Dharma and Social Constructions

The world is in the grip of a set of waves of social change that we term the “culture war”: individuals and groups disagree about the way that society should function in areas from treatment of minorities to economic inequality to gun rights. A frequently invoked idea in many these debates is the concept of “social construction” imported from academia. This is the idea that behaviors or forms of knowledge, rather than being based on empirical reality, are constructed by society. For example, consider the behavior of men and women. The social constructionist theory says that there is no behavior that is essentially male or female; rather, society organizes approved ways of acting for men and women and expects them to conform. One side of culture war belligerents draws the conclusion that if someone does not want to conform to those approved ways of acting, they should not have to, because there is no inherent basis for those rules besides arbitrary social convention. The other side usually responds that societally given arrangements are “natural”, and are not arbitrary. Since science is the most prestigious method of justification in society today, this conservative tendency often looks to root answers in biology in order to be able to show that the established way of doing things really is “natural”.

The concept of dharma can help to shed light on this issue. Dharma is the essential law of being of any given thing—animal or mineral, human or nonhuman. Dharma is often interpreted as pertaining specifically to societally prescribed responsibilities, or duties. But the law of nature that is dharma does not simply consist of the duties that someone must fulfill. To view dharma in terms of duties is a degenerate interpretation that reduces an entire way of living to a series of obligations; acts such as breathing and dancing are part of the dharma of a human just as his or her job responsibilities. The nature of dharma can perhaps be seen most clearly during times when dharma changes such as in major societal transformations where existing dharmas fray and people search for new ideas and ways of life. For example, during the hippie era, millions of young people felt that the previous way of life of 1950’s America, commonly understood as staid and repressed, were no longer working for them and looked for a new dharma, finding new ways of being in their attitudes towards work, conscription, sexuality, music, and fashion. (Their search was preceded by the beatniks who searched for new ways of being in jazz, poetry, and Zen in the heart of the 1950’s themselves.) A clear contrast can then be seen in the dharma of the 1950’s and the hippie dharma.

It is tempting to say that dharmas are simply socially constructed and have no empirical reality. But this misses the key principle that the socially constructed prescription is not the same as dharma itself, even if they often line up; in the final analysis, dharma can only be known by the individual. That is, society may tell the individual how they are expected to behave, but only the individual knows whether that is the true dharma which applies to them. If a given pattern of living is so outworn that it appears to the individual as an arbitrary social construction that gives no joy, then it should, in fact, be replaced; this is what happened when the hippies rejected the 1950’s lifestyle. But if the societal prescriptions still retain life and vitality, they should and will be accepted. Social constructionists note that identities are enacted through “performances"—maleness or femaleness, for example, are effects that are produced by a person acting in a masculine or feminine way. From the point of dharma, however, the question is whether performing the performance is stimulating to the soul; if it is not, it is time to find a new performance, wherever that may come from.

By adopting the perspective of dharma, the need to root the justification for behaviors in some anterior essence, such as biology, is seen as unnecessary. The problem with the drive to root behaviors in nature is that nature, too, can and will be able to be changed as science progresses. From the perspective of dharma, what matters is the soul’s consent to the pattern of thought, behavior, and even physical nature that it is presented with.

A problem comes in because refusing to cooperate with established dharmas is interpreted as adharma, which can be seen as sinfulness or the absence of virtue. A charge of adharma often occurs when an individual makes a choice that they feel aligns with their personal dharma while it conflicts with others’ view as to that individual’s dharma. There is no objective criterion that dictates who is right in this situation, the individual or society—there are only precedents and principles which may be used to provide a guide to judgment, but reasonable judgments ultimately still may differ. This is why the Gita says that it is better to perish following your own dharma than to succeed while following another’s dharma. There is ultimately no way to prove that you are following the right dharma to anyone else, and you may have to accept the consequence that you are judged as committing adharma, which can bring significant negative consequences.

This leads to the possibility of the unfortunate situation where individuals who follow their own individual guiding light are punished by society for following disapproved ideas. This can and does happen, as society is inherently more conservative than the individual and is only able to make general allowances for the most typical behavior. But there is a mechanism for making this situation somewhat less brutal, which is that is that society is able to update its ideas. If a certain number of individuals are viewed as committing adharma for the same reason, it is possible for society to look at them, reassess, and realize that in fact they are following a valid dharmic movement. This change may not be easy or peaceful and may even require conflict, but it is a pattern that is seen many times in history. An example is the recognition of homosexuality as a valid pattern of life, at least in the most progressive societies. Homosexuality was once regarded as an adharmic state, but thanks to the work of organizers and changing societal attitudes, it was recognized that it is in fact a natural condition. In this way the collective societal idea of dharma was updated, and it became possible for homosexuals to follow their nature in a socially approved way. Here, we see that social constructions can be responsive to change and update themselves according to new conditions just as individuals do.

In light of the concept of dharma, we can reassess what it means to be progressive or conservative without demanding either the overthrow or arbitrary preservation of all socially constructed standards. The true function of a progressive prescription is to point out that a given dharma has become outmoded and is in need of repair or replacement—even if there is no time-tested replacement for it yet. The true function of a conservative prescription is to point out that a given dharma needs to be preserved because still reflects the nature of things and needs to be respected—even if its value is not rationally understood. Together, the progressive and conservative negotiate their way around the true dharma, which is found at the point where the individual soul makes its choice to be itself.