Are we all slaves to society?
Before you comment please read this 
1) Most people are stuck in the rat race of constantly working for companies and corporations day and night just to make a living. Those that do become the employer instead, end up exploiting others and shroud them selves with ego and narcissism.
2) When people are constrained to debt when they buy a house they end up paying double after they have paid back the loan over 20 - 40 years.
3) Those who do not follow "socially" accepted values or are seemed to be "lower in class" than us are instead outcasted e.g. homeless guy on the street or the girl with no friends etc.
4) If people are laid off from work unfairly it effectively means that the "leaders" of the company do not give a **** and see you as "lower than them".
5) Our lives are heavily dependent on the latest celebrity scandal, materialism, etc in general.
You might just say thats how life is, but you must ask your self who made the rules and laws in the first place on how life should be like?
So are we but slaves to society unless one makes an effort to break through the herd?
"Those who try get by,
Those who cry are left to die"
1) Most people are stuck in the rat race of constantly working for companies and corporations day and night just to make a living. Those that do become the employer instead, end up exploiting others and shroud them selves with ego and narcissism.
2) When people are constrained to debt when they buy a house they end up paying double after they have paid back the loan over 20 - 40 years.
3) Those who do not follow "socially" accepted values or are seemed to be "lower in class" than us are instead outcasted e.g. homeless guy on the street or the girl with no friends etc.
4) If people are laid off from work unfairly it effectively means that the "leaders" of the company do not give a **** and see you as "lower than them".
5) Our lives are heavily dependent on the latest celebrity scandal, materialism, etc in general.
You might just say thats how life is, but you must ask your self who made the rules and laws in the first place on how life should be like?
So are we but slaves to society unless one makes an effort to break through the herd?
"Those who try get by,
Those who cry are left to die"
(edited 12 years ago)
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Original post by slavetosociety
co-operations
Corporation...
this could be argued for days but I believe that the laws in our society are set to provide boundaries in society in order to prevent chaos and to encourage the most efficient running of our country. thats a very brief and basic way of explaining what i believe. we must all remember that everyone has the opportunity to gain an education and gain authority in order to make changes to our society. thats how society adapts. society adapts with age, so is made by the people for the people. therefore what you are kind of saying is that we are enslaving ourselves.....
maybe im just saying this because i want to study law at university who knows.....
maybe im just saying this because i want to study law at university who knows.....
Original post by Jingers
Corporation...
lol
The good news is... Yes.
The bad... There is no bad everything is going great. NOW GET BACK IN LINE !!
The bad... There is no bad everything is going great. NOW GET BACK IN LINE !!
I agree...
Original post by py0alb
celebrity obsessed, materialistic, debt ridden narcissists?
speak for yourself, dip****. Your little diatribe doesn't describe me or any of my friends.
speak for yourself, dip****. Your little diatribe doesn't describe me or any of my friends.
I never said everyones a narcissist...read the whole post imbecile.Spoiler
ever heard of fight club monologue. "we are the all singing all dancing crap of the world and we have only ust recently found out about this. and we are really pissed off" or some such...
Original post by slavetosociety I never said everyones a narcissist...read the whole post imbecile.
I never said everyones a narcissist...read the whole post imbecile.Spoiler
you said "are we ALL slaves to society" and implied that anyone that was successful was nacissistic and egotistical. which is bull****. in fact everything you wrote was bull****, frankly.
If you think you're a "slave to society" (which you clearly do, judging by your angst-ridden username) perhaps you should do something about the miserable condition of your own life. You may wish to consider going to listen to some "emo music".
I think it's a very natural thing to form some kind of 'social structure', and only for a few to question it and stuff.
I guess it's all across nature, but the example that springs to mind is the bees in their hive.
They go about doing whatever they do, and it works for them.
Is that good enough for us? - no.
I believe that, at the time of Jesus's second coming, when many terrible things will happen, a very small number of people will go to heaven.
And, for me, that defines 'true life', rather than the pursuit of sustaining the sort of quasi-life which you describe, and which pretty much everyone does each day.
