• Registered: 2009-03-17
  • Posts: 349

Topic: 14. RACE [EARLY EXPERIMENTAL WRITING]

The point made here is well taken but its statement is confused.   To summarize:  Humans can think of things that aren't there as well as of things that are there (exist).  Civilizations are built on ideas of things that don't exist.   Civilizations by the same token sense they are threatened by things that exist.  What is unreal, essentially, is civilization.  What is real is race, or collective identity.  It is natural that civilization--not just American civilization but all cultures--should be threatened by racism.  On the other hand, just as life appears out of inert matter and returns to matter, cultures both appear out of and return to race.

SWARTZBAUGH'S 10 SYLLOGISTIC PRINCIPLES

1.A is, then not-A is not.

2.Not-A is, then A is not.

3.An animal can think A; the animal cannot think not-A.

4.Only a human being can think not-A.

5.The human being builds his human world--culture, society, civilization--upon what only the human being can do, that is, think not-A.

6.But A is.

7. Therefore not-A is not.

8. Conclusion:  the human being builds his world--culture, society and civilization--on something that is not, not-A.

9. Culture, society and civilization do not exist.

10. Only a State of Nature exists (is):  baboon fascism, Spartan socialism and Columbian town militias.  The encompassing term for these types of groups is race.

Race, which is a fact, is heresy to man, culture, society and civilization.  That is only to say that race is a fact in relation to a society or civilization built upon formal logic.    Race is not logical or even reasonable; but that is true of any number of things and events, including the very beating of my heart.  The fundamental incompatibility of race with civilization is easy to understand.   Heresy  means here simply fact as opposed to logic.  Race is the factual response of humans and other animals to the fact of distrust.   Civilization too is built upon the fact of distrust; but civilization is a logical response to distrust.  The logical response to a fact is not itself a fact but only logic.  This is to say that  civilizations are built not on the facts that any being can understand but on logical ideas.  Only humans can understand logic, although logical ideas have nothing to do with fact but only with other logic.  Thus the logical idea of nation and society has nothing to do with race; but nation and society also have nothing to do with fact as such. 

The logic of the issue of race is simply expressed as race versus non-race, or the negation of race.  Nations and societies are, as I say,  constructed upon or out of logical absolutes:  the absolute Nation, for instance, in the Hegelian sense of an Absolute Idea.  This nation is raceless.  Race is the fact of which the state, society and so forth are logical, but not factual, opposites.   What race is as a fact is rejected by society simply because race is a fact and not a logical absolute.  The metaphysical structure of race is entirely different than the state, nation and so forth; they are incompatible.    This is clear.   Putting the race vs. civilization issue differently:  civilization is built not upon facts, mainly, but upon logical--that is, "purely human"-- principles.   Such principles, I will show, are trust as opposed to distrust, certainty as opposed to uncertainty.  Nation is opposed, simply, to race.  But racelessness ("pure citizenship"?) is only a logical idea not a factual one.  What society and civilization do is to oppose a logical idea to what is essentially a factual one.  What fact is on the one hand and logic is on the other will be explained.  This is my basic line of reasoning.   I will elaborate on these point in subsequent pages. 

In the meantime we must say, simply, that the fundamental, pivotal and pronouced sacred ideas of civilization are not factual so much as they are logical.   Race is only one fact among many that have no factual opposite but only a logical opposite.  My overall principle can be stated as follows.    I will endeavor to prove that civilization, as an inference based on a point of logic, is a logical response to what is a fact.  A more general  example might suffice to explain this rule.    Much of civilization is a response to the distrust human beings show in one another; laws and finally the infrastructure of civilization is a response to distrust.  Here I risk the accusation that I am making sweeping inferences from small observations. 

Certainty is a word "of man" that means not-uncertain.  I have already talked about animal hestiancy as prefiguring human uncertainty.  Uncertainty is these terms is simply the human--abstract, symbolic--form of animal hesitancy.  The human being realizes, by virtue of his human thinking, that he is uncertain; also by virtue of this same thinking he arrives at the opposite of uncertainty.  Towards this opposite, or certainty, he strives.  But the idea of certainty was arrived at through logic.  Certainty remains then, insofar as it is only a logical idea, a purely human--as opposed to a natural--idea.  This consideration, that certainty does not obviate uncertainty so much as it focuses uncertainty, leads to a further idea.  This idea that attempts to alleviate uncertainty by making certainty "real" is the basis of the (likewise purely) human idea of "trust."  At this point we have advanced, as human society itself advances, from the notion of uncertainty to the notion of distrust.  It is correct to call distrust a "higher" human form of uncertainty.  Distrust encompasses uncertainty while evoking an idea of society that is increasingly focused; wherein, in other words, human beings as a group are presented to "witness" the distrust of one human being toward another.  Thus while uncertainty is "of nature," still--the human being is contemplating a nature of which he is uncertain--distrust is purely "of man."  Distrust simply focuses the issue of uncertainty and identifies the source of the uncertainty as human beings in their various relations.

Distrust is real.  Just as uncertainty, the general source of distrust, is real, so distrust itself is real.   The human mind arises to a realization of distrust, abstracts the distrust and presents the distrust as legal material.  This truth can be ascertained from any reading of court records or for that matter newpapers.  I am calling the comprehension of distrust "human" while at the same time seeing distrust ancored firmly in the relationships of man and man.    What is unreal on the other hand is trust.  Trust is the not-A in the equasion presented above.  The human being logically, that is dialectically by the programmed movement of the mind, moves from the concept of distrust to the concept of trust.  An animal comprehends only its own hesitancy and could not grasp uncertainty let alone uncertainty's focused form, certainty.  The animal knows neither distrust or distrust's logical opposite, trust.  Human beings not simply know distrust and by logical inference distrust's opposite, trust, they build their lives upon trust.  But trust does not exist in reality or in nature.  Trust is a purely abstract, or logical human idea.  Now I have already said that distrust properly exists.  That is true.  But trust on the other hand, as (as I say) a mere logical inference, exists only if distrust does not exist.  The fact is, however, that distrust does exist.  Therefore trust does not exist.  It is a momentarily perplexing paradox that human beings build entire societies and cultures on a non-existent thing or non-thing (no-thing).  If distrust is a thing that is, then trust--and the society built on trust--is a no-thing.

What follows here is general material that preceded what is above and what will follow. (Performance Philosophy does not delete past material depending, of course, on continued relevance.)

