Consciousness and Social Being

In class on Thursday we spent some discussing the following quote, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being which determines their consciousness.” There were several thoughts on what this quote meant. Some thought that it was our consciousness that determined our social being because our brain is before we begin to socialize and is developed a certain way that causes us to act and think in certain ways. Others of us thought that it was our social being which determined our consciousness. As soon as we are born we are constantly surrounded by other people whose actions are being absorbed into our brains. Although we do no understand what is going on, our conscience takes into account what is happening around us. As we grow up we are learning from those who we are with and they help to form our views and thoughts on things around us based on what they believe. In this way it makes sense that our consciousness is determined by our social being because without being a social being we would have nothing to base our consciousness on. It is kind of like saying that you are who you hang out with. We are told as we grow up that we should surround ourselves with positive people in order to be more positive ourselves which will help us to lead successful lives. By surrounding ourselves with these types of people our consciousness adapts to their actions and their ideas and causes us to believe in what we are seeing and doing when we are around these people.