What is a society, what is it made up of and how does it work? The simple answer is, jobs. Society is all about jobs. Living in the wild, surviving on their own, human beings had no jobs. Their lives were defined by the tasks that needed to be done in order to be able to survive.

A bunch of people living together and sharing their resources does a better job of surviving, and each person becomes primarily responsible for the task he or she is best suited to do.

A job is taking responsibility for a certain task, fulfilling a need of the group. I could keep breaking this down to simple ideas, but the point is, every job has specific requirements, certain things a person needs to be, have or do.

For every job, there is a job candidate. Finding job candidates is a job in itself. Participation in society is not elective. The resources a human needs to survive are no longer freely available.

So, we seek out jobs in order to participate in the system, because we are forced to be dependent on the system. Strangely, we are not entitled to have a job.

We can not just go out and do a job, even if it benefits society; to earn money, which is what entitles us to the benefits of society, we need to find someone who will give us a job.

Ironically, there are many jobs that need to to be done that never are. No one is willing, or no one is able, to cover the costs associated with them. The final cost is the consequences of our negligence, and we pay for it collectively.

Worst of all, the economics of employment, the disparity between jobs in high demand and the supply of applicants for them is absurdly asymmetrical. The amount of gate-keeping that results in our society is almost mind boggling.

Our job often defines our position in society, and our position in society determines the value of our participation and the opportunities available to us and our dependents.

A person can bring something of unique value to a job, the characteristics of his or her job performance, but to the system it only matters that the job is adequately filled.

To be specific, an individual can have a unique value to the people he or she works with or for, but as far as the system is concerned all of us are replaceable. That fact, when it is completely thought out, is unsettling.

The operative reality of society is that it is an ad hoc system. It is easiest to understand if perceived as a macro-organism, composed of individual parts that cohere into a pattern of activity that sustains itself.

That pattern will change and grow, evolving or warping, according to that activity of its components, but the individual components are expendable, because the purpose of the organism is to ensure its own survival, not that of its constituents.

To sustain itself, the system becomes geared toward the creation of components to replace those that are lost.

To sustain itself, it will even expend components in order to secure resources. It is a soldier’s job to die for his country if necessary to ensure the survival of his society. It is a soldier’s job to kill for his country, for the same reasons.

Who gives someone this job?

Who asks someone to do this job?

The jobs in a society are created by the needs and expectations of it’s members, so the answer to both questions is, we do.

What we do in society tells it what we want it to do for us. What does society have to give in exchange for our willingness to kill or die? What can anyone gain that is worth that?

A better place in society?

If society formed to make it easier for us to survive, why do we have to work so hard and sacrifice so much in order to survive in society? What have any of us gained? If society succeeded in fulfilling its purpose, those are questions we would not need to ask.

Opportunities in the US are not universal. Some opportunities are only available to those with certain advantages, and some of those advantages are unobtainable for some people.

Because of the risks of military service, inequities in the circumstances that determine who serves become dangerous to the fabric of society. It can lead to classism and the stratification of society, and that reinforces and perpetuates inequality.

General attitudes held by individuals in every part of society can be responsible for determining who is given opportunities that prepare them for more important and less accessible opportunities.

A parent’s decision that a child is too irresponsible to apply him or herself to music lessons are limiting the child’s life opportunities.

A teacher’s belief that Asian students are better students can result in a neglectful attitude toward all the other students.

For every choice we encounter, there are a billion possible influences that determine which options we will be choosing from.

That eventually results in a world where people are forced to do the jobs they are allowed to do, rather than the jobs they are interested in doing.

It has resulted in a world where a minority of people own all the real property and the rest are tenants. It has resulted in a world where people have to work for someone else, because few individuals have enough resources to support themselves through their own work.

At present, we are a nation of indentured, transient workers. It does not take much to turn a system that serves the people into a system that uses the people. It’s is another small step to a system that abuses people.

Ask yourself how you like the idea that your worth and significance as an individual is based only on your position in the system?

It might not be the purpose of Sociology to ensure that the world is a system that respects the humanity of all individuals, but the only reason for us to participate in the world is because doing so ensures that all our needs are met.

Any system that requires human participation without providing for the needs of all participants is inherently exploitive and inhuman.

Sociology’s purpose is to make us aware of the true character of our society, to show us how the system operates and to identify the cost in human lives.

There are many areas in our society where human lives are spent, sacrificed to keep the system going, and we hear the cries of outraged witnesses, the friends and family and sometimes the horrified bystander, every day.

It is not a Sociologist’s job to change the system. They are simply the individuals who are working out the information all of us need to be able to change the system ourselves. Only society can change society.

Having said that, I have to ask, can a social contract be inherited from generation to generation? If we are going to have rules we all have to live by, doesn’t it make more sense for all of us to have a say in what those rules are?

Is that even possible when no one can possibly know all the rules, and a special education is required to even understand them?

In the game of life, we have sort of made up all the rules as we’ve gone along, but unlike any other game we cannot just quit and walk away if we don’t like the way the game is being played.

I mean, seriously, killing ourselves is not an option, but it seems to be what we are doing, either way. The truth is that life is not a game, and we’re not all playing by the same rules.

We are supposed to accept that life is not fair, that suffering is the price of admission, but the real reason life is not fair is because life is what we make it.