Society begins with a conception of a confrontation, in a State of Nature, wherein human beings threaten each other with the leveraged violence of weapons.  Following from this conception of hyper-violence, and the natural human fear that comes with such a conception, comes also an "agreement" or a promise to set aside weaponry and to have, instead, a weaponless relationship.  There must be inevitably a notion, in the minds of principals to the agreement, of an original lurking possibility of a confrontation.   So long as there has been an agreement, however, it is assumed that any dis-agreement will be settled, not by the principals themselves, who now have no force to settle disagreements, but by persons or agents outside the agreement, here called a third party.

I will be making two points:

1. Where there is no agreement there can be no disagreement, and there can be no "fair" settlement of an agreement.  Because there was no agreement among groups settling America, but only a relationship of armed violence (in slavery, for example), there can be no disagreement; nor can there be any thought of a "fair" redress of past disputes.  Indeed, there is no real or viable conception--one agreed upon in advance--of right and wrong, or good and evil.

2. Out of agreements, however, which do engender ideas of fair and unfair (and so forth), there arises a certain "legal person" drained of personal attributes.  Such a person does not submit himself to ideas of good and evil, so much as he himelf becomes such an idea.  But there is more.  In the process wherein, through constant agreements, personaliity--a State of Nature so to speak within the person--the personality of the individual is finally projected large as a group personality, that is, the race.  It follows that race, as I construe the word here, is the personality of the individual in the modern age.

We search for a definition of the word society that is coherent and consistent.  Society in the human sense--as opposed to the group life of animals--is an organization, first and foremost, around the uniquely human capacity for agreements.  Society as we think of it, as a human phenomenon, begins with an agreement.  An easy example of this would be an agreement between two paleolithic hunters who, needing food for their families, talk together; in their talk they plan a hunt for the following day.  There is nothing here that is difficult for us to understand.  But in their talk they soon realize that their plan is complex and there is the possibility that some dispute will arise between them. They know that such a possibility of disagreement exists because of their past experiences together in the "crowded" environment of the hunting band, where small numbers of men are together throughout their lives and living in close quarters among themselves.  Men of such tiny bands would be inclined to argue. The men know also that the weapons they use in the hunt, that extend and leverage force beyond what any other animal is capable of, can be used against one another.  So disputes that inevitably appear are potentially very dangerous.  At this point in planning the hunt each vows to the other that, in the event of such a dispute or disagreement, no weapons will be used to settle the dispute.  This is all there is to the agreement.  To finalize the understanding each touches the hand of the other to signal that weapons are not to be used, and to determine, if only symbolically, that no one holds in his hand a weapon.  In human terms "weaponless" means friendly.  (Even animals, in their long acquaintance with human beings, have come to understand this symbolism.)  We have now understood human society as it first appeared since the beginning of language--and the promises and agreements made possible through language--seveal hundred thousand years ago.  There was nothing to human society originally except the agreement among hunters.

At the basis of the Force Theory of Society is the assumption that, for there to be a disagreement--and society itself is largely a record of human disagreements--there must be, or have been, an agreement.  As a model for past and present society I have chosen a civil court of law, or a proceding the assumption of which:  before there can be a disagreement, heard by the court, there must have been a prior agreement or contract.  To bring a civil suit one must first have "standing."  But society itself is modeled on this very assumption of "standing."  The original agreement between hunters as they planned a hunt for the next day has the same basic structure as a proceeding in civil court.  This point must be stated in more detail.   We may safely assert that any statement about law would have to begin with a notion of agreements.  In law this is called "standing":  no one may file a complain in civil court without having, first, standing as a participant in a prior agreement.  To settle such agreements is all there is, basically, to civil law.  (Criminal law is something else we can discuss later:  in a criminal act there is usually no prior agreement.)  To say that all there is to law is the settlement of disagreements that occur within agreements is a true statement.  We may also make a strong case that all there is to society is laws.   From moral laws evolve laws in the modern sense; from the early concept "should" appears the more modern idea of "must."  Society itself, whether pr not we must always insist that all there is to society is these laws, it would still be convincing to assert that society grows up around these laws.  Society may not always appear to "run on" laws, or have laws as its mainspring; laws are invoked when there is a disagreement, when, in other words, society does not function properly.  Then, at the time the disagreement is turned back into an agreement, the true role of laws in society appears clear.

As an anthropological forum, whose perspective on modern law is secondary, and as speculation as to the origins of human society rather than the details of its recent development, our consideration of law must be brief.  It is stated here, simply, that the agreement was the original human (Hegelian) Idea, but one as every Idea must, carry within it its own negation--the dis-agreement.  We may be explicit on this point.  The point of an agreement is to eliminate the main agent of violence--weaponry-- within the framework of the agreement; but, as the hunters know all too well, the possibility of disagreement still exists.  The agreement, an arrangement for peace, is still about disagreements that may occur.  In fact, the dis-agreement remains as the (Hegelian) negation of the agreement.  The dispute, here called the dis-agreement, is the potential dis-solution of the agreement.  We may get ahead of ourselves here to say that, in the event of dis-solution of the agreement, there can be no re-solution (resolution) within the agreement.  Parties to the agreement can expect a "settlement" of their differences, but no resolution of differences (settlement to the satisfaction of all parties).  I strive here to keep matters as simple as possible.  The dis-agreement was anticipated in the agreement; and the disagreement appears, then, first within the agreement explicitly.  I suggested earlier that there would be no disagreement possible without there being an agreement.  This is true.  Men in the primal situation of hunting together would simply be self-ish, thinking of only themselves.  Each would take what he wanted from the hunt without explaining to others or even thinking of them.  With the agreement, on the other hand, this potential for self-ish behavior is explicity or implicitly recognized and taken stock of.  Provision is made for the eventuality of self-ish behavior; that, namely, no weapons will be used in settlement of the dispute; that, also, the settlement of the dispute will depend on some reference (perhaps) to a law that is impartial "mediator" in disputes.  At that point in history there was no government, so no active human agent present to settle disputess; appeal had to be made to some "higher" or "authority" (a god?).

The fact remains, on the other hand, that the dispute or disagreement was still "within" the agreement as what the agreement was essentially "about."  I am going to say here that the disagreement was "implicit" in the agreement; that, finally, for the disagreement to become visible and present in the relationship between the men, some man had to explicitly disagree with the others.  In the event one man evoked a dis-agreement, the agreement itself would be ended, virtually, in dis-solution. What would be required at that point would be that the agreement be reconstituted or "resolved" at a "higher level," which would be through moral authority.  In Hegelian terms, the thesis of the agreement would, in having evoked within itself the antithesis of the dis-agreement, be resolved at a "higher"--moral--level.  In this event, that thesis and antithesis resolved themselves into a moral group, that group would be a "full" social group in the modern sense of the word "society."  All society is, in the sense that it exists today in its tiny or massive forms, from the society of the Bushmen to that of modern America, is the primal relation that existed between paleolithic hunters.  These hunters lived in groups not larger than 15 persons and had only the basic elements of language.  The point of philosophical anthropology, as I have discussed the discipline in this forum, is to extract this basic sense of society and apply it to present human life.

