This is the Seventh in a series of articles that examine nine “scientific facts” that require a new theological response.

Read First Article: What we can Know about the Universe
Read Second Article: Homo Sapiens, God, and the Evolving Universe
Read Third Article: From the Very Big to the Very Small
Read Fourth Article: Undeserved Suffering
Read Fifth Article: The World We Create
Read Sixth Article: A Zone by Any Other Name…
 
Reflection Number 7: How Other Persons Affect Us
 
The Indian wolf boy. The wolf girls of Midnapore. The Andes goat boy. The Syrian gazelle boy. And more. The Nigerian chimp boy. Ugandan monkey boy. Romanian dog boy. Cambodian jungle girl. Russian bird boy. Ukrainian dog girl.

These are all real people, feral children who, for various reasons, were separated from human beings early in life, and were adopted by families of the animals after whom they are named. None could speak human language. The bird boy chirped and flapped his arm-wings to communicate. The dog girl growled and walked on hands and knees. The gazelle boy could run 50 mph. After they were discovered, they found it impossible to assimilate into the company of homo sapiens, tried to and did escape, the unlucky ones restrained in insane asylums. Genetically, they might be the species homo, but they are not socialized humans. Yes, we need other people. At the most basic level, we need them to learn how to walk, eat, communicate, and just generally be in the company of others. I’m sure that any parent who has raised infants into children can identify with that process.

This deleterious effect of failing to relate has also been shown in studies with monkeys that were raised in total isolation. Solitary and confined to a cage, they saw not one living thing, not even the hand that fed them. Monkeys that had lived that way for a year or so then had another monkey put in with them, and they had absolutely no idea how to relate. They could not perform sexually, and most distressingly, when they were artificially inseminated and gave birth, they could not relate to their own babies in a nurturing way. Instead, some of them bit their offspring, hit them, threw them around, and even killed them. We are not monkeys. Nevertheless, we are primates, and it would not be too far afield to assume that our behavior might be similar to that of the monkeys. If we were brought into this world and never had the opportunity to relate to another human being, we ourselves could easily become less than human.

There is a second reason why we need other people, and that has to do with the subject matter of the previous two reflections: our self-created world, and the zone. On the one hand, we are egotistical and parochial, living in a world of own. We conflate our interpretation of reality with reality itself, fitting new experience into an already existing pattern of interpretation. On the other hand, those moments when we are in the zone refuse to be confined by our world, breaking in as they do with unexpected presence and power.

And it is from this perspective wherein other persons enter our lives at a second level: they are the source, I believe, of most of the moments that happen to us. Of course they are not the source for athletes who are performing super human feats while in the zone, nor for those creating great works of art while alone in the studio, nor for that solitary moment you experience on a starry night. But fellow human beings, like no other, can challenge our self enclosure at a moment’s notice. People who love us, or who challenge us, or who think thoughts radically different from ours (they could be the same person!),- these are, to use the language of Martin Buber, the Thous who rattle our cage.

People encounter, speak critically, and challenge us, thereby enabling us at least momentarily to become liberated from the world within which we are encased. The importance of human encounter at this level cannot be over-emphasized, and that is why, paradoxically, we fear it so much. We don’t like to be challenged. We are safe and secure in the world of our making, and we resent the threat. So we live with this dialectic: we need to relate to other people, and yet we are also afraid that they may be critical of us. We need to have our worlds challenged and overcome, but it is a most frightening and perhaps painful process. Painful, but enlightening.

Lastly, there is a third dimension to our need for other people, a dimension often referred to as social network. We belong to various groups that socialize us in different ways, but we also find in those groups certain others who are not just acquaintances, but friends. There have been studies that show that longevity is positively related to your social network. If you want to live a long life, get some friends!

Round the world, women live longer than men. Set aside the fact that men are often engaged in dangerous work. Set side also the fact that men often do stupid things. (Google why women live longer than men and see what comes up!) There are biological reasons offered as an explanation, which may or may not be true; estrogen has a positive long term effect on your body, testosterone does not. But there are studies that show that women much more easily than men develop close social networks, persons in whom they can confide and turn to when times get tough. Community, in the deepest sense of the term, is part of what defines us as human, even to the extent of enabling us to live longer.

I’m not sure, in terms of length of life, whether it matters who your friends are. But it does make a difference, in terms of quality of life, what kind of community you belong to. I am fully aware that this is a value judgement. I’m sure that there is honor among thieves (or street gangs, assassination squads, etc), and possibly love as well. But I believe it is more in tune with the universe if the community of which you are a part is a community of love. It is critical for our development as human beings to experience love, which by definition, involves at least someone else. Both the expanse and the intensity of that love depends on who and where we are in life. But caring for one another and sharing with one another is the hallmark of who we really are.

This is but the beginning of trying to comprehend our social nature. There is so much more. Think of young boys and girls raised in war zones. How do they see themselves and their world? or babies born in refugee camps? Who will they grow up to be? or the daughter of a billionaire? what will her self image be? And I might add, how am I affected knowing that those children are experiencing those realities even as I sit and type these words?

I remember a Dartmouth College commencement where Fred Rogers was the speaker. The ceremony took place on the green, surrounded by buildings, birds, and some cars heading down the roads on all four sides. Five thousand buzzing people under the blue sky with distractions everywhere. He started by asking everyone to remember those people in their life who had helped bring them to where they were today. It was as if someone had waved a magic wand over the excited, disparate crowd. Within ten seconds, everyone entered a silence that seemed to last forever. We are social beings.
Read Eighth Article: Who am I?