Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychologyDewey, John
Philosophy
Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology
Dewey, John
Habit; Social psychology
The significant thing is that the pathology arising from the sex
instinct affords a striking case of a universal principle. Every impulse
is, as far as it goes, force, urgency. It must either be used in some
function, direct or sublimated, or be driven into a concealed, hidden
activity. It has long been asserted on empirical grounds that expression
and enslavement result in corruption and perversion. We have at last
discovered the reason for this fact. The wholesome and saving force of
intellectual freedom, open confrontation, publicity, now has the stamp
of scientific sanction. The evil of checking impulses is not that they
are checked. Without inhibition there is no instigation of imagination,
no redirection into more discriminated and comprehensive activities. The
evil resides in a refusal of direct attention which forces the impulse
into disguise and concealment, until it enacts its own unavowed uneasy
private life subject to no inspection and no control.
A rebellious disposition is also a form of romanticism. At least rebels
set out as romantics, or, in popular parlance, as idealists. There is no
bitterness like that of conscious impotency, the sense of suffocatingly
complete suppression. The world is hopeless to one without hope. The
rage of total despair is a vain effort at blind destructiveness. Partial
suppression induces in some natures a picture of complete freedom, while
it arouses a destructive protest against existing institutions as
enemies that stand in the way of freedom. Rebellion has at least one
advantage over recourse to artificial stimulation and to subconscious
nursings of festering sore spots. It engages in action and thereby comes
in contact with realities. It contains the possibility of learning
something. Yet learning by this method is immensely expensive. The costs
are incalculable. As Napoleon said, every revolution moves in a vicious
circle. It begins and ends in excess.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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