Towards a definition of society

by John Mackay 900 words

In a 1987 interview for Woman's Own, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher ↗ is quoted as saying:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people [...] are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! (Thatcher, M. 1987)

And she was correct if for no other reason than the suffix -ety means ‘condition’. So yes, society is not a ‘thing’ but rather the condition of a thing. And that thing is ‘sharing’ because that's what soci literally means: ‘sharing’. Hence society, is literally the ‘condition [of] sharing’.

Thus Margaret Thatcher appears to lament that ‘too many children and people’ were failing in their individual responsibility of contributing to the ‘sharing condition’ and thus failing to manifest society. And whilst we both share this view we differ in so much as I see this failure not so much in terms of individuals but the system itself which dictates much of the behaviour of individuals.

But before we look at tackling the systemic failures of society we first need to finalise our understanding of what society is and more specifically what does sharing mean?

Alloting, and giving, like sharing, are acts denoting distribution, so does this mean allotment is sharing? As forms of distribution, each denotes transfer of possession from one to another. Unlike, the lossy distribution of alloting and giving however, sharing is functionally defined by mutuality and thus conveys a sense of lossless distribution. Think about it. If you give me a fish, you don't have it anymore—yes? If you allot me a portion of a fish you lose that portion. Giving and alloting are acts of lossy distribution because you lose something in doing so. In other words both involve losing some or all possession.

Sharing on the other hand, is ‘action to make mutual’ and thus to distribute losslessly. Being lossless is what differentiates sharing from dividing, giving or portioning. In sharing, what you share with me is not lost to you. The point here is that physical matter cannot be shared. For instance, you and I cannot share (mutually) the same crumbs of bread—because physics. Both allotting and giving are to the material realm as sharing is to the immaterial.

The novelist Anne Ritchie ↗ illustrates this perfectly in her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond ↗ wherein the character Jo states:

M. Caron should be here, [...] What is it he was saying in the studio last night, that an equal subdivision of material was an absurdity—that all gifts should be spiritual [...] and capable of infinite division? (Ritchie, A. 1885)

Here, the author, through the character, informs us that the subdivision of material things is finite but that the subdivision of the immaterial is infinite. Genius, thy name is woman.

In the next paragraph, Anne expands on the construct of sharing by introducing the reader to the parable of the fish (often missattributed to Confucius) where the character Jo reflects:

I suppose the Patron meant that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn. (Ritchie, A. 1885)

Here Anne's character begins to flesh-out the difference between giving and sharing. Giving is an act to distribute the material and sharing is an act to distribute the immaterial. And what is the one thing that can be distributed losslesssly?

What can be shared?

Knowledge, it's in the parable. Think about it, if I was at your home and asked where the bathroom was, you don't forget those directions as a result of sharing them with me. For if this were to occur you would never share anything with anybody. You are not giving me directions and thus losing them but rather sharing directions. This is what I mean when I say sharing is lossless. In sharing, what we share with others is still retained by ourselves, able to be passed to others who in turn pass it to others. Behold the power of reciprocal altrusim, ‘to take in and forward the practice of others’. Unlike giving, sharing is potentially infinite.

Unlike giving, in sharing, both the sharer and recipient are emancipated and thus free of obligation or reliance on each other. In teaching a person to fish, the reciprocal altruist frees themselves of the double burden of maintaining not only themself but another. Recipients are also emancipated through a greater sense of self-worth that comes from knowing they can catch their own fish. They become reciprocal altruists themselves by teaching others and thus raising the ‘measure of shared knowing’, that is quite literally consciousness.

From this we can see that the only way to manifest society, the ‘condition of sharing’ is reciprocal altruism, ‘to take in and forward the practice of others’ for this creates consciousness, a ‘measure of shared knowing’.

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Footnotes

• Thatcher, M. (1987) Interview for “Woman’s Own” (“No Such Thing as Society”). in Margaret Thatcher Foundation: Speeches, Interviews and Other Statements. London.
• Ritchie, A. (1885) Mrs. Dymond. p184. Harper & Brothers.
• Ibid. p.185