Overall, Has Your Society Failed You?

Original blog post on 6 Heretic's Way.

Why or why not?

Most importantly, what in your view is the role and/or duty of a society? Is there any beyond getting us to adulthood alive?

In my personal view, we must make the best deal for ourselves. It is wrong to treat a mass society as if it were a friend or reciprocating individual when in fact we are just a nano-cog far beneath its notice.
Faced with such an imbalance of power we must act accordingly for ourselves.

For much of your blog post I would have to agree with you. You raise many salient points. I would like to add my own thoughts on the matter, however meandering they may be.

Fundamentally, in many ways we are all just cattle for profit. Why then do we make pretence of ambition, or, as with especially older people, identify ourselves with our jobs? As a corollary to this, we also have a tendency to identify ourselves with our economic 'status'. Yet what is economic status signifiable of but our relative position within the tyrannical social system? The higher one goes in this system, the more status one gains. The more status one gains, the more 'privileges' one acquires. In and out of boxes and herded into packs, we live our entire lives being told what to do in some fashion or other; what to wear, how to act, what is of 'worth' and what isn't. Constantly toiling to make the grade, we seek permission to be worthwhile. Having known little but what we are specialised and socialised to do, many of us feel helpless without our jobs, by which we judge our self-worth, and even our raison d'être.

Conditioned from preschool our ambitions are not our own: there are the requirements of the host society disguised upon us as things to aspire to. In the radiant glow of youth, many of us dream of being doctors, engineers and lawyers. These dreams are programmed into us by the host society through the media, educational bias, through our parents, and through our communities. Sometimes it is explicit; more often it is implicit. Many people believe that it is the government that does most of the damage. This is true only to the extent that it shapes societies through laws, and in that way determines the direction of a society. The societies themselves, however, are many times more pernicious than the bureaucracy in so far that their control over the individual is more complete, and is usually never noticeable. Its iron censure is an ever-present background, never explicitly stated, but always implied.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill once summed it up thus:

The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. ... Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries.

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.

[T]there needs protection ... against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in excitement and high spirits, eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we are unaware of what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and until then oblivious of what their sentence means. The more one lives life under the yoke of a tyrannical society, the more one feels, on the whole, that life has been not only a disappointment, but a cheat.

Living to see three generations is like sitting for some time at a magician's booth at a fair, and witnessing the performance twice or three times in succession: the tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. If two men who were friends when young meet again when old, after being separated for a decades, the principal feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much . . . and then performed so little. This feeling will so completely predominate over every other that they will not even consider it necessary to give it words; but on either side it will be silently assumed, and form the groundwork of all they have to talk about.

There is an overwhelming sense of alienation (both economic and social), and increasing estrangement upon the individuals of a society who cannot fit in; the square pegs in round holes. Indeed, alienation is such a central feature of many experiences that, because of its nature, it is never realised by the host society, whose only interests are that all 'assimilate' or 'integrate'. However, what do these words really mean? Would it be in any sane person's interest to assimilate into a culture and economic system that is perniciously destructive to the individual, and breeds disaffection? It would not, but faced with no choice, one assimilates on the surface, yet remains unassimilated beneath it.

What we cannot escape, however, is that this is the civilisation and society we have engineered to make us serve. In the end, with our limited life-spans, the great majority of us lose. However, there are a few winners; those who in some way will benefit from the current system. The winner is the exploiter, be it a corporation, one's boss, or one's family. The winner is the maintainer of the status quo, be it a politician or your secondary school teacher telling you to become a doctor. The winner is the tyrannical society which cyclically imposes its values on its constituent members.

Interesting that Mr. Mill also described majority social pressure as a great tyrant.
I’ve long thought of mass society itself as a ‘mindless tyrant’ that we’ve all voted into power but cannot control.

There are many grievances we have. The present society is not a pleasant place and it continues to deteriorate. But neither is there much evidence of any mass society ever offering a friendly environment for most of its members. Enough food to feed oneself and one’s children is about the best an average person can hope for. For all those that went on to sire another generation, plenty more did not succeed in securing subsistence conditions. Unjust or not, relentless selective pressures force humanity down a fixed path.

This is why it is important to look at the implications of our situation. Why we have to ask what should a society do for us in return for our loyalty.
If we went to the average person on the street with such questions, they would no doubt point to precedent: The world is a certain way, it’s been this way for thousands of years, you either make it or you don’t.
Yet precedent is not enough.
We’ve seen many hunter gatherer societies with tens of thousands of years of precedent dissolve within the space of a generation.
Humans abandon social structures en masse the moment they cease to reflect economic realities.
Social structures are emergent from economic realities in the first place.

