My best friend and I went out drinking Saturday and we had an interesting conversation about society, and what kinds of things society demands.
You can find societies on any and every level of human existence. They are large and small, they can be formed on single or entire sets of beliefs. Anyone who lives in American is part of the American society, gay people are a society, people who go a specific school are a society, and the people in a certain class in that school are also a society. Now, society can be a wonderful thing, indeed most people when confronted with the choice would favor giving up certain freedoms in order to be member to a society which protects certain things and works towards a common goal. But in addition to legal, political, scholastic, and religious demands, society makes social demands as well. Ones that are less considered in the social model.
To set the scene, my friend was telling me that at my age, I should be out getting girls, not necessarily spending all my time looking for that long-term relationship. He was more in favor of me experiencing the short-term relationship, the mostly physical relationship that is easy to start and easy to end, no emotional commitment involved. This isn't the first time this has come up, and usually I just say that isn't what I'm interested in, and that it's the long-term relationship that I want. However, this night we had enough time, and we were drunk enough, to take it a little deeper. He suggested that by experiencing both sides of the argument, I would be able to better decide which I wanted, and that anything else could be considered a show of ignorance.
To establish a base upon which we could argue our points, we agreed on a model. On one side you have the 'traditional marriage' including unrequited love, complete fidelity, a few kids, a house, you know, the responsible family life, which I will refer to as 'love'. On the opposite side we agreed is the 'irresponsible' life (of course, words like responsible are relative to this argument), living for the moment. Doing what you like because you like to do it, including (for the purpose of this model) the short-term relationship, meaningless sex, come-and-go womanizing, getting what you want when you want it, which I will refer to as 'sex'.
Now, I told him that even though I've had slightly more experience with 'love' than 'sex', I'm largely unbiased towards either. Sure, all my past relationships have been more emotionally charged than physically charged, but none of those got anywhere near the two extremes of my model, so I can't really say I have experience in either. He initially said that unless you've experienced both sides, you can't have an unbiased opinion, to which I replied that it's actually only if you've experienced neither that you can claim an unbiased opinion. If you've experienced one side of an argument and not the other, that would be a biased opinion. If you've experienced both sides, bias evolves simply into an educated opinion.
So where does society take place in all this? Well, he asked why, in all my unbias in this model of ours, why I wanted the 'love' side and not the 'sex' side. I told him that between the two, it's the lifestyle I've experienced more in my life and seen more of in the lives of those I respect, that it was the traditional model in society and that it was better for me than the other. This is where society came into it, he assumed that I was putting this lifestyle on a pedestal because that's what society had told me to do, and at that point the argument changed from one arguing about "whether or not I should be going out and having 'meaningless sex' or pursuing love" to one about conformity, non-conformity, and the whys of society.
The flaw of society is this: society isolates those who are different. In any society there is a majority, and a minority (except of course in the rare case when you have a 50/50 split). There's three major reasons that I can think of that bring people running to join the majority. The first, and probably first-considered by people when picking a side, is which is easier? Let's face it, taking a stand, takes work. Whichever side takes less work, people will naturally go to that side because, again let's face it, people are naturally lazy. The second reason (and probably the more significant of the two) is most people have a deeply-rooted 'need' to fit in, they need it, and will go to almost any lengths to fit in with the majority of said society.
You see, when you take a group of people, any group of people from any selection of backgrounds, and throw them together, they will quickly find common ground, establish a majority and get straight to isolating the minority. Which is, like I said, the condemning flaw of society. When someone find themselves feeling isolated, their desire to fit in becomes a more influencing factor on their decision making than logic/common sense. The side effect of this is that they begin to make their lifestyle and behavioral decisions based on how well it will cause them to fit in, or how "cool" it makes them (and really when you think about it, cool is just a word to describe how well someone or something appeals to a society). So then you have a person who is desperately trying to fight who they are, covering it up, or simply don't know who they really are. Basically, someone who is who they are for the simple reason of fitting in.
