Part 3- Lemon Squeezers

    Social movements such as the beat generation are used as a tool that allows society to further believe in a false idea of progression and advancement of the human race; but also, even to Kerouac’s dissatisfaction, his movement, and his book On The Road, illustrate to readers that no matter how much humanity ‘progresses’, it will still indulge in a pool of selfish lemon squeezers.
    This new ‘Beat Generation’ is a direct descendant of the hippies. Their beliefs include the rejection of mainstream American values, exploring alternate forms of sexuality (homosexuality), and experimentation with drugs. The new ‘revolution’ forced Kerouac to play his hand which eventually lead to his separation from the movement. This shocking act can be explained through the term lemon squeezers. Lemon squeezers are defined to be people who metaphorically squeeze everything sweet and useful out of someone and when all dried up, dump those people in the trash similar to what humans do with lemons. To Kerouac, the new Beatniks were parasites of his movement and where in essence doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
    In the end, history has proven that the human race falls under one denominator of selfishness. People will go to great lengths in order to preserve and protect their beliefs and ideals. The question that comes from this is do people truly need their beliefs like race and gender?
    Simply, the answer to this question is no. The power of social constructions, “an idea or phenomenon that does not exist in nature but is created and given meaning by people”, is quite powerful. Within the exchanges between people, they develop the social value of power. In this expression, people come to believe in the necessity of ideas like money and war.
    To further this argument in the invention of ideas for the sake of selfishness such as the idea of the dinosaur. In the quest of explaining all the ins and outs of this world, the concept of a dinosaur is something that people have constructed over time. Even in the face of something real, this philosophy stating that every human beings actions are selfish would invite people to question if dinosaurs existed simply because of the fossil. Metaphysically, one could argue the dinosaur is real only because the human made it. In fact, eliminating it would not violate a law of nature. Or, on the other hand, the epistemic argument suggests that humans continue to believe in the dinosaur because of the role it plays in socially. The belief itself subserves a social purpose.
    Tying this idea together with the theme of selfishness is the idea of murder. For generations human beings have been taught that murdering is wrong. This ideal, proving to be yet another social construction, serves a social purpose for population control and self preservation tendency because people do not want to be murdered. Peoples’ beliefs are shaped on  what they truly want and desire for this world. Human beings safety would be challenged if murdering was allowed, and as a result, now, it is condemned and outcasted.