society

I wasn't going to name it a "philosophical thread" because the last edition of the ongoing anthology sucked donkey balls so I change the name.

Anyways:
Does society help or hinder the individual?

Both, we're herd animals. An individual is nothing without a society to fit into and doing it's "individual task", and a society can't exist with all the different individuals.

hinder.
endless reasons.
x

Rattle off a few emptyspace, so we have something to contemplate

Society impedes on an individual's goal for self perfection and happiness. Individuals are overlooked and forgotten in society. Individual achievements are also made much more minor in society, phrases like "T.E.A.M. Together Everyone Achieves More" are pure bullcrap. The individual mind alone could do great things without society restricting it.

Sub-societies with a common purpose or belief are the worst. They become so engulped with their belief that they sensor themselves from the outside world, they begin to refuse the acceptance of anything else aside from their belief... all this caused by society. An individual alone has much more common sense, for our best decisions are ones made without any outside forces acting upon us.

But society gives us the ability to not worry about being murdered in our sleep (well most of us...for the most part) and having to worry about finding/hunting for food. We can specialize and devote our lives to higher persuits as well as exchange more ideas more readily with other people. Take this forum as an example, it's a society of sorts and I would never meet any of you, or have this conversation with any of you if this forum did not exist because pank had to worry about feeding his family instead of designing websites. (If anyone derails this thread with a stupid comment about the previous sentence you are an idiot.) We could not focus on art, we would be living in the now.

But I do agree with you in large part and I would elaborate on that, if it weren't for the fact that I am really tired.

[QUOTE=Telemakhos]But society gives us the ability to not worry about being murdered in our sleep (well most of us...for the most part) and having to worry about finding/hunting for food. We can specialize and devote our lives to higher persuits as well as exchange more ideas more readily with other people. Take this forum as an example, it's a society of sorts and I would never meet any of you, or have this conversation with any of you if this forum did not exist because pank had to worry about feeding his family instead of designing websites. (If anyone derails this thread with a stupid comment about the previous sentence you are an idiot.) We could not focus on art, we would be living in the now.

But I do agree with you in large part and I would elaborate on that, if it weren't for the fact that I am really tired.[/QUOTE]

That's a good point. However, this exchange and adaptions of ideas are what limit one's potential. If you can take somone else's thoughts and use them yourself, why worry about creating your own thoughts? Think of all the people ruined by big corporations who stole their patents. Think of all the people crushed by charges of plagiarism. It's society that offered these things.

Edit:

I'll post more later, this stuff is really taking time away from homework doing.

society will always hinder the individual because of abilities, if the individual existed in themselves without a society, they would work to the best of their own ability, rather than to a standard set to create a sociological norm, this goes for every aspect of our living life, without society would our need for perfection exist? would we long for a thin, beautiful girlfriend, a highly paid job and a mansion with sports car in the garage? no, because nobody is telling you thats what you want.
the argument against this will be that if we narrow it right down to day to day life, an eccentric boy wears clothes that make him feel good about himself, society may not accept them as the 'norm' and so outcast him, however, was it society that presented him with these clothes in the first place, they had to come from somewhere did they not? some form of society must have labelled what he was wearing as their idea of 'fashion'. even if this is the case, then society is still hindering the individual, as either way he is still not being himself, only an interpretation of himself with barriers set by other people. Everything we see and create is based on something somebody else has seen and created... society will always hinder the individual, but there is no way to change it and live differently, so get over it, society sucks.
xxx