The four pillars of humanity.
For my own interests, in an effort to try and put modern times into perspective, to put together some framework for looking at things, I’ve tried to break humanity up into manageable sections, to then see where they might crossover, how they’re influenced, or to see if I missed something, or if my four pillars are an accurate way to break it up.
For instance, are they clearly different from each other, and could poetry be behind religion? I’ve also tried to avoid confusing the thing with what it produces.
Each of these pillars produce something. What they are and what they produce are two different thing. What they produce is the evidence of their presence.
I’m interested in what anyone might have to add, change or clarify.
Poetry: the expression of human consciousness and the unconscious. Art is a product of this.
Politics: ideas of nationalism. Division. Ideas of opposition. Power, the rule of law and society are products of this.
Economics: value in things, profit and loss. Power and private property are the products of this.
Religion: metaphysics, belief, the unknown, the unsayable. The church, the priests and power are the products of this.
Comments (78)
I was thinking about how humanity seems to keep on behaving in the same way throughout history. So I wanted to try and prioritise those things that drive us that way. And if those four pillars, as I call them, are the basic superstructure to our lives.
For instance it seems to me that society is politics, it’s the DNA of society. Which means we’re political animals, which is a bit different from social animals. If that’s true then the way we manage things and deal with them will never change. So I need to know exactly what political means.
And if economics comes after politics, is it the result of politics? So is my prioritising reasonable and are the four pillars correctly identified?
Edit: politics is regarded as something we do, but I’m suggesting it’s something we are.
It divides politics from economics, as if politics did not involve values.
Where's science?
And why include religion at all?
My feeling behind this OP is that politics is not about values. It’s originally a state of being, of viewing the world around one in terms of personal boundaries, what one has and doesn’t have, who has things and what they are, what’s happening around one and will they be affected by it and how to get what they want.
It’s a primitive state of being.
Politics became a ritualised game of rules played by professionals, like football is a ritualised game of war or battles.
Democracy let people back in through the vote.
Science is further down the track and developed from one of those pillars, or two, or a mutation. Religion is there because it’s an essential part of us. Whether God or Gods are real doesn’t matter, people have embraced it since they didn’t understand what the wind was, or why the sun rose every morning.
Economics and politics are separate. Economics was a way of playing out politics.
Poetry’s just my word for the expression of the unconscious mind, creativity is the result.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
[s]It seems like are missing the practical side to humanity. There's also markets, economy, institutions, businesses, etc...[/s]
Isn't there also an intellectual side to humanity? Schools, universities, intellectuals, and ideas. It seems like they play a crucial part to humanity.
No, it’s not about what we are now, it’s about our basic origins, what drives us and what feeds into other things. For instance politics comes before a community/tribe was formed. Economics is about trading. But at what point does trading appear, before a tribe is formed or after. And is economics just politics in action?
And what’s behind institutions, markets, business? They didn’t spring up overnight fully formed.
'Politics' originates from ancient Greece if I am not mistaken. You are thinking of tribal conflict.
Quoting Brett
Economics is a social science; modern terminology.
Quoting Brett
I say trading relates more to geography than individual tribes. Things get traded from places to places.
Quoting Brett
'Economics' is simply the study of economy. Are you thinking of markets?
Quoting Brett
They can. Well, not fully formed, no. More like an organic process.
Quoting Wheatley
Tribes come before Greek culture.
Quoting Wheatley
It’s origins are in trading on an individual basis for necessities.
Quoting Wheatley
Based on what I just said I think that trading begins at an individual level.
Quoting Wheatley
I don’t think studying something is the thing. The thing has to first exist.
Quoting Wheatley
Yes, so something initiated institutions, markets or business. Economics is behind business and markets, politics behind institutions.
Exactly! Problem is, no all humanity has adopted Greek culture! Is your mind blow?
Quoting Brett
Yes. I would say 'trade' is a way more appropriate term for a pillar of humanity than economy.
Quoting Brett
What did you say specifically?
Quoting Brett
'Economy' is an abstract term (and a social construction) invented by economists! *attempting to blow your mind*
Quoting Brett
Individuals start businesses. Governments and institutions are part of the 'ecosystem' in which business thrive.
Quoting Wheatley
What I meant was that people existed as tribes or collective long before the development of Greek cultures. So in the sense I’m talking about politics, which is not related to the Greek meaning, which refers to politics as a game of rules, I mean that it existed far earlier than Greek culture. All they did was begin the ritualisation/institutionalising of it and give it a name.
