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
Recognition of the correct psychology locates the problem but does not
guarantee its solution. Indeed, at first sight it seems to indicate that
every attempt to solve the problem and secure fundamental
reorganizations is caught in a vicious circle. For the direction of
native activity depends upon acquired habits, and yet acquired habits
can be modified only by redirection of impulses. Existing institutions
impose their stamp, their superscription, upon impulse and instinct.
They embody the modifications the latter have undergone. How then can we
get leverage for changing institutions? How shall impulse exercise that
re-adjusting office which has been claimed for it? Shall we not have to
depend in the future as in the past upon upheaval and accident to
dislocate customs so as to release impulses to serve as points of
departure for new habits?
The existing psychology of the industrial worker for example is slack,
irresponsible, combining a maximum of mechanical routine with a maximum
of explosive, unregulated impulsiveness. These things have been bred by
the existing economic system. But they exist, and are formidable
obstacles to social change. We cannot breed in men the desire to get
something for as nearly nothing as possible and in the end not pay the
price. We satisfy ourselves cheaply by preaching the charm of
productivity and by blaming the inherent selfishness of human nature,
and urging some great moral and religious revival. The evils point in
reality to the necessity of a change in economic institutions, but
meantime they offer serious obstacles to the change. At the same time,
the existing economic system has enlisted in behalf of its own
perpetuity the managerial and the technological abilities which must
serve the cause of the laborer if he is to be emancipated. In the face
of these difficulties other persons seek an equally cheap satisfaction
in the thought of universal civil war and revolution.
Is there any way out of the vicious circle? In the first place, there
are possibilities resident in the education of the young which have
never yet been taken advantage of. The idea of universal education is as
yet hardly a century old, and it is still much more of an idea than a
fact, when we take into account the early age at which it terminates for
the mass. Also, thus far schooling has been largely utilized as a
convenient tool of the existing nationalistic and economic regimes.
Hence it is easy to point out defects and perversions in every existing
school system. It is easy for a critic to ridicule the religious
devotion to education which has characterized for example the American
republic. It is easy to represent it as zeal without knowledge,
fanatical faith apart from understanding. And yet the cold fact of the
situation is that the chief means of continuous, graded, economical
improvement and social rectification lies in utilizing the opportunities
of educating the young to modify prevailing types of thought and desire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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