Volume 3
The Many-Splendored Society:
Fueled by Symbols
Also by Hans L Zetterberg
On Theory and Verification
in Sociology
Social Theory and Social Practice
Arbete, livsstil och motivation
Museums and Adult Education
Sexual Life in Sweden
Det osynliga kontraktet
(with Karin Busch and others)
Sociologins följeslagare
Sociological Endeavor. Selected Writings.
(edited by Richard Swedberg and Emil
Uddhammar)
Vårt land — den svenska socialstaten
(with Carl Johan Ljungberg)
Etik och demokratisk statskonst
Published
and planned volumes of
“The Many-Splendored Society”
Surrounded by Symbols, pp 1-171, September 2009
An Edifice of Symbols, pp 173-412, February 2010,
Fueled by Symbols, pp 413-599, July 2010, the present
book
Knowledge and Beauty
Wealth and Sacredness
Order and Virtue
Life and the Good Life
For progress and updates
see the author’s web www.zetterberg.org
Volume 3
The Many-Splendored Society:
Fueled
by Symbols
Volume
3.
The Many-Splendored Society:
Fueled
by Symbols
Copyright © 2010 Hans L Zetterberg.
All
rights reserved.
First edition 2010
Printed
in the United States of America.
ISBN
/ EAN13:
1453624813 / 9781453624814
Illustrations by Martin Ander
This edition is printed on demand by
CreateSpace, Scotts Valley, CA.
TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u CONTENTS with
links to this web page
Preface to and Abstract of The Many-Splendored
Society
Introduction: Fuel it with Words 413
A Vision 413
Motives 415
The Text Ahead 418
11. Vocabularies of Justification 420
Words versus Weapons in Ancient Athens 420
Conversions 428
The Scope of Justifications 431
Justifications in Societal Realms by Their Cardinal
Values 436
Cardinal Values as Motives 436
Going Astray with European Thoughts on the
Degeneration of Values 438
Justification by Cardinal Values 441
Some Detours of the Presently Domineering Societal
Realms 451
Awareness of What is Missing 454
12. Ideological and Universal
Justifications 456
Justifications in Communication Structures 456
Organizational Justifications 456
Justifications and Ideologies by Makers, Keepers,
Brokers, and Takers 454
Individualism: A Justifying Ideology of Makers 467
Meritocracy: A Justifying Ideology of Keepers 468
Universalism: A Justifying Ideology of Brokers 469
Egalitarianism: A Justifying Ideology of Takers 469
The Rise of the Takers and the Predominance of their
Justifications 472
Ideologically Motivated Collaboration and Contention 473
Universal Social Justifications 475
Justified by Freedom of Speech 476
Justified by Human Dignity 477
Priority among Two Universal Social Justifications 479
Societal Creeds 480
13. Compelling Vocabularies of
Likes and Dislikes 490
Compelling Vocabularies of Ageism [BIO] 492
Compelling Vocabularies of Racism [BIO] 494
Compelling Vocabularies of Sexism [BIO] 496
The Multitude of Like-Dislikes 498
Compelling Vocabularies of Inclusion and Exclusion 500
Inclusion 501
Exclusion 502
Emotive Choice of In-group and Out-group 503
Rational Choice of In-group and Out-group 506
Social Designs Coping with Dislike and Exclusion 514
Compelling Vocabularies of Ethnicity 516
Ethnicity and Immigration in the United States 518
Ethnicity and Immigration in Europe 520
14. Compelling Vocabularies of
Self-Images 523
Individual Identities: Self-Images 523
Collective Identities. Images of Us and Others 524
Self-Reliance 527
Multiple Selves 528
The I [BIO] 530
Conversations with the Self 531
Enter Designs 543
Enter Visibility 544
15. Compelling Vocabularies
with Scales of Evaluation 546
Deconstructing Social Evaluations 547
Anomie 551
Rank and Realm Equilibration 560
16. Compelling Vocabularies
Supporting Order 564
Convergence 566
Circular Emotive Actions [BIO] 571
Reinforcing Encounters by Circular Reactions 574
Compliance 576
The Defense of Encounters: Punishment 580
Vocabularies Coping with Degrading 581
Accumulation of Negative Self-appreciation 583
Excuse 584
Ostracism 585
Victimization and Redemption 586
Destructive Use of Language 593
Bullying in Socially Small Worlds 593
Bullying in Socially Big Social Worlds 595
Ostracism of the Middle Way 597
An Etic Conception of Compelling Vocabularies:
Totems and Deities 599
17. Justifying and Compelling
Vocabularies Writ Large: Conscience and Non-Violence 601
Combining Justifying and Compelling Vocabularies 601
