Hello...Its me, down inside you and all of the rest of us. I just wanted to say what we all feel but can't put into words. I can't speak for you without your permission, of course, but is it alright if I try?

What I mean is that I love all that about liberty and Democracy. I like freedom, free-enterprise, being humane, tolerant, equal and all the rest. I'd rather live here in the U.S. than in any place else; and yet, there is still something wrong. The problem seems to be with “society.” It isn't working well...just doesn't “feel” right. There's too much insecurity, stress, purposelessness, hostility, sleeplessness, loneliness, depression and suicide.

So, I ask you, what's causing all that, and why can't society do something about it? I don't have the answers because, being the subconscious, I just do the feeling, not the thinking. The thinking is your department! So, you tell me! You figure it out.

For example, tell me what is a “society?”

(You might look it up in the GLOSSARY to http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com )!

charles

Because everything is becoming more and more expensive and resources are running out and the sense of privacy has gone down a bit.

Oh yeah plus our environment is going downhill.

For example, tell me what is a “society?”

American society is undergoing some very severe changes within a very

short period of time. Fewer people are making a middle income living

because of all the jobs being sent abroad. Those that make minimum wages

are just keeping afloat because of the dollars weakened state and inflation.

There are many things that are making the American society change today

and those are but a few examples. What was once attainable by many only

a few can achieve today.

The problem seems to be with “society.” It isn't working well...just doesn't “feel” right. There's too much insecurity, stress, purposelessness, hostility, sleeplessness, loneliness, depression and suicide.

Part of the problem is that "society" has taken away the ideals of natural selection ....society has "progressed" to the point that we care for the weak and the stupid and the diseased, and allowed them to breed, thus creating more and more of what's wrong with "society".

I heard someone once say, "Hell, half of the people in the society can't even take care of themselves!" And that might not be far from the truth. That means that the stronger, better half is required to care for the weaker, stupider half. And that's a lot of time, effort and expense that could be utilized in more productive pursuits.

For example, tell me what is a “society?”

A "society" is a group of people held together ONLY by the "jail bars" of rules, laws, courts, and the police. To claim that "society" is some type of cohesive, like-minded people is so idealistic that it's beyond foolishness! Without the rules, laws and the police, "society" would not exist, chaos would occur and brutality would reign. Humans suck!

Baron Max

I agree that people in our Western society are sort of slowly throwing our society away by keep long term criminals, the hopelessly insane, those in perpetual coma, the mentally retarded, etc. alive. The result adds to the over-population and inadequate resources problem. Our society is going downhill. The stress is building up health problems that carry on into the future generations (epigenetic changes).

On the subject of law and order, we do have our differences! Did the Bolshevics take over Russia because they had better rules and laws? Did the communes of Feudal Europe have such good rules and laws that the nobles and commoners felt like invading Islam and taking over the so-called "Holy Land"?

A "society" is a group of people held together ONLY by the "jail bars" of rules, laws, courts, and the police. To claim that "society" is some type of cohesive, like-minded people is so idealistic that it's beyond foolishness! Without the rules, laws and the police, "society" would not exist, chaos would occur and brutality would reign. Humans suck!
Baron Max
What's to stop us fleeing the 'jail bars' and going off to live in a wooden hut in the middle of the countryside like you?

Human need - a need for each other - is the glue that holds society together. No-one wants to walk 20 miles every morning for a bucket of warm, freshly squeezed cow milk. Left to completely fend for ourselves most of us - yourself included, probably - would find out how 'weak' and 'stupid' we truly are.

Well... i don't know what to say, other than sociaty causes oppression, and oppression causes suicides, and all other human temprements.

What's to stop us fleeing the 'jail bars' and going off to live in a wooden hut in the middle of the countryside like you?

Laziness and greed. In the woods, you wouldn't have tv and computers and Internet connections and microwave ovens and microwave popcorn and......

Human need - a need for each other - is the glue that holds society together.

In a city as large as New York, millions of people, I've heard it said that the average New Yorker knows less than twenty people. Now tell me ...just how that New Yorker needs all those other millions that he doesn't know and seldom comes into contact with?

Society? Do you seriously think that New York has a single society? All of those people actually belong to that single "society"? Or Los Angeles ...do all of those people belong to a single "society"?

Human need ...a need for each other? Does that include a need for all the murderers, rapists, robbers, burglers, swindlers, con artists, ......, homeless, disabled, diseased, poverty-stricken, .....? Is that the glue you're talkin' about that holds us all together?

No-one wants to walk 20 miles every morning for a bucket of warm, freshly squeezed cow milk.

