The Needed Contradiction, Part II

...I think the counterbalance is our craving for community, and not the local government, no, the things we enter freely. I’m talking about your neighbors, your churches and your civic clubs, things we build in the private space, where you hang out with all your buds. The joint virtues you stand behind, those that you submit to by choice, no human works in solitude, these things we should not just avoid. Since when you volunteer to go along with sets of principles, you’re less likely to shirk from it, more disposed to give it you all. That works with the social pressure to act as a form of restraint, keeps you from being atomized, so ‘free’ that you become deranged. And there lies the contraction, we demand the state see the one, while at the same time seeking out those who tell us, “That just ain’t done.” The state sees individuals, and that keeps tyranny at bay, while we all seek communities that subtly guide and constrain. The tension that’s between those drives is the thing I am getting at, when one of them gets out of place the other side can pull it back. When we’re so free we loose all sense the community says, “Conform.” When we conform so much it’s dull the individual makes new norms. It may not be a perfect thing, nothing human even can be, but this needed contraction is what maintains society.