Philosophy Now Forum

Hi everyone,
I am trying to understand human nature and it seems to me that group dynamics plays a major role in how society operates. One thing that I have notice is that most successful friendships are asymmetrical in which there is a teacher and a student. For instance, let's say person X knows a lot about dinosaurs, then person Y becomes his student since he wants to know more about dinosaurs. This relationship create a dyad, then this dyad collides with another dyad, I think that a quartet is the most common form of human friendship groups. A good example, would be a couple who befriends another couple.

The thing that I don't understand is why humans then to form social groups instead of being independent people. What I mean by this is that most people will tend to create a small circle of friends where there is a leader and followers and they tend to do most things together. I have experience different cultures, and see the same pattern repeating. The only difference is that some groups like in college as opposed to high school are more open to outsiders, and won't exclude someone temporarily in social situations such as having lunch together but they would still have a limit as when the lunch ends they will go somewhere else with their friends.

1) forming bonds is a very practically skill/feature in humans, that we can rely on eachother in time of need, good friends will usually help eachother, so it can be very mutual beneficial.

2) we might form 1 main bond, and several lesser, and some almost nonexistant. It would be too time consuming and stressig to form too many bonds for the average person, only for very social or buisness relations people may attempt to form many strong bonds.

3) in the cantina, it will cause a natural break in our social behaviour, where we can meet with more people than we usual like to group with, where it's prone to sith with many, like in school we have a high social interaction contrary later in life where we settle with marrige and children, then our social interaction will drastically fall, or even just getting a job.

So we will change behaviour according to the surroundings.

Humans will join small groups where they have a greater chance of becoming the dominate member of that group. In a larger group there is always the chance that someone else will be more knowledgeable or dominant than they are. A big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?

I think that one of the main reasons is it helps to get more personal attention.

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:I think that one of the main reasons is it helps to get more personal attention.

LOL!

Hi Ctk;

You have interesting thoughts.

Ctk wrote:I am trying to understand human nature and it seems to me that group dynamics plays a major role in how society operates. One thing that I have notice is that most successful friendships are asymmetrical in which there is a teacher and a student. For instance, let's say person X knows a lot about dinosaurs, then person Y becomes his student since he wants to know more about dinosaurs. This relationship create a dyad, then this dyad collides with another dyad, I think that a quartet is the most common form of human friendship groups. A good example, would be a couple who befriends another couple.

Society is all about "grouping", but I am not sure that it is caused as much by thought, as it is caused by emotion. Bonding works through emotion, so a person "feels" as if they belong to a group or society, or they "feel" that they do not.

I agree that successful friendships fill a need, and that need must be mutual. It is true that a student needs a teacher, but it is also true that a teacher needs a student. If circumstance causes the group to break up, such as when someone moves, they end up looking for persons, who can fill the place of the lost group member(s).

Some people believe that if everyone spoke the same language and we had a world government, that it would stop differences and problems between groups, but I doubt it. I suspect that people would immediately start breaking down the world population into groups and societies that would develop different dialects and cultures, just as exists today in many large countries.

Consider that a group of researchers, who were studying language in prairie dogs, found that the prairie dogs in another state shared much of the same language, but had some different words. It could almost be described as a different dialect. So this "grouping" does not seem to just be a human trait.

Ctk wrote:The thing that I don't understand is why humans then to form social groups instead of being independent people. What I mean by this is that most people will tend to create a small circle of friends where there is a leader and followers and they tend to do most things together. I have experience different cultures, and see the same pattern repeating. The only difference is that some groups like in college as opposed to high school are more open to outsiders, and won't exclude someone temporarily in social situations such as having lunch together but they would still have a limit as when the lunch ends they will go somewhere else with their friends.

I suspect this is because people are not truly singular, so we are not truly independent. We have the "self" that is me, but we also have the immediate family, which is a larger "self" and an extension of "me". Some see the extended family as being part of their identity, and as such, part of their "self". A person can have their self, their family, their profession, their hobby, their neighborhood, their friends, their favorite team or sport, their religion, their city, state, and country, their race, their gender, and their world as an extended part of themselves. Anything that we put "my" in front of is an extended part of ourselves, so I think there are degrees and circles of "self" that extend out.

Gee

Thank's for your reply Gee,

My question would be can certain humans be born asocial or independent? What I mean by this is can a human be introverted to the point of having a more personal orientation towards life as opposed to having a social group? I see that in America that society is more atomized, however, most people, at least in college form social groups and remain in those groups.