One of the key factors which determine the emotional intelligence of societies and their evolutionary improvement is Self-Expression. Self- Expression comes differently to different individuals, some are perceived to attain this quite early in their lives, while others learn over the time to express themselves and be comfortable with it.
Self-Expression might look one of the most straightforward characteristic that an individual might have, but it might prove to be one of the hardest and trickiest ones to have. On the other hand, wider social behaviors which are taught in a domestic setup such as at home, school, town are much easier for individuals to seemingly understand and follow.
Individuals in a society are taught and also have a natural inclination of adopting and learning, these natural behaviors play an important part in the psychology of each individual. Thus the psychological and emotional state of an individual is the output of societal norms.
Then there is a wider environment with which an individual gets familiar with through the scope of Internet, Television, Films, textbooks and travel. There is always a very strong chance that any adaptations, choices or preferences made as a result of exposure to this wider environment will be via the psychology that has been honed and developed through the immediate primary environment of these individuals.
Society or environment is generally favorable of the like-minded individuals and familiar behaviors. Confrontation is generally discouraged or harnessed to ensure the smooth functioning of societies. Theoretically an individual will be having the best form of self-expression at a very young age and in the later part of his age. In the time in between individuals are conforming, learning, questioning, adapting or ensuring their survival. The process of self-expression generally comprises these three stages.
Self-Expression (Least Awareness) – Reactionary Expression (Least Awareness-High Awareness) – Self Expression (High Awareness).
The process of self-expression generally follows the same trend; however, its length can vary from one individual to another. For some these three stages can be completed in 12 years, 20 years; for some it might take 30 years or 50 years. Self-expression has to always to come to the fore, because it’s one of the most natural human behaviors, thus cannot be taken away or separated from individuals.
Self-expression can be one of the hardest thing for an individual to express and nurture, given its high complexity, variety and uniqueness of the combination of many of its aspects. On the other hand, developing academic ability, technical ability, well-practiced social behaviors, economic habits are much easier to develop and master. Self-expression however may remain elusive and unexpressed.
In today’s world the things are much hopeful and optimistic than they ever have been, the cycle of self-expression has a much shorter lead time, individuals are much more likely to achieve the state of self-expression.
Socio-economic factors play a decisive role in nurturing and sustaining the self-expression of individuals. I believe that countries with a better quality of life or at the forefront of technological and economic revolution are more likely to have a higher degree of individuals who have mastered self-expression. The moment an economic, social or legal setups cease to support and nurture the collective self-expression of individuals and its various social setups, it will collapse. A simple correlation that can be hypothesized is “overall wellbeing of a society is directly proportional to the natural expression of its individuals”.
Social and economic setups which have the ability to encourage the natural behaviors of its individuals while also satisfying their need of mental and physical growth will perform much better over other similar social setups.
It’s of paramount important to identify different facets of individual and collective self-expression. It’s also important to understand that our economic, legal, social and other policies must be examined using self-expression lens, and different correlations must be worked out and calculated.
Neomodern 