I, Society
By Anthony North
Copyright Anthony North 2013
Cover image copyright, Yvonne North 2013
Other books by Anthony North
I, TRILOGY INTRODUCTORY VOLUME
I, STORYTELLER SERIES
I, Adventurer: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/305210
I, POET SERIES
Inmate Earth: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/237329
Bard Stuff: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/252874
Mind Burps: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272508
Verse Fest: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/302837
I, THINKER SERIES
I, Paranormal: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/237339
I, Essayist: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/259928
I, Unexplained: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303478
I, Observer: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/304480
CONTENTS
Introduction
On Rivalry
The Machine Society
Crime & Society
Superstition - How the Modern World Works
The Inefficiency of Efficiency
Put It In Yer Head
The New Superbeings
Feelgood Television
Bye, Bye Love
We're Specialist Crazy
The Forever Gods
Evil & Morality
Religious, or Not
Nature Provides
Speed of Change
Individuality
When Good Becomes Evil
Psycho-Analysis
On Destiny
The Corporate Junkie
What Is Foul?
On Empowerment
On Passion
And I Want It Now
How to Explain You
The Root of Desire
Obsessive Essay
Extreme Behaviour
The Things We Fear
Little Voices
Moaning Men
It's No Joke
What an Insult
The God Man
It's My Opinion
It's His Castle
The Natural Umbilical Cord
About the Author
Connect With Anthony
INTRODUCTION
Here's my second volume of reasoned rants. I call it I, Society because many of the short essays are the result of my concept of socio-psychology - that the social and psychological are often mixed. The idea has led to some interesting, if off-beat takes on life, society and you. Enjoy. And if not, maybe you’re part of my concept of psycho-sociology.
ON RIVALRY
The world seems to thrive on rivalry. The greatest themes of classic literature involve rivals for love. The business world runs on rivalry. Who has not heard of sibling rivalry? And is not war the ultimate problem of rivalry?
Today’s capitalist way of life couldn’t exist without rivalry. In the UK we have the term, ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’, to identify our need to keep our purchases higher and better than our neighbour’s.
Rivalry is also at the heart of sport.
And it is here that we see the great contradiction in the term. You see, sport brings us together in friendly rivalry – sometimes – yet sport itself was arguably devised to keep warriors fit during peace time so as to be always ready for battle. Think karate. Think jousting.
The contradiction, however, is a peculiarity of the western mind-set. Religions are all about opposites, best seen in eastern concepts such as Yin and Yang. One is preservation, the other destruction, yet their real purpose is to find balance and harmony.
In the west, the concept was changed into good and evil.
The balance is taken away and the two polar opposites exist only to conflict. But this was done for a very specific reason, and it is all to do with politics.
It was the sociologist, Foucault, who best identifies a process in society where power is held by those who control the ‘knowledge’ a particular society has. In doing so they define what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’. The former is obviously good, and the latter bad, even evil.
In this way, a rival is identified as an enemy instead of someone with whom to find balance. And thus, a socio-political system becomes a ‘truth’ through identifying abnormality, and conflict is guaranteed within the world.
THE MACHINE SOCIETY
Do you get the feeling that society just isn’t working right any more? I know many do, including me. It almost seems as though we’re just going through the motions, as if we exist in a huge, unfeeling machine.
Well maybe we do. But don’t get me wrong. Some societal ‘machines’ are essential. The armed forces come to mind. I’ve experienced the sense of the ‘machine’ in the forces myself. It is essential for professionalism. But modern society is far more fundamental than this.
Society is supposed to hold a degree of chaos.
And whilst this is quite achievable in ‘lifestyle’ choices, it has changed in terms of work, travel, education, dealing with authority, and a host more areas.
One easy answer is that society has become much more regulated today. Everything works via the computer, and this little taskmaster is totally unbending. Hence, in order to be as one with the computer, our society becomes machine-like in itself.
But the problem can go deeper than this.
Indeed, it can seep deep into our communal psyche. For instance, society has always been regulated by the view of contemporary intellectuals.
In ancient times of Christendom, society was a reflection of heaven. In the Age of Enlightenment, society became based upon rationality. With the success of science, society became atheist, material and specialized.
Today, we live in the computer age, so it follows that we unconsciously view ourselves as bytes marching to the program’s tune.
Following films such as ‘The Terminator’, we asked ourselves, will the machine take over the world? Well, the reality was maybe far more subtle. It already has.
CRIME & SOCIETY
When Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society she was wrong. But in saying it, she created a truth. We can accept this contradiction because what we class as knowledge is often simply a bias exemplified by an influential person. And armed with the bias, people can behave in such a way as to make it become a fact.
