Is social knowledge imparted, or learned? Well of course it is a little bit of both: in stable times it will more closely resemble that which is imparted, in unstable times it will more closely resemble what is learned, and so on across the spectrum. Imparted knowledge has the advantage of being tried and true over a variety of situations, though it certainly becomes less effective as the social milieu changes.
For me the imparted social knowledge of our era pretty much went right over my head. The social knowledge of our era says to be cruel and competitive, and considering certain narrow short-term goals, this is sensible advice if you are still committed to certain ideals and ambitions, as an old set of ideals and ambitions is quickly becoming whittled down through forces of social disintegration, and if you want wealth and power, or even a comfortable life, you must fight tooth and nail with the rest of the poor schmucks struggling over the remaining scraps.
This attitude is generally transmitted through the family, and absorbed through various forms of mainstream media. In media, the furthest out to the fringe, the less saturation of a given system of convention, though oftentimes what is unconventional on the fringe slowly makes its way to the core in time, if that is the way things are moving.
And so I have learned to be almost aggressively nice - yes this is a thing - as being cruel is almost unbearable to me. Being hypersensitive, any sort of social pain or discord is amplified, sometimes to unbearable proportions, which forces one to seek other paths.
But I've come to notice something. If you maintain a given course, and seek to master that course, you can come to see the virtues (or at least the utility) of that course. Follow the course of the bully, and use aggression and intimidation to get what you want, and it just could work half of the time, so long as you don't run into someone more aggressive than you, and more willing to go the distance to get what they want. If you are built for it, if you are wired for it, you can live by it.
Like falling down the height of a tree, you may just hit a branch flailing in a certain direction, and arrest your fall.
But in an overarching social milieu of cruelty, you don't have to be mean. You don't have to fight over scraps with the rest of the rats. It is about capturing wealth, underneath of which is consumable energy. As an individual against other individuals, you have to be more aggressive, but negotiating within a group, you capture a large aggregate of energy and it is up to you how to distribute it.
So as a case study in individual social relations versus group social relations, let's say you come across someone whom you perceive is disrespecting you. In this society the recommended course of action would be: well tell the person off and establish your dominance! Don't let anyone walk all over you. And sometimes this is an appropriate thing to do.
But then let's say we can't take this approach for dispositional reasons, or you're stuck orbiting in proximity to this person for some time. If you decide that you want to try something else socially, you can usually find a way to do it successfully. So let's say you are disrespected by this person, and you say, "well fack you guy!" Well that about does it. The both of you are going to be in a mutually antagonistic state, which should retain its memory, shaping the bounds with which you interact. Sometimes this state resolves itself, and sometimes it continues on indefinitely.
Alternatively, you give the disrespecting person the benefit of the doubt, and decide not to act, instead deflecting or absorbing the act. Maybe the person was having a bad day, or you misunderstood the person, or the person misunderstood you. Is it cowardly, or false to be kind to such a person? Do you really know people? Perhaps you sort through the misunderstanding, and upon waiting to act, find that the person is more amenable to communicating. You find that you were glad that you waited.
Of course this calculus changes dramatically when you know the person well or you are in some sort of abusive relationship. But I guess the point is that there are many ways to do things, and if you try venturing beyond conventional social knowledge you can find out some interesting things, which can work or not work at all given the situation.
Much of this becomes moot in more extreme social relations, such as when violence is involved, or there is extreme environmental antagonism. Then the instincts just take over and events will unfold as they will.
