[QatzelOk]

Social constructionism is a theory in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory which proposes that certain ideas about physical reality arise from collaborative consensus, instead of pure observation of said reality.

Above is the wikipedia definition of Social Construction. It means that many of our commonly held ideas have been invented by other groups of humans in the past, and are NOT anchored in the physical and anthropological reality in which we actually live. It's all fake, and was invented for reactionary reasons at specific crisis moments in the past.

Some sources of Social Construction Addiction

1. Religion
2. Media
3. Nuclear Family
4. Government
5. Technologies (like cars) that require new laws

(sitting in your car lone, listening to commercial media, racing home to an isolated bungalow, following all the emergency laws of your government, praying to Saint Christopher to get you home safely as you slide into the intersection at each read light)

For example, that "polygamy is a sin" is not based on physical reality. It is a consensual agreement between humans to "pretend" that polygamy leads to "an eternity in hell during the afterlife." This fake reality was invented at one point in history in order to "react" against problems that civilization itself caused. For example, it's possible that sedentarism and agriculture lead to child abandonment at a huge scale. Unnatural acts (like sendentarism) always have destructive consequences. So a PATCH (a new law and new belief) are invented and made mandatory.

Social Construction might be a necessity of civilizations. But what if Social Construction also leads to the collapse of every civilization that socially constructs its "reality"? This is the theory of Ronald Wright, and many others.



As a passive observer of society, I have noticed that - as we approach a civilization-ending moment - more and more people seem to be addicted to Social Construction. They are unable to interact with "untreated" reality for more than a few moments.

Example: (cellphone conversation in supermarket line-up) "I found the paper towels I was looking for. They cost even less than you thought. I'll call you back when I get home with them. By the way, congratulations on getting a new monitor!"

This conversation is followed by a few uncomfortable moments of "reality" in the line-up. The cellphone user is unable to strike up a conversation with the other people in the line-up. They need a controlled environment in which to exchange socially-constructed ideas about the world around them.

Television is another way to avoid reality and "stay" in Social Construction mode.

In the 90s, as TV viewing was waining, I hoped that people would soon abandon this intrusive social-construction device, and learn to "livin in reality" more and more.

And then came cellphones, the Internet, and electronic feeds of every kind. People have never been further from reality. The Social Construction Addiction has never been more endemic.



This will not end well. It's like we've been eating plastic food for the last few centuries. Sure, it was designed to taste like healthy food, but... we can't digest this fake product and will eventually die from eating so much plastic (that's been cleverly disguised to look like real food).

soundtrack

[Robert Urbanek]

"Polygamy is a sin" is based on physical reality. Polygamy can contribute to birth defects.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170726-the-polygamous-town-facing-genetic-disaster

[QatzelOk]

"Polygamy is a sin" is based on physical reality. Polygamy can contribute to birth defects.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170726-the-polygamous-town-facing-genetic-disaster

And monogamy can lead to depression, divorce and sexual incompetence.

But MONEY will always fund articles that seem to "prove" that its forced behaviors are "healthy." In the 1660s, studies were indicating that it was dangerous to "let witches live among us""

This is part of the social construction trap.

Likewise, if you watch a lot of commercial movies and TV shows (social construction is available 24 hours per day on modern media!), they seem to "prove" that cars are normal and that any other tranportation is marginal. They "prove" this by normalizing these products, at the expense of all others. And they are also PAID to normalize these products.

This is the kind of manipulative "social construction" that mankind has known ever since he started living (and dying) in civilizations (all of which eventually collapse because of the lies that created them).

The only thing that can slow down or stop the artificiality of social construction... is to get away from it for hours and hours at a time. But are you able to do this?

Or do you need to constantly come back to your phone, texting, mass media, discussion groups, classes, church, etc... just to avoid facing the reality that is sitting there behind all those socially-constructed lies?

[Patrickov]

"Polygamy is a sin" is based on physical reality. Polygamy can contribute to birth defects.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170726-the-polygamous-town-facing-genetic-disaster

They have birth defects because they are isolated. Polygamy is a strawman here.

[Wellsy]

The emphasis on consensus and seems amenable to a sense of mere shared belief rather than having a reality that isn’t purely natural but isn’t something that is simply debunked but requires a change of relations and human activity.
Biology per epigentics is more malleable than often thought and culture is less malleable than some would make it.

