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
It is "natural" for activity to be agreeable. It tends to find
fulfilment, and finding an outlet is itself satisfactory, for it marks
partial accomplishment. If productive activity has become so inherently
unsatisfactory that men have to be artificially induced to engage in it,
this fact is ample proof that the conditions under which work is carried
on balk the complex of activities instead of promoting them, irritate
and frustrate natural tendencies instead of carrying them forward to
fruition. Work then becomes labor, the consequence of some aboriginal
curse which forces man to do what he would not do if he could help it,
the outcome of some original sin which excluded man from a paradise in
which desire was satisfied without industry, compelling him to pay for
the means of livelihood with the sweat of his brow. From which it
follows naturally that Paradise Regained means the accumulation of
investments such that a man can live upon their return without labor.
There is, we repeat, too much truth in this picture. But it is not a
truth concerning original human nature and activity. It concerns the
form human impulses have taken under the influence of a specific social
environment. If there are difficulties in the way of social
alteration--as there certainly are--they do not lie in an original
aversion of human nature to serviceable action, but in the historic
conditions which have differentiated the work of the laborer for wage
from that of the artist, adventurer, sportsman, soldier, administrator
and speculator.
IV
War and the existing economic regime have not been discussed primarily
on their own account. They are crucial cases of the relation existing
between original impulse and acquired habit. They are so fraught with
evil consequences that any one who is disposed can heap up criticisms
without end. Nevertheless they persist. This persistence constitutes the
case for the conservative who argues that such institutions are rooted
in an unalterable human nature. A truer psychology locates the
difficulty elsewhere. It shows that the trouble lies in the inertness of
established habit. No matter how accidental and irrational the
circumstances of its origin, no matter how different the conditions
which now exist to those under which the habit was formed, the latter
persists until the environment obstinately rejects it. Habits once
formed perpetuate themselves, by acting unremittingly upon the native
stock of activities. They stimulate, inhibit, intensify, weaken, select,
concentrate and organize the latter into their own likeness. They create
out of the formless void of impulses a world made in their own image.
Man is a creature of habit, not of reason nor yet of instinct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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