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Pill Pod 177 - Society as Magic, Society as Religion: Émile Durkheim

🕑 Added 2024-08-03 00:01:48 +0000 UTC

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Plastic Pills

Cited and delivered, ty

Acid Communist Aachen

I'd like to see 1Dime bring Ibn khaldun into this conversation.

Plastic Pills

Nailed it. Neo-kantian pretty much because as to the "how", there is no knowing causes or effects in themselves. In themselves they are arbitrary distinctions and don't mean anything. For D, science does not get closer to the Real, but it does get closer and closer to universal applicability to the point that its description loses its social locality and becomes applicable no matter where the measuring takes place. Yet, science still depends on a distinction having been made. So it never gets more (or less) true, but it does get more accurate. The world without distinctions is a meaningless impenetrable flux. Not to say nothing happens, but there aren't real events until a distinction decides they matter. For him, the original distinction is religious in form, and the form is indispensable. Soon we'll get into other takes, where they think there is a more primary distinction than sacred vs profane, but it was pretty good as a first shot imo

Jack

I’ll continue the thread lol I’m shameless. I’ve really been trying to read the critique of pure reason and I’m about halfway through more or less. What’s interesting is that the transcendental dedication of the categories seems to need apperception (the originally synthetically unity of consciousness) to decide cause and effect. I’ve begun to think about Durkheim, who I might be tempted to call a neo-Kantian, and how he takes the categories out of the mind. But how then does cause and effect work? Socially, yes, ok, but how tho?

Jack

I read one time about how their was a group of birds that were going extinct and they wouldn’t migrate because it’s not nature it is nurture for them. Scientists dressed up a plane as an adult version of their species and tried to reach them.

Alex B

Maybe "the sacred" can be biologically driven, migrating birds for example might feel space & time distinctions proto-religiously, an inescapable group act of faith, their journey as a sign that could serve as something of an identity. This would be intensified at the time when there was a significant (doomed) proportion that did not migrate. Maybe this potential could apply to any transition or division, maybe there is a sacred element in tge division between the definitions of the word ideology, or of groups of geese that have and have not been punched in the face

Aelwyn Williams

Yes, also love this thread and the episode. On as lighter note and picking up on some of the early comments, maybe quirkily relevant , Umberto Eco’s comments on Mac and DOS: https://www.simongrant.org/web/eco.html

Jack

So I can say I want to create a different society with different kinds of freedom and justice. Right now it’s perfectly just that labor is subjugated because it’s tied to our way of being in which surplus value is necessary for the motion of Capital. We could change our way of being but we could never not be by destroying society completely. Yet I’m still thinking in all the terms of the totems aren’t I?

Jack

Yes Socrates

Stas Kraev

Yes, there is a choice here. Durkheim chooses to posit that humans can't exist without society. If we agree then the idea of justice becomes problematic because it is so fundamental for us that the word becomes unnecessary, in Durkheim's universe meaning justice is just good society. But we don't have to agree with Durkheim. If we posit individuals who can create different societies then we don't necessarily have to reproduce the ones around justice as law, as equality in common subjugation.

Jack

I’m trying to follow you, but I’m not sure what comes first justice or freedom? It seems at least in my reading of social contractarians that they thought society came before justice. If that’s right then society is a precondition for justice and freedom, but it’s not clear to me if freedom contains justice or vice versa.

Stas Kraev

But according to Durkheim one can't exit or refuse to take part in society, so this alone isn't enough to rule out existence of societies who pride themselves on not being just. We can, however, imagine a society where justice isn't the highest value or even something important enough to have a word for it.

Khemith

What do you call it when humans and technology merge? the end of religion?

Plastic Pills

You're right, that might be the bottom. I don't know that you can get any more fundamental than justice because if a society prided itself on not being just, there would be no benefit to taking part.

Plastic Pills

Great trail to follow!

Stas Kraev

I liked the thinking through of the "What are our totems?" question. Now if you continue the line of "what equality is and is it one of our totems" the next step would be Justice, right? If you start from Justice then equality is just a subordinate moment - the equality of price and payment, the equality of crime and punishment, the equality of damage and reparations, the equality of social status and amount of deference which is due, the equality of merit and reward. The system of values dictates that some of those must be equal while others can be compromised as merely proportional. The other example is to think of one political statement that speaks decisively against Justice. Plenty of political mythologies speak against equality, freedom, the market, and individualism. Not one will ever dare to speak against Justice.

Isaac Suárez

Great episode! Re “the Dutch are too practical.” I just read a Karl Kautsky essay “Socialism and Colonial Policy”- where he really lays into the delegate from the Dutch Social Democratic Party, Henri Van Kol. Kautsky took issue with Van Kol and the Dutch Social Democrats because they had supported Dutch colonial development in Indonesia- and presented a thesis which espoused a “positive” or “socialist” form of colonialism (the rationale was 1. the Social Democrats did not have the power to end colonialism, 2. Colonialism helped the Dutch working class by providing the raw materials necessary for industrial development, 3. A more humane, or “positive” colonialism could help “develop” and “uplift” the Indonesians by introducing advanced culture, technology and industry- replacing the more harsh or selfish imperial policy of liberals or the right.) Refreshingly, if unsurprisingly, Kautsky critiques this position in harsh terms (it’s worth reading in and of itself, it shows the strengths and limits of orthodox Marxism when it comes to economic imperialism.) Tl;Dr more reason to be suspicious of “practicality” (and the prevalence of this concern within Dutch and other national social democratic movements.) PS: Henri Van Kol was a socialist, colonialist, and engineer who made a lot of money working on projects in the Dutch East Indies. Never trust engineers 😂

Eli

Gotta do an episode on Lee Edelman’s No Future, and the eschatology that is politics

Qoheleth

“We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist wunderbar”

Jack

Listening back to the pod. I like the theory of the freedom clan. Relating it to what I’ve been reading in Kant it reminds me of, god, freedom, and immortality. I see myself in the freedom clan, butane there is also an immortality clan.

Ashley H

You keep making references to everything being the same so I think you should read Parmenides

Matt S

Loving this thread. Please continue!

Johannex

Thanks! We’re heading toward the outskirts of thought to understand our current condition. I’m reading Integration and Difference by Grant Maxwell—constructing a mythical dialectic, just like you guys did so eloquently. Groeten uit Nederland 🇳🇱

Jack

Sociology is my vibe for sure. I love the insight that society can’t be overthrown just as language can’t be overthrown. I’ve seen they call Durkheim a functionalist, and I’ve been reading Kant where he defined a function as unifying diverse representations under a common representation. This is what the totem does.