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
be flavor left in it, then some natural traits have somehow escaped
being subdued. To be so good as to attract notice is to be priggish, too
good for this world. The same psychology that brands the convicted
criminal as forever a social outcast makes it the part of a gentleman
not to obtrude virtues noticeably upon others.
The Puritan is never popular, not even in a society of Puritans. In case
of a pinch, the mass prefer to be good fellows rather than to be good
men. Polite vice is preferable to eccentricity and ceases to be vice.
Morals that professedly neglect human nature end by emphasizing those
qualities of human nature that are most commonplace and average; they
exaggerate the herd instinct to conformity. Professional guardians of
morality who have been exacting with respect to themselves have accepted
avoidance of conspicuous evil as enough for the masses. One of the most
instructive things in all human history is the system of concessions,
tolerances, mitigations and reprieves which the Catholic Church with its
official supernatural morality has devised for the multitude. Elevation
of the spirit above everything natural is tempered by organized leniency
for the frailties of flesh. To uphold an aloof realm of strictly ideal
realities is admitted to be possible only for a few. Protestantism,
except in its most zealous forms, has accomplished the same result by a
sharp separation between religion and morality in which a higher
justification by faith disposes at one stroke of daily lapses into the
gregarious morals of average conduct.
There are always ruder forceful natures who cannot tame themselves to
the required level of colorless conformity. To them conventional
morality appears as an organized futility; though they are usually
unconscious of their own attitude since they are heartily in favor of
morality for the mass as making it easier to manage them. Their only
standard is success, putting things over, getting things done. Being
good is to them practically synonymous with ineffectuality; and
accomplishment, achievement is its own justification. They know by
experience that much is forgiven to those who succeed, and they leave
goodness to the stupid, to those whom they qualify as boobs. Their
gregarious nature finds sufficient outlet in the conspicuous tribute
they pay to all established institutions as guardians of ideal
interests, and in their denunciations of all who openly defy
conventionalized ideals. Or they discover that they are the chosen
agents of a higher morality and walk subject to specially ordained laws.
Hypocrisy in the sense of a deliberate covering up of a will to evil by
loud-voiced protestations of virtue is one of the rarest of occurrences.
But the combination in the same person of an intensely executive nature
with a love of popular approval is bound, in the face of conventional
morality, to produce what the critical term hypocrisy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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