We construct our own reality through language and behavior, and this changes everything.

This was the recent topic for Philosophy Talk on NPR: http://theblog.philosophytalk.org/2010/07/social-reality.html

John Searle, of Berkeley, is one of the main thinkers in this field.

What I find useful about this line of thought is that it clears up some issues I have with American culture.

You see, I think we esteem the values of individual freedom and liberty too highly to submit gladly to any but the most minimal levels of social construction.

The natural inclinations or disposition of human beings tend to lead us to narcissism and license when we are given too much freedom and liberty.

The social reality is there to reign those behaviors in and control them with duties, obligations, respect for rights and submission to authority.

I think our society has experienced the steady erosion of these social agreements until we have the thinnest film of socially constructed reality standing between us and our natural inclinations to act in a self-centered manner.

What we need is a social construction that places additional obligations on us-- not more freedom. What we need is a common social language that allows us to build and earn trust.

We see a nationwide erosion in trust-- in government, in finance, in education, in health care, in laws, in the police and in the intentions of others (both our neighbors and strangers).

This erosion is occurring because the agreements that held together our social reality have been stretched so thin that we don't trust them anymore.

The news barrages us with stories of people who have succumbed to their baser inclinations, even when all the social clues indicated that they should not have done so.

We lack an identification with a greater social ideal, with a national identity, with an inclusive whole that would keep us from splintering off into individual behaviors that harm others.

Small social groups that offer a coherent social reality (like terrorist cells) can exercise a strong influence on people who are looking for a social identity that feels "real."

So I think that in order to rebuild trust in our nation and our institutions, we need to construct a more collectivist whole-- a social reality with additional levels of inclusion, obligations, protections and rights and an awareness of the constant need for involvement, education, activity and validation of individuals in order to maintain a shared identity and a shared social reality.

We know that without a well-educated electorate our representative form of government will not work properly. We have already seen the erosion of our political system.

What we don't as often realize is that a without well-educated and highly involved citizenry our social fabric will unravel-- not just at the political, but at the moral and emotional level.

Without a shared social identity, or constant attempts to cultivate an agreement about what our society means and what we represent, we devolve into fragmented regional and economic social groupings, with self-interest and survival as our foremost values.

To my mind, we also get the housing bubble and the recession. We get a bloated health care system and the collapse of social security. We get immigration hysteria and increased policing of our cities and our borders. We get an erosion of trust.

Where does trust come from? It comes from shared beliefs and values.

We used to have regional and religious stop-gaps to cultivate shared values and inculcate rules of civility in our populace. We had strong Catholic and Jewish and Protestant communities of faith. We had Southern hospitality, the brashness of New Yorkers, Midwestern reserve and the pioneering individualism of the West.

These ways of life modulated our individual inclinations and helped forge us into different kinds of Americans with distinctive ideas of who we were and what America was about. There was an underlying morality that held hands with our political ideals of freedom and liberty.

The restraint and collective mindsets given to us by our regional ways of life and religious outlooks allowed us to enjoy individual freedom and espouse liberty without devolving into narcissism or licentiousness.

But all of these regional ways of life and religious communities have experienced an erosion of values and influence.

I'm not saying these institutions and regional mindsets were ever ideal, but they banked the coals of liberty and kept the hearth fire from going out or burning the house down.

Now we have a moral vacuum, no true leadership from any of the religious communities, an erosion of regional distinctiveness, a unifying media that tends to stir up hysteria more than facilitate a national conversation about the truly important things and an economic situation that leaves the citizenry with little time for anything but getting by and getting theirs.

Any extra time and resources tend to be spent on entertainment.

So when we're all jacked into our little entertainment worlds, insulated from the very real threats to our way of life, how will we find the time to rebuild the trust and sense of connection necessary to take back our nation, revive our values and ideals and preserve our way of life?

We won't.