Hi Social Charmer,
In yesterday's CharmingChatter, we discussed what we mean when we say "Social Dynamics", and the various ways that improving your skills can dramatically impact on your life.
Today, we want to start introducing the basic concepts, and to kick things off, we thought we'd start with a bang:
We're going to tell you the purpose of life.
You read that right - we're going to let you know what YOUR purpose is as an organism on this planet.
No small feat, eh?
"Yeah right," we can hear you say. "You guys don't even know me - how can you know what my purpose in life is?"
Okay, so before you jump to the conclusion we're egotistical and delusional, we're going to caveat what we're saying here. First of all, we're making a distinction between the purpose of life and the meaning of it.
The purpose of something is "what it is used for" (e.g. "The purpose of a saw is to cut things"). It is inherently functional.
The meaning of something is its "significance or intended message" (e.g. "What is the meaning of that sentence?")
Thus, when we say we're going to tell you the purpose of life, we're only talking in terms of "what life is used for", a much more basic question than "what is life's significance" (we'll leave that debate to the philosophers).
Secondly, we said we're going to talk about your purpose as an organism on this planet, not as a human being with a higher calling. Though we will eventually get into the topics of finding your higher purpose, we're starting at the most basic: what is the most basic purpose of human life?
The answer? It's the same purpose shared by all forms of life:
Purpose 1:
Survive
Purpose 2:
Reproduce
That's it. Your purpose as a biological organism on this planet is to survive and reproduce.
How This Works
Now please don't misunderstand us. We're not saying that this is the only thing that you can do with your life. What we are saying is that both of these things are necessary conditions for human life to continue existing on this planet (for the simple and obvious reason that if we stopped surviving and reproducing, pretty soon there wouldn't be anyone left).
It's also important to realize that this doesn't imply that we are in some way evil or soulless. If you think about it, all we are really saying is that - over time - those organisms that, for whatever reason (e.g. good genes, some advantageous mutation, etc.), were able to 'stick around' are the ones that are still around.
Put another way: let's say we had two organisms 10,000 years ago, both of which had offspring with slightly different variations. One of the offspring could move twice as fast as any other of that species. The other could barely move at all, but was covered in thick fur (yes, we know this would not really happen - this is just for explanation's sake).
That year, say there was a massive shift in climate, and as a result, the winter was twice as cold as it had ever been before. In this case, the slow-moving-but-furry organism would have had a much higher likelihood of surviving and passing on its genes to the next generation.
What's important to note is that neither the additional speed nor the fur was inherently better than the other, but it just happens that in the real world one made it easier to survive than the other. Had the winter not cooled down, it very well could have been that the other fast-moving organism would have been able to survive more strongly.
Let's take the same example, but this time the mutation that caused the fur also caused that organism to be infertile. In that case, no matter how well the organism survived the winter, it would have died out because it could not pass on its 'better' genes to the next generation.
What we are trying to illustrate here is that it isn't arbitrary that organisms are designed to survive and replicate: it's just a result of the simple fact that those organisms that DID survive and replicate are the ones that are still around. Easy.
The Power of Emotion
Moreover, remember that most of this process was happening before we as humanoids came on the scene, and way before we evolved with the large, 'rational' brains we have today (how rational they actually are is a subject for a different day).
Thus, even in humans, the way that those purposes - survival and reproduction - make themselves known is not through rational analysis, but through instinct and emotion - mechanisms that are far older than our logical, rational thought processes.
These emotions are often far more powerful than our rational minds, and in fact we couldn't get very far in life without them. In recent scientific studies, researchers have studied patients who had damage to the parts of their brains that control the formation and processing of emotion, but who still had their logical thought processes intact.
The scientists found that, despite the patients' ability to reason, hold a conversation, and other tasks that require a high degree of reasoning ability, when asked to make a decision between two choices - even something as simple as which color socks to wear - they were unable to do so because they had no way to judge the relative value of their decisions. This demonstrates that the assignment of value to any object, action, or outcome is ultimately an emotional one.
Understanding Humanity
So why is any of this important for improving your social skills?
In order to understand how someone behaves, you must first understand their values. These values include things that are conscious - they might value intelligence, friendship, or new experiences - and things that are so basic (like survival and replication) that they are often unconscious.
Moreover, these unconscious values are often the very reasons behind the conscious values that people hold. For example, Sam might really value being intelligent because on some level he thinks (and rightly so) that if he's intelligent he'll a) make better decisions and not die; b) be able to make more money and thus be better able to survive and impress women; and c) have more luck directly because women are often attracted to intelligent men.
In another example, Sarah might value being kind and having strong relationships, but on some level this is because she believes that having close relationships a) will ensure that she has friends to support her if she needed it (survival), and b) could help her either meet guys or provide assistance if and when she has a baby (reproduction).
In the above example, Sam and Sarah had different values, but ultimately the reason they value those things boils down to survival and replication. For example, not many people value being sick (bad for survival) or being ugly (not good for replication).
Now, before we go any further, we want to be very clear that as you get deeper into this stuff, you will start 'seeing' things in a way - a much clearer way - than you have in the past. Types of behavior that may not have made much sense in the past will suddenly become clear. You will start seeing the underlying, unconscious reasons for much of human behavior.
We are saying that the reasons people do many of the things they do are ultimately rooted in pursuing survival and reproduction. We are not saying that they are lying to you when they say that they genuinely value money or friendship or being healthy or visiting new places, or whatever else they might say. The particular manifestations of their values are what make individuals unique, and if you start becoming paranoid that everyone's motives are not what they say they are, you won't enjoy life very much. The ultimate goal is simply to be aware of the forces at play so that it can guide your understanding of why things are they way they are. You can then use this knowledge to help you improve your ability to socially interact in a way that helps give everyone more of what they want.
In the next issue of CharmingChatter, we'll go into more detail on exactly how these core values of survival and reproduction help explain human social behavior, and start exploring how you can begin using this knowledge to achieve social mastery.
Until next time,
