Desire and Socialness

As I talked about in "The Peace Game" post, peace can't be merely defined as a lack of tension. Instead, it's the pursuit of a kind of eternal social value that allows us to have peace in a necessarily tension filled world. Peace doesn't eliminate desire, but takes action towards a justifiable good. This would be easier if we were alone, but since we're not, a major difficulty in attaining peace comes from the fact that we are social animals.

As with all primates, we depend on one another for our survival. Creating cohesive social groups has allowed us to survive. Whether it's relying on electric companies to keep the power going, or leaning on family for emotional support, community is an essential part of life. Because of our lack of pure autonomy, we need to cooperate with others to help us get what we desire.

Since no one wants to be on the wrong end of selfishness, we try and practice mutualism (we both benefit), or reciprocal altruism (one benefits now and the other will be repaid at some point). When we do this though, our desires become tied up with one another. And the more complex the social system we must operate in, the more we have to become invested in what other people want. Because of this, we try and align ourselves with those that have a similar value system in order to reduce friction. This also protects us from having to sacrifice too much of ourselves for the group. Some amount of sacrifice is inevitable though since the restriction of time demands we let go of the less important. We're balancing between serving two masters: ourselves and others. We have to eliminate the "trivial". The fact that we are all part of more than one group only exacerbates this issue.

Despite the personal losses we may incur, we see the potential upside. By enmeshing ourselves with the common desire of the group, we gain more leverage. More leverage means a greater chance of getting closer to what we and the group want. It’s similar to traveling on a plane with a bunch of people. Even if it’s not precisely our destination, it’s a lot closer than we could have gotten otherwise. Socialness allows this. It's in this web of desire that our socialness gives birth to the political though, creating even more complexity in the game to attain peace.