What ever happened to positive pier pressure? We hear about bad pier pressure all the time, but not good pier pressure. Why do you think that is? This blog may get a little out of hand because I am not going to divide the pier groups between young and old. Each group has changed and each has changed in a negative way as I will point out.
First, just what is pier pressure and how does it compare with the rule of law? The rule of law is a set of laws that, in our democracy, we have agreed too. To be sure they are administered fairly, we have a system of judges and punishments. I think that we can all agree that we need the rule of law and to have those laws equally enforced. That is why lady justice has a blind fold on. The laws are also limited in the USA by a constitution that prevents a simple majority of the voters from taking advantage of a minority. Sorry, but we don't have constitutional protection for the redistribution of wealth.
Next, pier pressure. Before there were laws, democracies or constitutions, there was pier pressure. Pier pressure even preceded religion and its Ten Commandments. Humans found out early that if they wanted to survive and live among one another, they needed some simple rules of conduct and a way to assure that those rules were followed. That is when pier pressure arrived. For humans to belong to the social group, they needed to follow the rules of the social group. If they did not, the group reminded them that if they did not follow the rules, they would be tossed out of the group. If that were to have happened, there was a very good chance that the human would not survive. That was pier pressure. It was clearly better for the human to be in the social group than to be outside of it. The basic system worked and the humans prospered, now things seem to have changed.
Our current social order is much more complex. Rule of law is only a very crude tool when it comes to maintaining social order, it needs to be complemented with pier pressure. Two societies that have the same basic rules of law can look very different due to differences in pier pressure. Compare Germany with Spain or the USA with South Korea. I don't think the law are much different, but the social order is very much different and that is due to differences in pier pressure. Where am I going with this?
What I feel has happened here in the USA is that we have had a major change in pier pressure over the past 50 years. Start with graduating from high school. In the distant past, the high school graduation rate may have been low, but it was not because the kids and their parents wanted then to drop out. conditions beyond the control of the kid or the parent were the main cause of the drop outs. When it became easier for kids to complete high school after 1945, the completion rate went up. That was, in my opinion, pier pressure. A kid or a parent would be embarrassed if it became know that their kid dropped out of high school. The pier pressure would have banded the kid and his parents "low class" with in their social community. Now, when a kid drops out of high school, their seems to be no pier pressure from the greater social community. That is the problem. It could be the same for getting knocked up in high school or out of marriage. Where is the pier pressure. It used to come from both the younger social community and the older. Not now. Why?
Here is what I think. It has been a combination of organized religion and the liberalization of our educational system. Both are to blame. Western religion teaches us to "look the other way", "if you can not say anything good about a person, don't say anything". Liberal thinking tells people to, "do you own thing". You all know that I do not go with trends. I look for "events" that cause things to change and in this case, I think that we were hanging by a thread and it only took a small change to break our bonds with traditions. Two events that also contributed to this change were, urbanization and both parents working "outside of the home". Both parents have always worked to support a family, but on the farm, both parents worked "in the home". This change meant that their kids were around other kids more than they were around their mature parents. If the situation were urban, it was even worse. The pier group for the kids during their emotional development had changed for the worse. It is crystal clear to me. Look at marketing today. It is directed directly to kids around the influence of the parents. The kids tell the parents what they want rather than the other way around.
Once the flood gates have been opened, it is next to impossible to ever get them closed again. Once the kid goes to the fair, they are never again the same. Isn't that true? I think that pier pressure can be both good and bad. In the process of protecting the greater social order, it can come down very hard on an individual or it can favor the individual over the greater social order and be just as bad. What we have is a total rejection of the pier pressure for the greater social good and that is what I feel needs to change. How we do that is, at this time, beyond me. For my part, I am just one person who tries to convince others to do what is right for the greater social good, because we are the social order. It is us, like it or not. If we don't do it, it will not get done.
PS-----This may not be directly related, but it shows how we have changed. As a kid, we grew or produced at least 80% of the food we ate. I milked the cows, fed the pigs and looked after the chickens. I was also the best gardener and we had a big garden. My specialty was sweet corn and still is today. One year I grew pop corn and we had more pop corn that year than we could ever eat. I measured the height of the pop corn and it was 14'-2". I had to use a ladder to measure it. That was the tallest corn that I have ever grown. Today, I have only one friend who is a serious gardener and only one other who has chickens. I don't know anyone who keeps pigs. I saw a program on TV about the Czech Republic and many people there keep pigs in their back yards. The average Czech male is 6'-0" tall while we are only 5'-10.5" tall. They also have a longer life expectancy than we do. What has happened to us? It seems to be getting worse. If we can't find the cause, we are never going to be able to turn things around. That is what I do, search for the "cause".
