An honest attempt of self-analysis quickly
brings one to a point, where it is obvious that it is insufficient to view
oneself only as an individual, it is important to expand the view and include
the society and various interactions of oneself with various social groups.
Conversely, any responsible analysis of the society has to bring in
consideration individuals and various interactions between the society and
individuals.
Consistent separate analysis of an individual
and a society is at best misleading and at worst aimed at manipulation of
individuals and societies according to some goals harmful to the individuals
and the society.
Essentially, there are two Sides of a Human
being, two inseparable views at a Human being: Individual and Social. These
views are not always logically compatible. However, one has to grow accustomed
to manipulation of these logically incompatible views to achieve understanding
of oneself and of the society.
The phenomenon of Loneliness is about
perception of the world and own place in it.
Through painful life experiences one learns
to build internal walls, barriers between oneself and other individuals,
between oneself and various social groups. These barriers are only temporarily
lowered for loved ones and for friends.
These barriers limit degree of compassion
one feels for another person, degree of trust, degree of respect, etc.
Even
an entire group of ideas is built up to protect these barriers: we demand a
stranger to deserve, to work for our love, our trust, our respect. People, who
do not develop such defense system, are perceived as “losers” and often for a
good reason.
Accepting these barriers as something
natural, brings loneliness, longing for a mystical “sole-mate”, difficulties of
establishment of new relationships (new relationships have to overcome existing
barriers, which grow only stronger with age).
Sexual relationships suffer. Having sex
without connecting to a partner, sex with barriers in the stream of emotional
interactions, is a highly artificial activity, which goes against human nature.
One learns it, but one does not get needed satisfaction from it.
However,
try to drop these barriers and a swarm of con artists descends on you. They are
after your money, after sexual favors, after your submission, which provides
them with favorable social position, after your enslavement, which delivers a
whole range of “benefits” starting with cheap labor and ending with enjoyment
of power.
The
problem is not in barriers themselves, but in perception of them as something
initial, basic. Such perception brings a coherent logical world view and with
it comes Loneliness as an indication that something is wrong with this view.
One
should find strength to see these barriers as something secondary, temporary,
erected only to manage imbalance, imbalance in the society, in the own nature
and in their interaction.
Through generations, the society developed methods
of reconciling of two logically incompatible views – Individual and Social.
From an Individual point of view it is
inconceivable to risk own life for interests of the Society as a whole or to
condemn to death another Individual for transgressions, which are not related
directly to one, who has to make a decision. In the same time, these decisions
are easy ones from the Social point of view.
Learning the Individual and the Social
points of view is relatively easy; gaining the ability to use both of them is
not trivial. Bridging these views manifests in Moral Values of the Society.
Moral Values belong to both views
Individual and Social, but they have no logical justification in either one.
They are accepted in both views because these views are only different views of
the same reality – a Human as a social being.
Different societies have different Moral
Values.
Well articulated Moral Values attest that a
society has a model of a stable society. Adherence to Moral Values in a society
attests that the society is stable.
Moral Values reflect only characteristics
of society’s stability. It is impossible to evaluate Moral Values from inside
the society.
However, there is a universal point of view
– the Humanity as a whole. From this point of view, one could judge stable
societies and their Moral Values.
An acceptable stable society, and hence an
acceptable system of Moral Values, is one, which has a model of acceptable
stable global society and knows the path from the society in question into that
global society.
Societies,
which do not have these two components, should be treated as transient and
possibly dangerous.
A developed self-conscious society protects
its stability and hence safe-guards it’s Moral Values. Often, it dedicates a
group of specialists to this task.
The
Moral Values of the society have no logical justification; hence religious
leaders are most suited to take on such task. Usually, leaders of a dominant
religion get assigned a task of protecting Moral Values of the society. The job
comes with perks of social recognition.
When
integrity of the society is challenged, the authority of guardians of Moral
Values is reinforced, or even a new form of religion is brought to guard Moral
Values.
Thus,
specific functions of religion are neglected for the sake of protection of the
integrity of society. Even when tough times pass away, they continue to be
neglected and the dominant form of religion focuses more on protection of
stability of the society and less on religion.
Any
form of religion is a dominant form of religion for some society or at least a
social group. Hence, any useful religion has to have built-in safe-guards
against such development undermining its usefulness as a religion. Such
safe-guards hardly could prevent overloading of religion with care for Moral
Values. However, a religious form could specify Moral Values, which it guards
and could prevent expansion of the set of guarded Moral Values. This way, it
actually would specify its understanding of a desirable stable state of the human
society as a whole.
