Why does he/she behave like this???

As a social animal we inherit skills of fighting, loving, caring etc. according to change in age, time and situation we upgrade such skills which further impact our behavior. Our behavior is mainly situation driven; the way we behave in front of our parents is different than the way we behave in with our friends or with our colleagues at workplace. Let’s attempt to think critically why as a human we do so?

During our early childhood we develop strong affective ties with family members.  These ties provide drastic modification and make us conscious about basic social responsiveness like our religion, education or gender. After that we have situation which is noted as a difficult period in the life cycle i.e. adolescence. In particular, associated with this situation is prominence in our society of what has been called the youth culture, a distinctive pattern of values and attitudes is observed here. The age groups between childhood and the assumption of full adult responsibilities. Such youth culture, with its irresponsibility, its pleasure seeking, its rating and dating and its intensification of romantic love pattern is not just a matter of apprenticeship in adult values and responsibilities. It bears many marks of reaction to emotional tension and insecurity, and in all probability has among its functions that of easing the difficult process of adjustment from childhood emotional dependency to full maturity.

Moving out of romantic life we start earning majority of us start losing our emotional human characteristics because for the wage earner it has become merely a means of obtaining the wage necessary to maintain or prove his existence. Instead of work being the expression of man himself, work is being degraded into an instrument, a means of livelihood. Many of us instead of doing job start doing some business in that case also we became a slave of unpredictable market which is at the mercy of the hazards of competition. This changes our behavior pattern because work or job is external to a human, it’s not a part of human nature consequently he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself, many of us complaints about feeling misery, not of wellbeing, not developing freely physical and mental energy, but is physically exhausted and mentally debased therefore we feel ourselves at home only during our leisure, whereas at work he feels homeless. Our work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour(by society). It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs.
Ending phase of life cycle we can observe another pattern in behavior of humans because at this point of time a person has well-ingrained self-image as competent, successful at some level of work, usefully productive, self-supporting, and able to provide for his family. This image has been built-up over years of time by the favorable reactions of his family, friends, co-workers, and those segments of society whose opinions he values. He has, moreover, found a kind of work—a social role—that permits him to express his self-image satisfactorily, and he is firmly incorporated into a physical environment and a group of co-workers which make it possible for him to carry out his role.

Looking at rosy picture I share above let us try to look real picture of change in behavior of human at the age of 50’s or 60’s, mainly after retirement. The means of carrying out the social role disappears: the man is a lawyer without a case, a bookkeeper without books, and a machinist without tools. He is excluded from his group of former coworkers; as an isolated person he may be completely unable to function in his former role. He no longer sees respect in the eyes of former subordinates praise in the faces of former superiors, and approval in the manner of former co-workers (some times of family members also). He cannot accept this new evaluation for several reasons. He had the old self-image for so many years that it has become part and parcel of him and is no longer dependent upon the current reflection of himself that he sees in the words and gestures of others.
Courtesy: Kenneth Thompson, professor in sociology at The Open University, Milton Keynes 

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