Developments and Changes in Society in Recent Years - Essay Example

 This course so far has definitely challenged my ideas with regards to issues surrounding social change. I had previously only considered social change in a very general way. History lessons and general life experience had taught me that man has moved through various social moments, from medieval lord of the manor and peasants relations, through Victorian morality and religiosity, via the 1960s sexual liberation to the current time. I considered the social situation of ‘now’ to be a post-industrial, post-modern period of relative social freedom with comparatively relaxed social rules and under-going a period of change as a result of modern technology. I also believed that things had generally improved through time and that ‘now’ represented certainly not a perfect, but a very acceptable social model, for as much as I had thought about it. Issues such as terrorism had also played a part in my concept of factors which have affected society. I, like many Americans, have been affect by 9/11 and given that I receive my news media from American channels I believed that the attacks were largely unwarranted and unexpected. I had a vague awareness that US foreign policy had antagonised some Middle Eastern States but that was as far as my considerations on the matter went. As I basically understood the situation, the terrorists were the bad guys. As the course has progressed, however, my ideas on this subject have been challenged and I have questioned my own understanding of the situation. This questioning has not necessarily resulted in clearer ideas on the matter, but certainly broader ones. Barber’s Jihad v. McWorld has certainly helped me to question my basic premises not necessarily of social change but of how society actually is. I was aware that consumerism had negative connotations and that American society was not perfect, but did not believe that American was fundamentally undemocratic. Reading Barber has led me to question for the first time this basic supposition. In his book, Barber fundamentally argues that the corporation (the ‘McWorld’ figure) is not supportive of democracy. Too often, he argues, solutions as found to problems not by the State, but by big business. Barber claims that consumer culture is based on monism, on uniformity, on reducing difference and promoting a sterile sameness. If the consumers all think and act the same way, they are much easier to market to. McWorld has taken over America and is set to take over the world. Instinctively, I found this opinion a little extreme, not least because it conversely seems to regard extremists as having some sense of morality which America has lost. Although Barber clearly does not support extremism (‘Jihad’) he does support a return to better morals. I am not entirely sure that I agree with this point of view. Firstly, although it is true that America is dominated by brands and chains, I do not believe that this is necessarily anti-democratic. Humans will always act in different ways and express contrary opinions and McWorld, no matter how much money and power and influence it might have will never be able to change this. It is a biological fact. The involvement of big business in politics is worrying and in this way I agree with Barber, but the democratic process has the ability to safe-guard against it. Corrupt politicians do not necessarily spell the end of democracy. Issues of morality are also interesting. The commodification of the female body, degeneration of family values and increasing violence in society are doubtlessly negative and Muslim states are, to a certain extent, right to discourage them. However they are a result of social change in the 1960s. The liberalising approach to education, the shape of the family and sexuality has resulted in the damaging elements present in today’s society. It is not necessarily appropriate, however, to lament such changes which also brought greater equality for women in the workplace and the legalisation of homosexuality. This leaves me in a confusing paradox when confronting the effects of social change in the 1960s. Repression goes against democracy and freedom. However, liberalisation seems to bring with it equally undesirable social consequences. The pill, hailed as the greatest liberating tool for women, brought with it an explosion of un-protected sex and the spread of HIV. Open discussion of sexual relations has seen a parallel rise in under-age pregnancies. Perhaps the two are unconnected but if they are not then this is a worrying trend. So the pursuit of freedom, which is the defining epithet of the American constitution, does not seem such as noble pursuit after all. Can this really be the case? Can freedom actually work against the best interests of the individual? These are questions to which I do not yet have an answer. The paradox is still irresolvable to me. However what is certain is that I am asking questions that I did not pose to myself before I began this course. Erhenhalt, on the other hand, answers the question ‘can freedom work against the best interests of the individual?’ with a resounding ‘yes!’ In his book The Lost City, Erhenhalt clearly opposes the freedoms which the 1960s brought to America. He reviews life in 1950s America, in various locations and often presents a picture which makes that style of society seem much more desirable than the one we have today. Mother stayed at home, taught morality to the kids and was happy and satisfied in her role. In Erhenhalt’s view, what changed all that was the market. While Barber thinks McWorld might win, Erhenhalt thinks it already has, seducing women into the work place and away from their guiding role behind the kitchen sink. I find this argumentation difficult to follow, even if the social degradation he depicts might be something that I can understand. The reason I doubt Erhenhalt’s blaming of the markets for the decline is that I do not believe that markets form people; I believe they respond to them. Perhaps I am making a grave error here, but in my experience and reflection, radical social change is asked for by the many once the few have broken out of their traditional roles. The market, if anything, prefers to keep people within their established social positions because this makes them more predictable and therefore easier to influence. The social revolution (with all the negative connotations of that word as well as the positive ones) of the 1960s came about because the boundaries had already been pushed in the 1950s in all areas of life. The change was waiting to happen and it happened in spite of, rather than because of, market forces. Clearly once change happens the market immediately adapts, finding new ways to influences its new brand of consumers. However in my opinion it is always playing catch-up. I appear to believe, therefore, that social change comes about because of the will of the people. Women wanted to go into the work place. Some might argue that they were seduced into wanting the same role as men by capitalist aspirations, but I credit human will with more than that. It is therefore difficult to argue that these changes were negative, if they were long and hard fought for. Their side-effects are much less desirable and so I return to my conundrum. Is social change good at any cost? The simple answer is that I still don’t know. I always assumed the 1960s were a good thing. Now I can see that they were not good in everyway, but this has opened up more questions than it has answered. For better or for worse, however, I find myself living in the America of the early 21st Century. I eat, sleep and go to school in this society and one day I will work and perhaps have a family in it. I have often questioned what job I would like to do and sometimes I wonder how many children I would like and what their names might be. However I have never really, seriously posed myself moral questions about how exactly this current and future life of mine should be lived. I would say that I believe in the basic principles of tolerance