I have had an amateur interest in the subjects that (I thought) were studied under the headings anthropology and sociology.
After a couple of decades of imbibing information by osmosis and random diffusion, it seems to me that these fields deal primarily with people and societies as they exist. There is no field that I know of that tells us what societies should be like. I would have thought that if people study a thousand societies over several thousand man years and document them classify them and catalogue them, surely at least one person should have developed some ideas about what a society should be like. Has there been an ideal society? Is there, for example - a society in the past that lasted for 500 years or more without changing much? Does that mean it was better than others that did not last so long? Or is the fact that it is gone now an indicator that if it's dead it can't be good? For example - if guidelines for a good society could be formulated, would it not be feasible to teach it as a subject rather than simply study existing societies and people? It could be debated and refined or trashed. Who does that? I know people like Marx and the religions have views on society - but they have been discarded as not good enough except maybe by ISIS. But if those are not good enough what is good? Is change the only way for society? If change is the only way then was it always so? shiv
