The City of God - by SaloForum members

1 posts

Bob Dylan Roof
The_Hawk

I'm intrigued by the Valorian Society model because it reproduces some , but not all, of the traits typically ascribed to northern Indo-European societies. You highlighted a section that vaguely touches upon the problem of in- and out-group interaction, but it's devoid of any discussion concerning out-group behavior.

The model as it stands appears incomplete because it fails to account for the sovereign individual's desire for honor and prestige that historically led to the formation of war bands and expansion of power through elite dominance of weaker civilizations. These invasions ordinarily involved collective violation of the sovereignty of weaker, out-group individuals (e.g., the indigenous inhabitants of pre-Indo-European Greece mentioned in the Sovereign Individuals book). The Valorian Society glosses this fact with the implausible conclusion that conquered populations were slaves by nature who explicitly chose to live as slaves despite the overtures of the Indo-European conquerors. Do those who refuse to submit to the covenant, presumably out of fear of trial by battle and the prospect of living a sexless, childless existence, automatically become the property of the Sovereigns?

Traditional Indo-European war parties would obviously be the effective bearers of power in any Sovereign society, relegating the rest to ancillary nutritive and reproductive functions by definition. Since those who made war their exclusive profession would nevertheless require women and food, it is likely that their decisions would compel the rest to follow and supply them as they expanded their operations. This would violate individual sovereignty of at least some members of the society.

In sum, the model's excessive formal equality will inevitably come into conflict with its respect for individual sovereignty.

This is straight out of Feminist Legal Activism. It eviscerates the definition of rape and provides women with unequal state-enforced power. Why engage a man in trial by battle when you can have sex with him and then accuse him of rape? For all the talk of "nature," this provision is rather strange given the fact that it provides women with an institutional-collective mechanism to perform an end-run around the natural, physical division of the sexes.