Usefulness, being needed, recognition, and belonging

General Philosophy
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I would like to invite anyone interested to join a brief exploration of a common human trait. For now, I propose breaking this down into the desire to be:

  1. Useful (to someone)
  2. Needed (by someone)
  3. Recognized (by someone)
  4. Part of something (connected to others)

Where does this come from within us?

This question has surfaced in my life from time to time. While psychology has certainly contributed a great deal to this field, I do not wish to limit the discussion to psychology alone. I would like to examine this philosophically—not merely from an ethical perspective, but also through the lenses of ontology and epistemology.

I will try to be very brief.

In my reflections, I proceed from the premise that participation—or involvement—is a fundamental ontological property of any entity. In other words, nothing exists in complete isolation; the definition, form, and mode of being of any entity are revealed through a network of relationships and interactions with the “other.”

Applied to human beings, this means that a person—in the truly human sense—cannot come into being outside of relationships with other people. If one were to imagine an individual who grew up in total isolation from the human world, that person would remain biologically human, yet their human existence would differ significantly from our own. After all, the very concept of “who I am” is shaped through relationships with others. Even a simple conversation—a distinctly human act—presupposes the participation of at least two people.

At the same time, I am neither identical to other people nor entirely distinct from them. I possess my own project—a vision of who I wish to become—which I develop by observing others, identifying similarities, differences, and potential models for my own unfolding.

Finally, I cannot, on my own, fully assess the extent to which I have succeeded in approaching this project. For this, I require the recognition of the “Other”—especially someone who has already attained the state or possesses the qualities toward which I strive. Thus, the Other does not merely participate in shaping my self-conception; they also become a necessary condition for validating who I am in the process of becoming.

For example: I want to become a philosopher. How might I go about it? Is it enough simply to declare oneself a philosopher, or must one meet certain criteria? Or perhaps there is a need for someone else—an external observer—to verify that I fulfill the requirements for “being a philosopher”? I find myself wanting to become one. I open the books of other philosophers; I seek out encounters with them; I wish to understand what it means to be a philosopher—but only through the lens of others. Yet, even if I were to satisfy all such criteria, it would then become important for me to be of use to philosophy—to generate something philosophical. And this, in turn, is only possible within a community of people who can understand you, or who are at the very least sufficiently educated to grasp your ideas (while you, for your part, must learn to explain your ideas to those who are not philosophers).

Reading Hegel suggests that a human being does not exist merely as a self-conscious subject; rather, one’s self-consciousness is formed in relation to another self-consciousness. This leads to a question: might the desire to be useful be, in fact, a form of seeking validation for one’s own existence?
Marx offered a critique of this, noting that in a capitalist society, if you produce nothing, you are worth nothing.
For Buber, the “Other”—and the entry into an “I-Thou” relationship—lies at the very heart of philosophy.
Nietzsche, meanwhile, criticized self-sacrifice, arguing that doing things for the sake of others is a learned behavior rather than an innate human trait.

Yet, it seems to me that all of this is insufficient—that we are missing something vital.

And so, I ask for your help in uncovering the ultimate foundation for this particular striving of our reason.

We encounter this constantly in everyday life. I would like to gain some greater clarity.

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A fascinatimg question.

We have clearly adapted to internalise feelings of belonging because they provide psychological support for sharing in donestic labour, rule taking and long term co-operation.

My question therefore, and it is a question not an intended criticism is, why do we need a different philosophical explanation.

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That’s a very good question. I’ve been thinking about it. Frankly, my premise is probably that the worldview offered by modern individualism is somewhat narrower than my focus on the things I’ve divided into four categories.

And at their center is belonging. Am I truly ontologically dependent on the “other,” or is this just an interpretation?

I’d like to bring some life back to this question.

I’ve laid out my rough vision. But what if I’ve made all this up, and you now say to me, “Dude, you’re talking nonsense because: A, B, C?” I’d be happy about that.

Or, on the contrary, you’ll say, “You’re not making this up! Maslow’s writings about our needs really aren’t enough. Let’s think about it together!”

After all, philosophy isn’t just a discussion of “truth” or “what is.”

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Nice writing. Thanks for doing that.

One of the greatest strawman in the communitarian, communist, and ethno-nationalist critique of individualism is that it promotes a false anthropology of isolated man, that he ought to act like Robinson Crusoe, and this behavior leads inevitably to what critics call “social atomism”. But I believe it is the collectivist demand for conformity, homogeneity, and obedience that leads us to this condition. I believe that this demand for conformity, homogeneity, and obedience has compelled what you call these “common humans traits”, some of which I would criticize as overly obsequious.

