Dr.

Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

 Meaning of family
 Meaning of society
 Meaning of harmony
 Value or values in relationship feelings or values are innate, but need to be recognised
 Family as the basic unit of human interaction
 Values or feelings in human-human relationship
 Feeling of justice
 Disrespect
 Differentiation/ disrespect between human beings due to lack to right understanding of respect
 Difference between respect and differentiation.
 Identification of comprehensive human goal
 Inter-relation of comprehensive human goals
 Programs/path/five dimensions to achieve comprehensive human goals

MEANING OF FAMILY

Family is a group of human beings consisting of the parents and their child. In extended families the
grand parents and grand children are also included. They are usually related by blood or by marriage.
When it consists of only parents and their children, it is called Nuclear family, otherwise, of bigger
size with members of third generations or more are called Extended families.

MEANING OF SOCIETY

It is a community of people living in a country or region and having shared custom, laws, and
organizations. Therefore, society is a having much bigger group of people and may comprise
hundreds or even thousands of families. Society is a group of family related by shared values.

MEANING OF HARMONY

The word harmony is derived from the Latin word, ‘Harmonia’ which means ‘joining’. Therefore,
harmony is a state of peaceful co-existence of different members and groups. More than one group
member should be there.

VALUE OR VALUES IN RELATIONSHIP

Value means the importance or usefulness of something. But values are standards of behaviour.
Human values means those criteria which are usually referred to when the relationship between
different human beings such as harmony, love, respect, co-operation etc.

FEELINGS OR VALUES ARE INNATE, BUT NEED TO BE RECOGNISED

These human values or our feelings towards fellow human beings are already innate in our nature. We
just have to aware of these, and start expressing or using these. These do not have to be learnt. There
is a continuity of these feelings and we are able to fulfil these.

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

FAMILY AS THE BASIC UNIT OF HUMAN INTERACTION

A single individual can exist, think and live, but can’t interact with another person. The another
person to be around would be most likely brother or sister, mother or father, husband or wife, i.e.
someone or the other member of the family with whom start interacting. Therefore, in society family
is the first, smallest and basic unit of human interaction. So, let us start with our family:

Harmony in the family: When we talk about our family relationship let us accept the following facts:

 In the family, the relationship is between one ‘Self’ (I) and another ‘self’ (I) e.g. you and brother
or your sister both of you has your own ‘selfness’.
 Both of you have your feelings e.g., you like watching cricket but your sister wants to watch same
live dance programme (it is not necessary to have same type of liking in two different ‘self’ in a
family).
 The feeling i.e. likes and dislikes are definite, we can identify them
 These feelings of different ‘self’ in our family, if we can identify and recognise and try to fulfil
them, it would bring mutual happiness in the different self. Let us check these above points in details
to bring harmony in our family.

Identification of other’s feelings leads to mutual happiness in the relationship: When we accept
the relationship among the different ‘self’, we are able to identify the feelings i.e. the values. Once we
identify these values, we try to respect these values by behaving as per other’s expectations to create
harmony and Mutual happiness. So, the process is very simple:

So, what is the base of bringing mutual happiness in the family relationship? We must have the
feeling of trust which leads to mutual fulfilment, but if we have no trust or have doubt on others, it
would lead to happiness.

VALUES OR FEELINGS IN HUMAN-HUMAN RELATIONSHIP

To create relationship with others is the need of ‘self’. The relationship brings feelings i.e. values for
‘other self’. These feelings or values can't be replaced by any physical or material thing e.g. the happy
feeling we get by a meeting a close friend or the sad feelings we have about some one’s passing away,
how can they be replaced by some material things like cash, property or any tangible thing that our

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

body enjoy. Let us we have list of the values in relationship. We must verify them at our natural level
of acceptance and try to live accordingly, for understanding the mutual fulfilment.

There are nine values which are treated as foundations of good behaviour in human society. These
are:
1. Trust fo”okl (Foundation Value)
2. Respect lEeku
3. Affection Lusg
4. Care eerk
5. Guidance okRlY;
6. Reverence J)k
7. Glory xkSjo
8. Gratitude —rKrk
9. Love izse (Complete Value)

1. Trust
It is fundamental feelings in any relationship. The trust can be defined as “It is an assurance that
everybody inherently needs to be happy and prosperous and he or she wants others also to be happy
and prosperous”.
It is the value which enables our relationship towards others possible. As we wish others well, want to
help them, so we expect others also want to make us happy. If we truly believe in the sincerity of
intentions of others, then it is trusting them genuinely. There are two aspects of our exploration:
A. Intention (Goal): What do we aspire?
B. Competence (Skill): Do we have to ability to fulfil our aspiration?
So, we can say that ‘intention is our desire and competence is our ability to fulfil our desire or
intention’.
Trust is the result of the right understanding of the intention of all the human beings around us. This
trust helps to improve our competence in others and in ourselves.

