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Assuming no one consciously does anything without a motive, it is arguable that the weaker the social relationship between people, the less likely are their actions to be mutually beneficial. Without a sense of shared social goals, we are naturally more inclined to center on our own personal interests than on those of others. And although we may sometimes be moved to intervene and lend assistance in the case of strangers in our immediate presence, we are understandably not so giving as regards the billions of other strangers comprising the rest of humanity. Unsurprisingly, it would appear we are emotionally disposed to building social bonds within our immediate surroundings, whereas out-of-sight not only means out-of-mind but also too remote for any truly meaningful relationship – even if social media seeks to tell a different story.
By this reckoning, the entire notion that formalized social power structures have our real interests at heart becomes less credible in relation to the size and consequential internal remoteness of such structures. The statesman proclaiming his heartfelt interest in every citizen’s welfare is therefore a hypocrite who demeans the value of true human bonds – albeit he may be too immersed in his own propaganda to realize this. His claim of concern for millions defies any intelligent insight into what constitutes a real interest in others and the nature of constructive social interaction.
Hierarchical structures such as the nation-state nonetheless remain culturally central to almost every human society, even as their façade of unity only masks endemic internal alienation. And it is certainly not just within the political structures of nations that hierarchical frameworks are so culturally ingrained as to be effectively beyond question. Almost the entire spread of our species across the planet is coordinated – such as it is – through a presumption we must assume identities and play distinct roles within the many organizations, institutions, businesses, churches and so forth that regiment human affairs into hierarchies.
Such extensive formalization is clearly distinct from anything seen in the animal kingdom and is also something increasingly dragging both the individual and his experience of communal living away from evolutionary-normal conditions towards levels of artificiality previously unseen and therefore of unknown consequences. Meanwhile, the replacement of natural social cooperation with the highly individualistic and often-ruthless pursuit of money as a universal means of procuring almost anything does little to help preserve whatever untainted sociability remains in place.
Humans nonetheless appear resilient and able to adapt to changed social conditions – which is not to say that the resultant social reality is beneficial in the manners its supposed architects might claim. In any case, whatever criticisms may be hurled at the current world order, it generally enjoys knee-jerk defenses from those in key positions – almost as if, despite all the changes humans have already wreaked on this world, further changes would be inherently undesirable. This is obviously illogical, but whether such reflexive conservatism is simply rooted in the fear of change or results from a more rational justification of the status quo, those deemed to be in power appear little interested in anything beyond power itself.
Perhaps this is why amidst a plethora of competing ideas and commentary from a gazillion angles, we actually have little real agreement on most societal issues; power trumps understanding. As a result, it seems that, much as our great social thinkers might have never admitted it, the real and complex machinations of society’s evolution ultimately remain poorly framed by any of their great ideas and supposedly deep insights. Instead, social change appears intricately entwined in the changing and often obscure motives of countless social groups ultimately populated by unique individuals. Simplistic ideas populating mainstream culture may prove useful for the telling of convincing tales of reality, but reality itself is much more than a mere collection of tales.
Manufactured indifference and submission
Beyond superficially legitimizing one’s social persona, the fact is most people probably care very little about their government’s policies or about actively furthering any political ideologies. As long as their immediate life appears tolerable, they are likely too preoccupied with their daily routines to waste time speculating about how or why things are as they are, or about some hypothetical change that they generally expect will never happen.
For better or worse, this thinking suggests that social stability is simply a state in which people are generally persuaded that, despite any obvious inequalities or other problems, their own lot is acceptable to a point where serious objection or rebellion is not worth the effort. But notably, such a state does not depend on any demonstrable fairness, social justice, or even personal contentment; its key attribute is complacency, indifference or some other personal reluctance to act in the face of limited discontent.
