Gender
Relations, Sexuality, & LoveThis may seem like an odd question, because for most people "society" has become the standard for sanity. Few step back to observe events and apply a standard to individual actions which is not based on statistical reasoning about what is "normal", ie. the statistical norm which simply means most common. It is easy enough to see when an individual violates one of these norms and a severe enough violation will be labeled "insanity". But that same level of deviation when practiced by enough people becomes the norm, and those who refuse to be drawn into it now wear the label of "insane".
As a philosopher and theologian, I stand clearly on the side of humanism. Society evolved to serve the needs of its individual human members, not the other way around. Obviously there must be limitations on individual actions, but these limitations cannot be based on the needs of society itself over all of its members, else society ceases to serve the needs of living things and becomes a cancer which consumes life in order to survive. And, like any cancer, when the human host is sufficiently consumed it dies, and the cancer dies with it.
The concept of Society in and of itself is a thing of null value. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. Virtually all mammals are social to some extent. It is a survival mechanism. A group is many times more powerful than any individual member. Individuals which have little to no chance of surviving alone are able to survive in a group which serves the dual purpose of protection from danger and cooperation in the acquisition of food. However membership in the group is no guarantee of survival. Implicit in the structure is the principle that the survival of the group is far more important than the survival of any individual within it. Losing one member of the group may be unfortunate or sad, but that individual will be replaced and more with the next fertility cycle of the remaining group members. Lose the whole group and the species takes one step closer to extinction.
The value of a society therefore lies in whether and how it enhances the survival potential of its members and the species as a whole. A society which does not enhance survival potential is simply useless and will eventually disappear. A society which cannot adapt to changing evironmental and social conditions will also eventually die off. The destruction of the society of Native Americans by the Europeans with their superior technology is an excellent example. Today, 100 years after the fact, we can apply all sorts of value laden reasoning to the fact that it happened, but none of it changes the fact that it did happen. Native American society was completely destroyed and the remaining members of the group that it served largely remain outside the society which replaced it.
Perhaps, if Native Americans had understood the true nature of the society which the fair-skinned, fair-haired, fair-eyed invaders belonged to, they would have responded differently before it was too late: before their society and the vast majority of its members were destroyed. But they were just as hampered by their own ego-centrism and ethno-centrism, the basis of nationalism, patriotism, racism, sexism, and all other -isms, as any people. They knew that such concepts as being able to "own" pieces of the Earth were insane and, within their world, following them would mean certain death. Perhaps they just expected the Europeans to die from their insanity, which they would have had it not been for their superior technology.
Today we are faced with a similar challenge. Indo-European "society" is one of the ruling powers of the entire world. Aboriginal cultures, which we so arrogantly term "savage" or "backward" have essentially disappeared. Today we are told that it is not enough to survive, that we also must "succeed" and that if we do not survive in our lunge to succeed, well them's the breaks. In so-called "primitive" cultures one was considered "successful" by largely avoiding serious injury or illness with the associated early death, wasn't too hungry most of the time, and was able to raise one's children to the age and instruct them in the groups values so they could be a contributing member of the group including contributing children to help the group survive. By those standards very few people are "successful" today.
By today's standards of success, the most "successful" are also the most likely to experience early death from self-inflicted stress and lifestyle-related diseases. The most "successful" people are also the ones who practice the greatest excesses. Millionaire corporate raiders become so "successful" by stealing the money of thousands of hard-working people whose productive output disappears in a puff of smoke when the junk-bond market collapses. The more "success" that people seem to have, the less happy they seem, and the less they seem to be interested in the survival of the human race, or even members of their own smaller social group.
The values and practices of contemporary society indeed seem to have reversed direction and are no longer pro-survival. In an individual, self-destructive behavior is clearly seen as insane. But by sheer weight of numbers, that statistical norm, the sanity of society's full speed plunge toward self-destruction is not questioned.
I believe that the time has come to question, and question, and question again the sanity of society's dictates.
Most everyone knows the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes". For those of you who may not, or who have forgotten, here's the 5:00 news version:
Two con men blow into town. They have heard of the Emperor's famous vanity (insecurity) and decide to capitalize on it. They convince him that they are the finest tailors in all the world and that they can weave clothes so fine that fools cannot see them. The emperor, being at the top of the social status hierarchy is the most controlled by it, for everything about his existence at the top depends on it. He certainly wants the status symbol of such fine clothes, because he already has every other status symbol available and the insubstantial nature of such high status requires that it be continually reinforced by the acquisition of symbols which prove that status to others.