Civilization: Compelling Vocabularies instead of
Violence 607
An Axis of Pre-language and Language Brains [TECH] 611
Caution about the Designation "Civilized" 613
The Zipped Vocabularies of a New Leviathan 615
Propositions in Volume 3. Fuelled by Symbols
Figures in Volume 3. Fueled by Symbols
Index to Volume 3. Fueled by Symbols
Preface to and Abstract of The Many-Splendored Society
Version dated June 2010 at the Completion of Volume 3
In this work, the adjective
"many-splendored" describes a society with personal freedom and a
sparkling differentiation of six self-governing realms: economy, politics,
science, art, religion, and morality. When these "societal realms"
are integrated, so that no one realm rules over any of 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 the properties of language. This is a multi-volume reference work. The
seven volumes are printed on demand and self-published. They could possibly be
bound into one volume, and/or in one Kindle-type file.
Volume 1, subtitled Surrounded
by Symbols (2009), pursues man's symbolic environment, addressing the basic
elements of human living with a minimum of references to those aspects of man's
biology other than his language brain, 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.
Symbols codify societal
orders, represent wealth, summarize knowledge, embody beauty, define
sacredness, and express virtues. In this Volume, we identify common abuses of
language in the form of magic, confabulation, and defensive bilge. An enormous
potential of personal freedom is built into a language and this freedom deeply
shapes our own lives, and our own society. This personal language contains an
almost unlimited number of linguistic germs: any one of us can produce sentences
that no one has ever heard of before. Its fertile environment, of course, is
freedom of speech. Language gives mankind a wide crack in an otherwise
deterministic universe. [p viii]
Taking a telescopic view of
all symbolic environments, we find recurrent vibrations. We present three
proven pulsating strings: tradition vs. modernity, faithfulness vs.
instrumentality, and materialism vs. humanism. You find these strings in many,
perhaps most, symbolic environments. Their vibrations have an unusual independence
in the context of groups, networks, classes, and other social structures. In
their various combinations, the strings provide advice about the Zeitgeist
prevailing 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 these usages enter into the
minimum vocabulary of social reality.
Surrounded by Symbols introduces two default states of
human condition: 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.
Volume 2, An Edifice of
Symbols (2010), is a taxonomy of the social
reality created by language. 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 the
manner in which these categories interlace into processes and systems, i.e.
into humanity’s social and cultural achievements. Most worthwhile thinking
about this 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.
We look at the place of
statutes and contracts in human affairs and the spirit they produce in
societies where they are allowed to dominate. We pause to consider universal
human rights. We look at the main structures of communication i.e.,
organizations, networks, and mass media. We pay special attention to mass
media, one of the “demons” that run modern lives. [p ix]
One of the simplest
divisions of human living separates folk life from city life, or Gemeinschaft
from Gesellschaft, two German expressions used by Ferdinand Tönnies over
100 years ago. In time, these terms have become household words also among
English-speaking social scientists. Again and again the social scientists have
added to their meanings. We present Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as master
clusters of social life that help us understand contentions behind many civil
wars and social movements.
Following a lead from Max
Weber that has been largely unused, we discover that stratifications and reward
systems, diverse spontaneous orders, and several other social attributes are
different in different realms of social reality. That is, they vary in science,
economy, polity, art, religion, and morality, the constituent parts of a
many-splendored society.
