The Many-Splendored Society

The adjective "many-splendored " is used in this work to depict a society with personal freedom and a shining differentiation of six self-governing realms: economy, politics, science, art, religion, and morality. When these societal realms are joined together so that no one rules over the others we have, in my view, a good society.

The Many-Splendored Society deals with emerging categories and spontaneous tendencies in a social science based on properties of language. It is a multi-volume groundwork that might eventually bind in one volume, or one Kindle-type file, as elec-tronic reading devices become ubiquities on campuses.

Volume 1 is subtitled Surrounded by Symbols. Here we pursue man's symbolic environment, meeting the basic elements of human living with a minimum of references to other parts of man's biology than his language brain XE "brain:language" , i.e. the latest addition in the evolution to the total human brain. Our message is that human selves and their social life and culture depend on, nay, consist of, and/or are organized by the use of symbols generated by the language brain XE "language brain" \t "See brain, language" .

Symbols codify societal orders, represent wealth, summarize knowledge, embody beauty, define sacredness, and express virtues. We identify common abuses of language in the form of magic, confabulation, and defensive bilge. An enormous potential of personal freedom is built into this language that so deeply shapes our own lives and our own society. It contains an almost unlimited number of linguistic germs: any one of us can produce sentences that never have been heard before. Its fertile environment, of course, is one of freedom of speech.

Taking a telescopic view of total symbolic environments we find recurrent vibrations. We present three proven pulsating strings: tradition vs. modernity, faithfulness vs. instrumentality, and materialism vs. humanism. They are found in many, perhaps most, symbolic environments. Their vibrations have an unusual independence of their contexts of groups, networks, classes, and other social structures. In their various combinations they give us advice about the Zeitgeist that prevails in mankind's spaces and times. Taking a microscopic view of single symbols and sentences we find three recurrent usages: descriptions, evaluations, and prescriptions. We propose that they enter into the minimum vocabulary  XE "vocabularies:minimum" of social reality.

Surrounded by Symbols introduces two default states of human conditions: First we hold that the urge to preserve standing and to avoid degradation is more basic than the urge to improve. Second we claim that an emotive choice  is initially more typical than a rational choice. These threads of thought will prove essential in our further explorations.

In a second Volume, An Edifice of Symbols Draft, the use of symbols stripped of magic, confabulation, and defensive bilge, will provide us with a set of general categories and dimensions, all based on properties of language, for the study of social reality. The categories are only starting points. The tale of society is how they interlace into processes and systems, i.e. into mankind's social and cultural achievements. We look at structures of communication, rules and contracts, different stratifications and reward systems, diverse spontaneous orders, and several other social attributes. Most thinking about them comes from celebrated persons in the social sciences of past times, so in this presentation we pass many intellectual milestones raised by classical writers of social science, from Adam Smith to Max Weber. Following a lead from the latter that has been largely unused, we discover that all these attributes look different in different realms of social reality. That is, they are different in science, economy, polity, art, religion, and morality.

An Edifice of Symbols ends with a summary in the form of a special table of societal realms. A chemist might see this table as kindred to his field, for it has some properties of a Periodic System of the type discovered in chemistry in the nineteenth century. By knowing the place in this table of a phenomenon in social reality, we know a great deal of its characteristics. To us it means that a diversified, many-splendored society is everywhere within reach, an edifice raised by the use of bits and pieces of language.

In the third Volume, Fueled by Symbols, we turn from the use of constructing society by language to find out how we use language to inspire human beings to live in the home that language has built. We prompt ourselves by "justifying vocabularies" and we prompt others by "impelling vocabularies." These vocabularies of motives are short pieces of language with remarkable leverage. This use of symbols makes for civilized life, where conflicts are resolved, not by force, but by words, and violence is reduced to the minimum needed to defend civility.

