Part II: The Individual and the Collective

What Becomes Normal? 

And this made me think about how much of what we call normal might come from this kind of process.

Everyone has some reference for what is right and wrong, what is normal and abnormal, what is desirable and undesirable. But where did that reference come from?

Some of it comes from biology.

Some from childhood.

Some from the people around us.

Some from what society has already decided.

Some from our own experiences.

And then we add our interpretation to all of it.

But the same society that gave us these ideas is also the society we are part of. So when we express our own ideas, we are also adding something back into that same environment.

Someone experiences something.

They form an interpretation.

They express it.

Someone else sees it and thinks, "This is also how I feel."

They adopt it.

Then they behave differently because of it.

And now their behaviour becomes part of someone else's environment.

So the process does not really stop with the person who first had the experience. An individual's interpretation can become part of another person's environment, and eventually part of the environment in which many people grow up. This is where I started thinking about the individual and the collective differently.

Suppose someone is extremely capable at something but remains completely hidden from society.

A warrior trains every day at home for his entire life. He becomes incredibly strong but never shows his strength to anyone.

Would that strength be recognized?

No.

Would he make an impact?

No.

Would he contribute that ability to society?

No.

His strength would still exist, but socially it would be almost as if it did not exist.

And this made me think that individual development and social contribution are not the same thing.

You can develop something within yourself, but for it to become part of the collective world, something has to come out of you.

It could be science, writing, art, teaching, conversation, or simply the way you live.

But if individuals are constantly putting ideas into the collective environment, then another question follows: what determines which of those ideas remain there? 

Is it what is true?

Not necessarily.

Is it what is good?

Not necessarily.

It could simply be what is repeated, what resonates with people, what fits an existing belief, what gives someone an explanation for something they already feel.

And then it becomes part of the social environment.

The normal can become rare.

The rare can become normal.

A few people practice something and then more people practice it. Eventually it becomes ordinary. Then people grow up inside it and don't even remember that it was once unusual.

But if what becomes normal is not necessarily what is true or good, then I started wondering whether there is any objective direction to all of this.

Because if a particular way of living becomes common enough, it becomes the normal way of living.

But does that make it right?

If almost everyone believes something, is it true?

If almost nobody believes something, does that make it false?

I don't think either follows.

But then what do we use?

We need some way of testing ideas against something outside ourselves.

And that itself is difficult.

Because most people don't have the time or ability to properly test every belief they encounter. We have to make decisions with incomplete information.

So perhaps we are always operating with imperfect models, while still having to act as if those models are good enough for the moment.

From Beliefs to Relationships 

And this problem is not limited to beliefs about the world in the abstract. It also affects how we decide what we owe to other people, and what we think a relationship is supposed to require from us.

I have often thought that people take responsibility for another person's life in the name of love. They start deciding what the other person should eat, how they should look, what they should do, how they should live, what choices they should make.

At some point, care can become ownership.

But another person existed before me.

They were already living before I entered their life.

If I disappear from their life, they will eventually live again without me.

The same is true in the other direction.

I was living before them.

So I don't think the urge to maintain another person's entire life has a very strong basis.

But there is a subtlety here.

It is not as simple as saying, "Everyone is independent, therefore nobody needs anyone."

The more time you spend with someone, the more they experience you and you experience them.

You develop common ground.

You develop shared memories.

You learn how they react to things.

You understand parts of them that you couldn't have understood without actually spending time with them.

Without spending time together, bonds fade.

Conversations halt because you don't have the same common ground anymore.

So it cannot really be that you don't talk to someone and still remain equally connected to everyone.

Some relationships can survive long periods of silence, but even those relationships are not necessarily remaining exactly the same.

And this is where I think I was making another distinction.

I don't mind investing in someone when I actually want to.

If spending time with someone makes me happy, I can do it without expecting anything in return.

But I don't want to continuously compensate for a lack of reciprocity.

If someone doesn't seem interested in knowing me, why do I need to make them curious about me?

There will be people who naturally want to know me.

There will be people who naturally want to talk.

And if I want to talk to someone, I can talk to them because I want to, not because I need to create some obligation in them.

But if I have to continuously create the conditions under which someone will engage with me, then at some point I am no longer simply participating. I am maintaining something by myself.

And I don't think I need to interfere in anyone's life just because I want to remain in it.

But I also don't want the argument about autonomy to become another rigid framework. 

At the same time, I don't think this means that relationships are meaningless or that people should never depend on each other.

There is something in human beings that wants connection.

