Living in a Trance--Societal "Norms" under Review

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable
one persists in trying to adapt the world to his own values. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.”- George B. Shaw

Playing by someone else’s rules…..are there many things that are more objectionable than that….?

With very few exceptions, we are all playing by “someone else’s” rules to one great extent or another. We just don’t step far enough back from the picture to see how much we march to the beat of someone/something else’s drums.

As individuals and as a society we follow templates of behavior that have been established for us by people and societies from generations past….many from as far back as when the pyramids were built. These templates or societal “norms” are rarely, if ever, worthy of our adherence; at the very least we should subject them to careful examination to see if they make any sense or, if they are just utter nonsense.

When we are born, we enter a world that has rules that are already established..Let’s just stay with America for the sake of simplicity. Imagine being born in Virginia in 1795, for example: You enter a world where men are walking around wearing powdered wigs…and tights, and white men own black men….white people control society completely…blacks are slaves, women are subservient, cannot vote or hold public office, and are essentially there to serve the man and tend to family responsibilities. A child born into this time and place will know nothing but this reality. To stumble upon a slave auction where white men are bidding for the rights to own black men who have chains around their necks is a commonplace occurrence. That template of society will be accepted without question. Even great minds like Thomas Jefferson were born into a world with slaves, etc., and he continued to own them. He never truly questioned the tenets of slavery, or sexism, or any of the other social norms of the day for their sanity or decency….the same can be said of the greatly revered George Washington. He was one of the biggest slave owners in Virginia.

To his credit, and the credit of the other Founding Fathers, they rebelled against the established rule of England and refused to accept the control placed on the colonies by that monarchy….

Imagine being a baby entering society in 1970. A full 175 years later. You are born in Tennessee, for example. White men still run everything. Only 1 U.S. Senator out of 100 is a woman. No woman has ever been appointed to serve on the Supreme Court up to this point. Racism is still very prevalent and white America is afforded a much greater opportunity at success than any other. Women are still considered to be homemakers exclusively by most members of society.

Very few people ever question the rules of engagement. I think it is fair to say that our society has a stake in creating a compliant and complacent citizenry…one that doesn’t question the history books or the societal standards, or the status quo. ….How many people really questioned the racism that has been and still is prevalent and corrosive in our society? It took draconian efforts by MLK and civil rights groups to put the pressure on the federal government just to make basic institutional changes like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Ironically our government just watered down the protections of the Voting Rights Act just in the last 3 years. People just accept what is in front of them…

Look how long women have been accepting subservient status in our county---for centuries and it is still going strong. Women have no organization and very few resist being considered objects by men. To a large degree they walk into the webs that are set for them and allow their dignity to be compromised.

We so often do what our fathers and our predecessors did….we go to school, then we get married, have kids, retire, etc….that is what society tells us is standard and normal….but, we know that marriage is less than 50% successful just by looking at the divorce rate. The entire construct of marriage seems to crush discovery and freedom. If it was a product on the shelf at a Supermarket nobody would buy it based on it's failure rate. How many marriages that don’t end in divorce are a success? And, what are we defining as success? Is a successful marriage just one where the woman does what the man requires them to do …without fighting, is that a successful marriage? Is that a good enough reason to give away your life to another person ….?

Are our public schools really serving us well..? Is that paradigm working? I would say the answer is, of course not!…Poor communities have poor schools and the rich citizens often send their kids to private schools. Our education system is not much different from 200 years ago….we sit in a classroom in front of a teacher and we spend an amazing amount of time focusing on minutia and memorization and not enough time learning how to think…..we are just filled with formulas and statistics. We often lack creative and critical thinking skills. We don’t learn about ethics, or compassion, or how to live in a society with others. The public school system is, maybe, the most status quo, fossilized institution in our country today. To get a drinking fountain added to a school playground takes years of bureaucratic red tape. Changing the curriculum is incredibly glacial. It doesn't serve the people it is designed to serve.

How many men over the last 4 centuries (leading up to 1920 when women gained the right to vote) woke up and said, “we need to give woman the right to vote in this country”? Virtually none….women had to fight and claw and be imprisoned and beaten (on their own) in order to get their right to vote. Most women weren’t even fighting for that right…that is how docile and compliant women have learned to be over the course of our history as a country. The code of behavior is all about complete self centered-ness, i.e.: I'm not a man so why should I care about what happens to women? I'm not black so why should I care about black people? I'm not poor so why should I care about them? I'm not from that county so why should I care about what is going on there? These issues don't concern me.

