When academics constantly defines human beings as being entirely social creatures, what exactly do they mean by this?
What is their definition of social? Is it possible that the behaviors of human beings is not as social as previously thought?
Entirely social? Not all academics. I’ve read people who view everyone as a numerical quantity based on material worth.
I think RU/UR posted the figures on an individuals self-worth in some thread or other… so are we social commodities?
I think most human organizations are ones out of convenience and not that of the social.
There are so many anti-social behavior patterns when it concerns human beings that I believe the definition has been taken advantage of not to mention built upon too many vague assumptions.
While we are creatures of habit being habitual in nature I do not believe we are entirely social.
According to capitalism, yes.
thepathosofdistance.forumotion.c … 27.htm#129
This quote here is a excellent way of illustrating my skepticism and criticism when it concerns describing human beings as social or collective.
If individual selfish (self-oriented) behavior leads to the creation of group entities behaving collectively, then the individuals have become both individual and collective beings. When a group is created, the members of that group, insofar as they participate among the primary and secondary relations of the group’s dynamics, and insofar as they are defined in terms of these dyamics, become collective entities in a real sense. To isolate the individual from the collective in these situations is to miss the foundamental essence of a group.
Why can we not be both individuals and social animals? These are not exclusive of one another.
And in fact, they work hand in hand. The individual tends to derive his individuality against others, i.e. against the group - thus the group indirectly assists in the generation of individuation. Self-affirmatory individuation is far rarer than reactive individuation, and on a deeper psychological level these intertwine anyways. Even the perceptions and cognitions/judgments of what would constitute selfish behaviors occurs within a group dynamic, and is subject to the fluxes and flows of group-dynamic energies, structures, fields and forces - the physical and psychological spaces within which the individual is in fact an individual (expresses and experiences his own individuation) are group spaces, constructed next to, within and from the relations between other people and other group structures (social structures, capital, geographic space, economic rules, political powers, etc) . . . in short, within the reality that we live in, it is not possible to “be an individual” without also being a member of group(s), and since collective entities and processes define the social and psychological atmosphere of our reality, individuation itself takes place within these fields and thus is subject to their rules, nuances and codes, even where this subjectification mainfests primarily as the individuals reaction against such forces.
We are individuals in a sense that we think and feel and experience in a personal individual manner - we are also collective beings in that we think, feel and experience within the composites of relations to other people and to group structures and processes. These group realities define us on deep psychological levels, from the earliest childhood experiences with others and with the world at large. The individual is tied into the social, and the social is of course determined to a large extent by the actions of individuals, but there is no clear-cut line separating these. There is no “Individual” or “Social”, there are only extremely complex and interconnected entities of diverse multi-level forces which exist diffuse and across such artificial boundaries as we imagine, “individuals”, “society”, “this person”, “that group”, etc. . . . all such lines are for exclusive and empirical-descriptive purposes only, to pick out a common characteristic or mainfest relation, but in no way do these artificial classificatory lines truly describe what is actually the case, in reality and with respect to what constitutes and comprises/defines these entities and forces. For the most part, the concepts ‘individual’ and ‘social’ exist for linguistic purposes of classification and identity and are at most mere approximations to the physical and psychological realities that comprise us, others, the relations between us and the societies and realities around us.