psychoslaphead
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a wonderful essay called "Self Reliance" and in this essay he touted the idea that a person should "believe your own thought, ... believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men."
But what is "true for you in your private heart" is influenced by outside forces, by other human beings and their constructs--- or Society. So I pose the question:
Do you think it's possible for a person to completely escape the influence of society?
(Not an expert in anyway shape or form and really don't have time or desire to do the months of research to properly answer this question so what you see is based off my basic understanding.)
I am not sure that it is. First off to do so we would have to assume that people develop independent of their environment and in any environment we would develop into the same person at the core. There are a lot of debates over nature vs nurture and no sure answer has been decided though there is a general consensus that it is a mix between the two.
So to your question can a person completely escape the influence of society, I answer no as we are products of it to our core being.
Now to a question you didn't really ask: Can people have a core belief spread among different environments and different societies and I would say yes to that.
This is based off the idea that we are built around our interactions with people and these interactions include more than the basic societal norms. For example we you hurt someone and have been hurt before, you can associate your previous experience with the current one. You can realize any negative or positive feelings you have felt in a similar situation is transferable to another person. In other words humans have the capacity for empathy. This empathy with others, I believe, leads to a general guide line to how we act and form societies. Sometimes we may break this guide line and harm others as a societal norm but my experience with those who do often feel guilt/other negative feelings even when they are not judged or told what they did was bad. Rather they have an innate feeling of what they did was a wrongdoing. From having dealt with people like this they often are dealing with cognitive dissonance relating to societal acceptance the situation and personal feelings many have needed emotional treatment.
So what I am trying to say, not quite sure it came out right, that although we are raised in society and can't really escape it totally we have parts of us that will rebel against social ideas which if not addressed can result in harm of ourselves.
If any of that makes sense.
Reply