??
You can't divorce the word 'politic' from its original Greek meaning because politics is a Greek word. You're setting yourself up to confuse everyone.
The English word "politics" derives from the Greek word politiká (????????, 'affairs of the cities'), the name of Aristotle's classic work, Politiká. In the mid-15th century, Aristotle's composition would be rendered in Early Modern English as "Polettiques",[a][10] which would become "Politics" in Modern English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
Quoting Brett
I'm not sure what you are trying to convey to me.
Definition of Cistercians: a monk or nun of an order founded in 1098 as a stricter branch of the Benedictines. The monks are now divided into two observances, the strict observance, whose adherents are known popularly as Trappists, and the common observance, which has certain relaxations.
Auto-correct. Should have been ‘existence’ which I corrected.
Edit: and that should have been ‘existed’.
Quoting Wheatley
I’m using politics as a form of interaction between people. “The affairs of the city” are the affairs of the people. First the people then the institutions.
I just wasn't aware they predated the Greeks. But seems they didn't.
That's just wrong.
Quoting Banno
How so?
This is very typical of philosophers. Use an ordinary word, and then proceed to strip it of all its connotations. :vomit:
Don't mind me, I just don't like philosophers. :victory:
I never even heard of that word before.
Quoting Wheatley
If the Greeks had not named it do you think it would still exist.
It might not have because ancient Greek culture currently has a significant influence on western society.
Some early science.
Quoting Brett
What pillars specifically?
It seems to me that actions come before words. Things are named. The word doesn’t create the thing.
You mean this is science.
It was necessary for Greeks to come up with the word politics to describe what was happening in their democratic government.
That's how the polis ticked.
You're way more knowledgeable about ancient Greece than I am.
I don't understand any of those words you just used.
:yawn:
I think I might have to add science as a pillar then.
Edit: but maybe science is an offshoot if poetry. From where and how did the idea to make stone tools originally spring from?
Edit: ignore my last comment. Obviously it’s the actions of memory, observation, etc.
Its an interesting question where science originated. I think a lot of creativity goes into science, and I wouldn't rule out poetry as an influence.
Perhaps she was a poet, too.
Do you think politics, as I define it, was part of her life. Tools can’t have been made in isolation. Even if she was part of only a family I still see politics as part of that dynamic.
Edit: if they’re making tools then they’ve entered a complex state.
I'll answer that. Stone tools could have been made in isolation. It's only when they start sharing and passing down their knowledge, do politics get involved. Or it could have been a peaceful and pleasant act of cooperation. No one knows until they start researching hominids.
Have your read 'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari?
[quote='Yuval Noah Harari']Harari surveys the history of humankind in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. He divides the history of Sapiens into four major parts:
1. The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when Sapiens evolved imagination).
2.The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture).
3. The unification of humankind (the gradual consolidation of human political organisations towards one global empire).
4. The Scientific Revolution (c. 1500 CE, the emergence of objective science).[/quote]
^ which seems fairly aligned with your question. The book chronicles the evolution of these in accessible detail and links the pillar idea to evidence-based anthropology. Each event can be consolidated to re-word as a cornerstone, for example 1 can be phrased as Art or Imagination (which covers poetry), 2 as Agriculture (which is foundational to political/economic systems), 3 as Politics, and 4 as Science.
Religion's genesis isn't much to do with poetry, but Art played a role in its expression. The precursor was more likely hunter-gatherer pattern recognition, which gave a survival advantage over other species. The faculty, which evolved into a genetic propensity, caused false inferences to be made when human events coincided with unexplainable phenomena, an obvious example being tribal rain dances. If a tribe was experiencing a drought and rain coincidentally came immediately after some kind of ceremony, it was assumed causal. The tendency also encouraged other influential phenomena--like the sun--to be understood metaphysically, eventually with agency--which agency was the precursor to god worship.
Christianity is exactly the same, except it's more complex owing to expanding knowledge hierarchies and the increasing complexity of human civilisation.
Quoting dex
That’s interesting. Thanks for the post.
Would you go along with the idea that humans are inherently political creatures? And that the political class, and the institutions, took ownership of it.
Therefore what?
Wasn't sure because it seems like they could have been made independently in different parts of the world.
