Social Conditioning, Part 2
October 19th 2006 07:15
I am not an anarchist.
I'm not so concerned about society setting rules for us to follow (after all I'm a lawyer) as I am concerned about society trying to determine my identity as equivalent to my social roles, and teaching me to pretend that I'm who society expects me to be (whether I really am or not). We are taught from an early age to put up a socially acceptable facade and to pretend that it's not a facade; after long enough we begin to believe it's real.
So I would encourage people to make their own choices, but the choices we make are often defined by who we think we are - so if we allow society to tell us who we are, then we allow society to determine the choces we make. For example: I'm a lawyer, but then again I'm not. That's just one of the roles I play, not my identity. I find my peers all tend to think alike (they "think like lawyers" because they've been subtly taught that "what you do for a living" = "who you are". They all drive the same cars, live in the same neighborhoods, vote for the same candidates, etc. Off-duty conversation revolves around fascinating topics like furniture, dog food, and drywalling one's basement.
Ultimately, we made society; it didn't make us. Though we all have to follow certain rules in order to live together in peace, we should not treat society as if it were a god to whom we owe our identity. It's not either/or: it's just that the more we are conditioned to believe that we are nothing but a set of roles, the more we allow our roles to swallow us up, and the more plastic" and more dehumanized we become.
Conversely, the more we exercise the courage to think for ourselves and rely on our own perceptions, the more of our original humanity we recapture. That is what I'm trying to encourage people to do.
One of society's primary functions is to produce mediocrity. If one of its members slips from mediocity down into depravity (crime, mental illness, etc.), society will take corrective action - either to reform or treat the person, or to warehouse that person (as in a prison) so that he will no longer threaten others. Likewise, if a person tries to move up from mediocrity into greatness, society will move against him and attempt to either push him back down into mediocrity or get rid of him (or her). And by "greatness" I don't mean Bill Gates. I mean Jesus. I mean Nelson Mandela. I think that it's likely that more great men and women have been executed by society than have won Nobel prizes.
I'm not so concerned about society setting rules for us to follow (after all I'm a lawyer) as I am concerned about society trying to determine my identity as equivalent to my social roles, and teaching me to pretend that I'm who society expects me to be (whether I really am or not). We are taught from an early age to put up a socially acceptable facade and to pretend that it's not a facade; after long enough we begin to believe it's real.
So I would encourage people to make their own choices, but the choices we make are often defined by who we think we are - so if we allow society to tell us who we are, then we allow society to determine the choces we make. For example: I'm a lawyer, but then again I'm not. That's just one of the roles I play, not my identity. I find my peers all tend to think alike (they "think like lawyers" because they've been subtly taught that "what you do for a living" = "who you are". They all drive the same cars, live in the same neighborhoods, vote for the same candidates, etc. Off-duty conversation revolves around fascinating topics like furniture, dog food, and drywalling one's basement.
Ultimately, we made society; it didn't make us. Though we all have to follow certain rules in order to live together in peace, we should not treat society as if it were a god to whom we owe our identity. It's not either/or: it's just that the more we are conditioned to believe that we are nothing but a set of roles, the more we allow our roles to swallow us up, and the more plastic" and more dehumanized we become.
Conversely, the more we exercise the courage to think for ourselves and rely on our own perceptions, the more of our original humanity we recapture. That is what I'm trying to encourage people to do.
One of society's primary functions is to produce mediocrity. If one of its members slips from mediocity down into depravity (crime, mental illness, etc.), society will take corrective action - either to reform or treat the person, or to warehouse that person (as in a prison) so that he will no longer threaten others. Likewise, if a person tries to move up from mediocrity into greatness, society will move against him and attempt to either push him back down into mediocrity or get rid of him (or her). And by "greatness" I don't mean Bill Gates. I mean Jesus. I mean Nelson Mandela. I think that it's likely that more great men and women have been executed by society than have won Nobel prizes.
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
It may be that one of the most insidious centripetal drives in society is the drive to be an individual, to seek an identity, to be preoccupied with the question of identity and one's difference from others.
Comment by JakeDanger
The Matrix
of society himself, he knew nothing better than to define himself in terms of other products. Our
factories pump out nearly identical plastic Barbie dolls by the millions, and our families and schools
pump out nearly identical plastic people by the millions; when they grow up we house them in nearly
identical prefabricated cookie-cutter homes and provide them with prefabricated opinions ("choose
from among Opinions A, B, or C"). Everyone asks and answers the question "who am I?" one way or the
other. Not to dwell on the question is simply to answer it answer it by default - to let society answer
it for us. If we want to make a real contribution to the world we must be real people, not cheap, plastic,
mass-produced products. Some would call that "selfish" (those who stand to gain from the docility of
the masses), but it's not - I'm not a Barbie doll, but then again neither is anyone else. You can't love
or value someone who for all you know is nothing but a piece of plastic.
I like the line in Pink Floyd's "The Wall":
There must be some mistake I didn't mean to let them take away my soul
am I too old is it too late?