Perhaps one of the main purposes of “society” is (or, I should say, should be) to facilitate people learning/developing self-control and personal responsibility. The governments that rule societies have failed because they think they are the point. They fail because they do not realize that it is their ultimate job to lead, not control; that their proper function and purpose is to see that society fulfills its true purpose: to help its citizens learn how to no longer need society as a parent or other controlling authority figure. It is not that society itself is bad, it is rather that we need to learn to not need society for that which we currently need it—namely, to control those who are unable or unwilling to control themselves.
Unfortunately, societies currently engender and cultivate just such dependence and lack of self-control. Non-State ruled “society” can be great; it can help people be more than they can be by themselves. Just imagine what societies could be when relieved of the costly and time-consuming task of being parent to the child. Same with religion. We, as humans, do not need to always remain children, controlled by our parental government, religion, or corporation. We do not need to have an outside power control our beliefs and actions; but most people allow this to be. Any society that so functions is a society of children, children of simply varying ages.
This is one place where I and Judeo-Christian based religions strongly differ. For, through self-awareness, I encourage self-control and personal responsibility and the ability to think for oneself, while these religions preach precisely the opposite. One is a path of awakening freedom and one is a path of slumbering imprisonment. Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s still ignorance. These religions do not teach self-control and responsibility, they do not teach people to think for themselves—indeed, if they did, their very existence would be threatened—they teach people shame and blind faith, which is skillfully and subtly taught to be not blind. These people grow up to be children in adult clothing.
One of the problems with society, as with the governments that run them, is the notion of job security. It seems against our so limited understanding of so-called “human nature,” this idea that the goal of the state-society should be that it eventually becomes obsolete. It is not so much that society needs to progress to its own demise, but rather that we need to open our minds and adjust our assumptions of what its proper function should ultimately be. We do not understand the reality of change. Society does not need to be eradicated, it simply needs to be allowed to be something other than what it currently is. That is the essence of reality, the essence and lesson of nature. Society has become like so many of the products of our fear and misunderstanding of change—stagnant and undynamic; and thus subsequently confused, decadent, and self-serving.
Society, much like the individual person, needs to see the changing of its form and function as a success, as a fulfilling of its natural potential of being, rather than as something to be feared and resisted. In this way, as society at first needs to function as crowd control and almost as a parent, imposing rules and laws of conduct, it needs to see that its next function is to help people to be adults, to be able to control themselves, and to take responsibility for their own success and happiness. Just as a parent needs to adjust her function with her child as that child grows (we should not treat a 16-year-old the same as a 5-year-old when it comes to rules, expectations, level of responsibility, etc.), a society needs to adjust and adapt its function to its citizens as they grow and mature. A parent who cannot adapt and change her function as her child grows and matures fails in her job. The parent who cannot evolve past the function she served when her child was a baby will fail her child as it grows through the stages of life, and will foster confusion, bitterness, and distance. Most parents are not truly prepared to change their functions and roles as their children grow, and the cycle is thus repeated with their children’s raising of their own children, and so on it goes.
It is this ability to adapt and change that is the challenge of the human being, who does not (or, at least, should not) live on instinct alone. It is our own illusions, and our own ignorance, that block this natural ability we all have but are out of touch with. It is our craving and clinging which stops up the natural flow of our experience of life. Observation of nature teaches us that nature is adaptive, it has the ability to change and adapt to changing circumstances. The human body itself will adapt to the loss of an organ or limb. The herd will change locality as the supply of food lessons. It is about adaptation. Most people are not very good at adapting, and that is why most people are unhappy and unfulfilled. A society that cannot adapt its function as its citizens grow and mature will fall into, as Nietzsche so astutely pointed out, decadence. Accepting, and adapting to, change is the most fundamental function of life. It is the most fundamental necessity to happiness and success, especially if success is measured by one’s ability to accept, understand, know, and be (true to) oneself. Without this ability success is impossible.
Thus, the successful state-society is the state-society that helps its citizens to eventually no longer need it in the way they currently do. The successful society is that which weans the citizen from the breast which is so warm and comforting. Society, like the mother who must wean the child from depending on her breast for food, must wean the citizen from depending on its laws for the controlling of behavior and belief. We are a society of full-grown people clinging to the teat. We must wean people to be able to think for themselves, to take responsibility for their own lives and happiness, and to be able to control themselves. This is the proper function of a process-oriented, and thus reality-based, society. And anyone who looks can see that society is, in this way, failing its citizens as the mother who clings to her children as “babies” fails them.
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From my personal notes, 12/6/99.