The 2 con-men set to work on empty looms, counting on the emperor's insecurity and unwillingness to be thought a fool ("what will people think/say?") to prevent him from admitting that he might be a fool and questioning that the looms are empty. Everyone else is equally taken in. Normal human insecurity, fear, uncertainty, doubt, make everyone believe that they are the only ones who does not see them. They are the only fools. Thus they all become fools by pretending to see something which does not exist.
The ostentation and lording of one's own status over others which is part of the status seeking, leads the emperor to declare a public holiday to have a parade so he can show off his new finery to the public and once again prove how much more status he has than they. In the middle of the parade a young boy, still too honest to be taken in by the social pressure to conform, actually speaks what is on everyone's mind: "But he has no clothes on." Freed from their own need to lie by a single voicing of the truth, everyone's eyes are opened and they see that he does indeed have no clothes on and a murmer races through the crowd: "He has no clothes on". They are no less fools, because they have been living a lie that they know to be a lie, but have lacked the courage to confront it and speak the truth.
Now, the most frightening part of the story. As stated above, most people are familiar with the story this far, though for the most part they still remain fools because they will not speak the truth themselves. What most people do not remember, or perhaps never knew, is the last line of the story. The emperor is standing in the middle of the street, naked, and says "Yes, but the procession has started, it MUST continue."
One definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing with the expectation that the results are going to be different. How many processions are going on in society led by someone with no clothes, but which must continue simply because they have been started? How many times is "society" going to seek to solve its "ills" by the same actions that created them, creating more ills to be solved tomorrow, the solutions of which must be solved the day after? Are we ever going to put forth the possibility of stopping the procession?
Society does have a first name. Those who know it often use the shortened form "consumer", but society's real full name is Consuming Society. In order to be part of this society, one MUST consume. The foundation principle on which all social structures is built, status or "pecking order", is based in this social structure on one's ability to consume. Conspicuous consumption, planned obsolescence.
The underlying truth of anything can be easily seen by taking the words in their most literal meaning. The word "disposable" means "that which can be thrown away". We have disposable diapers, disposable lighters, and disposable income, ie. income we can "throw away" because it is not required for necessities. The more income we can "throw away", the higher our status in Consuming Society.
But, not everyone lives for status. Many people have a self-concept which is not entirely based on how much they can impress people. For some, the sheer joy of being alive, the simple pleasures of productive work, feeding their appetites, and raising their children to be mature and productive adults is enough to make them happy.
Consuming Society cannot allow these people to continue like this. Unless everyone is obsessed with the acquisition of income which can be thrown away, they will not throw it into the pockets of someone else who can throw it away to someone else, and so on. Society's method to deal with these has been to redefine everything strictly in terms of what society needs and the concept of a "necessity". Thus it becomes a "necessity" for many housholds to have 2 wage earners so they can afford the payments on the 2nd $20,000 automobile which is a "necessity" for the 2nd wage earner to get to work to earn the wages to pay for the automobile. Of course it is not just the automobile, but the entire lifestyle which it represents, that is defined as a necessity.
It becomes a "necessity" to buy one's children $100 tennis shoes so that they are not emotionally scarred for life by not "fitting in" to their social group. It becomes a "necessity" to be able to consume at whim a beverage which contains no food value except raw calories, which until recently universally also contained one or more powerfully addictive drugs and would still do so except for the fact that people are so conditioned to wanting it that they are willing to support entire new industries to create synthetic substitutes for old ingredients. Caffiene-free-diet anything costs more per gallon than gasoline yet, unlike gasoline, if it disappeared from our lives tomorrow it would have little impact and would be soon forgotten. How many billionaires have we created by becoming addicted to cocaine or caffeine cola? How many extra hours have we had to work in our lifetime to make those extra billions of dollars to put into their pockets so they can consume conspicuously?
Women have come to believe that it is a "necessity" to spend hundreds of dollars a year supporting a cosmetics, health and "beauty" aids industry in order to attract men, despite the fact that no female of any other species has any trouble attracting males and that human females had no difficulty attracting human males for the 2,000,000 or so years that the human race spent evolving before prostitutes adopted the practice of wearing makeup to advertise their sexual availability. Men have become equally conditioned to believe that they must work 60+ hour weeks at high-stress jobs in order to be able to bring in the money which supports the lifestyle which includes the cosmetics which were a "necessity" to attract him in the first place, but which he hates on anyone closer than 3 feet. Huh?!
