Individually and collectively, we are responsible for how the sexual revolution develops in the present and into the future.
I hear too many examples of men and women complaining (online and offline) about how society oppresses them and/or hates their
gender.
For goodness sake, people! Don’t you think this is all getting beyond a joke? Or am I the only one not caught up in this absurd pandemic of paranoia and self-pity? Do you not even see how such a viewpoint is patently ridiculous? No? Of course, you are just speaking up against the oppression and hatred directed at your gender, right? Maybe you would go so far as to say I am part of the oppression? You can throw rotten fruit at me and condemn me as an oppressor of some description but only after I have explained why such a viewpoint is so ridiculous.
I read a lot of writers on the internet dealing with the concept of society as if it were a single entity external and disconnected from them. Society is not as disconnected from you; it isn’t a single entity either. Society is the little girl playing next door with a skipping rope, the driver of your taxi, the elderly couple taking a stroll down the promenade, the lover in your bed, the mother cooking her children meals, the bank manager – are you suggesting that these people are consciously oppressing you?
There are many dictionary definitions for the word society (over 10 to be exact) but when we talk about society this is the most frequent meaning we are referring to:-
“A body of individuals living as members of a community; community”
I think it is this misconception of how society exists in reality that can turn each of us into victims of oppression. Far easier to blame society for the struggles in life than to accept that life isn’t always fair or take responsibility for mistakes that we have made. We assume it has nothing to do with us and so we bury our heads in the sand. We forget all concepts of honour and responsibility because we are so busy identifying problems with this fallacious idea of “society”
On the subject of honour and responsibility, I discussed both in my previous article What is your Honour Code? The article put forward the idea that women could have an honour code, and at the same time I was questioning why one has never been written or identified. I am not sure at this point if it is fair to state that this is because women don’t have a sense of honour or if there was never considered to be much need for one.
However, I do think human beings are contrary creatures; being capable of committing acts of both evil and beauty. I think given our circumstances and state of mind, most of us are capable of incredible acts of beauty and grace, but at the same time we are all capable of falling to actions that are base and low.
I think the key aspect to the concept of honour is a sense of responsibility for your actions and decisions. An understanding of cause and effect is also an essential element of such a sense of honour, because with it lies the realization that what you do and say does have an impact. I think a lot of us (me included) forget that we have the power to cause an effect upon others – for good and for bad.
I take a lot of heart from the following extract written by Steve Pavlina:
In 1998 I had an experience that had a deep and lasting effect on me. Erin and I were eating lunch at a local soup and salad place, and I noticed a woman cleaning the tables nearby. She looked very sad and depressed, as if she’d just been chastised by her supervisor or had gotten some bad news.
Erin and I didn’t have a lot of money at the time — even eating this cheap meal was a stretch for our budget — but as we were getting up to leave, I walked up to this woman, handed her a $5 bill and said, “I know you’re probably not appreciated for the work you do, but I want you to know that we think you’re doing a great job.
The woman’s facial expression changed instantly, from sadness to genuine gratitude. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Thank you soooo much.” She did her best to hold back tears but with only partial success. I don’t recall what else she said to me, but I’ll always remember the look on her face. In that moment we really connected –human being to human being. I doubt it was the $5 that mattered to her – it was the fact that someone acknowledged her as a real person. Erin and I were both deeply moved by the experience.
I think people have more power than they know. Even the simplest act of kindness can have a powerful impact. If we were to understand the impact we have on the people around us, I think we would understand that blaming society for the ills of life is not productive. We are a member of society and we have a responsibility over the actions and words that could affect society – namely the people in our lives.
I think that as members of society we have both power and responsibility over our relationships with each other, it is in this area that we can make the most changes as far as the ‘sexual revolution’ goes. If we can learn to accept, understand, and finally relate to the other sex without making assumptions based on false notions of what we believe them to be, perhaps heterosexual relationships can begin to be far more fulfilling for all involved.
Learning to better relate to each other is another way to take personal (and collective) responsibility in society. I would like to help others (and to have others help me) achieve this, through a collective knowledge and a variety of personal viewpoints.
