Years ago, I participated in an 18-month World Classics college course sequence, a sort of a survey of the history of civilization from hunter-gatherer mythos to post-modern linguistic theory. One of the questions that kept popping up in my mind was the question of a basis for a truly good society. We read about individualistic, innovative societies, like the ancient Greeks, which were also often violent and tended to succumb to internal conflict, and more structured, traditionalist societies that tended to take good care of people but innovated only slowly and tended not to withstand invasion well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, when we got to the 17th Century, the well-known thesis of Thomas Hobbes suddenly brought everything into focus.\u00a0 For those who don\u2019t remember, the Spark Notes summary is that Hobbes said that people form societies because a person\u2019s life on their own would be \u201c\u201csolitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.\u201d It makes an immense amount of sense to me.\u00a0 Even if you\u2019re Bear Grylls, able to gather food and build shelter after being dropped naked into the wilderness, somebody taught you your basic skills, which they learned from someone else, so you are benefitting from being part of a society, even if it\u2019s temporarily miles away.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the logical conclusion about what the scale is to measure the quality of a society: how much does it help people avoid a life that is \u201cnasy, brutish, and short\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, determining how to develop a successful society is liable to be a long process with lots of missteps and failed experiments. Or maybe I should say, it is. But at least it gives us a way of measuring our progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(You can help this blog progress by buying some clever knicknacks in my CafePress shop!<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feedback: blather@progpatriots.com<\/a>. I\u2019d like to say appreciate your feedback but I can only promise to check it when I can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Years ago, I participated in an 18-month World Classics college course sequence, a sort of a survey of the history of civilization from hunter-gatherer mythos to post-modern linguistic theory. One of the questions that kept popping up in my mind was the question of a basis for a truly good society. We read about individualistic,… Continue reading Successful societies?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-realignment","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progpatriots.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}