A society will remain intact on the condition that the people within it cooperate. As Hayakawa defines on page sixty-eight, society is "a vast network of mutual agreements."
It is interesting to realize how much people accept this systematized network of agreements everyday of their lives. When driving, people must obey street signs and traffic lights. Consumers at supermarkets must pay for the items they want. At school, students are expected to follow the teachers' rules. Even at home, there is a fixed set of rules from the parents for the children to follow. If someone refuses to adhere to a rule or law, he will be punished.
A lawless society is a paradox because no society can exist without a network of mutual agreements. Imagine how chaotic life would be if people didn't have any rules to follow. Murders and other atrocities would be inordinately committed everyday. Businesses wouldn't exist because nobody would pay for their purchases. Children would have the choice of whether to attend school or not.
It's unfathomable how disorganized the world would be without laws and rules to follow.
-Chloe Martianou
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I agree, however, it's not only laws these "mutual agreements" consist of. Our whole language is a complex system of mutual agreements. Just as we go to driver's ed to learn the "rules of the road", we learn at kindergarten (or at home) the "rules of our language". Organized language such as this is needed and taken for granted in socitey. As disorganized the world would be without official laws like you are talking about, it would be impossible to survive without organized language, which is just another type of rule.
ReplyDelete-Audrey Kindsfather
Agreed. However, social agreements extend beyond just humans. Even in living things that we deem primitive to us, societies exist that are held together by mutual agreements. Bee hives have the queen bee, presumably the "leader", as well as countless workers who toil daily. Wolf packs have an alpha-wolf, and the other wolves submit to the dominance heirarchy. While none of these species have societies as complex as those of humanity, they are still very similar in structure.
ReplyDelete-Bryce Cody
Yes, Hayakawa does say we take lots of cooperation for granted; cooperation is the norm whereas strikes and disruption of cooperation is abnormal for us (Chapter 1, The Pooling of Knowledge).
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of what we learned in Euro today. Dr. B said feudalism was "a system of mutual agreements"; people were bound to each other, such as the serfs' agreements with the lord to gain protection and the lords' agreements with the serfs to gain labor.
And Audrey, what's interesting about your comment is that laws are just one manifestation of the mutual agreements that make up our language. The contracts back in the feudalism days are another instance. The language is essentially the one and only component of laws and contracts. Language is what writes the laws and contracts. Signatures (letters that make up names) make the contract official and binding. Words strung together compose the actual rules and obligations that make the law or contract what it is; the words are complex enough to be able to twist the contract in whatever way the owner wishes it. The fine print consisting of language at the bottom creates loopholes for whoever can understand the semantics of the language well enough. Language IS the one component of the agreements that make society run.