Structure vs. Communitas - the Two Modes of Human Society
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2024
- Anthropologist Victor Turner, who popularised the term Liminality, found that human society has two modes of interrelatedness that function like a yin and yang - mutually dependant and without which human life would be impossible. Structure is the mode of status and hierarchy in society; Communitas of love, compassion and myth.
These two modes show up in very interesting ways in our current society. These can be fruitfully mapped over with the religious and scientific mindsets; with the Constrained and Unconstrained Visions of Thomas Sowell's work; with the Order and Chaos of Jordan Peterson's work Maps of Meaning and with the left- and right-hemispheres of the brain in Iain McGilchrist's work.
None of these are 1:1 mapovers but there's something rich even in this difference. This episodes marks the beginning of our explorations in this fertile model of human life.
____________________
📚 Further Reading:
- Turner, V. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
- Turner, V. Revelation and divination in Ndembu ritual
________________
⭐ Support the channel (thank you!)
▶ Patreon: / thelivingphilosophy
▶ Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/thelivingphilosophy
_________________
💬 More from The Living Philosophy
▶ Discord / discord
▶ 📨 Subscribe with email: thelivingphilosophy.substack....
________________
🎼 Media Used:
1. There’s Probably No Time - Chris Zabriskie
2. Lightless Dawn - Kevin MacLeod
3. Underwater Exploration - Godmode - Kevin MacLeod
4. Evening Fall Harp - Kevin MacLeod
5. Procession of the King - Kevin MacLeod
Subscribe to Kevin MacLeod [ / kmmusic ]( / kmmusic )
Subscribe to Chris Zabriskie [ / chriszabriskie ]( / chriszabriskie )
_________________
⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:30 Structure
5:30 Communitas
6:32 The Communitas Mode of Being
10:01 Structured Communitas
13:12 Religion and Communitas
Youre one of my favorite philosophy youtubers. Your content is insanely good and i wish you dont stop producing.
Thank you that's always a joy to hear 🙏
Personally, I'm very happy to see somebody from Ireland who has similar interests to mine and produces amazing content too! Keep up the great work and I wish you enjoyed your break!
He's an Irishman? I figured a Scandinavian of some cut. Regardless yes he's a great philosophical orator.
I feel like your videos always pop up when I need them most. My friend and I were talking about a similar topic just the other day. I can't wait to show him.
Structure is of the head, an analysed, calculated relation. Communitas is of the heart, a spontaneous, emancipated relation. Rather than two modes, labels for the opposite ends of an axis. Life usually takes place somewhere along the line. Is +1 mutually dependent on -1?
+1 is a symbol. -1 is a symbol. They both change. They both depend on the 0. The only thing that never changes. The subconscious. The eternal form. It never changes so that makes it a little more real. But it’s also not a thing, so that makes it a little less real.
@@Mark.Allen1111 Only if we really exist is subconsciousness eternal. Like a quantum particle, we appear and disappear out of nothing; if indeed there is such a thing.
@@upontheroofyou and @1627189 are 💥 🧠
Love this channel love this content. Keep up the amazing work.
On the last topic at the very end, you've made reference to the controversial roles in the Politics domain (Left & Right), in the Religion & Spiritual domains, and in the Science & Techonology domains associated or not with the Culture & Business domains; But you absolutely forgot to make any reference to the role of the Arts domain, in the development of our sensbility, imagination, vision, feeling and understanding of our own societies, and what it might become (just as you forgot to mention the role of Philosophy on that regard).
Besides that, congrats for this historical comparison between Structure & Communitas; it offers great insight in those concepts, notably Communitas which I had very few notion about. Now I have a word to explain why I often had certain kind of admiration for Religious communities (despite all the problematics of Religion), and for ancient, ancient-living or traditional/folkloric communities; it was because of the precise notion of "Communitas", even though I didn't have the word for it.
another great piece🤙
"Rapture of the nerds" is one of the best phrases I've ever heard.
I really like the art you have accompanying your lectures, especially the figure from the cold war science fiction novel Who.
I recently finished
'The Master and his Emissary' by Iain McGilchrist. This book does a good job explaining this idea of having two brains.
Ideally, structure would make communitas sacred and "protect" authenticity from the structure itself.
interesting concept and insightful summary. i appreciate how you connect the duality to correlate with order and chaos - though Peterson sees Chaos in a mainly negative valence, it also contains an idealism of what structurelessness offers in freedom, possibilities, spontaneity, and equality. it seems like many dualities out there essentially get back to this one.
Just terrific 👏
Appreciate your newst video thank you❤
Interesting take on religious institutions. I have felt the same way, but not really know how to best frame what I was thinking. Is there going to be any attempt to view Parsons vs. Giddens structuralism and then Stone’s “Strong Structuration?”
This listener hopes you are putting a book together. Your bringing together the history of Continuental and British thought and folks like McGilchrist is important thinking.
