Book 4, Chapter 9: With Open Arms
However, social forces do not exist in isolation. Even apparently singular points of social influence exist in the midst of a web of cues, directions, impulses, and directives. A useful way in which to conceptualize social dynamics is through a concept called dialectics. Related to the dialectical method of Greek philosophy, social dialectics allows one to frame many social issues in terms of two or more social forces in opposition to each other. In such a framing, “society” can be conceptualized as a web or fabric suspended between numerous forces working in opposition with each other, each of them trying to pull the resulting network in a direction of their liking. Wages for workers is perhaps the archetypal example of a social tension, stretched between the employer, who wishes for the wages to be low—if not nonexistent, in the extreme cases of thralldom—and the laborers, who want them as high as possible.
Consider other such oppositions; the aristocracy will be in opposition to the peasantry in terms of rights and privileges, and possibly also in opposition to the royalty. Hedonists exist in opposition with the ascetics. The intellectual against the ignorant, and possibly the propagandist. The agriculturalist against the industrialist and each in turn against the preservationist. The artist against the censor. The pacifist against the martialist. The authoritarian against the libertarian. The anarchist versus the statist. The despot versus the democrat. And so forth.
Each of these in turn stretch the fabric of society between themselves, forming the social environment of laws, mores, attitudes, beliefs, concepts, traditions and systems in which they live.
—Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press
Tropes that appear in this chapter:
- Big Damn Heroes: Rikard saves Eret from the assault.
- Content Warnings:Chapter Trigger Warnings: Explicit Depiction of a Hate Crime, Explicit Use of Racial Slur, Explicit Depiction of Assault, Explicit Depiction of Mental Illness
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Dagur outright says this when Hiccup tries to express sympathy for him over the abuse Dagur faced from Savage. His self-loathing is so strong he doesn't feel like he deserves pity.
- Fatal Flaw: This chapter has Stoick acknowledging his impulsiveness, temper, and stubbornness, how difficult it's been to overcome them, and how he feels they've caused him no end of grief.
- Insufferable Genius: Fintan fantasises about strangling Padraig for his overall attitude, but doesn't actually do it because Padraig is that good at his job and comes up with incredibly useful ideas.
- Internal Reveal:
- Stoick finds out Mac Bethad and his court were the real parties responsible for the assassination attempt on Hiccup and his retinue in England after Taskill and the other captured spies admit to it and they find the corpse of Siward's steward where they said it was as corroborating evidence.
- Inga and Dogsbreath learn their parents buried the hatchet, which leaves them with mixed feelings.
