Social Animals

One of the things I talk about occasionally on this blog is our essentially social nature: we need other people in order to be fully human. 

What I don't typically talk about - maybe because it's obvious - is the problems we have with that. So, Aristotle recognizes that "honor" isn't a proper goal of life, because people's opinions are fickle: we can't allow ourselves to be dependent on the value-judgments of others. At the same time, Aristotle is also one of the few philosophers who talks at length about the necessity of friendship. We really do need other people in order to be fully human.

Why is this? Simone de Beauvoir writes, “If I were really everything there would be nothing beside me; the world would be empty.” There's a  paradox there, that one's self-importance taken too far can lead to a vacuum: we need not just to have other people recognize our worth (and I won't get into Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic today), but also recognize the worth of others. But not just that, either: both people have to recognize that they contribute to what is necessarily an asymmetrical relationship. What do I bring, what do you bring? Those two things are unique, never equal, but both vital to the relationship. 

When this goes well, the combination of support and receptivity we give one another expands our capacity to support and receive: in feeling supported, I am able to better support, in receiving from another I am better able to receive. I focus here on receiving rather than giving, because giving is often problematic: our motives are mixed. Sometimes I give you what I have, not what you want; or I give you what I think you need, ignoring your stated desires. Or I give you something that I value - a lesson in philosophy! - but I give it in order to show my mastery of a subject, maybe even my superiority (in a particular realm), rather than giving it as a gift. 

And so I focus on our receptivity: can we really listen to others? What are they trying to convey? That can be the bigger challenge: I've seen people come together, each say their piece without listening to the other, and part feeling unvalued by the other, because they were more interested in talking than listening. I've done that; I sometimes worry that's all blogging is. A lot of times, I've found that what people really need is just someone to listen, without judging, without trying to fix, just listening. Why do we have so much problem with that? As I've said in a different context - correcting John Lennon - it's not easy, but it is simple. But I think we don't listen because we're worried that, in taking a receptive position, providing support for someone else, we won't get our own needs met. If I'm worried that my needs won't get met, I can't be fully present to your needs. To state it slightly differently, if I'm operating out of an economy of scarcity, rather than an economy of abundance, scarcity becomes the norm and becomes self-reinforcing. 

So we have to step out in faith. One of the things I've found myself saying, in different contexts, is that we're all broken, and we all need each other in our brokenness. We all fail, we can feel like failures and blame others for being failures, but in the end we come back together in acceptance of the limitations, because that's the only way forward. Our hearts have the potential to grow larger as we find the ability to let more people in, and in those connections we find the beginnings of healing. Because we're social animals. 

No cartoon today, sorry.