2. Respect
Respect means individuality. Once we are realized that we are individual then only we can see ourself
different from others. Respect means right evaluation.

lEeku ¾ le~ $ eku

lE;d~ ekiuk

Bhd Bhd vkadyu djuk

‘Respect is the feeling of admiration/appreciation for someone for his qualities or achievements’ .
Respect is a value of human relationship. It is also called universal human value.

3. Affection

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

‘Affection is the feeling of being related to the other’. Affection comes when I recognize that we both
want to make each other happy and both of us are similar. Then for the first time, I am related to the
other and other is related to me. This feeling is called affection.
When we have trust and respect about another person then only the feeling of affection can be
developed i.e. if we are not sure that another person is our well-wisher, we have not trust in him so,
there is no affection between us and another person. It creates feeling of opposition.

4. Care: ‘It is a feeling of protecting and nurturing the body of our relative’. Why do we do it? It is
mainly because self and body live in co-existence and we need the body as an instrument of self i.e.
the needs of self are fulfilled through the senses of the body.
It is like the natural tendency of mother for her dependent and even grown up children. This value
makes our relations warm, humane, intimate and makes our social life sweet and smooth.

5. Guidance: ‘The feeling of correct understanding about other (my relative) is called

guidance’. The other person also needs to have correct understanding. So, guidance is an interaction
between two self’s.
It is to advise others in their best possible interests, who are relatively less mature or inexperienced.
As we seek Guidance or directions from our own seniors, we should offer it readily to our juniors
also.

6. Reverence: ‘The feeling of acceptance of excellence in the other is called reverence’. When we

see that the other has achieved this excellence- which means to understand and to live in harmony at
all the levels of living ensuring continuity of happiness, we have a feeling of reverence for
him/her.

7. Glory: ‘Glory is the feeling for someone who has made efforts for excellence’. E.g the
people who have proved themselves to be the best freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi,
Subhashchandra Bose etc. It is not merely/only their excellence but their effect to make thers
excellent, brings them the feeling glory for them, by others.

8. Gratitude: Gratitude is the feeling of acceptance for those who have taken efforts for my
excellence. Gratitude is an emotion that occurs after people receive help from others.

9. Love: Love is the emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In other words,
 

love is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or
friend. Love is also called the complete value because the feeling love is related to all the
human beings.
Love is the second step of affection. It starts with other human being and get expanded to all the
human beings around us. Love towards all, helps to develop the undivided society. The journey starts,
within the family and through the society it expands to the world family (Vasudev Kutumbakam)

The above mentioned values are the core of all relations. These values are intrinsic
and available in every person. We need to find out in ourselves and implement. Without
implementation, one cannot think of a strong family relation.

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

FEELING OF JUSTICE

Just means being right and fair, as deserved. Therefore, justice means just behaviour or fair
treatment. The base of mutual happiness is to identify the feelings i.e. values of other person
and respect them. It is called as justice. So, the justice has four elements such as:

1. Recognition of values

2. Fulfilment of these values

3. Evaluation of the values

4. Creation of Mutual Happiness

When all the four are ensured, justice is ensured. Mutual fulfilment is the hallmark/feature of justice.
And justice is essential in all relationships. Justice starts from family and slowly expands to the world
family. The child gets the understanding of justice in the family. With this understanding, he goes out
in the society and interacts with people.

Web of feelings
We can apply this model at our home to test it. Let us check it with, Father-Son, Son-Mother, Sister-
Brother relationship.

DISRESPECT

Disrespect means positively an expression in our behaviour of disapproval of unhappiness or

dissatisfaction towards other person.

The feeling of disrespect may include three situations:

 Over-Evaluation: We evaluate our-selves more than what we are in reality.

E.g. you like to play cricket and you play for your club in reality. When your parents introduce to
you to the guests as “our son plays cricket for the university”
Do you feel comfortable or do you feel uncomfortable by such introduction? You become
uncomfortable because you have been over evaluated.

 Under-Evaluation: We evaluate our-selves lesser than what we are in reality.

E.g. you are good in studies and also like to have some social work. When your parents introduce
to you to the guests as “he is our son who likes to be a social worker at the cost of his studies”.
Do you like this statement of your parents? No, because, you have been under evaluated.