None in the immediate future. I still feel much too lost in the labyrinth to have something coherent to share. Hopefully some year soon it will resolve into some more coherent web. I appreciate the belief and support Rich
Is it possible that any society can absolutely escape structure? Whether it’s customs, religion, law, we’ll always find ourselves in the remnants of some convention
You don't need to "escape" the structure and order God created it's good for you.
without structure you will become an animal
@@1995yuda, good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
Incidentally, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@1995yuda There is no god
@@fantuswitt9063 Go dance in traffic
What is then your take on a computerized governmental/economic structure like with project cybersin? By using an unbiased agent to maintain our essential political structures, could we then prevent the uneven distribution of power and reach a higher status of equity/equality?
How would we manage to make the unbiased agent when we are biased ourselves?
@@Loregamorl perhaps biased wasn’t the right word, but I mean that AI/cybernetics is not corruptible in the way a person is. Some means of socialist/socialist-adjacent economic structure would have to be in place for a democratized cybernetic system to be established, but it would theoretically work on a system of self-perfection towards achieving certain agreeable principles (distributing resources fairly, responding to crises, managing labor, ect.) Humans wouldn’t be out of the picture, but the struggles of day-to-day corruption and conflict could be greatly negated. It is then the particle bias we implant into AI, one of equity and fairness, that would bring about a better society.
@@eliane9916 that makes more sense, I'll keep asking questions though.
This AI would surely have to be in some way conscious or sentient to do it's job though, right? If it's not, then what would be in place to prevent a "paperclip maximizer" thing? What would stop it from pursuing it's goals absolutely?
And if it is conscious/sentient, what's to stop it from changing it's mind/forming its own biases?
@@Loregamorl I don’t see why it would need to be sentient (if that’s even possible). In regards to ‘paperclip maximizer,’ certain artificial barriers or human overreach would be necessary. An example would be the creators of ChatGPT purposely coding out the racist biases the AI may have picked up from its data collection. And I really do recommend researching project Cybersin or the various cybernetic systems of corporations like Amazon or Walmart. They function more as loops that flow resources from their distributors to the needed areas based off demand (economic calculation problem poses some issues to a socialist model of this). When something breaks the loop, the problem is solved and readjusted to how the resources and information is allocated.
@@eliane9916 Thats interesting and its hard for me (I guess) to understand or believe we can use an AI to do those things. Worried for a sort of Dune future where machines are just used as "unbiased agents" by a bunch of folks in power. Its hard to put my faith in that sort of stuff I guess.
"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices."
J. Krishnamurti
order and chaos, structure and communitas, god mind and animal. We are both and must use both to fulfill our highest potential. The Logos to set goals, the anima to pursue them.
I am not really concerned about what any particular person BELIEVES. You may believe that there is an old man with a white beard perched in the clouds, that the Ultimate Reality is a young blackish-blue Indian guy, that the universe is eternal, that Mother Mary was a certifiable virgin or that gross physical matter is the foundation of existence.
The ONLY thing that really matters is your meta-ethics, not your meta-physics.
Do you consider any form of non-monarchical government (such as democracy or socialism) to be beneficial?
Do you unnecessarily destroy the lives of poor, innocent animals and gorge on their bloody carcasses?
Do you believe homosexuality and transvestism is moral?
Do you consider feminist ideology to be righteous?
If so, then you are objectively immoral and your so-called "enlightened/awakened" state is immaterial, since it does not benefit society in any way.
Essence, thoughts? Thank you for the video 👉👈 Rebirth of each season grows us. I hope.
Not only can/does the prophecy and prophet move institutionalized religion to renewal and reform, but also priests and kings can/are collaborating in Church renewal. It started with St. Francis in the 13th century and continues today.
Yeah, but... what does "structure" have to do with bureaucracy?
An interesting framework for sure, but I'm not necessarily sure if I agree with your dichotomy of progressive vs reactionary renewal. Many of those of the "prophet" archetype that you identify as the reactionary source of renewal would be better classified under your definition of "progressive" if their prophecies are taken into context. Some that come to mind are Abraham, who broke away from the structure of the Mesopotamian city state, founding a religion premised on the belovedness of man to God, rather than servitude to gods; Jesus who extended the belovedness of god to all humans rather than just a narrow range of Israelites; the Buddha, who asserted the novel and heterodox belief that escape from the cycle of samsara was a preferable action than merely the performance of one's dharma and Martin Luther, who denied the need for intermediaries to God's word, living or non-living. None of these prophecies had any established precedent in the traditions of their societies at the time, even as they may have drawn from past societies long since faded as a source of inspiration, as all revolutionaries do, progressive or reactionary
I love you man ❤
Monasticism may have been one of the earliest known forms of communitas in the West. In my estimation, it was largely successful due to the fact that the men and women who participated in it did so generally as a personal option, not as something externally imposed on them. This is what modern-day communism lacks.
How is refraining from unjustly harming animals a STATUS structure? 😬
@@SamBeck6090, kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
Very interesting! I hope it's possible to create a communitas world, as that is pretty much what I want the world to be like. It's concerning that it turns to structure again, though. Culture definitely needs to be revitalized, so we can find meaning in life!