Hence, although social stability in relatively egalitarian cultures can look reasonably functional in terms of large populations cohabiting without major problems, nothing can guarantee against the progressive erosion of such egalitarianism or the erection of barriers to dissent and protest. The only functional requirement for apparent stability is that public protest remains minimal or somehow muted. Furthermore, it can be reasoned that since those who gain power are by definition disposed to pursuing such power, they invariably hold a natural tendency to enact whatever measures increase their power and suppress whatever challenges it may face.
Other things being equal, this constitutes the ratchet mechanism by which power has a natural propensity to garner more power unto itself whilst never conceding it. This actually constitutes a permanent latency for fascism or other forms of runaway authoritarian zealotry: phenomena that typically manifest themselves through the state’s increasing use of its hierarchical structures as tools for propaganda and the suppression of dissent. Consequential increases in public desires to protest the state’s actions will likely be met with corresponding increases in efforts to thwart those protests – perhaps by breaking them up, banning them, or even via so-called false flag operations: clandestinely infiltrating them with violent elements such that they can then be publicly disgraced.
In such situations, long-standing pretensions that the apparatus of the state was ever working primarily in the people’s interests progressively unravels, whilst those in power are almost compelled to up the ante at each move given their increasing reliance on force as a means of keeping the public in check. Whatever the outcome, the otherwise believable myth that the nation-state has some inherent worth is revealed as a lie used by those who simply exploit nationalism as a means to procuring power for their own benefit – albeit such a ploy could be argued to include almost every citizen in at least some small way.
In a world where power-in-numbers has often been the deciding factor between which populations survived and which were vanquished, it is understandable that people tend to back the structures of their nations as apparent bastions against the worst. One may know one’s country to be guilty of various wrongdoings but provided someone else or some other country is on the receiving end of those wrongdoings, the world one knows appears preferable to the world known by others. Knowing the force of violence, the individual easily reasons it better to be on the side of those who perpetrate the violence than those who suffer it – even if such self-interest is rarely voiced openly. In more general terms, populations will mostly look the other way if their governing elites act out their worst excesses on others. Such indifference is of course actively encouraged through government propaganda and its supposed justifications for all such state-funded violence.
The resulting overall global situation is one of a generalized and subliminal paranoia – both within nations and between them. Conforming to the demands of the nation in terms of obeying its laws and paying taxes generally feels to the individual as somewhere between an annoying obligation and a barely-acceptable price for apparent protection within a dangerous world. Of course, choice in this matter is hard to exercise in any case given that flaunting the state’s demands obviously results in state-sanctioned punishments.
However, what could in fact be seen as just a grand and respectable protection racket benefits from the human mind’s readiness to window-dress its own compliance and subjugation as something loftier than the exploitation of primal instincts it actually is. Those in power use the persuasive influence of flattery to exploit their citizens desires to belong. Hence the identity of a nation becomes culturally imbued with notions of inherent greatness and is glorified in itself, rather than seen as just the pompous façade of a gang-mentality structure – something ultimately built on the constant threat of retribution for non-compliance. But within cultures deploying mass media to daily indoctrinate people to the seeming normality of all this, even the gang leaders can come to believe in themselves as people of genuine honor. Within any social analysis, it is only too easy to underestimate the extent to which the manipulation of tribal instincts can fuel mass conformity and robotic group-think; probably no one is wholly exempt from such blanket hypnosis, even if many will completely deny its very existence. Calling out the gang leaders for what they really are has in any case always proven a dangerous game.
The cultural cloaking of social fear as something other than what it really is offers self-esteem to those exploited by such fear and thereby makes the overall ruse even more effective. But in order for this stratagem to succeed there also has to be genuine fear centered on something real, or at least something believable. Hence ruling by covert fear tactics has always required plausible demons: from eternal hells and outright devils to enemy nations or enemies within – creations by which ruling elites sought to persuade people that their only salvation lay in compliance with authority. The ploy is actually pretty crude: simply highlight some supposedly evil force or enemy, and then convince the masses that it is only through a unified and obedient approach that such evil can be vanquished. Of course, publicly denouncing anyone unsympathetic or critical of the relevant doctrine as unpatriotic, an infidel, a traitor, or whatever other demonizing jargon befits the ideology in question, keeps many people all the more scared of stepping out of line. Nonetheless, there is always a further recourse to torture for anyone still not hearing the message. Thus did one ruling order supposedly embracing the simple moral edict of Thou shalt not kill mete out to its dissidents the utterly depraved torture of being hanged, drawn and quartered.