This, in turn, fuels the flaw of society, as every person who acts this way is adding to the majority of that society, and the bigger the majority is in relation to the minority, the more pressure the minority is going to feel to fit in. People in the minority may still be the type who wants to fit in, but they are comfortable with fitting in with the minority. However, the smaller that minority becomes in relation to the majority, the more people in the minority will begin to feel like they fit in with a big enough crowd instead, and will 'conform' or rather, put up a front, change their life, act differently, and basically do what it takes to fit in the the majority.
Take a sample of 100 people, measuring sexuality, two extremes, two choices, gay or straight. In a society where 55 people are straight, and 45 people are gay, the gay people are going to feel pretty confident about acting gay, as the gays in that society make up a significant part. If 80 people were straight, and only 20 people were gay, the gay people are going to start feeling that social pressure a little more because, as stated, the majority will by nature, isolate, persecute, harass, and sabotage the minority because...well, a majority society consumes everything in its path. If 95 are straight, and only 5 are gay, you can bet those 5 gay people are gunna have a hell of a time living in that society, as the sheer fact of their small representation in that society will cause them to come face-to-face with hate, ridicule, and isolation where ever they go in that society.
Is it bad to have a society of people that is 100% sided with some particular demographic? For instance, is it bad to have a society that is 100% heterosexual? No, it's not, in fact it's great. Like-mindedness breeds harmony while opposition breeds confusion, fear, and hate. The bad thing about having a society that is 100% sided in a demographic is that no one will ever be able to feel like they can be who they are if who they truly are lies on the opposite side of that demographic. They would know, well as anyone, that if they profess their feelings of opposition, they would come under fire and persecution, and ultimately be isolated from the society based on one of a thousand demographics that person can have opinions on. So they suppress their position on that demographic, never to reveal it until a time when they feel safe doing so.
So point being, does the flaw lie with conformity? No, the flaw lies with what society does in the absence of conformity. It breeds whole generations of 'sheep'; people who don't know the true reasons for doing what they do, but they do it anyways to fit in. They don't know why they feel the way they feel, just that if they feel a certain way they will fit in and if they don't, they won't fit in. Perhaps it is peoples' need to fit in that is to blame, or more likely, it is peoples' fear of that which is different that is to blame, and society is just a machine to fight for the majority against that which they fear. It's a stupid development, if you think about it, but there it is. It's really a stupid way to live your life, being someone or doing something you don't know anything about, or don't feel strongly about, or something you're even flat out against, but you be that person or do that thing anyways, because your need to fit in is so overwhelming that nothing else matters.
Now, I haven't even touched the polar opposite. These people, instead of feeling a need to fit in, feel a need to stand out. These people feel they need to establish a vivid contrast between themselves and the majority, indeed these people desire to live in the minority because, in addition to the flak the minority comes under sometimes, the minority also stands out to the majority. When you're a member of a demographic side that is in the minority of some topic, your voice constitutes a larger percentage of that demographic, a 'bigger chunk', which gives people a sense of empowerment. People would rather be 1 in 100 vs. 1 in 1000.
Of course, the minority isn't always a bad thing. On many topics, or demographics as I've been calling them, the majority doesn't lie along one of the polar opposites. In many cases, the majority sits comfortably in the middle of the issue while a minority establishes themselves on either side, nearer the extremes. In most of these cases, establishing yourself as a member of one of the minorities is more difficult than settling in the middle of the issue with the majority.
Take the issue of high school popularity as an example. There are two polar extremes, either you're very popular or you're very unpopular, either way, people are likely to know who you are. This is the minority and it can be found divided among the two extremes. Then there's the majority, which sits right in the middle. These people are neither popular, nor unpopular, and most are happy being just that. They aren't singled out, they don't stand out, they just are. This is the easiest route to take, and in this case, people's desire to do that which is easiest and their need to fit in finally work together. But then you have the people who need to stand out, and this is where you get your popular or unpopular minorities from. It takes less effort to get the disrespect of the majority than it does to get their respect. This is where you get your 'rebels'.