Inherently as in based in genetics? Like, would an island nation of 10 aborigines without knowledge of mass societies start engaging in machiavellianism?
I'd say we're inherently communal: as tribes grew to 150 members certain governences were needed for goal unification; one leader governing group morality became a hierarchy of leaders governing doctrines. 'Politics' is the advanced, large-population expression of the same thing. So ownership was more an organic thing than a takeover.
Quoting dex
It occurs to me that it’s similar to tool making but it led to something like false inferences that throws it back into poetry.
Quoting dex
Maybe not Machiavellianism but most likely subjective awareness that leads to individualism, that leads to perceptions of difference, which leads to a dynamic on the island which I would call politics. Before that it was all instinct, basic survival skills.
Is that genetic? I don’t know how we could know.
Not sure I follow but it might be said that Art has a basis in the pattern trait, whereby it led to creativity with abstractions.
What I was getting at is that the “hunter-gatherer pattern recognition, which gave a survival advantage over other species” is similar to the process, I imagine, in creating tools: memory, recognition of things being repeated, etc. Very concrete acts and results. And then it’s transferred into observation of weather, the sun, etc. and given spiritual meaning or understanding, which is then acted on through rituals, chants, carvings, prayer or dance; back to poetry.
Thats really interesting. If only @Brett put the same amount of thought and effort into his OP as our ancestors put into making tools, perhaps we would all make more progress. :wink:
Yep
It's not wrong usage to call them political but it's not well appropriated in my opinion. Politics in developed populations is advanced enough to constitute something different--maybe governance is a better bridging term--but power struggles and social structuring are inherent.
Would you refer to chimpanzees as political? Their tribes are organised much the same as our ancestors were, but we term them communal rather than political.
Well, I'm with @Banno in this: no arbitrary list of "pillars" is compelling; categorical extrapolations from anthropological 'data' are pseudo (as per e.g. Hume's guillotine, Lukács' hypostatization, etc).
Quoting 180 Proof
Why arbitrary and what would you add or delete?
Quoting dex
Yes I think I would. Communal is such a nice word, it sounds idyllic, everything in its place, everyone fitting in. I don’t think I would choose that over political. I know I’m appropriating the word, but even if I think about Chimpanzees I see it as a political body with all the friction and jockeying of humanity. I think communal is fine to a point, but after that what? The violence, the challenging, the posturing, the killing, the underlying tensions; that’s political to me.
Quoting Brett
Some broader ideas on politics:
“ Agonism argues that politics essentially comes down to conflict between conflicting interests. Political scientist Elmer Schattschneider argued that "at the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict",[27] while for Carl Schmitt the essence of politics is the distinction of 'friend' from foe'.[28] This is in direct contrast to the more co-operative views of politics by Aristotle and Crick. However, a more mixed view between these extremes is provided by the Irish author Michael Laver, who noted that "Politics is about the characteristic blend of conflict and co-operation that can be found so often in human interactions. Pure conflict is war. Pure co-operation is true love. Politics is a mixture of both." Wikipedia.
Quoting Banno
Just had a sudden late thought. Why conservative?
Because there is no mention of change.
No improvement, no becoming... things that are central to humanity.
Ah, yeah. That’s interesting.
Intuitively they do seem to go together. But I thought made an interesting comment about that.
["dex;431330"]Religion's genesis isn't much to do with poetry, but Art played a role in its expression. The precursor was more likely hunter-gatherer pattern recognition, which gave a survival advantage over other species. The faculty, which evolved into a genetic propensity, caused false inferences to be made when human events coincided with unexplainable phenomena, an obvious example being tribal rain dances.[/quote]
It’s trying to make sense of “the ineffable” and ends up contributing towards ideas of “the ineffable”
It seems to me that religion, the strongly held beliefs in God or Gods and their word has faltered or failed. Fewer people seem to take take part in religious practices. What they believe in I can’t be sure. But it’s influence has diminished I think. Then again it’s something one can practise internally.
We no longer have much of a connection with the unconscious mind, it’s the dark disturbing past, which is unmanageable.
Economics is removed from peoples’ control, it gives very few autotomy or sense of agency.
