In many an earlier post, I have made the statement that “the goal of a society is the maximum satisfaction of its needs and desires.” This is seen as something very obvious, an axiom really. One argues about the best methodology (socialism, capitalism, etc.) to achieve this goal, but not about this goal itself.
I must confess I don’t think much of this goal at all.
Indeed, this “goal” has had acceptance in common-society only recently. Historically, the goal of human-society was deemed loftier – to do actions that would lead one to heaven, to become a part of the Divine, to get good Karma. Luckily for humanity, the central-planners – the ruling class – never undertook the logical execution of this “divine” goal (with the possible exception of poor India). The ruling class has always considered the lesser goal of maximum-need-satisfaction in all its central planning objectives.
But recently, even common man has come to accept the more earthly maximizing-satisfaction-in-a-society as the ultimate goal.
Now, deeming the “ultimate goal” of humanity to be happiness is a bit jarring. One’d reckon it’s more the means than the end. That is, satisfying the needs of the human society is the “means” to a goal, rather than the goal itself. Happiness, satisfaction all these are secondary, compared to the “goal”.
Which is, simply put, progress.
I shall nudge off the arguments (evolution, etc.) to a later post, and merely present two gendanken(thought experiments).
Suppose God [this is a thought experiment remember?] were to come to you, just before you were going to be born, and give you two options. One is for you to get born in 4004 where humans have progressed a lot and control the entire galaxy or something. But in which you shall (obviously) have to face a lot more pressure, stress, and you won’t be as happy. And one is for you to be born in 0004, in a farm. Not much progress in human society, but you’d live an idyllic happy existence, rearing sheep, enough to eat etc. What would you choose? I’d choose the first. And so would most.
But why? If happiness was the goal, why not the latter? [For those who believe that they would choose the latter, note that you can go live a simple, idyllic existence in a farm even now in 2004. Quitting reading this, go now!]
Consider this second more powerful gendanken. Suppose in the future, humans are able to invent a braincap which can send electric impulses directly to the pleasure centre of the brain. Upshot of that is that one can experience direct pleasure and happiness with the push of a button. Note that this is not outlandish – our feelings of happiness and pleasure are just impulses and excitations of parts of our brain. Basically, happiness is just a chemical state of the brain. If this chemical/electrical state is indeed humanity’s goal, here is the question: shouldn’t the logical action of humanity then be to all sit in a chair and put on the braincap, and remain in blissful inertia?
Seems abhorrent doesn’t it? One would consider a person permanently sitting on a chair with a braincap as a vegetable rather than a person who has achieved the “ultimate” goal of humanity.
The ultimate “goal”, then, is progress (which I judiciously leave undefined for now). Thus when people argue for either maximizing the minimum happiness [communism] or maximizing the average happiness [democratic-statism] or allowing each individual to maximize his individual happiness even at the cost of average happiness [libertarianism], I think they are missing the point – the “goal” function should be expressed in “progress” terms, happiness is merely a tool.
And the sad thing is that the mass of humanity is more interested in subsistence, and maximizing happiness rather than progress. In part II of this post, I shall show how this ironically leads to an unhappy society. About how paradoxically, that only by eschewing happiness for progress can a society be happy. This is somewhat similar to what many ancient Indian sages were saying, albeit in different terms.
Hey.. I have some questions.
1. Is society an entity that can have a need? I think when we talk about needs, we should talk only about individuals and not group them as societies. Motivation and Needs research done previously by Sigmund Freud, Maslow focussed only on individual needs and happiness. A society’s happiness is just a sum total of individuals’ happiness. If a society can cater to the needs of all its individuals then, I think, we can say the society has attained its goal.
2. Individuals have varying needs/desires that give them happiness. ‘Progress’ at the cost of ‘happiness’ might be my need and ‘lazy happiness’ might be yours. Again, Maslow’s need hierarchy can be used to understand different individual’s needs. Till all the people in the globe cross level 2 [Safety], our global objective will be ensure that. No country can unilaterally increase the average maslow level of its citizens. I think, once all societies get to level 2 – then the global society will morph itself so that each individual is left to pursue his own ‘self actualization’ goals.
Sathish, your doubts raise some good points which I shall address in an ensuing post, but it seems you’re also missing the main point of this post.
Which is that progress is the ultimate goal irrespective of perceived needs and desires of “individual” humans/entities. For e.g. I seriously doubt tigers think deeply about their “needs”, or maybe they do, but irrespective of that, their “goal” is progress.
The perceived needs and desires are just tools to achieve more progress. The obvious questions this raises are whether I am equating progress to evolution and whether this “goal” of progress is merely ontological. The answers to both is a partial yes. I shall flesh it out in an ensuing post.
I think you have to explain what you mean by ‘progress’
If there is a goal, any activity that takes us closer to that goal is progress. Isn’t it?
If the goal of the society is to enable every person to pursue his own ‘self-actualization’ desires, then any activity (for instance, UN Millennium Goals that ensure Maslow Level 1 for everybody) that takes us closer to that goal is progress. I also think, we would all want to pursue divinity – irrespective of own individual differences – once we have managed to become the best that we can possibly become.
I would term the ‘loftier’ goal of reaching divinity as Level 6 in Maslow. 🙂
I think you have to explain what you mean by ‘progress’. If there is a goal, any activity that takes us closer to that goal is progress. Isn’t it?
Sathish, since we are talking of human society here, by progress I meant the societal connotation of creative progress. As I mentioned in the post, I wanted to hold off the exact meaning of this to this later post – clicky.
The ultimate “goal”, then, is progress (which I judiciously leave undefined for now).
Seven_times_six, the starting point of any philosophical discussion, as you no doubt know, is to define your terms. If you “judiciously” leave the most important term of the discussion undefined, you are effectively not allowing argument. Come on, define it!
Also, I agree with Sathish on his point about society. One of the biggest mistakes of social scientists in much of the last century was to talk of society, or humanity, as a superstructure, as if it can have needs and goals and so on. In your post, you yourself speak of “the goal of a society” and “the ‘ultimate goal’ of humanity”. So Sathish’s question does need an answer.
The “braincap” you conjure up is rather similar to Robert Nozick’s hypothetical ‘Experience Machine’? Have you read his book, Anarchy, State and Utopia? It’s an essential book for a libertarian’s bookshelf. Nozick also wrote a book called Examined Life; Ravikiran, was this blog named after that?
Amit, if you find the concept of a goal of human society to be dissonant, then you shouldn’t accept even the concept of a goal for a single human individual.
As as an earlier post – clicky – argued, we ourselves are comprised of fairly complex and distinct sub-systems, each with different “goals”!
Even if you belong to the reductionist school (I am a complete reductionist as that earlier post showed), one can still talk of things at a higher level for understanding. Object Oriented Ways and all that. The “goal” of humanity is merely ontological, there isn’t an intelligent superorganism per se, but that doesn’t mean one can’t talk at that level.
Also, the definition of “creative” progress is in the promised new post.
Yes, I read that earlier post you linked to just now. You seem to be denying the existence of free will in that, in which case, this discussion is pointless, isn’t it?
I’ve replied to your next post, btw.
Amit, we don’t need free will at all for this discussion. You were right that I meant “goals” here in a metaphorical/ontological sense.
42,progress is still left undefined.
Is the post meant to confuse or meant to say you are confused?
Navin – creative progress is defined in this post: clicky.
To create, to control, to know. That post puts it in a proper evolutionary standpoint. If you’re still confused about the meaning of creative progress, perhaps you could outline what it is that confused you?