Rebels show up in all facets of all societies. These people do the opposite of what they are told because they are told to do it. They hate the majority and want to oppose 'the man' or 'the conformists' in every way possible. They may not necessarily feel strongly about a breaking social rules and norms, but they'll do it anyways to piss society off. This is where you get your 'goth' kids, who need to stand out but don't want to work to be popular so they settle into unpopularity and then convince themselves they're in the best place to be by calling everyone else conformists and sheeple and such. I feel like a lot of hippies and environmentalists also fall into this category.
On the other side of this you have people who not only want to stand out, but also want the respect of the majority. This being the principle that creates the population of the 'very popular' side. They work for the majority just enough to garner their respect and, in most cases, envy. This is where you get a lot of celebrities, business billionaires, sports stars. Some of these people still hate the majority simply because they are the majority, this is where you get your elitist assholes.
Now, you have to consider the third driving force at power behind the whole social model, and truly this is the most significant force behind decision making, and that is self-interest. Self-interest can be described in a lot of ways, but in a nut shell, it's what you believe to be best for you, whether it's an issue the drives to the very core of your being or merely skims the surface, people are going to act in their best interest. No matter how strongly you may feel about something, a human can and will do the opposite if they feel it's in their best interest, whatever they define their best interest to be. One person may consider their best interest to be financial success, one person's best interest may be their wife and kids, one person's best interest may be simply to stand out in some way or another.
In the previous model of a society with 95 straight people and 5 gay people, one of those gay people may be gay to the core of his being, but he may also define his best interest as being able to get along with society so he can get a good job without being discriminated against, garner respect among the society, basically create opportunity for himself. So gay though he may be, and even though he very well may be one of those people who wants to stand out, his best interest that he defines for himself may just as well dictate that he cover it up all and fake it so he can fit in with society, so society will include him in opportunity, so he can make a good life for himself, based on his definition of a good life (which for all we know was shaped by society anyways) but at least he knows it's his opinion.
Ultimately, when people take the time to make the distinction, people will almost ALWAYS act in their best interest, it goes back to Darwin's 'survival of the fittest'. It's kind of like those movies, Saw, where people are taken and put into situations in which they have to do gruesome things in order to save themselves from death, which I would assume is in almost everyone's 'best interest'. Consider, of course, that living may not be in someone's best interest; best interest is defined by the person making the decisions, and that person will sometimes intentionally 'sabotage' one of their strong interests, keeping their job for example, in order to maintain what they believe to be their best interest, which might be being true to their strongest moral beliefs, so they intentionally 'sabotage' their job interest because they were put in a position in which they would have to compromise their best interest in order to keep it.
Now when you bring best interests into the 'polar opposites' model, it alters it a bit. This is where you get the expression, "where do you draw the line?". Consider a model of two polar opposites, a color bar if you will, with white on one side and black on the other, and throughout the middle is the steady blend from one to the other. Somewhere on that line, no matter the issue, people will draw a line, effectively cutting the color bar into two halves. This line represents their best interest, and from that point, on one side of it becomes your best interest and on the other side is your worst interest. Survival of the fittest dictates that person will never cross that line from their best interest to their worst interest, however, based on the issue at hand, that person is likely to live as close to that line as he/she can without actually crossing it. The student who works just hard enough to pass all his classes so he doesn't flunk out, the employee who works just hard enough to keep his job, the citizen who will bend a law as far as they can without breaking it, or even the citizen who will break as many laws as he can without stirring the authorities enough to get thrown into jail.
It can be said that one of the forces driving people to live as close to the line as possible is laziness, and it usually is, as with the student and employee who put the minimum amount of effort in to maintain their goals. However, don't be mistaken in that, consider the poor mother who eats barely enough to keep herself alive so that she can give the rest to her children, or the man who lives as frugally as possible so he can save as much as he can for his son's college fund.
I guess ultimately what I'm saying about society is, people make stupid decisions for stupid reasons all the time. Sometimes because of the frequency of decisions being made for stupid reasons, people stop being able to make the distinction between the stupid reasons and good reasons. This is how it comes back to me. I've made a lot of decisions in my life that could be interpreted (and often are) as stupid decisions, and can also be interpreted as falling into my category description of 'rebels', intentionally doing the opposite of the majority just to stick it to the man. This couldn't be further from the truth.
