Society?

A couple of days ago, one of my friends posted and interesting question on her status. These days, we blame everything on society. Society encourages this, society encourages that. The question is, who is society? Who is this 'them' that we keep blaming for everything?

We all live within someone's sphere of influence, and there are people who live within you sphere of influence. Hence you are an influence on someone, and someone is an influence on you. If society is credited with influencing and encouraging actions and behavior in people, does that mean the we are society? Now, all of us would want to shy away from that definition, since society is rarely credited with doing anything good. And we all know that why try to influence the people around us to do good. Surely, 'them' is someone else.

People also like to say that the society is the majority. Whatever the most people say is society's view. And it makes sense right? But then the question becomes, do we really know what the majority thinks? We all have a very narrow view of the world and none of us can say that we truly have the big picture. Take homosexuality for an example (I don't know why I chose that. It just kinda came to me.) Someone who supports homosexuality would say the society suppresses homosexuality. And they would be right in way, seeing as how there are laws that prevent gay marriage and homosexuality is generally looked down upon as being immoral. But someone who is against homosexuality would say the society encourages homosexuality. And they would also be right seeing as how there a gay pride marches, and every media outlet from TV shows to comic books all have gay characters that are portrayed as normal and persons who are against it are generally portrayed as being mean spirited. So unless society is schizophrenic, it obvious that one side has to wrong, when obviously they aren't.

So what is society? Well this is what I think. I honestly think that... the word 'society' is like the word 'boogeyman'. It's not a real or definite thing. Just like the boogeyman represents the fear of a child, society represents everything that is deemed evil or wrong in the collective human persona. We take all our fears and wraths, and chalk it up to 'society'.

Now, like I said, I have a very narrow view of the world, and I maybe wrong, and I'm sure there's a "scientifically correct" definition of what society is. But I just wanted us think about this enigma just a little bit.

See you tomorrow.