Musings

Looking back on history as we know it, the collective 'memory' of it all when it came to living within society is that of being shackled to rigid rules, with more or less of a weight on one's shoulders depending on their rank in terms of social obligations and duties. Everyone knew their place, it was clearer than clear. That is not to say that one of the most powerful momentums for some people was not to actually fight against the place within society they were confined in.

From the meagre knowledge I have of history as we are made to know it, Love rarely had a place within society, for society was always about making the whole function according to whatever ideology was being followed at any given time, and ideologies in themselves are emotionless - they are ideas fuelled by human emotions, perhaps, but they are intrinsically emotionless in themselves since they are but mere ideas.

Society isn't about love, or wants, let alone desires and wishful thinking - for the idea itself of 'society' is that of a collective putting the whole before the individual. The reason human beings found themselves writing mostly about love, passion and happy endings in general that invariably give the characters what they wished for in the end appears to be a direct response to the fact that we could never have it in reality.

I find it most fascinating that throughout history love and passion were rarely found within the confines of social norms, but outside of them. People made alliances through marriage, and most alliances such as marriage were either needed to have a better chance of survival or simply in a bid to preserve one's footing within society. Love and passion, on the other hand, were always relegated to the realm of rule transgression and secrecy. It was something one was most likely to fall into as they were already chained to their own conditions, and as such it was often unlikely to ever be 'recognised' by society as anything but taboo and 'wrong'. The few examples that transgressed the rules of society and 'followed' their hearts were usually the losers in reality, even though their stories could persist through time for having chosen the heart over society. In the world of fiction, some of the most famous illustrations of that would have to be stories such as Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Iseult. There are others real-life examples of such occurrences, too. One such example that happens to come to mind would be the account of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire - but really, history seems full of doomed love stories behind the 'curtains' where rules of convenance and social dictat mostly prevailed.

Fast-forward to our present day and it would seem that we've finally broken free of the yoke of social norms where the ideal of love - in particular, but not exclusively - is concerned. But I wonder - does love remain an attainable ideal when it becomes freely available? Do we even remain capable of recognising love and passion when we are no longer subjected to contrary rules forcing us to behave in accordance with the whole (society)? If our present society had been just as it is for the past 1000 years, would we have had people dreaming and writing about such intense love stories as, say, Romeo and Juliet, and other accounts full of intense idealism? Probably not. It would have been replaced with today's idea of what love is supposed to be all about - some insipid and blind 'search for love' in a world of plenty and loose social norms.

Isn't that the way love ended up being portrayed - some sort of elusive notion to be sought and found? Well, that would at least seem to be the case in terms of romantic love.

Looking into it, though, it seems we haven't changed so much from the past. Sure, social norms have loosened up enough to at least allow some liberties as to whom we wish to marry, etc, but still more and more people find themselves needing the help of yet new forms of 'matchmaking' to help them fit in and 'find' that love. And what are those matchmaking ploys if not a mere modern variant of how it always was in the past? Matchmaking, be it done by a family or via a computer, utilises the same process - that of matching one with another based on social rules. Even though one may think that he or she is being 'freer' to choose a mate by requesting a match in terms of hobbies and interests, the bottom line is that he or she is still defining her partner according to his or her own optimal vision of a good social match that could lead to a successful alliance/marriage.

However today's social rules have been so eroded and blurred that I personally have a hard time making sense of the need for alliances anymore. We've reached or are reaching the point where it's more about picking a mate on a shelf, as one would pick a chicken on a supermarket's shelf. There is 'so much' choice out there, with none of the past rules that worked to restrict us from simply discarding our obligations or duties. And then we find ourselves surprised at the high rate of divorce and separation in general. Since it's now all about individual 'happiness', I guess it should be no surprise.

Sometimes I really think that if I'd had more social constraints in life, I'd have achieved far more in concrete terms - I would have been fuelled with a stronger incentive to put my passion and thoughts to work. As for love, I don't believe it can be truly appreciated in a loose social environment. And since there are no more strong social restraints on anything except for the rule of Law, I see no point in alliances of any sort, especially that of marriage. Some people like to say that such conventions as marriage are now obsolete, and though they are most probably right, I suspect their reasons for deriving that conclusion are mostly flawed.

You'd think that by killing religion and social obligations/norms you'd get to a more evolved type of society... It could only ever work if you have something to replace the old with. As it stands, we've moved on by simply getting rid of what hindered the individual, without bothering to update social norms and obligations - the script, if you like - and this is why I suspect we are now living in a world that feels more like unrestrained chaos and confusion.

We've reached a point where the word 'society' no longer has much substance to it. It's the equivalent of calling a hollow jar a jar full of water when in reality it has been emptied of its content. You can still call the jar a 'jar', but the fact remain that it is now a hollow one with no real substance inside it.