TL;DR - Society and social institutions exist because we say they do. Over the centuries from Hobbes to Durkheim to Swidler, everyone pretty much agrees with that. That can either lead to an Anomic cynicism whereby everything is made up and nothing matters, or a Fatalistic cynicism where it all must matter because we say it does. It is probably healthier to be somwhere between those extremes. (Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and Suicide, Hobbes’ Leviathan, Swidler’s Lectures, and a little bit of Rosseau all informed this post.)

Ok, for a blog post, this might get deep. There will be citations, there will be suggested readings. It is going to be a lot; try to bear with me.

Buckle up and be prepared for stream-of-consciousness rambling in long-form.

The Duality of Individualism and Society

In this essay, I will discuss the foundations of society through the lens of a shared religion of the individual. I will also discuss how the Hobbesian approach of Equality leading to conflict, and the contractualism between individuals and the Governed/Governing relationship of social contract theory lead to an inevitable conflict between the Anomically cynical elements of a society and the Fatalistically cynical elements of a society. Briefly, I also discuss a short possibility on the outcomes of these views on the individual and their greater impact to the institutions they belong to. I believe it is also important to say that while this is an essay, and I have tried to hold to some rigor in the research and logic to my conclusions, it is also a blog post. There may be a “fuck” or two… and some breaching of academic writing norms.

I think it is important to say here that I am, somewhat, biased in my viewpoint. Recently, I have been trying my hardest to figure out who I am, what I am doing here, and how I got to where I am in life. In this soul-searching I have found that I, against all my attempts in life, ended up a fucking cynic. Not in the sense most might think of cynicism, but at a diametrically opposed end. I provide so much weight to the social constructs of modern society that I have an ultimately jaded view of society and that the most self-serving thing an individual can do is uphold those views. There will be a whole discussion on this when I define Fatalistic cynicism and how that apparent oxymoron is, in fact, equally problematic to Anomic cynicism.

What is Society?

I do not think any two sociologists, anthropologists, historians, doctors, psychologists, or any other social scientists will ever actually agree on a generalized definition of Society. For the purposes of this specific essay, Society is the collection of social institutions that bind a given group. This is, perhaps, a short section but also an important one. Our shared definition of society will be important as a foundation for the discussion of how societies come into being, and how individualism can lead to one of two Durkheimian outcomes.

It is also important here to discuss that in a modern society, or a society where an important institution is the institution of the individual, is noted to be a problem rather nebulously by Durkheim. His body of work is somewhat dedicated to answering this question, but it is my humble hope to shine a light on a different facet of looking at this problem through two lenses he gives us, specifically, the continuum between Anomic and Fatalistic viewpoints as inferred in his work Suicide. The discussion is further compounded by the contractual interplays between individuals, cultures, and sub-cultures that create the greater institutions that form a functional (or perhaps dysfunctional) society.

Society as a Religion

The foundations of modern society include a fanatical, sacred attachment to the individual and individualism. We, especially in the western world, most especially in the United States, are obsessed with the individual. The rights of the individual are paramount over the rights of society, and the John-Locke-Given right to property is sacred above all else. This has the, perhaps, unintentional outcome that, that which is good for the individual is sacred and that which is good for the greater social group is profane where it conflicts with that which is good for the individual. This is most easily explained in terms of American Capitalism and profit-driven thought. American workers are drive by their employers to have a profit-driven mentality. The goal is to make as much money for the business, not because it is good for the institution of the business, but because it is good for the individual as the profit drives their Salary and Salary growth¹. This also reinforces an idea that if you work harder, you two can become the next Jeff Bezos and own a disgusting dragon’s hoarde of wealth! This phenomenon is known as the “Temporarily Embarassed Millionare” and has been discussed at length in other essays. Consider looking into that as an exercise for the reader.

