Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology — John Shaqi
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
Meantime there are certain "practical" men who combine thought and habit
and who are effectual. Their thought is about their own advantage; and
their habits correspond. They dominate the actual situation. They
encourage routine in others, and they also subsidize such thought and
learning as are kept remote from affairs. This they call sustaining the
standard of the ideal. Subjection they praise as team-spirit, loyalty,
devotion, obedience, industry, law-and-order. But they temper respect
for law--by which they mean the order of the existing status--on the
part of others with most skilful and thoughtful manipulation of it in
behalf of their own ends. While they denounce as subversive anarchy
signs of independent thought, of thinking for themselves, on the part of
others lest such thought disturb the conditions by which they profit,
they think quite literally _for_ themselves, that is, _of_ themselves.
This is the eternal game of the practical men. Hence it is only by
accident that the separate and endowed "thought" of professional
thinkers leaks out into action and affects custom.
For thinking cannot itself escape the influence of habit, any more than
anything else human. If it is not a part of ordinary habits, then it is
a separate habit, habit alongside other habits, apart from them, as
isolated and indurated as human structure permits. Theory is a
possession of the theorist, intellect of the intellectualist. The
so-called separation of theory and practice means in fact the separation
of two kinds of practice, one taking place in the outdoor world, the
other in the study. The habit of thought commands some materials (as
every habit must do) but the materials are technical, books, words.
Ideas are objectified in action but speech and writing monopolize their
field of action. Even then subconscious pains are taken to see that the
words used are not too widely understood. Intellectual habits like other
habits demand an environment, but the environment is the study, library,
laboratory and academy. Like other habits they produce external results,
possessions. Some men acquire ideas and knowledge as other men acquire
monetary wealth. While practising thought for their own special ends
they deprecate it for the untrained and unstable masses for whom
"habits," that is unthinking routines, are necessities. They favor
popular education--up to the point of disseminating as matter of
authoritative information for the many what the few have established by
thought, and up to the point of converting an original docility to the
new into a docility to repeat and to conform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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