Self and Society
Our dilemma is self-evident. Our social nature requires a cultural expression but cultural expressions have the potential to destroy our evolutionary value. How does someone who is aware of the value of her/his own self-realization negotiate this terrain?
Self-realizations produce insights. All highly technological cultures have to allow some level of self-realization since the exploitation of the resulting unique insights is how the high technology has occurred in the first place, and provides the potential for further improvement. Therefore, such insights will receive the imprimatur of culture so long as they do not produce a fundamental challenge to the values expressed in the conventional wisdom.
However, as a second category, we have the insights of those self-realizations that do challenge the conventional wisdom and those which seemingly have no value in terms of current social requirements and knowledge base. For those aware of their evolutionary value, self-realization should be their dominant motivation. But we also are members of a society, which necessarily implies social obligations. So the socially perceived mediocrity has the dilemma of reconciling the demands of social obligations and self-realization. Because our social nature is an essential feature of the human condition, the demands of social obligations must have priority. However, the definition of “social obligations” is not determined by the conventional wisdom.
The essential social obligation is the requirement that each person be self-sustaining. That is, no one in the second category can claim that their self-realization exempts them from their obligation to make a duly proportional contribution to the economic efforts needed to the support society. Contributions to economic efforts that do not involve self-realization can be defined as “work”. So everyone has an obligation for self-sustaining work. But it is also required that this duly and proportional contribution of work also implies a duly and proportional opportunity for leisure. That is, as everyone has a requirement to work, so also they have a right to leisure, and it is leisure that provides the opportunity for self-realization for those in the second category.
For the single individual, the idea of leisure is somewhat elastic in that time devoted to work can be reduced to expand leisure beyond the duly proportional right - so long as work is not reduced below the self-sustaining level. However, each person’s work requirement also applies to family obligations. That is, for the duration of the child rearing process, the primary focus must be on preparing the children to be successful launched as “self-realizers” and the individual’s work requirement must be expanded for the attainment of that goal. Only after that has been accomplished can the individual return to the primacy of his/her own self-realization.
The justification for this approach is that it maximizes the number of “self-realizers”, which enhances the prospects for the achievement of the ultimate human goal.
The essential requirements for self-realization are leisure and solitude. It is up to each individual to engineer his/her particular circumstances in a culture so that those requirements can be met.
- Home
- Introduction
- Part 1
- Truth
- Insights
- The Human Condition
- Education
- Human Decency
- Enlightenment
- Part 2
- Culture Demystified
- The Elite
- Mediocrities
- Self-regard
- Self and Society
- Part 3
- Morals, Ethics, and Virtue
- The Concept of Evil is a Bad Idea
- Religion
- Patriotism
- Freedom
- Market Capitalism
- Wealth Distribution