What does society want from us? [Everyone]

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So my definition of society: An idea or abstraction of a group of individuals which acts as an entity larger than us within our own minds, even though it is made up of minds. An entity which is so powerful that it can mediate ANY human and influence our actions profoundly. An entity made by us as a collective, with each individual exercising individual consciousness and contributing to the greater mass of collective consciousness. Everyone is part of it, and everyone isn't.

My definition of want: Something "it" desires from us, something "it" wants us to contribute. Music, arts, mathematic formulas that can revolutionize mechanics? Codes and programs that can automate a town, city, state, nation? What are we here to give to it, if anything? Does it expect anything or does it simply expect us to stay in line.

I am not rebellious, I don't go against the system because it is nota danger or hindrance to me. However, I feel that no one has made a clear goal for me in terms of what I must contribute to keep this greater entity alive, which in turn keeps me alive. I recognize many millions of great works of everything and I dually recognize the magnificent statecraft in place that gives me freedoms and protects me from dangers at the same time, with ample opportunity for growth and expansion in whatever direction I wish, save that it doesn't harm others.

So what do you think? What should we contribute? What is in need? Good people? Architects? Physicians? Thinkers? I always think about past societies and wonder if they were any better, or if they just lasted longer and had a larger accumulation of intellectual output.

The message has gotten really scattered as of lately and you'll find bitterly opposed camps - some really pushing honor and duty, others just as adamantly pushing social justice, others pushing nihilism, still others seeming to suggest that the way we look at ourselves should hang on every progressive scientific discovery or new theory.

I don't think you'll find a safe answer, the closest I can come up with is do the best you can with the information you can get. Whatever you can make of the world do your best to make it a better place and do so without pitting yourself too much against various groups - ideas maybe, but even there don't get too committed to fighting a particular idea when the likelihood is that it's an exaggerated/distorted portion of the truth and you might take up the same sort of distortion if you're not extremely careful. Best I suppose to just work on yourself, being an example in your own life of what it is you think the world needs, and doing it with as much self-focus as possible and as little mandate on others as possible.

Single word variant:

Compliance.

Interesting.

Which definition are you referring to?



To put on my Joseph Campbell hat - I suppose people could take the weighted average of everyone's wishes, throw them into a machine, and call that public policy. Or - if you have a gas-head blowing hot air into the populace they may want to push back and stiffen.

Not sure what any of that has to do with my post though.

Compliance is also:

- The practice of complaisant civility
- Accord, concordance, amicability
- Complaisant servile accession to wishes (e.g. to a monarch or government)

Complaisance would have served equally well, though it's somewhat archaic.

I still don't think that really fits well with what I said.

What I was saying in essence in my first post:

- Work on yourself first, our culture is a collection of such selves.
- Facts and discursive logic aren't as sexy as demagoguery but they're far more useful and important - stick with that rather than falling into the fray.

That might compress well into two sentences, it doesn't compress quite so well into one word.

It's primarily a response to your suggestion there's no "safe answer", and the notion of bumping heads against various groups and ideas. Each ideology is clamouring for your complaisance, but your sole option is to pay lip service to those with which you find disagreement if you wish to avoid - as you put it - pitting yourself against them.

Self-improvement is likely not what society wants from you, even if its in both the best interests of the individual and of society for you to pursue such a goal. But it's a vague question with a near-unlimited range of factors and arguably no "wrong" answers, per se. The short, sharp, sweet, safe answer is that society wants your complaisance, but that's potentially the path of stagnation for all parties.

It might be better for one to point out, to the best of their ability, what's horribly wrong with those ideologies if they are a big enough issue rather than getting into the game of coming up with a solution which could be just as half-baked. Unfortunately utopian fads seem to come and go constantly, its similar to the plight that the Israelite people had in the book of Judges where every second or third generation needed to be saved from their errors by some great leader or hero. People are getting a little smarter about them but it seems like enough people in the right places aren't that the cycle continues. If there is a rogue ideology going around like a meme flu you're better off adding your own papercut to the thousands that see it to its grave, unless that is you're looking at actual revolution - then you probably should be a bit more active in your disapproval.


I think self-improvement is what society needs, whether it knows that or particularly has a mind to know that outside of our own imaginations.

I think I'd agree that the top wants us to be ruly school-children or sheep that it can lead. Clearly if you're a guy and take that approach you probably be too domesticated to be having kids as both men and women will not respect you, so it's a bad way to go. So trying to find some middle ground, navigate our surroundings, and the psychosis of what humanity is, what it knows vs. doesn't know about itself and its own intentions on a cultural narrative level, you're stuck doing your own calculus because you alone really know your own traits, your talents, strengths, weaknesses, etc. and how they can be best applied to leave the world a little better off by the time you leave. It also probably goes without saying that those who'd want your complete obedience at the top may not have the insight to life, what works or doesn't work in the world, etc. to really warrant anything like strict observance.

What I'd also say - the more you work out your own problems, your own insanity, your tendencies to evade truth for personal gain, etc. you're working on the kind of self-improvement project that benefits broader society as each person who can switch on in that manner chooses to. It's the kind of stuff Jordan Peterson often talks about in his videos whether Maps of Meaning, the Self-Authoring suite, etc.. We're filled with all kinds of crap - from other people's wrong-headed tautologies hammered into us to various evolutionary atavisms that pull at our sleeves to run down the evolutionary ladder which is part of what I tend to think western Abrahamisms and their Manichaean outlook on the physical universe were really fighting against - ie. their Arihman, Satan, Iblis, etc.. That's also why I much prefer taking on the Hermetic frame of reference in my own spiritual practices and why I love the idea of building the adytum within myself - ie. the temple not built with human hands.

When people talk about our culture needing spiritual advancement in whatever way they mean it I think they're right. It's the conquest of our more base impulses. It's what Steven Pinker talks about as the better angels of our nature. If our culture does at some point get pathological or nihilistic and wants to watch the world burn out of either frustration or boredom then that's a heck of a problem, at which point I think you can say a culture has gone pathological and it's best to avoid giving it what it wants to that end.

Disappointingly I find little to disagree with. That won't make for an interesting thread.

Anyone out there with a different perspective?

society wants us to roll in the crap, to cover ourself in crap, and pretend it's royal creme,
to pretend we're all covered in royal creme and its glow is bright and the whole thing is good-smelling

the best pretenders get ribboned and medalled, if you work very hard you get to get set in stone,
the stonificion-crux

That's a very autistic outlook. I say that because NT's don't "pretend" it's royal creme, they truly believe it is royal creme.

The society I'm living in wants women to be more privileged than men and want the men to get married and give their money to the women so those women can spend the money that was given to them by the man to the corporations. The last thing society wantws is men going their own way because that's less money for the corporations.