The Person Alone | Why We Need People

But are people ever really alone? Can we ever truly escape the social world in which we have been born and raised? Don’t we all in our most private moments, remain aware of other people?

Of course, there are times when we may want to isolate ourselves for brief periods, as when we have suffered a painful social encounter, or when we must meet a work deadline but have been continually interrupted. We may look for a room or a quiet place where no one can find us, but, in that very act, we are thinking of others because we are anticipating their possible behavior and moving toward those places where we think they will not go. When we get there, we may think about the expectations of others and our obligations to them, even though they are not physically present. In fact, even in the privacy of our own room, with the door closed and the shades drawn, we may feel and act as if we were on a stage of sorts, being closely and critically scrutinized by an audience made up of those who comprise the world of our past and present. And doesn’t this awareness of others continually shape our behavior?
                Think of Robinson Crusoe, for example, or the boys in Golding’s book Lord of the Flies. Abandoned on a deserted island, far away from civilization, they constructed for themselves not a strange and unfamiliar world, but a replica of the society they once knew. For Robinson Crusoe, it was a world replete with time-pieces, a shelter, and a type of moat to protect himself against the “hostiles.” For the boys in Golding’s book, the replica included special uniforms, a division of labor (hunters and fire builders), a list of rules, and eventually systematic violence, death, and destruction—all imported, so Golding would have us believe, from jolly old civilized England. (Golding, 1954)

                Perhaps the sociologist Emile Durkheim was correct when he said that the individual is little more than an abstraction. It is difficult to imagine a person for whom others are not present, either physically or psychologically. Everyone wants to be alone sometimes, yet often when people are not readily available, we seek them out. Jeff’s experience in the isolated cabin reflects a common conflict, one with which the child must deal at the very earliest stages of development. We all wish to become independent, to be free from interference and obligations to others. On the other hand, we all need others. This conflict has been thoroughly discussed by Erich Fromm (1941).

                Why do we need others? Jones and Gerard (1967) answered this question with their distinction between effect dependence and information dependence. Essentially, we need people for their effect on us, through the rewards they can offer and the problems they can help us avoid; we also need others for the information they can provide about our world and about ourselves.

                Others Help Us to Attain Rewards:

o   Satisfaction of Physical Needs

o   Satisfaction of The Need for Love and Approval

o   Affiliation and Fear-Reduction

(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. (1983). SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: United States of America.)

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