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The Society

Many months passed before Diotima was willing to speak to me about the Watatu view of society. Instead, she instructed me to continue my study of the individual. This advice had merit, but I was impatient to learn the secret behind the seeming harmony of the islanders. Diotima’s continued silence on the matter seemed mysterious, and (in my darker imaginings) even sinister. The true reason for this silence, of course, was quite different than I could have pictured.

Diotima had once told me that understanding the individual is the same as understanding the society, and I had taken it as a empty platitude. To the Watatu, however, this is a literal truth. Their conceptions of the individual and the group are very close. Both are seen as living entities, formed by the interaction between three forces (which are themselves closely analogous). Because of this, the individual and the group reflect each other in a surprising fashion2.

1. The Three Forces

   The expressive force, unitive force, and stative force, in their original forms, are still very influential at the group level, creating energy, forging bonds, and providing continuity. They each have a larger duplicate, however, which operates in a similar, but distinctly different manner.
   
   The analog of the expressive force is the outward force, which increases diversity within the bounds of the group, and creates relationships with alien elements outside the group. This force is often created by the action of individuals who enjoy novelty, or who have an excess of expressive force. The analog of the unitive force is the inward force, which enforces norms, rejects outsiders, and brings aberrant elements into conformity. This force is generally created by the actions of large or influential subgroups which promote or enforce unity. The analog of the stative force is the conservative3 force, which promotes stability and preserves the status quo. Like its analog, the conservative force is formed largely by stable elements, which can include physical boundaries, complex social structures (such as the government) and shared cultural values and rituals. Because society is dependent on relationships, all three social forces rely on the presence of the unitive force.

2. The Unbalanced Society

   “The most pressing danger to Watatu,” said Diotima, “is threat of losing the outward force, due to our isolation. We can compensate partially with internal diversity, but there may yet come a time when this proves ineffective.”
   
   “An even greater disaster,” she continued, “would be losing the conservative force, since it bridges between the outward and the inward forces. When linked together, those forces create a dynamic tension, which makes the society flexible, welcoming of outsiders, and willing to adjust to diverse circumstances. When their bond is broken, they pull apart, tearing the social fabric, and creating catastrophic results.”
   
   In a balanced society, all three forces are strong. A strong conservative force is created by the stable common bonds between the members of the society. This allows for a strong outward force, because the populace feels secure about coming into contact with strange people and new ideas. This, in turn, is balanced by a strong inward force, which incorporates the newcomers into the existing structures.
   
   If the conservative force is absent, the other forces fail to work together. Instead, the inward force creates small pockets of increasingly homogeneous, single-minded and xenophobic traditionalists. Like melting pieces of ice, these inward groups become ever smaller, as they exclude and expel more members. At the same time, the outward force creates a cloud of unassociated, dispersed and disaffected individualists, who have no stable identity, and are consequently amoral. The eventual fate of such a society is to become more and more dissolute, until its (former) members either destroy each other, or are absorbed by stronger groupings.

3. The Noble Society

   “A balanced society is not necessarily a good society,” said Diotima. “Nor is an unbalanced society always a bad one. A balanced society is more stable and efficient, and has a better chance of survival. But a good society must have good morals.”
   
   “I was surprised you didn’t speak more about morals,” I said, “when we discussed the individual.”
   
   “It is true that there are morals which have some or most of their effect on the individual,” said Diotima. “Truth-telling, for example, is an aid to expression, and hygiene (which we regard as a moral obligation) is beneficial for health. However, we generally discuss morals in relationship to a group.”
   
   ”“How odd,” I remarked. “You speak of morals as if they served some function. I tend to see it quite differently.”
   
   “Morals are extremely functional,” said Diotima. “The problem with your society is that it expects morals to be of immediate, personal benefit.”
   
   “When I was in school,” I countered, “I once debated against a classmate who believed in a philosophy called ‘utilitarianism,’ the main tenet of which was that morals should be functional. He was perfectly willing to call anything moral if it contributed to the sum total of human happiness, as a whole.
   
   “I demolished his argument with the following three points: One, that it was impossible to tell what would lead to long-term happiness. In the short term, I might consider myself justified in murdering an evil person who had made a great deal of other people unhappy. However, I could not be sure whether that evil person might not otherwise reform and make more people happy than he had previously made unhappy.
   
