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Night Stalker, you have touched on a debate at the very heart of social theory. If you take a basic sociology course in most colleges, you'll soon find that the two main social model theories are:
Marx: Conflict Theory. Society is always about struggle, conflict, and competition among humans - not just for resources, but also for status and control.
Durkheim: "Organic" theory. I'm using this "organic" term because I can't remember the trendy buzz words for his theory. But, Durkheim postulated that in a society people start to specialize in tasks and work together. It's a cooperative theory of the state of nature. Like cells in the body specializing into different organs, individual people and groups of people specialize according to labor/profession and allow us to accomplish more as a whole. This is basic to all of Durkheim's later works, wherein he explored his notion that absolutely every human behavior could be explained through sociology.
Anyway, what I'm saying is you have begun a debate as old as time. Are we, by nature, Appollonian or Dionysian, being more like Spartans or Athenians [gives appropriate nod the the apparition of Nietszche standing in the room].
Are we beyond good and evil?
[ 01-17-2003, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]
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