Society is only meaningful if its purpose and ideals make sense in terms of the individual’s purpose and ideals.
For the individual there is no society unless he has social status and function. There must be a definite functional relationship between individual life and group life. For the individual without function and status, society is irrational, incalculable, and shapeless. The “rootless” individual, the outcast—fr absence of social function and status casts a man from the society of his fellows—see no society. He sees only demoniac forces, half sensible, half meaningless, half in light and half in darkness, but never predictable. They decide about his life and his livelihood without the possibility of interference on his part, indeed without the possibility of his understanding them. He is like a blindfolded man in a strange room playing a game of which he does not know the rules.
ACTION POINT: Make time to reach out to a “rootless” person who may be unemployed or retired. Drop them a note of support or take them out to lunch.
The Future of Industrial Man
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker