Rocks and Sand

Usually if you have to say that you enjoyed something, you did not. In these cases, the claim of enjoyment serves as social consolation and reassurance.

But for what sake? In social situations, all rough edges must be smoothed - all conflicts given to resolution. One cannot have open conflict in civil society - else it would not be civil, and hence cease to be society. Society is a self-refining process. As it works upon itself, all of its constituent social relations become smoother, just as the ocean churns rocks against each other in order to form sand.

But let us return from these general, overarching observations back to the particulars of the the everyday, that which is more "down to earth" and therefore grounded. Let us ask ourselves, for whose purpose does this process of social leveling [Cf. Nietzsche] serve? In smoothing over the rough edges of the social relations we are engaged in, what is gained, and for whom?

We may accept a certain broadly human appeal to society itself as the moralizing force, that is to say, that sometimes things are to be done simply for the sake of society, that it may be perpetuated and preserved as society itself [that broad ever-present abstraction].

But at the ground level, in our everyday actions we are rarely motivated to serve lofty, ungrounded goals alone. Generally speaking, the more abstract a motivation, the less motivating it is. All people are simple people and are motivated most effectively by what is personally impactful. Unless someone has something of theirs at stake in a matter, they will rarely act. Our actions are directed in such a way because we have something at stake in the affairs of others.

In this way, we must ask: what do we have at stake, what kind of vested interest do we have in the goings-on, and with that in mind, are we to allow ourselves to be beaten against each other like so much rocks, to be averaged out and dissolved into infinitesimal, nearly-identical grains of sand?