How did the language come into existence?

A perennial question without any obvious answer. Do you have a theory?

I do not think people are connected or related because they use the same language.

Oppenheimer was referencing Rousseau’s “The Social Contract”, which is obvious because he mentions the title in your quote. So it’s odd you’d look for what he is referencing in a different, much earlier work.

The notion of a “bond” or “connection” is strictly metaphorical. It isn’t real. There isn’t anything between us, holding us together, which we can confirm by looking. A real bond or connection would be an umbilical cord. So in that sense I am not a realist when it comes to these metaphors. I would rather say Individuals relate to one another, or interact with each other in various ways. I relate to the grocer when I go to the market, for example. This is what I meant by "history", I think, the culmination of our interactions with one another. That is the extent of our relationship.

Only these types of interactions, in combination with the accounts of those involved, can determine what kind of relationship we are looking at—and from this, the nature of the collective, if any. I would argue that in order to do this, one must be nominalist. He must consider only the concrete, particular things involved, what they themselves tell of their lives and relations with each other, and let go of the pre-conceived, realist account of collectives.

At any rate, I need to still need to figure it all out, so I appreciate your questions. I would argue the activities involved in this nominalist account of relationships are inherently social in the original sense of the term (from Latin, socialis, "of companionship, of allies; united, living with others; of marriage, conjugal,"). People interact with each other in volitional, voluntary, "real" ways, and this account of society is paramount to, and more accurate than, the collectivist account of society (as the struggle between classes and races, for example). Actual social interactions and connections aren't determined by the will and imagination of some platonist/collectivist, who thinks he can surmise what a community is and ought to be through pure reason alone, utilizing concepts such as class, race, nationality etc. to do so. Each time he refers to the idea before the flesh-and-blood individuals involved, he is putting himself above all. For that reason I would say collectivist doctrines such as socialism, fascism, and their father, republicanism, are anti-social and anti-society.

You’ve supplied meaning to life with those remarks. However slight the significance might sound, you’ve still deemed life worthy enough of your attention and meaning. The difference is yours is not as aesthetically pleasing as other accounts. Yours is thick on the metaphor while loose with the truth.

I don’t understand the question, Paine.

This is exactly what @schopenhauer1 was talking about with his neologism the "TPF effect".

You guys sure are consistent, but I’m not so sure one should be consistently fallacious.

Your focus is me and not the arguments. Why must you keep me in your mouth? Why can’t you criticize the arguments, or absent that, come up with a better one? My politics and beliefs are no secret, so pointing them out isn’t any sort of revelation or refutation.

That's not the issue it is trying to illustrate. Rather, the gun didn't exist before, and then it will exist. Not only that, the gun will be used let's say in some nefarious way. Thus a worse state of affairs is likely to take place. But wait! You can prevent this... But you don't, you let it happen because you don't believe in future conditionals? I call bullshit.

I believe everything exists, but I question what they exist as. Future conditionals, for example, don’t describe or predict any actual future, no matter how likely. I let it happen because I do not trust your judgement.

Well, that's fine. You can do whatever you want. Clearly you don't believe in future states, for example. But my point is "de facto" dictates are a thing. Just because you choose not to acknowledge them, doesn't mean they are not a thing.

It doesn’t mean they are a thing either.

No mind reading necessary. No matter how you attempt to dress it up your arguments fall on under two related themes: defending Trump and radical individualist autonomy.

You described my intentions but completely missed the mark, I’m afraid. Here again you feign interest but immediately resort to ad hominem. It’s a pattern.

Baloney. You didn't address the gun analogy, for example. Should you not give a shit if you see someone making a gun, and they have the intent to use it? For surely, the possibility and high likelihood should not matter here?? Nonsense.

I fully endorse people making their own guns.

I love it how you arbitrarily just divide the line to make such that only "libertarian" values make sense, but yet nothing else that falls under the logic does... For example in this, it is definitely the case that now someone has to "deal" with things they don't want to deal with, exactly your complaint about compulsory government. It's just all too convenient and cherry picking.

Let me know when some other person or group of persons demand you comply with something and I’ll be there in support. Find some logic that is parallel with this and I’ll give it a shot.

This is just an attempt to repackage your same old argument. In your attempt to defend your desire to benefit from society without taking any responsibility you introduce a "metaphysics" which is nothing more than an abuse of terminology that is already problematic enough.

I’m afraid your mind-reading skills are as poor as your arguments. If you can’t argue a point regarding the topic, why do you bother? Is it some little power trip? An effort at propaganda?