An Edifice of Symbols ends with a summary in the form of
a table depicting societal realms. A chemist might see this table as kindred to
his or her field, for it has some properties of a Periodic System of the
type developed in chemistry in the Nineteenth Century. By mapping the position
in this table of a given phenomenon in social reality, we can identify many of
its characteristics. This means that a diversified, many-splendored society is
everywhere within reach, an edifice raised by the use of bits and pieces of language.
We can look up and see more than the drab worlds of economy and politics that
happen to dominate in contemporary times.
Let us use larger print to
tell about the third Volume, Fueled by Symbols, the
one the one that holds the file you read. We turn from the use of constructing
society by language to examining how we use language to inspire human beings to
live in the home built by language. We prompt ourselves by "justifying
vocabularies" and we prompt others by "impelling vocabularies."
These motivating vocabularies are comprised of short pieces of language with
remarkable leverage. This use of symbols makes for a civilized life, where
conflicts are resolved, not by force, but by words, and [p x] where violence is reduced to the
minimum needed to defend civility.
We find that different
justifications are in use in all subdivisions of society appearing in our
periodic system of societal realms. Six justifying vocabularies are unique to
each of the societal realms of science, art, economy, religion, polity, and
morality. Four justifying vocabularies are ideologies in free societies:
individualism, meritocracy, universalism, and egalitarianism.
Compelling language,
amongst other things, shapes personalities by constructing vocabularies of
identity. We look at some length at other impelling vocabularies
shaping social inclusion and exclusion, preserving a favorable
self-image, and maintaining the order that upholds us. The impelling and
justifying vocabularies lock into each other in very interesting ways. One
such link creates the human conscience. Another makes the vocabularies work
together like the left and right part of a zipper, resulting in a most reliable
day-to-day human motivation.
Such vocabularies, not
Hobbes 'strongmen of the state, give societies the motivation to flourish. Very
few tasks to be undertaken by a modern state need overriding physical force for
their execution. 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 has been political wisdom in past
times. This is unfit as the highway to the future. We argue that those who
still practice this approach are literally "uncivilized." Likewise,
it is uncivilized to use language to incite violence (“hate speech”), to
convert imprisoned enemies by words (“brain washing”), and use words to erode
the selves of others in daily life (“bullying”). Such practices should, if they
persist, be overpowered at the [p xi] hands of the civilized parties,
where in this case — and in this case alone — it is justified to use a
necessary measure of police and military violence.
The end of Volume 3 is a
watershed in this treatise on the many-splendored society. At this point both
the writer (certainly) and the reader (probably) can draw a sigh of relief. Our
analytical effort has come to an end. Numerous interconnected definitions and a
good number of propositions, a total of 64 to be exact, telling how social
reality is created and how it works are now under our belt. Time has come to
look at some of the lovely wholes that they make possible.
With Volume 4 to 6 in this
series we begin by presenting details concerning advanced societal realms. As
mentioned, they are science, economy, polity, art, religion, and morality. Each
societal realm is dominated by certain specific types of symbols and, thus,
depends entirely on language brains. In an animal kingdom without language
these areas would not develop.
Already in the first
chapter of the first volume, we identified the emergence of these societal
realms and their roots in European history. Now we go into detail regarding
their cardinal values, communication structures, different stratifications,
specific reward systems, and their diverse spontaneous orders. A striking fact
is that these areas 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 will deal 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, i.e.
on something [p xii] 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. Science is a rational pursuit,
but scientists are human beings who work under the same language-dependent
conditions as other human beings.
The societal realm of art
is concerned with what Germans call Erscheinung,i.e. 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 expressions revealing the unseen of
beauty, and of experiences from pre-language stages and worlds.
Volume 5 is entitled Wealth
and Sacredness and will deal with the social reality of economy and
religion, the stirring forces of Mammon and God. Economy, with its focus
on wealth, uses mostly evaluative language; it is not the goods and services we
have that constitute our riches, but their evaluation. We give particular
attention to two rather different pursuits of riches: manufacturing and
finance.
