It is difficult to estimate what percentage of people are poorly socialised. Yet it is high enough that everyone has to deal with antisocial behaviour from a fellow human being at some point. What are the causes of negative socialisation? Oof, that's a subject for a whole book. It is a very important topic, which needs a lot of discussion and writing about, and even though I started this paper by mentioning bad or negative socialisation, it is not the central theme of this writing. I am going to write about something else.
In this blog post, I would like to introduce you to a new way of looking at socialisation. A new definition of socialisation. A definition that goes far beyond the current perception of the socialisation process. I will write about perma-socialisation.
A few days ago, my boys and I were wandering around our little valley. It was just after a heavy rain, so the Radenščica river was running through it, which dries up in the dry season. It was so beautiful, and we watched a pair of ducks, waddling in the shallow water. We watched frogs croaking in a big puddle and listened to birds singing. We also picked dandelions for lunch. The boys told me how the water, because it had spilled over the banks in the past few days, had washed off the dandelions all the manure that the farmers had spilled all over the meadows of our valley. My cheerful mood was instantly shattered.
The boys reminded me of the fact that green meadows mean that the soil is not fertile. Manure fertilisation only brings bacteria into the soil. The fungi that are essential for the fertility of the soil are not present in the soil where the meadows are located. A land covered only with grass is the last stage before the desert... Or the first stage after the desert... Do you know how an ecosystem is formed? At the very beginning there is rock, then grass annuals, then perennials, shrubs and finally trees. Only when the trees appear is the environment ready for mammals to survive, including humans. Not before. Well, we have reversed this process with the way we work the land. We are now at the ‘pre-desert’ stage - green meadows. Reflecting on the catastrophic environmental situation in which our society finds itself has made me realise that it is not enough for man to be socialised into human society alone. Human beings must be socialised into the whole natural world. Into the natural environment that surrounds them. It is not enough to become a constructive part of human society alone. They must also become a constructive member of the natural ecosystem.
This is what is meant by the term perma-socialisation. It is not only about making the child aware of the society of which he is a part, its values, prevailing ideas and beliefs, and how he should behave in it, so as to bring peace, harmony and progress to it. Perma-socialisation also teaches the child to understand the natural world - soil, water, plants, animals - and how to relate to them so that the environment and its members - human, animal and plant - are healthy.
It can be said that, although the concept is not yet well established, negative perma-socialisation is present to the greatest extent possible. We do not really respect the experiences, feelings and ideas of our fellow human beings, which is clearly reflected, for example, in the school system, which disregards the laws of psychological development and puts increasing pressure on children. In fact, the whole system is designed to encourage the egoistic side of man. This is again reflected in the requirements of the school system, which encourage competition and evaluate children and young people according to the level of their grades. Competition arouses a whole range of feelings in human beings that than underpin their behaviour: fear, insecurity, the need to prove oneself, greed, etc. It is not difficult to observe the social phenomena that reflect these negative feelings and emotions: the pursuit of material goods, consumerism, passivity, shifting responsibility for one's own actions and decisions onto others, money and profit at the centre of everything, etc.
It is very similar to our relationship with the natural environment. This relationship is based on exploitation and acquisition. I do not know where to begin with the list. Well, let us start with the cultivation of the land. Agriculture. We want to produce more and more crops as quickly as possible: large-scale cultivation, with artificial fertilisers and chemical sprays, which impoverish the soil to the point where we have almost reduced it to a desert, as I wrote about above. The animals are not doing any better either. Our attitude towards them is not one of cooperation, but one of exploitation. We are feeding them antibiotics and strong foods to fatten them up as quickly as possible, which for us means lots of meat as quickly as possible. We see the earth, plants and animals as objects, things to be used as we please. That is the reality and we have to face it. Fortunately, at least in the West, we have abolished slavery and child labour. Of course, this is true, without getting into the area of the famous conspiracy ‘theories’. Our financial system ‘damn’ closely resembles a form of slavery. Enough about how poorly perma-socialised we are. Let us take a look at what positive perma-socialisation looks like in practice.
A human being who is perma-socialised in a healthy way possesses all the social skills that he or she needs in relation to his or her fellow human beings and the community of which he or she is a part, as discussed in the post ‘Do you know these 16 social skills that a child should learn?’... Moreover, a healthy, perma-socialised human being does not take his environment, plants and animals for granted, or at his disposal to exploit them, but is interested in their well-being. He or she works and lives in such a way that there is a balance between him or herself and the natural environment (land, plants and animals), marked by a kind of exchange. He or she strives to create a natural circle between him or herself and the world around him or her.
What would this look like in practice?
It starts, of course, in the family. Parents must allow the child to attach to them securely and to develop trust in them. This trust will later transform into self-confidence and enable the child to walk confidently through life. Parents should spend a lot of our time with our children and invest our energy in our relationship with them by caring for them, reading together, going for walks, doing chores, looking after the animals, going on outings, talking, etc. In this way, we create a bond and thus a healthy and respectful, loving relationship with them. In short, we help the child to mature psychologically.
At the same time as the process of psychological maturation is taking place, we are ‘introducing’ the child to the natural world around us. We learn about plants and animals, we go on nature trips, we teach about healthy eating, where our food comes from, how to care for the soil to make it fertile, how to care for plants to keep them healthy and full of nutrients. We teach them how to relate to animals so that there is exchange and not exploitation. We teach them that humans are part of an ecosystem and that the natural world, the Earth, is a connected whole. If one part of this ecosystem becomes ‘sick’, the whole ecosystem is affected.
Contact with the natural environment is healing for humans. On all levels, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Contact with nature can also contribute to a healthy socialisation into our own, human world, as a counterbalance to all the negative socialisation with which I started this piece.
This is perma-socialization. I hope I have managed to present it to you in a somewhat more comprehensive way.