Philosophy exercise: call for critiques

[grysar]

So, regyt once told me that philosphy was a meta area of study, that it explored and discovered caves/topics like politics, biology, economics, and moved on while those less meta subjects explored their own cave in depth. I'm not doing full justice to the eloquence of the metaphor, but I think that gets the point across.

In that case I believe this is an exercise in philosophy. I propose, against all comers, an analytic system for understanding effective human action. Specifically for describing codes, honor, moral systems, political systems, economic systems, religions, and the like. I do not seek to describe the actions of animals, unthinking objects, computers, or any other entity that doesn't meet my human-centric definition of self-consciousness.

Namely:
All these systems humans follow hold two opposing but also reinforces forces: power and principles.

Power is both creative and destructive. It gives us drive and is tested in the forge that is reality. Thus it changes as the world changes, for the power of a cave man is not the power of a modern human. It can be internal: sharpness of mind, force of will or strength of body. It can be external: weapons, money, technology, God or gods. It can even be a fundamental rejection of the world and a realization of some truer plane.

Principles are rules, conscious or unconscious. They are restrictions on the means we can employ. They are not goals in and of themselves, except that some goals deny us certain means or demand we use others. They are law, the golden rule, cultural mandates, and the like.

Both of these aspects are necessary. Moreover in an effective system they both must be balanced. Power needs the channel of principle or it will become corrupted: see absolute power or hedonism. Principles alone will lack the ability to achieve their goals or they will stagnate without the renewal of power.

As you get into complex economic or political systems the model can be applied, but complex systems will often have multiple sub-systems that need to check and mutually reinforce one another.

So here are my contentions:

1. This model is quite helpful in understanding what makes an effective system.
   
2. This model can be applied to any of the systems I've described above.
   
3. This model can not be simplified to contain only a single force and it need not be expanded to contain three or more.
   
4. This model is a better window for understanding these systems than other dichotomies: individual/society; order/chaos; good/evil; good/bad; rationality/emotion.
   
5. Any effective system must have both of these aspects and they both must be strong forces in and of themselves.
   

So, I need a quick nap and I'm also smug, so I'll skip the examples for now. I invite anyone to challenge any of my contentions or any other contentions they think are implied. And if you provide me a system, I'll give my breakdown.

Addendum due to Ard's threat of violence. (Note, there's lots of variety, I'll just go with a common one I think of.)

System	Power	Principles
Christianity (old school)	God	Strict code of sacrifice and golden rule.
Buddhism	Enlightenment/Seeing through illusion of reality	Rejecting atachment.
Capitalism	Self-interest; hard work; competition; entrepeneurship	Basic market rules: no violence, no monopolies, etc.
Theoretical communism	Hard work; power in the hand of the workers; collective effort	Work all you can; don't take more than you need.
Totalitarianism	Centralized power without restrictions; government can guide colleective energy of entire society; shaping of individuals to best serve countries need	Unquestioning devotion to leader; leader servers interest of people
Democracy	Power is in people's hand	Must accept results of elections; follow election rules; majority must try to serve interests of all
Utilitarianism	All means are available when appropriate	Means/ends together must server greater good
Natural law	Core desires and needs of humanity	Don't infringe on other's core needs in most cases
Kantian	Moral strength; positive example influences others	Don't do anything that you aren't willing to have someone else do
Nihilism	Rejection of no-win world	Don't give a shit.

Comments

[millenia.livejournal.com]

Quote:

"The only rules that matter are these: what a man can do, and what a man will do."

It's a rather structuralist coding approach, isn't it? Maybe it's because I've had to do so much textual analysis and all that, I just like post-structuralism better.

Shallow commentary. I'm not really intelligent enough to give you more than that.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I think one key distinction is that structuralism (if my quick review of the term is correct) deals in opposite concepts. I'm trying instead to deal with opposing but mutually necessary concepts. Similarly I'm not trying to be strictly heirarchical. I do think some are better than others certainly, but aside from system stability (e.g. having both forces in balance), this particular analytical framework doesn't rank. It's meant instead to expose driving forces which then can be evaluated in a manner the observor sees fit.

But yeah, I don't tend to follow schools with the prefix post.

[millenia.livejournal.com]

I'm working from the concept that structuralist approaches look for underlying commonalities among differences ("what is the common thread that ties these disparate cultures together?") versus post-structuralism, which suggests that differing sense-making practices present a number of alternative and equal viewpoints. I'm working off the (admittedly limited) definitions presented by McKee in Textual Analysis.

Considering the examples, I'm inclined to partially agree with unreason. I think the two force model is too reductionist for me. My problem is with the contention that these two are all you need. What you call "power", perhaps because of semantics, feels mislabeled to me. Those are certainly philosophical ideals attached to systems of belief. As unreason says: motivations. But how these motivations are executed is equally important. You can have, for example, Group A and Group B, both of which believe "the rule of law is paramount". But Group A might go about it in a diplomatic fashion while Group B establishes a vicious autocracy. Realistically speaking I suppose you could call those methodologies secondary characteristics to "power", but I think doing so is broadly coding for the sake of simplicity. If you want to consider the tension between "ideals that motivate" and "principles that limit", the bridge is "how do people express their motivations within the limitations of their principles?".

I think a third category of expressions/methods represents that necessary bridge category. It gives insight into people's actual actions -- what they're doing -- rather than simply coding systems of belief into a dichotomy that overgeneralizes their properties.

Coincidentally, I am amused by the pseudo paradox presented by applying principles to Nihilism.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

By principles I'm actually trying more to express methodology then motivation. Looks like I'm going to have to relabel my terms. Sadly this will likely involve abandoning alliteration, but if that's the price I must pay...

As with Unreason, I'm going to have to finish developing my question. Or perhaps I should try a tri-pole system with power/methodology/motivation.

And yeah, nihilism is definately there for a reason. Codes that abandon the idea of wanting stuff need to be covered for my idea to be universal.

Also, I find that formulation of post-structuralism far more pleasing than the wikipedia version. I'd reject the term "equal" though. But there is a good chance that even once I have my question properly defined, I will have to drop the contention that it is consistently the best system. I'll perhaps recast it with a listing of the advantages of this system over most alternatives.