Balancing two incompatible views of a Human
being – the Individual Side and the Social Side is not easy. It is not easy for
an individual inside own mind, and it is not easy to maintain in a social
discourse.
Maintaining such balance requires perpetual
checking against Human nature, which manifestation one could see in oneself and
in one’s society. This nature cannot be grasped by one logical system, but it
is something close and understandable for anyone.
Those, who are seduced by a coherent
logical system, which provides peace of mind, put themselves in a collision
course with reality. This is not a form of peace, which a human being could afford.
Internal barriers between individuals and
between an individual and a society brought to their logical conclusion produce
a sociopath. They cause extreme destructive and self-destructive behavior,
because they create breaks in the mind of such individual, who dared to go
against own human nature.
Internal barriers carefully managed based
on understanding of reality are useful tools.
An individual must erect barriers between
oneself and another individual, who is destructive, whose mind is rigid or who
aims to enslave the individual.
Similarly, a society should erect barriers
to protect itself from bad influences or enslaving attempts made by another
society.
These barriers prevent propagation of
insanity in the human society. Individuals and societies are losing their mind
pretty often; hence skillful manipulation of barriers is a must for a sane
individual or a sane society.
In a sick society, Moral Values reflect
chronic illness of the society. Not too many choices for a sane individual in
such society.
One
is to immerse oneself into a social group, which functions in a quiet
detachment from the main society. This has its own dangers – this group could
be insane on its own, being detached from the main society is dangerous for
sanity of the group.
The
other is to stay attached to the main society in a position of a vocal dissident.
This is a sad position, because one feels perpetually the pain of insanity of
the main society, one has to keep reevaluating Moral Values of the main society.
In this case, one has no normal interactions between own Individual and Social
sides.
There
is no third way of being a part of a sick society – a social creature cannot
detach oneself from the society and keep sanity and an individual cannot escape
insanity of Moral Values of the sick society being a normal part of it.
Following are a few distinctive cases of
pathological development caused by imbalance between Individual and Social
Sides.
Every artist wants social recognition,
which usually arrive ether late or not at all. As compensation, artists often
put excessive emphasis on the Individual Side and develop rigid barriers
between themselves and the society. This leads to paranoid behavior, where they
are busy defending their individuality, while no one cares to affect it.
Further, they develop a narrow “world of art”, where they live in an obvious
detachment from other people. This leads to loneliness, shrinking circle of
friends, use of alcohol and drugs to reduce psychological pain, poverty, etc.
This approach never improves artistic creativity, because it causes detachment
from those for whom art is created.
Communism, Nazism and at some degree
socialism explicitly declare the preference of the society over individuality. They
know that such arrangement is against human nature, they are after forceful
changing of the human nature just to organize this new form of balance between
Individual and Social Sides. Because human nature does not support such
arrangement, they have to implement a special perpetually working mechanism of
oppression and indoctrination. A few elements of such mechanism have to be
present to achieve such result:
Naturally,
in such societies needs of individuals are neglected, poverty is rampant, and
massive loss of life is usual, but such society can quickly reallocate
resources and mobilize its members in case of war or some public project.
These characteristics are present in all
societies forcing this kind of balance between Individual and Social Sides; it
is not a variant of implementation, it is in the root of the method.
Lack of variability of individual thought
in such society leads to diminished ability to recognize changes and eventual
demise of this society. Unfortunately, this kind of societies manages to cause
a lot of damage before their demise.
This is a chronic disease of the society,
recovery from which is prolonged even after such social organization is
demolished.
A society, which entrusted maintenance of
its Moral Values to religious Authorities, is in real danger of particular
pathological development.
It is easy to develop an illusion that
there is a coherent logical system, which allows making of right decisions.
After all, there is an Authority, which successfully straddles two Sides –
Individual and Social through Moral Values. Such logical system would greatly
simplify decision-making and it is easy to mistake “desirable” for “existing”.
Only one little step is needed, one needs to assume that Authorities have some
super-human properties, that they can sense “the right thing”, that they can
derive “the right conclusion” from ancient books, that they have a line to
supernatural or something like that.
From that point, one could have a comfort
of “knowing” what is right and what is wrong, one have an exhilaration of
“knowing” god’s will.
An external view shows how insane such
development is, but who wants to bother with an external point of view, when a pleasant
point of view is accepted in the society and brings so much enjoyment.
Such artificial collapse of logically
contradicting views into one logically coherent view is a basis of religious
fanaticism. It is attractive, as narcotics are attractive. It is dangerous,
because any information attesting to insanity of such view is explained out
inside a coherent logical system.
[
Alexander Liss 2006-03-20 ]