Personal and Group Formation as a Prerequisite and Consequence of Workplace

Personal and Group Formation as a Prerequisite and Consequence of Workplace

Social Rituals

The need to categorize the world, personal and group experience, and how

individuals and groups move through life plays an important part of the human condition.

Despite the vast array of cultural differences found throughout the world and through

time, this cognitive capacity for orderly categorization of the environment most

pervasively defines what it means to be human. And a central feature that characterizes

this most basic of human process is the creation of "identity." This is as important at the

level of the individual as it is at the level of humanity in general. The primal

differentiation between the "self" and the "other" provides the basis for navigation in the

social world, and is a prime requisite for any theory of true democracy. With a firm grasp

of what constitutes the "self," this identity may then be used to enter into agreements and

accords, as well as involve the individual in the everyday negotiations through which are

created our conceptions of the world in which we live, and consequently, the actions

available to the individual and the group in the world so conceived.

A further indication of the need for a creation and affirmation of self-identity lies

in the psychological concept of anxiety, or "self annihilation." Psychological definitions

of anxiety describe a process by which the self, an individual's identity and the seat of

rational action, literally disappears - the process of personal development reverses and4

the individual is annihilated, becoming merely an unthinking mass reduced to physical

reactions to external physical stimuli, left only with a choice between "fight" and

"flight." In writing on the pernicious effects of unfounded anxiety, Michael Diamond

writes that "[u]nsettling feelings of powerlessness and helplessness, and a

disconnectedness from reality, further describe this disturbing psychodynamic

phenomenon" (Diamond, 1993: 55 n.4). In short, without a sense of identity as a defense

against anxiety, and as the basis of the individuality of a freely associating being, there

remains no chance for humanity, or for a just and beneficial civilization.

As already mentioned, the process of creating and sustaining an identity also

works on larger scales than that of the individual physical being. We as humans create an

identity for ourselves that separates us from the other animals, plants, as well as the

remainder of the universe. This holds true for the mental, spiritual, and meta-physical as

well as the physical world. Utilizing a complex and well-developed communicative

system of symbolic interaction, humans have been able to organize in an effective

manner in order to affect changes most beneficial (and unfortunately, detrimental as well)

to the whole of humankind. Agriculture allows for the possibility of a sustained and

assured food source. Storage methods, especially cold storage, allows for a stockpiling of

provisions that may help to overcome the possible deleterious effects of drought and

production shortages. Improved transportation techniques gives the possibility of

obtaining basic necessities even in environments that do not lend themselves to

cultivation, or do not have the requisite on-site resources for a secure and comfortable

life. All of these improvements on what nature has offered rely on an orderly means of

coordination of individuals, which leads to the most important-by-far feature of the5

human identity: the capacity for sustained, repeatable, complex, extremely descriptive as

well as general, and adaptive communication - the ritual coordination of symbols and

language.

Negotiation of what constitutes identity - those aspects and features attributed to a

bounded and independent entity - may occur in the internal space of an individual, as

well as in a sphere in which notions of humanity play only a part. There are many

psychological processes that present possible problems to the formation of a unified

individual character, and the human species also plays a role within a larger world-

ecological system. But for the purposes of this present discussion, considerations of what

constitutes "identity" will be confined to the workings that occur in the spectrum between

the individual on one side, and the group on the other.

The definition of "group" used here includes two or more persons who share a

collection of attributes and attitudes that serve to distinguish them from their

surroundings, and the others that may occupy those surroundings. These may include

personal demographics, clothing, economic features and/or concerns, sharing of a

common space

1

, sharing a common social or work goal, among others.