Philosophers have written on society since the beginnings of philosophical thought. I am not in any of their leagues. My philosophy class in college made my head hurt and the instructor learned pretty quickly not to expect great insight into Plato, Socrates, or even Thomas Paine coming from me. Since those years of study, I’ve grown some but my opinions are based more on practical observation than on a deep understanding of the theoretical.
This paper will address my feelings of our society and the underpinnings of that society. To a large extent, the form of government is far less important to that discussion than the pillars upon which that government rests. There are all kinds of governments available to mankind, and history teaches us about them. We learn of their successes and the failures that ultimately brought them and the society they led to oblivion.
We’ve grown from small family groups into tribes and then larger collections. We’ve established nations based on the belief the ruler was actually a god, and we’ve established nations based on the belief the ruler was appointed by God. We’ve developed systems of government where a religious scholar tells us what God wants us to do, and we’ve created societies where the rejection of God is central and a collective of powerful will rule.
As I’ve traveled, I come away with the belief all successful societies are kind of like a simple stool. The number of legs holding up the stool will decide how stable the stool is. It is, in my opinion, the same with society. It is a simple analogy but for my simple mind a good one. A one-legged stool cannot stand by itself, if balance is just right it may remain upright for a brief time, but it will ultimately tumble over. The two-legged stool is similarly handicapped. For a stool to be balanced and stable there must be at least three legs. The social structure of society makes up those three legs upon which a government sits. If those legs become unequal then society and the government both become unbalanced. It that problem continues the society and government ultimately topple and the people must find a new relationship that will bring those pillars into balance.
I believe the first leg of society traces itself back to the origins of mankind. It is what has allowed us to become the Alpha predator on the planet. The family is all-important. It is the structure that creates the next generation, it is the structure that nourishes the young, protects them from harm, teaches them their role in the family, and in turn their role in a larger society. Without family to care for, and teach the young human is left to its own devices to find its way in the world. It will develop its own moral code, center its needs on the individual rather than the greater needs of the family, and become an unpredictable element. I might well be wrong but what I see in our society with the advent of the nuclear family (in the post-World War years) is a series of destructive impacts, each one seemingly minor, but taken in their totality hugely detrimental to the family unit as a stabilizing pillar of the larger society. There are almost as many causes for this phenomenon and everyone will have their own opinion as to the legitimacy of those causes. I’ll leave it to you to determine if you a) agree the family unit is dissolving and b) what are the causes. My intent here is not to debate the reasons for the changes in the historical family structure only to point out it has happened and the evolution of that construct has serious implications for the stability of society and the government that sits on top of that society.
The next pillar is one of faith. There must be a shared sense of faith for society to flourish and remain stable. We in the US have had a shared sense of faith in the rightness of the Judeo-Christian God, but that is not really the faith I am talking about here. The Egyptian society lasted for over 10,000 years and they did not believe in Yahweh or the Trinity. The families of society must place their faith is a shared and common system of beliefs that may include but is not limited to a common faith in a higher being. It must include a faith that those who govern do so for the good of society. We see that in the foundational belief we are “all equal under the law.” It also must include a faith that tomorrow offers a promise of being better than today. When that belief is destroyed the supporting leg of faith begins to crack and the stability of that society is put at risk.
The final “essential” leg is that of purpose. Without a shared sense of purpose, society is left adrift. That sense of purpose focuses the efforts of the people, hopefully towards a common good. Without purpose the other two legs are meaningless. Perhaps the visionaries of our founding generation realized this better than others as they defined our purpose to establish a government unlike any which had gone before, and then created our “manifest destiny” which drove our westward expansion. John F. Kennedy understood this when he challenged us to reach the moon before the end of the decade and in so doing beat the Soviet Union.
Well, for what it’s worth those are my opinions. I think it will be interesting to see if our grand experiment lasts as we adjust the legs of the society that underpins it.
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