If a capitalism of capitalisms held sway, what would be the minimum acceptable package for a non-indoctrinated person with reasonably high intelligence?
-Food – Enough to eat of high enough quality and variety.
-Shelter – A private room of one’s own not subject to invasion.
-A mate – Access to reasonably desirable long term partners of the opposite sex. Children economically feasible.
-Friends/family – A social life that permits and promotes constructive, fulfilling, long term human relationships.
-Basic autonomy – The state exercises no more authority than necessary. It functions as a facilitator in the interest of individuals rather than a boss or nanny. It runs no mandatory mass indoctrination programs that consume the youth of every citizen.
-Surplus- Life above bare subsistence. Allows for travel, vacations, hobbies, learning, exploration.
-Leisure – People willing to work their share as part of a society, but few feel the need for an all consuming career if status and survival aren’t on the line. Work is there to make life possible, not vice versa.

If societies were viewed as businesses, they’d pretty much have to offer something along these lines to attract customers.

If we were to judge our present society by these terms, it fails most citizens on nearly every count.
This is my criteria for a society’s success or failure.
It’s a different viewpoint than you’d usually encounter if you queried someone randomly on the street. Yet right now, even the average citizen with very low expectations(increased chances of being able to survive another year) is becoming disenchanted.

Still, it takes a misfit to see something greater: societies could easily be better but for our aggregate complacency and lack of imagination. The monopolies continue, if only because they have sufficient force to organize collective defense against aggressors.

I'd like your thoughts on Jante Law (Scandinavian way of thinking). Just read about it, and found it interesting.

I wikied Jante Law: apparently it's a traditional egalitarian social ethic from Scandinavia.

Basically, the individual doesn't presume to be better than others and remembers to be humble. In return the society offers a place of belonging and an appreciation of each individual's contributions. The individual doesn't assert power over others, the collective doesn't crush the individual or stifle innovation.

It sounds nice. Almost utopian. And it sounds like one of the inspirations of current Scandinavian social policy.

Unfortunately, there's a reason one doesn't see much of this outside of Scandinavia. There's little prospect of such a philosophy taking root outside of these small, wealthy, peaceful, ethnically homogenous nations.

Any social contract is vulnerable to abuse from both sides. So there's very little reason to believe it would work under anything less than extraordinary circumstances in which all the incentives are in proper alignment for a relatively harmonious relationship between collective and individual.

In short: sounds nice. A nostalgic throwback to small-scale village life. But mostly fanciful in the context of our existence in a mass society. I would say the Jante Law is a product of tribal level existence, not of a horde of strangers.

Here is another article which I found at many places:

http://www.waste.org/~xtal/red/jante.html

Parts which I liked:

Quote :

... as it is their duty under Jante's law to mask their successes as much as they can, and to never revel in them.

Quote :

From an American perspective, Jante's law may be Scandinavia's greatest cultural difference. In the American workplace, management uses positive reinforcement with employees as a method of motivation. In Sweden and much of Scandinavia, one is expected to get ones work done, without much herald. It can be related to the Swedish proverb, "Noble deeds are done in silence." (Engellau, 57). If an American enters the Swedish workplace expecting the same treatment of endless compliments for a job well done, they are certainly in for a surprise. Likewise, should a Swede come to work in the states, they are not likely to know the proper response to the barrage of compliments they will receive.

Though Wikipedia as well as the above article emphasize the communal aspect of the Law, I was interested by the introverted traits shown. I read somewhere that Scandinavian societies are very introverted, very prosperous, and amongst the happiest.

Jonathan Rauch seems to think : "If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place". Gauging by my limited knowledge of Scandinavian society, it certainly seems so. It could be that Jante Law leads to it.

I definitely see where you're coming from with this because I've
observed myself that someone more thoughtful and more restrained is going to be much less prone to reckless zero sum behavior. I agree with your observation. A higher IQ, more introverted population is going to naturally result in a happier, more egalitarian, more productive, more creative society. Any one Scandinavian country has less population than many US States and most of their land is rugged and sub-Arctic. And yet they are up there with the best commercially, scientifically, culturally, athletically(winter sports at least), just about any criteria you could think of. As with Ashkenazi Jews, the impact of Scandinavians is vastly disproportionate to their numbers and territorial assets. They clearly have a model that works well.
And part of their key to success may be Jante Law, an instance of a tribal level group ethic actually seeping into the mass culture.
If you think about it, a country like Denmark is practically a tribe. They're notable after all for having a ridiculously small number of surnames. What percentage of them are Andersens?

