In my reading the other day I encountered the thought: “societies don’t think, people think”. Well, that’s an interesting thought, but coming from the other direction it is rather like saying “cells don’t have a life, people have a life”. It’s all how you look at it. And a thought the phrase stirred in my mind was of the weight of society in most every human thought.
If we were to make note of our thoughts in the passing of a day, in most cases there would not be a single thought that was not colored by societal elements. What to wear, what to eat, on the job, in the home: every thought is a juggling of societal elements by the mysterious pressure of human existence. It is just about impossible to have a thought that is free from any societal consideration. And if one should retire to a monastery to dodge the societal bullet, one is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Societies are myriad, and the legitimacy of their demands upon the thought patterns of their constituents is generally accepted without consideration. These “societal demands upon thought patterns” make up the bulk of what passes as thinking.
That’s the way it looks to me, what do you think?
If we were to make note of our thoughts in the passing of a day, in most cases there would not be a single thought that was not colored by societal elements. What to wear, what to eat, on the job, in the home: every thought is a juggling of societal elements by the mysterious pressure of human existence. It is just about impossible to have a thought that is free from any societal consideration. And if one should retire to a monastery to dodge the societal bullet, one is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Societies are myriad, and the legitimacy of their demands upon the thought patterns of their constituents is generally accepted without consideration. These “societal demands upon thought patterns” make up the bulk of what passes as thinking.
That’s the way it looks to me, what do you think?
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