Deep Caring XXXI: Social Class, Agency and the Generative Society

As a sociologist, Kai Erikson focuses on the second half of the equation: communion. She points out that communion is a fundamental building block in all societies and in the formation of our own personal sense of identity and security:

Human beings, like all social animals, have an innate tendency to gather into collectivities containing individuals who regard themselves as being of like kind. That is, it is in our nature to seek communion with other human beings. But the ways in which we do so, the people to whom we find ourselves drawn, and the groupings that emerge from all this must be understood as products of social life. . . . Most people belong to a number of [social groupings.] . . . The most important question one can ask of these nested [social] identities is: which of them are crucial enough at any given time to provide a sense of communion, a sense of security, a sense of being at home among one’s own kind. (Erikson, 2004, p. 56-57)

Building on our own four role model of generativity, we can readily rephrase Erik Erikson’s statement about love and work to incorporate this generative interplay between agency and Communion. Here is our rephrase:

As an adult we need love and communion. We also require the challenge emanating from what we have generated through our work and agency. That which we have generated through love and work must be reared (Generativity One), guided (Generativity Two), guarded and preserved (Generativity Three) and eventually expanded and transcended (Generativity Four). While agency (and work) is needed to carry out the act of generativity and deep caring, communion (and love) is needed to formulate the desire to be caringly generativity.