DISQUS

Tia · 2 years ago

Your title is way off the mark and simply disgusting.

TStockmann · 2 years ago

Society is not an organism, not a family, not a firm, not an army.

It's an invariably tendentious mistake to treat "society" as having any linguistic tranparency at all. It seems to me that Margaret Thatcher famous comment "There is no such thing as society" should be taken as a Wittgensteinian invitation rather than an easy jibe.

And I'm so sorry that Tia had an attack of the vapours.

Lester Hunt · 2 years ago

The only argument of this sort that ever made any sense to me was: "the military integrated and got rid of racism within its ranks, didn't it?" But then an African-American vet explained to me what made this achievement possible. In the military, he said, you live very, very close to people of other races and creeds on a "twenty-four seven" basis. Nasty arguments break out all the time, but they are resolved. The only alternative is that of making your own life miserable. On this view the military's success in dealing with racism is not due to the authoritarian or collectivist features of the military that these writers admire. It is due to a feature of military life that isn't, and can't be, shared by the rest of society -- not unless we literally live like Spartans!

Blar · 2 years ago

This doesn't seem to be at all fair to Wright's column. Where does Wright say that society should follow a single shared purpose, or praise the army for pursuing a single common goal? Where does he cite the Spartan aspects of the Army as a model for society? I'm not seeing it anywhere.

The word "solidarity" does not appear anywhere in Wright's column. The closest thing I see is where he praises commanders for caring about the well-being of others, which is a perfectly appropriate sentiment for a society based on mutually beneficial cooperation.

The kinds of "egalitarianism" that he focuses on, diversity and equal opportunity, also seem fine for a non-militaristic society with diverse goals. He talks about people interacting with others from diverse backgrounds, quality schooling for all children, decent health care for all, and jobs that are open to anyone with the relevant skills (which may vary drastically for different jobs). How are those Spartan values? How do they depend on society marching in lockstep in pursuit of a single, shared mission?

Deborah · 2 years ago

"But a free society is not a fighting force — it is not organized around war."

I think our society is organized around war, as evidenced by the military-industrial-congressional complex. As a result, our freedoms are compromised.

Richard · 2 years ago

Blar has it exactly right in the comment above. Wilkinson makes a convincing argument against a straw man--i.e., that society is NOT a single-minded, single-issue, single-goal-oriented social entity in the way that the military is. But his argument against this obviously false claim is irrelevant to the issue of whether society at large would benefit from the features Wright mentions as enhancing life in the miliary: egalitarianism, equal opportunity for advancement as well as for health care, etc. In short, what Wilkinson succeeds at is not relevant; what's relevant he leaves unaddressed.

Consumatopia · 2 years ago

Society is not an organism, not a family, not a firm, not an army.

This sounds to me just like "an electron is neither a particle nor a wave".

A society may not be a physically contiguous entity, everyone may not be directly related, we didn't all agree to it, and we may not all be under direct orders to kill on command.

On the other hand, a society can have goals and values (sometimes contradictory, but individual brains contradict themselves too), a society can care for its members, a society can use its resources to compete with other societies, members can leave by emigration, and individuals can be compelled to comply with social goals as a condition of staying in the society. It has attributes of all those things, even if it meets the definition of none of them exactly.

"Plato is not a Roman. Romans were humans. Therefore Plato was not human." Just because X isn't a Y doesn't mean X can't have some properties of Y.