Ten days ago I put out the first of several teaser excerpts from my book -- To Make A Better World. Today I'm releasing the second teaser excerpt. This one is from the chapter On Society and Socialization. These excerpts are leading up to publication of my book. I hope that you enjoy it and feel free to share the link to this page with your friends, and to share your thoughts with me. Thanks.
FROM: To Make A Better World; The handbook for good secular living in the modern era.
by Joshua Michail.
Excerpt #2, from: On Society & Socialization.
FROM: To Make A Better World; The handbook for good secular living in the modern era.
by Joshua Michail.
Excerpt #2, from: On Society & Socialization.
 |
| Copyright 2015, Joshua Michail, all rights reserved. |
Social conditioning, socialization, is a normal process and it is a natural consequence of living in a society. We are taught when we are young what is expected of us, our gender roles, our cultural traditions, our group values and our principles. All of this is then reinforced over time by our peers, our friends, family and other people we have contact with. The process, itself, is important. It helps to create and maintain the much needed social cohesiveness. It's a glue to keep a society together. And a society that stays together is functional. However, what a society considers important, as a rule, can sometimes be quite dysfunctional. Social attitudes can sometimes be good and sometimes bad. Each of us ought to be concerned with whether a normative is healthy for our society or detrimental. And we ought to be interested in correcting the path of our societies when we see such problems. Luckily, there are ways to do this. Though it may seem improbable, raising awareness and changing attitudes can be done by individuals.
The process of socialization begins for each person the moment we are
born and never stops until the moment we are dead. Every day, our
friends and family inform us in this manner. TV shows and
commercials, radio programs, movies, music, billboards, posters,
internet sites, magazines and even books all are forms by which the
the process informs all of us. None of us are immune to it. It's not
a bad thing in and of itself. What is bad is the content, the
message, what we are being taught. The kind of social participants we
are being molded into. We must always question this. We are right to
examine the societal norms we are being taught and that are being
reinforced in us. Sometimes the ideas that are commonly taught as
normative behavior are acceptable, or even beneficial. But, some
other times the idea is bad, useless or even harmful. And we have a
duty to humanity and our society to fix those problems.
We were socialized by the toys we played with as kids. We are
pressured by our peers to “be cool” as teenagers and young
adults. When we watch television shows and commercials often we
either relate to or idolize the content. Most obviously, our parents
socialize us while we are growing up by teaching us how to behave,
what is right and wrong, the way we talk and many other things.
Movies socialize us to love fast cars, big bright explosions and
fashion. Magazines instruct us on how to think of or relate to
members of the other sex, or how to dress to impress people, or what
to think on a particular point in politics and sports, etcetera. We
relate to music, often we will hear a melody or a tune and feel an
emotional response to it, but we also interpret the lyrics and
identify with them. The vehicles for our socialization, our training to meet societal
normatives, is a seemingly endless list with all varying in degrees
to which they teach or reinforce the society's normatives. Typically,
most of those things are also genuinely the things they appear to be,
while still being such a vehicle for social conditioning. For
instance, a car commercial on TV is actually meant to inform people
of the car being available for purchase, and such advertising is
actually intended to sell the car. And the car, itself, is really
just a device for transporting people and luggage. The point is that
the practical often serves as the carrier for the piggy-backing of
the social conditioning, such as in the advertisements. And even
then, the advertisers are usually not actively intending to reinforce
social normatives, rather they may knowingly be exploiting them for
the purpose of selling the product.
There may be said to be two forms of socializing material, one that
establishes or instills certain notions while the other exploits or
reinforces existing social notions and mores. “Mores” are a set
of moral norms or customs which have been derived from practices that
are generally accepted by a society, but not from written laws.
Though, some socializing material may be both reinforcing and
establishing at the same time, e.g.: GI Joe toys and Barbie dolls.
