Human Being and Society - Essay Example

? Man and Society Being a human being in society means having a vast amount of responsibility; human beings have to look out for others, especially their families, and thus bring about their upbringing, help them with food and shelter, take on the responsibility of looking after them, etc. this involves the interaction of man with other people within a collectively large environment known as a society. Society is the aspect within which human beings thrive and interrelate with each other, and this helps in their personal growth and development as well. The role of society with relation to a human being has been thus described in this paper because this is the aspect of a human being’s life that helps him to achieve greater heights in his personal life. Society is the main factor that influences a person and formulates his characteristics and actions towards other people. Keywords: human being, society. Man and Society Man has been surviving within society since times immemorial. As discussed in the abstract of this paper, society is a very wide concept, meaning the collective environment within which a group of people come together and live in a way that their actions influence the habits of each other. Whatever a person does is an influence of the kind of societal environment he has been brought up in. Most people condemn society by making it sound like a bad thing, or an aspect through which people only learn how to ‘gossip’ or talk behind other’s backs. However this is not true entirely because society is also a measure through which people can understand others, learn new things from each other, as well as utilise their potential of the greater benefit of everyone else. The concept of nurturing a person is a very widely used concept; it is according to this that a human being grows with respect to other people around him. Society consists of a vast number of different kinds of people that have grown into beings in their own ways. Each of these people, influence others in some or the manner and help him thus inculcate habits that they possess. A person is attracted to anything that seems mostly impossible for him to achieve; thus, this is how a human being picks up different kinds of habits from his surroundings, or from society, and thus affects his own life. Every group that persists in society must also show a willingness to accept a human being into their group. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.” He wrote this in his famous piece of writing, ‘Eloquence’. Emerson means to say that the factors that persist in a human being’s environment are enough to help him grow as a person; this is because there are enough tests that a man faces in his external surroundings in the form of experiences that arise by being with other people. However, Emerson, even by writing about a man’s surroundings and society, was afraid of being a part of the same. This can be seen through Holmes’ writing, where he stated that “Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times.” By taking this example, one can understand the psychological pressure that a human being is faced with by being with his peers, in society. If we look at this from a wider aspect or point of view, it can be explained as thus; when a person is young, during the course of his childhood or infancy, he is very carefree and does not care much about the people around him. A child is not prone to comprehending how he becomes a part of society, or the kind of proper behaviour that he must emit in order to be accepted as part of the same. At the same time, other people in society also do not pay much heed to the bad habits of a child and pardon hi for not being aware of the ways of the world or societal behaviour and etiquette. However, when the same child grows up into an adolescent or faces an older section of his life, he is ridiculed by people around him if he fails to adhere to the rules and regulations that are followed monotonously due to societal conduct and social behaviour. Emerson thus, was a philosopher that criticised the rules of society and the kind of norms that a human being is forced to follow just in order to be a part of it. Taking modern day examples, from the famous book by author Jon Krakauer, ‘Into the Wild’ was a story about a young man, Christopher McCandless who felt suffocated by being in his surroundings. He was sick of ‘society’ and the kind of dreary and drab rules that everyone followed. According to him, he wanted to live a life in the wild, among animals and nature, as it were meant to be by God himself. Society is a very developed form of living according to many philosophers. It takes away the nature and joy of life because with time, the concept has come to involve only the cooperation of a number of individuals on a different level. When a person carries out any actions, it is based on whatever he has learnt from other people around him. Thus, society is the unity formed between different people whereby which people help each other to know and understand things. Only by witnessing acts that have already been achieved by others within the same society can a man go ahead and develop those actions in a way that they benefit him as well. This further helps in determining the wealth of a man as well. On the other hand, all actions that are carried out by a human being are the result of being restrained and not carrying out unnecessary actions that would lead to trouble. All this intellect and information arises from being a part of society. This is because societal norms that have been passed down from generation to generation help a person to understand and give him a concise picture of what may be wrong, or what may be right. On the basis of this, a person goes ahead with his tasks and thus is able to perform in a much clearer manner, as all his affairs are regulated as per the terms and norms of society. At the same time, a number of individuals within society might have terms, norms, conditions or views that may not change with time. These same thoughts are passed down through their families, through the generations, without developing any kind of change in the thought process. This however, might seem to create a hindrance in an individual’s life who is used to thinking out of the box and not conforming to society’s needs and wants. For example, most people within society have very rigid views with respect to religion and culture. These must be followed by all people within the society; otherwise the people who do not, are looked down upon as social outcasts or pariahs, and are outright ousted by the members of that society. Despite this, most people would want to break away from a society that poses such restrictions on people because this causes a hindrance in thinking and does not allow a person to grow or develop as individual human beings. Coming back to the idea and concept of being a part of society, problems occur in people’s lives because they get immersed within society and conform to other people’s views, thus not being able to retain their individualistic personalities or views. Every human being is free to be his own man, and thus it is the idea of a number of human beings coming together that leads to the formation of a society, and not the other way around. The psychological aspect of being a part of society is to do with the thinking of each and every person that is a part of it, and how the collective thinking is a potential for scaling new peaks. However society, for a long time, has been a platform for people to take advantage of others that are deprived and leads to exploitation of man, further leading to resistance and reluctance of people wanting to form a part of it. These forces help to either attract or disengage people from being together and form the scientific aspect of being a part of societal needs. In order to remain united within society, human beings need to learn to work in harmony with each other and embody wealth as only one of the aspects of growing on a personal basis. As stated by Emerson in his theories of philosophy, society should be a dais for liberation of man from conformed thinking and onto more characteristics behaviour. Just like during the times of cavemen, as both men and women, in spite of the many differences that they possessed, worked together for the collective good to grow and develop as a societal whole, and learned to achieve the best of accomplishments the same way, people in the modern day and age should be a part of society. This further helps people to grow while being a part of their surroundings, in collaboration with others and gives man a true picture of what society actually is and how a human being should fall prey to its goodness. References Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men, London, Bell and Daldy, 1870, p. 113. Read More