Becoming Human Among Humans

On Reading George Herbert Mead Again

Some thinkers quietly accompany us through life.

They are not always the loudest voices. They do not necessarily stand at the centre of philosophical history. Yet suddenly one discovers that their thoughts have begun to live within one’s own way of understanding human beings.

That has been my experience with George Herbert Mead.

I first read Mead as a young student. At that time, I was trying to understand how human beings become human beings. Not biologically, but socially and existentially.

How does a self emerge?

How does a child learn to see itself?

How do we become capable of understanding other people?

And perhaps the most fundamental question of all:

Can a human being truly become oneself alone?

These were the questions that led me to Mead.

When I read him again today, many years later, I experience him differently. Not primarily as a social psychologist or educational theorist, but as a thinker of relationships.

A thinker who understood that human beings never come into existence alone.

We live in an age where individualism is strong.

Human beings are often portrayed as independent individuals who create themselves through their own choices and achievements. We speak of self-development, self-realisation, and personal freedom.

There is, of course, some truth in all this.

Yet there is also a danger here.

We may begin to believe that the self exists before community.

That a human being is first a complete individual who then enters into relationships with others.

Mead thought the opposite.

For him, the self emerges through encounters with other people.

We become ourselves through relationship.

This is, in fact, a rather radical idea.

It means that human consciousness cannot be understood as something entirely private and isolated. Our thoughts, our identity, and our understanding of ourselves develop in interaction with others.

A child gradually learns to see itself through the eyes of others.

Not as submission.

But as a human possibility.

During my years in social work, I often met people who had lost faith in themselves.

Children who had grown up with violence, instability, or rejection.

Adults carrying a deep feeling of worthlessness.

Many times I later thought of Mead.

For if the self is formed through relationships, then wounded relationships can also leave deep marks within a person.

A child who is never met with respect slowly learns something about his or her own human worth.

Not necessarily through words.

But through glances.

Through silence.

Through the way other people turn toward the child — or away from it.

In this way, Mead becomes far more than a theorist.

He helps us understand how deeply human vulnerability truly reaches.

One of the most fascinating ideas in Mead is the notion of “taking the perspective of the other.”

Human beings develop through the gradual ability to see themselves from another person’s point of view. First through play. Later through more complex social situations.

A child does not merely play.

A child practices becoming human.

When a child plays mother, teacher, police officer, or shopkeeper, something more than innocent fantasy takes place. The child attempts to understand the world through the perspectives of others.

This is how the self slowly emerges.

I have always been drawn to this idea.

Perhaps because it says something important about human maturity.

Becoming human is not only about expressing oneself.

It is also about developing the capacity to enter into the experiences of others.

In our own time, this capacity sometimes appears fragile. Public debate is often marked by rapid reactions, hardened positions, and little willingness to truly understand the other from within.

Perhaps this is why Mead still feels so relevant.

He reminds us that human community is not built primarily upon control or rules.

It is built upon the ability to shift perspective.

Mead also wrote about the difference between information and knowledge.

This thought seems increasingly important today.

We live surrounded by information. Endless amounts of knowledge are available within seconds. Yet this does not necessarily mean that human beings understand more deeply.

For Mead, knowledge always had to remain open.

Open to experience.

Open to reconstruction.

Open to new encounters with reality.

Knowledge is not something dead.

Not something completed.

Perhaps this is something modern education easily loses sight of. Schools can become so preoccupied with measurement, testing, and performance that the living character of experience disappears.

But a human being is not formed through information alone.

A human being is formed through experience.

Through language.

Through presence.

Through participation in the world.

Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of Mead’s thought is his understanding of sociality.

Human beings are not primarily isolated individuals who occasionally enter into community.

From the very beginning, we are woven into relationships.

A child is born into a world of voices, glances, and actions long before it can fully understand them. Our first encounter with the world is always mediated through other human beings.

It is, in fact, a deeply humbling thought.

We become ourselves because someone was already there.

Someone carried us.

Someone responded to us.

Someone spoke to us before we ourselves had words.

None of us creates ourselves out of nothing.

When I read Mead again today, I am struck by how modern his thoughts still feel.

Not because he offers technical solutions to the problems of our time.

But because he reminds us of something fundamentally human that modern societies easily forget.

That human beings do not only need freedom.

Human beings also need belonging.

Not only self-expression.

But reciprocity.

Not only identity.

But relationship.

Perhaps this is precisely why loneliness has become one of the defining experiences of our age. Many people live surrounded by communication without truly experiencing presence.

We can remain constantly connected without genuinely encountering one another.

Mead would probably have understood this as a profound social problem.

For the self does not develop through contact alone.

It develops through living relationships.

There is also something hopeful in Mead.

For if human beings are shaped through relationships, then new relationships can also open new possibilities.

A human being is never entirely finished.

The self is never closed once and for all.

We continue becoming throughout life.

Through new experiences.

New encounters.

New ways of understanding ourselves.

Perhaps this is why certain encounters between human beings can become so significant. A person who is truly seen may slowly begin to see oneself differently.

Not because everything changes overnight.

But because something new becomes possible.

Some books and thinkers provide answers.

Others help us ask better questions.

That is how I experience Mead.

When I read him again today, I do not primarily encounter a theory of social psychology. I encounter a quiet reflection on what it means to become human among humans.

That the self does not emerge in isolation.

But in relationship.

That language is not merely communication.

But a way of sharing the world.

That human freedom does not arise outside community.

But through it.

Perhaps this is what Mead was trying to show:

That a human being slowly comes into existence through the presence of other human beings.

Through language.

Through glances.

Through responses.

None of us becomes human alone.