Views from the Abyss #41: Social Expectations

While navigating this tricky modern world of ours, where everybody and their favourite uncle has access to some flavour of untested at best, but outright laughable for the most part social theory at their fingertips, it's hard to find any contemporary social commentary that does not include expressions such as 'society expects' or 'society teaches' as an explanation of some isolated phenomena or other. 

Maybe it's the reason why less women choose to go into STEM fields, or men choose not to wear dresses, or why groping is still something of an issue on Japanese trains, or why little Johnny killed himself rather than spend the next 18 years paying child support to a child that isn't his (if only he'd gone against his social programming and embraced his emotions, he could have survived to have his income perpetually garnished the way that real men do...)

If you find yourself excessively irked by this trend, and cannot quite place your finger on why that is, then join me once more in our mutual quest for truth.

The very concept of society is, of course, a social construction, for want of a better word—and yes, I really want for a better word, because this one is way too loaded already. 'Society' has no objective existence, and manifests only as a subjective perception inside the mind of the observer. It is therefore incapable of expressing agency or independent thought of any kind, and is certainly not in a position to be expecting or teaching anything to anybody.

Now, if one were to be charitable, then it's not hard to see what the intended meaning is—it’s a kind of intellectual shorthand that is heavily rooted in actual social constructionism, but those making the assertion are frequently unaware of this detail. To them, it's just a rather lazy way of saying that many such thoughts and behaviours are to some extent learned through interaction with others.

But beware the passive voice, because it is the road to selective abandonment of personal responsibility. And it is used very selectively indeed. How often do you hear about "rocks being thrown" and "windows being broken" in the news, when the agency broadly agree with the sentiments behind the riot, only to switch to the active voice—"man arrested for throwing rocks, breaking windows"—when they're in ideological opposition to person in question? More often than not, and realise it or not, you will have noticed it.

But returning to the initial claims about "society's teachings" though, it should come as little surprise that this is also heavily rooted in collectivism. Invariably it is used to describe some manner of perceived problem, and by taking the focus off of the individuals involved, it becomes a society-wide issue that affects everybody, and one that can only be solved by fixing everybody.

If the idea of 'fixing everybody' frightens you, it is because you are sane. If you are a 'progressive' ideologue though, it is part of your pro-chaos toolset, and but one facet of your longer term plan of total global domination.

Never let them win. Ultimate responsibility must end with the individual.