Contrairily to what we see in Herman Hesse’s book ``The stepary wolf”, human beings usually behave as a social animals. In Hesse's book, Harry Haller is a solitary man with lost faith in humanity. He considers himself as half human and half beast, and he deeply abhors the middle-class society. Many of us consider ourselves stepary wolfs, with the pretext that we long for solitude and quietness. I, for instance, consider myself a solitary person that enjoys her alone time. Despite everything, we as part of the human species seem to have been made to live in society with other people. Even Harry Haller himself could not avoid the fact that he wanted and did indeed live in a city with other people. He was neither marginalized from everyone, since he felt the deep urge to join social events, which he after profoundly despised. He was thus not able to avoid society at all.
Our lifes consist merely in the interaction we have with the people that surround us. One might question themself what it is that makes this interaction that effective. We might be taking for granted the fact that thousands of strangers daily cooperate for our society to move forward. Studies show how Homo Sapiens has social instincts that allowed the first individuals to create alliances and hierachies among them. In order to survive in nature, they created those relationships and used them to hunt and fight together. However, when groups became bigger they destibilised and divided due to social disorder.
A way to solve this was ``gossip". This lead to the formation of groups of up to 150 members, where gossip and effective intimacy were possible among all members, allowing them to bond. However, the society we live in is composed of thousands of people that cooperate effectively. The new question that arises then is about what it takes for numerous groups, where gossip is no longer effective, to bond and work together. A great number of strangers can productively collaborate together if they share common beliefs. Therefore, "belief" is the answer. This is what we call “fictional entities” or ``social constructs".
“Any human cooperation at large scale is established on common myths that only exist in the collective imagination of people”
We believe the first fictional entities to be spiritual beliefs, which later on developed to become the different religions we find in the contemporary world we live in. Spiritual beliefs brought people together to participate in crusades, for example, everything was done just to carry a message believed to be bigger than mankind. These entities have been developed in many different shapes, set as an example the laws under which we live, the money we use to buy things, the companies we work on… None of this exists in real life. There are no nations, money, human rights, laws or justice outside of the common belief of mankind. Despite this, fictitious entities are not lies, since they exist in the collective beliefs of people. As long as enough people truly believe in it the entity will continue existing. It will exert some force over the reality.
We are born and educated to believe in these imaginary realities. We are constantly reminded of the order of these imaginary principles. They are everywhere: songs, books, fairytales... These social constructs are incrusted in the material world, they shape our wishes and they will continue existing even if we don’t believe in them.
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References:
“The stepary wolf”, Hermann Hesse.
“Sapiens: a brief history of humankind”, Yuvhal Noah Harari.
“High Resolution Archaeology and Neanderthal Behavior”, Eudald Carbonell i Roura **(Dordrecht: Springer, 2012).
Thank you very much for the post, very very suggestive. These are key ideas that help us understand how the world works, and the present does not stop giving us examples where to apply them.
Here are some small reflections motivated by this interesting entry.
Isn't the self, our self, me, the idea of person, one of these fictions? The first and most important. What we consider our most intimate being, is it not a social construction? A pale reflection of social fictions? I get the impression that our self is above all a grammatical construction, and language is actually a fantastic method of managing unrealities.
How are these fictions born and die? I hope the answer is not brute…