A SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE “SELF” AND THE “OTHER”

Many a time we are confronted with one fundamental question of existence. Whether we should be selfish/selfless or rather what should be the extent of self orientedness and society/other orientedness that should guide us so that we live a satisfying life. Assume that a person is influenced by a humanistic ideology like Marxism or for that matter even humanistic Christianity. That person understands that the purpose of life is to serve society or God at some level in some capacity. More importantly assume that the ideology that the person internalizes advocates a kind of living that privileges self-sacrifice as the only way of life which will enable a person to not only lead a meaningful life but also attain self-actualization. So, in this scheme of things, the ends from the society/religion perspective is supposed to be contribution to society/god and for the individual, the end is self-actualization by leading a life of frugality, self-sacrifice and devotion to his ideology.
But there is a problem in this. Selflessness may degrade into masochism (“Masochism” stands for that irrational psychological tendency to inflict pain on oneself so that self-suffering becomes an end in itself). Masochism may lead to Sadism and many masochistic persons have a Sado-Masochistic personality structure. For example, we see many individuals in Social Service organizations/Communist parties/Religious institutions who think that they have “sacrificed” a lot but have not got anything in return and hence become embittered and sadistic. The tragedy is that many amongst such people may have been very refined in their moral qualities to start with but then since their intellectual understanding was erroneous, they may end up as unhappy and socially dangerous people. A good heart without a scientific understanding of life may not make a person a good human being. So, every individual, from a scientific perspective has to live for himself/herself. Then only she will be happy and her psyche will be integrated and healthy and her contribution to society or any extra-personal entity will be meaningful for herself and others. But the question arises isn’t this a kind of selfishness?. To resolve this problem, we have to look at another crucial aspect of human behavior which is nothing but honesty.
Any person should be honest to his values in life as well have the honesty to question those values which is more difficult. Questioning one’s own value system is needed because, no value-system is static and has to change with time. A person’s value system normally reflects the value system of that person’s society or part of society from which he comes from. He, who does not conform to that value system will be a social deviant. A social deviant can be either a criminal or a social revolutionary. A person who follows society’s value system and also questions them in a socially progressive way is a social revolutionary and one who follows society’s value system and also questions them in a socially regressive way is a criminal. So one has to be true to one’s values whether it is right wing/left wing, liberal/feudal etc while also simultaneously question them continuously. This may cause a lot of mental pain which many persons may not be able to bear. But there is no other way. This pain will be a satisfying kind of a pain because it will be imbued with a sense of purpose. The problem is that if we don’t question our own values, then our thinking will become fascist. Historically, this has been the psychological reason for why left-wing social democracy in Germany gave birth to Hitler’s right-wing Fascism.
Just like all human beings are not equal in mathematical ability or painting skills, there will be differences between human beings in moral qualities and honesty levels. We have to accept this simple fact about human beings while affirming our belief in the basic equality of humanity as well as understand that people can change with time for the better or worse. So, there will be good and bad human beings in this world or to put it in more humanistic terms, people with predominantly good or bad tendencies who will correspond roughly to people with honest or dishonest tendencies.
The question of honesty is not as simple as it seems. It was Sigmund Freud who made a seminal discovery that what we honestly believe about ourselves may not be the truth about ourselves. This discovery of Freud toppled the existing notions of ethics which till then understood dishonesty as the fractured relationship between thought and talk, not as the fractured relationship between thought and thought itself. This is possible because the human psyche is very complex and has many layers. Our mind can effectively manage contradictory tendencies by giving comfortable explanations to itself. Nobody can be dishonest to others. A person can only be dishonest only to himself. For example a person of a very low moral character like say a hardened criminal may not believe that he is morally bankrupt but will be able to give some explanations to himself to justify his actions. This may be the only way for him to be sane.
So, the problem that has to be resolved is not a problem between being “self” oriented or being “other/society” oriented but being honest/dishonest to oneself. In other words, it becomes a question of being true to oneself. This phrase, “Being true to oneself” is getting hackneyed these days. Many interpret that as a free license for being selfish and justifying acting in their bare self interest at all times. This is to be expected in a world in which insecurity levels are increasing and individuals are increasingly getting socially atomized and cut-off from their traditional social moorings and bonds. But “Being true to oneself” has a meaning which is richer and more wholesome than this. For this we have to understand what is meant by the “Self”.
What does the “Self” consist of? Freud made a fundamental mistake by conceptualizing the self as something that is driven by deeply ingrained biological impulses which essentially construct the “self”. This is wrong because as the truism by Aristotle goes, “Man is a social animal” and for him, his social being is primary and his biological being is secondary. The human “Self” is constructed by a complex socialization process through which the biological “being” transforms into the social “being”. In this process not only do the biological senses get subordinated to the social but also the individual realizes herself as a part of a social whole. So, the “Self” in itself organically consists of the “other”. The other may consist of a combination of a set of persons/social entities like a lover, family members, one’s own community or religion or one’s own nation, social class etc. Thus we see people sacrificing for their families, for their country or suicide bombers sacrificing themselves for what they believe etc. A caveat needs to be attached here that all this other-centered self-sacrifices may not be socially progressive and may even be socially regressive. Thus we see highly evolved, selfless individuals getting influenced by regressive ideologies like right-wing religious fundamentalism etc. So, if one is true to his ”self”, he will be automatically satisfying his duty to others.
The Marxist understanding of the individual “self” is much more scientific than the Freudian one but has a big lacuna because it considers the “self” as being determined by being a part of a social “class”. It ignored crucial socio-psychological aspects of the self. So, in Soviet Union and other former communist countries, it was possible for many individuals with venomous and power-centric tendencies to successfully make themselves and others believe that they are living for the sake of the proletarian and hence social interest. This is the psychological explanation for how communism degenerated into state capitalism and dictatorship of a small minority and finally collapsed.
A crucial understanding of the “self” that could complement the Marxist interpretation at the socio-psychological level could be that of Erich Fromm, a member of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. He considers the “Self” to be constructed by a continuous day-to-day process of being in action/praxis which consists of both reflection and action. So, if a person is able to be in continuous passionate activity, then it means that he is being driven by the “self” and hence honest. But this may be very difficult for the person himself to realize. For example, a person who is driven by a great “alien“ ambition and appears to be in constant activity may be actually conforming to what society expects from him than the innate desires of his soul and hence his activity may be mechanical and not one that helps self-realization. But there is no easy way for the person himself to realize this.
So, the only duty that one has to satisfy is to be true to one ”self” in such a way that she understands that her “self” incorporates the other relevant extra-self entities or the “others” who are a part of her existence. One has to learn not only to be passionate about one’s life, one’s worldview/ideology but also passionate about reflecting and questioning her values in a process of engaging with social reality through continuous praxis in which her life’s central passions get reflected in each and every individual activity. This process of being “Being true to oneself” becomes complex and difficult and hence needs continuous and life-long practice. But herein lies the crucial answer to the question of how selfless/selfish a person should be and also the tragedy and the beauty of the human condition. One final caveat - The process of how to be honest to oneself may be much more complex that that which has been discussed in this article but this is what my own limited understanding permits.