On Being Influenced and Influencing: Our Role in Society
Humans are social creatures. That is an absolute, much like how the Earth revolves around the sun or the moon waxes and wanes. Michael Platt, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, says that “human beings are wired to connect – and we have the most complex and interesting social behavior out of all animals. According to Platt, social behavior is an essential part of our toolkit, allowing us to collaborate and cooperate to achieve what we would not be able to on our own.
It has been this way since our ancestors, who were hunter-gatherers, each had a role in the collectives they formed. This organization was necessary, as forming collectives allowed specialization and the distribution of labor, with some hunting, some taking care of children, others gathering resources, and so on. We got more done with more people, much more than we would have done individually.
Being communal creatures has allowed us to evolve into complex societies reliant on structure and division of roles. This has allowed for scientific and cultural innovation, which has led us to become the dominant species on this planet. Without the complex cooperative societal structures, we would never have professions such as scientists, painters, and others unique to our society. If we were solitary creatures, we would never have developed computers or works of art such as the Mona Lisa!
Paska Daksa : A New Craft Movement Part of Bintaro Design District 2022, at South 78 VIVERE Image by Alvin Tjitrowirjo
Such a social structure means people can influence one another with ideas, thoughts, or emotions. Living in cooperation means that you trade not just physical items but intangible goods – what you think, what you desire, what you feel, all of these are transferred from one person to the other and vice versa whenever you interact. However, influence does not just exist on a purely personal, one-to-one basis. Influence can mean one person influencing many or many influencing one.
The root of influence in humanity is our ability to empathize with others. Empathy, the ability to understand and feel others’ emotions, makes us able to or susceptible to influencing others. By having empathy, you can share and partake in someone else’s feelings or see things from their perspective. This can allow you to use that understanding to try to change someone’s perspective or mold them to be in line with what you believe, or instead, you can use that understanding to adjust to their viewpoint, essentially letting them influence you.
Take, for example, an authority figure, a presidential candidate. In an election, a presidential candidate will use whatever means necessary to influence the general public to view them in a favorable light to get more votes. This entails a great deal of understanding, as to influence a large number of people, never mind the citizens of a country, requires you to comprehend their wants, needs, political leanings, etc. A presidential candidate can empathize or at least understand all of this because of the research done by their campaign team or third parties, giving them the ability to speak and act in a way that appeals to their primary audience, sways those on the fence, and discredits the opposition. This is influenced on a massive scale, pulling at what makes people tick and shaping them based on that.
Paska Daksa : A New Craft Movement Part of Bintaro Design District 2022, at South 78 VIVERE Image by Alvin Tjitrowirjo
These days, when people are being influenced or doing the influencing, it is, more often than not, subtle. There are so many channels through which people can now influence others, especially with the inception of the Internet. Social media, advertisements, and even more traditional media such as television and books – are all means of spreading your influence or being influenced. Ideas are communicated daily by appealing to our base emotions by other people and corporations without us realizing the prolonged effect.
Think of it this way, when you see a celebrity wear a particular outfit or a character you like dresses a certain way in a movie, you’re likely to be influenced into buying clothes that match that aesthetic. If you've shown an advertisement for a phone that appeals to your aesthetic sensibilities and want to have the newest and most advanced thing, you’re likely to buy it.
It is in this way that influencing and being influenced are embedded into aesthetics. Aesthetics are unique to each individual, but each individual exerts and receives influence on their aesthetic sensibilities. An average individual may be able to influence their immediate circle’s aesthetics. By just dressing in a way that makes them appealing while carrying themselves with confidence, they can make themselves into the ideal person for their circle, resulting in others emulating them.
Paska Daksa : A New Craft Movement Part of Bintaro Design District 2022, at South 78, VIVERE Image by Johan
However, on a larger scale, corporations and the people behind them now have the power to shape our preferences. For example, there has been a push for a more simplistic, minimalist aesthetic in various industries – resulting from the homogenization of visual and auditory products. This is most obvious in the increasingly uniform logos of various tech companies. Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, and even Google, have abandoned their previously distinct logos in favor of sans serif fonts that are almost indistinguishable from one another.
This is also seen in the homogenization of electronic devices. In the not-so-distant past, items such as phones and laptops had distinct shapes from one another. We are now being influenced into purchasing slim, minimalist, rounded phones as we believe these aesthetic choices mean they are the most advanced—a representation of the futuristic sci-fi aesthetic.
Nevertheless, individuals can and will push back on these influences. Where there is mainstream culture, subcultures are constantly subverting the norm, which will gain more power as time goes on. You can see this in the rise of the ugly but beautiful aesthetic in graphic design and music, going for brash, kitsch, cheesy aesthetics to combat the influence of sleek, modernized designs.
Influencing and being influenced is a push-and-pull game, and influencing an average person is becoming more difficult in this age of hyper-media. It is no longer just about one-on-one interactions but has become more complex, an intricate web of different parties pulling at one another.
Paska Daksa : A New Craft Movement Part of Bintaro Design District 2022, at South 78 VIVERE Image by Alvin Tjitrowirjo
