Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxn.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!mhuxl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxn!rlr
From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: Never stop fighting
Message-ID: <777@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Jun-84 19:02:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.777
Posted: Fri Jun 22 19:02:55 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Jun-84 08:49:19 EDT
References: <414@ubc-vision.CDN> <1819@rand-unix.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 67

> |    To be nobody but yourself in a world   |
> |    which is doing its best night and day  |
> |    to make you like everybody else        |
> |    means to fight the hardest battle      |
> |    any human being can fight and          |
> |    never stop fighting.                   |
> |                                           |
> |                          e. e. cummings   |
> [submitted by Farzin Mokhtarian]
> 
> As much as I like e.e. cummings' poetry, and as fascinating as I find the
> New England Transcendentalist tradition of which he is a part, I find
> myself in disagreement with this quotation, as I find it proposes both
> an obsession with self and an attitude of individual-vs-society.

I find it, on the contrary, to propose a concern for one's self and one's
own needs as opposed to the "needs" that society has proscribed *for* you.
A society is supposed to be a means to accommodate the needs of all the
individuals in it, rather than having individuals exist to serve a society as
some would have it.

> A lot of the alienation, loneliness, and unhappiness that many people
> experience in our culture comes from our cultural obsession with our
> selves.  We deny the deep emotional need for knowing where we fit in,
> and instead approach life in terms of what we can obtain to enhance
> our self-image.  Peer pressure, fads, and such all work in terms of
> our inflamed desire for enhancing our self-concept, and *not*, as is
> commonly asserted, because of any desire for conformity.  Conformity
> is merely the statistical result of a collection of self-obsessed
> individuals.

The peer pressure and fads that you speak of are, in fact, the means by which
the society enforces its "norms".  Since it is known that people will succumb
to such things, it provides a means to keep the society molded in the way
that is desired by those who benefit from keeping it that way.

> All sorts of ill-fitting attempts are made to establish a feeling of
> connection, though achieving true intimacy seems more and more
> difficult on an individual-to-individual basis, while striving
> for the feeling of belonging to a group is frustrated by the sense
> that the group itself is isolated and powerless.

The notion that one NEEDS to belong to a group seems kind of opaque to me.
When I hear that people are somehow obligated to groups that they had no
choice in joining ("Support your family/nationality!"), I grimace.  When
people believe in such group identification to the exclusion of their
personal lives (like terrorists who would give their lives for their
nationalist cause), I grimace harder. (Harder?)

> It's easy to attack the idea of roles when the evils of current roles
> have been so well illuminated.  But the need isn't to abolish roles,
> it is to reshape them.  Roles are not incompatible with freedom;
> at least they don't need to be.  The anxiety and lack of trust produced
> by social anarchy are as limiting as any role.  But a role of any kind
> is a prison when coupled with our cultural tendency towards self-
> obsession, as it becomes a standard of self-measure.  I believe that
> is is such a concern with self-image, and not social role, that forms
> the prison that e.e. cummings sought to escape.

On the contrary, the notion that my (or anybody's) life should be based on
any externally proscribed role seems rather ridiculous.  As you say, the
need isn't to abolish roles, but rather to abolish the NEED to fit into them.
What you call "social anarchy" I think of as a society that accommodates its
individuals instead of vice versa.
-- 
"Now, Benson, I'm going to have to turn you into a dog for a while."
"Ohhhh, thank you, Master!!"			Rich Rosen    pyuxn!rlr