Alexis de Tocqueville, and "The Truman Show"

[editec]

Your quote seems to accept the false concept that man exists for the sake of others, and not for himself. That describes a slave, not a free man.



True dat



You got that slightly wrong but the slight wrongness ends up with enormously important implications for how we and community interact

We do not exist FOR the community, but we exist BECAUSE of the community.

No man is an island, champ.

That is enormously incorrect. How do you assume that we exist BECAUSE of any community?

Well I know that I exist because my mother and father were part of a community.

Perhaps you sprang out of the dust fully grown and needing nobody to help you grow up and survive, I really don't know.

That makes assumptions that we owe our existence to one community or the other – a false premise.

Did you invent yourself, Lad? Did you happen to invent the language you and I share?

Really what you are telling us (or implying about yourself) is complete preposterous.

He was perfectly correct – the community exists for us and when that community ceases to accomplish this we establish another OR we leave it for another.

THAT is an entirely different issue, lad.

Of course a person finding that the community they are in is lacking ought to have the freedom to move on.

Nobody denies that.

If we existed, as you presume, because of the community then we would not have the inherent right to walk away from it.

No, that does not follow at all.

Further, if you so choose, you could very well be an island apart from any community.

Once one is formed I suppose one could. I do not deny that people can choose to isolate themselves.

What I deny is the premise that one is a SELF-MAN MAN.

If that is not what you meant, then we have no debate.

That would be your choice but unlikely as no one likes that kind of solitary existence. Instead, WE create communities that we want to be a part of.

WE might, once we're significantly important enough within a group to influence that community, that is certainly true.

But YOu and I did not create the communities that we sprang from.

That community created us FIRST.

Agreed?

 

[FA_Q2]

Well I know that I exist because my mother and father were part of a community.

Perhaps you sprang out of the dust fully grown and needing nobody to help you grow up and survive, I really don't know.




Did you invent yourself, Lad? Did you happen to invent the language you and I share?

Really what you are telling us (or implying about yourself) is complete preposterous.



THAT is an entirely different issue, lad.

Of course a person finding that the community they are in is lacking ought to have the freedom to move on.

Nobody denies that.




No, that does not follow at all.



Once one is formed I suppose one could. I do not deny that people can choose to isolate themselves.

What I deny is the premise that one is a SELF-MAN MAN.

If that is not what you meant, then we have no debate.








WE might, once we're significantly important enough within a group to influence that community, that is certainly true.

But YOu and I did not create the communities that we sprang from.

That community created us FIRST.

Agreed?

Well, no I can’t agree not because what you are stating is untrue but because what you implied with it. IOW, the ideas:

We exist BECAUSE of the community
And
They do not exist for the community, the community exists for them.

Are NOT mutually exclusive in the manner that you put them in the quoted post. It is entirely true that you can become what you are because of a community and that community (which you CHOOSE to continue to be a part of) exists for you.

HOWEVER, you refuted his statement with yours leading me to believe that you are stating that communities DO NOT exist for their members but instead, the members exist for the community. It is THAT idea that I firmly refute. Tell me, am I miss representing you? If not, what were you attempting to counter when you ‘corrected’ his statements and claimed that it had rather large changes in the connotations?