People All the Way Down

T.K. McNeil

“Society” is one of the most potent concepts in human language. Whether it is used to refer generally to the society in which one lives or a specific, often historical, example. While there has been much thought and debate about its particular aspects, as the invention if the disciplines of anthropology and sociology attests, there has been little inquiry into the root causes at the base of society and the inherent meaning diving it all. There has certainly been rebellion. For every establishment there has been an opposite movement, to paraphrase Newton. Even those who say the offer a new vision are often working within the system of the old one. Offering, at most, reforms to the existing model as opposed to a genuine alternative to it. A shake-up of the meaning behind society itself. This is because there is no such underlaying meaning to begin with. It has become fashionable to refer to things as “just a social construct”, usually in order to discredit or dismiss them. This is, paradoxically, both ignorant and correct. The concept of society itself is a social construct. A word that was wholly invented, as all words are, by humans to describe and categorize a concept. In this case the system of institutions, traditions and conventions by which we organize ourselves. Institutions, traditions and conventions which are themselves invented, often arbitrarily. Society exists because people agree that it does and it either serves their interest to keep going along with the invented societal diktats or it would go too much against their interests to openly oppose and defy them.

This is, of course, no true of everyone in every society but has been enough to keep many societies going for decades if not centuries. The reason we know this to be the case being the the rarified moments in which the majority of the population change their minds in unison and en masse. A recent example of this being the literal removal from his office of the Serbian president and war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. No military coup, a group of citizens just set off from their village one day, headed for the capital to have it out with their head of state. As they passed though the villages, towns and cities along the way others joined them until there were was a sea people at the door of the leader’s residence, in what was basically the world’s largest citizen’s arrest. An event with at least some roots in the winter of 1989 in what was then East Germany. Now considered to be one of the most successful and brutal of the european totalitarian regimes in history the over-night destruction of a significant part of the Berlin Wall and the effective reunification of the Soviet-controlled East the the democratic West is still a stunning example of the will of the people trumping the ambivalence of government and the institutions of society. You can only push people so far before they show up with sledge-hammers.

Is there, then, any value to social traditions and conventions? Yes, to argue that there is no value at all would be to fall into the trap of nihilism and the philosophy I am endeavouring to outline is a form of absurdism. There is a type of value to be found in social structures as they exist. Though, rather than being inherent and common to all individuals, as many absolutists like to claim, this value is practical in its use and subjective to the needs of the individual. An idea that can be somewhat depressing. There is a particular attraction to the notion of a completely logical system that is applicable to all and can make everyone happy. Sadly, humans are not a wholly logical, or predictable, species and cannot realistically be expected to live in, let alone create, such a system. However with this realization also comes a type of freedom. Rather than strictures to be blindly accepted or dismissed, social conventions and values become options form which to choose. Does this leave room for religion? Yes, at least as far as organized religion is one of the major institutions of many societies. Unlike the traditional absurdism of Camus which had at its core the presumption of a godless universe, there is no particular reason to do away with religion either as an institution. It really does not matter in the present instance, the ineffable questions of existence being just that.