The Individual and Society: Overview
From Facing History and Ourselves:
Holocaust and Human Behavior, Chapter 1
We begin to learn our culture - the ways of our society – just after birth. That process is called socialization and it involves far more than schooling. It affects our values, what we consider right and wrong. Our religious beliefs are therefore an integral part of our culture. So is our racial or ethnic heritage. Our culture also shapes the way we work and play. And it makes a difference to the way we view ourselves and others. Psychologist Deborah Tannen warns of our tendency to generalize about the things we observe and the people we encounter. “Generalizations, while capturing similarities,” she points out, “obscure differences. Everyone is shaped by innumerable influences such as ethnicity, religion, class, race, age, profession, the geographical regions they and their relatives have lived in, and many other group identities – all mingled with individual personality and predilection.”1
The United States is home to hundreds of different groups, each with its own culture and traditions. It would be impossible to study each group’s history in depth. But by focusing on the links between particular individuals and society, Chapter 1 reveals a number of universal principles. In doing so, it raises a number of questions:
- How is our identity formed? To what extent are we defined by our talents, tastes, and interests? By our membership in a particular ethnic group? Our religion? By the nation in which we live? Are we limited by the groups to which we belong or can we expand our horizons? What opportunities do individuals have in our society to expand their horizons? How does one make the most of those opportunities?
- How do our attitudes and beliefs influence our thinking? How does our thinking affect our actions?
- How can we keep our individuality and still be a part of a group?
- How does our tendency to see us as unique but them as members of groups affect our behavior as well as our attitudes? Do we welcome or fear them? When does fear turn to hate?
In exploring these and many of the other questions you will encounter in Facing History and Ourselves, it is useful to keep a journal. Unlike a finished work, a journal documents the process of thinking. Much like history itself, it always awaits further entries. A journal also allows a writer to witness his or her own history and
consider the way ideas grow and change. For author Joan Didion and many others, writing is a way of examining ideas. She explains, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”
Download Chapter 1 from Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior
Selected Readings from the Chapter
Notes
1Deborah Tannen, preface to You Just Don’t Understand (Morrow, 1990), 16.