You and I are not ontologically nor socially dependent on the “Other” because this concept assumes just any arbitrary “Other”, maybe the sum-total of all people within a certain mile-radius, for instance, or within certain jurisdictions. Nor are you and I dependent on a community, which is a term so ill-defined that it is essentially meaningless. These are artificial relationships, thought up in someone’s head but never brought about by any real interaction. Rather, you and I are dependent on particular others: real, flesh-and-blood human beings involved in our lives—individuals—who have dedicated themselves to raising you, being with you, mentoring you, and so on. It is in these people we find our self-consciousness in the Hegelian sense. We do not find it in the forced cooperation of maintaining nations, cities, even neighborhoods, where we’re all strangers unmoored from any real shared history or common experience.

So I could see the desire to be useful and part of something as status-seeking motivations, used as they are to gain position and advantage in modern social hierarchies, and to signal one’s obedience to authority. I don’t believe we require such traits in natural relationships.

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Yes but these particular moments are always mediated by what you term the “artificial”. The natural unfolding of any relationship includes all the baggage of knowledge/conditioning/discernment/prejudice/custom.

When a skinny homeless lady approaches me at 7-11 and and asks me to buy a cigarello and a bottle of beer, what would your response be in my shoes? Maybe she never said she was homeless to begin with, so why on the basis of what she looks like and what she is asking, would I come to the conclusion she is homeless?

Why can’t I smile for her and instead carry a judgemental look in my face?

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With human beings, the drive to make meaningful connections is as strong as our need for food and sex. Our brains are hardwired across several regions for connection, and function optimally when they are “connected” to other brains.

A mechanism called brain-to-brain coupling helps us to create and share in a social world –

The premise of brain-to-brain coupling is that the perceptual system of one brain can be coupled to the motor system of another. This binding mechanism is similar to action-perception coupling within a single brain. Action-perception (or stimulus-to-brain), coupling relies on the ability of brains to actively interact with the physical world

Connection is the default setting – our brains expect it – and operate under the assumption that we are part of a social network. Human brains expect relationships built on interdependence.

It’s not a feeling, or a preference, but an instinctual need.

These systems are impaired in people with autism, or schizophrenia.

Impaired social-connectivity is also associated with drug addiction and alcoholism, both characterized by having the brain hijacked by one over-riding connection – to the drugs or the alcohol – at the cost of all other connections.

This understanding led to the maxim that - “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is connection.”

Recovery from addiction is possible if new, meaningful connections are made, but it takes months to re-wire the brain.

Anyway, knowing all this does not take away the preciousness of love for friends and family.

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There seems to be two possibilities for why people adopt prosocial values -

these reflect widely spread psychological dispositions

Or they are result of the successful efforts of Communist Party cadres to undermine our rationality

More research is needed…

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We are a social species, so it’s not surprising that we define and assess ourselves in relation to a tribe or a community. We seem to find peace and purpose in having a role and a place within a hierarchy.

But above this we should probably interrogate our yearning to be useful, needed and recognised, and determine whether this is healthy or not. Is it a quest for status or veneration? Is it a quest to feel special and better than others because of our perceived uniqueness? Is it a grab for power? Some of the most dangerous people on earth are those who think they know what’s best for others.

Do you propose to advise others about morality and philosophical problems? I would have thought that to be a philosopher, one needs a set of core competencies and qualifications, such as a demonstration of requisite training, reading and knowledge. But given there is no Manual of Philosophy that everyone agrees upon, this is a domain that allows for significant variety, mediocrity, bullshit and posturing. Who is going to tell you that you are not a philosopher? The philosophy police? One of the deans at Harvard?

This takes us back to the beginning. Do we want to be useful, needed and recognised to fill a hole inside ourselves, to acquire status, or is there a genuine impulse to be of use to others? For me, the word foundation isn’t quite right to describe this. It’s more a question of motivation, and self assessment and that won’t come from others but can only be arrived at through self-knowledge.

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Nothing forbids you from creating new relationships or being kind to others. Meeting others and fostering relationships in this manner is one of the natural ways we create association.

But the artificial relationships, as dictated by those who force you into them, precludes this beginning. Next thing you know your community includes people you would never associate with to begin with, or are not deserving of your company.

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It’s not a prosocial value to force relationships on others. No research is required.

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Where do you get this stuff? When we go to the grocery store to buy food we are dependent on farmers, ranchers, delivery people, store clerks, etc. When we watch TV we are dependent on miners, electricians, video store clerks, actors, directors, etc.

Our cooperation with these people is enforced by laws compelling us to pay for our groceries and TVs.

Strangers whom we have never met are clearly intimately and dramatically involved in our lives.

Perhaps we want to be “useful” to others because they are useful to us. It is true, of course, that we are more alienated from the production of our needed resources than humans were in the past. So our “usefulness” is less clear and obvious.

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I can’t go along with that outlook because it reads to me like we’re dependent on a grocery store and cooperating with a smart phone. There is nothing intimate nor dramatic about grabbing produce or thumbing a remote control. When the store closes or the talk shows are cancelled, what then?

