What makes someone a friend? No, seriously, give it some thought. I want no platitudes, or trite answers.
My current life situation has caused me to ask this question. It would seem I have come to a place in my life that I have been in many times. I have no friends. It isn't half as sad as it seems, especially when you consider that, as I have said above, I don't really know what a friend is.
After giving it much thought, and talking it over with my good friend Don, I have decided that I actually do have some friends. It is jut that my definition of friend is different from the reality. So, I have to ask myself, what is a friend, really? When you strip away the emotion of a relationship, what are you left with?
I am a very logical person, and though I accept emotion as real, I don't think it should define reality. There is emotion and then there is reality, and they do not necessarily always agree (I am banging on my keyboard, because it isn't typing all of the letters; that is, the window I am typing into is not capturing all of the letters I type; this is very irritating, as you can imagine).
Back to the question of a friend: Is a friend always just an emotional connection? Can there be logical reasons for being friends? I have always felt (not known, or even thought) that a friend is someone you have an emotional connection to, and that is it. They are someone to be around who is rewarding emotionally. This is why, when someone becomes emotionally unrewarding, I generally let them go. Now, while this may seem heartless, it is often the healthier thing to do.
My friend Blair posits a different understandng of friendship: A friend is an ally, someone who will fight with you against yor mutual enemies. Now, that mutual enemy could be as pedestrian as boredom, or the heat, but it is the enemy that is essential. This may explain why my friendship with Blair has been rocky at times.
Others have led me to understand that people bond together out of a herd instinct. Now, whether you believe that or not, humans are not herd animals. We are predators. It is why our eyes face forward. A pack instinct I could understand better. A group of predators, hungry and lurking. But this leads us back into Blair's belief: The enemies of a group of predators are boredom, hunger, and other predators.
None of that explains the emotional context, however. Why do people like eachother, and decide to share lives together? Why do we need other people? I will post on this more, later.
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3 hours ago
4 comments:
I have always defined a friend as someone who is still there for you after you have had bad luck or rough times. This is a friend who doesn't judge you and is willing to listen to your tales of woe.
Well, looks like I stumbled onto something genuinely interesting here.
It does seem (and this is, of course, an emotional response) somewhat ignoble to define the concept of friendship simply as a shared opposition to something. It seems to me that the logical conclusion to that line of thought would be that a person without enemies not only has no need for friends, but is thouroughly incapable of friendship.
That may be so, I suppose, the hypothesis requires us to assume the person in question has no problem enduring either physical or emotional hardships, if they even register. Heat, cold, hunger, boredom, all would be meaningless concepts. I don't suppose we're very likely to ever find out how such an individual would relate to others.
I do not fully agree with the idea that we are predators. We do have predatory instincts and many physical characteristics of the hunter, rather than the hunted (an argument could perhaps be made for the strategicly fixed positioning our ears, though) but we are after all omnivores. The highly successfull evolutionary strategy of mankind consists of two key elements:
Firstly, we have the most advanced ability to solve problems of any creature on the planet. More than anyone, we have the ability to adapt our environment to ourselves, rather than the other way around (for better or worse, obviously).
Secondly, we are the most sophisticated social species on the planet. We have allways relied on each other for survival. The emotional responses we show towards one another have been honed and developed over millions of years of hominids facing an environment where survival without the group was laughable (by the time our pre-human ancestors developed the ability to laugh). It is not herd mentality, nor is it quite a pack instinct, though that comes closer.
I should stop, for now. Sleep is also part of our survival strategy.
Thanks for responding.
As to a discussion of omnivore vs predator, you mixed the metaphors a bit. A -vore is a descriptor of eating habits and materials. Predator is a description of behavior. Humans do exhibit a lot of what could be consider predatory and pack behavior. We can eat almost anything, but the way in which we get our food tells a lot about our mindsets.
Instinct is a guid, when it comes to humans. Animals act as their instinct dictates, they can't do anything else. Human beings filter their instincts through the lens of logic and our ability to solve problems, and we come up with a wide range of responses. In fact, even these responses can be ignored, changed over time, or just plain different from person to person.
I call this the emotional response. I have read some psychological journals that refer to the anthropomorphic fallacy. That being the idea that animals share human or human-like emotions. This is entirely untrue, as animals do not have emotions, they have only instinct.
As I said, human instinct is a guide. It leads us to create responses that I call emotional responses. Thus, when you are threatened, your body has a certain reaction, but that reaction is qualified by your perception. Not every person responds to danger the same way, and even over the course of a lifetime, people can have many different reactions to danger.
Wow. This is getting a bit long.
You mentioned that a person without enemies would have no reason, or even ability, to have friends. But there are more threats in nature then other people or even animals. Cold, heat, and physical hardship are as much 'enemies' as a man with a knife. You mention this as well. A person who was completely inured to hardship, and who did not even register such things, would probably be comatose or dead. In which case, he would have no need of friends.
I will talk more when I have more time. Again, a very insightful comment, thank you.
Well, I may not have followed my own train of thought to its conclusion with the -vore thing. My point was that, certainly, we have a pack hunter attitude to our social life, but not necessarily to the extent that for example a wolf would. As I was saying, human interaction is by far the most complex social interplay you will find in this world. The omnivore argument does in my opinion hold some merit. Not all our food needs hunting, coordinated strikes against a single target, while necessary when bringing down a mammoth, may not be the most effective approach to turnips. Not too sure where I'm going with this, really, except for whats allready been stated: The pack mentality is there, but it is not entirely dominant as a mind set.
Our social complexity, by the way, is as far as I understand it the generally agreed upon explanation for the anthropomorphic fallacy you mention. Survival has hinged on the ability to accurately read other people for so long that we now have a borderline instinctual urge for emotional understanding. This is a very interesting aspect of the human psyche, actually. Not only do we tend to act on the notion that animals are in possesion of a higher intellect, but inanimate objects and forces of nature recieve the same treatment as well. Being angry at your car engine for breaking down may be completely pointless, but it is still a deeply human reaction. Deep down in your subconscious, a little voice is telling you that since you interact with the car, it is sentient. Most likely it stranded you in the middle of nowhere on purpose.
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