[Caveat. This thread is at heart a philosophical discussion/rant. As such, I expect a lot of shibberjam and opinion; not so much web-research and presentation of hard facts. Perhaps this isn't the type of discussion 32 is clamoring for, but we'll see. Mostly, a friend of mine and I discussed this topic quite a lot recently, and I want to bounce the ideas off of bulldrek, because <shameless flattery> this is a wonderfully intelligent and diverse group of individualss</shameless flattery>, even if (as I will later state) it is Evil.
]Where to begin. Every year it seems, our society (and by 'our' I mean Western-style Democracies, because Fate knows there are plenty of societies that are already there) comes one step closer to Orwell's nightmare of 1984. Our privacy is eroded and the powers of the government and corporations to control our lives increases. So far I don't think I'm saying anything that will meet with much disagreement on this board. Howerver, I think when people talk about this issue they often pick a specific entity to paint in the light of Big Brother, be it corporations or the government. The problem with this is that we try to solve the entity we are focusing on with another form of group action: more corporate oversight vs. the free-market over government bureaucracy. What we fail to discuss is the core issue, or at least what /I/ think is the core issue: Groups are Evil
I don't mean Evil in the moral/religious sense, instead I mean Evil in the Lovecraftian/Cthuloid sense. Which is to say, that any group is an alien entity controlled only by it's ability to amass and exercise power. I feel that this applies to any group from Exxon-Mobil to Bulldrek, the US government to your aunt's knitting circle.
Now, before I go off more on groups and their role in society, I first feel I should explain what I think the purpose of society is, since society is inexcapably a group. Society is something that an individual joins in order to accomplish those things that he would not be able to accomplish otherwise. In exchange, the individual gives up some freedoms in return for the right to be a member of society. Society, and by extension any group, is a good thing only insofar as it allows an individual to accomplish his goals without compromising the basic freedoms of the other individuals that make up that society. This is the basic idea of the social contract. Ideally, IMHO, agreeing to the social contract would be a concious act, but that's only marginally feasible in the real world.
Returning to groups within society, the same principle applies: groups are only "good" insofar as they serve the needs of the individuals that make up a given society. However, groups are extremely powerful, otherwise they wouldn't be so damn useful. There is only so much a single individual can do, but there is no theoretical limit to what a group of individuals can accomplish. Frankly, groups are the most dangerous entities we as human beings can create. Groups can destroy someone's reputation. They can kill any number of of their fellow human beings. They can destroy an entire biosystem. They can make life for everyone, both those outside of and inside of the group, a living hell. And the two worst groups for doing these things are governments and corporations, which is why we focus on them. But your aunt's knitting circle is still a dangerous beast, and we as individuals should be aware of that.
More later.
