A Treatise on Structure within the Social Construct

Through my observations of various members of social class, I have learned that membership involves submission of individuality and individual will to a collective will and group identity. Once the collective absorbs individual will, individuality ceases to be independent. I do not observe any clear distinction between social classes. There is evidence of “social class” manifested in the fashions, language (including regional slang), education (or lack of), and values people wear on their bodies and hold in their minds. Should I consider myself a member of the blacks from fatherless homes who attend under-funded public schools with a parent working at an office job to make ends meet? Or how about African-Americans in the $60,000 - $75,000 per year salary range living in a semi-detached row home in the “ghetto” with the classy car (financed for 5 years at $500 per month) suffering under credit card debt? What of the so-called generation Y class who can afford the latest in prescribed fashion from Gap, Old Navy, American Eagle Outfitters, and Abercrombie and Fitch living in mommy and daddy’s basement attending college using grant and financial aid money? Membership in one of these descriptions may adequately classify anyone within the Social Structure, because these descriptions are part of a prescribed, scripted, and easily quantifiable demographic. And are completely fabricated for the minds of the members of these social classes so that they will continue to labor so that they can buy more registered and approved merchandise (seemingly particular to that social class demographic), forever. Social Class and its Structure within the Social Construct make it easier to keep people organized. Members of social class can think of themselves as sheets of paper in a file folder in a file drawer, categorized neatly.

I would like to think that social class is indicative of one’s true place and merit within the patterns of human life, but reason wakes me screaming from the American Dream. In the U.S., class is used as an identifier of certain roles by which each member must abide. Class comes with pre-conceived rules such as norms, meanings, values, ideologies, stereotypes, beliefs, myths, truths, and perspectives to provide reason for existence. Once a member, dues are expected to be paid by adhering without question to all said rules; reward is the appearance of social mobility manifested by an increase in wages or mortgage on a bigger home.

Under the circumstances, I do not consider myself a member of any social class. To do so, I must submit my reason, my independence, my autonomous thought, my conscience, my Will, and my curiosity to the will of an external force.
Although, I do not consider myself a member of any social class, I am not spared the assumptions of others who look at my appearance and attempt to place me among others who may appear similar, in other words, to fit me into a social class, so that my existence makes sense within the Social Structure.

: I can say this: without the confines of social norms (i.e., television, social gatherings, consumption, and the like), I am free to pursue my own interests, which, in turn, allow me to determine what and what does not influence my self-conception and the chances in my life. Because of my insatiable curiosity (a trait not allowed within the confines of a social class, as curiosity causes resistance to the pre-contrived conditioning of social class) I choose to question everything (even my affinity for questioning everything) that I may develop and expand knowledge I have already gained on my own. However, I cannot deny the influence of demeaning and dehumanizing labels such as “Anti-Social” or “Mentally Ill” attributed to those who question. And once labeled, it is the label prescribed by people wearing labels of authority that the questioning, mindful individual must battle in order to attain a more preferable way of life. That one must fight not among social classes, but among labels and symbols of “social classes” influences the avenues one must choose to travel in order to avoid obstructions (in the name of mental institutions, public schools, psychotherapy, medication, etc.) by delusional members of social classes.

By portraying vignettes into American homes through “news coverage” or programs, media, like language, not only contributes, but creates perceptions and understanding of class issues. Through the media, any class issue becomes part of the mainstream in society. Through programming members in one social class can peer through a portal into the intimate lives of other members. The media, like a diplomat, crosses all boundaries of class, race, gender, and even sexual orientation to represent to the American mind a moving portrait of America (and the globe).

The media contributes to the perceptions and understandings that were developed in the class mind through tradition, bringing opposing class values into realm of public view, to be scrutinized and judged by all. The media manipulates the occurrences of human relationships, folds those occurrences into 30-second segments spliced between commercials for sale, and then exposes those occurrences into the living rooms of every American household. Perceptions and understandings of class issues are shaped by the constant oration of the “man on the street.” In the world of media, any one’s private life has the potential to be seen and heard by every one else, that it can be dissected without actually having witnessed the occurrence.

