Society

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

In a material sense, society does not exist. There are only individual collections of particles that behave as “people.” What makes them operate as if a society existed are the structures in their brains, which we call by such names as “assumptions,” “ideas,” “knowledge,” and “rationality.”

In a similar sense, countries or nations do not exist, only people who spend their time in defined geographical areas who share structures which give them knowledge of borders, laws, and the probable consequences of violating them. There are people whose mental structures make them follow roles that reinforce these borders and laws: border guards, customs agents, police officers, immigration officials. Each individual person has a sense of how they are supposed to behave and to interact with each other.

Governments do not exist. The term is merely a reference to common structures which cause some people to assume authority and other people to accept the necessity of obedience.

Assumptions play a big part. People act like they believe they are supposed to act. They play their roles in the way that is modelled to them by others in those roles. They do this to get social approval and to avoid negative outcomes like losing status or being punished.

Also, at heart everyone needs some guidelines on how to act–if you make it up as you go along you’ll be lost and confused all of the time.

Ideas are contagious. That’s just how our brains work. Monkey see, monkey do–literally, since we are highly specialized monkeys. We are taught–one could almost say indoctrinated–as we grow up, by parents, who tell us what is right and wrong, how to get along in the world, how to take care of our teeth and hair, and a thousand other things. By peers, who teach us what is normal, what is cool, how friends act towards each other. By teachers, religious leaders, and of course the media, which teaches us what is attractive, popular, worth paying attention to. All of these things contribute to our “world image”–the way we see, categorize, define, and understand. We understand that we are a part of a group, that we live in a nation, that we have a government, that we are “mothers” and “plumbers” and “soldiers” and “senators” and “Christians” and whatever else. So despite our understanding of our individuality we ramify the fiction that there is such a thing as a society or group that has attributes beyond those of the individual people in it.

What is the point of this? The point is that it is good to remember that it is individuals who act, not impersonal forces. We might say “the police came, arrested him, and took him to jail.” But this is all an abstraction and disguises individual action. Several people came, ordered or forced a person to get into their vehicle, answer questions, submit to a search, etc., then took them to a building staffed by other people where a further set of people were kept behind bars. Each police officer was following the instructions of their superiors and doing what they felt was their job; the person arrested was defined as a criminal or someone whose proper place was locked in a cell, where guards, similarly, acted in those ways they considered normal and proper.