Well, societies do have some common goals among its members. Majority of members do like a stable and healthy economy. Majority of members like the safety and stability law enforcement provides. Majority of members do buy into the authority of institutions of the society, and abide by the rules prescribed by society (or by some members of society, to be truthful).by another member in this club in another thread wrote:Societies are not moral agents, or even sentient beings. They are merely groups of individuals so situated as to be able to interact. Societies have no interests, no desires, no beliefs, no values that are not reducible to the interests, desires, beliefs, and values of the individuals who constitute them, which, in any large society, will be infinitely diverse. Indeed, they have no properties, other than statistical ones, not reducible to properties of their members. Likewise, there are no conflicts between individuals and "society." All conflicts and antagonisms present in any society are conflicts between individuals, some of whom may join with others to pursue some common interest, or to thwart an interest of some other individuals which they perceive to be antagonistic to their own.
Majority of the members enjoy the benefits of society.
Without putting a false statistic on the issue, my estimate is that 98 percent of people think similarly on what the role, the benefits, and dues paid by them to its upkeep, of a society is. And they agree and would even voluntarily agree, to live in their society.
Does a society have sentience? A conscious? No, I don't think so. But they do form a unit which is life-like in some of its own aspects:
- it can reproduce
- it maintains itself even with parts coming in and going out on a regular basis
- it consumes energy and supplies lifeline to its component parts and to itself as a whole for survival
- it will fight for autonomous survival
- it will get up, the most literally physical way, and move over a distance to greener pastures, if needed, while taking all the cultural aspects of itself and not losing them
- it will interact with other societies and exchange information
- it will fight with other societies when there is a reason
- it will merge with other societies for survival's sake or when forced to
- it is made of many smaller units, which each individually are sentient, but they don't have a common "sense" (although individually they all may have common sense)
- these smaller units are forming sub-societies, with definitely predetermined functions (families, for raising young to adulthood, schools, to educate, churches, for worship, work places, to sustain the economy, leisure places, to refresh and unwind and re-energize, hospitals, military, etc.)
- all of the smaller units will specialize in some function each of which aide other members and thus the survival of the society
- smallest units (individuals) can switch form one smaller operating unit to another within the society, but they normally look after the same specialist roles
- some smaller units will be employed by the society in pleasant ways, some in unpleasant ways, but the remuneration policy will ensure that the workers in unpleasant jobs and conditions will not mind too much and willingly continue in carrying out the unpleasant tasks
- each society has its own language, which prevents or hinders bleeding members to other societies... it is an identity as much as an identifier and enabler, language is
- societies can get diseased by acquiring an infection of too many sick element components, or being destroyed, or partly destroyed which eventually means demise
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All these qualities form something that is very similar to the life form of a single-celled animal or plant. Plants and animals, single-celled, will have a metabolism, which means that it consumes matter of atoms for the benefit of obtaining energy and material for growth; and this society-thing has people join and leave, who supply their bodies and work for the energy and manpower (body of people) in the society. Society processes people by building them into itself in specific roles, and society gives them a life line of food and other supplies for their providing work and body mass.
These societies are mobile, much like other single-celled animals. They multiply by splitting, much like single-celled animals. They exchange information of survival with other societies, much like single-celled animals do. They fight with other societies, or even eat each other (in the case of societies, by annihilating or subduing the enemy, occupying their territory, and taking possession of their things.)
Once an atom or type of atoms gets regularly situated in a functional unit within a single-celled animal, it gets replaced in metabolic change by the same type of atom. In societies, as well. A person whose ability and interest enables him to become a CEO, will be replaced by a similar person. The same for doctors, professionals, workers, mothers, slave labourers.
In an organism there are unpleasant jobs for cells, such as lining the walls of the stomach, or lining the walls of the intestines. These are equivalent to people working in deplorable, ugly jobs. Or dangerous jobs where they can get injured easily or die easily. Like cells in an organism, a society will have people working in dangerous, unpleasant jobs.
In conclusion, societies can't be dismissed as non-entities. Societies do have a purpose, like individuals do: to survive, and to metabolize. I doubt that at the present developmental stage of societies they have emotions, sentience, or reasoning ability. Those are functions of its component elements, people.
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Do you, as a person or as a philosopher, buy the notion that societies are indeed identifiable, separable, and coherent units that have a purpose, and are capable of striving for that purpose?
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