   “Two, given the right circumstances, practically any action can be justified under this system. In addition to the aforementioned assassination, one could justify genocide (Hitler did), infanticide (there are cultures that practice it) and many other atrocities.
   
   “My third argument was that happiness is not necessarily the best end to pursue. A society where ninety percent of the population existed in a constant drug-induced stupor is not a society I would choose to live in, no matter how happy it might be.
   
   “Needless to say, my opponent had no reply. I concluded with the assertion that morals should be pursued for their own sake, without regards to result or function, and received a rousing round of applause from the audience.”
   
   Diotima regarded me severely.
   
   “I have changed my opinion,” she said. “The problem with your society is that it looks at morals as things that are dead.”
   
   “We,” she continued, “tend to think of morals and virtues as living entities not unlike spirits. They live in our hearts and minds, and survive through our belief and allegiance.”
   
   “That reminds me of a book I once read,4” I interrupted. “In which the author claimed that all ideas and concepts are pseudo-organisms that survive through parasitic infection of people’s minds. If I recall correctly, however, those creatures tended to be on the nasty side.”
   
   Diotima gave me a look that suggested little patience for my interruptions.
   
   “Obviously, the spirits of the heart-mind can be positive or negative,” she said. “That is why we are very careful about which ideals we feed and protect.”
   
   “Values can be very strong carriers of the stative force, which lends stability, and the unitive force, which brings us closer together,” she continued. “So we honor some of them for that reason and that reason only. But there are other values which do much more.”
   
   “For example, we have a value of being very hospitable to guests. Because we all share it, it brings us closer together, and makes our community stronger. If only one person had that value it would mean little. But if he or she nurtured the value and kept it alive, it could some day grow to shelter us all.
   
   “Most of the values that we honor support the health of our society, in the same way that the value of hygiene supports the health of an individual. There are also other kinds of values. Courage is a value that supports other virtues, by making people more willing to take risks for worthy causes.
   
   “When we find a value that supports humanity as a whole, we honor it above all others. Many of us would happily die to support such a value, because we know that its success could help humanity survive, long after our own society is a forgotten memory.
   
   “The problem with your friend’s point of view is that he thinks values are things that can be chopped apart, and used in pieces when convenient, not living things that must be nurtured. The result could only be a world filled with the dead corpses of morality.”
   
   Abruptly, Diotima asked an unexpected question.
   
   “What use,” she said, “would you call a value that is preached, but not practiced?”
   
   “I call that hypocrisy,” I said. “And consider it of no value whatsoever.”
   
   “And yet,” Diotima replied, “sometimes hypocrisy is the only way to keep a value alive in adverse conditions. However, it does so at the price of weakening all other values. Furthermore, it blunts the effectiveness of values, and makes it difficult to tell the good ones from the bad.
   
   “Here, we consider hypocrisy to be among the worst spirits of the heart-mind, and avoid it like a plague. Yet, if we were wholly without hypocrisy, our values would be doomed to die the first time they were ever violated.”
   
   “Ideally,” she continued. “Values will never need to be violated, and hypocrisy can be kept to a minimum. This can only happen, however, if a society chooses values wisely. They must match well with the society itself, with the individuals within it, and with the larger concerns of humanity.”
   
   “The problem with your point of view,” she added pointedly, “is that it has no means to distinguish between good values and poor ones. Furthermore, you seem to expect praise every time you follow a value, no matter how inappropriate that value may be.”
   
   “Not exactly,” I objected weakly.
   
   “Your country,” said Diotima, “is wealthy and powerful. If it nurtured better values, there would be very little hunger and poverty left in this world. Nor would the ocean around Watatu be polluted with your waste.”
   
   This sudden finger-pointing aroused my patriotic ire, but Diotima paid no attention to my protests.
   
   “If you want to create the noble society,” she concluded, “you must always keep the best interests of humanity at heart. Then your society becomes home to virtues such as courage, kindness, inclusiveness and fellow-feeling. It is the best possible place to live because it ennobles the individual work and striving of its members, and places them in a context that elevates humanity as a whole. If such a society should perish, its members would know that they have provided, at the very least, a resting place in their hearts and minds for virtues, which are the best and truest friends of the human spirit itself.”

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