Of course in reality Society is a dynamic changing things which has taken on endless convoluted indefinable forms in its history and has been composed from an endlessly changing sea of people.
An indefinable sea of people is a more authentic conception of society but it is not favoured because it diminishes our conception of our individual power. If we consider society ruled by a monarch for example and then consider ourselves in favour with the monarch then we have a conception of security. Likewise if we consider financial wealth as the backbone of society then we need only accumulate some money to be able to hold the secure conception of ourselves as "in" society.
It is all lies and self-deception. As if society were so simple as to be controlled and wrapped around such entities as "monarchs" or "gold".
The bedrock of society is more vast than any one of us and any one of our "conceptions". This is the authentic Society which simply couldn't be mapped as there are too many people, holding too many conversations and doing too many things to even begin to model or understand.
But one day in our blissful childhood we experience rejection. Maybe we can over look this. But if it happens a lot and seems to be to do with "us" then we have a very dangerous conception to form... it is the idea that people do not like "me". "ME" is an idea that never forms on its own, but we do form the idea of other people. Jane is taller than John and is better at climbing trees so I will ask her around not John. John will probably survive that rejection, he can rationalise that he can't climb trees well so it makes sense. But Jane is funnier than John so she can come to my party. John will find this harder to explain and it starts to become personal. I get on better with Jane than John so she is my friend. Now it is really personal. John has no option but to understand that I favour Jane over him, that "he" is not my friend. He experiences this as rejection not of his qualities; but of "himself".
Oh Dear! So begins the life time of ignorance and suffering for John that we all know. So where was the error.
John should have continued on the path of rationalising the qualities. The "ego" is formed because we crudely and carelessly package a whole load of qualities together as a distinct entity. We call humour, gaity, energy, intelligence, spontenaity, mood, opinions, like/dislikes, memories, intention, will, motivation etc all these we crudely stick together as personality and imagine that "someone" has these qualities. So we characterise John and make our crude decisions based upon this prasy of his "being".
That is our mistake. John's mistake is to accept this crude basket of qualities as "himself". Or while he may disagree with the qualities that are placed in the basket, to at least accept that there is a basket. He may be inspired therefore to improve his qualities - which is a good thing - but no matter how good his qualities become he is still burdened with the concrete basket - the illusion of a solid self, upon which the ornaments of personality are hung. A solid self tying together the qualities of personality into one discrete concenient person to take his place on the waxworks display of the world alongside all the other waxwork people.
It is no wonder that psychopaths exist who really do see people as waxworks. We are all psychopaths of varying degrees having our routine, fixed views of other people - the stuffed museum pieces, the lifeless waxworks that fill our scheming imaginations as we decide who this and who that. Only family and very close friend are allowed to gain true life and live more freely of the judgements and personality and fixed boundaries of self. Friends can occupy the same room in a loose and liquid affiliation; mixing conversations, laughter, touches, jokes, ideas with no recourse to distinct personalities or selves - until a name is mentioned in gossip and one is outcast and feels the walls of self close around them becoming objectified and alienated. And, we struggle to get back into the melay and that is where we are inauthentic fighting for our own existence in the group, our own status: we are fighting to be freed from the prison of objectification, fighting to have other people accept us as friends rather than waxworks in the psychopathic imaginations of other people - other people who we accept without thinking to have personalities and identities.
How ironic!!! So this is the whole mistake of fake society and status. We accept without thinking the label of self, as we use it against other people. And being isolated as a self we fight to free ourselves from the label in the eyes of the very people who we objectify and think do have a self themselves. The cult of celebrity is born as we view some people to be mroe solid and real than others, and seek to associate in false society with these Egos so that we might gain solidity to our Ego and at the same time paradoxically be freed from the alienated Self that comes from being rejected and "out of the loop".
Odd isn't is that we feel most distinctly ourself when we gain entrance to the exclusive night club AND when we get refused from the exclusive night club. In both cases we gain a "self" but in the former we like having that self and in the latter we don't like it. Since being in prison is an unpleasant experience something very odd must be happening to those people who get access to the exclusive world because they like the fakeness and the feel of their false ego! They like the prison!
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I'm expanding from notes made on my phone under the tree I've been sleeping the last 3 days. The note goes: Tue soc then ego = false soc then competition then status. Competition and Status in society are products of Ego.
=== adding notes 5/4/10 - (found the original note from which above was written)
> Slow disintegration of "society" - being a "member" compensatory mechanism for lack of recognition of "true" society - article on "loneliness" measuring social contact and structure as though "society" can be measured. We are never apart from other people, we are never with other people. Fighting to be "with" other people as though physical proximinity actual means anything. Maybe the "intention" of a touch, or sexual encounter, or speech, or look provides "proof" of being "with". Yes if someone is talking to you then u feel recognised and included. But this depends upon them identifying you as someone - how do they do this? By how u look etc. Thus such thinking binds us to a conception of outrselves and our society as based on "physical identity".
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