To settle a dispute and resolve a dispute are two different things.  I will talk later about this distnction. Society as it exists today in a "modern superstate" such as America is largely a "fabric"--as fibers are to a cloth--of settled and unsettled disagreements, most of them unresolved.  Society is viable and functioning so long as disagreements are settled.  But in most cases parties to the agreement are left unsatisfied, and the agreement is injured.   Reolution of disputes can only be symbolic, through the "majesty of the state, or some final "negation of the negation" such as Hegel's Absolute Idea."  In fact, everyday modern life is an ongoing process of making agreements, completing them or violating them--disagreeing--and submitting these violations to a civil authority. 

I said in finalizing an agreement two hunters shake hands, symbolizing that they both abjure weaponry in the settlement of disputes.  This symbolism carries over into the present day.  All society is is agreements and the settlement of agreements.  Thus today as earlier the basic human relationship, the agreement, is an abjuration of weaponry--and that is all there is to human society.  We may continue however to think about weaponry.  If two men abjure weapons, do they also abjure anything else?  That question emerges now, at this stage in our argument, as important.  Do the hunters also abjure anything further of themselves, for instance part or the whole of their personality?  This is the question that I will raise and the one that leadus to "race theory."  Race is the personality of the human being in modern society.  This is the thesis I will shortly develop.  First, on the other hand, we must try to discover if, when two men abjure weapons, they abjure also something of their personality that, over perhaps millions of years (humans have had weapons this long), has grown together with, and has become instinctively associated with, tool and weapon use.  There may be inhibitions associated with tool use they are abjured, along with weapons, in the simple agreement.  There may also be a certain cunning (German: List) that, having originated to soften group perception of weapons--which are always laying about a given campsite--actually conceals weapons or distorts perception as to what they are.  Weapons bode ill for some hapless animal; weapons may be source of anxiety for group members as well. Does the human hunter, then, in planning a hunt, agree to forego all hidden thoughts that as a human hunter he is bound to have?   This is another question we must ask.  What I am suggesting is that there is more to an agreement, in the formal sense of the word, than merely an abjurement of physical weaponry. Such an understanding may be merely implicit in an agreement.  The very foundation of the individual personality may be called into question.

Last edited by richard_swartzbaugh (2010-12-08 15:27:40)

  • Registered: 2009-03-17
  • Posts: 349

Re: 14. RACE [EARLY EXPERIMENTAL WRITING]

Logic:  the negation of the negative

I have already said that the logical opposite of a fact is not itself a fact.  Therefore civilization is only that--logic--and not fact.  Race, on the other hand is fact.  Race is an attempt "by nature" to solve the same problems that civilization tries to solve, but on the level of fact.
A fact for our purposes, now, is some thing that a human being senses and thinks about that an animal, too, senses and thinks about.  Facts are of, and pertain to, animals; they pertain also to human beings insofar as humans are themselves animals.  So first when we talk about facts--what is a fact?--we must talk about animals.    There is nothing more difficult about facticity than this.  We may put this differently.  What a human being knows about factual existence an animal knows too.   Hunger is such a fact and one that both the human and animal understand.  But there is more.  The human being exhbits logic which the animal is incapable of.  Thus, for example, what animal and human both experience as a fact, the human being, exclusively, can think of as a non-fact, an anti- or negating fact.  Such a non-thing or no-thing is a fabrication of logic and is not to be found in the "real" world.  We are examining hunger as an example of a fact, or some thing real.  The satisfaction of hunger, too, is a real activity for both animal and human being alike.  There are strategies and activities--for the human being technics--designed to win food that will satisfy hunger.   Much of human life is devoted to the kinds of activities of which an animal is capable abeit slow.  The animal then can know both hunger and the satisfaction of hunger.  What the animal cannot know, but the human being can know, is the end of hunger.  We are speaking of different things when we talk of hunger itself, which is a "fact" in the way we understand facticity here, and, on the other hand, that which negates hunger.  Hunger itself is an "animal" fact of which the human being too is capable; whereas the end of hunger, or the negation of hunger, is an idea achievable only through logic.  Negative ideas, numbers and so forth are logical notions, but they cannot be experienced--or I should say sensed--in real time and space.

Earlier I said that uncertainty is perhaps the real basis of the animal and human personality.  Animal life separates itself from the existence of plants through animal hesitancy. The human being for his part does not transcend hesitancy so much as subject hesitancy to symbolic and intellectual terms.   Uncertaincy is the human form of hesitancy, wherein the human being translates his own hesitancy into mental and intellectual symbols.  This consideration--that human beings, too, have a specifically human form of hestitancy--is basic psychologicl science. I have called uncertainty a fact.  Uncertainty like hunger and many other states of being, along with perceptions of objects in real space and time, channel human behavior; this real disposition results in real behavior.  So when we examine human behavior in all its forms and complexity, when we contemplate human history and culture in its full extent, there will obviously be much in that behavior and culture that is the result of fact.  In other words, the human being sees certain facts before him and responds to meet the challenges that these facts impose.  This, we may say, is the practical side of human culture and existence.  So far I have said nothing new. What is being suggested here, following in the tradition of Hegel but without slavish copying, is that the great outburst of civilization, from Babylon to American civilization, is not the result of the challenge of facts so much as it is the virtual negation of facts through human logic.  I think I can formulate this idea easily and without undue hardship on the reader.  Briefly, what the "higher" forms of civilization, which rise above animal facticity, accomplish is not so much the allaying of uncertainty or the satisfaction of hunger, as certainty and the end of hunger.  Certainty is a logical idea, not a factual one.  There is nothing real we can call certainty. Uncertainty along with many other facts, if not most of them, are negatives. By negatives all we mean is that uncertainty and hunger (etc) are regarded by people as undesirable;  human beings do not want them. These negatives or undesirables constitute a challenge for human beings.  We may call uncertainty a negative--Hegel and every other philosopher, except the present writer would call hunger and uncertainty negatives--while, on the other hand, certainty and the end of hunger are not negatives, at all, so much as they are negations.  We may easily observe that much in civilization--in the present social policies of America, for instance--are not negatives (undesirables), or are not based upon or derived from, negatives so much as they are based upon and derived from negations.

