Social Immunity

From: http://kingdomofintroversion.com/

Leads To: Breaking the Iron Law:  A Game of Social Arbitrage,
Breaking the Iron Law: Developing Public Resources

In the beginning of life our family/guardians control our lives
A little later, school controls our lives
After school, a boss controls our lives
After retirement, the curators at a ‘senior home’  control our lives
All during that while, a host of peers in our same situation expose us to mass social expectations of what to buy, what to like, how to behave, who to associate with.
Every small child dreams of being a ‘grown up’ but they do not yet understand that they may never have any more control over their lives than they do as an infant.  In fact, they may very well have less.  Small children can go and play with their toys nearly any time they desire.  Adults might be able to play with their toys on Saturdays if they’re lucky.
If we ever find time to stop and think(most of us won’t), the entire social experience seems like a raw deal.  Surely, there’s the possibility of something smarter, something more fulfilling than a life moving slavishly from one containment zone to the next until the day we finally keel over and die.
Anyone who has ever stopped to think has probably imagined Social Immunity, a complete escape from the standard containment zones and the gravitational pull of economic necessity that keeps us within them.
To gain the ability to choose the peers who form our social environment and how we associate with them.
To be able to live life without a stultifying repetitious routine.  To orchestrate a day by one’s desires rather than the schedule of some monolithic organization that can care nothing for the individuals that comprise it.
To be able to enjoy all the wonderful things societies produce without having to give a lifetime of subservience in return.
To view all of the swarming mass of society as if from an airplane.   To have the luxury of being able to regard all desperate human struggles taking place below with a sense of distance and detachment.
Many if not most people would accuse such a dreamer of being fanciful, self indulgent, and selfish because such concepts are antithetical to ‘reality.’
Yet a sense of lack of control over one’s life is one of the greatest sources of emotional turmoil and stress.   People who live under chronic stress experience a significant lowering in life satisfaction and life expectancy.   They have far more illnesses and health problems.   People often point to smoking as one of the deadliest habits, yet it pales next to feelings of helplessness and alienation.  Such feelings drain the human spirit and even the will to live.
I once read of a senior home that experienced a massive drop in the deaths of their residents when they changed one simple thing:
They gave the old people menus from which they could choose their meals instead of simply thrusting standardized trays of food at them.
This one small change gave helpless elderly people a sense of control and purpose in their lives and with it the will to live another day.
Seen in such a way,  is the human craving for Social Immunity greedy and selfish or is it a desperate human hope for the most basic things that make life worth living?
Societies must constantly produce in order to avoid being engulfed by rival societies, but why couldn’t even a small collective of socially immune individuals outcompete a multitude of those who are drained and subjugated?