Communication As A Mean of Survival

Ahmad Adha
Aug 26, 2017 · 2 min read

I would like to begin my first writing by quoting some words from a well known Greek Philosopher, Aristotle, he said:

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god”

There is truth in Aristotle words, we, human definitely cannot survive living in this world alone. There is limit to what an individual human can strive for their survival, but beyond that, helping hand from others is an absolute necessity. One bridge laid for us to accomplish a good social life is by communicating with others.

Communication in literal definition is an act of conveying intended meaning from one entity or group to another using mutually understood signs and rules. The goal of communication is to made the other group/ person whom we communicate with understand our intention.

Just like how animal need the ability of foraging to survive in nature, we humans need to communicate with each other to be able to life a good life. take example when we hungry we go to market to buy food, there we need to communicate with the clerk to buy what we need. When we sick we go to doctor and we need to tell the doctor about what we feel, that’s communicating. Those examples are just enough to stress how important communication in human life.

Then, the question is: How about deaf, blind, or mute people? Are they not communicating? There are other forms of communication beside verbal communication such as written communication and nonverbal communication. According to their handicap, people with disability use those forms communication but mostly the use nonverbal communication such as sign language for blind and deaf people.

What more important in communication is reciprocity, that is the communication between the one giving message and the one who receives it should be going both way. This requires both sides to understand the message conveyed and giving feedback on the message. Without reciprocity, communication would be plain and the goal would not achieved.

From those above, we can conclude that to survive living in this world communication, more than that, good communication with reciprocity is required. Without communicating with others, the survivability of one individual human would be very less likely because human, in their nature, is a social creature, and they cannot survive without social life.

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Ahmad Adha

Written by

I don’t even understand myself

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