Attention: bored, enraged, and disillusioned young people, "Society" doesn't exist

It actually does. But what you need to do is stop treating "society" as a single and sentient entity with an agenda. Society doesn't impose values on you and it has no influence over you or anybody else. It is the collective attitudes of the people and is entirely intangible. The sooner you begin denying all societal influence and stop acting like the rest of the world is actively and consciously trying to change you, the happier you'll be.

 

Society influences itself.

 

True that. I think that young people tend to feel like society imposes upon them and alienates them because the majority of it consists of older people who don't share their values. And many tend to treat society as an active, sentient force with an agenda to impose upon them and change them. This is a harmful attitude that needs to be shed quickly.

 

I think you would benefit greatly from viewing this website.

 

I didn't benefit from that. Alarmists conjuring imaginary enemies are never beneficial. And no I'm not going to buy their dvd.

 

Haha, I like that. It's like instead of "don't let the man get you down," it's "the man doesn't exist."

 

Ahaha pretty much. The man is merely anyone who tries to change you. There's advertising, but if you're media literate it doesn't work. And there are political parties trying to get your vote, but that's what they're supposed to do. Anyone interested in politics should be extremely critical of everything politicians say anyway. These are distinct forces and are not "society", as we are society.

 

I was disagreeing with you by what I said.

Out of the people I know and have talked with, no one believes society is some separate entity. It's pretty obvious "we" are all part of society.

It's worth recognizing what role mainstream culture, social norms, and the government play in society, though.

 

Not really. Those are all a reflection of society, not a force acting upon it.

 

Read again.

 

So what are you trying to communicate exactly? Use words. Lots of them. Not little ambiguous three word posts.

 

They are anything but. Society and culture are all created from the top. You're pretty naive if you think that the people in government and media have any thought to spare for what you and I think. They want to tell us what to think, and they do. If culture were truly a reflection of our thoughts, there would be no culture. Culture creates thoughts, it doesn't mirror them.

 

Such popular culture propaganda only impresses upon us insofar as we allow it. You must learn make the distinction between popular culture and actual culture. Values and customs which a society has adopted naturally and ones that are fabricated for the purpose of profit.

It is possible for such propaganda to be nonexistent within our minds, which is why I say that these forces do not exist. Not unless we allow them to.

 

And what is your take on political culture in reference to popular culture Stabby?

 

I probably don't have one. That's too vague a question for me to know where to begin anyway.

 

Meh.

 

This might be true if society was made up of rational, sentient people. People who grow up with these artificial values from birth have no choice (unless they decide to think, which for the most part is laughable). It's pretty basic psychology: if you have grown up in the presence of something, the vast majority of people will not question it. For them, it is perfectly natural, requiring no scrutiny: it just is.

The concept of 'popular culture' is actually a fairly new one. Real culture, as it goes, generally has some definite causes (climate, natural resources, etc.), and is limited to much smaller areas than what we see today. What we are seeing today (or what we have been seeing for at least the past century, as the process it pretty much complete at this point) is all the actual culture being replaced by what they now call 'popular culture', a completely artificial culture that moves from the top down.

 

I suppose all there is to do is just question everything. Question our values and behaviors and be especially critical of advertising. I can't deny that I'm not at least partially effected by it but in constantly striving to be free thinkers we can all thwart their efforts. I just can't stand when people brood and obsess about this sort of thing. If people don't like having values imposed upon them, they should stop letting themselves be imposed upon. Denying the very existence of such propaganda is the first step to freedom and authenticity.

 

I agree that awareness can be very effective in reducing the effects of this kind of thing. I think it is most dangerous, not in the form of advertising, but in the form of what might be called 'popular saturation', in which entire new concepts are introduced into society which did not previously exist, and within a generation or two are considered normal mainstays of human interaction. When you grow up with them, how could you know anything else?

Where did we get the concept of romantic love, or of the generation gap? Romantic love is a concept which did not exist until quite recently; young people and old people used to get along and respect one another. But now, within two generations of their popularization, both seem like entirely ordinary concepts.

(This is not to say that romance never existed, or that there was never a conflict between a young person and an old person. Obviously these things happened, but we see it on a totally different level now, sociologically.)

 

So, what exactly does this thread have to do with politics, Stabby?