Fifth in a series
For those who have just joined us, I am exploring the roots of my philosophies and sharing them. This really means asking a series of questions and then trying to answer them. Those who have read the earlier essays, I hope this continues along in a satisfactory vein.
Society: What is it? What do we expect of it? What does it expect of us?
Ah, therein lays the rub. Expectations and how do we deal with them.
Society, as I see it, is the social contract that binds humans together to form … well … society. It is the social contract that defines every society.
So, what does a social contract do? It does what any contract in human relations does: It defines expectations. It tells the party of the first part what is expected of them and in return what the party of the second part is expected to do in return. No matter where you are, where you live or with whom you are living with, there is a social contract that outlines the rules of the relationship. Sometimes these are written, but more often they are not. Usually, they are not even articulated but understood because of the conditioning that we all receive from our experiences and cultural environment as we develop into adult human beings.
Interestingly enough, this is where the cultural environment comes into play and pretty much defines how the contract is laid out and enforced. In the United States/North America there are maybe a dozen and a half or so cultural environments or patterns that have been laid down and compete for dominance. Each has its own value system as to what it considers important and what it doesn’t. Unfortunately, while they may share some aspects, they can be mutually exclusive in others in what they expect. Expand that to include the whole world and the competition for dominance and the breadth of beliefs is mind-boggling. We simply cannot comprehend it, or those whose world view is so different from our own.
For instance: What is the role of the individual? What place does the individual have within the construct of a given cultural value system? Is the individual important or merely another bee in the hive?
That adds another paradigm for us to consider when we look at people: Are we herd animals? Are we pack animals? Or are we hive creatures? In each of those paradigms the individual plays a different role, but the question is which paradigm is the best for humans to adopt as a social model? Or maybe there is another model out there for us to consider. Interestingly enough, we humans exhibit characteristics of all those social models, so go figure.
I for one have made the choice that the individual is probably the most important element in the social model, any social model. It is the basic component and is capable of making independent choices separate from the group. To an extent, it can survive without the group, but the group cannot exist without individuals. That is reality. And where there are two humans, one of each sex, then the group at least has an opportunity to thrive and grow. Without those individuals making the choice to be together, then there will be no society.
Others may not agree, but assume for the moment that what I posit is true.
So, the next question becomes how we define what we expect society to do for us and what should society expect of us in return. Remember, this is a contract and like any contract it is a two-way street. Of course, you are free to disagree with that formulation, but I suspect that any society that you create that does not recognize that life is a contract and it goes both ways will be destined to collapse.
Let’s go back to my earlier contention that we all basically are operating in our own self-interest seeking to meet our basic needs in the hierarchy of needs outlined somewhere by psychologists that I vaguely remember studying way back when I was getting that formal education that many of us go through. (Of course, if you want to read a more current version; then read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins – I found it a difficult but very interesting tome.)
Realizing that I am speaking in generalizations, but people are not really altruistic for the most part. There always is a somewhat selfish reason for what they do, even if sometimes they can’t even articulate that reason themselves. People are – at the same time – very complex and very simple creatures trying to satisfy that hierarchy of needs. Occasionally, I admit, saints do walk among us, but they are the exception rather than the rule and societies cannot be built on the expectation that everyone will be a saint (unfortunately, that too is a recipe for failure and disappointment). So, if you want things to work, then find reasons for people to want to make things work. Society needs to make whatever it is in the individual’s own best interest to do what it expects.
To do that, society can use two methods to modify behavior: Rewards or punishments or some permutation of the two. Rewards are more positive ways to reinforce acceptable behavior, while punishment often is a better teacher for immediate correction. Mistakes are nature’s best teacher because usually there is a negative consequence (id est: a punishment) associated with it – sometimes very severe consequences. Fire burns. Touch it and it hurts.
But before we must choose which manner we want for our society to work, we have to decide what we want society to do. So, as individuals, what can we expect society to do for us?
Well, that is the great debate that rages in American society today. In fact, I suspect that the same debate is raging in societies around the world as they come in contact in an age of near instantaneous global communication with differing philosophies and cultures that pollute their environments with strange and new ideas about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
The point I am making here is that we are all the products of the environments in which we grew up. Whether we want to admit it or not, everything we think, do or say, is a result of those influences that have shaped our lives. We are not clones. We are not all the same. We are different.
Unfortunately, in the modern world, the boundaries have shifted. Our societal expectations, a product of our being exposed to different cultural environments, are in a flux. Whereas, for earlier generations, expectations did not shift much over time; now – with the telecommunications revolution and flow of people and ideas from land to land – the rigidity of cultural expectations are collapsing left and right, leaving many people adrift. In fact, entire countries, societies and cultures are adrift. We are desperately trying to reestablish what those cultural norms are to be.
Well, folks, we ain’t there yet … and I suspect I will be long dead and gone before you get there.
The problem, unfortunately, is that we are still clinging to some absolutes and those are the cultural blinders that we grew up with or we have instituted new ones to replace the old. We still are thinking that everyone in the world, much less our own societies (at all levels), is singing from the same sheet of music but they aren’t. Because they aren’t, we get mad and insist that everyone play by our rules.
So, we have this great chasm in a country as large as the United States over what we expect from society and what we expect society to expect from each of us as individuals. Expand that to include the rest of the human race and all its various cultural environments and it gets even worse.
What will have to happen, in the end, is that each individual will have to reach an accommodation with the social structure he or she chooses to live in. That process is known as reaching a consensus. We don’t have that right now and I see a lot of conflict ahead of us before such consensuses begin to shake out.
Be not disencouraged, however, this is normal. In fact, admittedly usually at a bit slower than the breakneck pace we see today, mankind has gone through these upheavals many times and has survived them all so far. I think it will do it again.
I hope I have given you some more food for thought.
Nuff said for now.
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