The final point to be made here is that "high" civilizations are based on logic, not on fact.  The point of logic that forms the basis of civilization is that of negation.  So, in other words, as I say, civilization builds its structures and infrastructures upon such notions as "certainty" and "the end of hunger."  Early on I presented the equasion:  If A, then not not-A.    But if not-A, then not A.    Civilization is built on the idea of not-A, which is a perfectly logical but also totally non-factual idea.  Thus if civilization attempts to end uncertainty and hunger with certainty and the negation of hunger, civilization has set itself in confrontation with the law of non-contradiction. Hunger and uncertainty exists factually and absolutely.  They exist both as fact and as logic.   Hunger and uncertainty as absolutes, in our sense, as inescapable facts of existence, contradict the idea that there can be (exist) certainty and the negation of hunger.  I said earlier that it is still possible to "factually" alleve hunger and uncertainty.  This is true.  But the mere mitigation of hunger and uncertainty are not what civilization is built upon.  These things are "mere" facts.  Civilizations are built upon absolutes possible only through logic; but absolutes further whose "validity" is made possible by direct contradiction and refutation by its (also) logical opposite.

Certainty is a word "of man" that means not-uncertain.  I have already talked about animal hestiancy as prefiguring human uncertainty.  Uncertainty is these terms is simply the human--abstract, symbolic--form of animal hesitancy.  The human being realizes, by virtue of his human thinking, that he is uncertain; also by virtue of this same thinking he arrives at the opposite of uncertainty.  Towards this opposite, or certainty, he strives.  But the idea of certainty was arrived at through logic.  Certainty remains then, insofar as it is only a logical idea, a purely human--as opposed to a natural--idea.  This consideration, that certainty does not obviate uncertainty so much as it focuses uncertainty, leads to a further idea.  This idea that attempts to alleviate uncertainty by making certainty "real" is the basis of the (likewise purely) human idea of "trust."  At this point we have advanced, as human society itself advances, from the notion of uncertainty to the notion of distrust.  It is correct to call distrust a "higher" human form of uncertainty.  Distrust encompasses uncertainty while evoking an idea of society that is increasingly focused; wherein, in other words, human beings as a group are presented to "witness" the distrust of one human being toward another.  Thus while uncertainty is "of nature," still--the human being is contemplating a nature of which he is uncertain--distrust is purely "of man."  Distrust simply focuses the issue of uncertainty and identifies the source of the uncertainty as human beings in their various relations.

Paleolithic people and, for that matter, human beings nearly everywhere today--the exceptions seem to be Americans of the immediate present--lived and live with hunger.  There never was any biological--and in that sense real--reason to instil animals or their human successors with any idea except that of pressing hunger.  A momentary satiation was the reward for overcoming hunger.  The impulse to eat has been the motive power to provide the organism with the means for life.  So, today, the impulse to eat continues in the face of what has appeared in very limited areas of the world the virtual negation of hunger.  Americans have potentially overcome hunger in an absolute and logical sense of the word overcome.  Overcome in this special case means negation--the negation of hunger.  This sort of "logical" thinking represents civilization, always, even as it characterized the excesses of Rome.  (The Greeks perhaps balanced civilized thinking with just reasonalbeness.  This proposition awaits some clarification.) There is no reasonable reason, based on facts--biologocial or psychological--to overcome or negate hunger--yet this is what Americanism purports to want to do.  Logical thinking is gluttonous thinking, we aver!  But the excesses of Americanism are not exhausted in the gluttony of food but in all sorts of gluttonies.  I speak of the social gluttony of human brotherhood; and I speak of all sorts of things of this order.  Nietzsche said "Society has lost the ability to excrete."  This is certainly true.  Such logical thinking, which opposes the negativity and dis-satisfaction of everyday factual life with, on the other hand, logical negation--this thinking demands correction.  I have already spoken of the correcting influences of fascism, Spartan socialism, Columbian town militias, terms which are encompassed in the term race.  The violence of such a correction could have been averted.  A way of life cannot be built on a logical idea which contradicts a factual idea.  This is something I have already proved, but will add additional evidence for in subsequent sections of this blog.

Now distrust is real.  Just as uncertainty-- the factual source of distrust, is real, so also distrust itself is real.   The human mind arises to a realization of distrust, abstracts the distrust and presents the distrust as legal material.  This truth can be ascertained from any reading of court records or for that matter newpapers.  I am calling the comprehension of distrust "human" while at the same time seeing distrust ancored firmly in the relationships of man and man.    What is unreal on the other hand is trust.  Trust is the not-A in the equasion presented above.  The human being logically, that is dialectically by the programmed movement of the mind, moves from the concept of distrust to the concept of trust.  An animal comprehends only its own hesitancy and could not grasp uncertainty let alone uncertainty's focused form, certainty.  The animal knows neither distrust or distrust's logical opposite, trust.  Human beings not simply know distrust and by logical inference distrust's opposite, trust, they build their lives upon trust.  But trust does not exist in reality or in nature.  Trust is a purely abstract, or logical human idea.  Now I have already said that distrust properly exists.  That is true.  But trust on the other hand, as (as I say) a mere logical inference, exists only if distrust does not exist.  The fact is, however, that distrust does exist.  Therefore trust does not exist.  It is a momentarily perplexing paradox that human beings build entire societies and cultures on a non-existent thing or non-thing (no-thing).  If distrust is a thing that is, then trust--and the society built on trust--is a no-thing.

Last edited by richard_swartzbaugh (2009-07-17 19:07:13)

  • Registered: 2009-03-17
  • Posts: 349

Re: 14. RACE [EARLY EXPERIMENTAL WRITING]

DIALECTICAL MOVEMENT WITHIN THE PRIMAL AGREEMENT

The source of all morality, great and small, past and present, is, we suggest here,  in the agreement.  We say that a person "should" do this or that; we say that it is his moral obligation to do this or that.  What we are saying, essentially, is that we expect him to do this or that because he has agreed to do it.   On the other hand, if he has not agreed to do this or that thing, then there is no real reason to expect him to do it; nor is there a reason to repremand him if he does not do it.    I'm not going to review of the ethical theories that there have been.   What we are saying, simply, is as follows:   If one drops an object, we expect  it to fall.  We may say, if I drop this object I expect it to fall; but we may also say that it "should" fall.  By "should" in this context we are only saying that we expect the object to fall.  Of course, as this falling is a natural event we are only saying that, as per our past experience, the object always does fall.  Hume said this in his famous work on causality.  The real issue however, now, is the agreement.  Here we are not talking about a "naturally" caused event, precisely, so much as a human-planned event wherein, in other words, there is a certain causality but not the causality we are thinking of when we think of dropped objects.  This is a causality planned by human beings, that is not under constraint of gravity or any natural force; this causality within agreements may be contra naturam, or opposed--anti-gravitationally--to such natural causality.  (Natural Law, despite my great reading on this subject, remains to me an utter mystery as to what was being talked about.)   Rather, the expectations, corresponding to the expectation that a dropped object will fall, within an agreement are different than what we expect outside the agreement.  Within the agreement we expect, as per the promise, that a person will act this or that way.  We say, as per expectation, that he should act this or that way.  We have now used the word should within the agreement.  Once within the agreement the expectation becomes a moral obligation. 

