Pluto wrote:No, no pictures. But they are there.
So that society has a direction, a destination, a plan. You think societies are just plodding on like a ship adrift?
What did I think what was?
I don't think creating a disaster is a simple plot. Not sure why you say 'the great man view', like Blair you mean. Institutions, agencies, working collectively, not one stalin, but twenty, in a room.
I don't think "societies" have a plan - not one that you can easily shake a stick at. People have plans, associations have plans, and governments have plans. Sometimes these coincide to a more or less definable object that historians are like to identify
post hoc. But generally we all just mush along with our own interests, and find other people's plans resist our own. That goes for all levels and aspects of society.
Plans are for the historians, and they are wrong; as prone to belief as religious people.
For example, David Hume is one of my favourite philosophers. In recent years he has been identified with a thing called the "Scottish Enlightenment". In which he is supposed to be a key actor, along with Adam Smith, Reid, and a few others. Despite him being an atheist, the SE, has been colonised by protestant historians and spun into a "movement". "THE ENLIGHTENMENT" was not invented until the 1930s, however. Then it was a collective terms for mainly French
philosophes, who were challenging the status quo. As an idea it has grown into a many headed hydra.
But when you look at Hume's work you find that "enlightenment" was not even part of his vocabulary - and I mean that literally. There is little that specifically identifies him with a 'movement', thought he knew the other actors, especially Smith, but there is not much specifically that he shares with these people philosophically, nothing that amounts to a plan.
Moreover, NOTHING in his work of the others is identifiably or recognisably "Scottish". So what the fuck is the "Scottish Enlightenment"?
What this is all about is the human need to; want to create a coherent story like narrative of their history and their lives; the want to believe is something that gives meaning to their short lives; the idea that their lives are contributing to a thing beyond their short years; and the yearning to rebel against something.
To these ends, plans and tends and geists are identified in the past and into the present. Sometimes that are made real by genuine, and definable 'movements' such as "socialism", Islam etc.. But any analysis of even these carefully designed projects shows that people have different ideas, aims and aspirations.