Whenever I talk to people about the state, the social contract, taxation, the free market or just ideas about the way that people should relate and interact with each other in general, something weird starts to happen. It happens particularly if the person I am talking to is a hardcore statist. Most people have been raised by government schools in this country, so as a result most people are statists and this happens quite often. What happens is that the person I am talking to stops talking about people, and starts talking about something called “society.” So the question arises, what exactly is society? And if you offer an opinion on what society is, can you prove it?
Usually in these conversations people will give society human properties and rights. They will claim that society can think and act. People will claim that society has certain interests. It has wants, it has needs, it provides certain things to people. People can owe it things and they can take back things from it. Sometimes they they claim that society has the ability to speak. One thing people always grant society is the ability to make choices. They claim that society has chosen things. It has chosen certain policies and systems. Society has chosen democracy. That’s a big one. People love to talk as if society has chosen democracy from a list of available options. Apparently society thought that democracy was just fantastic.
Sociologists at college
Now, this is actually pretty crazy if you think about it. Can anyone prove any of this? How would one go about even attempting to prove this? Where are people getting this? What can actually be proven about society? As far as I can tell, society is just a convenient label for a large group of people. People that call themselves “sociologists” sometimes define societies in terms of racial, linguistic and cultural categories. That sounds reasonable at first, but it’s still pretty arbitrary. Why should I assume that all people that share certain traits belong to some abstract group? Moreover why should I take the word of a bunch of people that took out $40,000 government loans in order to drink and possibly get raped at a government college for 4-6 years, but could not figure what they wanted to study, and thus majored in “sociology”? Why should the people these “sociologists” group together accept these groupings? Shouldn’t the individuals actually involved have some sort of say over the people they are associated with? What exactly is a culture anyway? None of the conclusions sociologists come up with are actually provable, so sociology can only really be a bunch of opinions, not a science.
Society having a meeting
It starts getting really weird when people start talking about things that various societies have done and choices they have made. There is something I like to call the theory of “the meeting before time began” that people love to talk about. They will tell you that in some remote time and place, before the emergence of the state, everyone was brutish, savage, predatory and had no health care. Then suddenly, seemingly for no reason, society got together, had a meeting and decided that people needed to live together in peace and order. At this meeting society decided to create a special group of people called “the state”. This special group would supposedly guarantee certain rights like life, liberty and property. In turn society would give up certain rights and freedoms and blah blah blah. I’m sure you’ve heard this kind of crap before. This is actually totally insane. When the hell did this actually happen?!?!
The meeting was a total fail
The theory of “the meeting before time began” is a total fail. First of all, it never happened. That can easily be established. We can actually know things about history. There is not a single historical record of any such meeting taking place either in the remote or recent past. So this theory fails empirically. We can also know something about the history and origins of so-called “states” or “governments.” These are also part of the historical record that has been developed through empirical research. While there are certainly disagreements on the historical record and different interpretations, there is nothing in there about a fantasy meeting where everyone sat down together and agreed on anything. In pretty much every case a group of people calling itself a “state” emerged as the winner of a war. This group of people then started taxing and pushing around the people in a certain geographical region.
Not only did this meeting never happen, but we know the history of the theory itself. A guy that some people call a philosopher, but I call a douchebag, named Thomas Hobbes first came up with the theory of the imaginary meeting in a long and boring book called “Leviathan.” It’s not really worth reading. He wrote this screed after the English Civil War in order to justify the new regime of a total beast named Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was a complete animal who had just beaten the so-called “King.” He was in the process of taking over, taxing people, pushing them around and killing them in large numbers. Basically the kind of stuff you would expect from a warlord and religious fanatic. But Hobbes was a huge fan of his, and Cromwell made the cover of the first edition of “Leviathan.” So this is where this insane theory comes from. This is what people are basing their crazy fantasies on.
If you want an example of this kind of theory, I can provide one. This is a comment from a debate that emerged on a social news site discussing my argument on the “social contract”. This is beyond insane, so just be warned.
me: How does a “society” acquire rights?
batshit crazy lunatic: They thought real hard for a while, grabbed some sticks and stones and beat the crap out of some guy who told they they didn’t have a right to drink at the river because it was private property and he owned the water and the land all along the river, But he’d sell them some if they wanted because after all he believed in Free Markets.
But it set off a whole chain of beatings and stonings through out history leading to other rights. (It’s a unique feature about humans, you tell them they don’t have the right to do something, and first thing you know, it’s the sticks and stones again…That’s about the only thing Natural about the process…sticks and stones.) How did we earn the right to self governance? We took some sticks and stones and beat the crap out of a bunch of Redcoats and Mercenaries who’s king told them to beat the crap out of anyone who didn’t agree with his right to tell them what to do, and when to do it. Some times it takes lots of “stones” to gain a right. (pun intended) Anything else?