All this might possibly even be worth it if people were happy in the midst of all this consumption. Or, if you are one of those people who believe that humanity's lot is to suffer, if there were at least some greater good being served. But neither is true.
The first thing Consuming Society must consume is the individual. People will not buy these useless products if they realize how useless they are. So they must be made to appear useful. The easiest and most powerful way to do this is to utilize a natural tendency of humans toward insecurity. As a species, evolution wise, we are but an eyeblink's elapsed time from the days when existence was not secure. Before "germs" were postulated only a little more than 100 years ago, a cut on your finger could kill you. Having a child killed a significant percentage of women. Despite the fact that much disease has been conquered and the "average" human life span has close to doubled, fear is still a natural emotion for humans. Consuming Society has co-opted it to push us via fear, uncertainty, and doubt (Advertising 101) to view fitting into Consuming Society's mold as a necessity. And, since most of the skills for surviving without "society" have been lost, it is a necessity for most.
Unless children are systematically indoctrinated into the values of Consuming Society, they may escape the terrible emptiness inside which drives them to consume and make billionaires with their overtime. Unless a child's natural tendency to feel alive and enjoy it is overcome, they will not learn to look outside themselves for happiness in a bottle, or a shoe box, or a jewelry case, or in their garage. The first thing Consuming Society must do in the process of building a new little consumer is to consume everything within which would allow fulfillment without consuming. Like a work or saddle horse, the child and its spirit must be broken in order to force it to take on the harness or the saddle.
Consuming Society is relentless in its efforts to do this, because ITS life depends on an uninterrupted supply of new consumers. The sons of men who worked to buy $7 Levis and make the manufacturer of Levis rich, must now work to buy $70 Levis for their sons and make the sons of Levi even richer. In the intervening time, however, something has changed. The $7 Levis were an excellent value because they met a need, protection from the elements and the abrasion of physical labor, and with inflation would sell today for about 3 times as much. In fact, that's about what the current version of the old model do sell for. The $70 Levis are not as durable, so what is it that gives them their value? The answer is status, the status of un-needed consumption. The difference in price is due to the fact that "fools" cannot see their value, and thus will not pay it.
Sadly it is now the children who are the most taken in and consider such things important. Having thoroughly stripped them of any sense of their own intrinsic worth and substituted a sense of values based on what is outside them, they are prepared for their role of producing, consuming, consumed consumers long before they are able to produce, so the parents must produce for all of them. And the parents, stripped of their own sense of worth by their parents, organized religion, and advertising, get their worth by feeding the consumptive needs of the children. Every aspect of humanity, from the desire to get along with and be liked by others of your kind, to the natural drive of parents to provide and care for their children, has been co-opted to fuel Consumer Society.
Western industrial society's reign as the emperor is drawing to a close. Others in the world are tired of seeing us live like kings while they starve because we are buying their crops for less than it cost our farmers to produce the same crop and they are using the money to buy caffeine-cola. Unfortunately, they are no wiser than we, because their solution is to grab and demand a larger share of the pie for themselves instead of asking themselves how much they really want pie and whether it makes them happy. They are using the same methods that western culture has used, they are raping and destroying the earth to plunder it for its resources.
The earth is so vast, and the numbers of humans so small with the percentage who consumed so excessively even smaller, that, until recently, there were more resources than humans could consume. That is no longer true.
Consuming Society now is the emperor of the world. We want our MTV. We build our lives on the fictions that there is such a thing as an economy and that it can be based on agriculture, or industry, or service and it makes no difference. The procession has started, and it is continuing. One day our children will face the bitter truth that they cannot eat or breathe either industry or service. And they will justifyably hate us.
An acre of rainforest which may have taken millions of years to create can be burned and bulldozed down in a few days. When the nutrition in the soil which took those millions of years to accumulate, and which was being constantly recycled by a diversity of life unknown anywhere else on earth, is harvested off and sent somewhere else to feed a people who base their own economy on service in return for the money to buy caffeine cola and XYZ "Air-Somethings", the soil is depleted in 2 or 3 years and another acre must be destroyed to take its place. One day there will be no more acres. One day our children or grandchildren will be working all those overtime hours to buy oxygen, and those who cannot afford it will die the most horrible death imaginable.
Are you willing to stop the procession for their sake?
Gender
Relations, Sexuality, & Love
The Destruction of little boys
The Destruction of little girls' sexuality
Generation X
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