Part of the difficulty is things are based in human habits and material culture and aren’t simply that individuals believe something but often things are believed as they do have some basis practice.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#constructivism

Constructivism was an Art movement centred in Moscow in the 1920s, which emphasised the constructed character of the world. Subsequently, constructivism has come to indicate a very broad school of psychology which asserts that meaning is “constructed” by the subject out of material provided by the external world, rather than “discovered”.

The Marxist School of psychology including Lev Vygotsky, Georges Politzer, Lucien Séve, A R Luria, A N Leontyev and others, is ‘constructivist’, emphasising the social-historical and collaborative character of human activity. On the other hand, relativist constructivism emphasises the voluntarism and autonomy of an individual subject in constructing personal meaning.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Brandom.pdf

The metaphor of judge-made law cited above, which is a pragmatic rendering of Hegel’s conception of sprit, by disposing of the need for a pre-existing principle governing the development of new propositions, seems to justify the idea that the whole process of cultural and historical development can be rendered as interactions between individuals. But this does not stand up. The process depends essentially on the availability of the precedents, the body of enacted law and all the legal principles which exist in the form of documents. These documents are crucial mediating artefacts which regulate the development of the common law. The idea that the judge is able to make explicit what was merely implicit in the previous decisions is an attractive and eminently Hegelian idea. But it presupposes that these documented decisions act as mediating elements in the development of law, not to mention the entire material culture which supports the way of life in which the decisions are made by judges and enforced by a state.

A proposition appears to be something created and enacted in the moment when two people interact, but neither the language used in the interaction nor the concepts which are embedded in the language are created de novo in that interaction. The words and concepts relied upon in any interaction “are always already there in the always alreadyup-and-running communal linguistic practices into which I enter as a young one” (Brandom 2009: 73). Through the provision of these artefacts, every linguistic interaction is mediated by the concepts of the wider community.
…
Brandom focuses his energies on how concepts regulate the reasoning process by acting as norms for judgment, but even within this domain of the investigation of norms he is acting blindly, because he considers only the end product of a long cultural and historical process of the development of norms. It is only possible to make sense of a complex whole (such as the system of norms operating within a community) by coming to understand it as the outcome of a long, conflictual process of development. To be more precise, norms must be understood both diachronically and synchronically, both as the outcome of a certain process of development (which shows why it is done this way and not that way), and structurally. The fact is that any real social formation is what it is as the result of certain historical experiences and social problems, and this is encoded in norms reflecting the metaphysical beliefs and ethical precepts that the social formation has adopted. For example, when a judge makes a determination of some dispute, they have recourse to precedents and it would be quite impossible to understand their determination, without having access to the precedents (as well as the social context in which the judge deliberates). Norms have a history and not only is it impossible to understand a norm independently of its history, it is actually impossible to understand norms in general, without studying the historical process which fashions norms.

[Robert Urbanek]

And monogamy can lead to depression, divorce and sexual incompetence.

But MONEY will always fund articles that seem to "prove" that its forced behaviors are "healthy." In the 1660s, studies were indicating that it was dangerous to "let witches live among us""

This is part of the social construction trap.

Likewise, if you watch a lot of commercial movies and TV shows (social construction is available 24 hours per day on modern media!), they seem to "prove" that cars are normal and that any other tranportation is marginal. They "prove" this by normalizing these products, at the expense of all others. And they are also PAID to normalize these products.

This is the kind of manipulative "social construction" that mankind has known ever since he started living (and dying) in civilizations (all of which eventually collapse because of the lies that created them).

The only thing that can slow down or stop the artificiality of social construction... is to get away from it for hours and hours at a time. But are you able to do this?

Or do you need to constantly come back to your phone, texting, mass media, discussion groups, classes, church, etc... just to avoid facing the reality that is sitting there behind all those socially-constructed lies?

I find any progressive defense of polygamy to be peculiar. You are essentially saying, “Not only should the powerful alpha males be able to hoard all the property and wealth, let’s also give them the green light to collect all the women they can.”

[late]

I find any progressive defense of polygamy to be peculiar. You are essentially saying, “Not only should the powerful alpha males be able to hoard all the property and wealth, let’s also give them the green light to collect all the women they can.”

I think it was just an example..

I'm also not sure if Qatzel is a Progressive. My impression is that he's a bit to the Left of guys like me.

One last thing, marriage is a contract. It serves a social good by creating a family. But is there a reason we can't let people write their contract the way they want, regardless of the number or sex of the individuals?

There has been a quiet movement of people creating non-traditional families. They buy a big house, at least one person stays at home to care for the kids.