What this does, however, is it leads to a psychological fallacy where the individual only grows by providing selfishly for the institution that provides for the individual. Despite this abhorrently cyclical reasoning, the greater part of American society, and to a lesser extent other Western societies, seem to spiral into this never ending abyss quite readily. In reality, what this does is takes the spectrum of Egotism and Altruism and turns it into an abstract Möbius strip of egotistic altruisim. “What is good for me, is good for society, because it is good for me.” I apologize for the rambling explanation there, but a detriment of trying to explain broken logic is that it will, inevitably, sound like broken rambling.

Hopefully that concept is now understood because it is key to the next point: Religions, as defined by Durkheim in his work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, are built of two key elements (The Sacred and The Profane), and are solidified by the willingness of individuals to follow the Sacred even to their own detriment. This, in Durkheim’s view, leads to the emergent properties of the system of social interactions that are the very institutions that create society. In my view, this creates a world where modern societies could be considered a religion of the individual, where the shared beliefs and practicecs that guide the moral “Church” to which people belong is, in fact, a “Church” of the individual.

The paradox here is addressed in Ann Swidler’s introductory Sociology course for UC Berkley in 2011 as being problematic in that the individual becomes the very thing binding society together. Creating a problematic cycle where the thing that gives society its power is taken away from the society. The individual benefits, and the social institution begins to crumble.

Modern contractualism and a Hobbesian fallacy of the modern American society

This selfish view of societal growth creates a problem. I am loathe, here, to say that Hobbes’ view of Equality creating struggle might be right. The equality of every person to become stronger mentally or physically than any other person seems, in fact, to lead to constant conflict. The current state of American Capitalist society seems to demand, and rely heavily, on Hobbes’ expressions of the inherent selfishness of man to be precise, correct, and accurate in every sense of all three terms. This creates an unforeseen friction with a problem in the way American government and society were founded:

“We the People” as the defining Hobbesian sovereign of American society requires altruism to function.

The Constitution of the United States opens with the Preamble. This section of the document defines that the people of the United States are the ultimate authority. Note: This is also thrown around by, especially, Conservatives in America with phrases like “My tax dollars pay for X, Y, or Z” and “We are the President’s boss” (most commonly when their preferred candidate did not win the most recent election). This requires Americans to work, together, to define and provide the means to “Form a more perfect union, provide for the common defence, and assure the blessings of Liberty for [Them]selves and [Their] posterity…”. This is increasingly hard to do in a society where everyone is expected to become the person with the most in the country. One could argue (outside the bounds of this essay) that this has lead to a representative Anarchy of businesses governed only by what they can do in a sociolegal culture where regulations are often suspended for those organizations with enough money to pay the fine.

The Constiution, if we look to the very folks who inspired both the Declaration of Independence that preceded it and the document itself, creates an inherent problem with the very contractualism it demands. These documents rely heavily on the consent of the governed as defined by Locke, Rosseau, and Montesquieu in their compounding works that gave us the modern theory of the Social Contract. The problem becomes the fact that the very society and governing element are no longer operating at the will of the sovereign, but the institutions the sovereign has created as a proxy for their egotistic self growth. (Warning, logically broken sentence ahead to explain a logically broken viewpoint) Thus, the altruism required by contractualist thought is lost to a paradoxically egotistic altruism that fails to consider the posterity and union in favor of the individual because of the very belief that this egotism is, in fact, better for the union and posterity itself.

It is here that we have to conclude, regrettably, that given the right environment: Hobbes was right. People given complete equality with no sovereign greater than the self will, in fact, be at a constant state of war with each other…

The Constant State of War and The Extremes of Being Overwhelmed

Compounding on all of this is the fact that we are, for the first time in Human history, able to be aware of and at some level socially interact with an exceedingly vast number of individuals, cultures, and sub-cultures across the planet. We, as Human beings, are being subjected to an extraoridarily well studied and ignore problem of constant cognitive overload. In short: Everyone with a smartphone in their pocket is overwhelmed. They are overwhelmed by information, expectations to form an opinion on every topic, and the requirement to be in constant communication. Humans may be social creatures, but we also need dwell time to recover from social interactions. When Humans are overwhelmed, as we see in psychological studies of the self and self-identity, they do not have the capacity to actually integrate the information and knowledge they have been exposed to into a complete picture of the self. If this goes on long enough, the individual becomes a pastiche of their surroundings and creates a loss of self-identity.