We are born (now) into a country where 70% of the people are Christians, 50% of people believe in the devil. We anchor our entire view of our existence on books and testimony written 2,000 to 4,000 years ago that depict virgin births, and raising from the dead, etc…A child born into this culture will likely feel a huge gravity to believe in Jesus, or some other faith of their parent’s choice. A child born into an orthodox Jewish family will go to synagogue and wear the yamulke before he is old enough to drive. Those decisions will be made for him. He will likely be an orthodox jew his or her whole life….yet he or she probably never had a chance to believe in anything else…they were likely told how the universe works and everyone they knew believed in the dogma of their parents, grandparents, etc… This is true of all religions, and most dogma. Democrats most often beget Democrats. Republicans beget Republicans, etc.. Take the Kennedy family, for example. There are dozens and dozens of them that we can trace back to JFK in some way....many of them have lived a public life...and, have you ever heard of even one of these who is a Republican, or even a non Democrat? Now, imagine if these Kennedy offspring had grown up in a household run by Republicans. It goes without question that many of them would be Republicans. So, it can be concluded that these Kennedy children, not unlike all children, adopt many of the values and dogma of their parents. Most are, no doubt, Catholics as well. Are we to believe that is through free choice? I don't think that is a good thing. By that I mean that a parent should encourage his or her children to not just accept their own world view and values. A parent, in my opinion, should encourage their children to ask a lot of questions and come to conclusions about life by themselves, not with a steady, firm, parental hand on their shoulder.

I’m not indicting spirituality or religion, or the Kennedy's, or anyone else per se, but I am pointing out the total lack of scrutiny and critical thinking that should go into a person’s process of establishing a view of the universe and their personal meaning to life; saying that your parents told you it was true is not much of a process of discovery. Imagine if you just ate what your parents decided to feed you for your whole entire life. You never tried other food or challenged the thinking behind being fed the same food all the time. This is a metaphor for how we are “fed” how to live and to think by our family, culture, and the society we live in.

We are born into a world where people have to earn money to buy things….they are in constant competition with others to earn ….they are not taught to care about anyone else in society...in fact, we are taught that if we make enough money we can buy more and more extravagant things and we don’t have to give a thought or a penny to anyone else….we are taught that our own family is the only thing we need to be concerned with….society places no burden on anyone, regardless of how rich they become, to be concerned in the slightest with anyone else in society. It's every man (and woman) for himself, survival of the fittest. On it's face that seems incredibly primitive.

Why do we just accept the rules of the game…..? It’s so random. Does our existing societal standard deserve this incredible deference….? I think not. The blind are leading the blind. Society's track record is horrible.

We came over to this continent and committed institutional genocide on the native population and didn’t blink an eye. We then captured blacks from Africa and chained them to each other in boats so that they could work for us for free for almost 300 years….we didn’t blink an eye. We have been treating women and girls like objects since well before fire was discovered. Even today 80% of our U.S. Senate is made up of men…All 45 of our Presidents have been men….

As a country we are overwhelmingly dedicated to a philosophy that was written thousand of years ago and cannot be corroborated whatsoever. We worship books (the Bible and the Koran) that are more violent and discriminatory and repugnant than the most violent novels we could find.

Just in the last 50 years we have invaded multiple sovereign nations for no reason whatsoever and destroyed their countries, killing millions of their citizens… and without any remorse or conscience…

We now live in a society where the top 1% have 50% of the county’s wealth......and we have elected as our leader the most disgusting, misogynistic, racist, dishonorable, person that many of us have ever seen in public life.

This is the template we should adhere to without questions?

Why are we as Americans so docile? I can understand obeying traffic laws, and other societal laws (though there were laws that enforced sexism and racism that lasted for centuries). I can see the merits of a cooperative set of rules for safety, etc….I can see many other societal norms that seem to be harmless enough and have a good practical benefit….but so many of them should be examined and challenged with that finest of fine-toothed combs...and discarded.

How about the idea that in a marriage a women is supposed to give up their bodies to their spouse whenever the man desires….why does a woman have to give up her body at all to anyone, including her husband if she doesn’t want to….? That is a horrible societal “norm”. Yet, it's an unwritten rule.

