Utopia : The search for a perfect society

Man is a social animal

This was probably the first quotation that had caught my attention as a school going kid. Though I hadn't pondered over this quote, it had definitely made an impact. It had left a scar on my mind, which I would come back and visit after many years. Here I am today trying to dig back, examine the scar again and see what it means to me now after so many years.(Thanks to the Time's Mock CAT passage which touched this topic and gave me some more insight)

Though the topic of this article is "Utopia : The search for a perfect society", I started with this quote because it tells us that the very definition of man is incomplete without mentioning society, and hence stresses the importance of society in man's life.



A closer inspection of this quotation throws more light on the inherent relationship between man and society. This quote, while defining man, first generalizes him as an animal but later differentiates him from other animals by saying that he is a social animal. What this quote does is first it pushes the man into a deep ocean(of all animal), but later by saying that he is a social animal, it pulls him back to the air again and shows how different(man) he is from the rest of animals.
When it calls him an animal it is an attribute which put him into a group. It is a generalization, a uniting factor. Lets call this attribute : Genaralizer. But when it calls him a social animal, it is an attribute which separates him from the group to which he belongs. It is a unique factor, a differentiating factor. Lets call this attribute : Differentiator.

An analogy makes the understanding of the above paragraph easier. Lets define a bird. Bird is a flying animal. Now compare this with the definition of man : Man is a social animal. So for both bird and man the Genaralizer here remains the same which is Animal. But the Differentiator is different for man and bird. For a bird the differentiator is Flying and for a man the differentiator is Social. So what flying is to a bird, social is to a man. So among the group of animals it is this attribute(social) which makes him unique. Therefore the word "social" is the Unique Selling Point(USP) of Man.

                                                        Genaralizer                Differentiator

                       Man                             Animal                      Social

                      Bird                               Animal                     Flying


Now that we know the importance of society in Man's life, lets try to define the word society. Society is a community living of animals, in which the pros of living together have greater positive impact on the each individual than if he were live on his own. Here the words "greater positive impact" are highlighted to make room for negative impact which might result because of negative elements in the the community living, or because of the inherent nature of the community living itself which might have negative impact on an individual or a group of individuals.

As we have defined what a society is, now lets get to what are the characteristics of a society.