Our society is made up of greed. Our society is defined by hookup culture. Our society is going to end the world. Our society is the reason women get raped. Our society is the reason racial biases still exist. Our society is corrupt. Our society fill in the blank with the latest stereotype.
People say a lot of negative things about our current society, mainly through Facebook rants, but still it seems like everywhere we turn there is another person blaming society as a whole for whatever problem they are talking about. And I get that. I’ve done that even. It’s easier than trying to figure out exactly who is at fault for the what is happening in the world. It’s easier to go broad than it is to speak in detail so society ends up getting blamed.
Now before the sociology majors reading this and go get pissed or blow me off, you should know that I do in fact understand that our society runs our lives through strictly inherent societal norms. I know that most of the things we do are a creation of the world we grew up in and specifically how we were taught to deal with said world. I get all of that and I’m saying that people still need to think twice before they blame society as a whole for every little thing that is wrong with the world. And I am saying that for one simple reason.
We are society.
In the simplest way, we are society because we are in society. Think about the “you are what you eat” saying. We consume what society puts out so we are society. We also tell society what we want them to put out. Meaning we are society because we consume what society puts out but we also tell society what we want put out into the world meaning we control what we consume.
We do this of course in a more complicated way. It’s not like society sends out a poll to each of us and asks questions like do you think we should talk about racism this week? No we tell society what we want by giving attention to elements of it. The headlines that are in the facebook trending section are there because enough people decided to talk about that particular topic. We feed into all the Trump headlines. We tell the media outlets that we will pay attention to that kind of thing so they keep putting that kind of thing out into the world. We are telling them that’s what we want put out.
So we are society meaning we have control over society. What it is, what it represents, and what it puts out into the world is all under our control. So if you don’t like what our current society stands for, stand up. Change it. Start a movement and create the world you want to live in. Don’t just sit back and hide behind your closed door and complain about how terrible the world is if you aren’t doing anything to change it. You can’t blame society for the situation you are in if you aren’t fighting to change it.
Featured image via Arash Payam on Unsplash
Your writing is nonesense. I’ve met illiterate people that express clearer opinions than you
No, it isn’t. She makes sense. Maybe it’s just hard for you to understand common sense.
Fairly contradicting yourself lowering others abilities and using it as an insult, somehow standing up for peoples individual problems that ‘can’ be blamed on society at the same time. Keep it up Allie, more media like this is needed.
I just told my husband he needs to stop doing this. I’ll say to him, our toddler isn’t happy in school because teachers are not loving, he says how can anyone be loving or caring when they are not valued in society and when they are underpaid teachers with too much school debt. I’ll say to him, please take our infant down from the car seat propped on the dining table “it’s not safe”; his response: “nothing is safe in America… Americans are sue happy that’s why everyone is so scared of everything – he’s fine.” Too me it is bizarre to complicate these simple tangible issues by mixing them into larger societal woes, because it seems to stunt any movement towards improvements and solutions. For me, if my son is not happy at school we can do a few things to make it better for him: we can talk to him about it and help him process his feelings, and if it’s an unsafe place for him we can move him. For me if the baby is elevated on a surface that he can fall from, we can just place him safely on the ground… I agree there are big societal problems, and we can work on them by advocating for solutions, but we also need to address our day to day issues. We can’t just cry that nothing can be fixed because it’s all societal. I just want to say thank you for your post because it makes me feel less alone dealing with a partner who wants to blame society for everything.