Today we tried to relate the Base Superstructure schema we have been speaking of in class to a code of conformity and non-conformity (mainly following your values and morality, or going with the flow). Our main example, a Kiss Cd.
If one goes to a Walmart and buys a Kiss Cd, one is a conformist (giving into mass media doing so). If one chooses not to go to Walmart and not buy a Kiss Cd, one is still a conformist... (conforming to a group that "chooses not to buy Kiss").
If one buys a Kiss Cd even though they know the profits will go to some corporation that is immoral, this is conformity! acting on a whim and going with the "flow" (grayness) of society. It seemed like the reigning dogma of our discussion today was that this is not "bad", because by not buying the Kiss Cd you have "conformed" to a group that chooses not to buy Kiss Cd's.
Therefore a society that accepts these terms that there is no Black and White, is a society that accepts that there is no set right and wrong. Right and wrong is determined by our ever changing ever shifting Base and Superstructure schema. This Base and Superstructure schema is manipulated at will by those with the most power and money. Those who are low enough to manipulate the "masses." Those on top are not challenged because the masses refuse to take responsibility for the actions, they see everything as "grey" nothing is entirely right or wrong, there are no conformists or non-conformists.
This superstructure turns the invisible forces of the market (those in power) into arbiters of what is right or wrong, able to change them at will for profit, power, or any other fantasy that comes to their minds.
A great example of this would be Nazi Germany, when Hitler was elected into power by entirely legal means. Jews and other minorities were taken from their homes and put into concentration camps, and for a long time... no one stopped them. Society said the Jews were destroying the German economy? well then lets just take them away and kill them, and thats okay because it was said that it would be "for the good of society" (good for those at the tip top of the triangle, good for those with power).
The only way to escape this moral grayness is to live in a free society, America has been for a while but the values it was built upon are being stripped away "in the name of society", or in "the greater good of the masses."
The only way to live in a free society is by protecting our freedom and the individual rights that it entails. So on the subject of conformity that we discussed to day, I have this to say:
We must learn the nature of morality, ethics, and judgement. By claiming that there is no black or white, that we are "all conformists" does not excuse you from or change the fact that it is evil to conform. Because there is no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil
For irony's sake:
Detroit Rock City is actually my favorite movie...
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