Ithink these are good questions, not dumb questions. They get down to some fundamentals. The precision of human sociality/sociability is very important to establish.
>>> gcf at panix.com 04/24/01 07:11AM >>>
>> Suppose we confine ourselves to science, and rigorously
>> avoid lit- and cult-crit, while admitting those portions of
>> psychology, sociology and anthropology which seem firmly
>> grounded in material evidence. What can we prove, scientifically
>> speaking, about the degree to which humans are necessarily
>> social animals, and the degree to which they are individuals,
>> as dictated by their _material_ characteristics? How nonsocial
>> can human beings be, and still live (as a species)? Could
>> they live like those animals which meet only to breed? What
>> happens to humans who don't grow up in world containing
>> language? Have any anthro or socio folks gone into this issue?
>>
>> I realize this seems like a dumb question, and I'm hoping to
>> get the very snappy yet profound answers which truly dumb
>> questions merit.
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I was recently arguing with some Natural Law advocates who assured me that certain things were forbidden in "all known societies", and of course I demanded a scientifically respectable survey of all known societies, or at least a good random sample of say 100 of them. Needless to say, they didn't have such -- Natural Law seems to be a religious belief. But although the sort of encyclopedic survey of anthropological knowledge I demanded is a big order, someone could have done it to see what, if anything, was universal or nearly so.
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CB: I think that in the main your implication in contradiction of the Natural Law assertion is correct. There are of course physiological, natural basics that all human societies must meet, but this does not mean that the social does not enter into these natural areas , intertwining with instincts. So, even though individual humans do have instincts, these are always clothed in culture , and the array of indivdual instincts in not adequate for survival or participation in most of life.
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One problem is that to some extent we're dealing with the possibility of non-society. We know that individuals can survive indefinitely in isolation (hermits) and some time ago I read the tale of a woman who not only survived in isolation but gave birth to a baby while doing so. I think she had to hunt for her food, too, although she was equipped with a rifle, which is a social fact. And those isolated humans I know about have always started out in the sort of highly socialized context we're familiar with; they're not really counterexamples.
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CB: Agree. ((((((((
As long as we're dealing with mere physiology, I think it's _conceivable_ that human beings could live like those animals which meet only to breed. However there seems to be very little knowledge of such instances, indicating (but not "proving", in my sense) that the social context is necessary to human life. I know this seems obvious, but it's also obvious that the Earth is flat and that the sun travels through the sky from east to west every day, so I'm not satisfied with obviousness.
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CB: It is not so obvious. The main and prevailing ideology and philosophy in bourgeois society, i.e. society today , comes down to an opposite assumption.
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> Moreover, consider the case of isolated/solitary children.
> They often demonstrate social, cognitive and emotional
> deficits--it's not just that they don't know how to use a
> spoon or speak a language! Human development seems to
> require social interaction.
Right. Any keywords? I thought the term for this was _marasmus_ but this word appears to be defined as a physical or medical concept associated with malnutrition.
I assume if people have gone around saying things like "society creates the individual" then they have a materialistic basis for their beief as well as a clear- enough definition of society to make such a statement meaningful.