Given such an overall state of affairs, there are less obvious but wider costs for everyone. For example, conflict and war become culturally understood as permanent fixtures once minds believe reality to be inherently populated by evil forces. And so we see that even in so-called peacetime, nations maintain standing armies permanently ready for war, with the continued sight of uniforms and weapons helping ridicule any ambitions of a peaceful world. People come to see peace initiatives as unrealistic, and paradoxically believe that only preparation for war can protect them from the horrors that war entails.
When manipulating the citizen’s thinking with the specter of some supposed enemy, the statesman’s voiced aspirations of peace often amount to nothing more than blame-shifting decoys by which he also tries to legitimize the state’s aggressive actions as credible in the face of external threats. But once one rises above the naïve tale of reality that says my nation is inherently good and other nations are all potentially evil, it is obvious that a world of armed factions can only be a world suffused with background paranoia and a constant propensity towards conflict. Even if an armed state has no intentions of making war, how is such a harmless stance to be understood by other nations, given the first tactic of war is to surprise one’s opponent? And when no one really knows for sure who will attack who next, the preemptive strike can appear as a legitimate means of managing risk – even where no threat otherwise exists. As a consequence, any apparent peace within the current order is nothing more than a tense standoff that threatens to collapse at any moment. History provides the proof.
Moreover, periodic war is arguably essential to the current world order. Sustained peace might raise questions about why such huge resources are poured into weaponry and military forces. The truth that many jobs are founded on humans threatening or killing one another might be revealed, and corporate profits from the relevant industries might suffer. Without the ultimate threat of military intervention, global imbalances might begin to even out and the whole geopolitical map of the planet might alter significantly – an unwelcome outcome for nations strong-arming their global dominance. Perhaps most importantly, without scenes of horror and bloodshed to grace our screens, people might realize that ordinary human beings are not in fact hell-bent on murdering one another, and that war mentality is promoted primarily to suppress such a realization, and to stave off the really meaningful questions regarding shocking global inequality and ongoing oppression.
From some perspectives, the world as it is runs on wars. Peacetime not only poses commercial problems for what could be described as the war industries; it also undermines the otherwise common idea that a highly structured and centralized governing power is key to a stable and supposedly healthy society. Without wars, society as we know it could not exist, given the devils of religion no longer hold quite enough credibility to exact the desired level of fear and subjugation from everyone. There is nothing like the insanity of war to stoke up national sentiment and have people rally behind the very leaders who might otherwise be held responsible for its outbreak in the first place. Propaganda has taught many to unthinkingly see some inherent honor in whoever dies in a blood-soaked uniform – cut down by the very forces of global paranoia their supposedly great nations help keep in place.
The cost of obedience
This whole situation is only sustainable by widespread techniques of indoctrination starting in infancy. Obedience to authority, together with the idea that learning necessarily consists of assimilating the ready-made ideas of others is all enshrined in the classroom paradigm – the ritual of remaining silent and attentive whilst someone else informs you about life and how to live it. Much as the initial educational stages may focus on the learning of seemingly innocuous basic skills such as language and arithmetic, the principle that life is essentially about conforming and unquestioningly absorbing the knowledge of others is the real lesson. Educational merit is of course issued in proportion to the extent that one knuckles down and avoids questioning core ideas or how they are presented – a reward-and-punishment system that later continues into the workplace and society in general. Hierarchical structures are not built on challenges to their authoritarian frameworks – a truth subtly reinforced at almost every turn from childhood onward.