"But wait, J4YC33, didn't you just say we all have too much individualism? How can we be selfishly individualistic if we have lost ourselves?", I hear you cry. 

My answer is simply a shrug and "Yea, that's a hell of a problem I am not going to touch with a ten-foot pole, but I recognize it!", I answer. 

This loss of self-identity and overwhelm prevents us from being able to solidify our thoughts and processes into unified streams of consciousness. This leads inevitably to the taking of extreme positions. Extreme political positions, extreme positions of likes of food and art, and extreme positions of how we conduct ourselves socially. Most concerning to me right now is that last one, because fuck how complex this mess is and I am just trying to write one essay, not a book (yet).

This leads to two extreme viewpoints on how we should conduct ourselves in society when it comes to the application of how society functions. Luckily, Durkheim (in Suicide) gave us two continuums and one of them is all about the rules of society: The Anomic extreme to the Fatalistic extreme.

Anomie vs Fatality: FIGHT!

An undeniable fact that we have spent a fair number of paragraphs discussing directly and indirectly, is that society is made up. Whether intentionally made up, or as an emergent property of the system of social interactions, society’s rules are all Human social constructs.

Given a loose definition of Cynicism stating “being scornful or jadedly negative, especially towards the motives of others”, we have an obvious outcome:

The rules are made up, and none of them should fucking matter because of it (Anomic Extreme)

but we have a slightly less obvious outcome that I have found myself embroiled in:

The rules are made up, and every single one of them is sacred because of it (Fatlistic Extreme)

I have, somewhat embarassingly, gotten into actual arguments with people about the position of my fork on the dinner table. Why? BECAUSE THE RULES SAY THAT’S WHERE THE FORK GOES.

I am not at a state dinner, there is no societal institution present at my dinner table (outside of the very family whose institution should be making the rules), and there is no greater society to offend if the forks arrive stuck straight up and down in the meat course.

Yet, in my overwhelmed lizard-brained (yes, I know that isn’t actually a thing, but colloquialisms are also part of language, dammit) state, the fork goes on the left, the knife goes on the right with the blade facing in, and the drink cup must go above the knife.

In practice, most people will always exist somewhere between these extremes. For instance, most people would not be so Anomic to go to the local market completely devoid of clothes, and attempt to walk out carrying an entire wheel of Parmagiano Reggiano.

The relevance of this to modern society

It turns out that, when my fork is not in the right place, society does not crumble and my meal can still be eaten. What the problem comes down to is that both the rigid adherence to the rules of one institution in another institutional setting is equally damaging to the continuation of social institutions and norms as a complete disregard for them is. Almost everything human beings are doing in the modern day is at an unprecedented level of social interaction (classically defined) and has an oddly magnified societal importance. When taken with the fact that humans are being driven to extreme viewpoints it has extremely damaging potential for what we classically consider important societal institutions.

Ultimately, we, as Human beings, are in such a state of flux that everything we have known about society and its development is being turned on its head. It is quite probable that entirely new forms of society, government, and modalities of social thought emerge from this tumultuous time in world history.

All we can really do is sit back, observe, and hope.

Oh, and we can all take a minute to sit with our thoughts, and maybe let our forks be put in the wrong place. Just make sure you at least wear clothes … at least outside of your home…

Footnote.

There is only the one.

[1]This is demonstrably untrue, as the higher echelons of the business will inevitably take more of the profits and nothing actually trickles-down but Reaganism dies hard.