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Vincent's Blog of Opinionated Ramblings
Vincent's Blog of Opinionated Ramblings
A theory of nearly everything : read it and weep.
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That’s it I thought as I found the theory I'd been looking for. It is the arbitrary connection which binds language(symbology) , social cohesion , social anomie , depression, suicide, consumerism and selfish gene theory; it’s cultural and contextual relativism.

Phew that’s a lot right; in the hope of keeping this blog short and to the point each one of the above terms is hyperlinked to a wikipedia article to give you the low down on just how expansive this hypothetical model I’ve created truly is.

Ok first off, a few theorists came up with a kick ass idea which would explain how and why we behave in certain ways in society and theorized that most if not all of them were in the pursuit of replicating our gene. So altruism, gaining prosperity and even more likely plastic surgery are all fated to do one thing, enable an individual to attract a mate to reproduce with and hence replicate their gene and so on and so forth. We’ll leave the argument of homosexuality and pious celibacy aside for now, it’s not necessary when you’re making stuff up. I’m on a cerebral high and for now I’m omnipotent and infallible.

Ok secondly on the back of a very structuralist / functionalist perspective there exists a proposal that cultures / pockets of individuals passively engage in particular habitual rituals which enforce and crystallize the society itself. Take for instance the punitive justice system, we punish criminals (a few of them) and send them arms bound to an isolated institution which we call the ‘prison’. From the looks of things it appears that we just want to punish the bad guys, but in essence what we’re doing is a) ensuring that particular societal values are upheld and others are not and b) we’re separating those who obey the values and the dictates of a particular set of norms in society with those who do not.

Thirdly, and now we’ll together tackle a foursome: language, consumerism, depression and cultural / contextual relativism. For starters let’s suggest that language is a set of arbitrary symbols (search semiotics) which connect particular animate or inanimate objects with a word or phrase. So we’ve got an open (not closed) system of meaning operating in a world which is out to get you if you somehow deviate from the norm. Next; consumerism and depression are I think at least becoming mutually exclusive, as we drive toward a society which obeys the profound command of the deity known as instant gratification. I speak here of buying love, buying objects, getting it now and having it all, if you cannot get what you want, if you are doomed to being the person who drops off the mail instead of the woman who signed the check and sealed it in a yellow envelope then undoubtedly you are doomed to forever feeling that the Jones’ have hit warp speed and are about to shatter into nothingness and you are being delivered to your grave aboard a steam train.. Long sentences aside, cultural and contextual relativism then impacts upon this so called ‘have not’ depression angst, you see you’d never know how depressed you were until you had a litmus. Take for instance if you were a lonely woman desperately seeking a don juan to lift you out of your funk and you lived in Italy you’d probably already be holding the trusty bic razor and have the DIY suicide manual on your lap, hoping like hell that the book was penned by a failure. If however you were that woman desperately seeking a romeo and you lived in Senegal and you weren’t exactly sure where your next meal was coming from, or the next mortar then I firmly believe the last thing on your mind would be romantic angst and suicidal ponderings, you’d be fighting to stay alive.

Ok so now for the group hug. Take the women in Italy; she’s wants a lover but cant get him right now. Take the language, which she, having attended a decent school is able to use to describe her angst and include the fact that at her finger tips is a cornucopia of self-help guides to applying a particular label onto her pain. Then apply the notion that individuals within society are compelled to conform in order not to buck the system and be ostracized lest they face social exclusion. Furthermore this same system compels you to obey a body of norms (a set of unwritten rules for a particular culture), which hypnotically ought to ensure that a person from the opposite gender is magically lured into your procreative nest. Lastly add the notion that this entire scenario plays out in a particular space and time in society and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Well what do you get?

You get modern day society, a rising crime rate, abnormally high suicide rates in what appears to be the most ‘normal’ societies for example Finland and ultimately a society which compels individuals to be culturally relativistic when they self-diagnose using a language which arbitrarily places ambiguous value onto particular states of being eg. sociopath, depressed, happy, sad, morbid, lazy etc. etc. As we modernize (note not progress) and become a smaller world due to globalization the norms which govern particular societies will begin to over lap and create a set of super norms, a set of genes which are so selfish they’re not bothered with replicating and more realistically probably not willing to engage with another gene below their particular class. We are propelling ourselves toward disaster because very soon our expectations for what is normal (ambiguous term) will far exceed our ability to live up to them (hyper masculinity and femininity) and we will all be doomed to using labels like depression to ensure that we are able to cope with our inability to live up to said expectations and will henceforth and forever more attempt to medicate and cure such a dilemma.

Peace out, and have a good day and remember train tracks lay across and not up nor down.

April 24, 2008 | 1:04 AM Comments  0 comments

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