I'll admit I may not have evaluated every time where on my 'moral color bar' this decision landed, but I don't expect anyone ever does. When I made the decision to smoke marijuana for the first time, it probably wasn't too much in my best interest, but remember that I said you draw a line, and one side becomes your best interest, and though smoking marijuana probably wasn't near the extreme side of my best interest, I clearly felt I was still standing on the side of that line I had drawn in my mind. If I had considered everything, all of this, all the possible ramifications of it all at that time, I might've shifted that line to a position that would've that decision into the 'worst interest' side. But I'll be honest, reevaluating your lines, or your 'morals' as you can fairly call them, takes work. And here comes human nature towards laziness, I didn't feel like it. People probably make a lot of stupid decisions because they don't feel like reevaluating their morals everytime they make a decision, or they simply don't think to reevaluate them and just go by their last judgment, which people, including me, do frequently.
Now, back to the beginning, and the conversation I was having with my friend about the traditional marriage model and the newer, 'more appealing', meaningless sex model. Society has shaped my opinion on the matter, it's true. It's kind of stupid really, but society shapes everyones' opinions on everything. You may not agree with society, but you still form your opinions based on the influences of those around you whether you like it or not.
So based on what I've experienced and seen, and liked, I've decided that in the model of long-term vs short-term relationships, I've drawn a line and called the side of long-term/marriage as my best interest. As with many models, the opposing side has a certain appeal that draws me as close to my line as possible, indeed I would probably take limited participation in the side I've deemed my 'worst interest' if opportunity came up, but I have no intention of seeking it out. I had no intention of seeking out someone with marijuana, I had no intention of seeking out someone with alcohol, I had no intention of beginning to swear when I first did that, but we do these things because we trust ourselves in our interpretation of our best interest and honestly believe we are still acting within the realms of our best interest. Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't, but what I think is important above all, is to understand why.
Lots of people throughout life would love nothing more than to tell you what your best interest should be, and in fact some will insist upon it, such as parents, religious authorities, legal authorities, or others. What's important is to understand that these are opinions, just the same as anyone else's, and are to be taken as such. Of course, a lot of them may be right, you may not agree with them, but they may be right all the same. This is where personal experience enters into the realm of deciding what your best interest is. Inexperience breeds poor definitions of best interest, which breeds poor decisions, which eventually, in the long run, leads to a society that makes poor choices as a collective whole which, if allowed to continue in that fashion, will destroy the society. I hope I have made my argument up until now clear enough to convince most people that the statement I just made is true. I honestly believe it to be.
Many decisions in life can be extremely effective in shaping your future, for both the better and worse. The problem with a lot of these decisions is that the effects of the decision take time to manifest, or to create a noticeable enough change to for you to realize the effects. Your inexperience can lead you to making decisions in the present that you think are in your best interest, but over time will effectively shape your life into something you no longer believe is in your best interest, usually by that point it's too late to reverse the effects of the decision and you're left trying to sort out the mess, and the people you've built bridges with in the meantime of course.
So how do you avoid these catastrophic decisions when you can't tell them for what they are? You seek the guidance and experience of those who are older, those who have gone through it already or seen it manifested in another, and can relate the effects of the decision, those who will know the decision for what it is. That would be all well and good, but there's exceptional flaws with doing this as well as with anything.
There are a lot of people who act like they know what is best for you and they really don't. There are those who will tell you to make a decision based on the fact it has worked for most, but things affect people in different ways, and their lack of knowledge about your background can lead them to guide you down the wrong path, in other words, lead you down a path that may not be right for you.
Remember the crowd of people who do what they do just to fit in? Without ever really knowing why they do it or what them doing it really means? Well a lot of those people grow up and turn around spreading the exact same information even though they STILL don't know why they do it, or what it really means to do it. This is an example of ignorance creating more ignorance. It's a vicious cycle really, but it happens all the time. You get the kid who is raised all his life never to drink alcohol 'because it's bad', who then turns around and teaches his kids (and really anyone who will listen) also not to drink alcohol 'because it's bad', and anyone he convinces turns around and teaches anyone else who will listen. You create a web of misinformation, a regurgitation of baseless morals, and people listen and don't drink alcohol 'because it's bad' which is the same as saying 'I don't do it simply because I was told not to do it'. Of course, there's a reason for all things, and over time through the constant retelling of the morals, the reason gets lost by the way side, or even intentionally covered up in attempts to persuade more people to adopt the morals.