[QatzelOk]

I find any progressive defense of polygamy to be peculiar. You are essentially saying, “Not only should the powerful alpha males be able to hoard all the property and wealth, let’s also give them the green light to collect all the women they can.”

That you think my posts were "a defense of polygamy" is socially constructed.
Even the word and concept of "polygamy" is socially constructed. Post-nuclear-war survivors will have no time or inclination to follow the weird behaviors that lead to our almost-extinction (or total extinction. Dead monogamists.)

The concept of "alpha male" is also socially constructed. Property and wealth are socially constructed. The nations that were genocided in the Americas didn't have these things, and were healthier and happier than the miserable European invaders were.

Being lost in social construction means that you can't really survive for a very long time. Your "reality" is too fake.

I think it was just an example..

I'm also not sure if Qatzel is a Progressive. My impression is that he's a bit to the Left of guys like me.

One last thing, marriage is a contract. It serves a social good by creating a family. But is there a reason we can't let people write their contract the way they want, regardless of the number or sex of the individuals?

There has been a quiet movement of people creating non-traditional families. They buy a big house, at least one person stays at home to care for the kids.

The Flintstones: prehistoric car passes prehistoric bungalows

Our way of arranging our families was changed in order to help the rich and powerful to control everyone. And then these powerful elites used propaganda to make these unnatural arrangements "seem" natural. Even the Flintstones seemed to tell children that electronic devices, stay-at-home nuclear family moms, and automobile suburbs... had existed for as long as the dinosaurs. In reality, humans did NOT arrange themselves into private nuclear families.. for the first million years of our existence as a species. So nuke families were a technical change, just like lock-downs were during Covid.

Most people consider the Flintstones"empty entertainment," but it's secret (to most viewers) function is to normalize a very unnatural way to live (in community-less suburban isolation).

Rather than being a healthy way to raise families, the suburbs were a great way to sell cars and oil - both industries being heavily in bed with the Military. And it is the moneyed elites who control commercial media, and are able to socially construct new, fake ways to live. But they are fake, and untested in human history - just like many medications are (social construction of health?).

So much social construction, so little time.... for us. Are we too fake to survive?

***
Addiction

Henry is alone in the forest when his cellphone suddenly dies. Oh my god! He isn't expected anywhere, is not waiting for a call, but he no longer has the ability to escape the forest into Google, Facebook, games, or even his GPS.

He panics. How can he survive without social construction for an hour? Perhaps if he runs really fast, he can find his way to a Tim Hortons where he can order a coffee and timbits and just savor the social construction all around him.


"Oh no! My cellphone died! Now I will have nothing to look at while I walk back to my car."

[Robert Urbanek]

That you think my posts were "a defense of polygamy" is socially constructed.
Even the word and concept of "polygamy" is socially constructed. Post-nuclear-war survivors will have no time or inclination to follow the weird behaviors that lead to our almost-extinction (or total extinction. Dead monogamists.)

There are certainly those who would gleefully abandon monogamy:

Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
- Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

[QatzelOk]

There are certainly those who would gleefully abandon monogamy:

The whole debate between forced monogamy (it's always forced) and natural polygamy (it's the only natural sexuality)... has been socially constructed.

This has harmed humanity greatly.



Social construction - lead us to make lots of rules for pedestrians so that they don't get killed quite so often by cars. We constructed a road reality that looks like the picture above when you are outside your protective tank.

The world of sexuality has been made just as dangerous for humans with natural desires by other un-natural laws.

Both walking and having sex.... have been turned into dangerous activities by Social Construction. These were both FREE activities that built human capital and health. Then Social Construction came along.... and sexless sedentary people are more likely to interact with media, gossip, and other forms of Social Construction.

[Robert Urbanek]

The whole debate between forced monogamy (it's always forced) and natural polygamy (it's the only natural sexuality)... has been socially constructed.

This has harmed humanity greatly.



Social construction - lead us to make lots of rules for pedestrians so that they don't get killed quite so often by cars. We constructed a road reality that looks like the picture above when you are outside your protective tank.

The world of sexuality has been made just as dangerous for humans with natural desires by other un-natural laws.

Both walking and having sex.... have been turned into dangerous activities by Social Construction. These were both FREE activities that built human capital and health. Then Social Construction came along.... and sexless sedentary people are more likely to interact with media, gossip, and other forms of Social Construction.

Humans only invented marriage when sexually transmitted diseases started spreading though ancient farming communities, say scientists.