The utilitarian treatment of people as a means to an end is a glaring indictment against the whole project of artificial society and forced association in the first place.

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I would go along, at least as a starting point, with @questioner’s approach here. We ought recognize first of all how fundamental sociality is to us biologically. What we share with many other mammals is something I would call “organic sociality”. But in humans, this becomes not just an inbuilt tendency to cooperate but a means whereby learning becomes a bootstrapping process that is fundamentally social. Tomasello’s joint intentionality is relevant here. Human’s learn not just by mimicry of peers but by engaging in meaningful tasks with them, and during these meaningful tasks they can harmonize in powerful ways both behaviorually and biologically. This process is highly rewarded through recognized physiological mechanisms. Hence, kids love to play together in a process whereby they prepare themselves for the adult game of culture. In fact, this aspect of being human which goes along with humans’ entanglement with language is just what makes us the special sort of beings we are.

So, our particular form of organic sociality is what allows language to take hold in us such that the social self is almost a unique organism that we are forced into constant dialogue with whenever we turn inwards. And this is in large part why we crave recognition—because self-recognition such that we are conscious of it or desire it is always funneled through the other, and the other is like us a creation of culture as well as biology. So, you can separate out a kind of engrained physiological tendency towards a particularly intense form of organic sociality (which notably with regards to joint intentionality distinguishes us from our fellow apes) and particular cultural instantiations built on that. But fundamentally regardless of political or personal psychological orientation (short of recognized aberrations such as psychopathy), the very nature of being a self presupposes a self with and through others, and all that reasonably follows from that.

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Am curious as to what constitutes a “forced” relationship.

Occasionally our prejudice may be an obstacle to the formation of desirable relationships. Forced conditions can be a boon as they help to endure what by first impressions we find unpelasant.

There was a women volunteer I directed once at my work. Initially she had a bit of an attitude about me, as if she would’ve preferred the woman who used to hold my position. But being with her overtime she flipped that unpleasant attitude entirely and she took quite an interest in me. Time and proximity with people can change how we view them.

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Thank you for your response.

To be honest, I have no doubt that, biologically speaking, we are inherently “interconnected.” We cannot be born, nurtured, or educated in isolation.

The same applies to the social dimension. I have even heard that the ability to walk upright does not emerge spontaneously in a human being; while we are born with the potential for bipedalism, the skill itself is acquired only through experience and example.

Naturally, humanity—that which distinguishes us from animals—is also something that only becomes possible through the presence of another.

I suspect few would dispute this.

However, my question is more philosophical—or, perhaps, more narrative in nature. Consider this: if we posit individualism as the foundational premise of our existence—if we focus solely on our own finitude and the responsibility that arises from it—where, then, is our gaze directed?

I believe that, in such a case, our gaze is directed toward confirming that very premise. For instance: why would I need another person if I can survive on my own? Why would a woman need a man if she can conceive via a donor and raise a child by herself? And, for that matter, why should a woman give birth at all if she herself is the center of her own world?

I would argue that the premise of self-sufficiency shapes, first, our own lives, and subsequently, reality itself.

When we decide whether to call a friend or our mother—or even whether to speak to anyone at all—this premise of self-sufficiency seems to whisper to us: “To hell with them all; I owe them nothing, and they owe me nothing,” or, “If I need something, I’ll simply go out and buy it.” “I can handle all this shit on my own.”

In the course of such reasoning, facts pertaining to one’s own biology or social standing are, in a sense, cast aside—after all, there will always be someone else, won’t there? Even the very language we use to articulate these thoughts, or the concepts we employ at such moments, do not strike us as things we have acquired from others. They feel entirely our own…

From this stems a self-imposed restriction on the intensity of relationships: “I won’t become too dependent on him, because it’s just too risky.”

Look at the responses mentioned above: biology, history, sociality, ethics—all seem to be discarded the moment the premise of self-sufficiency is introduced.

It is precisely here that I discern a weakness in the philosophical grounding of “participation” (or “being-with”). This is what drives me to ask: do we truly need an “other” in an ontological sense?

I occasionally share some of my thoughts on this matter on this site; yet, the question keeps resurfacing in different contexts, drawing me back to it time and again.

So, is involvement with the “other” not merely a condition of human existence, but a condition for the definiteness and continuation of human being?

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The fact that I am not a self-caused being—or that I require otherness for my own existence—does not imply that someone else should have the authority to direct my life.

The fact that my “self” is shaped through relationships does not mean that society holds a superior right to determine who I ought to be.

Indeed, it is somewhat ironic, given that my proposed approach to understanding the “Other” presupposes—and even demands—the preservation of that Other’s distinct otherness. If the Other is dissolved into the collective, or compelled to conform to a “general will,” then the very otherness that gives meaning to the concept of “participation” vanishes. This is precisely why the start topic highlights an orientation toward “the desire to be useful”—a drive that emerges within any society, social structure, or political regime.