Engagement with the social level, not avoidance, strengthens character.

Evidence

It rather reveals a certain weakness and lack of confidence in his higher elements, if the individual does not dare descend far enough toward the social level to be prepared for the fight against the social level which is always a fight for it. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 2001

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Unpolitical sociability supplies the familiarity that later enables civic engagement. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 126; Impersonality in urban modernity is a positive achievement, not a loss. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2196