Basically, all the rules are set up to favor the men.... and in this country it is the white men……I was brought up to see "the man" as the “head of the household”. Who made that a rule…? Is there any reason to think that men are superior to women…? There is every reason to think that women are much better at being world leaders than men….most notably because they don’t have very much testosterone in their systems and they tend to be more compassionate and nurturing and less likely to start a war, or poke someone’s eye out. Note to self: 98% of all violent criminals are men.”; and we put men in charge?

Again, I understand complying with the language that is established…and maybe even with certain styles of clothing, dress, etc…but there are very few people who actually question everything ….we eat fast food that is toxic because it is served to us conveniently and subliminally. We drink "big gulps" full of calories, we smoke cigarettes (or did) because everyone else did….we all sit around on Sunday and watch football on TV…..whenever there is the newest hair style we all go out and get that same haircut as if we don't want to be the last one who doesn't comply with the group.

Rejecting societal norms does not mean disconnecting from people or society. I totally recognize the need to establish connection with other people in society. That is imperative in my opinion. The connection I am talking about is even deeper and borne out of a more compassionate and selfless standard than we have today, or at anytime in history…that is actually one of the larger points: that our societal norms over the centuries have been very uncompassionate and based in power and selfishness. I think you can live a more thoughtful, autonomous, and dignified life and feel a great sense of empathy and compassion, and even a responsibility for your neighbors, etc…Actually, I don't think we will likely survive as a society if we don't start putting the needs of others at a very high priority.

We’d rather get on hamster wheels….we just get on the wheel…the wheel of getting an education, the wheel of getting a job and getting married and “settling down”. We buy a house and get some furniture and get wifi and start a family and we go to church on Sunday and expect nothing from our spouses but role playing and repetition….

Just for the sake of fantasy…let’s say that the next generation was born into a society where there were no uber rich because people who earned a lot of money gladly gave it to people who were in need. It was the new standard. Instead of becoming satisfied with a country where 23% of children under 18 live in poverty, the rich people felt responsible to help those who are suffering; everyone felt responsible. The idea of buying a new yacht or a second tennis court for your friends when other people were suffering and couldn’t send their kids to college no matter how hard they worked was considered a mental illness. Super rich people gladly paid more in taxes so that others could have benefits that they had in excess…..Imagine being born into a country where it was absolutely unheard of for a woman to be treated as a sex object….that a man would be held accountable for abusing a woman.

Do you think a society like that would have more crime or less crime? more equity or less equity?, more justice or less justice?

Imagine being born into a country where treating black people like second class citizens was unacceptable……imagine being born into a country where the definition of “family” wasn’t so incredibly narrow so as to exclude everyone but those with whom you share blood.

Imagine if it was common for a person who is accustomed to traveling in First Class to offer his First Class seat on a flight to a random stranger in exchange for their seat....just because he cared. Why does that sound so ludicrous?

Our standard as a society is incredibly low…we are probably as racist now than at any time in the last 50 years…..we don’t value honesty or Truth, or integrity……

There are countries out there that resemble somewhat the utopia that I depict…many of the Scandinavian countries (all of them actually) have much lower crime rates, much greater Quality of Life indices, much greater happiness quotients, much better educational systems, much less poverty, and much less greed, much more socioeconomic equality, etc., and much less corruption…..

WE allow ourselves to be led around like sheep by some very questionable role models. The Bible says that God banned shellfish but he allowed slavery….and yet most of us don’t question that…

How can that be? Why should we be surprised that our culture took slaves when the Bible (the playbook for 70% of Americans) supports slavery throughout….read Exodus 20:21 from the Old Testament or Ephesians 6:5 from the New Testament if you need proof of the Biblical and divine support for slavery….Why should we be surprised we have rampant sexism when the Bible preaches the dominance of man over women?

I have guarded hope for humanity….Our indifference to critical thinking and our indifference to Truth and Justice is a recipe for disaster. Our inability to look at any reality that doesn’t have “me” at the very center Is sure to keep us in a primitive state, a primitive “norm” regardless of how many Tesla’s we have or how technologically advanced we become.

I could imagine Trump being elected during the Dark Ages….but to imagine we elected him now….is just mind numbing. It’s like turning back the clock to when we burned witches at the stake.

Start thinking independently and critically….accept nothing that you can’t examine….resist acting like a sheep and following the societal norms that keep you docile and compliant and easy to control. Stand up to injustice whether it affects you personally or not.

Take control of your own life or somebody else will. Start playing by your own rules.

Food for Thought....

My opinions...