Influences On Social Behavior

Aside from the people who are around us most consistently, there is another impersonal influence on our behavior that is almost as strong. Some would use the word 'culture' to describe this influence. For purposes of this discussion, I would define culture as follows: a set of well-defined norms for personal comportment, for family relations, for the taking of meals and other routines, for what constitutes 'decency' and 'indecency', for what behavior is tolerable and for what behavior is not.

Whenever there is a distinctive, well-formed social culture of the type I have just outlined, there is a consequence for violating these and other of the culture's norms (most frequently, this would be some form of ostracism). There is also a tendency towards conformity which, to our way of thinking, might appear quaint. In this country, as well as in many other places, we have freed ourselves from the restraints of the old-fashioned social culture, consciously in some ways, unwittingly in others. The result has been mixed.

A strong social culture does impose rigid precepts regarding our place in the world. Such a culture would demand a certain uniformity of dress, and prescribe what clothing to wear for certain occasions (comfort would not be the foremost consideration in each case, but rather, appearance). All of our interpersonal dealings would be far more formal. Incivility, or even mere breaches of etiquette would be seen as more shocking (and possibly less likely to occur). Families would arrange their daily schedule around shared meals, and not the other way around. Sexual and other kinds of morality would be more or less absolute, not relative. Social relations would be predetermined in more cases; the relationships between parents and children, for example, might well be more authoritarian. Social contracts of both the legal (marriage) and the unspoken (filial duty) kind would be seen as more or less unbreakable, etc., etc.

There might well be more hypocrisy, as the ideals of society would be much more difficult to attain in individual cases. There could be greater prejudice even than at present, because highly structured societies can be more exclusionary, and we would inevitably make the criteria for inclusion into society more rigidly based (even than is now the case) on inherited or received attributes (race and social class, for example). Compared to the kind of society we have now, the ordered, heirarchical society that used to be prevalent would be experienced as stifling by the majority of the populace. Most people would see no advantage to having so many unspoken rules governing their behavior.

There could also be benefits. The probability of having a respectful interaction with a stranger would increase. People would have to set aside their momentary desires more frequently and pay greater heed to the demands of the larger group of which they were part -- in the case of the family, setting aside time for meals and other rituals could strengthen the bond between members. It would make being in public places more pleasant, because the behavior one would encounter would be more predictable, and therefore probably more civil. Ambiguity and impossible arrays of moral choices would not bedevil relationships -- marriages, parent-child bonds, etc. -- any more than could inherently be expected.

Only the tiniest handful of figures in history have been influential enough to alter the social characteristics of large groupings of people -- and even they can have an impact only on selected (if important) aspects of the self: religious belief, tolerance, attitudes towards authority, etc. Changes in technology, wars, and other impersonal developments may be seen to have equal or greater impact on how we think and behave in the world than the conscious effort of any person or group of persons. In any case, social rules can not be enacted, as if they were laws; they can only evolve. It is not possible (as desirable and beneficial as it may seem) to 'turn back the clock' to a time when we imagined people behaved more virtuously.

However, I do think we could benefit from re-imagining a world in which we acted with more general restraint than we do now. I am grateful to live in a society as fluid as ours. I am ambivalent, though, about the freedom of personal action that is tolerated in such a society. If we have lowered or removed altogether our standards of private as well as public behavior -- one could easily make the case that this is indeed what has happened -- we have also exposed ourselves to a great deal more in the way of unsavory and even harmful actions on the part of others (and from ourselves!). We have made life easier to live, while making the it at the same time more unpleasant, even treacherous, to navigate.

A Childhood Recollection

There is a species of ant -- the fire ant -- that has moved up from the tropics and established itself in the South. When I was a child I had heard the fire ant was a pest, so I resolved to search the property for fire ant nests and eradicate them. I believed I had seen the fire ants before, but I could not distinguish them in my imagination from other harmless kinds of ants. I believed the only way of becoming familiar with fire ants was getting bitten by one. They could kill animals with their stings; this frightened me, but also attracted me to them.

There was a number of small dirt mounds scattered around the yard. I could see tiny red ants going in and out of holes at the tops of these mounds. Surely these were the ones. Only wicked, fearless insects would have established themselves so conspicuously and so near human habitation.

In appearance they were not fearsome creatures, but something in their comportment was unsettling. Their movements seemed deliberate, even measured. I believed they were conspiring in some way, and would accumulate in numbers until they became invincible.

The only appropriate way to kill them would be in a duel of wits. I wanted to challenge them on their own level, test their defenses, find and exploit their weaknesses. I hoped for circumstances that would require me to devise ingenious and bizarre weapons against the ants.

I first chose a certain ant nest off the side of the house. Once I had destroyed it, I would move on to the others.

The fire ant is very tough, and can withstand a blow. The only way of destroying one by force alone is by rubbing a stone or some other hard object over it repeatedly. At first I thought of digging the nest out of the ground with a shovel, then crushing the ants with my shoe. But this would have been too hazardous. Then the idea occurred to me of burning the ants to death with a magnifying glass.

I found this weapon worked well on isolated ants that were simply minding their business about the mound, if they were moving slowly enough. Surprise was necessary to get the beam of sunlight squarely upon them. If they detected the heat, they scurried away before the light could do harm. After a time I realized I was not killing enough of them to affect the life of the nest. They had to be drawn out and killed in numbers.

The ants were sensitive to disturbances around the nest. When I pulled on a blade of grass that was on the mound, or pushed a stick into an entrance hole, ants would stream out, ready to attack. In this defensive mode they were very agitated. But as soon as they sensed there was no intruder they began merely to mill around, and then they were easy to pick off with the magnifying glass. In this manner I increased the number of ants killed by two- or three-fold.

My methods of drawing out the ants were very damaging to the mound itself. Soon it was completely razed. The ants began to come out in smaller and smaller numbers. I assumed this was because I had killed most of the worker and warrior ants. The next step was to get at the higher castes, and eventually, the queen ant.

(Eventually, I did get get stung by some of the ants. The sting felt like a violent pinch, although it did not leave a welt. The stinger is in the abdomen, and the ant applies it by raising the rear of its body up, then pushing the stinger down into the skin.)

To reach the lower levels of the colony, I set off firecrackers in the gound. The explosions drew swarms of angry ants. After the smoke cleared I would light a second firecracker and drop it on the ants themselves. They would swarm over the firecrackers and sting them -- apparently thinking them living creatures -- and scurry away just before they exploded. Afterwards all the ants would be gone.

I began to see ants of other castes. There was a type with a larger abdomen that looked very fierce. There were also puny winged ants that were less aggressive than the others.

I could not tell how deep the nest went underground. I had made a crater about four inches deep with the firecrackers, but each explosion revealed new tunnels. Moreover, the ants seemed to be getting used to my attacks. I jammed sticks deep down into the tunnels and exploded quantities of firecrackers to draw them out, but they reacted less and less angrily each time. After a while, I felt they were ignoring me.

Finally, I decided to destroy the nest in one quick blow. I boiled water and poured it slowly over the nest, allowing time for the water to sink in. It was satisfying to know that the ants would be destroyed in the lower reaches of the colony, where I had not been able to reach. I left, expecting that when I returned I would find the nest completely lifeless.

When I came back some time later there was a neat pile of ant carcasses and destroyed larvae in the middle of a crater. The surviving ants were bringing more dead from underground and adding them to this pile. They went about their work with what seemed a horrible patience. Now and again a winged ant crawled to the surface and flew away -- later I surmised that these flying ants would begin new nests elsewhere. After that time I did not kill any more of the ants.