I’m fully aware that we use modal reasoning, but when I ask the question “what in the world is schopenhauer1 referring to”, I can see you are only reporting on your thoughts. You aren’t referring to actual persons, but to your notions, the movements of your brain, in short, yourself. It just so happens myself and my own thoughts differ.

The point is we do not comply with existence because it has no wishes or commands. There is no game of life, and when it comes to survival you only have yourself to answer to. If you’re hungry and must work to feed yourself, it’s you, not existence, telling you to do this. Hunger is your dictate. And you don’t have to comply. You can deny yourself if you choose and can make any efforts towards your own liberation.

I suspect its not a coincidence you bring up antinatalism, and then blame me for rehashing old arguments. Am I supposed to come up with new arguments while you repeat the same old ones? I dub it the schopenhauer1 effect.

Peter L. P. Simpson has often drawn attention to the fact that the state has a monopoly on coercion (and violence) in the modern world, and that this is different from any time in the past.

Sigmund Freud notes they also have the monopoly on crime.

"The individual citizen can prove with dismay in this war what occasionally thrust itself upon him already in times of peace, namely, that the state forbids him to do wrong not because it wishes to do away with wrongdoing but because it wishes to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco."

- Reflections on War and Death

There is a fallacy called the genetic fallacy where you base the truth of a claim on its origin. Even the National Enquirer (an American tabloid) breaks news. One should be able to assess any claim on its merits rather than on who says it.

I don’t think he should be indicted on this. I want to know about the tax evasion and unregistered foreign lobbying and human trafficking, some of which may implicate bigger fish.

Hunter Biden has been indicted for gun charges, and only because a federal judge called out the sweetheart deals. I wager he is the sacrificial lamb of the Biden crime family. Free Hunter Biden!

Hunter Biden had previously reached a deal with Weiss to resolve the matter without charges, but that deal collapsed over the summer amid scrutiny from a federal judge and after a related tax deal unraveled.

His gun-related legal troubles relate to a firearm he purchased in October 2018. While buying a revolver at Delaware gun shop, he lied on a federal form when he swore that he was not using, and was not addicted to, any illegal drugs – even though he was struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time of the purchase.

It’s a federal crime to lie on the ATF form or to possess a firearm as a drug user. (Hunter Biden possessed the gun for about 11 days in 2018.) Prosecutors have previously said the statute of limitations for some of these offenses is set to expire in October.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/14/politics/hunter-biden/index.html

I have tried, repeatedly over many threads. More often than not I don't bother though.

If I understand what you think the issue is, I can address it and give you my arguments. Are you a platonist?

I don’t think that’s true at all and we fundamentally disagree. There is no similarity. There is no person to seek consent from. There is no prior realm of freedom from which we are plucked and placed in a prison-like condition, against our wishes. Existence is all there is. No compliance is necessary, only being. More often than not parents relieve their children from burden, feeding them, carrying them, housing them, protecting them from all manner of danger. If you wish you were never born it is because you regret your life, yourself, maybe your family, not because you were better off before you were conceived.

Are you just playing at being obtuse or do you really not understand what is at issue?

I thought the issue was the metaphysics of it all, specifically the problem of universals and abstract objects. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

What jungle? There is only a bunch of different individuals in the same place.

It's true, but there are too many individuals and factors to name and account for, so, since myself and my language are limited, I just say "jungle".

To me the government is a gang of rogues and scoundrels, a criminal cartel made respectable through centuries of propaganda and bribery, bound together by specious writings and custom. Historically they are little different than others who have invented rules punishable by violence, robbery, and kidnapping, like kings, slavers, and warlords.

As such my relation with the government is as a serf to his landlord, or as a slave to his master. There is no mutual, voluntary coordination going on here. In fact I avoid officials like I would the plague. The reason I follow their rules is because they are allowed to kidnap me or kill me if I do not. They are allowed to take my money, my property, and there are no shortage of goons to support that kind of activity. The reasons I drive on their roads and use their amenities is because it’s funded with the stolen money of mine and my fellow serfs, and because of their monopoly I am unable to find similar amenities, let alone coordinate with others to build our own.

It’s like saying a prisoner has a “real relation” to the prison because he is forced to use their toilet. If your idea of “society” resembles a prison or plantation, I don’t want any part of it. To me the activity and relations you defend are anti-social, anti-society, even anti-human nature.

I thought that was a jungle.

What’s the difference? More individual trees?

Brilliant. Little did he realize he was in a thicket.