To the extent that obligations do coerce or cause behavior they fulfill the expectations that we derive from a promise.  Within the agreement, on the other hand, unlike "natural" causality there is also an additional uncertainty that we do not have regarding natural causality; and it is to that uncertainty we address ourselves by saying, additionally, well, if this behavior does not happen it is a "reprehensible" omission on the part of one or the other parties to the agreement.  He should have acted as he promised to do.  This I aver is where our notion of "should" comes from originally, that is, out of some primal human promise.  There is basically nothing to "should" except the sort of expectation that comes from dealing with human beings, who often act as they promise to act but, unlike natural causality, sometimes they do not.  We may speak of the concept "should" as a sort of causality, but one, understood to be weaker than the causality of "nature," needs the reinforcement of an admonition--or suggestion of punishment--coming from human observers themselves.

We are  saying only that a concept of "should" would likely have been in a simple proposal, offered at the beginning of a hunt by two paleolithic hunters, regarding the terms of an agreement to meet in the morning to carry out their task.  There is nothing arcane in this process, requiring great minds to spin out elaborate theories of ethical conduct.  There is no need for prophets and saviors, only a meeting of minds to collaborate on an everyday activity. In the simplest activities there is the outline of the idea that one human being is  responsible to another human.  But before there is a sense of "should" there must be an agreement.  There is more.   It must be pointed out here that  "should" is not a noun or a verb or an adjective or an adverb.   "Should" is not a properly a word.  The word could make sense only in terms of an agreement as an admonishon, we are saying, to each party of an agreement to carry out his respective task.  The word "should" indicates some state of affairs that has not yet come to pass, but is "owed" by some person--presumably as agreed upon--to some other person.  The sense of "owing" and "being owed" is central to our notion of should.  This point has already been suggested earlier.  Thus, in what passes verbally between two persons, in the ordinary planning of a day's work, there is the basic structure of a "moral commitment" between persons.   

Hegel has said that in ordinary conversation there exist the ideas that are basic to abstruse philosophy; the same is true, we aver, of moral ideas.    Each person "should" carry out what he or she has promised; each party to the simple agreement understands his own responsibility, his "part" of the agreement (suggesting the meaning of the word "party").    But before there is this "moral commitment" there has to be an agreement.  I have already spoken of the fact that before there is a true disagreement--more than just a conflict of interests between two, say, predators in a "State of Nature" over possession of some food--there must first be an agreement.  There is no morality in a State of Nature," contrary to the Natural Law theorists such as Rousseau, Locke and  Hobbes.  These thinkers derive the whole of human morality and the concept of "should" from "nature."  This is a false approach.  Nature existed since eternity without any morality.  Coincidentally, morality appeared in human life, we can assume, about the time that humans acquired speech, could make promises, and could thus forge agreements.  It is a fair assumption that, if there is a moral obligation on my own part toward, say, some former slave or some former occupant of the land I took by force, then there has to be, by necessity, an original agreement between the two of us, one that we can point to in order to say--there, that is how I am obligated to this man.  The overwhelming conclusion is, upon close consideration of the various ethical systems that have been propounded over the centuries, that the idea of "should," or moral obligation, has no source other than what is common between two parties to an agreement.  We have already said this, but the point needs emphasizing.   If there is the suggestion, as there always has been, that persons who do not know one another, are strangers to one another, or have had no conversation together, that there is some kind of "moral tie," then the burden of proof falls upon the person who made the suggestion.  He must show where there has been some kind of agreement.  The phrase "actual agreement" suggests itself here.  There must have been an actual and documentable contract, formal or informal, that has transpired between the persons in question.  Thus, if I am responsible for the "injustices" of slavery, then there would have to be, in the theory I presently outline, an agreement stating what my responsibility was for that slave.  This is what I am stating. 

To get around this difficulty in modern day moral philosophy--that there is no documentable agreement between this former slave and myself--what is proposed in Christian, democratic and other thinking is some concept of a "collective responsibility" wherein there was a responsibility, and one that was violated in some way, between my ancestors and the presumed ancestors of this individual now making a claim.   In that case, too, following the premise I have outlined here,  there still would have been an agreement.  But obviously there was no such agreement in actual American history. I have already covered this problem.  There was no original agreement.  The only agreement made was between the original sellers of the slaves, in Africa, and the slave traders with whom I have only (presumably) the bond of race.  That is all.    The slaves were brought to America by force.  The presence of force in a relationship is a presumption that there was no agreements.   We have stated the premise that all agreements exclude force; if a relationship permits force, or if force is present as a pure fact, then the relationship is not an agreement.  What we mean by the word agreement is that parties to the agreement, or persons within the agreement, agree to the agreement.  The slave masters did not have to agree to anything, so they did not.  The slaves for their part were not given an opportunity to agree (or disagree), and so they did not agree.   An agreement is a proposal that is agreed to.  But there has to be a principal party, a human being, who knowingly and explicitly enters into the agreement.  Also, as I said, there is no moral law or legal position that exists outside agreements; and so there is no law of human origin that stands over and administers the insitution of slavery.  But there is more.   I have already stated that there is a "natural course" of an agreement, wherein the agreement comes into existence, passes through several distinct phases, and then expires.  We are stretching the concept of agreement beyond any reasonable bounds when we talk of ancient agreements for which there are no written records.  But there is worse to come.  It is assumed in modern ethical theory that there is an agreement by fiat  in some heavenly or transcendental realm, through a god or an eternal "principle," that involves my own self as an individual.  This is by a huge stretch of the imagination.   

