5.07.2005

Breach of contract

I was showing Supersize Me to one of my classes yesterday, and something somebody said in it got me thinking. One of the people being interviewed kept bringing up the idea of a "toxic culture" or a "toxic society." While at the outset this seems like an alarmist term, or perhaps a hyperbolic buzz-phrase, it really isn't. And the implications of this are huge.

A society has one obligation: in short, to better the quality of life for those who subscribe to it. The obligation of a society is to its individuals, rather than to itself as an entity. When the society ceases to uphold its obligation - in its structure, its laws, its expectations - the social contract is nullified. As Hobbes says in Leviathan - "You are king only so long as under kingship, my life is secure." This doesn't mean, of course, that if you're unhappy, it's society's fault. This is an unfortunate perversion of this concept. The question is what happens if you behave as society asks you to? By agreeing to uphold the law, to pay taxes, to not build a castle and stockpile it with women, jerky and guns, what happens in exchange?

Our culture right now?

If you eat the food you are expected to eat, you will get sick. You will get diabetes, you will get asthma, you will have heart trouble.

If you entertain yourself the way you are expected to, you will grow petty, dull-witted and illiterate. You will cease to be able to pay attention for more than the fifteen seconds which is the maximum allowed to pass without a "joke" on a sitcom. You will grow to adore barbarism and torture that you inflict, via your games.

If you own the items you are expected to own, you will get terribly, terribly in debt, and you will stay there for the rest of your life. Your home will become a storage facility of gadgets around which you patrol as caretaker.

If you work the jobs you are expected to work, you will never, never in you life, create something that is identifiably yours. You will never contribute anything to society that is unique or new. You will never benefit from the success of you company, only be allowed to remain in stasis. You will service the system, and then when you have fulfilled your part of the bargain, you will be thrown out.

If you admire the people you are expected to admire you will strive to be shallow, self-obsessed, mean, childish, greedy, and self-promoting.

This is the very definition of "toxic." If you ingest it, it will sicken and kill you. If you subscribe to the culture as you are expected to, it will ravage you, not force you to better yourself, to contribute, to do good things. This is a breach of contract, and it renders it null.

The question becomes this, then: If you have no obligation to the society, does this fact mean you should just look out for yourself, or does it increase your obligation to other individuals? Does it mean you shouldn't pay taxes and play spider solitaire all day, or does it mean you have to work harder to reject expectations, while fighting to rebuild a better society? Do we reject the foundations on which our society was built? Or do we try to get them back?

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Did you think of all that just watching that movie? And are you always so negative?

12:26 PM  
Blogger MacLymont said...

Responding to anonymous-

Sort of. And yes, always. 24-7. I am the love child of Morissey and Sylvia Plath.

No, of course I'm not always that negative. Maybe I'll write on this in an entry in a couple hours. For now I must get back in my dark hole and think about entropy while putting tacks in my palms and eating breakfast.

7:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Better negative than panglossian. And he's right. But the thing is is there is no escape from this "toxic world" or "toxic society" that he is describing. It's just like pollution. You may be a germ freak but there really is no way to prevent them from reaching you. If you attempt to isolate yourself from the world, you will become very maudlin and lonely and possibly go insane. You either consume the toxins or you intoxicate yourself. It's a trap.

6:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

my vote goes to the spider solitaire.

1:50 AM  

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