In general, the system expects conformity and rejects criticisms. And to the extent that individuals enjoy its offerings in return for subservience, they can also be seen to police its norms – habitually acting shocked and seeking to ostracize whoever dare undermine its conventions. The cultural renegade should not expect many friends, given every gang only exists by demanding conformity.
The choice for the individual – if it can even be seen as a choice – is to keep his head down and accept whatever benefits conventional gang life offers, or to reject the general group-think nature of society and see if life makes sense on some other dimension. But this choice is rarely taken consciously, and it is certainly not a black-and-white matter given the complexity of daily normality in which we exist. Although we might recognize that absolute and unthinking acceptance of social norms only makes for a gray robotic personality, we also sense how excessive criticism of the social order can threaten our social standing. Life is often about whether it is better to speak up or just remain silent, with every situation presenting unique complications. No set strategy proves reliable; there are simply too many variables at play – not to mention that the idea of the independent self as both observer and personal guide can only mislead anyone seeking a wholesome understanding of himself within the wider world. But ultimately everything can nonetheless be reduced to one simple question: What constitutes a meaningful approach to life? However, given the open-ended nature of abstract thought, such a question invites an infinitude of answers.
Perhaps ironically, this question also appears more challenging within so-called first-world populations. Rather as if the ready availability of life’s essentials sapped the natural appetite for daily living, affluent people can be found restlessly searching out some ever-elusive meaning of life. By way of contrast, those who have the least in a material sense are often observed to have a down-to-earth contentment with their lot in a manner devoid of such tortuous searching. Does the supposedly great search for the meaning of life not just highlight how some have already lost contact with some inherently meaningful aspect of simply living – something that maybe cannot be accessed via any number of plans or thought-out strategies? Maybe what is sought is in truth not so much the meaning of life, but simply an end to meaningless ways of living: the rediscovery of our natural joie de vivre.
An existence in which most danger is superficially removed – or managed at a higher level such as the state, its police or military, and in which conformity is socially expected in return for life’s essentials, is surely an existence more lacking in spark and adventure than its many followers would ever admit. Hence, it is no surprise that people turn to all sorts of recreational activities in attempts to replace that spark and adventure. However, every demand in this direction made from within the system becomes only another means by which the individual exposes himself to the system’s exploitation.
Consequently, major industries feed off many areas where people seek relief from the monotony of normality’s daily grind. Media in particular is geared to fake experiences: the serving up of second-hand real and fictional danger and drama – the very elements removed by a controlling social order that seeks to justify its existence by disguising the tedium of conventionality as something desirable. The inevitable removal of primal forms of excitement by a world based on daily routine is arguably a cause of the widespread malaise and restlessness so typical of affluent peoples.
The stark and terribly logical truth is that life without at least the occasional serious challenge is boring. And a serious challenge by necessity includes some risk of failure plus having to deal with failure’s consequences. But this is not a reality within media-based entertainment. If your helicopter is destroyed in the video game, or your new lover in the romantic novel fails to appear as expected, there is no real impact on your life – just as there is no real depth to the satisfaction of winning the video game or reading the predictably happy ending to the book. All media content is a distraction, and much of it only serves as a surrogate for a more meaningful life. If this were not true, and if the supposed means of finding fulfillment within modern consumer lifestyles was not in fact just based on a bunch of lies, we would not see such comprehensive desires to replace what modern life lacks; we would not see the longing to escape its inherent emptiness driving so many to submerge themselves in so much distraction.
Our evolutionary confusion
Conventional science, by its academic and authoritarian formulation, constrains the validity of its inquiry to those aspects of reality that, as it would appear, conform to the deterministic model. Hence, inasmuch as we might want to gain control over such aspects, those conventional approaches prove valid. But it is abundantly evident from the effective failure to derive useful social sciences that human behavior does not conform to such a deterministic model – or at the very least, such behavior proves too complex to be meaningfully interpreted by any such model. Therefore, at a time when humans are in fact directly responsible for all the main threats confronting the species, continued faith and investment in conventional approaches is very arguably a distracting waste of mental energy – if not actually a continuation of the dangerously delusional position underlying the awkward evolution of human ideas to date.
