On Mutuality

You and I have almost certainly never met, but what happens to you matters to me – your health, your happiness and your wealth – and vice versa. Mutuality rather than independence is the chief characteristic of human life, whatever we'd like to believe.

Many prefer to see human life as one long competitive struggle for dominance. Philosopher Edmund Burke, Darwin's champion Herbert Spencer (who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest") and Ayn Rand (high priestess of the American idea of rugged individualism) are among those who characterise human life in terms of the struggle between individuals for the spoils of humanity.

Science is increasingly contradicting this view: rather than being a species of arch individualists, we are the social ape. We live in larger, more complex groups than our closest cousins, collaborating with friends and strangers thanks to our nuanced social brain. Indeed, we use other people's brains to navigate the world: to acquire skills and practices, and to access knowledge systems of long-dead strangers. We call this "culture".

We are so inextricably embedded in this world of others that what the people around us do shapes each of us: recent studies (such as Christakis and Fowler's Connected) show how all kinds of things spread through our social connections. If one of my friends gains weight, drinks or smokes, I'm more likely to do so, too. Ditto less serious things such as the clothes we wear and the music we listen to. And these effects seem to work across two or three steps of acquaintance – so even if you and I never meet, what happens to you can touch my life directly. Like it or not, we're in it together. It's mutual.

Mark Earls is author of 'Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature'.  Follow his blog at: http://herd.typepad.com/

Comments

[Daniel Snell]

Mark we have met and 'hello' to you.

i was contemplating this very thought just this weekend.

i realised, i don't even have to come into contact with someone, just sense them, or see them from a far, and i consciously and unconsciously pick up and mimic things.

perhaps their purposefulness, their pace, their annoyance, frustration, tempo. but perhaps at a deeper, and cellular level, their ideas, their beliefs, their cultural values. hidden in their body posture, the muscle tone, their gate, their clothes, the way their wear their clothes.

literally thousands of signals, we pick up, messaging at ways we just can't fully comprehend.

[Trisha de Borchgrave]

I think the essense of wishing others well and enjoying their successes is easier to attain in more equal societies. Where the divide between have and have-nots is great, such as the UK (materially but especially still class-ridden) the prevailing sense of resentment (it is the UK media that often mentions individual incomes when writing about a particular person) dominates the cultural relationship in society. There is a dinstict lack of sympathy, let alone empathy, for those who might be enduring hardships if they are generally considered "well-off" and for those from un-educated backgrounds because they probably "brought it upon themselves".
In other countries with a greater social equality, for example the United States, there is a general positive regard for those sharing the same country - a feeling of "citizens of the same community" which palpably creates a sense of well-being wished upon others. Having lived in various western countries for significant periods of time (The UK/ the US/ Spain/France), the only one where I watch what I say in case I sound a little too happy is the UK. In all others, I have not only celebrated friends' successes but I have been genuinely congratulated in my own moments of good news because, as you say, the joy in someone else's life, is a joy shared.