Monday, December 7, 2009

stratification in the land of the free


stratification, something that is not suppose to exist in America, where "all men are created equal". While yes, technically there are no Dukes, or lords in our country, and that technically you can't be discriminated against for any reasons besides what you have accomplished in your life, people are constantly discriminated against. No title can legally go with your name unless it is a job title such as M.D Jones or President Obama. But that doesn't mean that there is no systems of stratification present within this country. This can easily be proven not by giving examples of how people are equal here, but how they are not. If we truly were all equal in every manner there would be no racism, no member only clubs, people wouldn't be judge based on how they dressed or what car they drive. But that is not the case. And as cold hearted as this may sound it is a good thing. Now I'm not saying poverty is good, or that no not everyone should be equal. I say this because society CAN NOT survive without some people having power over others. There is no government that has or will EVER work WITHOUT inequality. Even Soviet communism wasn't all equal, there were people in the government that were higher than everyone else. All the Generals were higher than their troops, everyone was below the KGB. For society to work you need leaders, and leaders need to have power over others because otherwise no one would follow them and you would have anarchy (which by the way if you think it works it doesn't because then you would be in charge of yourself and so would everybody else and therefor you would be isolated, which defeats the entire purpose of society and therefor fails, assuming you weren't killed by the lawless actions of others) Society by definition is a group of people coming together and giving up some of their rights for the good of the society and for the protection and security that the society provides. So no matter what to be in a society you have to give up some rights. Now some say well then everyone gives up the same rights, for the most part yes that is true. The exception comes for the leaders of the society who need to have power over the other members in order to make the society efficient. If there was no chain of command nothing would get done because there would be no motivational factors that the commanding elite provide to motivate the masses. The motivational factors can be positive or negative. Some societies used physical power, while other used the power of religion and beliefs, while ours as well as most cultures today us monetary means to motivate the masses. And in addition since there are a limited number of resources available to utilize some people will always have more than others, and as a result will have control of the other person because they have something that they want. In our society that is money, but it could be troops, land, livestock, anything of value, in the future maybe it will be air or oxygen. But regardless those factors must be present otherwise nothing would get done and the society would fail, which is bad for everyone. So since inequality is necessary for the survival of the society, and society is preferable to anarchy there will always be inequality and to some degree will always be stratification, even in the land of the free, where "all men are created equal".     

1 comment:

  1. very interesting perspective on the whole thing. 2 questions: Is there a way to make the necessary inequalities fairer? and
    Why does society keep promoting the ideology that it is the fault of the individual, not society, if one has not climbed higher on the class ladder?

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