Has social acceptance become too important in human society?

DTK October 09, 2016 at 16:50 4750 views 8 comments

Social acceptance seems to have become much too greatly impacting on a person's life. We can see this in teenagers who wish to become popular, adults who want to go out so they can meet people they can get along with, politicians who often make lies to win votes and gain public approval, and young adults going into business in hopes of becoming rich so as to please their's and other's desires.

At times it is hard to see any self-acceptance if any at all. People have become prone to this rather odd trend stemming from the rise of technological advances that it seems as if the only thing that matters is to fit in.

Comments (8)

BC October 09, 2016 at 17:42 #25369 0 likes

There areinner directed persons and other directed persons. It's a fundamental difference in approach to one's life. Inner directed people need much less social interaction; other directed people need much more. What one does with one's social interaction, or its absence, is another matter.

Barry Etheridge October 09, 2016 at 17:52 #25375 0 likes

Reply to DTK There's nothing new in this. Social media and other technical wizardry has merely changed how the need is expressed but status has always been a major driving force in human interaction. Jane Austen's novels are full of just such manoeuvrings!

wuliheron October 09, 2016 at 17:57 #25379 0 likes

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and people are social animals. To ask if we are too social is like asking if fish swim too much or birds fly too much. The problem isn't whether we are too social or whether social acceptance is stressed too much, but how has civilization distorted our natural inclination to be social. Today there are routine protests of magazines retouching photographs to make already stick thin models look even thinner and toy manufactures selling things like Barbie dolls that are so disproportionate they would have to be seven foot tall just to survive. Its similar to the now largely abandoned Chinese tradition of binding women's feet because treating one another as abstractions is the cause of a great deal of confusion. Lao Tzu said, "Habits are the end of honesty and compassion, the beginning of total confusion!"

DTK October 09, 2016 at 18:43 #25386 0 likes

Well, thanks for your answers. I suppose it is only normal for humans to be social.

jkop October 10, 2016 at 07:20 #25491 0 likes

But the question was not whether being social has become too important but whether social acceptance has. There is environmental pressure on individuals to be "socially acceptable", but this can mean many different things, from learning the language to adapting to oppressive habits (e.g. racist, nationalist, ideological) dictated by power in a conformist society.

bert1 October 10, 2016 at 08:36 #25497 0 likes

I heartily agree with the OP. We can be social, without being obsessed with fitting in. Check out:

https://angryautie.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/the-institute-for-the-study-of-the-neurologically-typical/

Cavacava October 10, 2016 at 13:45 #25566 0 likes

Reply to bert1
;)

wuliheron October 10, 2016 at 20:17 #25618 0 likes

When money does all the driving, nobody is steering and the guy with the gun in the backseat decides what is socially acceptable. The more wealth inequality we have, the more obsessed people become with their being socially acceptable. For example, the closer to a major urban center you get, the higher women's heals become because raising a family in a city where you can't go deer hunting and grow a little garden is not an option.