Humans as Social Beings

By  Akhmad Zamroni

Source: Foto Akhmad Zamroni

Have you been constantly living alone in order to provide for all the many and varied necessities of your life? Is it true that you can live a normal life without the presence of other people? To your knowledge, is there a human being who is able to live and exist continuously in total solitude, completely without contact with others? Of course 'no', right?

Even in the smallest environment, namely family, it will be clear that you, as well as other people, always live with the help of others. In the family environment, to pay for school and daily living, you still need help from your parents. To study at school and hang out in the village, you also need the help of teachers and the presence of friends and community members around you. Your friends and others who are much older and more economically established will still need the presence and help of others.

The difficulty in escaping from the presence and help of others shows that you and everyone else around you are social creatures. As a social being, you need other people, and vice versa, other people need you too. Several characteristics can then be recognized related to human existence as social beings, among others, that humans: (a) cannot live alone, (b) need the presence and assistance of others, and (c) need to make contact /contact and cooperation with each other.

As social beings, humans have an instinct called gregariousness, which is the instinct to always live in groups or together. In humans, the instinct for gregariousness appears to be a natural nature that cannot be eliminated. According to Elwood (in Purwito, 2007: 52–53), the instinct of gregariousness arises because of the impulse or necessity of life that needs fulfillment, which are more detailed, including the urge to meet the needs of eating and drinking, to defend oneself from threats and dangers. as well as to channel biological needs and obtain offspring. These three impulses or needs can then be explained as follows.

a.  To fulfill their food and drinking needs, humans must cooperate with other humans in various forms, such as buying and selling, contracts, and working.

b.  In order to defend themselves from threats and dangers, humans must have self-defense by forming cohesiveness and collectivity with others.

c.  To channel biological needs (especially sexual desire) and get offspring, humans need a partner (opposite sex) to marry (marriage).

Meanwhile, human needs themselves, in fact, do not only include the three things above. When human life has entered the modern era, as it is today, human needs are very complex and are often difficult to list in detail. To fulfill all or most of these needs, humans clearly need the presence of other humans. The presence of humans or other people is needed to establish cooperation (in the social, cultural, economic, and so on), form groups (associations, organizations, political parties, ethnicities, nations, states, etc.), and create a defense and security system (military and so on).