The self and society can hardly coexist without any tension. While all of us have our own desires, goals and values, community expectations often come in conflict with those. Some people manage to compromise – the others do not. If an individual is too different from the vast majority that constitutes the community he or she lives in, this person risks becoming isolated, and such an alienation often has lifelong consequences; nevertheless, we are not as powerless before the community as we think.
The primary source of social isolation is the otherness, the difference that an isolated person has from others. The examples are countless: a new boy in the school, who has no friends, the only overweight girl in the class, the only women in a men’s team, an elderly person, an individual with disability, foreigners, who poorly speak the language of the country they live in, and so forth. In each of these situations, individuals risk to become socially isolated if they do not compromise or find another way to be accepted, which is not always easy or even possible.
In the first chapter of his Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez writes about his first day at school and some memories from his childhood. As a son of Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants, he had very poor English skills, which were limited to a hundred of words (Rodriguez 12). From the moment when the teacher named Richard in English and wrote his name down on the blackboard for other students to understand it better, he realized that he was different. And he also was isolated too. No one of the children living on the same street with Richard ever wanted to make friends with him, and he found out their names only when those sounded in the classroom.
As I see it, the reason why nobody wanted to make friends with Richard was the fact that he was different from others. It was the source of social isolation in his case. He had a different skin color, different language and was different from the inside. Considering that it is hard to change who you are, it was almost impossible for Richard to fit it. Still, he decided to get educated and learned to speak English fluently. One the one hand, it can be considered the right decision. On the other hand, achieved this, he lost the connection with his family. Hence, he let the community destroy some of his inner beliefs and values. He chose to change himself in order to fit in.
Another example of social isolation because of the otherness is the situation that happened when I was studying in the secondary school. There was a girl in our class, who was a little bit overweight and thereby was different from others. She also always did her homework and never came unprepared to the class. For the group of students, who consider themselves better than others, it was enough to start bullying her.
This example is very similar to the previous one because the reason for social isolation remains the same. However, the reaction of an isolated person to it is radically different here. While Richard tried to fight, even though he mainly fought with himself, not the community, the girl from my class never managed to do that. That is why her isolation only continued and strengthened. She became even more shy, self-contained and unsociable.
So, it goes without saying that communities are strong. However, that is people who give them tremendous power. Driven by the desire to be accepted by society, Richard Rodriguez eventually became alienated from his own family, even though he could not even imagine doing this in the childhood. He admitted that the community was stronger than he was, and he needed to fit in. Similarly, the bullied girl in my class did nothing to stop bullying and surrendered to the community because it was powerful. Nevertheless, people do not always react to their social isolation in such a way, and sometimes it can have diametrically opposed effects.
Instead of siding with the community only because it is strong, sometimes we have to find like-minded people and go against it together. In his article called The Hungry Got Food, the Homeless Got Shelter, D. Scot Miller described the national process movement, known as Occupy Oakland. Driven by the common cause and the unwillingness to obey the rules of the stronger community, people joined together and formed their own community, which was big enough to make a difference. Miller described it as “full cooperation” (par. 7). He stated that nothing mattered at that time: neither color of the skin nor a profession. People just united and managed to go against the community they did not want to obey anymore.
I am truly convinced that it is the best possible way to resolve the conflicts that arose between the self and society. One individual is too weak to confront hundreds of people (even though it is not completely impossible). However, when people unite and put the common cause in a priority, their power grows by several times.
To conclude, the society indeed has a great strength. It can affect an individual’s decisions and behavior, and it can make a person isolated if he or she is too different from the vast majority. Many people put up with that and become discouraged. Many try to change in order to be accepted. However, only those who find the courage to fight the community and find like-minded people for this purpose can really make a difference.
Works Cited
Miller, D. Scot. The Hungry Got Food, the Homeless Got Shelter 2012. Web.
Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, New York, New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2004. Print.