For the time being, the intellectual world appears almost entirely unaware of this, as evidenced by the fact that, instead of actually defending itself against criticisms of the abstract thought process on which the scientific position is based, academic culture in effect does not even consider such weaknesses could exist – the complete silence on the matter being deafening. Does such a blinkered outlook in the face of logical problems with abstract thought result from academia being too stupefied by the weight of its own hubris, or is it because the potential for culture-wide seismic shock is subliminally understood as simply unthinkable? Perhaps it is both, and maybe more – ironically all diffused throughout our modern world in manners too nebulous for abstract thought itself to ever grasp; it is a fact that clouds are invisible from their interiors. But regardless of any such speculation, academia and other institutional power structures embody the wide and long-standing human tendency to establish hierarchical power in manners that prevent minds from questioning core ideas.
We are all actors, and far more so than is generally recognized within conventional sociology or psychology. The sociologist and the psychologist are themselves taught to act out a belief in certain simplistic, logical and rational explanations of human behavior which invariably endorse the current social order and its ideas. In general, those ideas see the individual as the focal point for any problems – never the social structure itself, and certainly not any professionals in the pay of that structure. Viewed from a philosophical perspective, the resulting abstract models dominating the social sciences are conservative and limiting, as well as being both too simple and too complex to grasp the rather visceral drives behind much human behavior. But they also fail to examine the willful and often highly organized deployment of deception and trickery by which human hierarchies sustain themselves – precisely because this would undermine society’s overall hierarchy within which the professional community itself finds comfort.
For example, the various types of fear that institutions propagate for political ends is never critiqued by the world of mainstream psychology; the understood limit of practicing conventional psychology being to treat people, as opposed to asking if seemingly personal problems may in fact be symptomatic of the system itself.
Meanwhile, although gut feelings and emotions might be frowned on by science, they nonetheless play highly instrumental roles in determining human conduct – albeit operating in manners professionals and academics have generally been taught to ignore. In truth, most momentary behavior appears rather independent of whatever constraints formal societal structures impose; control by laws and regulations can only go so far. Hence, verbally convoluted but nonetheless crude theories of society fail to explain behavior that is in fact better understood by immediate fears of not fitting in, reactions to threats, and succumbing to enticements and desires.
Behind the veneer of technological sophistication, we remain very animal-like on emotional and organic levels, and our culture might be less confused if modern civilization did not work so hard to obscure this. If our technological aspect is stripped away, a cursory view of biology or genetics illustrates exactly why humans can be seen as just another animal – almost all our physical technology being external to the organism in any case. But the current situation is that too many respected minds are too locked into the religiosity of objectivity and modern science to consider that additional understanding might lie within more introspective forms of observation. This dogmatic refusal to constructively explore the subjective dimension manifests itself in blinkered academic comments such as that emotions remain the most mysterious elements of human psychology and are therefore the next area for clinical investigation. But the very reason they will remain mysterious to certain minds now and in the future is that clinical investigations can never directly grasp certain non-objective matters any more than studying audio signals provides an understanding of the subjective experience of music. Basically, the scientist with his microscope and abstract ideas only blinds himself to the sort of truth alluded to within the common adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; his method of looking leaves him too preoccupied to spot the very thing to which that method blinds him.
Is it not obvious that something is lacking in a form of knowledge where our emotions – the recognized wellsprings of so many of our actions – are considered mysterious on the basis that any subjective examination of them is by definition not objective, and therefore bad science? Note here that the concept of objectivity has no logical connection to the etymological roots of the word science; the marriage of the two is simply an adopted convention.
Abstract thought appears relatively young in evolutionary terms, and we are arguably still too blinded by its sheer power to look at the wider implications of unreservedly deploying it. The species has yet to properly understand and responsibly address the grave risks this all poses – both in terms of potentially destroying the