The Big Question of Our Day: What is the Purpose of Society?

I think you're all missing what the reality is.

"Society" is nothing more of less than the social rules we all agree to live by.

Every living creature on this planet has "society." Fish in a school have society. They travel together and instinctively follow certain social behaviors that enable them to increase their chances of survival when confronted with certain situations. At other times (depending on species), certain social behaviors disrupt their schooling behavior driving them apart, weakening them but ensuring that the strongest are the ones who survive to increase the species.

Every animal has its own society, its own social rules. No matter how anti-social, they all have rules for interaction because they all have ways to communicate and keep from killing each other off and making sure they interact enough to increase their numbers. And the more social they are, the more complex their social rules and behaviors, societies, tend to be.

The thing is ... animals are not free. They are constrained by their instincts. They only do what their natures, what their instincts tell them to. Some of the higher order animals can bend that or very occasionally ignore the pull for a time to show us things that remind us of ourselves, but mostly, they are caught in their natures.

Mankind, on the other hand, is liberated from his instincts. So when we form societies which are intended to safeguard our species, we can make all sorts of variations on the theme to suit whatever twisted desires come into our heads. You don't see variations on animal societies. The basic rules of a species' society are the same from one group to the next. Humans ... well, we are only constrained by whether or not we can get (or compel) large enough numbers of other folks to go along with us.

But to make a long story short, the only real purpose society serves is to lay the ground rules by which we interact with one another.

reply to post by ketsuko


As far as I agree with you and why I point to more such as our evolution and reason for life as the real questions our society, how it works and to which purpose we are using those laws is quite important questions.

reply to post by guidetube


They are, but they are mostly extraneous to the real purpose of society.

These days, I see the real pressure of society is to attempt to enforce a sense of conformity. Part of the reason I think this is happening is because the bedrock rules that we used to rely on are coming unglued. When people start to try to force others to conform to what they want, to me, it's a sign of social insecurity. And if people are feeling socially insecure, they are either not fully self-realized as complete people or they do not feel they have a strong society that they can trust, so they seek to make it stronger.