This is why I blog.
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8 Comments
August 6, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Yes, there’s that Golden Rule do-unto-others-yada-yada stuff, and it’s all true. But I think the more important aspect of it is that it’s meant to be applied one-to-one. To truly interact, you have to do it as individuals, and when you do you tend to see others a themselves and not as a stereotype. If you see everyone as someone else, you’ll always be isolated from them. If you see everyone else as a person like you, you’ll be part of a larger whole – maybe even a society.
August 7, 2007 at 1:19 am
Just as you’ve said “society” is who _we_ are, so is “the world” who we are. The way we use these terms these days does tend to put the two concepts “society” and “the world”…”over there” and allows us to create a disconnect, which leads to permissive behavior. It’s important to remember that “We are the world, we are the society” and that a criticism of society is a criticism of who we are individually and collectively, whether that be passive-tacit-ignorant-supportive permission of a social or global ill, or actively creating the condition. Each of us has a voice and is capable of speaking up and saying something to set things to rights and keep civilization advancing in the right ways, and not necessarily under the existing concept of “progress.”
The terms “society” and “world” are useful descriptors to make general collective observations about an overarching condition or perception. But it is the basic units of “world” and “society” that make the difference, make these things the way we perceive them and that is something we can do something about, and the basic unit referred to, is us, every individual one of us.
The idea of women having an honor code is I think a valuable one, and I’ve supported the notion since I first heard from Emmah on it. Honor is at its heart a concept that addresses virtue and the virtues are not a subject we hear much about in modern society, though if you study the philosophers on the subject of ethics then the Virtues do make an appearance, but they’re not a topic for discussion, or guidance today. Business ethics tends to dominate everything and these are driven by one central concept which is the holy grail of business, and probably central to much of the ills a materialistic society has: profit. While business is supposed to be founded in honesty and trust, we know from experience and watching the news and those who are succeeding that these virtues mean little when it comes to making money. The garment industry is still using slave labor to make clothes for men and women, and we’re talking major labels that most of the women who read here are probably wearing. The denim you wear as jeans, most of it is made by women who are slaves in countries like China, the Philipines, and US Saipan (which was exempted by the US govt. from US labor laws in order to allow the garment industry to benefit from slave labor–there’s a video online: search for Garment Workers of US Saipan). A lot of the art that is imported and put into (cheap but gaudy) ornate frames (worth more than the paintings themselves) and sold on canvas is mass produced by teams of children each painting one part of the canvas, working in studios throughout Asia, who knock-off the art of original artists, making subtle changes, but approximating the original works close enough to make them appear to be reproductions of famous original works. They are paid a pittance (water, rice and $0.50/day) to produce hundreds of these paintings, and distributors then pick them up, and sell them in big art and trade fairs and through retail showrooms at fantastic mark-ups (a canvas they paid $1.50 for, is sold for $250+) and most of these are purchased by women who want to decorate their homes with art (which is great). But these painting that look like real oils (but which have none of the quality of real oils) are questionable from a intellectual property perspective and, more importantly, an exploitation of human beings that calls into question human rights and whose purchase perpetuates conditions of poverty and exploitation that we are supposed to be intolerant of in a free rights-based society.
What does this have to do with the concept of honor? Well, is it honorable of women to support a fashion industry that is based on the exploitation of women and children in developing countries, and whose sole motive in doing this is to maximize their profit regardless of the morality of what they are doing and which would have them pilloried in their own countries if they tried to it there?
Honor is about having and living up to ideals and principles of conduct that achieve some enhancement of our survival both individually and collectively.
But one of the biggest problems I have with women is with their communication; they say one thing but they mean (and do) something else. This is not an isolated statement coming from the observation of an isolated incident, or two. I’m talking about a consistently observed pattern of behavior. And if there is a place for women to start creating honor then I would strongly suggest that they drop what I perceive as deceptive ways with language and communication. I would (and do) say the same of men and don’t want what I’m writing here to come across as if I’m unaware of dishonorable behavior in men. Men have plenty to answer for, but are so often tarnished with the brush of dishonor when in fact many are not at all dishonorable. Tolerance, forgiveness, and patience as well as a true understanding of motive and circumstance that lead to relationship problems are, I would offer, (a few) important relationship virtues that the partners in a relationship need to share and uphold as inviolable, as near as possible as it is to hold to any absolute. We are human, we do fall down and fail to live up to the things we sincerely wish to manage.
