Individuals Relationship to the Community - Essay Example

Sartre's existentialism and Human Emotions talk about how an individual can get the essence of his individuality through his existence. According to him, humans are thrown in this world without essence and with the span of time that he spends in the world, he has the chance to make decisions for there are choices available no matter what kind of situation circumstance he will be. He also added that since the people are born in the environment where there is no external value, it is already his chance to achieve the internal value that he desires.

This optimistic view of existence can be related to how people base their decisions, most of which depend on what will people say and how people will judge. The individual and the community can never be separated although that is the aim and the goal of each one, still to depart from what is real and existing as a factor of survival is absolutely impossible. That is because of the reality that man cannot live and interact with himself alone. The interaction with other people that is needed for the nourishment of his physical, mental and emotional aspects is quite significant to be disregarded.

This is the same reason why the community, the place for interaction is indispensable for his survival. The disadvantage comes in when free will and personal decisions get replaced by what we call "rules," rules which Freud said to be a kind of mutual relationship which replaces the individual's freedom by the rules of the society. This means that one is restricted to do things of his desire to give way to order and justice. Individual instincts for happiness are also controlled so as to reach the level of civilization which is thought to be progress.

And since we talked about progress as another goal of every society, we can't remove the fact that progress deals with new technology which just like what Said mentioned in his book Representations of the Intellectual can somehow alter the real meaning of freedom. This is due to social conformity that needs to be accomplished to get the work done riding along with technology. The improvements and progress being the aim of every community and society, or group of individuals which usually follow a rule will always violate the so-called "norm of freedom" which Said partly talked about in the said book.

The point being raised here is that even if there is a choice for man to be totally free at a given time or place, there is always a big possibility for him to be submissive to the rules which to him will bring forth bigger advantages. The violation then comes in when the expectations of the man who went struggling to deprive himself from personal satisfaction for a bigger cause gets corrupted by a bigger longing not from an individual but from the society, which supposedly is the on that would protect and or work for his desires to be achieved.

A violation can also be done to personal freedom of choice and decision is when at a moment, the basis for a particular action or agendum is already the reaction of the community which cumulatively formed the rules in the society. What went wrong between the individual and the community was the interlocking of desires both from the individual and the community. No matter how mutual the so-called rules can be, there is always a greater desire that may pass over the well-made rules of the