• Monogamy emerged in early farmers after 'sleeping around', which had been the norm among hunter gatherers, became too risky
• This was because of the spread of genital herpes and other diseases
• Without modern medicines, infertility from them would have been high
• Males were better off mating monogamously, punishing those who didn't

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... tions.html

Given the increased resistance of strains of VD to antibiotics, the value of marriage and monogamy will likely increase, not decrease as progressives seem to wish.

[QatzelOk]

Humans only invented marriage when sexually transmitted diseases started spreading though ancient farming communities, say scientists....

Yes, and humans only invented nuclear weapons after a genocide. Nuclear weapons would keep us safe from bad guys, said scientists. Scientific narrative help "construct" modern man's worldview.

New Inventions are ALWAYS supposed to "help" to destroy something. And they are socially constructed as being "the cure!" for something else. Circumcision was mandated to "cure" masterbation, which causes blindness, by the way, said scientists.

Scientists are often paid to sell things, and this is why all people should act more like open-minded scientists themselves when evaluating the products that are marketed to us by men in white uniforms. The head of the MK-Ultra program was a doctor as well. Did you buy what he was selling?

Look how Catholic Priests and the 1% have escaped the control mechanisms of unnatural sexual regulation. They are in positions of power where they can do what comes naturally, while their cattle are all contolled by regulations that punish them if they act natural.

One of the reasons moderns are so addicted to social construction is that the world that money-making-science has created is unlivable if you just try to exist in it without socially-constructed blinders (like mass media and drugs).


As long as you follow the rules that car company scientists have ordained, you shouldn't get violently killed by a car or truck.

The above image is what the streets looks like when your safetyTM is socially-constructed by car company narratives.

[Robert Urbanek]

Yes, and humans only invented nuclear weapons after a genocide. Nuclear weapons would keep us safe from bad guys, said scientists. Scientific narrative help "construct" modern man's worldview.

New Inventions are ALWAYS supposed to "help" to destroy something. And they are socially constructed as being "the cure!" for something else. Circumcision was mandated to "cure" masterbation, which causes blindness, by the way, said scientists.

Scientists are often paid to sell things, and this is why all people should act more like open-minded scientists themselves when evaluating the products that are marketed to us by men in white uniforms. The head of the MK-Ultra program was a doctor as well. Did you buy what he was selling?

Look how Catholic Priests and the 1% have escaped the control mechanisms of unnatural sexual regulation. They are in positions of power where they can do what comes naturally, while their cattle are all contolled by regulations that punish them if they act natural.

One of the reasons moderns are so addicted to social construction is that the world that money-making-science has created is unlivable if you just try to exist in it without socially-constructed blinders (like mass media and drugs).


As long as you follow the rules that car company scientists have ordained, you shouldn't get violently killed by a car or truck.

The above image is what the streets looks like when your safetyTM is socially-constructed by car company narratives.

The development of agriculture wasn’t an “invention” designed to suppress people. While I can agree that people in our modern society are manipulated by the media to be dutiful consumers, regardless of the environmental costs, I don’t see social structures that have endured for hundreds of years to be part of that process.

As someone interested in modern media manipulation, you may enjoy the “Candy Everybody Wants” music video by Natalie Merchant:

https://youtu.be/3M9ncAkKSNM

[QatzelOk]

The development of agriculture wasn’t an “invention” designed to suppress people.

Most of modern man's historical and anthropological understanding of the past has been socially-constructed in a way to get him to accept his lot in life and get back to the grindstone.

Agriculture didn't develop instantly, and was mainly made MANDATORY after the technology of long-spears lead to the killing off of the large game that had kept humans alive for a million years. That was the end of hunting for most men. Have we recovered since then, or have males particularly suffered under unnatural living conditions ever since?

This is a question that science can't answer for you.

[QatzelOk]

"Polygamy is a sin" is based on physical reality. Polygamy can contribute to birth defects.

Monogamy is unnatural. And "sin" is a social construct.

When the oceans all die of plastic islands, remember, it wasn't a sin to throw all that garbage into our waterways.

And when the "sin"-hating Euros discovered that First Nations women were not usually monogamous, they wanted to kill them even harder.

Monogamy was introduced in order for MALES to dominate their families. Before patriarchy and before agriculture, women were not monogamous. They chose their mates, and were the centers of their communities.



Example: A Haudenosaunee long-house is inhabited by one grandmother, her daughters, and all their men friends and children. The brothers of the mother raise the kids. The women are central to the social order.