One area I guess I’m saying is important is the area of quality of communication between men and women. If we can improve the quality of communication between men and women then I think we can do much to move relationships into more stable positions, but it requires women (and men) to start disagreeing with much of the propaganda that tends to characterize men as evil sex-mad beasts, incapable of emotional sensitivity or feeling, fixated on women as sex objects and only sex objects. Sex is not the only thing we have on our minds and even if it was, it happens to be biologically and physiologically necessary to male mental health, and this has actually been known for centuries (harking back to the book by Jonathan Margolis, I’ve mentioned recently. Seriously good book if you want to see where a lot of the silly ideas we’ve adopted as a society that perpetuate the gender wars came from and who actually put them in place). So, if women withhold sex from men, what are women doing other than driving men insane? (I’m not considering isolated incidents here, but a pattern of behavior). For women to use sex as a control mechanism is I think dishonorable behavior on the part of women. Just as to use sex, or male strength, as a means of dominating and subjugating women is dishonorable on the part of men. One of the things I always like to look to, when it comes to these sorts of things is the question: Who gains from this? Often it is third parties. For example, the filling of the confessional with tales of lust driven by enforced abstinence, against a background and context where sex is sinful, helps to keep parishioners seeking the “service” of confessional, and thus could be said to justify the continued existence of an institution which has used the idea of sex and intimate relations to create a polarized situation and a confusion which provides the same institutions with several means of controlling people. By keeping the sexes off-balance with respect of each other, any third party is able to manipulate the genders and keep them coming back for more service, or distracted from other social issues and entire economies can be set up around this, when all that really needs to happen is the two people in the relationship need to talk to each other, and not (necessarily) others. I’m not saying relationship services are unnecessary, or useless. I’m simply offering another perspective, that leads to this idea: if the two genders truly had a better understanding and appreciation of each other and were in much, much better communication than they appear to be (if we look at the statistics) then we could reasonably expect that relationships would be far more robust than what we currently are told they are like. Western world divorce rates are at 50%. Women are more prone to initiate divorce than men. What does this say about women’s ability to persist on a given course of action? To resolve problems? To pick good partners? Do women actually have staying power? What makes women more prone to initiate divorce than men? Are women really as great at relationships as they like to think they are, or are purported to be? I don’t have all the answers, but I do think these sort of questions need to be asked so we can understand the issues.
More honesty and truthfulness is part of what is needed. And we need to reward honesty, not punish as a consequence, because the punishment of truth-telling creates an environment which destroys trust and honesty, and promotes the continued hiding of the truth for fear of punishment. This is not to say that making careful and just decisions based on truth that redress real wrongs is to be avoided, but rather that we need, at the relationship level, to refrain from snap and summary judgment–usually emotionally driven– that in itself creates more problems, or which perpetuate the underlying situations and create an environment of unfairness and injustice. Can we define a virtuous relationship in terms that are not bound by concepts of ownership and property where one or other partner is considered to be chattel in some way? I would forward that even the idea of ownership in the 21st Century is becoming, in some respects, outmoded, and that custodianship may be a better model to entertain and respect, both from a resource perspective and as answer to rampant consumerism and materialism.
I’m not sure where our civilization is going in terms of the Gender Wars, I just hope that the changing nature of relationships between the genders in society is going to find a new and better balance than it has enjoyed since women began to enjoy their newfound freedom under the banner of Human Rights. And lest it be forgotten, it was not that women seized their freedom and achieved equal status and rights to men; men were involved in helping achieve this also. Men did hear, men did listen, and men did agree. I think that it is oft forgotten that WE do achieve so much more when WE work together and that this needs to be remembered, and put into a much better perspective than it has been over the last 40 years.
I’m confident that we can achieve this.