Such perpetuate existing gender-role stereotypes, while establishing
normal gender identity and teaching the young person how to fulfill
his/her expected gender role. Some others might exploit and reinforce
normal gender roles simultaneously, such as a TV commercial with a
man driving an expensive car past a line of beautiful women who all
turn their heads and stare at him lustfully. This sort is implying
that for men when they have that car women will be interested in
them. And for women it suggests that she should like a man with that
car, because most other women will. Such an advertisement exploits
the social norms because it targets adults, who can afford the car
and thus have been around long enough to already have been
conditioned. While it also reinforces the mores because it treats
such ideas as normal and expected. An example of the more common sort
that only establish such mores may be a parent's instruction to
his/her child to eat all of the vegetables before being allowed to
have dessert. Though it should be said, teaching children the idea of delaying
gratification – having the dessert after dinner – is good. Being
taught this may help the person to be better disciplined and so more
likely to achieve goals, put in the hard work, and then later in life
to be able to enjoy the rewards. In fact, those who can delay
gratification tend to be more successful. Successful in their
education, in their careers and in life over-all. This is,
nonetheless, an example of part of the process of socialization, the
parents teaching that in their culture dessert comes after dinner,
and that this is what is considered “normal”.
Some socializing material may actually be distracting or detrimental
to a healthy lifestyle. Though much is quite useful. In particular,
among the detrimental, are the archaic gender-roles. Though the old
standard idea of the woman submissive to, and dependent upon, the man
once served a useful purpose, it is now out-of-date and quite
harmful. Several thousand years ago, when to feed a family
necessarily meant hard labor in the fields all day, it makes sense
that women would stay in the home. They would usually do all sorts of
less labor intensive, though important, work. Such work would be
cleaning, cooking and raising the children, of course. But, it would
also include weaving fabric and making clothes, feeding the animals,
making pottery and preparing foods. While the men would be hunting
animals and tilling fields and felling trees and building the homes.
This was way back before there was much labor-saving technology. When
hunting was done with spears or by archery. When farming the fields
meant using thick sticks with stones attached to til the land and
walking along harvesting by hand. Certainly women often worked the
fields with the men. But, physiologically men tend to naturally be
stronger than women. And the work that needed doing was very tough.
Some work was demanding on muscle and some work demanded more
dexterity, but required less muscle strength. To succeed meant having
those who were better suited to the work doing that job, instead of
another. It simply made sense, in that case, that traditional
division of labor. But, that was then, this is now. The complete truth is that today there simply is no logically valid
argument to justify maintaining those now out-dated normatives. Just
as there never was a logically valid argument to support the selfish
thought that women are not equal to men. Even with labor division
being assigned according to the needs and capabilities of so very
long ago that would not mean one is inherently worth more than
another. Thankfully, many people have for a long time worked hard and
have been quite successful in reshaping our Western society's
normatives regarding equality.
The fact that those archaic gender-roles have persisted to this day
within our culture speaks to the nature of the socialization process.
Parents may teach their children many things. But, a child's primary
relationship is with his or her parents. Girls learn how to be women,
mostly, from their mothers and boys learn how to be a man, mostly,
from their fathers. Principally speaking that is, of-course there are
other significant influencing sources. Even more to the point,
though, is that usually people learn how to relate to others through
their relationships with their parents. One learns what to expect in
a romantic relationship by witnessing how one's mother and father
interacted. Indeed, our ideal of a relationship with a mate is mostly
built upon the model our parents provided. Whether it is good or bad,
this is the way most people have learned to relate with their mating
partners. As a matter of fact, this fundamental aspect – in the
worst cases – can cause a young woman to believe that if a man
loves a woman he shows it by beating her and degrading her. Clearly,
this is because she grew up in a home, in which, her father would
beat and degrade her mother and her mother constantly endured it.
This can also often explain why a young male might be so abusive
toward women. Sadly, this happens all too often. But that also speaks
to the nature of the process of socialization.
©
2015, Joshua Michail, all rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment