Society and Man

The human being and the group. The problem of man cannot be solved scientifically without a clear statement of the relationship between man and society, as seen in the primary collectivity—the family, the play or instruction group, the production team and other types of formal or informal collectivity.
Everybody performs certain functions in a group. Take, for example, the production team. Here people are joined together by other interests as well as those of production; they exchange certain political, moral, aesthetic, scientific and other values. A group generates public opinion, it sharpens and polishes the mind and shapes the character and will. Through the group a person rises to the level of a personality, a conscious subject of historical creativity. The group is the first shaper of the personality, and the group itself is shaped by society.

The individual is a link in the chain of the generations. His affairs are regulated not only by himself, but also by the social standards, by the collective reason or mind. The true token of individuality is the degree to which a certain individual in certain specific historical conditions has absorbed the essence of the society in which he lives.Man is a kind of super-dense living atom in the system of social reality. He is a concentration of the actively creative principle in this system. Through myriads of visible and invisible impulses the fruit of people's creative thought in the past continues to nourish him and, through him, contemporary culture.

Sometimes the relation between man and society is interpreted in such a way that the latter seems to be something that goes on around a person, something in which he is immersed. But this is a fundamentally wrong approach. Society does, of course, exist outside the individual as a kind of social environment in the form of a historically shaped system of relations with rich material and spiritual culture that is independent of his will and consciousness.

 Culture and Personality View: How Individual and Society Affect Each Other? Or How Individual and Society Interacts?

Both the above views are incomplete. In reality, it is not society or individual but it is society and individual which helps in understanding the total reality. The extreme view of individual or society has long been abandoned. Sociologists from Cooley to the present have recognized that neither society nor the individual can exist without each other. This view was laid down mainly by Margaret Mead, Kardiner and others who maintained that society’s culture affects personality (individual) and, in turn, personality helps in the formation of society’s culture. These anthropologists have studied how society shapes or controls individuals and how, in turn, individuals create and change society. Thus, to conclude, it can be stated that the relationship between society and individual is not one-sided. Both are essential for the comprehension of either. Both go hand in hand, each is essentially dependent on the other. Both are interdependent on each, other.

The individual should be subordinated to society and the individual should sacrifice their welfare at the cost of society. Both these views are extreme which see the relationship between individual and society from merely the one or the other side. But surely all is not harmonious between individual and society. The individual and society interact on one another and depend on one another. Social integration is never complete and harmonious.

 Conclusion

 Society and individual are made mutually dependent and responsible and mutually complementary. The result is that society progresses well with the minimum possible restrictions on the individual. A very wide scope is given to the natural development of the energies of the individual in such a manner that in the end. Society will benefit the best by it. While society reaps the best advantage of the properly utilized and developed energies of the individuals, an attempt is made to see that the normal and sometimes even the abnormal weaknesses of the individuals have the least possible effect on the society. Spirit of service and duty to the society is the ideal of the individual and spirit of tolerance, broadmindedness and security of the individual is the worry of the society. There is no rigid rule to develop the individual in a particular pattern suitable to the rules of the society. 

Society demands greater sacrifices from its greater individuals while the fruits of the works of all are meant equally for all. The general rule is: the higher the status and culture of the individual are, the lesser his rights are and the greater his duties are. A sincere attempt is made by the sociologists to bring to the minimum the clash between the individual and the society, so that there will be few psychological problems for the individual and the society both. The inherent capacities, energies and weaknesses of the individual are properly taken into account and the evolution of the relation between the two is made as natural as possible. Human values and idealism being given due respect, the development of the relation between the two is more or less philosophical