The Myth of Society and the Common Good

If you were to look up the definition of society in the dictionary it would be listed as a noun. But if society is a person, place, or thing than what does it look like? How big is it? How can it be described? Truly, society is nothing more than a theoretical mental construct. Actual society is made up of nothing more than a number of individuals, who operate in their own self-interest, and have their own values. But belief in society as a noun is what allows people to claim society has it’s own set of hopes, fears, wants, needs, emotions, and values. All the things that make actual individuals different and individual.

We can claim that “society” wants certain laws passed, and so passing those laws benefits the common good. Individuals, of course, have no rights versus this imaginary common good, and yet it is individuals themselves who suggest these laws, not society. Society is the concept that allows a small group of people to tell a large group of people what they can and cannot do.

The belief in society and the common good is what drives men, who would otherwise be bakers and butchers, to goose-step with rifles in their hands. It is the myth that allows the rights of the minority to be stripped in favor of the majority. It is, above all, the complete absence of rational thought, and the surrender to romanticism that allows a few leaders to bend the will of many people.

After all, there really is no answer to the common good, or worst of all “The Children”. A politician can sell anything if it’s under the guise of being for The Children. Every rational argument can be repressed and refuted by just the emotional call to an imaginary group of children who supposedly all share the same hopes, fears, wants, needs, emotions, and values. We all know that private individuals are better at providing hot dogs and shoes than the government, so what’s the rationale argument for Public Education? There is none, only an appeal to the romantic ideas of society and the common good.