It would probably be extremely good for us all, don'tcha' think? And in that 20 miles, we could say hello to all our neighbors walking to get their milk, too. Cow milk, the glue that holds us all together? :D

Baron Max

I Dont see the hatred u see i see the miitary that rules my country i see mistakes are made when we close a blind eye and only see what is put infront of us is like a game of chess sum people cant see the good moves sum people cant see the good moves in people we only see what were ment to see is called society
the dying u say is sad to die or kill one self to me i doubt that very much they are very lucky they took the easy way out is the ones left missing them that hurts so dam bad i feel sorry for these people they live in sadnes every day missing their loved ones have pity on the living dont lose sight of your belief is right there infront of you

It isn't working well...just doesn't “feel” right. There's too much insecurity, stress, purposelessness, hostility, sleeplessness, loneliness, depression and suicide.
Yes, mostly it has to do with the noise and ugliness of modern urban life, which has a profound effect on the human psyche.

Too many people, too much pollution, too much noise, too many ugly buildings, asphalt, concrete, telephone poles...


"Too many people going underground,
Too many reaching for a piece of cake.
Too many people pulled and pushed around,
Too many waiting for that lucky break.

That was your first mistake,
You took your lucky break and broke it in two.
Now what can be done for you?
You broke it in two.

Too many people sharing party lines,
Too many people ever sleeping late.
Too many people paying parking fines,
Too many hungry people losing weight.

That was your first mistake,
You took your lucky break and broke it in two.
Now what can be done for you?
You broke it in two.

Mm-mm-uh-uh.

Uh!

Too many people preaching practices,
Don't let 'em tell you what you wanna be.
Too many people holding back,
This is crazy, and baby, it's not like me.

That was your last mistake,
I find my love awake and waiting to be.
Now what can be done for you?
She's waiting for me"

-Paul McCartney

For example, tell me what is a “society?”




Society is an artificial construct designed to check our instinctive impulses... invariably it will thwart many of our desires and as a consequence we will feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with life in general.

<<< puts a bone through his nose and runs out the front door screaming and pointing at the sky

People in the US work too many hours, don't play and hang out with each other enough, and convert too much of the landscape to money.

As far as laws, police - they don't matter much to happiness until they become oppressive. Millions of people have lived happy lives in societies without them.

We evolved as members of hunting-gathering size groups and instinctively get along well that way. In order to funtion as well in huge cities, we have to have common ideology. Otherwise, we cannot tell "who is in 'our' group and hence can be trusted. No wonder we fill with mistrust and no wonder we treat other people badly sometimes. We think of them as "non-members." No wonder we invade Islam. No wonder there is so much crime. People of other faiths are not members of "our group." Those who idealize diversity are just responding to a stop-gap doctrine that is incompatable with human nature. In our vast numbers, we suffer when our beliefs differ. Thats why there is so much hostility.

Ultimately, we will have to have a new and more advanced belief system to replace the old and divisive ones that are, themselves, too divided now to enable anyone to feel he or she "belongs," to feel secure, to feel a "oneness" with others.

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

Laziness and greed. In the woods, you wouldn't have tv and computers and Internet connections and microwave ovens and microwave popcorn and......
In other words you wouldn't have all the benefits that living in dense urban environments brings. So, contrary to what you said earlier society isn't "a group of people held together ONLY by the "jail bars" of rules, laws, courts, and the police" - is it, now [my emphasis].
In a city as large as New York, millions of people, I've heard it said that the average New Yorker knows less than twenty people. Now tell me ...just how that New Yorker needs all those other millions that he doesn't know and seldom comes into contact with?
Do we need to 'know' people in order to interact with them for our mutual benefit?
Society? Do you seriously think that New York has a single society? All of those people actually belong to that single "society"? Or Los Angeles ...do all of those people belong to a single "society"?
Nah. You're fuzzy about how all this works exactly, aren't you?
Human need ...a need for each other? Does that include a need for all the murderers, rapists, robbers, burglers, swindlers, con artists, ......, homeless, disabled, diseased, poverty-stricken, .....? Is that the glue you're talkin' about that holds us all together?
The answer's fairly predictable, really. No, Baron. No, it isn't.
It would probably be extremely good for us all, don'tcha' think? And in that 20 miles, we could say hello to all our neighbors walking to get their milk, too. Cow milk, the glue that holds us all together? :D
To return to my original point: why don't more people do it then? The majority have voted with their backsides. They prefer the dirt and the smoke and the crime. Now what are we to make of that?

