THE SOCIAL
Call it nature, call it nurture, or an interplay of both, but we all behave differently around different people, in different spaces + places. To what extent and how varies between individuals.
Why do we do this? Mobility.
Now there are many definitions and typologies of mobility, but I’m going to frame it as the enablement of interactions with people and different spaces and places, across time, through our bodies (it’s the Human Geographer in me!).
Essentially what I mean here is in order to engage with people, access and utilise different spaces and places, perform different activities, we need to have mobility. When exercising this engagement, we are experiencing mobility, and a key influencing factor in our experience of mobility is how we approach, our behaviour towards and across, all these different elements (space, place, people, time, our bodies).
I call this active process of approach + behaviour our filter. Say if you were to head to your local park, this filter is active in the process of deciding and selecting your destination, but also in how you behave when there – in its different spaces and places, with the people you encounter, and what you do with your body when there.
In other words, the filter is the intellectual (i.e. our understanding of the world around us) key to unlocking and negotiating the mobility you need to live, work, perform.
THE IDEAL
Yet what is shaping our filters? How do we determine the right or wrong, most or least effective way to approach + behave? How do we learn this?
There’s plenty of factors, from laws + policies to norms, values, customs + conventions – all these imbued with power, at different scales from the global to the place you inhabit (i.e. home). These outline what is essentially acceptable or not, and we translate these into practice everyday. For example, our filters that give us mobility in a professional workplace are shaped by employment contracts, codes of conduct, guidelines, policies and laws, cultures.
But I want to step away from the workplace into the realm of living (just bare with the work-life dualism for a moment) because this is the area I want to give focus; the realm arguably most applicable to the social + emotional aspects of our lives (which most fascinate me).
CAPITAL
See once we exercise our filters, we need to adopt/exercise/perform the ideal approach + behaviours to achieve what we want. Herein enters the final concept I want to breakdown: capital.
Like the concept of mobility, capital has many meanings and applications, but I want to draw upon the notions forwarded by the French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who essentially defined capital as consisting of the resources, assets, provisions, tools we utilise to make things happen – to exercise mobility, to perform and progress throughout our lives. Although further principal forms are cited by many, Bourdieu detailed three:
- Economic: money, land, property
- Social: identity, relationships, groups and belonging
- Cultural: dress, speech, appearance + presentation (i.e. body capital); knowledge, education, experience
Empirically speaking, these forms aren’t inextricable from one another and there is much crossover. For the rest of this article, particularly due to the socio-emotional focus I have (read relationships, intimate and/or platonic) I will give impetus to the second and third forms identified: social + cultural.
EMOTIONAL CAPITAL
This notion is worthy of it’s own focus because of it’s significance and complexity. The term is largely used in business circles discussing emotional intelligence and relationship management. My application here is similar, albeit we’re going beyond the workplace into the realm of everyday life.
To keep this short and simple, in the context of emotions, I am referring to the skills, capabilities and capacities that we possess and exercise to experience mobility. We express and exchange emotions within ourselves (internally) and towards others (externally). Internally we are frequently regulating our emotions (i.e. emotional processing), whilst externally we interpret (identify, acknowledge) and exchange them with other phenomena, particularly people to enable interactions and develop connections.
How effectively we exercise our emotional capital shapes our mobility as emotions inform every element of our existence. I believe our capacity to regulate and harness all these emotional dynamics over time thus has significant bearing on our condition of existence, i.e. how well we are living (wellbeing).
SUMMARY
I’ve just written this article off the cuff, drawing upon years of experience and learning (life to academia) and inspired by recent events. It provides a snapshot into my outlook of how people live. But in a nutshell, the following summarises the above:
FILTER (approach) > CAPITAL (resources) > MOBILITY (experience)
For theoretical purposes I have separated these as linear phases, but in practice, these are an interconnected, interchangeable web of activity. For example, during an activity like meeting people in a park, you’re constantly filtering the phenomena around you, like people and places, and drawing upon capital to exercise your mobility. They feed into one another, but have been separated for explanatory purposes.
THE CONTEMPORARY
SCOPE
Now it’s probably unfair and empirically inept to say this is the way things are right now around the world. So I’m going to narrow it down to maybe the Western world, or maybe yet my lifeworld here in the UK (although I think there are similar trends to be found across the world) and give you my view of how this dynamic is manifesting across contemporary society.
HIGH (SOCIO-EMOTIONAL) STANDARDS
I feel the bar, expectations, standards as to what comprises social + cultural capital is more nuanced, specific, narrow, essentialist, curated, public, impatient, scrutinised and policed than ever before. How we identify ourselves, are identified by others, who we interact with, the settings and groups we affiliate + associate with, how we think and feel, how we dress, the way we speak, what we say + how, the way we look, what we know + believe in (i.e. our knowledge, skills, education, experience, values + beliefs), and how quick we make progress with people + activities.
It almost seems that more and more capital is required for people to have mobility, would you agree? Be this material possessions and/or intrinsic qualities + experience. Long lists to check, criteria to fulfil, with immediate gratification anticipated.
Now I accept that these are big, bold simplified statements as of course in practice this is more complicated than I present. You could write books breaking down these dynamics I discuss (as I’m sure already exists)!
On one hand, there is growing awareness + experience, digital and physical, of different ways of living, people, identities, cultures, which is great to foster better understanding + embracing of diversity (and tackle social injustice), and to discover + experience more of the world + humanity.
Yet conversely, in a world where people interact less through the physical and more through the digital, there is a pressure, a requirement, a conditioning, to keep gaining and consuming more rather than working with and embracing what already is there, and doing it quickly.