August 8, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I have found that, just as Pavlina showed, the little things you do can give you that connection with others. It is a connection with society and it is really the only great and individual effect you can have on it. You can have an effect other ways, but this one is concise and true. Once you enter into other avenues of attempt to “affect society,” you run into possibly a watered-down, trickly version of your goals.
Yes, society is made up of US. And all of those you mentioned. If we would claim our part in that, we might take it more seriously that we are responsible for its character. It is just the same when we talk about the sins of others, while we treat our own sins very gently.
A woman can enter into an affair with a man late into her marriage. When the affair is discovered, her husband can confess an earlier affair. She is appalled at his indiscretion and the fact that he had a straight face in the marriage from that time to now? Is this not the same sin she has been committing? Is his sin greater because it happened longer ago?
We are so tender with our own selves. When it’s not tenderness we need at those times.
I will say, that sometimes when I refer to society, it is in the sense of the power, or force, that the populous sway impresses. As in, “society makes us believe we must be beautiful” or “society forces us to put too much emphasis on owning things.”
But those things are us, too.
October 16, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I am unsure on how this site works so I will keep this as brief as possible lest I waste energy on something that is not sent to the intended recipient.
I have been led to this site by a young friend of mine who practices daily all the virtues you espouse and lives by a code of ethics and honour that you would unquestionably applaud. As do I.
He has suggested to me that I at least begin to examine some of the thoughts being expressed in such blogs as your own and that perhaps my own ‘twopennyworth’ may be injected to some purpose.
I can only say it is refreshing to encounter someone who is attempting to seek positive answers and to ‘think’ in a society that seems to wish to suppress any such action.
That is to say, many individuals that go toward creating society, seem to be trying to supress.
May I suggest, if you have not done so, that you look up Arthur Koestler who actually invented the word ‘ holon’ from whence our ‘ holistic’ concepts eminate.
A Holon is something that is a complete entity in its own right but is also part of a larger Holon. For example a leaf is a complete thing yet it is actually part of a tree, which is of course a Holon, yet is also part of a forest which…….
As an individual we are complete and act and think in a singular way in isolation. Once in a family group we become something else and act and think as part of that group. Once the family is part of a tribe we become something else again and think and act as part of that tribe.
Whilst it is admirable and comendable to suggest that we see others as individuals it is almost immpossible to so when viewed collectively. A smile really does go round the world but it is folly not to understand that so does a slap. That we should encourage the smile and resist the slap should I hope not need confirmation here. However the paradox is that in defense of the group that one loves it is hard to turn the other cheek, especialy if, when achieved, someone who you love is going to be hurt.
Society,regretably, does contain the opposite of love ( as do you and I ) and when all other avenues have been exhausted one surely has to formulate a set of circumstances where one protects the innocent and fights those that would exploit them ?
Thus society, out of love, creates rules which bind a society…rules which eminate from a universal individual response. Society does exist in its own right. By definition it comprises of individuals but by the creation of those rules becomes a thing in itself. When two ‘ societies ‘ collide we experience catostrophic results to the individuals- who willingly stand under their colours.
Belief in our univeriality seems the only way of allowing for a single society. A single society, if possible, is the only way the individual will be able to act as you would wish, all of the time, rather than only some of the time. So please coninue urging us all to believe in treating everyone else as our equal-and perhaps go further and say that our societies rules and economies should do the same.
October 17, 2007 at 7:19 pm
This comment has been very thought provoking and I appreciate your contribution, John. I need to consider what you have offered in a little more depth before I write an intelligent reply.
I am open to new interpretations of ’society’ amongst other issues and concepts, and yours is an interesting one. I don’t write with the assumption that I am right, (of course, I prefer to be
) but that somebody can take my suggestions and build upon what I have already considered.
I will look into Arthur Koestler and get back to you with a reasoned reply, or perhaps an update on my blog on the very subject.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write. I hope you will stick around and that my blog has more food-for-thought for you.
October 29, 2007 at 8:26 pm
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October 29, 2007 at 9:16 pm
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October 29, 2007 at 9:28 pm
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