Otherwise: you get your typical situation around the world. A sufficient proportion of zero sum competitors force everyone else to either follow suit or lose the game.
Your typical gridlock and struggle just to survive.

Look at some of the poorer more densely populated regions on our planet. They have many times more people to draw upon than does any Scandinavian country, but these places are notable for their paucity of scientific, cultural, and creative contributions.

The only commodity someone forced to struggle for survival truly produces is survival. They will make enormous amounts of things and perform any conceivable service because they have to. However, they are not creating. They do the same thing as a dog asked to roll over to get a treat. Their actions are reflexive, reactive, devoid of initiative. There's no potential for real progress, change, or creativity in such cultures.

This is a critical distinction that is lost on most who call themselves 'capitalists' or 'entrepeneurs.' This is not to say that I'm some kind of gung ho anti-capitalist, but that the dominant interpretation of capitalism emphasizes the exchange of capital to the point of fault.
There are more important things than minding the ledgers. Having a stable society is one of them.
Take care of certain larger concerns, and the ledgers will practically take care of themselves.

All this said, it has occurred to me that the more introverted, more Subtle segment of humanity has a higher destiny, a manifest destiny to fulfill.

After all, the relatively less subsistence oriented, more creative nations of Europe rose to prominence despite their insignificant territories and populations.
How many of the world's great subsistence empires were subjugated, by a tiny, cold, rainy island, a piece of drained coastal swamp, and a narrow semi-arid strip of land comprising maybe 1/5th of a less than impressive peninsula?

If we believe our ways naturally lead to a fundamentally better social system might we not have a duty to first:
establish our own enclave even if it means draining a coastal swamp a few precious feet at a time.
then:
establish dominion over the lesser, more savage, more massive communities, colonize, and civilize them?

At the very least, I ask this as a means of challenging and changing the way we see the greater society: not as an unstoppable behemoth, but as a backwards, bloated, feeble thing passively waiting for something better to come along, change it, and rule it. To see weakness in them, rather than an illusory strength.

I've segued enough from Scandinavians at this point. Nuff said.

Quote :

Look at some of the poorer more densely populated regions on our planet. They have many times more people to draw upon than does any Scandinavian country, but these places are notable for their paucity of scientific, cultural, and creative contributions.

India and China are both densely populated and poor. I doubt that there has been any paucity of any sort of global contribution. Quite the opposite. Ancient China and India have provided a huge base for modern science and mathematics. The medieval age in India was prosperous. The modern ages of both are riddled by poverty, but in terms of "creative contribution", neither lags behind. Many other poorer and densely populated countries have contributions too, once you go looking for them. For example, the concept of "jugaad" in rural India is one which delights many social scientists.

Quote :

All this said, it has occurred to me that the more introverted, more Subtle segment of humanity has a higher destiny, a manifest destiny to fulfill.

How many countries have the Scandinavians "colonized"? None outside Europe.
Add two and two. You might be wrong on some counts. Your point may be right, but your examples are slightly wrong.My question is about happiness more than it is about wealth.

The difference between Scandinavia and others is the way they have used their resources. They have utilized their natural richness of oil as a backbone, and have made a good use of high taxes for benefiting the people, with minimal corruption. My question is : How did they do this without interference from their own people?

Maybe, it could be, as you say, that they are ethnically homogeneous to the point of being almost tribal. This confirms your point.

But this point of yours is definitely WRONG :

Quote :

If we believe our ways naturally lead to a fundamentally better social system might we not have a duty to first:
establish our own enclave even if it means draining a coastal swamp a few precious feet at a time.
then:
establish dominion over the lesser, more savage, more massive communities, colonize, and civilize them?

I believe Africa would have chugged on happily in their own world if colonists had not tried to interfere in the way they lived their life. But then again, I don't know much...

True, Scandinavians didn't colonize anyone(at least not since Viking times) and I'm not saying they did. But I did point out that many great colonial powers came from smaller countries, with smaller populations, and relatively marginal land.
One would not expect them to be involved in the business of ruling the world if one saw only the insignificant areas they occupy on a world map.

