Recently is has become more and more clear to me that people trust society. They follow what they have been told without questioning it. And through doing so, not only do they hurt people and perpetuate those false ideals, but they feel completely justified in doing so, because 'everyone knows that'.
Let me start with an easy example: the idea that everyone should eat a lot of fruits and vegetables to be healthy. This idea is not based on nothing, it is true that vegetables have vitamins and minerals that are rare to find in other foods, and also tend to have fiber for ease of digestion. But are there no alternatives? Is it okay to assume someone who does not eat vegetables is not healthy, and should be scolded for such a poor decision?
No. Anyone who has done any research in what actually helps someone maintain health, can tell it is obviously not the vegetables themselves, but the vitamins and minerals found inside them. So, if someone only eats meats and starches, and substitutes vegetables for pills containing the same amount of vitamins and minerals, and even fiber, how is that person's health different?
It is not, yet many people will still argue it is 'good' to eat vegetables. I believe this stubbornness comes from society's constant message that you do need vegetables, and that not eating them will always be unhealthy. So why do so many people not question this? (I know one famous man who did, and now eats the same meal that he made himself every day, with no health detriments.)
Now I'd like to move on to a more complicated, less cut and dry example. Society tells us that we must do 'things', as in have many activities in out lives, 'go out'. Why is that? No one ever questions this, it is just known. Well I am questioning it now.
Going out provides a few benefits. It is often social, and it often requires some sort of exercise. Most of the time going out does not actually involve meeting new people, but rather hanging out with people you already know, though for some, meeting people is a higher purpose, and I'll talk about them later. But for those who just want to spend time with friends, 'making memories', and just conversing, I ask how this is different from playing a video game while talking to them though a talking service (skype, mumble, ventrillo, in game chat....ect)?
Do you get more pleasure out of hiking while talking to your friends than you do from killing zombies with them? I contend that actually going out of your house is highly overrated in this sense. You can be very social without leaving your house. As far as exercise, that is a fair point in many occasions. But when you say to someone 'hey, let's go out friday night', you are not thinking about the distance you will be walking to the bars, or the energy consumed by dancing, you are focused on the social aspect.
Advances in technology are being ignored by society. In the first case it is the advancement in nutritional knowledge and technology, and in the second case it is the greatly improved communication technologies that have risen over the last 15 years.
So I ask everyone to please question society, don't just hear something from television, your friends or even parents and accept it as an absolute. Be able to argue for or against the thought, the practice, the event. And try not to judge people who think differently from the norm, they probably have good reasons for doing so, or they would have caved under the societal pressure by now.
(more examples I might consider writing up later: prison?, amount of sleep/sleep schedules, religion, racism, chivalry)