Typical is the existence of God. Rationally, we can reject the idea as superstition. But when a believer lives a life as dictated by the Bible, he places the idea in the real world through his actions. It seems that all we need to allow God to exist is the belief that he does.
On the same analysis, if enough people believe that society does NOT exist, then our actions will show that it doesn’t. But it is only a truth by virtue of our behaviour.
There is, infact, a relationship between co-ordinated society and the belief in a God or gods. History tells us that most co-ordinated societies lived as such because of an overriding ethos of a higher Being looking after them. Such a form of spirituality – an idea of social bonding, if you like – tends to be the opposite of individuality, which can be seen as the main element of social deconstruction - which does, of course, suggest that we can only be harmonious in a proper society with a belief in a deity.
We can see this in action in the history of crime. Individuality seems to generate crime. This was so during the 18th century British crime wave, which came at the time when an automatic belief in God was in decline. One of the central factors that brought the crime wave to an end was the work of the Wesley brothers, and their ministering of Methodism, taking religion out of the pulpit and into the street. The moral code which is the bedfellow of spirituality eased the urges towards crime.
Our present crime wave
is coming at a similar time, where individuality is the ethos and religion is in decline. This suggests that the only way to stop the onslaught of crime is to rebirth a new religion – a new spirituality. However, this is not going to happen. But we are in a unique position in social evolution in that we can now look back on history and realise what is missing, thus allowing crime to thrive.
We can best see religions of the past as a form of social glue which stuck people to each other through a bonding ethos. And I do not believe it is beyond the wit of man to realise the need for a new form of secular bonding, taking the social ideals of religion and placing them in a more secular world. And I am convinced the new social glue can come from a proper understanding of the diversity, yet mutualistic existence of the natural world. Nature has its separate parts – its individuality – but it comes together in a holism of inter dependence. We should realise this and become as spiritual as the animals.
SUPERSTITION - HOW THE MODERN WORLD WORKS
When the Large Hadron Collider was switched on, people began to fear a black hole would form. How stupid, weren’t we? Then a few days later the financial markets collapsed and a black hole appeared in the global economy.
Are the two events related? Well, in one sense, the human mind does form a connection between the two. We have the idea of irony, an apparent perversity of fate. And irony is so well known because sometimes the world DOES seem to work like that.
Irony is the driving force of superstition.
In Medieval times the Devil was out to get you because people perceived the perversity of fate about them. Often it was caused by sinister meaning placed on words, such as the ‘black hole’ in the economy.
We can say that we’re not affected by such bunkum today. Yet, the financial meltdown was caused by a loss of confidence due to irresponsible trading. The money was apparently there, but banks became too frightened to lend it. Fright and loss of confidence are the result of irony, and therefore superstition.
Storytelling is also important to the process.
It is through the storyteller, telling tales around the camp fire, that myths grew. Studies of the paranormal can show how a haunting at a particular time in history sticks to the theme of the ‘story’ of the ghost believed in at that time.
A similar cultural force operates today in conspiracy theory. An event happens and storytellers (conspiracy theorists) sensationalise it. Suddenly, popular understanding of the event is made up of an event plus our appreciation of it following the fact. Reality, like time, is relative to the observer.
This form of reality is more than perception.
Indeed, it is beginning to gain scientific acceptance. In chaos theory we learn of concepts such as the ‘strange attractor’. This can be a tiny event which nonetheless has a disproportionate effect on the events that follow.
Typical is the analogy of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane. Place the concept into psychology and could the insinuation of a black hole and doom regarding the LHC have caused subtle psychological perversities in the unconscious of some financial traders?
Coincidence can be brought into the discussion.
We know they happen and we’re told it is to do with chance – or is it fate? Yet we also have the concept of synchronicity, where coincidences become meaningful. Could this be due to an initial coincidence affecting the unconscious, similar to a butterfly’s wings?
It would work like this. We know that the human mind is selective in what it appreciates. If it wasn’t we would be overwhelmed by information. This is often known as ‘selective attention’. Yet is it possible that such a concept allows us to walk a path from an event based solely on what we selectively see and react to?
If possible, then we are not just talking about personal psychology. Culture provides ‘symbols’ which define who we are and what we will do. The science of semiotics is carefully mapping such influences.
This is sociology in action, and affects the masses. From this process a ‘consensus’ arises of how we think the world works. Yet, bearing in mind the above processes, we can easily decide that we are not talking, here, about a definite reality, but how a particular society imagines how things work.
Dawkins identified a process to allow such psycho-sociology with the ‘meme’ – an idea that spreads through a society like a virus. He did of course limit the process to our foibles, as such, and not to an actual appreciation of ALL our knowledge of reality.
