PSU Magazine Spring 2004

inclusive frame of reference. It requires that we attend to the complexities cre– ated by all those other people who are connected to us and to whom we are connected-all those mostly anony– mous others upon whom we rely everyday in countless ways-in order to accomplish our "individual" goals. The sociological perspective informs us that all human situations are inherently and ineluctably social. The social institutions that arise out of these intricate social memberships hold a powerful sway over our actions, even while we think those actions are motivated solely by individual consid– erations. Karl Marx famously summed up this powerful truth when he said that men and women are free to choose, but they are not free to choose any way they wish. Each of us has already been shaped– "trained up ," as it were-by ubiquitous social institutions in which we spend the great majority of our time: earning a living, educating our children, enjoy– ing our families, worshipping our gods. They markedly shape our lives in countless ways of which we are never fully aware. In turn, our belonging and partici– pation in these organizations animates and empowers them. What they ulti– mately consist of is the dynamic collec– tive synthesis of our own individual behaviors, behaviors which most often run along the well-worn paths of expected behaviors created by those who have preceded us. And so it turns out that most of us do what those anonymous others want us to , at least most of the time. This is the primary trick that every society plays on its members-getting us to want to do what we are going to have to do anyway What happens in that process is that we embrace that most fundamental of all human invenLions: the rules. Sociologists call these norms. We usually follow these norms, these directing-paths-of-least-resistance not just because they usually work, not simply because they are readily avail– able, or even because they might be physically enforced. Our conformity is much more a result of volition, of desire, of emotional commitment. And also a result, perhaps, of a lack of that individualism we so strongly believe in. H erein lies a question that has long intrigued sociologists-why do we humans embrace the norms so passion– ately? An immediate answer is that certain concrete rules-especially the "here and now rules" of everyday life– are constantly in use by the people very much like ourselves in whose midst we quite literally find ourselves. A more complete answer would acknowledge that vague sense each of us has of the "open-endedness" of life and the ways in which rules shelter us from drifting aimlessly upon the vast sea of human possibility At an even more fundamental level , this inherent human reliance on group norms-our dependence on the group-comes from an underlying core of anxieties to which each of us is sus– ceptible, however inchoately This core has been identified by a wide array of people in many different ways and by many different names. It is referred to in such diverse sources as Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be, Tom Peters' and Robert Waterman's In Search of Excel– lence, Erik Erikson's Insight and Respon– sibility , and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. At base it is comprised of three primordial human fears: that the unpredictable might break through my stable world at any moment; that how– ever much I might surround myself with others, I am finally alone; that I am never completely certain how it all is supposed to make sense. Such basic fears can only be relieved through an extended and constructive collaboration with others. It is society that enables its members to allay these anxieties, to transcend these fears. It does so by satisfying the human needs that counter each of these fears: needs for order, for membership, and for meaning. Every society and every group provides its members with a convincingly substantial foundation to build their lives upon: order-a stable frame of reference for "what's what"; membership-an explicit sense of iden– tity and belonging; and meaning– intimations, if not explicit recipes , for direction and purpose. The inevitable human interdepen– dence required to sustain these three staples of human existence endows groups with their compelling attractive– ness as well as their tremendous power. That we cannot exist as individuals without these social essentials means that our beliefs, and the actions our beliefs lead to , will always be shaped by the groups to which we belong. G iven this intricate social complexity, we might be tempted to conclude that we were better off not seeing the world from the sociological perspective after all. But that is just not so. While the sociological perspective informs us that we are to a large extent captured by the very forces we think we control, it also provides us with the tools to at least manage if not direct those forces. Ironi– cally, we might well be oblivious to both forces and tools were it not for the insights offered by the sociological perspective. By enabling us to see more, and to understand what we already see even more fully, sociology-in fact, all those sciences which struggle to comprehend human behavior-enables us to con– struct a more complete and multifac– eted picture of our human situation. Through the sociological perspective we are better prepared to formulate and explore more effective answers to the increasingly complex problems of both our "individual" and our collective lives in the world. D SPRING 2004 PSU MAGAZINE 9