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
That captains of industry are creative artists of a sort, and that
industry absorbs an undue share of the creative activity of the present
time cannot be denied. To impute to the leaders of industry and commerce
simply an acquisitive motive is not merely to lack insight into their
conduct, but it is to lose the clew to bettering conditions. For a more
proportionate distribution of creative power between business and other
occupations, and a more humane, wider use of it in business depend upon
grasping aright the forces actually at work. Industrial leaders combine
interest in making far-reaching plans, large syntheses of conditions
based upon study, mastery of refined and complex technical skill,
control over natural forces and events, with love of adventure,
excitement and mastery of fellow-men. When these interests are
reinforced with actual command of all the means of luxury, of display
and procuring admiration from the less fortunate, it is not surprising
that creative force is drafted largely into business channels, and that
competition for an opportunity to display power becomes brutal.
The strategic question, as was said, is to understand how and why
political, legal, scientific and educational conditions of society for
the last centuries have stimulated and nourished such a one-sided
development of creative activities. To approach the problem from this
point of view is much more hopeful, though infinitely more complex
intellectually, than the approach which sets out with a fixed dualism
between acquisitive and creative impulses. The latter assumes a complete
split of higher and lower in the original constitution of man. Were this
the case, there would be no organic remedy. The sole appeal would be to
sentimental exhortation to men to wean themselves from devotion to the
things which are beloved by their lower and material nature. And if the
appeal were moderately successful the social result would be a fixed
class division. There would remain a lower class, superciliously looked
down upon by the higher, consisting of those in whom the acquisitive
instinct remains stronger and who do the necessary work of life, while
the higher "creative" class devotes itself to social intercourse,
science and art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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