We find that different justifications are used in all subdivisions of society that appear in our periodic system of societal realms. Impelling language shapes personalities by constructing vocabularies of identity. We look at some length at other impelling vocabularies that shape regulations and rights, avoidance of social exclusion, preserving a favorable self-image, and upholding the order that upholds us. The impelling and justifying vocabularies lock into each other in most interesting ways. One such way creates the human conscience. Another makes them work together like the left and right part of a zipper, making for a most reliable day-to-day motivation.

Such vocabularies, not Hobbes' strongmen of the state, give societies the motivations to flourish. Very few tasks of a modern state need overriding physical force for their executions. Instead the body politic needs impelling vocabularies, as do the other realms of civilized societies. To follow the temptation to use shortcuts of violence instead of diplomacy (i.e. language) to exercise ambitions and to solve routine conflicts have been political wisdom in past times. It is unfit as the highway to the future. We argue that those who still practice it are literally "uncivilized." They should, if they persist, be overpowered at the hands of the civilized side, which in this case — and this case alone — is justified to use a necessary measure of violence.

With Volume 4 in this series on The Many-Splendored Society we begin presenting details about advanced socio-linguistic areas of life, the societal realms. As mentioned, they are science, economy, polity, art, religion, and morality. Each is dominated by usage of some specific types of symbols, and thus depends entirely on language brains. In an animal kingdom without language they would not develop. Already in the first chapter of the first volume we saw the emergence of these societal realms and their roots in European history. Now we can go into details about their cardinal values, communication structures, different stratifications, specific reward systems, and their diverse spontaneous orders. A striking fact is that they have the potential of becoming comparatively autonomous parts of society, a collective home for individuals who have civic rights, academic freedom, free trade, artistic license, and freedoms of religion and of conscience. Our slogan "Six Realms Born Free and Equal," signals both a discovery and a bias: science, art, religion, and morality are as important in society as are today's favorites, economy and politics.

Volume 4 is entitled Knowledge and Beauty and deals with the social reality of science and art. The societal realm of science contains not only descriptive verbalism, it has openings to the mathematical brain; physical nature has a structure that can be expressed in mathematics. Social science, however, is based on a grammar XE "grammar" , i.e. on something found in language — but not necessarily in the old school grammars. Both physical and social sciences are dominated by descriptive discourses that help us understand the world.

The societal realm of art is concerned with aesthetic forms of revelations, appearances, and entries that are worthy of our contemplation. It also depends on descriptive symbolism, but on a different and more emotive kind that opens a door for people to stay in touch with deep expressions of beauty and also with experiences from pre-language stages and worlds.

Volume 5 is entitled Wealth and Sacredness and deals with the social reality of economy and religion; we have now come to Mammon and God. Economy with its focus on wealth uses mostly evaluative language; it is not the goods and services we have that constitutes our riches but the evaluation of them. We give particular attention to two pursuits of riches: manufacturing and finance.

Religion with its cardinal value of sacredness also uses mostly evaluative language but of a very different kind than the economy. The fact that language organizes identities and that all language-using beings are mortal has given rise to religions in which selves are turned into souls.

Order and Virtue is the title of Volume 6. It deals with the social reality of the body politic and morality. The body politic is focused on the exercise of power, using the tools of legislation and diplomatic treaties, usually phrased in the commanding speech of prescriptive discourse. A many-splendored society is a federation of societal realms. The key to ruling such a society is a ‘central zone’ where exponents of the six societal realms meet and interact. It is essential that access to the central zone is open to comers. 'Consent of the governed' takes on new qualities here.

The realm of morality also uses impelling imperatives but of a different kind than politics. In the past morality had a strong focus on how we should cope with biological spontaneities, such as sex and violence. In recent times a new moral focus has emerged in requiring mankind to live so that the physical environment is sustainable, and live so that the animal kingdom can survive. In a many-splendored society comes an additional new moral requirement of authenticity in the cardinal values of knowledge, beauty, wealth, sacredness, order, and virtue.