Such an idea as a "pre-existing contract" one that would have to be accepted solely on trust.  My basic statement is:  for there to be a claim on my person--a claim of any kind, whether for damages or some other sort of claim--there has to be an agreement into which I myself entered.  I would have to be a principal party to such an agreement.  No other person could stand in for me.  This limitation of the terms of any agreement is built into the agreement itself as it appears as a phenomenon among others.   By agreement we mean a specific human relationship that has certain boundaries; it has certain specific characteristics.  No agreement can be made "in heaven" without the parties to that agreement being actually present.  No agreement can be made on behalf of me, by some other person.  I personally have to agree to the agreement.  I could send, of course, an agent to represent me, but that would have to be, of course, in itself by my agreement.  In short, what we mean by an agreement is a relationship that is agreed to; and out of that agreement could come, reasonably, a "moral" commitment of some sort.  Otherwise--there can be no claim of any kind, by one person upon another, because there has been no agreement.

We may go on here to a slightly different line of reasoning.  Are all relationships based on either force or agreements.  For instance, do I have an agreement with my neighbor next door not to attack him or steal his lawn implements?  I cannot go deeply into this issue.  There are questions of tradition, habit and culture that enter here making it impossible to access each human relationship in terms of the elements of force and agreement.  Suffice it to say that relationships do not have to be one or the other; they could be both through force and through agreement; but, on the other hand, they could be neither one nor the other.  It is possible to live in peace and cooperation without agreements or force.  I talked earlier about agreements of exclusion, wherein, in other words, people agree simply not to interact but rather to respect each others small bit of territory.  That is the way people live in the quiet neighborhoods that do exist wiithout any preoccupation with law or issues of civil law.  There is the possibility, which can be explored here, that an agreement can take hold in a place or situation that already is settled and predictable, where humans already cooperate and do not intrude into one another's proverbial small space.  This is an everyday state of affairs in the average American suburban and rural neighborhood, where there is a feeling of peace throughout the land. It is indeed possible that such a place could exist without government intrusion or police; that neighbors could be neighborly simply through habit and stored-up neighborliness.   There is no reason to think otherwise.  Were government to disappear, these same neighbors would not attack one another but would continue to exist in peace.  The same is true of a marriage.  To take marriage as an example:  the contract of marriage is added to the man-woman relationship to protect both parties in the event of a dispute that threatens to turn violent. Such violence is not so much anticipated as thought simply possible.   On the other hand, most heterosexual relationship where there has generally been a spirit of cooperation and understanding before marriage, do not after marriage suddenly become violent, requiring the intervention of law.  On the contrary, most such relations are non-violent. 

From these considerations--that many relationships, even those of animals, are cooperative and peaceful--we can draw the conclusion that many if not most relationships do not require, additionally, an agreement.  If an agreement is implemented, for instance marriage, that is only because a disagreement is possible.  Again, agreements do not repair a truly troubled relationship.  Agreements cannot solve basic problems; a dissolution of the relationship may be inevitable.  Agreements are in fact only useful in relationships that have already acquired a great deal of stability.  The general inference at this point is agreements, although an ancient and omnipresent fact of human relationships, do not actually overturn "Natural Law" so much as momentarily alter certain facts of relations in order to achieve, again, limited goals.  It is in the temporary suspension of the use of leveraged (armed) force that enable the great achievements of human beings.  There are humans on the other hand who never do supend the threat of violence among themselves; where every enterprise no matter how small ends in some pointless argument with the threat of physical force.  What is suggested here is that, underlying human society is a biological principle that holds human life together.   The agreement itself, as per its humble origins among hunters and gatherers, is a fragile and fleeting thing.  The agreement is inherently limited to the terms human beings of the "everyday" sort, and who are likely to be impatient with subtleties and fine details, can understand.   That agreements are bound to be limited, inherently through the original nature of agreements, goes now to the issue of "universal agreements."  A Rousseauian Social Contract, or democracy and socialism and so forth are cases in point.  No one understands these things, they are not understandable by normal people.  In law there is a common law provision that a contract whose terms are incomprehensible for normal intelligence, or whose terms violate common sense rules, are invalid.  The same can be said of the Social Contract.

The source of all morality, great and small, past and present, is, we suggest here, in the agreement.  We say that a person "should" do this or that; we say that it is his moral obligation to do this or that.  What we are saying, essentially, is that we expect him to do this or that because he has agreed to do it.   On the other hand, if he has not agreed to do this or that thing, then there is no real reason to expect him to do it; nor is there a reason to repremand him if he does not do it.    I'm not going to review of the ethical theories that there have been.   What we are saying, simply, is as follows:   If one drops an object, we expect  it to fall.  We may say, if I drop this object I expect it to fall; but we may also say that it "should" fall.  By "should" in this context we are only saying that we expect the object to fall.  Of course, as this falling is a natural event we are only saying that, as per our past experience, the object always does fall.  Hume said this in his famous work on causality.  The real issue however, now, is the agreement.  Here we are not talking about a "naturally" caused event, precisely, so much as a human-planned event wherein, in other words, there is a certain causality but not the causality we are thinking of when we think of dropped objects.  This is a causality planned by human beings, that is not under constraint of gravity or any natural force; this causality within agreements may be contra naturam, or opposed--anti-gravitationally--to such natural causality.  (Natural Law, despite my great reading on this subject, remains to me an utter mystery as to what was being talked about.)   Rather, the expectations, corresponding to the expectation that a dropped object will fall, within an agreement are different than what we expect outside the agreement.  Within the agreement we expect, as per the promise, that a person will act this or that way.  We say, as per expectation, that he should act this or that way.  We have now used the word should within the agreement.  Once within the agreement the expectation becomes a moral obligation. 

To the extent that obligations do coerce or cause behavior they fulfill the expectations that we derive from a promise.  Within the agreement, on the other hand, unlike "natural" causality there is also an additional uncertainty that we do not have regarding natural causality; and it is to that uncertainty we address ourselves by saying, additionally, well, if this behavior does not happen it is a "reprehensible" omission on the part of one or the other parties to the agreement.  He should have acted as he promised to do.  This I aver is where our notion of "should" comes from originally, that is, out of some primal human promise.  There is basically nothing to "should" except the sort of expectation that comes from dealing with human beings, who often act as they promise to act but, unlike natural causality, sometimes they do not.  We may speak of the concept "should" as a sort of causality, but one, understood to be weaker than the causality of "nature," needs the reinforcement of an admonition--or suggestion of punishment--coming from human observers themselves.