And you do make good points: Europeans weren't particularly powerful until relatively recent history while India and China were perhaps the greatest centers of power and culture.

I suppose we have to clarify that my 'paucity' refers to the last 2-3 centuries. European civilizations definitely reached a point where they far more creative, adaptable, and resourceful.

India, China, and Islamic Civilizations invented and made use of gunpowder weapons and the printing press. They had come close to something like the scientific method, industrial manufacture, and had taken mathematics to high levels. China even had a great fleet of exploration until it was disbanded, and further expeditions outside the Middle Country explicitly prohibited.(This brings up an important point, the lack of a political monopoly in Europe may have benefited by resulting in greater competition between states. If one monarch decided not too have a fleet, another would have taken advantage.)

Europe was late on the scene, but they made new and inventive use of ideas and technologies that had arisen centuries before in other parts of the world and either hadn't changed much or just never caught on.

And I think subsistence and zero sum circumstances are an important part of the picture. When everyone in a civilization is just trying to survive, there's not as much room to be inventive.
And if shortage goes on for generations: the culture becomes more rigid and more oriented around obeying the collective.

When it comes to Europe, the black plague might have been a critical factor as it killed off 1/3 of all people on the continent.
Let's face it: when you get epidemics like that it's because you have too many people, too poorly nourished all packed together in too little space.
It may have been that the plague forced Europeans to cope with shortages of manpower at a critical time in their development while other cultures had less incentive to find alternatives to population intensive forms of agriculture.
Or/also, European staple crops did not lend themselves as much to rigid subsistence communal life as those found elsewhere.

Result: Europeans made some new technologies that incidentally freed up a larger percentage of the population from bare subsistence or at least made individual persons less dependent for survival on the good graces of the collective.

I suppose what I have said overall: there are certain humans who are less pre-occupied with social competition and more prone to recognize larger patterns in civilization. It would seem that if people who lean in this direction were to run a country, the quality of life and level of creativity would be quite high. Such people have the vision to recognize that society loses as a whole from unrestrained zero sum competition and large populations eking by at subsistence levels.

In short: The rise of a Europe less dependent on super population dense subsistence agriculture, and the modern prosperity of a few historically peripheral sub-Arctic European nations reveals a pattern for us.

Therefore: ought not Subtle, introverted people look to themselves more as more the rightful colonizers than the colonized?

And since you are Indian: I well understand my choice of words may well have hit a nerve.
I would ask you to consider, were not the Mughals also foreigners who came to India and founded a Raj?

I did not make the connection at first but I recognize you now. Good to see you, Fool.

Let me make this clear. I don't want to rule the world. I want to be happy. Britian figures at around 25 in the Happiness chart. The Scandinavians are all in the top 10.

My search process was as follows:

Rauch says governments with an introverted streak of thoughts are quieter, healthier, richer, HAPPIER.
Are there any governments to prove it?
Yes. There are the Scandinavian governments.
Is a large population introverted OR does their culture show introverted traits?
Yes.
What is the main reason for this?
Apparently, it is Jante Law.
Therefore, ask Gluon about his opinion.
Gluon replies. It seems that I should give him an additional source of information which provides some more knowledge.
Gluon says that, because everyone is of the same type, there is less competition, therefore, no need to think much of survival. Thinking of survival hampers creativity and innovation.
I reply with an example of Jugaad to explain that necessity is the mother of invention. People will invent anything when their stomachs grumble. It is not the ideal solution; a stop-gap created by crude mixing of two worlds. Invention, inventive use of previous ideas, but for survival.
I still ask whether he saw what I saw : the secret of happiness described by himself in his own blog. All I get is the dream of colonization of savages and subjugation of idiots.

Jante law appealed to me because it seemed to engender Subtle thought when I looked closely. It's ideal was the Negative Charisma (Don't think you're anything special + the Swedish proverb : good things are done in silence). Frowned upon the Extroverted Concept of Deserval (Don't think you are more important than us). Refused to acknowledge the Extroverted Concept of Success(don't think you are good at anything). The tax these countries impose help avoid the Tragedy of the Lords. Some of your own ideas, already established.

