Social Toast

Norm and I were standing around his kitchen drinking coffee and toasting as usual.

Amongst other various topics the subject of the need for society came up..

I personally think it is time that we stop thinking in the "what's best for the whole", society type of standard and start thinking in a more individual based or small tribal type of mind set.

It seems that everything we do is controlled by some kind of society rule, or law. We spend the majority of our daily lives, doing what?... Working, the majority of us working for some nameless faceless "company" that really doesn't care if you have a family, or hobbies, or even a desire to work there. Working so we can live in society. Working to "contribute to society". What is society contributing to us? A forced way of life, whether we like it or not? Not only has society trained us to think that we NEED things like starbucks, tv, SUVs. but we are also FORCED by society to live this way. We have made our selves so dependant on money and social status that we could not live with out it even if we didn't want to. Our basic needs even….

-Food: You could grow a small garden, if you can afford to “own” your own land (in which you have to pay taxes for) although most of us that can afford to own land, probably work to much to be able to tend a garden. You could hunt for meat. But you’d have to make some trip far off into the wilderness to a place that will allow you to hunt, probably for a small fee, on top of the fee you had to pay for your hunting license, once again, assuming that you can do this on a weekend that you do not have to work, and actually succeed at killing some thing in that allotted time, cause other wise you are screwed for the week.

-Shelter: You, are not allowed to build your own house (or at least live in it) unless you go by specific guide lines and rules that are more often then not very difficult to comply with and “get permitted” for, some times taking YEARS to complete, and of coarse, the question lies, where does one live in the mean time?

Your only other option is to pay some ridiculous price ( ridiculous meaning, you’ll probably never pay it off in your life time) for some piece of shit house that looks very similar to every other house that is near by, so much that they are dubbed “cookie cutter houses”

-Water: ok, water is theoretically free, but is it? You have to pay to have it pumped to where you can drink it and have it filtered. True, you could probably live just fine on un filtered water, but it would take you a while of being sick and getting used to the ever changing nasty taste of it. Your other option would be to get it from a natural source, such as a lake….. I don’t know about where you live, but here in the Seattle area, the urban bodies of water are FOUL, and I for one would not drink out of it or swim in it ( but I’m a little weird like that) your best bet would be to go to a river, if you happen to have one accessible. Or go up into the mountains to gather glacier water, once again… who has the time to do this?

-Companionship: Here is something that is readily available everywhere you look, but here is the thing about this….. in this society based world, where status is the is as, if not more important or even equivalent to self worth. in this type of environment , it is rather difficult to find people that are real, or really who they seem to be, and worth putting your self out there for. I think most people kind of go through life half trusting people and making a lot of “acquaintances”, often based on their similarities in social standing or positioning, and calling them friends and lovers rather than finding real friends and lovers.

I’m sure I could go on, but I’m starting to feel like a Sad Bastard on some under medicated depression trip.

The saddest part is that this is not "big brother" or even necessarily "the government" (although Norm and I did go in to this too, see “social control”, to be possibly written later). No we did this our selves, we are our own big brother. a paradox I know , but none the less seems real enough to me.

One cannot decide to not work for society and go live in solitude and in a small group in any reasonably livable area.. because it is all "owned" and you will eventually be chased off by some main society member. Even if you were to purchase some land and create some sort of commune. you still have to pay some sort of land tax this meaning of coarse that you have to make money thus contributing to "society"

I don't think that there should be total anarchy per-say, just a higher level of individualism, and allowances and opportunity for that. For example if we were to square off in to small "tribes" of various sizes, those tribe could decide for them selves what law, ideals and values that they hold true. they could also choose for them selves what type of currency, or what type of value they'd give certain goods. These tribes could even trade amongst each other, introducing "new culture" so to speak.

With the variety of tribes in any given area, I would think that a person who is not necessarily a leader, self motivator, or simply doesn't have any interest in creating their own ideal, would find it easy to find a tribe, that caters more or less to their specific, ideal, this would promote individuality, with out having to be some sort of pioneer, or having to fall in line with the heard mentality and simply just do what every one else does. In this way I believe the tribe idea caters to many types of people (leader, followers, artists, liberal, and more structured type of people, and everything in-between.

Imagine a quilt each square being a different color, shape, size, texture... all these pieces sewn together as one to create one huge quilt.