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

 Otherwise-Evaluation: You are good at your at studies and like to watch cricket. Your parents
introduce to your guest as, “He is our son. He is doing his engineering and plays cricket for his
university.
Do you feel uncomfortable by their statement? If it is ‘yes’, it is because, you have been evaluated
otherwise. But if your answer is ‘no’ it means you like the statements which are not true.
So, wrong evaluation makes us disrespected.

DIFFERENTIATION/ DISRESPECT BETWEEN HUMAN BEINGS DUE TO LACK TO

RIGHT UNDERSTANDING OF RESPECT

Today, we are differentiating in the name of respect. We either differentiate people on the basis of
their body, physical facilities and beliefs:

On the basis of body

 Gender: We ignore the fact that being male or female is an attribute/feature of the body, and not
an attribute at the level of ‘I’. And differentiate in giving respect on the basis of gender called male
and females. In many countries, males are respected more than females. In fact, ‘I’ or self in male
and female is the same. In our country also we prefer to have a male child than a female.
 Race: The people have different colour of the skin, eyes, or hair. Some people are black, brown or
white. On the basis of these physical characteristics, we classify them into different races like
Aryan race, Mongolian race etc. or on the basis of caste. Again here, we don’t do the evaluation on
the basis of ‘I’, but on the basis of the body. Generally, we feel safer and show respect to the
person to the person of our own race.
 Age: We have notions such as ‘one must respect elders’. There is no such notion as respect
youngsters. Here, we see that we are again evaluating at the level of the body – age is related to the
body, and not to ‘I’.
  Physical strength: If someone is stronger, we again treat him/her differently. This is again at the
level of the body. In fact, we think that we are respecting the other, while it is fear; if we do not
treat them like this, we will be harmed.

On the basis of physical facilities

 Wealth: We must have observed that wealthy and rich people are always respected by others
(mainly by the poor people). It is because of their money power we respect them and never bother

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

about the poor persons? This is wrong, both the rich and the poor persons have same ‘self’ (which
must be respected).
 Post and position: We always show respect to the person who is having high post and position. It
is wrong to respect a person on a higher post and position and not to have any respect about a
person who is at a lower post and position than us. The persons on the higher or lower post and
positions have the same self. In our education, we are trained directly or indirectly to earn posts for
us to fetch/get respect.

On the basis of beliefs

 ‘Isms’: ‘Ism’ means any belief in terms of a ‘thought-system’ that we have, or that we have
adopted. Each one of us has a set of thought-system i.e.Isms like capitalism, socialism,
communism, nationalism etc. These isms are extended upto the national level i.e. some countries
like Russia, China, are the strong believers of ‘communism’ while U.S.A., U.K., Canada, Australia
are the capitalist countries. The people show respect to another person having same Isms and have
no respect about other people from another ‘Isms”. It is wrong because people from any ‘Isms”
have same ‘Self’.
 Sects/tradition: People from different religions have different traditions and faiths, likes and
dislikes. E.g., some people like veg food and some like to have non-veg food. This reflects in our
respect others. Generally we show respect to the people from our own tradition, culture or religion
and have little respect about the persons from other tradition. It is wrong as the persons from any
tradition have the same ‘self’.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RESPECT AND DIFFERENTIATION.

S. Respect Differentiation
N

1 Respect is right evaluation. Differentiation is lack of understanding of respect.

2 Respecting and its expressions increase Differentiation creates disunity, resentment and
positivity in our social life. negativity in our social life.

3 Respect joins and unites the society. Differentiation breaks it in parts on basis of gender,
languages, wealth, position, sects, isms etc.

IDENTIFICATION OF COMPREHENSIVE HUMAN GOAL

To fulfil the basic aspiration of all the human beings at all the levels we must try to understand the
goals to be achieved. We can classify the goals at various levels:

Level Goals

Individual Right Understanding

Family Level Prosperity

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

Society Level Fear-lessness / Trust

World / Nature Level Co-existence

a. Right Understanding: It is necessary for all the human beings at the individual levels. If an
individual does not have correct understanding (of any situation), he or she get disturbed and act
also in the same manner to create disharmony with other persons and also with nature.
b. Prosperity: It is a general need and goal of all the families. Prosperity of a family means it must
be able to identify its physical and self needs and must produce more than the requirement.
c. Fearlessness/Trust: The society can become trustworthy and fearless, if each one of the member
of the society has correct understanding of other members of the society. The feeling of oneness
create the trust and fearlessness in the society.
d. Co-existence: It mean there is relationship among all the entities in the nature i.e. all the animals,
plants, and microorganisms have a coexistence e.g. ecosystem.
So, Right understanding, Prosperity, Fearlessness and Co-existence are the four comprehensive
human goals.

