“Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.”
This quote speaks volumes to the tendency of man, when assimilated into society, to lose himself. A society, much against conventional thought, is not a large group of people who are each a person in themselves. Once in a true society, a man shares the same mind as his fellow brethren and is hence no longer his own character. If one were to spend his entire life living in such a closely meshed society as that, departure to a life of individualism would be like a suicide of sorts in that he will, much like the atrophied coma victim who spends fifty years fallowing in a bed, not be able to stand upon his own thoughts. This behavior is exemplified by the colonies of bees throughout the world who pool their entire psyche into a hive mind which rules them all. The drone worker bees are literally clones of themselves and could not, to save their lives, be individuals. This bee analogy, though, brings about the idea of a queen bee as well. This bee, unlike every other bee in her society, is unique. She can have thoughts and she tells the drones these thoughts so that they may have these thoughts too. The only reason she can have these thoughts, though, is because she is isolated from the rest of the bees and only interacts with them through pheromones. In a human society, it would be the best-case scenario if there were a queen bee telling the drones to have thoughts. Without this little bit of guidance, the members of such a body are left wandering aimlessly, one member following the next as they respectively trip and fall into a rocky gorge. The society does not come without merits, though, and this is exemplified by the mention in the quote that the members agree to surrender the liberty of the eater, in order that their bread be secure. When one is an individual, he can just as easily be someone whose existence is meager and thoughtless as he can be someone who is self-reliant and astute. If said person were to be assimilated into the above-styled society, he would then, at the very least, gain the stability of being like everyone else such that there would be no need to be more brilliant than he already is or will become. Nonetheless, this is a great loss to humankind, for, although the society offers riveting stability, Man has the capability to, as an individual, rise above and beyond everyone else. In that scenario, every person, in himself, can only be one person and not a part of a person as occurs in a society.
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“Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.”
This quote speaks volumes to the tendency of man, when assimilated into society, to lose himself. A society, much against conventional thought, is not a large group of people who are each a person in themselves. Once in a true society, a man shares the same mind as his fellow brethren and is hence no longer his own character. If one were to spend his entire life living in such a closely meshed society as that, departure to a life of individualism would be like a suicide of sorts in that he will, much like the atrophied coma victim who spends fifty years fallowing in a bed, not be able to stand upon his own thoughts. This behavior is exemplified by the colonies of bees throughout the world who pool their entire psyche into a hive mind which rules them all. The drone worker bees are literally clones of themselves and could not, to save their lives, be individuals. This bee analogy, though, brings about the idea of a queen bee as well. This bee, unlike every other bee in her society, is unique. She can have thoughts and she tells the drones these thoughts so that they may have these thoughts too. The only reason she can have these thoughts, though, is because she is isolated from the rest of the bees and only interacts with them through pheromones. In a human society, it would be the best-case scenario if there were a queen bee telling the drones to have thoughts. Without this little bit of guidance, the members of such a body are left wandering aimlessly, one member following the next as they respectively trip and fall into a rocky gorge.
The society does not come without merits, though, and this is exemplified by the mention in the quote that the members agree to surrender the liberty of the eater, in order that their bread be secure. When one is an individual, he can just as easily be someone whose existence is meager and thoughtless as he can be someone who is self-reliant and astute. If said person were to be assimilated into the above-styled society, he would then, at the very least, gain the stability of being like everyone else such that there would be no need to be more brilliant than he already is or will become. Nonetheless, this is a great loss to humankind, for, although the society offers riveting stability, Man has the capability to, as an individual, rise above and beyond everyone else. In that scenario, every person, in himself, can only be one person and not a part of a person as occurs in a society.
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