The Objective of Society

 Philosophically, there is much impetus and purchase drafted upon the insular mind to try and place an objective and vision to every task, day, and existence of an individual. Appropriately, many fail this exercise until much later in their adulthood. Imagine then the tension upon sinews of the mind to create an objective for society;  a task that many will not understand , in isolated thought, until it is too irrelevant an excursion – one that the body does not allow of the mind’s will.

In this gap come the lubricant ideologies and philosophies like religion, political doctrine, economics, etc. These lubricants, as the purpose of lubricants go, allow the inertia of the insular mind to slide into a new state of enlightenment and alignment; alignment of the being with the environment and the larger collective.

Centuries have shown us that religion is, for all intents and purposes, the Political Manifesto of a Macabre Idiocy. There is no need for religious doctrine to follow any rule of sense and even the rules of gravity – that which grounds us – can be abandoned. What absolute chaos then ensues, inevitably, that this ideology takes root and defines what men and women can and cannot do as individuals and with each other. History therefore stands testament to the most Warped of Laws, Violent of Rule, and Illogical tenets of education that religion then imparts. Nevertheless, it was a stage in the existential dialectic of man. A thesis that was so cohesive that civilization itself needed this mortar for its foundations, worth mentioning of course that, what better way to legitimize the slavery and feudalism of medieval  times that the Will of God.

The keepers of the faith in their hallowed tombs of servitude - to that, which their senses say doesn’t exist; however, also faced the fact that every thesis meets it anti-thesis. Christ was, in that sense, the first political ideologue and perhaps the first Socialist of the “known” world as well.  And so it came to pass that his dissent would cause a Govt crackdown culminating in his being nailed to a cross – only for the reformation and eventual destruction of the religious order of the Old Testament.

It is incumbent upon one to pause and introduce the rogue called Political doctrine. Political doctrine as a reform to Religious Law is a concept that is asynchronous and not contiguous in succession. Events like the signing of the Magna Carta, the reduced influence of the Church against monarchy and Science were catalysts. Nevertheless, when the heralded change did come, it was the replacement of the God above with the one below – seemingly futile but significant because, in monarchies, a synthesis arises from the dialectic.

Economic doctrine brings us to the modern and post-modern era where political ideology can now, rightly, never be divorced from Politics: where how we as a society and our progress define our Law and vision – and sometimes our delusion.

One would be remiss at this point to not mention that the invention of an ideology of society and the masses or collective is a tectonic shift in Political Thinking. To that philosopher who decided that Economy cannot be divorced from the masses, that equality is obvious, and that democratic institutions cannot exist without the former two, there cannot be enough accolades. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukanin and all the women of the Suffrages movement must be lauded for their contributions.

This heralds a return to the question of Objectives of Society in the confines of the Modern State apparatus. Today, after successfully challenging the rule of the Capitalist machine for over 70 years, the world has regressed back into one where Liberalist economics rules supreme, but now called Neoliberalism. This economic model is Libertarian ideology in many ways until it twists the State to enforcing a, “Socialism of the Rich” But what is the point of an Economic Model that just remodels an old one. Thus we enter the realm of the Orwellian propaganda machine enforcing that which Marx warned us about. “Greed is Good,” “Yolo” and all such that has translated the objective of the State to a Silicon Valley startup. This is dangerous as society is not a business. The Objective of the State cannot be the profit motive. Progress cannot be defined in terms of revenue.

If one had to play the Devil’s advocate, the West follows this model; no matter how much it fails, it manages to economically spike every now and then to prove that Neoliberalism is a feasible model. But even these states only dared this venture after building their societies to such a level as to avoid Future Shocks. The West has built a society that will automatically revert back to a Socialist model because they are aware that it exists and works.

But if the reader is wondering, what about a permanent Socialist model instead? There can be no such thing, for the progress to Communism is incumbent up on the Politbureaus of the Collectives. Communism is that state where there is no State and we live in a Utopia.  A jarring concept to many but will be explained in a modern context. However, another answer to the question can be found in the rhetorical question: “What if the Objective of the State was only to advance, improve, and maintain Society?”