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
We return to the original proposition. The position of impulse in
conduct is intermediary. Morality is an endeavor to find for the
manifestation of impulse in special situations an office of refreshment
and renewal. The endeavor is not easy of accomplishment. It is easier to
surrender the main and public channels of action and belief to the
sluggishness of custom, and idealize tradition by emotional attachment
to its ease, comforts and privileges instead of idealizing it in
practice by making it more equably balanced with present needs. Again,
impulses not used for the work of rejuvenation and vital recovery are
sidetracked to find their own lawless barbarities or their own
sentimental refinements. Or they are perverted to pathological
careers--some of which have been mentioned.
In the course of time custom becomes intolerable because of what it
suppresses and some accident of war or inner catastrophe releases
impulses for unrestrained expression. At such times we have philosophies
which identify progress with motion, blind spontaneity with freedom, and
which under the name of the sacredness of individuality or a return to
the norms of nature make impulse a law unto itself. The oscillation
between impulse arrested and frozen in rigid custom and impulse isolated
and undirected is seen most conspicuously when epochs of conservatism
and revolutionary ardor alternate. But the same phenomenon is repeated
on a smaller scale in individuals. And in society the two tendencies and
philosophies exist simultaneously; they waste in controversial strife
the energy that is needed for specific criticism and specific
reconstruction.
The release of some portion of the stock of impulses is an opportunity,
not an end. In its origin it is the product of chance; but it affords
imagination and invention _their_ chance. The moral correlate of
liberated impulse is not immediate activity, but reflection upon the way
in which to use impulse to renew disposition and reorganize habit.
Escape from the clutch of custom gives an opportunity to do old things
in new ways, and thus to construct new ends and means. Breach in the
crust of the cake of custom releases impulses; but it is the work of
intelligence to find the ways of using them. There is an alternative
between anchoring a boat in the harbor till it becomes a rotting hulk
and letting it loose to be the sport of every contrary gust. To discover
and define this alternative is the business of mind, of observant,
remembering, contriving disposition.
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