Being Erica Season 3: Checking Yourself Against Others (early access)
The moral case for making sure you are considering what other people think when making decisions.
We need other people.
No matter how much we might want to go it alone, other people is something we rely on for the things we need most. Whether it's for basic things like food, housing and to protect us from terrible tragedies like crime. But more than that we need them for relationships. Family being the first group of people who we rely on to help us grow and establish deep emotional connections to. The kind we can turn to when things go wrong. Then we rely on them when we build out other relationships like friendships and becoming romantically involved with someone. If things go down badly and we lose either love or friendships, we turn to family members for emotional comfort and safety.
Yet at the same time we can come to rely on these friendships and other relationships for a similar type of emotional support. It's not the type of relationship you have with your family but it can still be deep and meaningful. When it comes to romantic relationships, they can in fact end up becoming family. Friendship can also be as deep as family although that's harder to establish. But that comes with all kinds of problems. These people can always leave you if they don't feel capable of helping you with your problems. They aren't feeling the need to stick by you that a family member would. So you have to be careful what you share with these people. Sometimes even holding these feelings back can be seen as evidence that you're not as good at maintaining these relationships. Which makes it easier to leave.
This is part of what makes building and maintaining relationships so difficult. It's never entirely clear how much you can share with someone before it becomes something they worry about. You worry that people aren't nearly as willing to help you, while at the same time you worry that someone will tell you something about themselves that makes you feel extremely weird. The kind of thing you don't want to have to deal with. Giving you the option to leave them behind and find new relationships. But we still need other people. We still want to know what they think and how they feel about you and the things which you do. Hopefully if they do it well, you can actually improve. Make yourself into a better person.
Previously in this space, we've explored the idea of living in the past and the relationships people have to each other that are long lived. Then we looked at the idea of trying to leave the past behind and focusing on the present so you can have fun with the world around you. However, people don't always get you or want to go along with what you're thinking or doing. Other people have other ideas and finding a way to work with them is incredibly difficult. If you do though, they can be really important friends of yours. The kinds of friends who you can rely on no matter what the circumstance without fear. Doing so is a whole process though, and not everyone can do it.
“Friendship... two people choose each other through some mysterious mix of alchemy and circumstance. On the surface the reason for our choice seems obvious. They should share our interests, they make us laugh, but is there more to it than that? And do we ever really stop and wonder why this person and not another? Friendship, it begins when two people choose each other. But what happens when we outgrow the choice? When little by little, our paths diverge, our needs change, and one day we wake up and we realize we need to choose something different.”
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