In dealing with grand realms two topics become interesting: how do they search for hegemony within their society, and how they seek a global reach. Now and then in the text we look at their infightings within a society: state vs. church, religion vs. science, morality vs. law, business vs. politics, et cetera. Furthermore, we discover that these realms are the main actors in the process of globalization that so preoccupies mankind at this juncture of history.

So far, the accounts of societal realms. What remains are the interpenetrations between the social world on the one hand and the biological and physical worlds on the other. Physicians, ecologists, engineers, and military officers use language-based skills to cope with bodily spontaneities, vagrancies of nature, technologies, and organized violence. In the seventh and final volume called Life and the Good Life we go a short distance beyond what is created by mankind's language capacity (that is almost "the good life" in Plato's sense) and pursue the impact of some more biologically based life areas. This is where needs for food and shelter and sleep give rise to mankind's tradition of living in households. Sex and reproduction give rise to the tradition of living in generational families. Here is also where biological age sets stages for lifecycles.

In all, in these seven short volumes we will tell a story — a social theory — of how man's use of language creates the framework for freedom in a many-splendored society. No au­thor, dead or alive, is a supreme lord over his or her own for­mulations. New generations make their formulations. As George Herbert Mead  said in Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1936, 116): "A different Caesar crosses the Rubicon not only with each author but with each generation." I have made several re­formulations of the classics of social science and humanities to fit into my schema, and in order to be more relevant to the contemporary state of knowledge. The classics are treated, not as monuments, but as stepping stones.

In presenting thoughts and evidence from other authors I have tried to cite or mention those who formulated them first or, at least at an early stage, and, at the same time, gave evidence that they fully understood their importance. Sometimes I underline the buildup from the past by mentioning the original year of publication in the Bibliography. You will find more old references in this text than in most others that profess to be up to date in the 21st century. I hope this practice will convince readers that there has been much accumulation of knowledge in the social sciences. I have not included the great number of other supporting statements and additional evidence from later dates than the original discovery.

With some ingenuity that at least sometimes goes beyond conventional wisdom, we may discover how our categories can build a set of testable and consistent propositions that give us an understanding of the past and a handle to cope with the future. Not that a future society can be forecasted, but that our options for the present and the future can be less myopically perceived.

The schema presented in these volumes is not the property of any particular academic discipline. In the latter half of my professional life I have worked mainly outside universities and their somewhat archaic division of disciplines. Without inhibi-tions I find it easy to draw on brain research, rhetoric, linguistics, semiotics, cultural studies, communications, journalism, public opinion research, demography, jurisprudence, political science, economics, business administration, market research, anthropology, history of ideas, as well as sociology, which was my field as a university professor. I hope that deans of liberal arts faculties will take notice: many of the different courses they offer in these fields have a common base; many overlap with one another. A great rationalization of students' study is possible if you can overcome the straightjacket of the historically given borders of university departments.

This text sums up my intellectual struggles searching for categories in a science of human society, and combining them into informative messages. I have thus expressed many of the ideas presented here before, and sometimes with the same formulations as here.

There are differences between ordinary language and the language of learning and scholarship; we specify a most important one in a distinction used by anthropologists between emic and epic accounts (discussed here). However as mentioned, our categories of social phenomena in this work are based on properties of language. This has opened the intriguing possibility to write advanced social science in a way that can be understood by most everyone!

A work of this kind can only be attempted by standing on the shoulders of giants. It is also essential to have good people help you up, and it is particularly important to have many others who in various projects help you not to fall off. - - - In an Appendix to Life and the Good Life I try to tell how it all happened, and to thank some colleagues and friends who have helped me.

Greta Frankel has translated fragments of text that I originally had formulated in Swedish but wanted to reuse here. She has also read the whole work, and has seen to it that parts from academic papers, newspaper columns, and lectures reappear here in a consistent style that can be understood also by non-specialists. What we present in these writings is science about social reality for a general public.

The Many-Splendored Society is dedicated to Karin Busch Zetterberg , partner in marriage and research.

Bromma and Strånäset in Sweden and Fuengirola in Spain in the years 2002-200?.