Why do we humans, call ourselves social animals?
What are the basis of society? More importantly, what are the basis and need for a prosperous society? And is society really important? Why can’t everyone have their own space of solitude? Can humans survive or thrive without civilizations?
A healthy functional society gives every individual a chance to bloom, where our survival is taken care of, where we can look beyond the survival and look into deeper dimensions of life.
First of all we are not the only animals to have social constructs. Human beings are referred as social animals because our civilizations are built on very deep foundations of empathy. We are the species which is so evolved that it has no need to be limited by the law of the jungle, where the meek is exploited by the mighty. We are evolved enough to even take care of the meek. And in doing so, we exploit the nature in horrible ways for which it becomes important to not just to be a civilization, but a prosperous one which knows how sustain and live natural.
Most importantly we as mechanisms are built to be in a society. We feel good we want to share it with someone, we feel bad we want people to understand it, we want to be acknowledged and we love it when people show love and empathy. It is not about feeling good on a psychological level. It makes you feel good on a very energy level. With right people which share your frequency, you feel safe, you feel like home, you feel like you can express and open up, you feel like an hour was passed in a few moments.
Society has tremendous amount of impact in shaping ones identity and in return an individual has potential to shape the collective society.
Having said that, not every dimension of your life is for civilization. Personal space and solitude are very important. It is important for ones personal growth. Many many sages and great beings completely withdrew themselves from civilization and all form of worldly attachments. Well that is one way if it works for you, great if nobody is stopping you. You can go on living the forest, living with the nature, which is a great way to exist.
But some of the wants to stay in the civilization, be the part of the transaction that happens for society to survive and moreover want to build a prosperous society, also needs solitude. Yes even for the people living with complete involvement in life also need complete solitude. It is needed to understand and have a deeper perspective about life, about self.
So which one is better?
Being part of society or being alone?
We don’t know about which one is better but there is nothing wrong about either of them. The times now are going to be more individual based, even in a functional society. Individual will of more importance. Society goes through change and every phase has its own pros and cons.
Back when there were agro based civilizations, people used to live in rural societies with huge families because it was much needed for the family to be huge so that all the day to day work can be done with help. Then comes an age where industries took over. There were inventions and innovations which reduced our physical work and so we no longer needed huge family. Don’t misunderstand, we still need society but also personal space. So we have concepts of nuclear family. We are against going through a shift where we won’t be even needing nuclear family. First time in the human history, for a huge part of human population, survival is no longer a question. Never before did so many people think for themselves as an individual. This will bring shift in businesses. The products now will be more customized as per an individual, the services will be made as per personal choice, relationships and the institute of marriage will collapse in many ways, religious organizations will collapse in a huge amount. We are going through a time where we need to understand the importance of society and harmony. We will surely evolve as individuals. For that, you don’t need anything. You need nothing for your inner growth. But for us to thrive, for us to make the functional society where everything works in harmony and yet everyone can have their personal space we need to do some introspection. We need to understand and move beyond our unseen habits, we need to think of the society as one healthy unit.
Join us in our journey of making a healthy, sustainable and prosperous society.