Ironic, that, isn’t it?
THE INEFFICIENCY OF EFFICIENCY
Now there’s a title to get you confused. If something is efficient it cannot be inefficient, surely? But in the crazy world we have created nowadays the two do not always follow. For instance, a PR message can appear efficient, but is full of spin.
Underneath so much of the modern world this factor rings true. A politician can appear efficient, but increasingly they are proving to be totally inefficient.
Such an argument goes to the heart of Big Biz and bureaucracy.
The beauty of today’s corporate and bureaucratic world is said to be that it runs with the perfection of a machine. Maximising everything to its utmost potential, nothing is wasted, and the end result is profit for all, and a service next to none.
In many ways, this is quite true. But there are problems in such an approach. First of all, it ends up being an unbending machine. Everything is down to procedure, and any deviation from the norm becomes impossible.
And we’ve all been on the receiving end of this inflexibility.
But the major problem goes even deeper because this type of inflexibility may be essential to the running of a machine, but it is counter to good order.
Essential to any non-machine is the idea of surplus. Things happen in life that cause disruptions to the system, or even create sudden higher demand. But have you noticed that whenever our corporate world is faced with such a blip, it fails to provide?
It is similar with bureaucracy. The reality is, service at the local is vital to efficiency, but bureaucratic ‘efficiency’ today is geared to the centre. Hence, services do not bend to local need. A truly efficient bureaucracy is chaotic at the centre in order to provide efficiency where it is really needed.
Machines are machines, and societies are societies, and sadly the two cannot possibly meet. But too many who think they know seem to think they can. And as long as this is the case, the efficient will always be ultimately inefficient.
PUT IT IN YER HEAD
What is education?
It seems to be many things to many people. But for most of history it has been to do with providing a rounded knowledge from which you could then go on to specialise. However, modern western society seems to have another view. Obsessed with financial success, politicians seem to think that education is now only to do with preparing us for the world of work.
Whether academic or vocational, this seems, now, to be the only ethic. But is there more to this than meets the eye? Education can be split into many categories. One of them is the imposing of a moral code. Through education, we are thought to be taught how to be nicer, more social people. This one has gone by the board of late due to liberal thinking. Put simply, liberals believe man, in his natural state, is a social animal. Hence, morality is inbred, so doesn’t need to be taught.
You only have to look at a riot, or simply a group of people denied what they want, to see that this is rubbish. Rather, man is instinctual, and will always seek what he wants. This can only be remedied by education imposing a thin veneer of morality. And by their insistence on man’s social nature, liberals are destroying the moral fabric of society.
Another important element of education is an appreciation of aesthetic value – i.e. the beauty of the world, the brilliance of man, as expressed through the arts. To many people, this is a mere distraction, but man needs more than work. But unless he is educated to know to look for those things above work, all he will do when not working is look around for trouble.
We
are only enriched when we are aesthetes at heart. This is particularly seen with the loss of our ability to cope with boredom. Aesthetic values are best understood through quiet contemplation, becoming bored, and through this inactivity, triggering thoughts in the head. This is where true fulfilment comes in life, as mystics have always known. But nowadays, because this aesthetic element is no longer in education, the only thing we trigger when approaching boredom is a video game.
History is also vital to education, and a thing a modern, forward looking society hates. But how much of the feeling of emptiness in modern society is due to a lack of appreciation of how we got here? Put simply, if we don’t know where we came from, how can we know where we’re going? The bottom line is this: education is a rounding of our appreciation of experience, making us whole human beings. In this way we become able to think for ourselves - which is maybe the problem. Politicians don’t want us to think for ourselves too much. It upsets their applecart. It seems they no longer want to educate the natives.
THE NEW SUPERBEINGS
We are so used to living in a material world, ruled by pragmatism, relying solely on the individual, and leaving knowledge to science alone, that we forget that more collective psychologies may have a bearing on our lives.
Indeed, I’m convinced that ‘mechanisms’ exist throughout human experience just as prevalent today as in the past. It is just that our worldview is so short sighted that we do not even consider such esoteric elements.
Researchers such as Jung and Campbell knew this.
In their work on myths and archetypes, they identified specific personality traits that exist in myth. But more than this, they also appeared in our dreams.
Myths, it seems, were our dreams writ large – the first ‘media’, as it were. And the relationship between myths and us does not stop here. Indeed, they are fundamental to who we are.
Why did myths have such an effect on people?
Because the archetypal gods were actually aspects of our own psychology. In heroes such as Hercules we see an exaggerated form of the striving of the human.
Hence, myths get under our skin, because we intuitively know they are us. In some myths, such as Oedipus, we even find great human drama played out, and in this way, they become symbols of taboo.