I'm a little confused as to whether you're addressing issues 1 or 2. On the issue of the needs of the majority, I agree that I think the free-wheeling anything goes pluralistic society is likely to spark social chaos and confusion. I agree also that I think people like structures and categories as means of shaping and defining society, and that these often, although not necessarily, arise out of economic motives. However, women are no longer a primary means of exchange/cementing social bonds between men in the aforementioned young coastal elite American society.
So I'd argue that the social/economic need in the above subgroup currently is for forming supportive communities that nurture the individual and their needs. I think that such a social network will become more stable if there are clearer signs distinguishing members of the group and their relationship to each other, and I suppose I'm offering that as one possibility for resolving the upheaval and instability, because I don't think that the traditional patriarchal heteronormative nuclear family model is working terribly well at the moment.
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orichalcum.livejournal.com at 05:17pm on 01/02/2008![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I'd argue that the social/economic need in the above subgroup currently is for forming supportive communities that nurture the individual and their needs. I think that such a social network will become more stable if there are clearer signs distinguishing members of the group and their relationship to each other, and I suppose I'm offering that as one possibility for resolving the upheaval and instability, because I don't think that the traditional patriarchal heteronormative nuclear family model is working terribly well at the moment.