On Social Relationships

What is relationship?

Relationship can be defined as a voluntary cooperation between individuals who have mutual needs and sometimes complimentary skill sets. Thus for a relationship to be established there should be a need which can be satisfied to a greater extent by cooperating with another individual who has needs of his own.

In today’s society, the relationships are sometimes (often) formed through peer-pressure. Nonetheless, even such relationships satisfy some of our needs.

So what could be our needs?

The evolutionary objective of life is survival of oneself and then one's own species. To achieve the first and basic objective, two things are required and these requirements constitute the basic needs. These basic needs are food (and a continuous supply of that) and security. To achieve the latter objective, sexual needs also gets added to the basic needs. 

So how did relationships develop?

Sexual relationships should have been the first kind of relationships but such relationships are more personal in nature and not social.

The initial kind of social relationship must have arisen due to the need for security combined with the natural diversities in physical strength and in intellect of people. Thus this relationship would be of protection. In a group everyone is a protector for everyone else. As the group realised the other fields in which they could cooperate, the initial relationship might have then developed, so that everyone is a hunter/food-gatherer for everyone else. Further this transformed into a relationship of sharing food. Since the norms of 'founders keepers' and 'first-come first preference' might not have lasted long, there arose a necessity to divide/share food according to one's contribution. This meant that the type and amount of contribution towards the collective survival of the society would be judged. Since the one who judges the amount of contribution would obviously be the strongest or the most intelligent, and due to the fact that man is inherently selfish, the earlier mentioned diversities slowly became grounds for discrimination.

 

So what?

To judge the 'amount of contribution'; to discriminate is essentially a power, rather it is the power in any society, and because power has an innate tendency to get concentrated, soon the ‘share’ of food became entitlements. This combined with development of agriculture and settled life resulted in property rights. All this along with the advent of money (which complements and supplements power and vice-versa) meant that in such a society, where the survival of any individual is dependent on the infinite and complicated snare of relationships that he/she maintains with every other member of the society, will always have, in all strata, two classes: the rulers and the ruled; the exploiters and the exploited; the 'judge' and the 'judged'.

So what can be (could have been) done? What is the solution?

I think we can find a solution if we could only stick to the definition of relationship.

If we analyse the definition, it is quite clear that relationship when existing between a few people can more efficiently achieve its objectives while more number of relationships not only complicates survival but also renders it meaningless since we don’t have a survival of our own.

Hence I feel that the number of social relationships and through that the dependence of a person, for survival, on others should be kept at minimum.

Thus a more perfect society would be where there are relationships only to the size of a family, and where such a ‘family’ is self-sufficient and doesn't need any reimbursements from the rest of the society.

In such a situation, a family would be an entire independent 'society' in itself.  

Only in such a society can there be comparative equality and justice.

A Cat-Dog Analogy !

Independence and Freedom are virtues that we all cherish. The goriest wars in history were only waged to preserve these values. In fact they are the cornerstones of modern-day lifestyles. And I am quite sure that you wouldn't have failed to notice a difference between cats and dogs in this respect.

Dogs have masters while Cats have servants. The dogs famous for their loyalty and selflessness are actually the ones who lack any kind of freedom or independence. They have their own fixed time to go out or to sleep, fixed meal, fixed bed everything of which is decided by the master. While on the other hand, Cats would eat when they want, sleep when and where they want, go out when they want and simply they don’t care what their master ‘staff’ tells them. 

But why is this difference? What is the origin of this difference?

It’s quite simple actually: Cats don’t trust anybody, not even their owners. Dogs have a strong faith that whatever their masters tell them is for their own good while Cats decide it for themselves. They don’t trust in others’ predicaments. And if you look closely, the nature’s best survivors are those who don’t trust anybody. Take the example of a crow. If you feed birds regularly most of them would not be alarmed by your close proximity but that’s not the case with a crow. It will either attack or flee, if it senses any unusual movements or proximity.

So why is lack of trust so important to independence and survival?

Again its quite simple, when you trust someone to do something, you are actually relieving your responsibilities; you are being dependent on him which obviously takes away the complete independence. And by not fulfilling your responsibilities yourself, you are missing an opportunity to perfect yourself and giving it to someone else. And going with Natural Selection, the more perfect you are, the more ensured your survival is. And frankly speaking, our society is a vicious cycle of trust! No one can fulfill their responsibilities on their own; no one can survive on their own.

But the truly dismaying question is: What is trust? How can we define trust?

Science, as we know, is the most reliable form of knowledge and its reliability is because of its testability. But can we know how reliable a person is? Science emphasizes on relying on any kind of knowledge only after it is proved. But then trust is, by definition, meaningless.  Then how come we built a whole new system, so unlike from what nature gave us, from something as hollow and obsolete as trust?

The questions, the answers, the ways of life and the ways of thinking are all being contradictory to each other and still each one of them can be true all the time and we cannot do anything else but being helpless. 

But I don’t want to be just helpless, so I ask you Who do you want to be: a Dog or a Cat?


--- Sarath Warrier---