I realize there’s more pieces coming, and don’t mind just having this essay as a “here’s Duncan’s worldview laid out” without (yet) concretely arguing for a thing. But a thing I think would have helped me with this essay is “okay, why is it better to think of civility as a set of things-given-up rather than positive-things-to-do (or, other random ways I might have thought of civility?)”
I tried to address that within the essay a little bit with the last section, but the more true answer is “I think that’s just what’s actually going on.”
Like, sort of the thesis of the sequence is “this is what civilization is, in fact—it’s the voluntary relinquishment of technically available options.”
As I squinted at all sorts of instances of civilization, and people being what-felt-like more civilized versus more savage or lawless or whatever, it seemed to me that it was always the case that what was going on was people eschewing various weapons. As with any model, if you simplify things all the way down to one axis/one property, you’re going to be abstracting away some pretty important detail. But it feels much less false to me than it usually does, to say “this is what’s actually going on; this is the sole and sufficient explanation.”
Or, to look at it another way: every escalation of civility comes, concretely, from the shelving of some particular weapon. Future essays will talk a lot about that, but when two people or two groups or whatever go from relatively-less-civilized to relatively-more-civilized, it is via the relinquishment of an option they were previously exercising (or at least retaining the right to exercise).
What about something like having a tax whose revenue is used for supporting people with a serious enough disability that they need someone help take care of them?
“People voluntarily relinquishing their option to keep all of their money” is certainly a part of it, but “people actively doing a very specific thing” does also seem like an important part of it. (And it’s also something that seems to increase the available options for the people who do have a serious enough disability.)
The more I think about it, the more the “for supporting people with a serious enough disability” doesn’t feel like “civilization” to me. It does feel good, and I like the use of an abundance of resources being spent that way, but it feels to me like “everyone relinquishes power so that it can be used in a coordinated way” is civilization and “the coordinated use of power is for good things rather than for bad things” is moral progress. Not sure if I’m just trying to fit things into the OP frame but it doesn’t feel like it.
It feels like American people are more civilized when they create a military, but nations are less civilized when they all have militaries which are doing things to each other?
I realize there’s more pieces coming, and don’t mind just having this essay as a “here’s Duncan’s worldview laid out” without (yet) concretely arguing for a thing. But a thing I think would have helped me with this essay is “okay, why is it better to think of civility as a set of things-given-up rather than positive-things-to-do (or, other random ways I might have thought of civility?)”
I tried to address that within the essay a little bit with the last section, but the more true answer is “I think that’s just what’s actually going on.”
Like, sort of the thesis of the sequence is “this is what civilization is, in fact—it’s the voluntary relinquishment of technically available options.”
As I squinted at all sorts of instances of civilization, and people being what-felt-like more civilized versus more savage or lawless or whatever, it seemed to me that it was always the case that what was going on was people eschewing various weapons. As with any model, if you simplify things all the way down to one axis/one property, you’re going to be abstracting away some pretty important detail. But it feels much less false to me than it usually does, to say “this is what’s actually going on; this is the sole and sufficient explanation.”
Or, to look at it another way: every escalation of civility comes, concretely, from the shelving of some particular weapon. Future essays will talk a lot about that, but when two people or two groups or whatever go from relatively-less-civilized to relatively-more-civilized, it is via the relinquishment of an option they were previously exercising (or at least retaining the right to exercise).
What about something like having a tax whose revenue is used for supporting people with a serious enough disability that they need someone help take care of them?
“People voluntarily relinquishing their option to keep all of their money” is certainly a part of it, but “people actively doing a very specific thing” does also seem like an important part of it. (And it’s also something that seems to increase the available options for the people who do have a serious enough disability.)
The more I think about it, the more the “for supporting people with a serious enough disability” doesn’t feel like “civilization” to me. It does feel good, and I like the use of an abundance of resources being spent that way, but it feels to me like “everyone relinquishes power so that it can be used in a coordinated way” is civilization and “the coordinated use of power is for good things rather than for bad things” is moral progress. Not sure if I’m just trying to fit things into the OP frame but it doesn’t feel like it.
It feels like American people are more civilized when they create a military, but nations are less civilized when they all have militaries which are doing things to each other?