Wow. Just wow. I can’t really go in to all of this now, and it would not even be very enlightening to try. The one thing I will point out is the violence of this fantasy. And this is supposedly a theory that explains how society has gotten together for the purpose of peace and order.
Not only does the theory of “the meeting before time began” fail empirically, logically it is also an epic fail. Think about it for second. Just like with the empirical case, it only takes about one second of reasonable thought to throw out the logic of the imaginary “meeting before time began.” Supposedly before the meeting everyone was a savage brute. Nature was red in tooth and claw. Everyone was preying on each other, no one was safe and no one even had any health insurance. Since this was so intolerable people decided to sit down and have a meeting to establish the rules of peace order. But a meeting itself requires peace and order. So people would already have to have the ability to behave in a peaceful and orderly fashion in order to sit down and have a meeting in the first place. How did they decide on the rules for the meeting? Did they have a meeting before that? And then a meeting before that, all the way back to infinity? It’s the turtles all the way down problem again. And if everyone was so savage, where did the desire for the meeting come from in the first place? If they could have this meeting prior to creating the state, that proves that there is no need for a state to establish peace and order. The imaginary meeting, like every theory or argument for the state you could ever come up with, “self detonates” as Stefan Molyneux likes to put it.
The “meeting before time began”, like all theories and arguments for the state, is just another failed attempt to provide a post-facto justification for people that violate peace and order.
Pingback: Yes, you really do own yourself | The Emptiness
Even if such a meeting had occurred there would be no way to justify this as a contract for ever future generation living inside the same geographical boundaries. It’s ridiculous to suggest that contracts made by an individual’s forefathers would be valid. Just imagine applying the same to say democratic elections…
In my sociology class in college, the professor spent the entire first class talking about how it is a science. I knew then, that it wasn’t.
“None of the conclusions “sociologists” come up with are actually provable, thus sociology can really only be a bunch of opinions, not a science.”
You know, if you think about it, science really is mostly opinion. Not to bag on science at all, but many people cite a study and call that “proof” to support their argument. Every scientific study is trying to support some kind of theory–or the theory is drawn as something suggested by the study.
Take the the Big Bang Theory. There is no possible way anyone could know for sure how the Universe was formed since no one alive today was there, and there is (obviously) no written record. They are guessing even if they have excellent scientific data and research to back it up. Every branch of science that I know of can be boiled down to theories–and theories can be disproved.
Many people I know who have attended college seem to treat science almost as a religion. If the “scientists” say so, it must be true. I think a true scientist will question his own findings or at least take them with a grain of salt, knowing that there is a chance someone will come along and disprove his theory. Science requires an open mind or it’s just religion.
Yeah. I can remember that feeling from when I was a kid, and even well after the couple of years of college I took (I am proud of not having any sort of degree). The public schools and the papers I think trained us to believe something if an article begins “scientists say” or “new studies show”. I would bet that if you were to actually talk to the scientists that did the study they would claim they were misrepresented.
Hoppe, Rothbard and Von Mises all have some choice words for the so-called “social sciences”. too much for me to go into here. Their critiques are more sophisticated than what I have presented here obviously.
Very true. I think everyone should question “scientists say” up front. Not that they are automatically wrong, but they aren’t the clergy spouting off the gospel, either.
I think Hayak said the problem with empirical methods in economics is that it ignores human action. I debated a liberal statist who thought all of the Austrian school economists were bunk because they did not use empirical methods. He was also a huge fan of gov’t regulation, regarding it as the panacea to all our ills.
Theories are not opinions. Moreover, theories are *proven*.
You are confusing “hypothesis” with “theory”. Buff up on the basic concepts before commenting on these topics.
Theories are still guesses. Maybe very good guesses, but they are different than FACTs in that can still disproved–new data can surface that challenges prior understanding, or there could have been a flaw in the original data, etc.. Just because something is “proven” does not mean it is correct. I think a healthy approach to scientific studies is to allow them to suggest whatever the intent was, but always keep in mind they could be wrong.
Geez! It’s a shame you didn’t argue that humans will self-organise into harmonious Libertarian tribes when given half the chance. However reptilian aliens arrived assumed human form and use their superior knowledge and technology to form governments and forment conflict to keep the masses ignorant who in turn keep the aliens wealthy as well giving them a steady supply to human flesh which for them is a delicacy.
Yes, humans do in fact form tribes because people are capable of doing more in a group than on their own. The most primal tribe is the family and what sinks your theory is that people do protect those they prefer while ejecting or killing those they don’t like. Not to mention there’s competition for resources. Far from doing things unnatural, animals within a species will also protect their own members while forcefully ejecting outside members. You’re hypothesising humans aren’t social animals but they are. It’s writing like yours which suggest Libertarians are mostly aspies who were bullied throughout school.
Still, it’s a shame you don’t like Sociology since it is the study of society and why people form societies, how they act in society, how one society interacts with another society and, ultimately, why does each generation pretty much do the same things each generation did before it even though we claim to be more enlightened.