How to Resolve The Social Conundrum

The larger social situation we find ourselves in has intensified the issue which we might call “the social conundrum”, for lack of a better term.

Simply put, it is the holistic totality of our postmodern social affairs, fraught by callous self-interest, cynicism, egocentrism, and a non-caring attitude towards strangers and even acquaintances, old classmates, and others rom the past.

This predicament has arisen from the endless options that people have nowadays of potential people to bond with and a widespread pathological attitude of non-caring towards others you have nothing to do with resulting from living very detached and networked lives.

It can be anything from getting unfriended by old friends on Facebook to deliberately walk past recognisable faces in the street without a greeting.

To illustrate it better, the situation seems to me like the opposite of the universal sympathetic regard which Adam Smith always stressed as going hand in hand with market economic principles and rational self-interest, albeit in a broader sense for my part.

Smith was obviously never against the kind of nurturing communitarian entities which characterised European society at the time, at least from what I reckon, and he would almost certainly have disapproved of the current market society which Michael J. Sandel has been keen to advocate against.

This self-centred sense of staggeringly individualised sociality has torn down communitarian sentiments to such an extent that most people don’t really seem to care about one’s fellow man anymore – it has just been left to the welfare state at the expense of former intermediate social institutions.

Ultimately, what do all the online donations and initiatives toward meaningful causes truly mean if we just pass by each other in daily life, avoid people due to inconvenience, and avoid eye contact or otherwise try to minimise contact with other human beings, or at least those not close to us, as much as possible?

Back in the day of the Enlightenment, rational mercantile self-interest, efficiency, and time allocation were all reasonable concerns worth emphasising as important considerations in a sensible society, and they have proven very useful notions indeed, but should we not take a step back and reflect on what kind of social reality we are perpetuating?

What we end up with, is a society where the common good suffers under unconscious neglect and blind carelessness, and down the drain go other notions of human community, sociality, decency, and even a sense of disinterested humanity, of helping other people in daily life.

Worse, with workplaces moving home and meetings increasingly taking place online from the comfort of one’s abode, the authentic social space for caring about others becomes even more circumscribed, and this constriction allows any remnants of local communitarian sentiments to dilapidate as a result.

I don’t want these concerns to seemingly be animated by a naïve sense of wanting everyone to get along and be nice to each other, but do we not need a semblance of that as well? Why do many people feel the need to harshly cut other people out of their lives?

As moral beings, I think we should try to think along such lines of thought again, not in the sense of giving everyone a medal, but to not coldly and harshly distance ourselves from and reject others, who are after all just fellow human beings seeking companionship, understanding, and warmth, just like the rest of us.

So, the question remains: how do we resolve this?

Realise that the online sphere is just as much a part of our lives as never before

That Internet has become a fully integrated aspect of our social life seems apparent enough, but we sure don’t act like it.

Like countless others have pointed out before, anonymity and distance have made it possible to adopt a personal social life of plausible deniability in terms of not being present due to busyness and disinterest, leading to getting left on read, ghosting, unfriending, and other online social phenomena.

These actions hurt us more than we like to admit, even when strangers or people who we barely know do it to us.

What we need is a reinstated sense of common courtesy and social decency on online platforms, and for etiquette to become a thing again. We should become more generous toward the people we interact with.

The imperative of inclusion

When coming across people who seem to be more in their own shell to a miserable extent and who don’t help themselves properly in a social setting, it remains crucial to encourage people to actively include outsiders and newcomers to a greater extent.

What is important to stress is how much we need interpersonal warmth and understanding in an otherwise cold and detached society.

Become less preoccupied

Although many people live very busy lives (or so they often claim at the expense of genuinely caring about others), we should start encouraging them to have more social breathing room available so they can more readily answer other people who reach out to them.

Accordingly, one should convince them to reach more often out to old friends and to maybe even chat up with strangers more.

That way, we can have a warmer and more decent society for all without as much coldness and dehumanisation in our midst.