It almost feels like (or the discourses and messages you are surrounded by tell you) what you do or have, is never enough. We are inundated by all this activity, information, opportunity, possibility questioning the condition of your very own existence. This is what an attractive person should behave + look like, this is what it means to be healthy and happy, this is what it means to be successful, this is the specific path I will take to meet this person or achieve this goal. Anything else other than this isn’t right or acceptable, like we’re trapped in a perpetual pursuit of perfection.
THE CONSEQUENCE
In my view, this is highly damaging. The effect this has on how people view themselves, and how they view others, inhibits and constrains people greatly. Expectations and demands are raised, to almost unattainable levels that makes people devoid of their own uniqueness and agency, diluting their confidence + esteem.
You may come across someone you would like to know or an activity or opportunity that piques your interest, but you don’t feel it is enough for you, or you are enough for it/them. The art of giving things + people a chance, of embracing the unexpected and seeing what the journey brings, is fading/dying. We can be quick to dismiss, needing to have more data, make more predictions, be better prepared, before giving things a chance and feeling ready (is this even possible?).
The consequence? We are never satisfied, rarely fulfilled.
ESSENTIALS vs IDEALS
Now I AM NOT saying blindly say yes to everything! There are of course people, places, opportunities that aren’t simply safe + appropriate. There are lines, minimal standards or essentials as I like to call them, around respect + safety that must absolutely never be crossed.
But I’m talking about ideals. I’m talking about giving less weight to material things like skin colours, body shapes + sizes, voices, the money in one’s account + pocket, their dress. Moreover, I’m talking about putting aside any preconceptions about identity you may perceive at glimpse and patiently giving people a chance to paint their own picture, get to know what they may actually be like. To not expecting the perfect, fully formed complete article, but appreciating how through relations + interactions over time, in writing your own story you each evolve in myriad ways (i.e. we are human becomings, not beings).
As things stand, with the proliferation of digital interactions, and diminishing of in-person interactions, and the demanding capital seemingly required to make connections + interactions with people, spaces + places, things are at a standstill for many people in their lives. When speaking of relationships, we have growing levels of disconnection, of loneliness + isolation – maybe these dynamics I discuss may help explain why?
EXACERBATING FACTORS
ECONOMIC CAPITAL – although I decided to not explore this, it is still an important factor. To enter many spaces + places, to meet + interact with people, there is a growing economic cost. You need money and resources to travel, to park, to enter, to undertake an activity, consume food and drink. When living is difficult enough to provide for, your roof + utilities need securing, how can one expect to have socio-emotional mobility?
INSECURITIES + PAST TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES – an understandable factor inhibiting people in forming new relations, shaping how they interact with people, is our past experiences. When people have been abused, damaged, subordinated, bullied, harassed, experienced (great) loss, it does make it difficult for them to give and receive once more. People become closed, more cautious + insecure, compare the old to the new they encounter, which can understandably heighten demands and expectations but consequently limit options. Although it’s totally understandable, it’s a shame how such experiences can have a lasting damaging effect.
POWER OF EMOTIONS
It’s incredible how ‘small’ moments in our life, emotionally loaded ones, have such a huge impact on our lives. It’s my way of flipping Einstein’s theory of relativity (inadvertently, I just see the similarities) and applying it to humans, when he spoke about how items of small mass could be capable of huge energy. It’s the same with human experiences, as they may occupy a small time-space (i.e. mass) in our lives, but have a HUGE influence on how we live thereafter (i.e. energy released into our lives).
This is why I’m passionate about the work I’m doing around emotional wellbeing + performance, about how the effectiveness of our preparation, labour and processing is instrumental in managing our emotions better with how we live our lives – in mediating how much control + influence they have thereafter.
THE INSPIRATION, THE POSSIBILITIES: RAW BEAUTY
I started this article wanting to talk about the topics of this section for the people + experience I will allude to were the inspiration behind the whole discussion. Then I delved into geek-level detail surrounding the underpinning dynamics! It has been fun, intellectually stimulating for sure. But let’s look forward.
BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
There’s someone I know who has grown to value me highly as I have them. Full of wild energy, flowing with love + passion. Who has shown me much respect, and I am thankful to them. What’s even better is I can express this gratitude freely, as can they with me. It’s a great dynamic to be able to experience.
Most recently, I became the fly on the wall, watching them buzz as they reconnected with countless people they hadn’t seen in a while. People from different walks of life, various ranks, positions, titles. Labels were all irrelevant though. It was just pure, unfiltered, raw love being shared + exchanged. It was a pleasure to witness in motion. Beautiful. Fascinating. Intriguing.
FLEETING WARMTH
What a gift it is to sometimes have NO FILTER. There are drawbacks of course, don’t get me wrong. But to witness this when there is an exchange of love + appreciation, and the feeling is mutual, was like watching life make meaning in a moment. Like a raindrop warming the ocean on a sunny day it was fleeting, yet all motion seemed to slow down and radiate through the glow I could see within the embrace and exchange (most prominent in their faces). It was a surreal illustration of what this person meant to all who crossed their path, the impact they had: this person made them feel loved, valued + appreciated.
BITTERSWEET
Upon reflection, there’s a bittersweet feeling. It reminds me of how I once was, that extrovert energy I often exuded, but with time + adversity have come to curtail, particularly in ‘professional’ settings. But at the time, when bearing witness, I was simply captivated by the love streaming in countless colours + temperatures.
Those moments I witnessed from them inspired me to step back + reflect, just question the filters flowing between our daily rhythms and interactions. What more would be possible if we simply let ourselves be, just followed our instincts and said what we thought, expressed how we felt, with no external filters?
In a realm of mutual love + respect, the possibilities are mesmerisingly endless. They give me hope, remind me to be myself more, and thus make life worth living.
drBACKPACK 