and forgiveness and I would hope that my life will bring me satisfactions but I have not really worked out how, on a moral level, this will be achieved. It was for this reason that I found Bellah’s book Habits of the Heart compelling and fascinating. By bringing together a discussion of the values most important to four different people, representative of four different social groups in America, I really got an idea of just how complex and at times contradictory of this country really is. The pursuit of happiness is written into the American constitution. What is not included is a guide to what form this happiness might take. Bellah’s books set out to prove this exact point by exploring what makes people happy. The life model for the majority of people in the US is school, work retirement. It is generally assumed by most young people that if you do well in school you will get a good job and this will somehow bring you satisfaction and happiness. If you meet the love of your life along the way, then things will be even better. However, it is clear that life a lot more complicated than this. Pursuing success in your career can lead to a breakdown of sentimental relationships at home both with spouses and children. Excelling in your work and bringing home a fat pay check won’t necessarily compensate your family for your physical absence as you put in long hours at the office. That much seems clear. However the opposite approach to life won’t necessarily result in satisfaction either. Investing your efforts in your local community might seem life a worthy way to spend your time. Organising local events is a great way to get to know your neighbors and bring the community together, helping you to switch off from work and spend time with friends and family. Here too, however, it is easy to fall in a trap of reminiscing about the good old days when people could leave their doors unlocked and children could play out at night. Being involved in your community can turn into an attempt to turn the clock back and will never meet the idealistic standards that you have in mind when you first undertake it. Rather than changing your community, your efforts can in fact depress and frustrate you. With each new era of social change, people mourn the passing of the older (and therefore better) one. We as human beings have a sentimental attachment to the past which makes it hard for us to accept and enjoy social changes. I had not considered this psychological block which makes it hard for us to be happy. It can also be hard to achieve community unity because the pursuit of individual freedoms has taken precedence over the prospering of the group as a whole. Although we might not like to admit it, the 1960s has brought with it this effect too. With the traditional gender roles fractured, women are no longer always present within the community to create fusion and unity. This has been compounded by the rapid acceleration of capitalism in the 1980s, when community and society were laid aside in favor of the pursuit of individual wealth. Margaret Thatcher once famously declared that there is no such thing as society and sadly her bombastic statement wasn’t far off the mark. However this fracturing has not brought us satisfaction. Man is a creature designed to live in a group situation. Limited contact with other human beings, which is increasingly the case, can lead to depression, anxiety and an unhealthy level of isolation. Ironically this is something which our society encourages us to do from birth. Bellah explains that leaving home is considered a right of passage in American society. We are taught to have a sense of independence and this is a quality which is respected and encouraged within us. In our teenage years we go through a period of rebellion where we challenge the authority of our parents and sooner or later, in most cases, we reach the stage when we strike out on our own, to forge our own path. This can happen once we leave high school or, at the latest, once we graduate from college. It is a process which we consider perfectly normal and one which I have never questioned. It represents a break between child and parents which we all consider normal, or even healthy. It is only through reading Bellah’s chapter on finding oneself that it has been brought to my attention just how abnormal this process actually it. It promotes a distancing of child from parents which never took place in peasant societies and which even now in some parts of the world, such as India and China and to a lesser extent even European countries such as Italy and Spain, would be unthinkable. What we consider normal actually involves a huge psychological wrench which leaves us dissatisfied and stressed. Children no longer consider it their role to care for and even respect their elders and so this has subsequent negative connotations for the older generation which often find themselves isolated in old age to an extent which would have been unthinkable even one hundred years ago. What we consider healthy teenage rebellion actually represents a breakdown of the crucial mechanism of interdependence between young and old which has held human societies together for millennia. If we consider this in the light of the greatest changes in society in recent years – the rise of technology – things become even more worrying. My relationship with the internet has been a positive one. I can now keep in touch more regularly and more cheaply with friends who live in other states and other parts of the world. I can research hard to find books or buy clothes which are no longer in stores on-line. I can even make new friends through chat rooms set up on fan sites and meet people with similar interests to me. Certainly the internet has brought its own unique set of problems associated with data security and the difficulty of policing illegal sites, but I have never been a victim of these problems and I have therefore had only good things to say about the World Wide Web, for the most part. From the point of view of developments and changes in society, the internet has therefore had a huge impact. However these changes go largely against the natural instincts of human beings. Sites such as facebook, instant messaging and email contact mean that we have the sense of maintaining regular contact with friends and family. However in reality we have less and less face-to-face contact with those around us. Virtual networking is no substitute for the real thing and only exacerbates the increasingly isolated lives we lead. Human contact can protect us against depression and a variety of other problems, while virtual contact does not perform the same role. Many of us wonder how we ever managed to survive without the internet, but in reality its long term effects on the fabric of society could be disastrous. I therefore face the same issues when I consider the internet revolution as I do when I think about the impact of the 1960s. Are the negatives worth the advantages? Is this kind of social change to be welcomed? These are questions which I didn’t ask myself at the beginning of the course and which I now find increasingly difficult to answer the more I read into social change. In conclusion, I have certainly got a much broader understanding of what social change means and that any move away from our tribal origins brings both positive but also worryingly negative results. It seems that for all the problems that social change resolves, new ones come along to replace them and that we therefore find ourselves chasing our tails. One set of repressive or challenging situations is replaced by another and it is clear that it is almost impossible to satisfy all of the people all of the time. However, I still cannot shake the instinctive feeling that the progress we have made with regards to greater equality and emancipation was worth fighting for and I therefore find it hard to look back on the past with rose-tinted glasses. In summary, while I have learnt a lot from this course, I find myself with more questions than ever about what social change really means. Read More