Some say that society is just a bunch of people together. I doubt this; it must be something more than this. Most people most of the time seem to me to be pretty understanding and tolerant. 90+% of the population understands that to be born is lucky, one has to go to school, get an education, work and pay taxes, save something for an emergency, and that we are better off trying to spend our free time in our own way as best we can. This last thing means that we try not to interfere with other people’s business because once we do, we open the door to other people getting involved in our business – and then in addition to all the things we must do in life, we must then spend time defending ourselves of false accusations, meddling, and a host of other problems. Live and let others live as far as possible is a way of life that the vast majority of people seem to accept – if they did not – we would see a lot more crime, problems, and violence than we actually do – all of these things, such as crime, war, conflict, if you look carefully, are engaged in by the minority – not the majority – so there is reason to be hopeful – that we are not – most of us – like that.
But then I look at society in general, as a whole, and I am completely confused. You would think that if society as a whole were simply reflecting the people who make it up, our societies in the world would generally be peaceful, people would be friendly to one another, as most of us likely experience with our neighbors or walking outside of where we live. We would not be able to travel at all if this were not true. On the news, however, there is barely an hour that goes by without some sort of crises. Crises after crises, crime after crime, disaster after disaster – there are a lot of bad events out there – and I would have guessed rationally that a society made up of such decent people could easily realize how much they could get done if they focused on these things and lent a hand. We could eradicate poverty tomorrow in Canada or the USA if we had this social attitude, we could spend our time reducing the problems we see around us.
Instead, this is not what is done. Instead, society appears to be in a CLASH of CIZVILIZATIONS and I was never sure that there was more than one – Which other civilization are we clashing with, when and where? I have never met some other society where a lot of people, let alone the vast majority, were actually going to spend their time and energy to go out and wreck havoc on another society. How would this happen? Why would 90% of one society be kind and generous, and then somehow, 90% of another group of people not be so? If you look at the news you might be lead to believe that the vast majority of Americans believe every single thing Bush does – or that every single Canadian believes what Prime Minister Paul Martin says, but actually when you listen to people, virtually no one believes what their leaders say almost ever – so why do we assume that some other society, where their leaders say something, must be true about their society? If we know that most people want peace and prosperity in our own country, we can probably assume reasonably well that people in other countries want also peace and prosperity. I have yet to see a country where people decide to dedicate themselves to war, violence, and self-mutilation. If they were so – they could just commit mass suicide.
No, if society were just the addition of the people in it, I am convinced we would not see half the problems we see today. We would realize war was pointless and our countries would not fight with each other – our governments would not waste our tax dollars, and we would spend social time reducing problems common to all rather than creating more problems.
Society as a whole appears to me to be the opposite of its parts – in the modern world – society appears violent, judgemental and irrational. Clinton was attacked publicly and viewed as outrageous as the President of the USA, in popular media, for having engaged in sexual activity – and whether one agrees with the president or not, or thinks this immoral or not, think of how society appeared to be so concerned about this for so long in the USA and how much time, effort, and tax dollars were spent pursuing this. Other issues, common to the public, at the same time were ignored – like poverty, disease, and disasters – to focus on this issue. Now, the current President, Bush II, mislead the public into a war which he claimed was all about defending the USA from an imminent threat – which was not true, he destroyed the lives of Americans, Foreigners (particularly large numbers of Iraqis, and Afghans in his previous war - and Afghanistan did not attack America, nor did it pose any threat – how could a nation so poor where people worry about feeding their families get the time, resources, and thought to worry about threatening America?), plus all those people who had their lives disrupted including the accidental bombings of Syrian tourists, etc. He said the war would not involve casualties and be quick, claimed Mission Accomplished shortly after invading – the war continues – and is worse than ever, and he has spent in one year more than government revenues worse than any government in US History – he has spent far more than any Dictator would ever have felt comfortable spending – and has spent 40 million just on inauguration ceremonies – like a King might be expected to spend a few dollars less. Which President does a society consider impeaching? Which president would it make sense to impeach? Which president has fallen out of line, dramatically, with doing the job of president and representing the greater public?
If there were ever a case to be made of promoting a reality check on our theories and ideas of society – it would be this – That society, and those who claim to represent it, are in no way the same thing as society is in reality – so shouldn’t we change our minds about who represents society, how we view society – and also, as a result, what we focus on as a society, and reducing problems common to all of us rather than creating more than we can deal with? If society is the simple addition of all the people together, it should be calm, cool, collected, and peaceful more than 90% of the time – because the 90% should be able to ignore and calm down that hot 10% easily – especially in a democracy – you would think. If this could be so, we would see that there was no reason to kill people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cuba, and now Iran. These are all actions that I just do not think 90% of us would think of doing on our own, let alone together. Why? Of what benefit is this to 90% of us? I have a pretty decent idea of which portion of our societies benefit from these actions, but it is likely no more than less than 1%.
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