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.