I think that Thomas Hobbes was right in outlining humanity without society as a state of total war. His idea is that the rules given to us in society do limit our freedom but this is necessary to protect humans from each other.
But I would not subscribe to the Freudian view of human nature that society inevitably forces one to submerge one's natural violent and sexual urges.
The rules are necessary to protect people from each other because even when a person is good-natured they cannot trust others to not kill them so they must go on the offensive to survive.
These questions of society come down to questions about human nature.

In other words you wouldn't have all the benefits that living in dense urban environments brings. So, contrary to what you said earlier society isn't "a group of people held together ONLY by the "jail bars" of rules, laws, courts, and the police" - is it, now [my emphasis].

No, you're wrong again. Take away the laws and rules and cops and courts, and there wouldn't be any benefits to enjoy! How you can't see that is beyond me ...can't you just imagine a large city like New York without any laws or cops? Do you really, honestly, think that it could function at all?

Nah. You're fuzzy about how all this works exactly, aren't you?

No, I know how it works. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of "societies" in the USA alone ...and they work together ONLY because of laws and rules and cops and courts.

Just remember this; In a group of hundreds of people, it takes only one vicious, nasty criminal to ruin it for all. So for human societies to be as you suggest, you're basically saying that there are no "bad guys" in the society. Now how realistic do you think that is?

Baron Max

. . . why don't more people do it then? The majority have voted with their backsides. They prefer the dirt and the smoke and the crime. Now what are we to make of that?

Exactly! The cities grow while the hinterland empties. We are SOCIAL animals. If we fill with hostility, hate society, complain about corrupt government and don't talk with our neighbors, it is only because we have lost the feeling of closeness and oneness of the small size-groups we are evolved in through millions of years of evolution. When the population of the world was much smaller, we had the same number of major ideological systems--Christiandom, Islam, Hinduism, etc. We are many more now but have the same old religions and they, in turn have all divided much further and into self-hating groups.

Our secular beliefs are also so divided that we fight over them. For examples, our "free-enterprise" doctrine is fought over by "libertarians" socialists, and objectivists. "Rights" has become a war involving animial rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc. and the public is divided on all of them and many more. Some sabatogue fishing vessals over environmental issues and we are divided on that.

Because we have no effective and advanced belief system a sort of new world-view and way of thinking, one in tune with science, we all feel stress because we feel "out of place," lost, hostile, etc.

This is all why we hate "society." We need a new one!

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

No offense but the 'something' that is wrong is that this

"I like freedom, free-enterprise, being humane, tolerant, equal and all the rest"

is in direct contradiction with this

"I'd rather live here in the U.S. than in any place else.."

This is all why we hate "society." We need a new one!

Do they sell 'em at Wal-Mark? If so, how much are they? ...and are they made in China?

Baron Max

Granted, I am no expert on this subject. However, I seriously doubt that modern society is suffering from a fundamentally different set of problems than people had 2000 years ago. Things have changed a lot, but people have not. Happiness is not a condition that exist spontaneously in the natural world. One has to learn how to be happy. And generally speaking, if it is not taught people will not learn. People need not meet any demands to be happy. That, I think, is the lesson that that keeps getting lost.

Part of the problem is that "society" has taken away the ideals of natural selection ....society has "progressed" to the point that we care for the weak and the stupid and the diseased, and allowed them to breed, thus creating more and more of what's wrong with "society"

Baron Max

Youve got it completely backwards.The entire point of society is to insulate us from natural selection, we band to gether because its easiser to survive in a group than it is on our own. We then created further 'rules' and 'laws' to eliminate the inherent injustice embedded within nature.
So what you think is whats wrong with society *is* society.

We could definitely return to a pre-society model in theory of course, but there'd really be no point. It makes far more sense to dictate the laws that we live by than have them dictated to us by nature.
I never understand why social darwinists dont collective migrate to the congo or somewhere similarly brutal.
If you want to live a life in which youre entirely at the mercy of natural forces there's really nothing stopping you.

Society is an artificial construct designed to check our instinctive impulses... invariably it will thwart many of our desires and as a consequence we will feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with life in general.


Yep, thats what freud always said and i dont think ive come across a better explaination. Society creates dissatisfaction because it constantly forces us to repress our deepest desires and instincts, although we put up with it because the alternative doesnt bare thinking about.
Unless youre a social darwinist of course, in which case the idea of living entirely within nature's brutal regime will be an incredibly attractive prospect.

You've got it completely backwards.The entire point of society is to insulate us from natural selection, we band to gether because its easiser to survive in a group than it is on our own. We then created further 'rules' and 'laws' to eliminate the inherent injustice embedded within nature. So what you think is whats wrong with society *is* society.

Yes, but we've taken it to such extremes that "society" itself has become one of man's major problems.

