Unawareness of social conventions

[Piet]

People of Western society are unsufficiently aware of the social conventions that they live by.

[Friso Schous]

Hi so uhh, I put my reply on my take of things here right?

I don't really have much to add though, I agree that people of western society are insuficiently aware of the social conventions they live by. A better understanding of our (un)conscious behavior will help us make choices that make us happier and stuff (or the same choices, since a lot of norms aren't all that bad). In general I support non-conformism. But I don't really think it's a societal problem. I'm not really suffering from other people's adherence to social conventions, and I don't think that many people are. I do suffer from other people their ignorance and biasses though, but that's another subject entirely.

So I would vote in favor of scrapping the problem alltogether. I don't mind thinking and discussing along if others disagree though (don't want to endlessly move around in circles around how to define the subject either). I agree with the statement, and I like talking/thinking about it, but I don't think anything needs to be done about it.

[Werner]

Allrighty, so this is where I would post basically what I wrote on the scrap of paper last monday night (with some elaboration, of course). As I conceived it the thesis was something like this:
"People are being lived by basically the rules of the group they think they belong to (in the sense of "doing what is normal without second thought") more than they are aware of their own potential or other possibilities for their life and society as a whole. This is in an important sense an obstruction to societal growth/progress as a whole. In other words, there are many norms which are not necessary or obligatory in a strict sense. There is room for change/development. However, awareness of these norms is important in order to use that room; most people are not aware of the conventions they live by and therefore they are not free."

My reaction was, written down, something like this:
I don't think we should want this awareness to be collective in the sense that "everybody is aware of all the rules". I would argue that perceived freedom is just as if not more important than this hypothetical/virtual freedom people 'would have' if only they were more aware. We cannot dictate what freedom means to people who think themselves to be free, it's that simple.
Something like an absence of norms is impossible, the best that can happen is change in the same 'actual space' of society (that is to say, once we get rid of some rules, people will necessarily develop new/other regularities in their behaviour, which will lead to a kind of normative rule). So, there must be some kind of principle with which to decide which are good norms and which are bad ones, so that we can change them for the better.
I would suggest harm is a fruitful principle (which has a lot to do with freedom as it is perceived), more so than 'progress of society as a whole' or reasons that are only visible to "smart people" (such as the virtual space of possibility described above). The point about harm is that it usually doesn't have to be argued for: it's there, people can recognize it, but there needs to be only one perceptive individual to notice it and draw attention to it: the rest of society will follow, but there needs to be no constant awareness of everything with everyone. Compare how scientific "progress" is made: not because all scientists are completely aware of everything they do and its context, but because of breakthroughs by single individuals who thereby redefine the way that particular discipline works: the rest of the scientists can recognize this breakthrough without having to discover it themselves, which is exactly how a society based on a harm principle could work. Therefore I more or less disagree with the thesis as it stands at the moment.