We are  saying only that a concept of "should" would likely have been in a simple proposal, offered at the beginning of a hunt by two paleolithic hunters, regarding the terms of an agreement to meet in the morning to carry out their task.  There is nothing arcane in this process, requiring great minds to spin out elaborate theories of ethical conduct.  There is no need for prophets and saviors, only a meeting of minds to collaborate on an everyday activity. In the simplest activities there is the outline of the idea that one human being is  responsible to another human.  But before there is a sense of "should" there must be an agreement.  There is more.   It must be pointed out here that  "should" is not a noun or a verb or an adjective or an adverb.   "Should" is not a properly a word.  The word could make sense only in terms of an agreement as an admonishon, we are saying, to each party of an agreement to carry out his respective task.  The word "should" indicates some state of affairs that has not yet come to pass, but is "owed" by some person--presumably as agreed upon--to some other person.  The sense of "owing" and "being owed" is central to our notion of should.  This point has already been suggested earlier.  Thus, in what passes verbally between two persons, in the ordinary planning of a day's work, there is the basic structure of a "moral commitment" between persons.   

Hegel has said that in ordinary conversation there exist the ideas that are basic to abstruse philosophy; the same is true, we aver, of moral ideas.    Each person "should" carry out what he or she has promised; each party to the simple agreement understands his own responsibility, his "part" of the agreement (suggesting the meaning of the word "party").    But before there is this "moral commitment" there has to be an agreement.  I have already spoken of the fact that before there is a true disagreement--more than just a conflict of interests between two, say, predators in a "State of Nature" over possession of some food--there must first be an agreement.  There is no morality in a State of Nature," contrary to the Natural Law theorists such as Rousseau, Locke and  Hobbes.  These thinkers derive the whole of human morality and the concept of "should" from "nature."  This is a false approach.  Nature existed since eternity without any morality.  Coincidentally, morality appeared in human life, we can assume, about the time that humans acquired speech, could make promises, and could thus forge agreements.  It is a fair assumption that, if there is a moral obligation on my own part toward, say, some former slave or some former occupant of the land I took by force, then there has to be, by necessity, an original agreement between the two of us, one that we can point to in order to say--there, that is how I am obligated to this man.  The overwhelming conclusion is, upon close consideration of the various ethical systems that have been propounded over the centuries, that the idea of "should," or moral obligation, has no source other than what is common between two parties to an agreement.  We have already said this, but the point needs emphasizing.   If there is the suggestion, as there always has been, that persons who do not know one another, are strangers to one another, or have had no conversation together, that there is some kind of "moral tie," then the burden of proof falls upon the person who made the suggestion.  He must show where there has been some kind of agreement.  The phrase "actual agreement" suggests itself here.  There must have been an actual and documentable contract, formal or informal, that has transpired between the persons in question.  Thus, if I am responsible for the "injustices" of slavery, then there would have to be, in the theory I presently outline, an agreement stating what my responsibility was for that slave.  This is what I am stating. 

To get around this difficulty in modern day moral philosophy--that there is no documentable agreement between this former slave and myself--what is proposed in Christian, democratic and other thinking is some concept of a "collective responsibility" wherein there was a responsibility, and one that was violated in some way, between my ancestors and the presumed ancestors of this individual now making a claim.   In that case, too, following the premise I have outlined here,  there still would have been an agreement.  But obviously there was no such agreement in actual American history. I have already covered this problem.  There was no original agreement.  The only agreement made was between the original sellers of the slaves, in Africa, and the slave traders with whom I have only (presumably) the bond of race.  That is all.    The slaves were brought to America by force.  The presence of force in a relationship is a presumption that there was no agreements.   We have stated the premise that all agreements exclude force; if a relationship permits force, or if force is present as a pure fact, then the relationship is not an agreement.  What we mean by the word agreement is that parties to the agreement, or persons within the agreement, agree to the agreement.  The slave masters did not have to agree to anything, so they did not.  The slaves for their part were not given an opportunity to agree (or disagree), and so they did not agree.   An agreement is a proposal that is agreed to.  But there has to be a principal party, a human being, who knowingly and explicitly enters into the agreement.  Also, as I said, there is no moral law or legal position that exists outside agreements; and so there is no law of human origin that stands over and administers the insitution of slavery.  But there is more.   I have already stated that there is a "natural course" of an agreement, wherein the agreement comes into existence, passes through several distinct phases, and then expires.  We are stretching the concept of agreement beyond any reasonable bounds when we talk of ancient agreements for which there are no written records.  But there is worse to come.  It is assumed in modern ethical theory that there is an agreement by fiat  in some heavenly or transcendental realm, through a god or an eternal "principle," that involves my own self as an individual.  This is by a huge stretch of the imagination.   

Such an idea is a "pre-existing contract" or one that would have to be accepted solely on trust.  My basic statement is:  for there to be a claim on my person--a claim of any kind, whether for damages or some other sort of claim--there has to be an agreement into which I myself entered.  I would have to be a principal party to such an agreement.  No other person could stand in for me.  This limitation of the terms of any agreement is built into the agreement itself as it appears as a phenomenon among others.   By agreement we mean a specific human relationship that has certain boundaries; it has certain specific characteristics.  No agreement can be made "in heaven" without the parties to that agreement being actually present. The assumption that I cannot be party to an agreement without my specific consent is a provision of everyday civil law:  that is why my verifiable signiture has to be present on any legal document that involves me (unless there is a court order stipulating my mental incompetency, wherein my business is put in trust).   No agreement can be made on behalf of me, by some other person without legal exception.  I personally have to sign to the agreement.  I could send, of course, an agent to represent me, but that would have to be, of course, in itself by my agreement.  In short, what we mean by an agreement is a relationship that is agreed to; and out of that agreement could come, reasonably, a "moral" commitment of some sort.  Otherwise--there can be no claim of any kind, by one person upon another, because there has been no agreement.  We will finally go on to the sweeping statement, but one altogether true, to the effect that no agreement is made in heaven, or anywhere on earth except where I am; because, obviously, I am not where I am not.  Nor can I--following this line of argument--be held responsible for anything--or anyone--when I did not accept responsibility as per an agreement.  All moral theories, from Platonic theories, Christian and Kantian theories--even Darwinian theories, so far as these are cast in moralistic terms--flounder if the word "agreement" does not appear.  Kant, so far as I am aware, did not use the word agreement anywhere in his writing--his writing is therefore devoid of any real significance.
We may go on here to a slightly different line of reasoning.  Are all relationships based on either force or agreements.  For instance, do I have an agreement with my neighbor next door not to attack him or steal his lawn implements?  I cannot go deeply into this issue.  There are questions of tradition, habit and culture that enter here making it impossible to access each human relationship in terms of the elements of force and agreement.  Suffice it to say that relationships do not have to be one or the other; they could be both through force and through agreement; but, on the other hand, they could be neither one nor the other.  It is possible to live in peace and cooperation without agreements or force.  I talked earlier about agreements of exclusion, wherein, in other words, people agree simply not to interact but rather to respect each others small bit of territory.  That is the way people live in the quiet neighborhoods that do exist wiithout any preoccupation with law or issues of civil law.  There is the possibility, which can be explored here, that an agreement can take hold in a place or situation that already is settled and predictable, where humans already cooperate and do not intrude into one another's proverbial small space.  This is an everyday state of affairs in the average American suburban and rural neighborhood, where there is a feeling of peace throughout the land. It is indeed possible that such a place could exist without government intrusion or police; that neighbors could be neighborly simply through habit and stored-up neighborliness.   There is no reason to think otherwise.  Were government to disappear, these same neighbors would not attack one another but would continue to exist in peace.  The same is true of a marriage.  To take marriage as an example:  the contract of marriage is added to the man-woman relationship to protect both parties in the event of a dispute that threatens to turn violent. Such violence is not so much anticipated as thought simply possible.   On the other hand, most heterosexual relationship where there has generally been a spirit of cooperation and understanding before marriage, do not after marriage suddenly become violent, requiring the intervention of law.  On the contrary, most such relations are non-violent. 

