More Comments on Ted Hughes' letter

I used to live by those kind of thoughts. Who are we now?

This is a crappily, but heartfully written excerpt from an essay from my Philosophy of Society class at UC Berkeley, exactly on this subject:

"To lend further support to this idea that it is not so simple as “opting out”, imagine the following: the typical picture of “success” as defined by someone living in America today, in a place like San Francisco, LA, New York, or any major city you would like, is a man, say his name is Brad. He’s a lawyer, he’s married with two kids, he goes to the gym three days a week, doesn’t drink too much, eats healthily, deals with any emotional problems by visiting a therapist weekly, considers himself a member of the Democratic Party, has the neighbors over for dinner now and then, goes to visit his family on holidays, goes to church every so often, owns his own house, attends his son’s soccer games, etc. Each aspect of this picture of “success” can be categorized as belonging to this or that social institution, marriage, property ownership, work, education religion, family, etc. Here is what is most interesting about all this: strip his participation in all these institutions away, and who is Brad? Whose thoughts does he think all day long? Thoughts for his law firm or his kids’ school, his mom, what he’s going to buy his wife for Valentine’s Day, what his wife should cook for dinner for the neighbors coming over Tuesday night, when he’ll have time to make it to the gym this week. As Durkheim points out in “Social Facts”, “most of our ideas and our tendencies are not developed by ourselves but come to us from without.” (p.38, Reader). When one is tempted to argue this and say that Brad chooses to be a part of all these things, one realizes that not choosing such things involves certain consequences.

Does anyone in this position have the time to think his own thoughts, and have any kind of identity outside of the social roles he plays? In order to make this possible say we subtract one aspect of Brad’s life so he has more time to contemplate his inner self, his desires and beliefs apart from those pertaining to his social obligations. Let us subtract work, which is usually the part of present-day life that takes up the most of one’s time and energy. In this case Brad would not be able to pay the mortgage on his house, feed his kids, send them to school, or pay his taxes, among many other things. He is likely to be looked down upon by his friends and have to live off unemployment, or become a criminal to maintain any kind of livelihood. Whatever might be one’s reasons for wanting to opt out (since wanting to “discover oneself” is just an example), it is easy enough to see that people continue to participate in social institutions because there are severe consequences to behaving otherwise. The situation is especially significant if Brad is unhappy, because in essence he is trapped as a result of the unfavorable consequences that would occur, should he step outside his social roles. Brad might be happy, in which case this could be attributable to a lifetime of exposure to specific definitions of success which he believes himself to have fulfilled. Consequently he is on the receiving end of what Searle refers to as “positive power” generated by institutions, or under the illusion that he experiences freedom, and that he uses this freedom to cultivate all the various aspects of his life. I will revisit the idea of “illusions” further on.

To make another point about positive power, for every one person who enjoys such positive power, there are many more on the receiving end of negative power. Examples of such cases are felons, drug addicts, people who are homeless or in poverty etc. These are perfect examples of people who have “opted out” of this or that institution, say the law as in the case of criminals, and as a result they are much restricted as far as advancing or fulfilling typical definitions of “success” in society. To take even another example consider the case of someone who chooses not to pursue a college education because he or she is aware of the ability institutions have to regulate over the minds of individuals, and furthermore he or she believes that to become college educated is just to become trained to think the way the government wants people to think, to learn the things the government wants people to learn, or as Durkheim puts it:

Considering the facts as they are and have always been, it becomes immediately evident that all education is a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling, and acting which he could not have arrived at spontaneously…the aim of education is, precisely, the socialization of the human being. (italics added) (p. 38)

In order to refrain from acting contrary to one’s beliefs, one might opt out of education and as a result be extremely limited as to job possibilities, and be likely to experience chagrin from the rest of society. This is yet another situation in which to “opt out” is NOT in one’s best interest.

In chapter 4 of The Construction, Searle states

…we are in a state of nature all the time, but the state of nature is precisely one in which people do in fact accept systems of constitutive rules, at least nearly all the time. (p. 91)

Indeed this is true but it only describes the surface. What is taking place on a deeper level is much more complicated, and it is much more likely that what you have in society is not a group of people happily accepting and recreating the conditions being handed down to them from past generations, but rather on the one hand a people under the illusion that there is nothing wrong with accepting things as they are (such as the women in Searle’s story) and on the other, people who accept things as they are only because the alternative is likely to be worse. Durkhiem points out the related fact that the illusion of control and freedom is maintained precisely up until the point that one attempts resistance: “We are then victims of the illusion of having ourselves created that which actually forced itself from without.” (p. 38)

What is particularly disturbing about whole the situation is that most people are too afraid to try to resist at all. Allow me to use myself as an example. There are times I think that I would love to drop out of school, quit my job, stop paying my rent, and do whatever I want, go wherever I please, think whatever I want, manifest whatever ideas I desire. But again, there would be consequences. I would be looked down upon by my family who expects me to finish college and go to graduate school, have a family and get a “good” job. I would be even less likely to get a job than I am with a completed BA in Philosophy.

Mr. Searle seems to be fond of “tests” for certain facts and situations. Consider the following: when you ask the question, “who might people be if they could do whatever they wanted?” and realize that the answer would be quite different from a description of who people are as defined by their social roles and their participation in societal institutions, you realize the extent to which such institutions are in fact constraining rather than empowering. Once again, Durkhiem’s point, that the illusion of empowerment and control is maintained until one attempts to resist, is relevant. Hence, there are very good reasons, particularly concerning consequences (whether they be from the government or one’s family or social circles) for why people do not simply “opt out” of the parts of society that are contrary to their belief systems or that are not in their interest to be a part of."