Some realise that this is no way to live, and instead choose to spend life seeking out pleasures instead.
In one way, that's intelligent, and it asks the right question but yields the wrong answer (if you see what I mean), in my opinion.
It is a very self-serving solution.
I guess it's all across nature, but the example that springs to mind is the bees in their hive.
They go about doing whatever they do, and it works for them.
Is that good enough for us? - no.
I believe that, at the time of Jesus's second coming, when many terrible things will happen, a very small number of people will go to heaven.
And, for me, that defines 'true life', rather than the pursuit of sustaining the sort of quasi-life which you describe, and which pretty much everyone does each day.
Some realise that this is no way to live, and instead choose to spend life seeking out pleasures instead.
In one way, that's intelligent, and it asks the right question but yields the wrong answer (if you see what I mean), in my opinion.
It is a very self-serving solution.
I've come to the same conclusions by myself, through therapy - which the foundation was built upon the ideas of nonreligious materialism. Through this facing reality for what it is, I've decided to follow God. I've turned back the clock 2000 years because I don't believe science has all the answers. Only we have the answer. And that's not to stop short of being a democratically inclined drone (which is nothing to do with real invididuality anyway , but more to do with buying into the notion that one is free and has certain liberties - which are never real anyway). But i wemt further and decided for myself that being a slave to ego, then to someone elses idea of a mature ego is just all vanity. Modern Western democratic society is a corrupt and failed concept
Original post by slavetosociety
Those who cry are left to die"
Those who cry are left to die"
That quote is so powerful, honestly
Short answer: Yes.
The long answer might include some potentially controversial points; I am not an anthropologist or sociologist, but here goes:
Long Answer:
Humanity thrives on structure and the known. Our desire to rationalise and structuralise the world around us results in the creation of a number of religions and philosophies, from Zeus and Anubis to the Christian God. This desire to rationalise has also developed our scientific curiosity. Both Science and Religion aim to give a structure and a meaning to our lives. I posit that "Society" is a further method that is used, subconsciously, to give our lives structure. Therefore, we not slaves to "society" but slaves to our subconciousness and our innate desire to structure life.
In any "Society" or group of people, we see that structure forms. This comes from a (percieved) need for specialized roles. For example, the gender roles that exist (in part) from when men hunted and women cared for babies. Other specialized roles include the shaman, witchdoctor and the early priest. These were people who had more "wordly" or theological, sometimes scientific knowledge than the rest of the tribe.
Having specialised roles creates an imbalance of wealth. Casting our minds back, we can imagine that something is wrong with us - it might be diarrohea, it could be gastroentritits, it could be halloucinations. The person that we would visit or would be sent to us, would most likely be the witch doctor. This is the person in the tribe or the group of people who is most likely to have a remedy for our situation. They have more "knowledge" than us. This means that we rely on them. We are dependent on them. Already a form of slavery exists.
For much of the world, now, the "knowledge" and structures within society are different. It is now that we have big corporations and big religious institutions. Some of these institutions overtly try to control our lives, some covertly. Governments also exist, and these also control our lives to the extent that we are not truly: I am not free to, if I so wish, to run down the road, naked, and kill.
By themselves, these organisations do not make us slaves. However, it is because we have a very limited alternative, no way out, to these organisations that we become enslaved. There is no way for us to "opt-out" of law, or from seeing psychologically persuasive advertising. We may be able to turn our TVs, radios and computers off, but we will still need to eat. For the vast majority of us it is unfeasible to go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, so we visit markets/supermarkets. Here we are exposed to cleverly designed packaging, strategically placed foodstuffs and offers all designed to change what we buy and how much we spend.
Further, we are unable to be free from work. In years past we would work out of necessity (food/hunting) and potentially self-reliant. However, as societies form, we become interdepedent: why should I farm when I can cook - you can do the farming. In the 21st Century this has become international, and we have countries that produce, others that do accountancy, and more that primarily consume.
