What The Society Says About Society
The moral case for understanding how you'd react if society breaks down.
What makes a society break down?
More importantly, what do you have to do to keep it from breaking down? If you go through the motions of performing what a society looks like, is that the same as an actual society? It's one thing to live within a society where all the big decisions are made for you. Things like where to get food, how to keep the lights on, and what to do with criminals. In most of society, there are other people to do those things for you. So much so that you don't have to think about them. You don't have to worry about the moral and ethical implications of the decisions being made. At some point however, you won't be able to rely on other people for things like that. Eventually, you'll become the people who other people are looking to for answers. To make those important decisions.
Then you have to be willing to ask yourself if you'd be willing to do those things. Whether you can do what's best for other people instead of just for yourself and those around you. That's when you really find out what you're made of, because if you're not, things can go really badly really quickly. Previously in this space, we've looked at how to build a functional society from the ground up and how to make it work in practice. We've also looked at the fact that there are some people in society who simply want to see society come apart. But what we haven't looked at is what it takes to keep society running. The day to day functionality most people don't spend a lot of time wondering about.
It's something of a paradox that the reason why people don't think about them is because they work so well. You don't have to worry about them. But if you didn't have those people anymore, you have to know you're going to do them, or at the very least be able to assign someone to do them. Even if the person you might be relying on for them doesn't want to do them. Making that happen is not an easy thing. Most people would assume that the best thing to do is to force the issue. But that doesn't really work long term and you can end up alienating the people around you. Especially if you remember a different way of doing things. Or at least that other people used to do things differently, even if you didn't really know how they did them.
The Society is fundamentally about what makes a society function properly. Allie Pressman, as played brilliantly by Kathryn Newton, has to think about how to keep something resembling a society functioning. More than that she has to get other people to think about these things and come up with solutions for these problems. A way to maintain some level of the society all of them were living under for most of their lives. Watching her struggle along with so many of the people around her is a powerful reminder of the things we never think about.
Give yourself a chance to remember how society really works by checking out The Society as soon as you can.
Check out The Society on Netflix.