When monogamy was introduced, it lead to the immediate creation of prostitutes (concubines, mistresses, etc.) for men. It was only women who were expected to be monogamous. And to this day, words like "slut" seem to point an angry finger at non-monogamous women, and women only.

Women have been miserable ever since, and so has humanity. If you hurt one gender, you harm the entire species.

When we get too addicted to our socially-constructed world, we lose the ability to return to health. Most of us are no longer able to even imagine what a natural and healthy life would be.

Too busy staring at cells and following trends - both examples of social construction addiction.

Biology per epigentics is more malleable than often thought and culture is less malleable than some would make it.

Biology is only malleable in the sense that you can live for weeks on bread and water while in prison. But being able to survive multiple generations after destroying the natural relationship of humans to the environment... is highly unlikely.

We continue to exist because the shit hasn't hit the fan yet, not because we are prepared for the consequences of our increasingly fake existence.

[Unthinking Majority]

Looking at a screen in the grocery line isn't in itself social construction. Looking at a screen because you feel some social influence to do so like your parents and friends also do it or that you're given "social permission" to do so (it is seen as socially acceptable to look at your screen rather than it being frowned on socially because its seen as rude/taboo) is social construction.

[XogGyux]

I'm also not sure if Qatzel is a Progressive. My impression is that he's a bit to the Left of guys like me.

I don't think so either. He is his own stuff. Perhaps even a troll, it is conspicuous but I don't think I recall ever criticizing a repud, but he routinely bashes his head with Pelosi and others... so it is not a "equal opportunity offender" he seems seriously biased against "democrats". Sure, there is plenty there to criticize, but it is the lesser of the two evils so it is weird someone that pretends to be a progressive mostly bashing against what is arguably more progressive than the alternative. So I personally don't buy his act. He is an agent of chaos.

[Unthinking Majority]

Monogamy is unnatural.

Its not unnatural for women to want to find a longterm stable mate to protect and provide for her family. Its not unnatural for a man to fall in love with a woman and treat her as the center of the universe.

Men want to screw everything that moves outside a strong romantic relationship. A lot of times the "love" wears off after the kids are older and able to fend for themselves. Love is a short to medium term high designed by evolution to maximize success in child rearing. Parents that don't care about their kids and each other means the children have much lower chance of surviving to adulthood.

[QatzelOk]

Its not unnatural for women to want to find a longterm stable mate to protect and provide for her family. Its not unnatural for a man to fall in love with a woman and treat her as the center of the universe.

Yes, but Hollywood is an example of social construction. So the romantic memes you just shared were socially constructed, and are not natural. Bonding with other humans is natural, obviously. But the constrained way you described this activity above... is the civilizational sublimation-of-all-natural-behaviors version of this. Barbie-and-Ken love.

Men want to screw everything that moves outside a strong romantic relationship. A lot of times the "love" wears off after the kids are older and able to fend for themselves. Love is a short to medium term high designed by evolution to maximize success in child rearing. Parents that don't care about their kids and each other means the children have much lower chance of surviving to adulthood.

Yes, and men are always out driving their cars, and women are always staying at home watching television, and kids want all the new toys they see on commercial media, and ... and ... and ... this is all the result of social construction.

Suburbia trapped a lot of people into a world where only warmed-over second-hand social construction is available (commercial media). Trapping generation after generation in this kind of environment... is an excellent way to kill the last vestiges of traditions and historically passed-on wisdom.

And in suburbia, you HAVE NO CHOICE. T.I.N.A.
Netflix, car radio, shopping mall music, billboards long highways, texting, and zoom. No real contact or exposure to nature.

[QatzelOk]

Social construction gets increasingly fake over time

100 years ago, people who were addicted to social construction, would spend their entire day talking to friends and family whenever they could steal away for a few minutes. This is not necessarily healthy, as it denies the 1922 person of time to reflect and relax, time to structure ideas and make value judgements.

But relying on humans for this meant that you were occasionally foiled in your attempts to avoid self reflection.

But in 2022, we don't socialize like this anymore. We text and stare at screens and talk on our phones while walking our dogs and interrupt all social contact with our devices.

This means that, not only are there far more social constrution addicts out there, but the THING that is constructing their man-made world... isn't even human. It's mainly machine.

Perhaps in the future, your whole life will be "socially constructed" by an implanted chip or dictated by a central authority. A lot of people would probably feel "safer" this way.