Were we better off in a state of nature?

[coberst]

Were we better off in a state of nature?

 

How credible was the concept of the Noble Savage?

 

The thing is that society is constantly changing. How can we create a stable society within such a dynamic world culture? We need an ideal as a North Star. An ideal does not depend upon what is or what was but upon what we want or what we need—hopefully that are similar.

 

I think that Socrates may very well be the first person to recognize what we need. Socrates recognized that the basic need was for wo/men to awaken their critical faculties. Socrates was perhaps the first to recognize that humans are too easily delighted by the praise of their fellows and that this sought after social recognition prevented their free and enlighten action. Humans need to share in a shared social fiction. The anxiety of self-discovery is a constant source of internal conflict for humans.

 

It appears that human play forms “may even outwit human adaptation itself”. The created fiction becomes more real than reality itself. New humans enter this world and immediately begin the process of survival which becomes “a struggle with the ideas one has inherited”. This fiction reality destroys our rational adaptive process which can react to the real world; we are too busy reacting to our fictional play.

 

Is it appropriate to say that the Amish might be considered to be the modern Noble Savage?

 

Is it possible that we could study the Amish as a means for creating a better society?

[coberst]

Bill Moyer has a video wherein he discusses the book “Amish Grace” that you might find to be very interesting regarding the Amish response to their tragedy. Compare that Amish response to their tragedy and the response of America to our 9/11 tragedy.

 

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

[Queso]

yeah I step back before I take a step forward

[Zythryn]

Society will ALWAYS be in flux. The rate of that change may be lesser or greater but there will always be change in any living society.

Personally, I as an individual would not be alive in a more 'natural' society that did not rigorously pursue medical science.

Some may say that wouldn't be bad as it would keep population numbers down. But if you ask me if we (including me) would be better off, I would say no:)

[coberst]

All animals, except humans, live in a total state of nature. All animals, except humans, are guided totally by instinct. Civilization is a mark of this transition from instinct to ego domination of behavior.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

I agree Coberst. But I would argue that we are still within the bounds of nature. For every action there is an opposite reaction. For all that we create, more is destroyed. I would say yes, we were better off in a more natural state. I would say that our desire to control nature is a product of fear, to prevent natural pain and natural death. But we still have natural pain and natural death, but we have created more fear by creating an illusion of control that doesn't test. But nature has a way of working itself out, and we are not exempt.

[coberst]

My statement says that I consider a creature is living in a total state of nature when that creature is controlled by its nature and its instincts. Humans have an ego which stands in the way of instinctive behavior for humans. Animals other than humans do not have an ego. The more effect the ego has on human behavior the more civilized we become and the further removed from nature.

 

Instincts are the emotions that an animal is born with. Animals are hardwired with certain automatic control reactions. These emotions, i.e. these instincts cause the deer to run and the lion to fight.

 

Ego says, HOLD IT, TIME OUT!

 

The ego is our command center; it is the “internal gyroscope” and creator of time for the human. It controls the individual; especially it controls individual’s response to the external environment. It keeps the individual independent from the environment by giving the individual time to think before acting. It is the device that other animal do not have and thus they instinctively respond immediately to the world.

 

The id is our animal self. It is the human without the ego control center. The id is reactive life and the ego changes that reactive life into delayed thoughtful life. The ego is also the timer that provides us with a sense of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. By doing so it makes us into philosophical beings conscious of our self as being separate from the ‘other’ and placed in a river of time with a terminal point—death. This time creation allows us to become creatures responding to symbolic reality that we alone create.

 

As a result of the id there is a “me” to which everything has a focus of being. The most important job the ego has is to control anxiety that paradoxically the ego has created. With a sense of time there comes a sense of termination and with this sense of death comes anxiety that the ego embraces and gives the “me” time to consider how not to have to encounter anxiety.

 

Evidence indicates that there is an “intrinsic symbolic process” is some primates. Such animals may be able to create in memory other events that are not presently going on. “But intrinsic symbolization is not enough. In order to become a social act, the symbol must be joined to some extrinsic mode; there must exist an external graphic mode to convey what the individual has to express…but it also shows how separate are the worlds we live in, unless we join our inner apprehensions to those of others by means of socially agreed symbols.”

 

“What they needed for a true ego was a symbolic rallying point, a personal and social symbol—an “I”, in order to thoroughly unjumble himself from his world the animal must have a precise designation of himself. The “I”, in a word, has to take shape linguistically…the self (or ego) is largely a verbal edifice…The ego thus builds up a world in which it can act with equanimity, largely by naming names.” The primate may have a brain large enough for “me” but it must go a step further that requires linguistic ability that permits an “I” that can develop controlled symbols with “which to put some distance between him and immediate internal and external experience.”

 

I conclude from this that many primates have the brain that is large enough to be human but in the process of evolution the biological apparatus that makes speech possible was the catalyst that led to the modern human species. The ability to emit more sophisticated sounds was the stepping stone to the evolution of wo/man. This ability to control the vocal sounds promoted the development of the human brain.

 

Ideas and quotes from “Birth and Death of Meaning”—Ernest Becker

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

I agree. Personal ego is the catalyst for most, if not all, problems.