"modern" societies?

The idea that modern societies are not modern enough is linked to the slowing effect of custom, according to John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. Custom is the many-headed tyrant that controls with the whip of “status quo,” thus preventing the development of modernity within our societies. Mill states that, “society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression … it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.” (Pg. 4) In order to prevent this, an understanding needs to be reached on how custom does this and how it reveals itself. The heads on this tyrant take shape and form in our society as the burdens of tradition, the intolerance of individuality, the hindrance of human genius and advancement, and the subjection of women.

Currently, custom prevails on the legs of precedent. It is the “what has been” or the tradition. Mill states, “yet to conform to custom merely as custom does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice.” Mill implies that a virulent hold onto the past inevitably generates a lack of history within a society, that they are inversely related. Under the yoke of conforming to an approved standard all originality is lost and the standard becomes ultimately one of no color, no desire, and no ingenuity. And the people within that society become without any marked character due to its loss of originality and adaptability. This generates what Mill likes to call “dead ideas” and “dead beliefs” that can only be hedged by new ideas and new beliefs. “There have been, and may again be, great individual thinkers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere an intellectually active people.” (Pg. 33) So what is required is a liberty of atmosphere which can only be realized by the release of precedent or tradition.

Mill also states that, “In this age the quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate past evils as to introduce new benefits,” which plays out on the set public opinion and it’s intolerance of individuality. If one were to wake up the veritable lion of “status quo” it will attack, as history can attest. Far too often when a fiery revolutionary hero or free thinker is spoken of it’s chilled by the tale of how public opinion brutally silenced them to the point of death, a terrifying deterrent to those that would attempt to elevate their expression and activism. For example, Socrates, who was charged at his tribunal as a “corrupter of youth” and was put to death. (Pg. 23) So it is no surprise that when such a one could meet such an end that another free thinker would rather choose discretion than jump into the lions den. To society this discretion has become a reasonable art, but to Mill, “the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.” (Pg. 29) This is where the lion becomes self-feeding by generating it’s own tyranny of the majority where many progressive individuals are lost by either suppression or capitulation. As in all things, “there is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence,” and so it would take a significant persuasion of public opinion to be tolerant before the individual can be free.

Unfortunately, Mill states, “Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.” (Pg.28) This paradox is a trap for human progression in society because “genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.”(Pg. 62) The freedom of opinion and the freedom of expressing an opinion are necessary for society’s genius to be healthy and active. However, Mill does not go so far as to say that this freedom will put an end to all evils, only that without genius societal advancement becomes difficult; an event that has been witnessed in the stagnation of many “modern” countries. He also goes on to say that the value of a country is ultimately “the worth of the individuals composing it.” (Pg. 113) He calls this the government of mankind and it is this government’s break from custom that will be the leading step into a more modern society and the advancement of culture.

Another prevalent yoke of custom is on the necks of women. In The Subjection of Women, Mill raises concerns for the, “disqualified half of the human race.” (Pg. 108) Mill argues the capacities of the female gender and its fitness to being “exceptional” is primarily due to opportunity. “How are they to be answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken? Or how can the answer be known to be satisfactory if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory?” (Pg. 36) He goes on to state that when historically women were allotted an opportunity they did very well for the “weak sex”, in some cases much better than men, as in the case of Queen Elizabeth and Margaret of Austria. (Pg. 59) Although, he does not specifically address upper versus lower class women, it is implied that the exceptional woman is bourgeois or upper class. He states that, “there ought to be nothing to prevent faculties exceptionally adapted to any other pursuit…due provision being made for supplying otherwise any falling-short which might become inevitable, in her full performance of the ordinary functions of mistress of a family,” but only a few women could afford it. (Pg. 52) In addition, it is the woman’s duty to rear the children in the family economics. According to Mill, by empowering society’s women, men would no longer be corrupted by a sense of entitlement to privileges that they have not earned, and the family would change from a school of despotism to a school of virtues of freedom. (Pg. 47)

In order for “modern” societies to become more “modern” The sword to slay the hydra-headed beast called “custom” is the help of new values, created within and answering the needs of the people, that will strengthen the society as a whole. It can only successfully win power from those groups in society that are hostile to it by holding to these new norms and ideals. (Pg. 249) This would be enabled the reduction of repressing governments. Mill says that society is at fault and the cure is less government, not a new government. In order for the individual to be sovereign it needs to have the freedom to pursue it with minimal compulsion. Once that can be obtained then the value, or principle foundation, of life can be achieved in human happiness. By the abolition of traditions yoke, the intolerance of individuality through tyranny of the majority, the hindrance of human genius and advancement, and the subjection of women, Mill states that society would be able to advance to a more modern, a moral state of existence. According to Mill this is the very definition of liberty as “pursuing our own good in our own way,” which leads to our well being as people, families, and society as a whole. (xviii)


Bibliography

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1978, originally published in 1859. Indianapolis, Indiana.

John Stuart Mill, Subjection of Women, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1988, originally published in 1869.