Anti-Social...

I don't know where I'm going with this - it could be random.


I was just thinking earlier about society.  I have a sociology degree so it's not an entirely uninformed bit of thinking.  But really these studies are a beginning, not an end.


I am quite interested by the term 'anti-social'.  Behaviour which is outside of society and a threat to it.   I wonder how much of this behaviour is actual necessary for the development of society - in order to prevent stagnation.


In a totalitarian society, anti-social behavour is entirely suppressed, and such societies don't ever work (in a purely totalitarian form) possibly for that reason.


Take punk.  At the time a threat to society - and yet now considered to be an essential part of the history of the late seventies, in anyone's textbook.  The angry impulse was subsumed by society and became part of society - to such an extent that John Lydon can now appear in a butter advert and parody the punk idiom.  Same goes for Iggy Pop.


These people get a fair amount of flack for this, but then are they selling out any more than any of us when we buy into the capitalist lifestyle, as we all do?    Maybe it's no bad thing.  It's worth remembering that capitalism is the most successful way of organising a society yet devised, by any terms.  Isn't it?


I am also interested in the urge we all have to destroy society - an urge which expresses itself in stories of apocalypse and destruction.  I am fascinated by these scenarios, I think because part of me is attracted to the idea of no society at all - the freedom that comes with breakdown.  Maybe it's the raging, anarchic toddler in all of us?


I am also fascinated by cold war / nuclear paranoia stuff for the same reason.  I went with some friends of mine to Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker and I was absolutely thrilled by the whole outing - rather oddly I suppose.  I went back the next week for another look.  And yet I find the whole thing terrifying as well so I suppose there's the adrenalin rush of fear associated with it too.


Finally, there is the whole transgender business.  For most of human history my desire to be a girl would have been considered beyond the pale, as well as being impossible to achieve.  Now it is widely accepted, entirely accepted in an official sense.


But not necessarily in the informal realm.  When people gossip and joke there is a release of tension - and anti social impulses are indulged.


Funny how anti-trans / homophobic attitudes now seem to come from outside society.  Of course they don't - they are part of the conflict which pushes society forward.


Even though I say I am accepted by society - there is one area in which people like me don't make an appearance.  In the realm of consumerism proper.


For example, the existence of trans-women isn't acknowledged by advertisers or by the consumer world generally.   But the same is shamefully true of gay and disabled people - they are not represented either.


In a consumer society you know you are really included when people try to sell products to you according to what you are.