Religion, with its cardinal
value of sacredness, also uses mostly evaluative language but language of a
very different kind than the language of 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 all 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 [p xiii] 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 there is an additional new, moral requirement of
authenticity in the cardinal values of knowledge, beauty, wealth, sacredness,
order, and virtue.
In dealing with these six
grand societal realms, two topics become interesting: how do they search for
hegemony within their society, and how do they seek a global reach. Now and
then, in the text we look at 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 which so preoccupies mankind at this juncture of history.
So far, the grand story 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 progress a short distance beyond that which is created by
mankind's language capacity (that is beyond "the good life" in Plato's
sense) and pursue the impact of certain more biologically based life areas.
This is where the requirements of 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. It is also here where
biological age sets the stage for lifecycles.
Together 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. Each
of these seven volumes is planned so that it can be read on its own, and it has
its own pagination. Each volume is also an installment to a larger work about
the theory and practice of a many-splendored society. As such it has a second
continuous pagination and numbering of chapters throughout the seven volumes. [p xiv]
No author, dead or alive,
is a supreme lord over his or her own formulations in such stories. New
generations create their own formulations. As George
Herbert Mead (1936, p 116) said: "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 refer to those
authors who first formulated these principles or, at least who formulated them
at an early stage, and, at the same time, provided evidence that they
understood their importance. At times, I underline the buildup from the past by
mentioning the original year of publication in the Bibliography. You will find
a greater number of older references in this text than in the majority of texts
professing to be up to date in the Twenty-first Century. I hope this practice
will convince readers that there has been a great deal of accumulation of
knowledge in the social sciences. I have not included the great number of other
supporting statements and additional evidence from dates subsequent to the
original discovery.
With some degree of
ingenuity that, at least, sometimes goes beyond conventional wisdom, we may
discover how these categories can establish a set of testable and consistent
propositions that provide us with 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 inhibitions I find
it easy to draw on a many-splendored collection of accumulated knowledge:
anthropology, brain research, business administration, communications, cultural
studies, demography, human geography, economics, gender science, hermeneutics,
history and history of ideas, journalism, jurisprudence, [p
xv]
linguistics, market research, political science, public opinion research,
rhetoric, semiotics, 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 courses they offer in these fields have a common base; many overlap with
one another in applications. A great rationalization of students' study is
possible if you can overcome the straight-jacket of the historically given
borders of university departments and paths of academic careers. 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 in earlier contexts, and sometimes with the
same formulations.
There are differences
between ordinary language and the language of learning and scholarship; we
specify a most important difference in a distinction applied by anthropologists
between emic and epic accounts (discussed on pages 136-138 in Volume 1 of The
Many-Splendored Society: Surrounded by Symbols). 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 most everyone can understand!
While the professional language about social reality can be made compatible with ordinary language about social reality, the layout of a page in a book on social science can differ significantly from a page in a diary, biography, or history book. Readers of The Many-Splendored Society are asked to cope with three such differences.
First, in this text there are a number of tables that do not contain numbers, but are comprised of words. These tables specify classifications, a backbone of theory in all sciences [1]. To construct a straightforward sentence from a cell in our table of words, you must first read the column heads and, then, the row headings, and finally and last, you must pay attention to what is written in the cell. Most people do the reverse, and find it difficult to understand the message of a given cell. Pages 38-39 in Volume 1 included an illustration of how to read our “tables of words.”
[1]A so called postmodern approach has tried to totally dispense with stable classifications in the social sciences. This can be done by writing in Saussarian symbols, ever changing symbols referring only to other changing symbols. However, there is in any language, and also in scholarly terminology, what we call Meadian symbols, described on pages 55-59 first Volume). We ap-[p xvi] peal on page 95 to a generous use of the latter to achieve more stability in our thinking about social reality.
