies emerging from enlightenment-era thought in Western Europe. (Sure, I could say all that but it’s a mouthful!)

[EUROCARE]

The point is, these behaviors clearly did not emerge only there as we have plenty of examples in completely unrelated cultures. There is no point in calling something "western" only because it's happening there as well - you have the same thing everywhere else, so why not call it "eastern" or "southern" instead - or why use meaningless names at all?

[zamfi]

In this case, the name is really only indicative of where the current canon of philosophical thought identifies the first recordings of these notions as explicit philosophical notions, and has nothing to do with “these behaviors” as were not even talking about behaviors.

The name isn’t meaningless — and I’m not using it from a belief that “western” people are more “individualistic” or something than others, as you and others seem to be implying. Obviously there are plenty of individualistic behaviors in people across cultures.

But the notion of the individual with agency creating a state to protect individual agency is recorded explicitly by Kant and enlightenment rationalism, collectively typically referred to as “western” by philosophers. The OP here was discussing freedoms and values, and I was pointing out that they seem to derive from this notion of the individual, which is only one among many.

Do you also open discussions of Newton’s Law of Gravity with a critique that it’s misnamed because gravity is present everywhere?

Apologies to anyone triggered by this jargon, it wasn’t my intent.

[wahnfrieden]

it’s funny bc i’m specifically citing research from indigenous populations mostly in the americas and asia

[Fargoan]

No. You're just wrong.

[weakfish]

Please elaborate

Edit = spelling (dang autocorrect:-()