Since I’m bored, I’ve decided to type this up in Word and share it with you:
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, all rights reserved, I’m sure.
THE COURSE OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Introduction
Let us make two clear and significant distinctions concerning human beings and society. The first is between kinship and civilization, as the primary organizing principles of human society. The second is between balance and imbalance, as the primary orientations of human personality within society.
Kinship means that all one’s loyalties are to kin, relatives, and not to strangers. Duties are to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, spouses, cousins, and these duties are reciprocal. Everyday life is lived face-to-face with kin. Pleasures are shared with them. What modern persons call politics, economics, and even cultures are subsumed within kinship and can be derived from it.
Civilization means that most of one’s loyalties are not to kin but to persons, typically strangers, who are positioned higher in some hierarchy by a mechanism other than kinship. Authority flows downward, and obedience upward, in political, economic, and other social hierarchies: Any one person will be obedient to persons higher in the hierarchy and, in turn, will expect obedience from persons lower. Kinship loyalties are often sacrificed to the demands of superiors in the hierarchy.
Balance means that two large clusters of mental activity are equal, each functioning full. One cluster is based on the act of making distinctions –for example, creating hierarchies and valuing precision and orderliness in human affairs. The second cluster is based on dissolving distinctions. In contrast to the first, this cluster dissolves hierarchies and values richness of experience and complexity as opposed to narrowness of focus and precision. A balanced person can do everything in both clusters, responding appropriately to differences in his or her environment.
Imbalance describes the dominance of the distinction-making cluster, with a corresponding weakening of the distinction-dissolving cluster. Imbalanced persons posses a smaller repertory of responses to different environments and thus often respond to change inappropriately. Most important, the weakening of their capacity to dissolve distinctions between themselves and others means that imbalanced persons are less able to identify with other people and thus more able to injure them.
If the two distinctions are combined, the four fundamental modes of human society are obtained:
Balanced kinship – the mode of the hunting and gathering family groups of primitive and tribal cultures, both ancient and contemporary.
Imbalanced kinship – the aggressive, often horse-mounted, tribal confederations exemplified by the Mongols before they became an empire.
Balanced civilization – historically important, but nonexistent today.
Imbalanced civilization – the dominant mode of contemporary nations and most other political and economic organizations.
Shall I go on?
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, all rights reserved, I’m sure.
THE COURSE OF HUMAN SOCIETY
Introduction
Let us make two clear and significant distinctions concerning human beings and society. The first is between kinship and civilization, as the primary organizing principles of human society. The second is between balance and imbalance, as the primary orientations of human personality within society.
Kinship means that all one’s loyalties are to kin, relatives, and not to strangers. Duties are to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, spouses, cousins, and these duties are reciprocal. Everyday life is lived face-to-face with kin. Pleasures are shared with them. What modern persons call politics, economics, and even cultures are subsumed within kinship and can be derived from it.
Civilization means that most of one’s loyalties are not to kin but to persons, typically strangers, who are positioned higher in some hierarchy by a mechanism other than kinship. Authority flows downward, and obedience upward, in political, economic, and other social hierarchies: Any one person will be obedient to persons higher in the hierarchy and, in turn, will expect obedience from persons lower. Kinship loyalties are often sacrificed to the demands of superiors in the hierarchy.
Balance means that two large clusters of mental activity are equal, each functioning full. One cluster is based on the act of making distinctions –for example, creating hierarchies and valuing precision and orderliness in human affairs. The second cluster is based on dissolving distinctions. In contrast to the first, this cluster dissolves hierarchies and values richness of experience and complexity as opposed to narrowness of focus and precision. A balanced person can do everything in both clusters, responding appropriately to differences in his or her environment.
Imbalance describes the dominance of the distinction-making cluster, with a corresponding weakening of the distinction-dissolving cluster. Imbalanced persons posses a smaller repertory of responses to different environments and thus often respond to change inappropriately. Most important, the weakening of their capacity to dissolve distinctions between themselves and others means that imbalanced persons are less able to identify with other people and thus more able to injure them.
If the two distinctions are combined, the four fundamental modes of human society are obtained:
Balanced kinship – the mode of the hunting and gathering family groups of primitive and tribal cultures, both ancient and contemporary.
Imbalanced kinship – the aggressive, often horse-mounted, tribal confederations exemplified by the Mongols before they became an empire.
Balanced civilization – historically important, but nonexistent today.
Imbalanced civilization – the dominant mode of contemporary nations and most other political and economic organizations.
Shall I go on?