A more advanced means of
structuring classifications is the so-called “semiotic square,” a diagram
introduced on pages 61-63 in Volume 1. Those who find such diagrams
incomprehensible can simply read on in the text to find the intended
categories. The semiotic square is usually seen to be more of a device for the
author of a schema of classification than for the reader of that
classification. An example is found on pages 249-250 in Volume 2.
Second, unlike a text of a
novel or a detective story in which the reader is challenged to keep track of
previously presented characters and intrigues, our text contains numerous
explicit cross-references, i.e. points referring to previous sections or
sentences. Such is the nature of theorizing, even postmodern. In our thinking,
layers of details, starting with grounded fundamentals, are built up on top of
one another. Or, an overall system is presented that is built on subsystems
that cannot function without one another. Such undertakings require numerous
cross-references in the text. All cross-references refer to the continuous
numbering of pages and chapters, mentioned above. The many admittedly tedious
references in footnotes or running text can be ignored by readers who are
uninterested in nitty-gritty congruence of theoretical arguments.
Third, some particularly
informative sentences in our text are elevated to be numbered and named
Propositions, also re-listed in an Appendix at the end of each volume. These
sentences state some grounded probabilities about social reality, sometimes
supported by historical records or records systematically collected by
researchers, [p xvii]
sometimes simply convincingly declared by famous social scientists.
Other considerations and conclusions solely based on such Propositions also
carry some credibility, albeit attenuated, and some such reasoned hypotheses
are occasionally included among our Propositions.
The Propositions summarize
something of what I believe belongs to what we at present actually know
from a scholarly study of society. Our Propositions about social reality are
not the same as laws of natural science. The latter are immutable, and
calculations and forecasts based on them command credibility. Our Propositions
can be negated by social designs employed by rulers and free people – but only
at a cost and with human effort. We introduce the nature of our numbered and
named Propositions on pages 47-49, and the freedom to rule over them on pages
154-155 in Volume 1. Needless to say, in the vast amount of past, contemporary
and future literature of social science there are other schemas of
classification and other propositions, many containing different content and
better wording than the ones applied herein.
The Many-Splendored
Society is written
for a general public used to serious reading, and for college and university
students and their teachers in a social science. These seven short volumes
offers my pick of a chock full of nuts in the form of exciting discoveries
about social reality, and at the same time, the text is meant to give
professional social scientists a framework which is larger than their own
specialty.
I will not and cannot hide
the fact that I like the vision of a many-splendored society. However, my focus
in these pages is not to convey personal preferences, but to give a broad-sided
picture both of social reality and of social science.
A work of this kind can
only be attempted by standing on the shoulders of giants, as a saying goes. It is
also essential to have good people to give you a lift up, and it is
particularly important to have many others who in various projects help you to
avoid falling off. Not here, but in an Afterword to the last volume of The
Many-Splendored Society: Life and the Good Life I attempt to tell
how it all happened, and[p
xviii]
to collect thank-you notes to colleagues and friends who have helped me.
The late Greta Frankel
translated fragments of text that I originally had formulated in Swedish, but
wanted to reuse here. She saw to it that excerpts from academic papers,
newspaper columns, and lectures reappeared in a consistent style so that also
non-specialists can understand
The Many-Splendored Society
is dedicated to Karin Busch Zetterberg, partner in marriage and research, and
my first reader.
Bromma and Strånäset in Sweden and Fuengirola
in Spain in the years 2002-2010.
Hans L Zetterberg
The above Preface, which
also serves as an abstract, will be extended as this multi-volume work is
completed. Seven books are planned, of which this is the third. The text of
this preface is updated when new volumes of The Many-Splendored Society are
concluded. [p xix]
Our Typographical Border
Signs of Social Reality
The Many-Splendored Society
includes some warning signs when the text drifts off its central topic of
language-based social reality.
[BIO] This book does not focus on
biological spontaneities and processes, but when needed to understand social
reality we bring them in. When we touch the biological base in a more decisive
way, we will flag the occasions by a special sign, [BIO], in the margin of the text or after a heading.