Yes, my objection is that corporations are not individual people.

Trump told Ukraine to look into corruption; Biden told him to look away from corruption.

I think that’s a great point. The larger the aggregate, the more difficult it is to discern the extent to which its members relate. A prerequisite of a “real relation” might be that people know each other or interact with each other.

You’d be surprised to hear I don’t believe in law either.

Your responses are a series of out of context quotes, evasions, and goal-post widenings. Thanks for your contributions.

I said it ought to apply to each and every individual, which implies more than one individual. You can label the set whatever you like—to abandon such abstractions and generalizations would render language too laborious. But I’m fully aware that in order to refer to this set you are unable to refer to anything particular in the world (unlike a family, you cannot point to, name, nor understand a vast majority of the particulars involved), and are referring to your idea of a society more than any actual flesh-and-blood human beings and the innumerable interactions between them.

Laws are passed by particular legislators, often opposed by other particular legislators.

Unlike loose aggregates of individuals sharing a roof, families are raised by one another, play with one another, work together, love one another, and so on. The dynamics of their relationship are different. They are not only nominally or proximally bonded, but have a history together.

Worker cooperatives need not be imposed. You’re' engaging in the fallacy of composition. You've also moved from the claimt hat there isno society to a claim something like that social norms ought not be imposed.

I didn’t say they need not be imposed. In fact I just wrote that those who get together to form clubs or company’s do so voluntarily. But you’ll note that the OP is concerned with politics, not with getting together with like-minded people to form companies. I was never trying to write about voluntary associations.

I claimed that society is without a particular referent, so in order to discern what association (a political subject) he is referring to, one must understand another’s metaphysics. Are you a platonist, conceptual realist, immanent realist, or nominalist when it comes to abstractions and universals?
.

Presumably you would count incorporated companies as individuals?

I do not count companies or any other association as individuals.

I am not against people working together voluntarily, whether they incorporate or not.

Laws ought to apply to each and every particular individual, not a set of individuals.

It isn’t a voluntary association like people getting together to form a club or company. It is imposed. Socialism and fascism are anti-social and anti-society in this regard.

I would consider them a family.

I do admit my inability. I can neither see nor know the subject to which you aim your politics. That’s why I think it is mistaken or purely self-concerned.

Incorporation in the general sense is voluntary, and involves the input and voluntary efforts of its particular members. Socialism isn’t. If I am forced to consider what it means to be social or a society, it applies only to the former and not the latter.

So you claim, yet "Common ownership" and "public control" are clear enough in the associations listed on the ASX.

So you claim. But it would be clear only if you knew which investors owned how many shares. By then your notion of “public” wouldn’t fit the reality of it.

To start, nonviolent coexistence (i.e. sustainable eusociality) ...

Nonviolent coexistence is not a thing, I’m afraid. And I do not think any political institution should serve only your ideas.

Some like to speak of the common good and society. These are the political subjects towards which political institutions should be mobilized. But the political subject is without a particular referent. So what thing or things in the world should these institutions work for?

Of course.

It's weird to believe in social entities as defined by imagination but refuse social entities as defined by contract and common goal.

I have read his essay, and I’m weary of the unibomber’s holistic methodology. I don’t think “leftism”, for example, is any sort of ideology that anyone actually holds, and the use of it as a subject of opprobrium risks painting with the same brush a myriad of competing beliefs and individuals, most of whom are without any common political goal. It also leaves out the very similar beliefs and behaviors of the so-called right. On top of that, I do not think the left/right spectrum is worth a damn.

But beware how collectivist the unibomber is. Does society really socialize children? What are society’s expectations? Upon who or what should we place our blame? I can only speak for myself but I have never felt the pressure of one, or have been the coerced to meet the expectations of other.

Metaphysically speaking I am unable to reduce a marriage to anything between two people, especially when it appears there is nothing between them, connecting them, and bonding one to the other. It also appears they are not “in” anything of the sort. I would say each of them relate to one another, or at least I would recognize that one is speaking figuratively when using such language. That isn’t to say one should never use the word “marriage” or “relationship”—abstractions, generalizations, universals are necessary to speak and think about the world—it’s just that one ought not to include them in his ontology, metaphysically speaking. As such he should not apply his politics to them.

But you raise some good questions in regards to political subjects (the people, the nation, the workers, the race, society). What sort of bond or relationship can we infer between the aggregate parts of these sets? Are these bonds actual? Or are they assumed and imposed? If they are not there, is it the goal of the politician to create them?