Living in a colorful land makes you understand one thing. Development (western version: tools, factories, buildings, applied science) does not equal peace and prosperity. When you go towards someone else's idea of perfection, you ruin what you have in hand, plus you don't get what you ask for, because someone else's vision is not the same as yours. Everything becomes a weird, complicating jumble. It's analogous to adding excessive fertilizers when earthworms are already doing stuff. What I liked about Scandinavia is that it seems to be a land living by its own rules, set by its own environment, and not because someone forced it or they did stuff in a fit of jealousy of another country. That is why it might be prospering. India wants to live the western dream, wants to set western standards. Scandinavians might be seeing nature everyday (some law called "Right to Access"). I have forgotten what the earth smells like.

So, if a tribe-level ethic and homogeneity are the secrets of happy citizenship, we fall flat on so many counts. India has been attacked numerous times. It's too big for even marginal homogeneity. Foreigners came, founded multiple "Raj"es (how I hate that word in English), created diversity of many forms. This diversity, as you yourself say, forms seed of zero-sum competition. And it has. Indian States are fighting for the tag of most developed, the most vibrant, blah blah (I have taken the most bland example; what goes around here frightens a lot of people). And you still want to go and colonize lands.

Don't worry about hitting nerves. They taught me when I was five to be "patriotic": up to the point of not accepting your own faults. I want to try and shake that off me. But they also taught me history. And it tells me colonization was painful for the colonized as well as the colonizers. The colonized become oppressed by someone's change in stance: first a simple goal of good trade, then drunken quests of power by "exploitation". The colonizers have to see their own being killed and the killers being proclaimed as heroes of the revolution.

My main point here:
We find ourselves under the dominion of a crass and gigantic mass culture:
It is an exercise to of sorts to imagine, to realize that the roles could be, or even ought to be reversed.
That instead of allowing others to tell us we are flawed or incomplete, that in fact they are in need of our guidance. To consider the idea that though we are lesser in numbers, we know of a way that is better.
It seems, though, that my use of colonization as an analogy seems to have triggered a whole cascade of associations relevant and not relevant to my meaning here.

Our goal is happiness above all else, but I see every day that this goal remains elusive for many of my visitors. They still find themselves overwhelmed by the millions all around them they cannot relate to. The trouble is that they cannot shake the idea that they are somehow lesser, Incorrect persons.
On some level, you have to totally change your world view from that of the birth culture and create a new one that affirms the rightness and power of your identity.

Have you not in some ways come to see many widely accepted customs as savage and backwards? You certainly do seem to disapprove of a surrounding culture where everyone's main concern in life is selling more mangoes than their next door neighbor.
I would say we both in a way see ourselves standing above and apart. And this is what makes us more of the colonizer's frame of mind.

Does this mean you or I want to control every aspect of their lives, run their economies, and endure their rebellions? No, that would be a far too literal understanding.

It does mean, I think, that either of us would see our sort of culture and ideas triumphant.

Also:
The way I explained the rise of Europe would fit in with the Jugaad idea: great nations elsewhere had less incentives to develop beyond what they were already doing. No necessity, no invention.
Indeed monarchs and emperors have a vested interest in keeping a nation sealed from the outside if they can.
Wealth from abroad can result in excessively powerful nobles and merchants if the ruler doesn't keep things under strict control.

GluontheFerengi wrote:

Most importantly, what in your view is the role and/or duty of a society? Is there any beyond getting us to adulthood alive?

Obviously this question should come before "Why or why not?". Society is just a big tribe. Many animals organize themselves into groups for their mutual benefit. This benefit is evolutionary, meaning that it benefits survival and reproduction. The strongest human societies were safe (survival) and had strong families (reproduction).

Quote :

Why or why not (Has Your Society Failed You)?

Yes, compeletely. I could not find a wife in my society, I had to look abroad. So it failed in reproduction. As I explain in [a link I can't post for some stupid reason], declining empires genetically select for immoral men (through feminism), and modern society also selects for stupid men. I fail to meet both criteria. Modern culture is against my evolutionary interest.

Quote :

In my personal view, we must make the best deal for ourselves. It is wrong to treat a mass society as if it were a friend or reciprocating individual when in fact we are just a nano-cog far beneath its notice.
Faced with such an imbalance of power we must act accordingly for ourselves.

In my personal view, one cannot just go it alone. This is evolutionary suicide. One must find the best available culture, no matter how far from the ideal it is, and join it and then work to improve that. Modern Western culture is the absolute worst option. Islam is somewhat better but doesn't appeal to me. Christianity is broken beyond repair and has no defense against modern culture. I personally only see 2 reasonable options, Orthodox Judaism and Japan. I am currently working on Orthodox Judaism.