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Philosophy

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  • Right, there is a current idea that an overemphasis on individual liberty has brought us to an impasse. But, groups voted in our political leaders... (or did they?) Commented Mar 5, 2025 at 12:24
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    @ScottRowe My concern is that understanding id, ego & superego is a start, but egos operate in groups and more significantly, groups operate on egos, e.g. "role suction", conformity. Canetti describes 4 pack behaviours and their transmutations and Alford describes 5 small group behaviours that are more or less similar but are smaller in detail. The group dynamics switch and change and the individuals are generally swept along. To understand oneself one needs to understand the group, which – evolutionarily – is the more primal unit. Commented Mar 5, 2025 at 13:39
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    Interesting. That matches well with my observation that human interactions within tribes (however we are instinctively defining our tribes) tend to be hedonic while those between tribes are more likely to become agonic. Though I'm not sure whether the right word is actually tribe, pack, or some other social unit, and we seem to be able to affiliate with multiple groups at once. Commented Mar 5, 2025 at 23:06
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    @keshlam Yes, one could draw equivalences between hedonic-agonic and Freud's eros-thanatos. Commented Mar 6, 2025 at 13:06