Let's take alcohol as a perfect means to illustrate my example, and I'll try to tie it all together. Alcohol has been woven so deep into the fabric of society I doubt it'll ever be removed, but that certainly won't stop people from trying. Regardless of alcohol's stranglehold on society, an alarming amount of people oppose alcohol (to varying degrees). Many of them will have different reasons for opposing the consumption of alcohol. Some of these reasons only dictate the person doesn't drink themselves, while others can be more extreme and drive the person to spread their cause as far and as wide as they can, and by any means necessary to satisfy them. Some of these reasons can be as simple as 'my parents told me not to', or 'if I do I'll get grounded', or 'God says it's bad in the Bible'. The strength of these arguments is going to be different to different people, personally I think they're all pretty weak.
My opinion? I believe the facts are that, like many things, when handled irresponsibly, alcohol can lead to addiction, death of yourself or others, and general poor decision making that can affect you and others in negative ways. LOTS of people are irresponsible, and if they drink they are likely to be irresponsible with alcohol as well, including drinking too much, drinking too often, driving while drunk, displacing their priorities because they become addicted, etc. Of course, not everyone who drinks will act in such irresponsible ways. Most people who drink, like myself, are responsible enough to know when is a good time to drink and when isn't, and when it IS time to drink, how much to drink, and what kinds of things are acceptable to do while drunk and what kinds of things aren't. Alcohol is just an enabler, people can be (and are) irresponsible with LOTS of things, but the nature of alcohol makes it so the irresponsible decisions made while under the influence of it are often more significant consequently. Drinking in and of itself isn't wrong at all in my opinion, but like I said, when combined with irresponsibility, the effects can be disastrous. My interpretation of the facts lead me to establish a moral that drinking is, at least for me, okay, as long as I don't over do it.
In some peoples' minds, it's better to get rid of alcohol entirely than to deal with the consequences of the few who do it irresponsibly. This is the kind of person who intentionally doesn't communicate the facts in order to use a reason he believes will persuade more people who consequently will adopt of the moral of not drinking. This is the kind of person, in my opinion, who would write the Bible and put into it that God said drinking was a sin because he knew that most people believe in God and their belief that if God said it, it's true. This is the kind of person who pushed for, and passed, Prohibition (which is commonly referred to as "the Progressives' folley"). So then these people blindly take on this reason and spread it themselves, ignorance feeding ignorance, like I said. This wouldn't be so bad except like a lot of other things, this is used in conjunction with close-mindedness (which is another force), a superiority complex (another force), and ignorance that there are different ways of looking at the same thing.
I realize that my opinion of why people should or shouldn't drink may not be right either, but it's one I've formulated for myself based on the information I've heard concerning the subject for 22 years, and that's just it, that's how I feel empowered over others, I've heard these arguments and have formulated my own opinion. I'm not just taking something someone told me was truth and taking it for face value, I've evaluated the opinions of others and made my own opinion on the matter, I've drawn my line and am sticking to it. I know what my line is, I know where it is, and I know which side I stand on.
All I really want is for people to do the same. To stop making the decisions they make for stupid reasons, to question their morals, to ask WHY? when someone tells them something is right. To take everything into consideration and make the best possible choice with the information they have. I'm not telling people to do the opposite of what they are told is right, but to find out WHY? that person believes it's right, and make a decision for yourself. Make the effort to sort out your life, your morals, your beliefs, make sure you know WHO you are and WHY you do the things you do. Establish your best interest and stick to it, but know when it's appropriate to act out of your best interest to help others. We live in a society and in order to maintain that society, we have to work together, we have to be courteous. Sometimes we have to do things we may not feel are in our interest, but when taken into the big picture of maintaining a society that protects your interests, you may find it actually is.
