Download Nature of Human Being, Society, and Culture Human Nature

Nature of Human Being, Society, and Culture
Human Nature
Philosophers have made various claims about what is our outstanding characteristic, our key quality.
They have pointed to our ability to make and use tools, to love, to know right from wrong, to feel, to
think and to use language.
Religious leaders emphasize that we each have a soul and a conscience. They may also stress that we
are created in God's image (thus, we are closest to God) or that we are selfish and sinful (thus, we are
similar to other animals).
The more cynical critic maintains that we are the only animals that makes war on its own kind (even
though other animals are clearly aggressive toward members of their own species).
Sociologists, too, have much to say about the nature of the human being. They maintain that our
unique qualities include that we are:
1. social, in that our live are linked to others and to society in many complex ways; and
2. cultural, in that what we become is not a result of instinct, but of the ideas, values, and rules
developed in our society.
Without these two qualities, we would not be what we are.
Human Beings Are Social Being
To claim that the first human beings were social is simply to recognize that our social life was always
important to us and that humans never existed without this quality. The first humans were depended on
one another, and lived their whole lives around others as they reached adulthood, as do a few
individuals today, but all were social in their early lives, and the vast majority were social throughout
their adult lives.
Human need others for their very survival. Infants need adults for their physical survival: for food,
shelter, and protection. Adults also need other people. we depend on others for our physical survival: to
grow and transport our food, to provide shelter and clothing, to provide protection from enemies, and
almost all the things we take for granted. As adults we also depend on others for love, support,
meaning, and happiness. Human survival, therefore, is a social affair. Almost all of our needs -- physical
and emotional -- are met through interaction with others.
To be social also means that much of what we become depends on socialization. Socialization is the
process by which the various representatives of society -- parents, teachers, political leaders, religious
leaders, the news media -- teach people the ways of society and, in so doing form their basic
qualities.Through socialization people learn the ways of society and internalize those ways -- that is,
make them their own. No other animal depends on socialization for survival as much as the human
being. Almost all other animals depend primarily on biological instinct rather than socialization for
survival. Human being live in a world where socialization is necessary for survival; that socialization is
ongoing, lifelong , and broad in scope.
Besides showing us how to survive, socialization is also necessary for creating our individual qualities.
Our talents, tastes, interest, values, personality traits, ideas, and moral are not qualities we have at birth
but qualities we develop trough socialization int the context of the family, the school, our peers, the
community, and even the media.
We have looked at three ways in which we are social. Our survival depends on others, we learn how to
survive through watching and learning from others, and we develop our individual qualities largely
through socialization with others. A forth quality of the human being attests to the importance of our
social life: our very humanity. At what point does the human being become human? Sociologists
typically focus on three interrelated qualities: the use of symbols, the development of self, and thinking.
The Use of Symbols
A symbol us something that stands for something else and is used in its place for purposes of
communication. Words are the best example of symbols. They stand for whatever we decide they do.
We use words intentionally to communicate something to others, and we use words to think with.
Besides words; however, we also decide that certain acts are symbolic (shaking hands, kissing, raising a
hand). And humans also designate certain objects to be symbolic: flags, rings, crosses, and hairstyles, for
example. Such objects are not meaningful in themselves, but they are designated to be.
We use symbols to think with: to contemplate the future, apply the past, figure out solutions to
problems consider how our acts might be moral or immoral, generalize (about anything, such as all living
things, all animals, or all human being), and make subtle distinctions between smart and not-so-smart
candidates for office. Our whole lives are saturated with the use of symbols. And, far from being created
for us by nature, social interactions that our representations are developed, communicated, and
understood by us.
Selfhood
In a similar way, human develop self-awareness only through interaction with others, and selfawareness, too, qualifies as a central human quality. Humans develop a realization that they exist as
objects in the environment. "This is me." "I exist." "I live, and I will die." "I think, I act, and I am the
object of other people's actions." This self-realization should not be taken for granted. It arises through
the acts of others. We see ourselves through the eyes, words, and action of others; it is clearly through
socialization that we come to see ourselves as objects in the environment. Selfhood develops in stages,
and each stage depends on a social context. Through interaction with significant others, we first come to
be aware of the self, and we see it through the eyes of one other person at a time. Selfhood makes
possible many human qualities.
First, we can see and understand the effects of our own actions, and we are able to see and understand
the effects of the acts of others on us.
Second, selfhood also bring us the ability to judge ourselves: to like or dislike who we are or what we
do, to feel proud or mortified. We develop a self-concept, and identity, and self-love or self-hatred.
Third, self also means self-control, our ability to direct our own actions We can hold back; we can let go
at will; we can go one direction, and, upon evaluation, decide to tell ourselves to go quite another. We
are not simply subject to our environment -- we are able to alter our own acts as we make decisions,
and we are able to do something other than what we have been taught to do. The more we investigate
the meaning and importance of having a self, the more obviously it can be recognized as one of our
central qualities. and it is a socially developed quality: Without our dependence on social interaction,
selfhood would certainly not exist.
Mind
George Herbert Mead made sociologists aware that the ability to think is intimately related to selfhood
and symbol use. Mead called this ability mind. Humans, like all other animals, ate born with a brain, but
the mind -- the ability to think about our environment -- is a socially created quality. Symbols are
agreed-on representations that we use for communication. When we use them to communicate to our
self, we call this thinking: and all this communication that we call thinking, Mead called mind. Humans
do not simply respond to their environment; they point things out to themselves, manipulate the
environment in their heads, imagine things that do not even exist in the physical world, consider
options, rehearse their actions, and consider how others will act. This ability, so central to what humans
are, is made possible through symbols and self, which (as we saw above) are possible only through social
interaction.
Human Being Are Cultural Beings
Culture is here defined as the ideas, values, and rules that are socially created and are understood.
Culture is abstract. Instead of physically responding to out environment, we bring a socially constructed
perspective of the environment and our selves that influences our actions. We discuss our world, we
have to think about our world, we use abstractions to understand and act in situations. The knowledge
we learn in our lives is not lost when we die but is passed down to others. Because of this cultural
quality, societies differ considerably from one another. Each has a somewhat unique approach to living.
Culture distinguishes organizations of people.
Being Social and Cultural
What difference does it really make that we are social and cultural being? First, to be social and cultural
means that we are not set at birth but can become many different things and can go in many different
directions. Because we are social and cultural, we are capable of becoming a saint or sinner, a warrior or
business executive, a farmer or nurse. One can become only what one knows, and that depends on what
one learns.
Second, distinct societies arise. Societies based on culture rather than instinct, imitation, or universalspecies teaching will vary greatly in what they emphasize, and thus what they socialize their populations
to become. this also means that as new circumstances and problems arise, people can reach new
understandings andf change their ways.
Third, to be social and cultural also means that to a great extent each of us is controlled by other people.
We are located within a set of social forces that shape and control what we do, what we are, and what
we think. The culture that we learn becomes a part of our very being and comes to influence every
aspect of our lives. Unlike other animals, it is not nature that commands us. Nor, unlike what most of us
may think, it is not free choice that characterizes many of our decisions. We are social and cultural
being, and it is impossible to escape the many complex influences that this fact has on us.
Fourth, we become active beings in relation to out environment. As we depend on social and cultural,
we are no longer passive organisms who must respond according to instinct or conditioning. Instead,
socialization into a society with culture allows us to understand what is around us. Society and culture
may control us, but society and culture also give us a more active relationship to our environment by
allowing us to rise above a simple response to it in a fixed way.
Joel M. Charon
Posted 14th October 2012 by Praphat Sirivongrangsan
Labels: Being Human, culture, society