Sometimes, when I fly, I have random thoughts. On today’s flight, I started thinking about the purpose of society. I have no credentials in sociology, economy, or any related field, but who cares?
At the beginning of time, as I have been taught in school and by reading several books, human groups were nomadic. These nomadic groups were the basic elements of society, such as extended families roaming the savannahs. The logical reason for them to stick together was to fight off any threat to the group together. Additionally, they could also benefit from splitting the routine survival tasks. Therefore, we can conclude that a society’s main purpose was to ensure the survival of its members.
As time passed, discoveries were made, and technology was developed. Now, mere survival does not provide a real answer for the purpose of society. So why do we, as humans, still work in society?
I have no real answer, but it occurred to me that this lack of purpose is what has driven our society to its apparent decline. Our society is no longer composed of individuals fighting to survive (in most places), but rather of individuals seeking their own beneficial pleasures throughout their lives. This entropic consumerist “get-rich-or-die-trying” lifestyle has carried consequences such as resource-straining, wealth-imbalance, and world-political tensions.
Ultimately, our lack of a collective purpose will lead us nowhere. Greed will ultimately destroy us and we will fight over the remaining resources until our own destruction. At that point, we will likely retrocede, as it has happened in the past, and we will just be remembered as a lapse in history with a glorious informational progress that lasted around 300 years. Then our ruins will fade away and we will return to forming small groups to survive. October 4, 2022. Delta Flight Atlanta-Boston.
