A short analysis on society

When I looked up the meaning of society in dictionary I got not one but four meanings. According to the dictionary, the first meaning is “society is an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization”; the second meaning is ” a formal association of people with similar interests”, like a nature society, lunch society,etc. Then, the third meaning is “the state of being with someone” and finally the fourth and last meaning, to my surprise, “the fashionable elite”. I was expecting there would be only one meaning of society and it would be something deeper on the lines of the first meaning written above. Like every other meaning is obsolete.

I am interested in the first meaning of society. A group of individuals, belonging to different cultures and with different economic statuses coexisting together happily, we call it society. From the earliest times, humans are burdened with the need to be social, to be able to live and survive in a group. But, are humans really social? We have these morals handed down and spoon fed to us by our elders. The balancing scales of good and evil try to mould our actions so as to put more weight on the good side. But, who wants to be good anyway. Because given a chance, most people will cheat on a test if no one’s been looking. So, what is it that is still holding up our social structure? We cannot deny that the moral ground on which we judge others become obsolete when it comes to judging ourselves.

It’s not every day that something happens that changes our outlook towards life, friendship and the so called society. So, when it happens, do we give ourselves and the society a second chance? Yes, almost every time. And when someone chooses not to let go, then they either start a revolution or become part of one. A successful revolution is not in which thrones are crushed and lives are lost but the one in which hearts are changed and truth is realized. It’s lame to say that its human nature to cheat and that it’s okay to turn a blind eye to crime. So, what makes people think their wrong doing is justified? Is it because that’s how they saw their parents going around with the society or is it because they know the moral codes taught to them are shallow and no god will ever question them because they make a hefty donation to their favourite spiritual/religious haunt.

In present society, we measure an individual by his notoriety. It’s doesn’t matter what you’re good at, but you have to be good at something, anything. One can be good at being the worst and make a decent living out of it. The society has an amusing sense of weighing talent and deciding what could be termed as a talent. We make movies on gangsters and serial killers and cast them as heroes. We give standing ovation to a man who can hit a ball with a piece of wood real hard and assign the nickname God to him. We cheer when two sides erupt in a showdown, as it sets our pulse racing. We were not meant to live in a society. There are animals who act rather genius when in a large group, such as ants. But, humans on the other hand, act foolish in large groups thus giving birth to the term “crowd mentality.” It can easily be inferred that when humans gather in a very large group the collective IQ of the group is much lower than the sum of individual IQs of each member of the group.

What sets humans apart is their ability to accept defeats, work around problems and mask true nature of their feelings. No one can deny that he has actually seen god once in his/her lifetime, maybe without realizing it. Likewise, no one can deny that he has seen devil too, once in his/her lifetime, in himself/herself. That applies on our society too. But, it chooses to play devil all the time, leaving no room for angels. The only way to kill the devil is to disintegrate the present social order. And maybe then we won’t need a moral code to do the right thing.

Adarsh Nanwani
Adarsh.nanwani@gmail.com