Society v. State

Society, State, and Man:

A side discussion below deserves a top-line response. One of the things I've learned over the last few years is that we need to do a better job of balancing powers. We have a system of checks and balances between the executive branch, Congress and the judiciary; but, as we've often discussed here, we've largely lost the comparable balance between Federal and State authority. We need to recover a balance there.

By the same token, there are three other groups that need a system of checks and balances: the state, society, and individuals. We have balanced much too far toward the state, and to some degree too far toward individuals, while society has lost almost all of its power.

One of the chief tasks ahead of us, if we are to recover a decent way of life, is to find a way of rebalancing power. Frankly, I don't think our accountability mechanisms for the police work very well at alll; dismantling the police state we've built is very important if we are to make policing honorable work again. The police as peace officers are meant to be one of the balancing functions that affords some negotiation between the interests of the state ('the lawful order') and society ('the common peace'). As law enforcement officers, they've become enforcers of the state: and, to the degree that they are that, enemies of both society and the individual.

Cassandra suggests a way of thinking about society (the brutality exercised by certain proponents of a rather impoverished version of Islam) that suggests it would be bad to let society have a say in how individuals live, or the state is ordered. That comes from the wrongful assumption that a monolithic society is necessary or desirable as a standard. I love the idea of lots of little societies which have their own standards: and we have a way of balancing that concept with the interests of the state (and the States) in the Federalist system. Provided that certain basic rights are absolutely protected, it's OK if we have different social standards here and there, and different legal orders as well.

Why should society be given a voice in how individuals live? Consider this example. From the individualist point of view, this is a great story: the guy's personal actualization has been fully supported by the state. From the state's point of view, it was following its rules, so all was well until he actually started killing and eating women.

Yet that's half the picture. The individualist standard is violated here because the women didn't want to be killed and eaten; but some people have consented to being killed and cannabilized. If individual self-actualization is the answer, we have no standard to criticize two people consenting to such a system.

The state is (supposed to) follow the law; and the law says whatever it says. If we changed the law to say that it was OK to kill and eat women, then there would be no standard for challenging his behavior.

Could a society be subject to the same complaint? If a society chose to endorse such behavior, it would vanish in a few generations. This fact points to something important about society, and the reason that we see the destruction of the West's 'Culture of Life' at the same time that we see society disempowered before the state and the individual.

All individuals die. It is a matter of complete indifference to the state as to whether it dies or lives. Societies are what live across time, and link lives together. It is only in society that we find life expressing itself as an evolutionary control on behavior and standards.

Another way of saying that is this: society is how humanity rubs up against natural law. Life-affirming values come from here, or from nowhere. The state doesn't care; it will accept whatever set of laws exist, at the convenience of its masters. Individuals may well find that death-affirming values (such as abortion) are more convenient and pleasant for them.

Only society brings us into touch with the natural law governing humanity, as opposed to a single man or woman, or the unfeeling machine of the state.