A full social spectrum

As human beings, we are social above all else.  Cause a break in this much needed sociality and there is a break in the human being.  To be ones best, one must have a full social spectrum.

Best means something like optimal.  Not most money, not most possession, not toughest, not having some special ability others don’t. Best is fulfillment in achieving self; being a human being.  Striving to live the life, that is 'best'.  In this sense that I am using it here anyways.

The way we live our lives is broken in this sense.  We do not live socially as we were meant to live.  As human beings we are not our best.

This is the stepping out of the box business that is so difficult for people.  It requires one to realize that even if they think they are being social they are not.  They are not really being social if the idea of what being 'social' means is set by our current American societal standards.  This standard is far from the best.  It is not even close.

This is what I mean by that fundamental flaw in psychology research.  It typically defines what is best by societal standards and performance, and not in comparison to the actual way human beings are meant to live; being truly social caring for one another.  In this conversation the reasons why we live the way we do does not matter so much.  The reasons why are not nearly as important as having the realization itself that we can live a different way.  People often get offended if you suggest what they are doing is not what they should be doing.  But it still stands.  One must open their eyes to possibility to see that the criticism is not offensive.  It is what it is.  If one truly researched it, one would come to the same conclusion.  Attaching feelings to the observation of another is almost certainly the stop of all critical thinking.  So just think about it.  Don’t let your feelings sway you.  Feelings must mature too.  They are never supposed to stay the same.

Maturing never ends, there is never some time, when it is done.  The day will never come when you stop experiencing.  The same goes with the changing of our back ground information, it is always growing and changing.  It is a constant and never ending process.  Some people suppress the change but this only increases their suffering.  The flow of experience does not ever rest.  Even as we sleep our brains are experiencing.  Our socialness as human beings never rests either.  It is a non-stop flow and the two, social and experience, cannot be separated.  We may separate them in our minds, metaphorically, as two different things, but they are actually the same thing in actuality.  They are connected and cannot be separated.  Our brains literally evolved to be social.  This concept of social also means we are all connected.  We are individuals in a whole, not separate from it.  In a certain sense the word human and social are interchangeable; they are synonyms.

Everything we do affects those around us, regardless if they, or we, are aware of it or not.  Our conscious mind is but a speck of the complete individual.  The largest portion of our brain is for social functioning and our conscious mind, most of the time, has no idea about this and what it is causing us to do, or should I say, how to be. The affect of this fact on our life is profound because it means so much of what we do requires absolutely no thought whatsoever.  We are oblivious to it. This is lack of awareness.  Having no idea of the affect of those around us and our environment, on us as individuals. It goes both ways.  Because it is one thing. 

Achieving awareness is a big part of the overall maturing process.  Could almost say it is the process, but we do have a great deal of biological maturity that happens regardless of whatever we might think or feel.  By doing this, by becoming aware of what is going on around us, this is what it means to be actually educated, to be in control of one’s own life.  Failing to educate one's self harms those around you whether you know it or not.  We are not taught these things unfortunately.  We are typically taught that by going to school and learning some trade/skill/ or line of thought that we are educated.  I have my suspicions as to why so many people are apathetic but that is another subject.  Luckily for me though, overcoming my past caused me to dig deep into the depths of what it is to truly be a human being and here are a few of the ideas I picked up along the way.

What if all the women raising kids, what if they were all helping each other out?  What if instead of living in groups of two, a man and a woman, trying to work, raise kids, live life, and be happy; what if instead of that we were living in groups of four or five?  What if instead of a city block containing 10 or 12 houses it contained one big one?  A large living area, with separate living quarters for the families?  What if everyone was helping to raise each other’s children?  What if living in tighter quarters with larger numbers of people helps keep each other accountable for their actions, enables them to mature better, faster, and live a much less stressful life? 

I am not saying something like this would completely change the world and that all of our problems would just go away.  I am not saying that all of the suffering would go away either, suffering is part of life like all the rest. This idea will not create some utopia.  But I am saying that this kind of living would greatly reduce the suffering being created by our current culture.  It would make what we have now, much better.  It would be evolution in effect.  Changing as a social organism to survive the current environment. 

If there are eight or ten adults living in the same house, if the children all grow up living together sharing everything.  That would mean at any one time there would only ever need to be half the adults at home.  Just considering this fact alone, think about how much freer each individual living in that situation would be?  How much easier would it be for the mothers to nurture the children?  For children to not only have one mother for nurturing but four or five; not just one father figure, but four or five!  The shortcomings of one compensated for by another; it would have a profound impact.  Each of their individual traits and characteristics contributing to the children's over all development and security through an entire childhood.  Think about being able to go on dates, to go to the store, to do anything you wished and know your children would be safe while you were gone.  People would be able to leave for weeks at a time and their children would be absolutely fine. 

