Social norms and breaking free of our socialized mechanics

As I’ve concluded in a previous post, human beings are machines. I mainly focused on the fact that we are machines based on biological laws. We also follow the laws of society. Social norms and pressures mold us into predictable, controlled beings; machines.

Social norms are some of the most unbreakable laws in society. Many laws in place by the government or leaders within the society are broken with little thought or concern. Social laws are much different. There is a greater fear of stepping outside social boundaries then breaking federal laws. For example, the majority of Americans breaks the speed limit. This is a law that was put in place for the safety of those on the road yet very few people stay below the limit in place. Opposed to that, you will never see someone in America sit in the seat next to the only other person on an empty bus. We have strict rules about space in America. Although only three people (you, the person you sat next to and the bus driver) would know that you broke this rule, the anxiety and discomfort you feel would prevent you from doing it. Social norms are enforced from within yourself and externally as opposed to federal laws that are enforced only externally. Because the consequences are felt externally and internally, social norms are much harder to break. These norms become the mechanics that make us a machine: our socialized mechanics.

The name of this entry though is “breaking free of our socialized mechanics.” How can we break free of our mechanics that have so many consequences for breaking? The answer is social deviants. Those of use who are already, by definition of our identity, break the social norms. This was my experience this past weekend. It was a backwards world where everyone was already living outside the realm of regular mechanics. This weekend I attended a conference for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer leaders. Because all of us identified as Queer we automatically broke many of the social rules that the majority of America follows. We played with gender and sexuality: two of the most strict social laws of America. Gender is man and woman. Sexuality is heterosexual. We expanded and disbanded this theory. We took sacred concepts to most Americans and turned them on their head.

At this conference, it was common to break social laws. There were few rules not broken and even those were questioned and played with. The gender rules were obsolete. Few people at the conference identified as strictly male or female. Those who did identify as male or female, would not play into society’s definition of the two genders. Sexuality was even more fluid at the conference. There was a fraction of heterosexuals compared to LGBTQ identifying students. The entire spectrum was at this conference: Asexual to Bisexual to everything in between. This was a world completely different from mainstream America.

If people can break these social laws and act on their own, does this eliminate the machine theory? It does not. Although this was a conference where everyone seemed to break every rule in the book, it was more accurately a conference where everyone created new rules. The people at the conference broke gender and sexuality rules without remorse, but this conference still had its laws every person needed to follow. For example, making assumptions was taboo. There were so many identities that there was no way to assume an identity for anyone. Not only that, but new rules about communication were established. It was now perfectly ok to cross the boundary of the room. People were comfortable going to the front of the classroom and using their voice. I first felt as if this really was breaking out of our mechanics. I was wrong. By the end of the conference, the patterns of communication and interaction were obvious. It was just like any other place in America in the sense that it was predictable. I knew who was going to speak and when, what was going to be said and how and how the audience would react. We were stepping out of main stream mechanics to create our own machine; a machine none the less.

Yet again I come to the conclusion that humans are machines. We are predictable and trapped in our own mechanics. We have rules and boundaries that we can’t ignore. An important distinction though is the fact that we are not all the same machine. We all work differently and have our own sets of rules. After this conference, I’m wondering if there is any way to step out of our mechanics and live without out habits and rules.