I never understand why social darwinists dont collective migrate to the congo or somewhere similarly brutal.

You like to talk in extremes, don't you? Do you think that makes your point stronger, or just make you appear silly? :D

But regardless, the remark isn't worth a rational response.

Baron Max

You like to talk in extremes, don't you? Do you think that makes your point stronger, or just make you appear silly? :D

But regardless, the remark isn't worth a rational response.

Baron Max

:roflmao:

You just broke my irony-meter baron.

You just broke my irony-meter baron.

Did it hurt?

Baron Max

Society is an artificial construct designed to check our instinctive impulses... invariably it will thwart many of our desires and as a consequence we will feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with life in general.

<<< puts a bone through his nose and runs out the front door screaming and pointing at the sky

"Artificial construct designed to . . ."? Who designed it? We have societies because we are instinctively social animals, I thought. Aren't we? We evolved as a small hunting-gathering group people who have to have huge conglomerate societies bonded by some common belief system so we can get along together in some sort of organization and thus deal with our expanding numbers.

I think the reason everyone here and everywhere else is so down on society is a group of old socieites based upon a number of very old and obsolete ideological systems called "religions" and a secular system people are rapidly loosing faith in. What we need is a society based upon more modern, contemporary beliefs, a new world-view and way of thinking.

what do you all say?

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

Granted, I am no expert on this subject. However, I seriously doubt that modern society is suffering from a fundamentally different set of problems than people had 2000 years ago. Things have changed a lot, but people have not. Happiness is not a condition that exist spontaneously in the natural world. One has to learn how to be happy. And generally speaking, if it is not taught people will not learn. People need not meet any demands to be happy. That, I think, is the lesson that that keeps getting lost.

Yes, I agree. Being a social species, our instinctive nature never changes, but how it is expressed does change because each generation absorbs changes in belief. Our beliefs change because we set up ideals to solve growing problems. For example, our belief system keeps dividing, so we have to idealize tolerance and diversity in order to get along. This change in belief then causes new problems and, eventually, we think up new ideals to deal with them.

I also agree that happiness does not change from one generation or society to the next.

Also, there has not, as you say, been much change in the last 2,000 years because conditions then were very much like they are now. We also have our secular age (the Hellenic age then). We also have a sort of world empire in our dollar-based global economy. We also are waging war on other countries to control this "empire". And people all over the world are now, as then, disillusioned with it all.


No wonder they took to a new religion. But in our times, a new religion would be a secular world-view and way of thinking that would be better than the whole messed up present secular-old-religion combination.

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

what can be said?
misery is the river of the world (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tw-u2X5EaGY)

:D

Hello...Its me, down inside you and all of the rest of us. I just wanted to say what we all feel but can't put into words. I can't speak for you without your permission, of course, but is it alright if I try?

What I mean is that I love all that about liberty and Democracy. I like freedom, free-enterprise, being humane, tolerant, equal and all the rest. I'd rather live here in the U.S. than in any place else; and yet, there is still something wrong. The problem seems to be with “society.” It isn't working well...just doesn't “feel” right. There's too much insecurity, stress, purposelessness, hostility, sleeplessness, loneliness, depression and suicide.

So, I ask you, what's causing all that, and why can't society do something about it? I don't have the answers because, being the subconscious, I just do the feeling, not the thinking. The thinking is your department! So, you tell me! You figure it out.

For example, tell me what is a “society?”

(You might look it up in the GLOSSARY to http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com )!

charles

It has been like this since the industrial revolution when we all stopped being subsistent farmers and went to sell our souls to the cities.

The only breaks of this depression have been when new freedom had been granted to us - a nice little short term party to keep our spirits up- unfortunately there hasnt been a break like this in a while cause there aint much more freedom we can have.

If you want a happy fulfilled society go and be subsistent farmers - if you wanna be a rich lonely person then go to the city!

Baron: no, the new society we need is not Chinese! Chinese Marxism is ultimately, deviously based on Marxist theory and hence is riddled with 19th century error. The whole system had a chance to sweep the world from Russia, but it was too defective an ideology to succeed. It will have more problems in China in the future as well because of its defects. Wait and see what happens when the Shanghi stock market bubble collapses!

Machaon: you are right. Modern times is much like mid-t0-late Roman times! We have secularism in a almost played out world-like empire and they had the Helenic age in also such an empire.

People generally all have the same social instict repitoire but their religions/cultures condition those instincts in slightly different ways. Yes, no system makes people happier. Our luxury society is riddled with depression, stress, suicide, crime, etc. All that is about to slowly bring it down until we develop a new society which can then build a new and better civilization.