The benefits of the children growing up so much more social with other children, having so many more adults around to support and raise the children would be profound beyond comprehension.  From our current standard it would be difficult to imagine from a child's perspective what this would be like.  This is not some original idea of mine.  I am nowhere near the first person to realize this.  But I also know it is not beyond our reach; it is actually quite feasible.  It simply requires us maturing a bit more, collectively, just like we hope our children will do.  Like we ourselves are supposed to do.  We just have to see that we have not set our standard high enough; the GDP is not the standard.  Our quality of life should be set on the quality of the communities in which we live.  Don't miss this major point, the more social we are, the more we grow.  It starts though, with us as individuals.

We have the internet now.  All of the families could have something like FB, where people vouch for one another, keep track of what other families are doing.  A social network for finding other family groups to live with when moving occurs or disagreements occur.  And they will just as they do now.  We all change, so when the changes occur, we have the means to move on and find others to live among.  As they say, if you don’t like who you are, change who you are around.  There would be a lot more open land with so many fewer individual houses for all sorts of endeavors.  Growing food, hobbies, sports, parks, on and on.  The benefits of this type of life seem almost endless in comparison to the divided way in which we live now.  There would be far less children growing up without parents, far less children being neglected, far less being treated with violence.  Permanently scaring their lives.  Parents would be less stressed about their day to day life because there would be others there helping raise the children.  Others there helping live life.  Just the lessening of stress alone would have a huge impact on the raising of children.

Our social spectrum would simply be much more complete.

When I look at someone, clear my mind, truly look at them, that is when I can see them as another human being who is just like me, exactly like me, in what it is to be a human being.  Just trying to get through life; surviving.  This does not mean I take on some passive role and just accept whatever it is they are doing, even if I realize exactly why they are doing what they do.  Yes, I should have compassion.  Yes, I should display empathy, but I must also love them.   When you love someone you hold them up.  When they do something we all know is not even an attempt at best; we say something to them, that is love.  This can be done in a variety of ways, it would be impossible to list them all.  But we don't turn our heads and this is exactly what happens in our current society.  Almost everyone just turns their head the other way.  Apathy; the opposite of love.

If we are all living together in larger groups, there is no head turning.  You can't just turn your head when you hear a child screaming in the other room because a man is abusing him.  That man doesn’t do that kind of thing when others are around, because he knows it’s wrong.  But when someone can go home where there is no one to hold them accountable, they can, and do, whatever they wish to their children.  No matter how atrocious.  They do not realize those kinds of events, that those kinds of actions affect those children for their whole lives. 

Isn’t it time to end this? It needed to be ended thousands of years ago.  But now we are in a different age, now we have the ability to acquire massive amounts of knowledge: FOR FREE.  Catholics are no longer killing us for seeking the truth, although our government is getting closer and closer to telling us what we can and cannot know.  But we still have the means and ability.  It is time, as a culture, to begin demanding of one another to grow up, to mature, and to become educated about life, about what is going on around us and to do something about it.  It is time to start much more than a political revolution; it is time to start a cultural revolution.  We desperately need to change our culture, from greed; to care and concern for one another, showing this, by doing it first ourselves.

We both scientifically and technologically have the means to move beyond this current type of cultural family life.  We have the ability to move beyond division and apathy.  The reflection of a generation of children raised in a more egalitarian environment would ripple on forever and ever in what it is to be an American.  To be free, to be educated, responsible, and Democratic.  To live in a country where we do our part.  A land where we are not the best because we have the highest GDP but where we are the best because of how we live our individual lives by taking care of one another on a personal level in our own communities.  An America where we do not need the government to do anything for us because we do it for ourselves.  An age where we live our lives to the fullest. 

By living our lives divided, not realizing the affect it has on us as social beings, we are unable to do all the things that need to be done in any given day, not if we are to have families.  But by being more social, living together in bigger groups, caring for one another, we would be much freer to live our lives more fully.  To mature and realize you can love more than one person; that more than one person can love you.  To mature and know that you can love other people's children as much as you love your own.  To actually know what is going on around us, to have the time to read and learn and teach each other.  There is so much to learn it can’t be done without help.  To be good people, in a free country, living good lives.  I know it seems foreign.  Such a big change.  All the negatives creep in, what about this and that.  All change is difficult at first.  But the change starts first with discontent; which we have in abundance.  Next is discussion.  Share this with your friends.

I will definitely be writing more about this.  Everyone tells me to keep it short.  So I will break up the whole concept.  Bit by bit. 

There is a great deal more to being aware.