St. Francis started the renewal of institutionalized religion. His work continues
Structure is meant to change, communitas is meant to be timeless. Society suffers from extra baggage, too much focus on that which is temporary and conditional; in this sense, the structure of society has defeated it's purpose. It has become overly complicated where it was supposed to be practical. There's too much concepts that aren't needed, to much terminologies that exists solely to make stuff sound more intellectual and new, endless categories, everything has a label, so much focus on identity... We need to start playing Tetrix with ideas, some blocks need to get put together and disintegrated
14:22 bro want a theocracy, based lmao 🤣
He doesn't want the separation of church and state, based
Idealism vs materialism is another manifestation too
Dualism and monism also
Idealism:
Metaphysical Idealism is the view that the objective, phenomenal world is the product of an IDEATION of the mind, whether that be the individual, discrete mind of a human subject, or else that of a Universal Conscious Mind (“Nirguna Brahman”, in Sanskrit).
The former variety of Idealism (that the external world is merely the product of an individual mind) seems to be a form of solipsism.
The latter kind of Idealism is far more plausible, yet it reduces the objective world to nothing but a figment in the “Mind of God”.
Thus, both these forms of Idealism can be used to justify all kinds of immoral behaviour, on the premise that life is just a sort of dream in the mind of an individual human or else in the consciousness of the Universal Mind (and of course, they rarely speak of how non-human animals fit into this metaphysical world-view, especially in the case of the former kind of Idealism, subjective Idealism).
Idealism (especially Monistic Idealism), is invariably the philosophical position proffered by neo-advaita teachers (see that Glossary entry), probably due to the promulgation of the teachings in the West of Indian (so-called) “gurus” such as Mr. Venkataraman Iyer.
This may explain why such (bogus) teachers use the terms “Consciousness” and/or “Awareness”, instead of the Vedantic Sanskrit word “Brahman”, since with “Brahman” there is ultimately no distinction between matter and spirit (i.e. the object-subject duality).
At the risk of sounding facetious, anyone can dress themselves in a white robe and go before a camera or a live audience and repeat the word “Consciousness” and “Awareness” ad-infinitum and it would seem indistinguishable from the so called “satsangs” (a Sanskrit term that refers to a guru preaching to a gathering of spiritual seekers) of those fools who belong to the cult of neo-advaita.
The metaphysical view postulated in my book, a form of neutral monism known as “decompositional dual-aspect monism” ('advaita', in Sanskrit), is a far more complete perspective than the immaterialism proposed by Idealism, and is the one realized and taught by the most enlightened sages throughout human history, especially in the most “SPIRITUAL” piece of land on earth, Bhārata. Cf. “monism”.
Both Idealists and naturalists (which includes materialists and physicalists) negate Absolute Reality, since both consciousness (at least the form of consciousness advocated by Idealists) and matter are RELATIVE. For instance, when a materialist, such as the typical professional physicist, states that the foundation of reality is some kind of particle/field/string, those things are always in relation to something other than those things (either another particle or field, even if that scientist advocates for the Unified Field), or else, are in relation to nothing. Similarly, those who believe in the metaphysical schema of Idealism, claim that some kind of mind (either a discrete mind such as a human mind, or else a certain form of Universal Consciousness) is fundamental, even though (like all concepts) mind is a relative notion - mind is in relation to matter.
Communitas reminds me of the wild men of dunlendings in lord of the rings which saruman takes advantage of using powerful emotions to do his bidding. Those who disagree with them see them as a threat and the cycle continues similar to the saying more things change they stay the same.
It's funny how people labeled "communitas" do everything in their power to stifle any semblance of community...
Free markets maximize freedom and well-being, but we need the institutional framework of protecting rights for markets to work.
Liberal-capitalist incentives uplift the lowest common denominators in all areas of life making exactly the type of situation we have today, you can claim "free markets maximize freedom" all you want but it doesn't change this elephant in the room.
@@shelbyspeaks3287 First of all, today's markets aren't free, they are over-regulated. In spite of that poverty has been decreasing. If we unfettered the markets, poverty would decrease faster.
@@InventiveHarvest have 100% free markets ever been tried?, and if so does the poverty *actually decrease* or does it balloon effect into other parts of the world?
@@shelbyspeaks3287 wages would go up, prices would go down, and excess profits would decrease. To fight this, the oligarchical corporations have their talking heads like John Oliver always pushing for more regulations.
@@InventiveHarvest Having less regulations will just have corporations steamroll citizens in whatever way they can. We need more, way more regulations to tame capitalism, to stop it from making people suffer. Look at the US as an example what having too few regulations can lead to. Then look at western European countries as an example what more regulations can do. I'm not sure how you do not see this, or maybe you are unaware how many Americans are suffering from unbridled capitalism.
Seems the craic is turning from laughter to wirship of the wokde🦁👸🦍
Learn English please
Imagine having all this convoluted intellectual bullshit running through your mind when you having a cup of tea with a friend or hiking out in a forest. 😵💫