All facets of human life are contributable to the public forum and its preformed perceptions, judgments, prejudices, and all forms of “-isms”, for each human being inhabiting this Earth and his Thoughts are the media, each person subject to the glaring eye of the Information Age. The very thoughts and motions of every actor in the Social Construct are displayed to the public, and each actor, now viewer before the television or newspaper or magazine or billboard allows the Public to judge these so-called private actions. Media collects the daily events of the Human Condition, magnifies it, interrupts the daily routine, and explains the occurrence along binary lines, so that the Member can form opinions on events, which he did not actually witness. Media makes the member audience to his own life, so he acts accordingly.

Once membership into a class is established and the social norms and ideologies firmly fixed in the class-consciousness, the media is the instrument through which the rules of membership are made concrete. Under guise of quality programming such as situation comedies and news coverage, the media supplies reason for the norms and ideologies to each member, by way of which values are formed, eventually leading to belief in the rightness of membership.

In this way, media, owned and scripted by the inventers of the Social Construct, creates the issues in and between social classes. The advent of television has enabled the dominant class to impress upon the class-consciousness the thoughts and ideologies paramount to class issues, the reality of class issues, and the existence of class issues. Each individual alive has the potential to be any representation he or she “chooses”; however, molded into the ideal collective, social class, that individual is now one of many, and so judged by the characteristics of that collective. Through demographically specific television programming, the news media can contrive class issues among the social classes by appealing to the pre-conceived ideals, beliefs, and myths present in the collective consciousness. Like a machine code media writes the program onto the brain of the collective consciousness that the collective consciousness manifests what was “advertised” in their daily routines. Using such tools as branding, imprinting, and rhetoric media molds perceptions and understanding of a malleable social mentality, most notably, convincing members of social classes who have surrendered their will and labor to an external force called “social structure” (which was built by people with assumed power and authority) in exchange for the “right” to consume, that they are free.

By obedience to the social norms inherent within every class, class-consciousness is born. The media, mindful of class-consciousness, does not just contribute but also creates class issues between the classes. The media portrays actors that speak the thoughts of the class-consciousness and members unknowingly echo these scripts in their communication with one another, using this seemingly reciprocal interrelationship to perceive the world about them. Advertisement supplies the proper attire for class roles, with which each member unknowingly costumes their bodies while preaching their individuality. People look at the other people in a class, who are most likely affected by the same media programs, and formulate what the proper behavior, thoughts, and conversations are. Historically, humans have learned from their direct environment what it is to be human within that environment, but now, the media sets the standards of what it means to be a role within a class.

Social Class and Social Consciousness are all a part of the composition Social Construct. Certain instruments within the Social Construct are used to reinforce the validity and veracity (of the completely fabricated) Social Consciousness. These instruments include the imaginary thoughts of perpetual debt, which introduces the perpetuation of capitalism, slavery, property, power, prestige, poverty, and capitalism. The Social Construct exists only because people become members of Social Classes and adopts Social Consciousnesses and the instruments are believed. “Government” systems such as economy and politics are tools used to create faith in “government,” “money,” “value,” “social stratification,” etc. The belief in trade of intangibles for the desire of material gain creates slavery, crime, war, capitalism, prestige, and power among the members of a social class.

The Social Construct already in place is embedded deep into the American consciousness. Students of politics, economics, biology, psychology, sociology and the like (namely such thinkers as Alexis deTocqueville, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Jean Paul Sartre, Gustav leBon, Adam Smith, and Frederic Bastiat) throughout history have all looked at the social structure of people and found it wanting of individual will and awareness. Systems such as education, politics, or economy cannot be employed to change the Social Construct, because these systems are a part of the Social Construct. Because these intangible systems are believed real in the American mind, they are believed to exist as tangible things, so the Social Construct will continue. Class-consciousness has become dependent on stratification, dependent on external will in order to provide its members with reason, meaning, truth, and purpose of existence. As Marx said, the engine of history is fueled by class struggle. Stratification gives the illusion of struggle (that is not to say that events such as slavery did not actually occur, but that such events are absorbed into the class-consciousness to promote the actuality of a “better way of life”) which gives the illusion of progress within the Social Construct. And the illusion of progress (in the form of time, employment, education, etc.) strengthens the illusion of secure existence, safe from any all worries that may occur, accidentally, without the local meteorologist’s forecast, or televised orator’s predictions, or man behind a pulpit’s promises. For the member of a social class, this is most important because then he does not have the burden of thinking for himself, and therefore, free of the burden of being free.