There is a discussion on what society actually is.
The debate between agency and structure is largely centred on a discussion of how things impact individuals and how individuals make the world, yet there generally exists little in relation to what this mysterious substance that impacts us may actually be.
There is a range, an ultimate range that defines what is ontologically possible, that being the is and is not, or material and amaterial (in a materialist sense), or material and ideal (in an idealist sense), or what I see as all material, mixing in proportion to become what we experience, what we see, and what in many instances is what we do not see.
The dialectic is well recognised, and this is the pulse to freedom.
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2 comments:
Nobody touched my human population issue. Am I being boycotted?
I think of society as a kaleidescope of packs of complex mammals. It's like nothing that ever came before. World, countries, provinces, cities, neighbourhoods, and families. A super complicated mix of alliances and clashing of ideals. And while it is utterly unique, it mirrors everything else, the universe itself, starting at "nothing" and unravelling, sprawling wildly out into every possible direction.
Maybe its that we lack understanding of this "substance" and that if, with understanding of it, would resolve many debates about social ontology.
I think that this is the dream of thousands of social theorists who have struggled to quantify and NAME this one elusive thing that would sew together all the discrepancies between theory, action, and results- along with all the infinite amount of variables influencing at all three levels.
In reality, I think that this mysterious substance might be due to pure celestial randomness. That's why we use statistics, ignoring the outliers. I feel that the knowledge (intuitive or not) of this substance died with the rise of civilization.
Not that we knew its essence before, just that the universe knew it for us.
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