INTER-RELATION OF COMPREHENSIVE HUMAN GOALS

If we look at these goals which are universal and are the minimum requirement of any society to
create trust and harmony. Let us find out their interrelationship.

a. To create harmony in the society, it is always necessary to have correct understanding at the
individual level. It is the basic foundation of the society.
b. If all the individuals have right understanding about the needs of the physical facilities of the
family. He or she can assess the needs and can produce more than the family’s requirements to
generate prosperity.
c. Right understanding, prosperity at the family level leads to trust and fearlessness in the society.
d. The trust worthy and fearless, prosperous society with right understanding at the individual level
can help to have correct interaction with the nature, to help to create co-existence.
So, all the goals are interrelated, shown in the following figure:
Right Understanding

Prosperity

Fearlessness/Trust

Co-existence

PROGRAMS/PATH TO ACHIEVE COMPREHENSIVE HUMAN GOALS

Comprehensive human goals are right understanding, prosperity, fearlessness and co-existence. 
Programs/five dimensions of human society needed to achieve the comprehensive human goals are:

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

S.No Five Dimensions Comprehensive Human Goal

.

1 Education – Right Living (Siksha – Sanskar) Right Understanding

2 Health – Self Regulation (Swasthya – Sanyama) Prosperity

3 Justice – Preservation (Nyaya – Suraksha) Fearlessness and co-existence

4 Production – Work (Utpadan – Kriya) Prosperity and co-existence

5 Exchange – Storage (Vinimaya – Kosh) Prosperity and Fearlessness

1. Education – Right Living: Education refers to understanding harmony at all four levels of life
and right living is to have the ability (competence) to live in harmony at all four levels of life.

The final goal of education is to achieve the continuous happiness and prosperity.

2. Health – Self Regulation: Sanyama/ Self Regulation refers to a feeling of responsibility for

nurturing, protection and right utilization of the body (According to the W.H.O. “health is the well
being of the body and mind”). When our body is physically fit to act according to the needs of the self
(‘I’), and, there is harmony among the parts of the body, it is referred to as health or swasthya.

So, self-regulation is the base of good health.

3. Justice – Preservation: Justice (nyaya) refers to harmony in the relationship between human

beings i.e. To recognise, To fulfil, To evaluate for the mutual relationship.

Preservation (suraksha) refers to harmony in the relationship between human being and the rest of
nature i.e. To recognise, To fulfil, To evaluate for the mutual prosperity.

There are three methods to develop relationship with the nature:

Man-Nature Relationship

Enrichment Conservation
Protection

Enrichment is to develop the environment this can be done by recycling of the resources, like soil,
water, forest, minerals.

Protection is mainly confined to save the wild life and rare species of plants.

Conservation is to have proper utilisation of the resources like soil, water, forest, minerals, renergy
resources etc. ‘Use them but do not abuse them’.

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 Dr. Alka Singh
Module III: Understanding Harmony in the Family and Society HVPE (RVE 301)

4. Production - Work: To is to put efforts on the rest of the environment (forming, mining, grazing,
manufacturing etc.)
The production is the results or the output of these efforts i.e. grains from farming, minerals from
mining etc.
So, work is the physical efforts put by the persons on the environment and Production is the results
of the physical efforts.

5. Exchange – Storage: Exchange (vinimaya) refers to the exchange of physical facilities between

the members of the society, while storage (kosa) refers to the storage of physical facilities that is
left after fulfilling the needs of the family. Storage is the indication of prosperity at the family.

We can now see how these five dimensions of humanistic society are able to ensure the human goal:

Education – Right living       leads to           Right understanding

 Having the process of education and right living leads to right understanding in the individual.

Health – Self-regulation        leads to           Prosperity

 Having the program for health and sanyam leads to well-being of the body, and identification of
need for physical facilities which along with production ensures feeling of prosperity in the family.

Justice – Preservation           leads to           Fearlessness and Co-existence (respectively)

 Ensuring justice in relationship, or mutual fulfilment in relationship on the basis of values like
Trust, Respect, etc leads to fearlessness in society, while Suraksha of nature – via enrichment,
protection and right utilization leads to co-existence in nature.

Production – Work               leads to           Prosperity and Co-existence

 Production and work are for physical facilities, and this leads to a feeling of prosperity in the
family. Production is done in harmony with nature, and hence, this also leads to co-existence with
nature.

Exchange – Storage              leads to           Prosperity and Fearlessness

 When we store and exchange for mutual fulfilment and not for exploitation, then it leads to
fearlessness (trust) in society.0

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