I am firmly with Tim the Mage on this one.
The use of abstract nouns in political debate is inevitable. But there are a couple of terms in particular, widely used in UK political discourse, which bother me. Both are ripe for a dose of skepticism.
The first is "society". Tim has already shown that the term is problematic (and indeed that Thatcher's quote is invariably taken out of context by those seeking only to make a shallow political point). As a descriptive (passive) term, it is fairly meaningful - "we live in an unequal society", "we live in a tolerant society", etc.
As an active term, however, I often do not know what it means. "Society should do something about it!" - but who or what is the "society" with the alleged (a) authority or (b) capacity to do the (usually vague) something.
And then there is "society is to blame" (and, one notes, never to be congratulated). In fact, this means no one is to blame. It is, for me, an intellectually evasive term. And Thatcher's quote, in its context, was actually on to something on this.
The other term is "State". Again, it works ok as a descriptive term ("Church and State" or "State immunity").
But, as an active term, it becomes problematic - I mean here "the State should do [x]" (or the State should not do [x]").
This statement presupposes that the State can indeed do something, and that the political decision is whether it should do so.
On the presupposition, empirical evidence stacks up of repeated, chronic public sector failures - from welfare reform to government IT projects. Although my leftist friends may well want the State to do something, in saying so they usually just make a leap of logic, disregarding the contrary factual evidence. I find this "faith" in the existence and power of the State akin to that shown by Christians in thieir God. For leftists, the State is the new God - omnipotent and omnicompetent.
Thankfully, like the power of God, it is dawning on people that the State cannot actually do these things (even if one would like it to do so).
At bottom, the reason why the State cannot do these things is because it is unclear what is meant by the State in an active context.
Laws can be passed, policies followed by varied bodies in their administration and decision-making, taxes and charges collected, and money spent. Each type of action open to the bundle of public bodies (from Parliament to police forces and parish councils) will have direct and direct effects on the rest of us: but there is no one "thing" the "State" can "do" in any area.
In an active sense, there is no such thing as society, or the State.
Last edited by Jack of Kent; 13th August 2008 at 09:17 AM.
Your 'Leftist; friends are not as wrong as the argument ut forward implies.
The 'State' removes half of the income of the majority of those who work, and in return promise to deliver services and security. The state through laws determines the circumstances under which each of us may lose our liberty. The state through its enforcement personnel reserves in effect for itself the right to use overwhelming force against any citizen or group of citizens of whose actions it disapproves.
So while you are right that this is in practice a consesnus democracy, and the state must bring public opinion along with it, the state versus the individual is a wholly unequal relationship.
It is hardly unreasonable having ceded (or had removed from them) so much power to the executive, that many begin to become reliant on the state to sort out problems the state would rather they sort out for themselves. While I applaud those who have the motivation to succeed, I think in a wholly unequal relationship - corporations and the state must recognise that they are largely responsible for the dependency culture.
This was a church barbecue and the vicar was making an effort to hold a conversation on an ostensibly secular subject with the husband of a parishioner. Nice guy, by the sound of it. His view of scientists, who he seems to think are all atheists (actually cosmologists and theoretical physicists such as Hawking tend towards deism or pantheism, dunno about Hawking himself) is that they need faith.
The way to tackle this is to say that a scientific theory is a hypothesis--an explanation--backed up by observation. If it fails to match observation it fails, and if it fails to have much explanatory power it fails. The best response to the statement "postulated by physicists with so many assumption", when made by a vicar, is that if God gave us the ability to investigate the universe we should use it. We may be being presumptuous in assuming that the universe can be explained--and of course that opens a big question as to how it come to be explicable. However I'd try to convince him that, allowing that assumption, the scientists do a very good job of constructing theories that predict actual behavior and can be tested. Mention the germ theory and how it has revolutionized public health over the past 150 years. Before that was discovered, people blamed the smell, or "miasma" as it was known, for spreading disease. It took scientists making observations and testing the miasma theory alongside the germ theory to make those public health improvements possible.
For bonus points, express some scepticism about the power of intercessory prayer. Allude to the prayer experiments in which it was found that patients who were told they were being prayed for fared worse than those who were not.
Last edited by tonysidaway; 17th August 2008 at 08:42 PM.
I always liked this comment on the issue - from a real genius:Originally Posted by tonysidaway
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
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