If I chose not to work, in the UK, I will be looked after by the Welfare State. I will be given monetary support, housing support and, even if homeless, I will still be reliant on the charity of strangers: In none of those positions am I "free."
Having now explained that humans are slaves to society, I resume my discourse on why society exists and that, we are actually slaves to our minds not society itself - that society is simply a "mechanism."
As explained, we create religion, science and society. Why? Because we need to know how things work, and we are primarily concerned with survival. By knowing what exists we know what to expect, we are able to minimise risks and live longer lives. If we are unable to become immortal, we produce offspring; in areas where infant mortality is high, we produce more. This is to secure our bloodline, so that "we" will continue, in part, for ever.
Society offers us an efficient way for us to become "immortal" - if we say that immortality is the continuance of ourselves through our offspring. We make societies because it offers us the greatest chance of survival.
I think that's it.
The long answer might include some potentially controversial points; I am not an anthropologist or sociologist, but here goes:
Long Answer:
Humanity thrives on structure and the known. Our desire to rationalise and structuralise the world around us results in the creation of a number of religions and philosophies, from Zeus and Anubis to the Christian God. This desire to rationalise has also developed our scientific curiosity. Both Science and Religion aim to give a structure and a meaning to our lives. I posit that "Society" is a further method that is used, subconsciously, to give our lives structure. Therefore, we not slaves to "society" but slaves to our subconciousness and our innate desire to structure life.
In any "Society" or group of people, we see that structure forms. This comes from a (percieved) need for specialized roles. For example, the gender roles that exist (in part) from when men hunted and women cared for babies. Other specialized roles include the shaman, witchdoctor and the early priest. These were people who had more "wordly" or theological, sometimes scientific knowledge than the rest of the tribe.
Having specialised roles creates an imbalance of wealth. Casting our minds back, we can imagine that something is wrong with us - it might be diarrohea, it could be gastroentritits, it could be halloucinations. The person that we would visit or would be sent to us, would most likely be the witch doctor. This is the person in the tribe or the group of people who is most likely to have a remedy for our situation. They have more "knowledge" than us. This means that we rely on them. We are dependent on them. Already a form of slavery exists.
For much of the world, now, the "knowledge" and structures within society are different. It is now that we have big corporations and big religious institutions. Some of these institutions overtly try to control our lives, some covertly. Governments also exist, and these also control our lives to the extent that we are not truly: I am not free to, if I so wish, to run down the road, naked, and kill.
By themselves, these organisations do not make us slaves. However, it is because we have a very limited alternative, no way out, to these organisations that we become enslaved. There is no way for us to "opt-out" of law, or from seeing psychologically persuasive advertising. We may be able to turn our TVs, radios and computers off, but we will still need to eat. For the vast majority of us it is unfeasible to go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, so we visit markets/supermarkets. Here we are exposed to cleverly designed packaging, strategically placed foodstuffs and offers all designed to change what we buy and how much we spend.
Further, we are unable to be free from work. In years past we would work out of necessity (food/hunting) and potentially self-reliant. However, as societies form, we become interdepedent: why should I farm when I can cook - you can do the farming. In the 21st Century this has become international, and we have countries that produce, others that do accountancy, and more that primarily consume.
If I chose not to work, in the UK, I will be looked after by the Welfare State. I will be given monetary support, housing support and, even if homeless, I will still be reliant on the charity of strangers: In none of those positions am I "free."
Having now explained that humans are slaves to society, I resume my discourse on why society exists and that, we are actually slaves to our minds not society itself - that society is simply a "mechanism."
As explained, we create religion, science and society. Why? Because we need to know how things work, and we are primarily concerned with survival. By knowing what exists we know what to expect, we are able to minimise risks and live longer lives. If we are unable to become immortal, we produce offspring; in areas where infant mortality is high, we produce more. This is to secure our bloodline, so that "we" will continue, in part, for ever.
Society offers us an efficient way for us to become "immortal" - if we say that immortality is the continuance of ourselves through our offspring. We make societies because it offers us the greatest chance of survival.
I think that's it.
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