From these considerations--that many relationships, even those of animals, are cooperative and peaceful--we can draw the conclusion that many if not most relationships do not require, additionally, an agreement.  If an agreement is implemented, for instance marriage, that is only because a disagreement is possible.  Again, agreements do not repair a truly troubled relationship.  Agreements cannot solve basic problems; a dissolution of the relationship may be inevitable.  Agreements are in fact only useful in relationships that have already acquired a great deal of stability.  The general inference at this point is agreements, although an ancient and omnipresent fact of human relationships, do not actually overturn "Natural Law" so much as momentarily alter certain facts of relations in order to achieve, again, limited goals.  It is in the temporary suspension of the use of leveraged (armed) force that enable the great achievements of human beings.  There are humans on the other hand who never do supend the threat of violence among themselves; where every enterprise no matter how small ends in some pointless argument with the threat of physical force.  What is suggested here is that, underlying human society is a biological principle that holds human life together.   The agreement itself, as per its humble origins among hunters and gatherers, is a fragile and fleeting thing.  The agreement is inherently limited to the terms human beings of the "everyday" sort, and who are likely to be impatient with subtleties and fine details, can understand.   That agreements are bound to be limited, inherently through the original nature of agreements, goes now to the issue of "universal agreements."  A Rousseauian Social Contract, or democracy and socialism and so forth are cases in point.  No one understands these things, they are not understandable by normal people.  In law there is a common law provision that a contract whose terms are incomprehensible for normal intelligence, or whose terms violate common sense rules, are invalid.  The same can be said of the Social Contract.

Hegel said that the moving force in the world is not good but evil.  Evil is the machine that propells history forward; without evil life would stagnate.  While we may object to Hegel's conclusion on grounds of vagueness, what is possibly true in life in general is true absolutely within the framework of an agreement.  It is the dis-agreement which sets the agreement in motion and causes it to move forward.

The question today is whether there is within an agreement, always, insofar as the agreement is complete, a movement inherent in the agreement wherein parties to the agreement are "swept" from one phase of the agreement to the next phase.   An agreement always contains within it the basic element of a dis-agreement that contradicts the agreement itself and moves agreement forward to the later stages of its completion.   We would understand the agreement in these terms not so much as a static structure as, on the other hand, a process.   This process would be "mental."  In other words the process would be inherent within the agreement as a specifically human way of thinking.  Hegel's "world dialectic" or Idea is suggestive here.  In other words, how the agreement works, in its unfolding, is rather like the mind itself works as it passes from one idea to the next.  Thus, in the case under consideration, the fact of a possible confrontation evokes the concept of an agreement; the agreement evokes the confrontation framed now as a dis-agreement; the dis-agreement demands settlement (in order to preserve the integrety of the original agreement); and so forth.  We may see a total course of mental events, in a logical relation, wherein the basic ideas of human life appear logically.  From the perceived potential confrontation emerges, finally, as the agreement moves forward, some sense of morality.  Moral ideas appear in the later stages of the agreement as a reflex of the agreement itself, as, inevitably, some agreement large or small seems inevitable.

In considering the above-stated assertion of Hegel,  that the moving force in the world is not good but evil, we may go on to suggest that morals themselves--and the codification of morals in laws of civilized societies--originages, ultimately, in the simple agreement even as this agreement transpires between two hunters in the setting of paleolithic culture.  These men know they may disagree; and they are prepared with their "arguments" in the event that what they imagine will happen does happen.    Evil in these terms, so long as we think of evil as whatever discomfits one hunter or the othe, is the machine that propells the agreement of these hunters forward; it is not too much to suppose, then, finally, that this same "evil" that inheres in the relation between the two men is what on a much larger scale moves the whole of human history.   That is our whole purpose in philosophicaol anthropology:  to extrapolate from the small situation, where issues are clear to the much larger situation, that is modern human society--where issues certainly are much less clear!    While we may object to Hegel's conclusion on grounds of vagueness, what is possibly true in life in general is true absolutely within the framework of an agreement.  It is the dis-agreement which sets the agreement in motion and causes it to move forward.

An agreement has set stages:
1. the perception of a possible confrontation set in the context of a need to cooperate.  Hunters need food, but they also see in their cooperation a source of conflict.
2. An agreement within which the potential confrontation, now seen as a dis-agreement, is framed and acknowledged.
3. The appearance of a disagreement.
4. The settlement of the disagreement; which is to say, the disagreement is set aside for the sake of the agreement itself.
5. A perceived desire not merely to settle the disagreement but to resolve it.  Here "moral" ideas are raised, the "rightness" or "wrongness" of one or other of the positions in the dispute

Last edited by richard_swartzbaugh (2009-07-06 14:45:09)

  • Registered: 2009-03-17
  • Posts: 349

Re: 14. RACE [EARLY EXPERIMENTAL WRITING]

Race is heresy to man, culture, society and civilization.  I proposed above in my Ten Principles that these things--man, culture, society and civilizaation--do not "properly" exist. (See...) Some exposition is still needed regarding the word "properly."  Anyway, once the falseness of "man" is shown--that he basis his life on "not-A when A, the contradiction of not-A, is (exists)," we may reconsider the word race.  All that is meant by race here is nature, or a State of Nature.  I have included in nature the organizing principles of baboon fascism, Spartan socialism and Columbian town militias.  But all these concepts, and more, are encompassed in the word race.  This will be abundantly apparent.  Race is the motivating factor in nature:  diversity within continuity.  A society will emerge someday, I aver, that is not of man but of nature.  It will be primitive and direct.  Within this society, however, I suggest, human life--and mind--will thrive.