As the previous post discussed, our experience of the world is organized by the interests that have guided our knowledge, the knowledge that our experience relies on. At the same time, this knowledge of the world is embodied in us, the subject of knowledge, the knower (point #3 in Compass). In other words, the knower has been shaped by the interests that have guided the knowledge their experience relies on. We have been made per those interests, we reflect those interests. This shaping of the knower, of each and every one of us, is the outcome of the disciplining that our experience relies on: we, the knowers, have been disciplined to know (Knowledge, Ability, Discipline).
We are well aware of this relationship between who we are and our specific way of experiencing the world: we are products of a long process of socialization, a socialization into the ways of our community. This socialization begins early on, as we learn to discern particular features of our environment and direct our actions towards them, as we learn how to communicate through language, as we assimilate social roles and behaviors, and as we learn skills to earn a living. We see the particularities of aspects of our socialization when we notice the finely-grained categorization of family relations in Mandarin Chinese (Family Relations), the differences of Hanunoo color categorizations (A Color Perception Example), or the bodily experience of marital problems among Hindu women (Ardhanarishvara). Different socialization can result in radical differences in the ways we engage with and comprehend the world, a point beautifully expressed by Michel Foucault in the preface of The Order of Things: “… the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that … is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.”
We are socialized by assimilating a stock of given knowledge, knowledge that is shared by the members of our community, knowledge that supports shared ways of experiencing and orienting ourselves in the world. The stable organization and cohesiveness of our community is maintained through widespread agreements on what to produce, what to consume, what is valuable, what is proper behavior, what may be unacceptable, and so on. We are socialized and made in ways that promote the stability and advancement of our communities.
Our socialization into a community is guided by two fairly obvious kinds of interests:
First, there are the interests of the community, reflecting the necessity of the maintenance of its organization and cohesiveness. These interests guide the generation of shared knowledge and its transmission through socialization, knowledge that makes us, so that we can be members of the community. This supports the sharing of a common life, of life as members of the same community, and ensures our mobilization for the needs of the community.
Second, there is our own personal interest that guides our socialization, our own interest in belonging. In the early life of each one of us, when, as infants and children, are completely dependent on adults, we strive to engage and interact with others. We actively seek to be socialized, to assimilate the ways of the people we depend on, and becoming a member of their community is necessary for our survival and growth. As we grow older, we often seek to become a member of communities we develop an interest in – perhaps for learning a trade, for joining a profession, for pursuing access to resources, or simply for finding company to do things together with. We learn and become socialized into the ways of the community we want to join, so that we can be accepted as members. In the diverse contemporary societies, we frequently find ourselves belonging to and participating in several different communities we share things with, for example, from language, religion, cultural traditions or rituals, to the skills of our trade, affiliation with political parties, membership in sports and other clubs, or hobbies.