SOCRATIC SEMINAR ON: Theme: Society is a balance between what is best for one and what is best for all. Theme words ( hashtags ): Theme: Choice must be sacrificed for peace and order. Theme words ( hashtags ): Theme: Understanding the past makes us wiser for the future. NAME: PERIOD: Theme words ( hashtags ):
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THEME1: Society is a balance between what is best for one and what is best for all. Quotes regarding Individual vs. Society In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. -Kathleen Norris Many people are extremely happy, but absolutely worthless to society. -Charles Gow Because power corrupts, society s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. -John Adams A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society. -Thomas Jefferson What kind of society isn t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm -Milton Friedman Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society. -Thomas Szas Society is a masked ball, where everyone hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. -Ralph Waldo Emerson A nation is only an individual multiplied. -Mark Twain
THEME2: Choice must be sacrificed for peace and order. Excerpt from The Social Contract By Jean Jacques Rousseau, social philosopher Humans reached a time when the challenges in Nature were greater than their ability to overcome them. They had to change how they lived. It was either that or they might cease to exist. But humans cannot create new forces. They can only combine and control ones that already exit. And they have no way of keeping themselves safe other than to join their forces and act together to overcome hurdles. When several people work together, they unite their forces. But, if individual force and freedom are the main ways to protect oneself, how can they be shared safely with others? The problem is to use a common force to create a community that defends and protects each person and each person s possessions. But this community must also protect the person s individual freedom so that he may stay true to himself. This is the main problem for which the Social Contract provides a solution. The Contract happens when each person gives up his individual rights for the good of the community. But, it must be that each person gives up his rights entirely. This condition is the same for everyone. In this way, no one gives up or keeps more or less than another. When this happens, the community becomes as perfect as it can be. No person can demand more than another. And there is no judge among equal people. If there were a judge, the state of Nature would continue. Then the association and community would not work or it would become tyrannical. Because each person gives all, he actually gives himself to nobody. There is no person who has more or less right or force than any other. And each person gains an equal amount back for everything he gives up. Through the community, he gains more power to keep what he has. If we toss out the pieces from the Social Contract that are not essential, we find that it can be said this way: each of us puts his person and all his power under the common direction of the community. In our combined capacity we accept each member as an indivisible part of the whole.
THEME3: Understanding the past makes us wiser for the future. Excerpt from the essay Why Study History? By William H. McNeill, Professor of History, University of Chicago Without individual memory, a person literally loses his or her identity, and would not know how to act in encounters with others. Imagine waking up one morning unable to tell total strangers from family and friends! Collective memory is similar, though its loss does not immediately paralyze everyday private activity. But ignorance of history-that is, absent or defective collective memory-does deprive us of the best available guide for public action, especially in encounters with outsiders, whether the outsiders are another nation, another civilization, or some special group within national borders. Often it is enough for experts to know about outsiders, if their advice is listened to. But democratic citizenship and effective participation in the determination of public policy require citizens to share a collective memory, organized into historical knowledge and belief. Otherwise, agreement on what ought to be done in a given situation is difficult to achieve. Agreement on some sort of comfortable falsehood will not do, for without reasonably accurate knowledge of the past, we cannot expect to accomplish intended results, simply because we will fail to foresee how others are likely to react to anything we decide on. Nasty surprises and frustrating failures are sure to multiply under such circumstances Memory is not something fixed and forever. As time passes, remembered personal experiences take on new meanings. A bitter disappointment may come to seem a blessing in disguise; a triumph may later turn sour, while something trivial may subsequently loom large-all because of what happens later on. Collective memory is quite the same. Historians are always at work reinterpreting the past, asking new questions, searching new sources and finding new meanings in old documents in order to bring the perspective of new knowledge and experience to bear on the task of understanding the past. This means, of course, that what we know and believe about history is always changing. In other words, our collective, codified memory alters with time just as personal memories do, and for the same reasons.