There is also something that wants autonomy.

And perhaps those things are not really opposites.

Maybe love can involve support without ownership.

Maybe someone can feel secure because they are loved and that security can actually allow them to take more responsibility for their own life, rather than less.

But some people may seek love because they actually want dependence. They don't necessarily want someone to simply be present. They want someone to steer them, take care of them, make decisions for them, or constantly reassure them that they are needed.

And then the word "love" becomes difficult because several completely different things can be placed under it.

There is sexual desire.

There is attachment.

There is affection.

There is care.

There is dependence.

There is companionship.

There is the desire to be needed.

There is the desire to make another person feel safe.

And maybe people sometimes confuse these things because they happen together.

Biology, Culture, and the Individual 

And if these different things can all be experienced under the same word, then I started wondering where our ideas about relationships actually come from. How much of them is biological, and how much is cultural?

Human beings have thousands of years of evolutionary history behind them, but social structures can change much faster than biology.

So if the way people think about relationships changes, does human psychology change with it?

Or does something remain behind?

Maybe the social structure changes but some older psychological tendencies remain.

Maybe people adapt.

Maybe there is a lag.

Maybe there isn't.

Maybe what I am describing is only something people like me notice because we already have a particular way of thinking about relationships.

And this brought me back to the larger social picture.

The individual is shaped by society, but then the individual expresses something back into society.

So the same society that created my way of thinking is also the society that I can potentially change through what I think and what I express.

But if the individual is shaped by the collective and can also change the collective, then my earlier question about frameworks acquires another consequence. I cannot simply say that everyone should live according to their own truth.

Because someone else's truth can become part of someone else's reality.

And that person may adopt it without ever questioning it.

The self-harm example keeps coming back to me because it shows how complicated this can be.

Someone can genuinely experience something as relieving.

They can write about it honestly.

Another person can recognize themselves in it.

The second person can adopt it.

And now the original person's interpretation has entered another person's life.

The original person may not have intended any harm.

The second person may not have done anything irrational in the sense that the idea genuinely made sense to them.

But something harmful can still come out of it.

So then what exactly are we responsible for when we express what we believe?

And how much responsibility can reasonably be placed on someone when they cannot even know all the consequences of what they say?

Because if we demand that every idea be completely tested before it is expressed, almost nothing would ever be expressed.

But if we say that every personal experience is equally valid and can simply be passed on, then we know that isn't enough either.

And somewhere between those two things is where human beings seem to actually live.

We form beliefs from incomplete information.

We act on them.

We express them.

Other people receive them.

Sometimes they are challenged.

Sometimes they are adopted.

Sometimes they become part of the culture.

And sometimes we only find out much later that the thing we believed so confidently was not actually what we thought it was.

Can Psychology Keep Up?

If individuals are constantly shaping one another and culture is constantly changing through this process, can psychological development actually keep up with it?

If culture keeps changing, if relationships keep changing, if the way people understand themselves keeps changing, then perhaps our psychological tendencies are always slightly behind the world we have created.

Or do we continue carrying older psychological tendencies into newer social arrangements?

And if there is a gap, what does that gap feel like?

Is it experienced as loneliness?

As something missing?

As conflict?

Or do people simply adapt and eventually stop noticing the difference?

Maybe it feels like confusion.

Maybe it feels like something is missing.

Maybe it feels like the world is wrong.

Or maybe it feels like we are wrong

 Maybe nothing is missing at all.

Maybe the feeling of something missing is itself produced by the way I have learned to look at things.

And that brings me back to the problem I started with.

Coming Back to the Lens 

I keep thinking that I need a lens to see anything at all.

But once I have a lens, I can also start seeing everything through it.

So I don't know where exactly the boundary is between understanding something and imposing an interpretation on it.

I don't know how much of what I think I have discovered is actually something I have discovered, and how much is simply something that fits together very well inside my own head. 

But I also don't think that means nothing is real.

It just means that I have to remain aware that the way something makes sense to me is not, by itself, evidence that it is true.

And perhaps that is the uncomfortable part.

Because even when I know that I may be wrong, I still have to think using something.

I still have to make decisions.

I still have to interact with people.

I still have to express things.

And whatever I express can become part of someone else's way of seeing.

I need a lens to see the world.

But I also need to remember that the lens is not the world.

So I keep wondering how much of the world we live in is made from things that were actually understood, and how much of it is made from things that simply happened to make sense to someone, then to someone else, and then to enough people that eventually nobody stopped to ask where the idea came from in the first place.