All that’s left is their original state; the political animal who acts. I think politics comes about through the sense of individuality people naturally experience. The irony is that Democracy, representing the wishes of the people, (who I regard as autonomous, political animals), takes their political nature, remodels and restructures it through professionals and institutions and then hands it back to them one vote at a time.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
Your views seem to be in line. :up:
"Arbitrary" in so far as any historically persistent features of human behavior can be substituted for any of the ones on offer in your OP. My initial post (p. 1) suggests 2 other quartets.
I wouldn't "add or delete" anything because I don't see a philosophical point of "pillars" - again, as I pointed out, it's pseudo-philosophical "essentializing" or "teleologizing".
Quoting 180 Proof
Would you at least be prepared to admit that humans are political animals?
:up:
Well I intend no distinction. So then I take it that you agree that humans are political animals. Would you agree they’re more political than spiritual?
Quoting 180 Proof
By the way I don’t think that’s true. Primates yes, but pack animals seems to be operating on instincts. I don’t see instincts being political.
I don't know that there's a difference (Hegel).
Quoting Brett
Such as "instincts" to lead? or to dominate? or to reconcile? (Nietzsche)
When you can speak for yourself we’ll continue.
How is this claim philosophical? If we're asking what the four basic foundational pillars of humanity are, I'd suspect it'd be best addressed by an anthropologist with all sorts of references to the archaeological record and an analysis of various societies over time. I also find your definitions limiting and not really accurate. I see politics, for example, as existing as much in a family as a nation, and well before the concept of nationhood.
What religion is is variable as well. I'm not convinced ancient societies saw the gods as vague abstractions dealing with the unknown and unsayable. They were often human like entities doing battle with one another.
Quoting Hanover
:up:
I have. Don't bother.
Thanks for the reference re. the Sapiens book. It’s been very helpful in relation to what I’ve been thinking about. I’d discuss it further but it may not be “compelling” or “philosophy”. We mere monkeys must bow to the apes.
Maybe post about it in the Currently reading thread?
Sounds good so far, if all of the arts are encompassed within this.
I think these two things are inseparable and so belong as parts of the same pillar. You even say “power” is a part of both. These are the things to do with the value structure of society.
Religion has two sides to it: the side that describes how the world supposedly is, and the side that makes moral prescriptions. The part that makes moral prescriptions belongs to the same pillar as economics and politics as part of the value-structuring part of society.
But the other part belongs more with the physical sciences as something that is all about describing reality, which is a missing pillar, opposite the pillar that most of the other pillars have now been rolled into.
Also missing, opposite “poetry” / the arts, is mathematics, which is a more structural and technical, less stylistic and expressive kind of language use.
So your four pillars then could be math, the arts, physical sciences and the descriptive parts of religion, and what we might call the “ethical sciences” (economics, political science, etc) and the prescriptive parts of religion.
But since all of your four pillars are value-related except maybe a part of religion, I think maybe what you’re aiming for might be more like the prescriptive analogue of “STEM”, which I prefer to re-order as “MSET”: math, (physical) science, engineering, and technology. The analogues of those, I would say, are the arts, the “ethical sciences”, entrepreneurship, and business (administration).
Looking back to that model with math, art, physical and ethical sciences, I’d say that engineering, technology, entrepreneurship, and business all fall within a fifth pillar: the trades. And opposite that, between math and art, is a sixth pillar of language itself, in a way prior to either math or art. And then right in the middle of it all, bringing everything together, is where I’d put philosophy.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think that might be wishful thinking. It’s an interesting diagram and covers a lot, but I don’t really see people living this way with philosophy as the core of their behaviour. There are posters on this forum who feel that less than half the posts on this forum are doing philosophy. Is that really who we are?
My post as an attempt to find something that I could use to view the world today. My conclusion was that we’re political animals and most things, if not everything, about us springs from that. I’ve indicated previously what my idea of political is.
I was interested to see if other aspects of our nature confirmed that, like economics and religion. Banno introduced the idea of science, based, I presume, on the idea of developing stone tools. Whether it is or not is a difficult debate I think. Economics, to me, serves the political animal. Religion is the consequence of the political animal.
If we are foremost political animals then what does it suggest about what’s happening in the world today. If everything we do is done through the lens of that political animal then does that explain things a little more; the seemingly irrational behaviour, the division and aggression, the ideology behind things. Does it suggest that we only know of one way of doing things?
This is a bit of a move for me away from what I’ve thought so far. So far I’ve regarded humans as inherently moral animals but I’m beginning to think differently, as are my thoughts on relativism.