Ask a typical libertarian what prevents himself or herself from being truly free, andthe answer will undoubtedly be "government." It's true that in its current form, government is an oppressive institution. Government, however, is part of a larger social context.
Today's society contains not just a single aberration called "government," but numerous oppressive institutions. Schools, for example, and churches, indoctrinate children with the values of oppression -- group-think, self-sacrifice, obedience to authority, social conformity, etc. These anti-individualistic values are reinforcedthroughout society.
For those who fail to question it, society can be an oppressive force stifling individuality and destroying individual freedom. Any person who wishes to live in society while enjoying substantial personal freedom, and retaining his or her individuality, must engage in a constant process of questioning and critically evaluating society.
What follows is an effort to do just that. I will present abroad overview of society -- it's institutions and values -- from the perspective of an individualist. (Note: while the following analysis is based on American society, the main points of the analysis apply to most societies around the world.)
Overcoming Barriers to Objective Evaluation of Society
Making objective evaluations of society is a great challenge, owing in part to the difficulty of isolating society from one’s own existence. Nearly everyone's family, job, and hobbies exist within society, or at least depend largely on contact with society. Therefore, it is important to recognize that society is not "reality." Today's society is merely a temporary creation based on the arbitrary attitudes, beliefs, and values reinforced by society's dominant forces. The norms and rules of society do not supercede the basic facts of existence and of human nature.
A second challenge to analyzing society is that society has no "structure." It has no official set of decision makers, no formal process for determining its "policies." As a result, the best one can do is attempt to analyze the aggregation of the institutions, attitudes, and values that form the essence of the society.
What is Society?
The concept "society" refers to a collection of individuals interacting within a geographic proximity who accept, or are pressured to accept, a set of established values and customs.
There are a myriad of disparate cultures and value systems within American society. It would be impossible here to analyze each of these. My main concern is the culture and value system that the vast majority of Americans accept. This is the system that I and all other individuals who reject the dominant trends in America today must relate to on a daily basis.
(Continue to Part II: Religion & Superstition)
