3.7 Life in Society
The Need for Societal Life
Social life is natural to human beings.
Humanity has been made for life in relationship with others. Speech, along with the many other faculties needed for communication, cooperation, and shared existence, would have no purpose if human beings were meant to live apart.
For that reason, absolute isolation is contrary to the law of nature. People are drawn by instinct toward social life, and this instinct is not accidental. Human beings are meant to assist one another, and through that mutual help they contribute to the progress of humankind.
There is also a wider purpose in this need for society. Human beings must progress, yet no one can do so entirely alone. Individuals do not possess all capacities in equal measure. One person has strengths another lacks; one understands what another has yet to learn. Contact, exchange, and cooperation are therefore necessary conditions of development.
In isolation, a person becomes diminished. Cut off from others, human nature tends to grow coarse and barren rather than fuller and stronger. Shared life draws out dormant capacities, corrects limitations, and supports both well-being and advancement.
No single individual contains the full range of human faculties. Through union in society, people complement one another. What is incomplete in one is supplied by another, and in this reciprocal completion they find both their welfare and their progress. Humanity needs society because human beings need one another.
The Life of Isolation and the Vow of Silence
Human life is naturally social. Withdrawal from others may at times appear disciplined, pure, or spiritually elevated, but isolation is not good in itself. When it is chosen for personal satisfaction alone, it becomes another form of selfishness.
A person may say that solitude suits their nature, but natural inclination is not enough to justify a way of life. Many harmful tendencies can also feel satisfying. What matters is whether a choice accords with the purposes of life and with the divine law. A life that deliberately makes itself useless to everyone cannot be considered pleasing.
Absolute Isolation
To live in complete seclusion in order to avoid the corrupting influences of the world may seem admirable, yet it carries a double danger. It not only places personal preservation above service to others, but also abandons the duties that arise from human fellowship. Escaping one kind of wrong by refusing contact with others often leads to another wrong: neglect of love and charity.
Even when severe solitude is embraced as a form of expiation, it does not become the highest path. The better reparation is not merely to avoid evil, but to do good. Voluntary hardships have value only when they contribute to moral growth and to the good of others. A person who withdraws completely may spare themselves some temptations, but they also deprive themselves of opportunities to serve, help, forgive, and love.
Withdrawal for Service or Useful Work
Not every withdrawal from ordinary social life is blameworthy.
Those who leave worldly pleasures in order to care for the suffering follow a nobler course. They rise by placing the needs of others before their own. In doing so, they gain a double merit: they detach themselves from material enjoyments and fulfill the law of labor through active charity.
The same can be said of those who seek quiet in order to carry out certain kinds of work that require recollection and peace. Such people are not isolated in the selfish sense, because they do not separate themselves from society in order to become useless to it. Their outward solitude may simply be the condition needed for labor that benefits others.
The Vow of Silence
Speech is a natural faculty, and its existence shows that it has a purpose. What deserves reproach is not the use of speech, but its abuse. Silence can be beneficial when freely chosen in measure and for a wise purpose. In silence, a person may gather themselves inwardly, quiet agitation, and give the spirit greater freedom.
Yet an absolute vow of silence is a mistake. However sincere the intention, such a practice misunderstands the true law. To renounce speech entirely, as though the deprivation itself were a virtue, is to reject a faculty given for good use.
As with isolation, the problem lies in cutting oneself off from the relationships through which progress takes place. Human contact provides occasions for patience, kindness, instruction, consolation, and moral effort. To suppress communication altogether is to lose many opportunities to do good.
Social Relations and the Law of Progress
Progress does not come through barren withdrawal from human duties. It comes through rightly ordered living, through work, and through charity.
Solitude has its place when it supports reflection, discipline, prayer, or useful labor. Silence also has its place when it calms the mind and helps free the spirit from distraction. But neither isolation nor silence should become an absolute rule.
The relationships of life are not obstacles to spiritual advancement by their very nature. They are among the means by which advancement occurs. In living with others, one learns to overcome selfishness, to practice love, and to turn inward convictions into active good.
A life cut off from all companionship and all exchange deprives itself of those very opportunities. For that reason, absolute isolation and absolute silence stand opposed to the law of progress.
Family Ties
Among animals, the bond between parents and offspring is chiefly governed by instinct.
A mother’s care is directed toward preserving the young she has brought into life. While they are helpless, she protects and nourishes them. Once they can provide for themselves, that instinctive task is complete. Nature no longer requires the same attachment, and the parent turns to the care of new offspring.
Human life follows a different law.
Human beings are not destined only for material existence. They are called to moral growth and progress. Because of that higher destiny, they cannot be understood simply by comparison with animal life. In humanity, there is more than the satisfaction of physical needs. There is also the need to develop, to learn, and to advance together.
For that reason, social ties are necessary. Family ties are the first expression of those social ties and are contained within them. They are not merely the product of convention or habit. They belong to the order of nature.
Family affection, therefore, has a deeper purpose than mutual assistance in early life. It prepares human beings to love one another more broadly. In learning to love within the family, they are trained to recognize one another as brothers and sisters.
When family ties weaken, society suffers.
The loosening of these bonds strengthens selfishness. What should unite hearts becomes fragile, and the spirit of mutual care gives way to isolation and self-interest. Family ties are therefore not only natural; they are essential to the moral health of human community.