Social organization : $b A study of the larger mindCooley, Charles Horton
Science
Social organization : $b A study of the larger mind
Cooley, Charles Horton
Social psychology; Sociology
It is indeed probable that the growth of class fellowship will help to
foster that spirit of art in work which we so notably lack, and the
repose and content which this brings. There is truth in the view that a
confused and standardless competition destroys art, which requires not
only a group ideal but a certain deliberation, a chance to brood over
things and work perfection into them. When the workman is more sure of
his position, when he feels his fellows at his shoulder and knows that
the quality of his work will be appreciated, he will have more courage
and patience to be an artist. We all draw our impulse toward perfection
not from vulgar opinion or from our pay, but from the approval of
fellow craftsmen. The truth, little seen in our day, is that all work
should be done in the spirit of art, and that no society is humanly
organized in which this is not chiefly the case.
It is also true that closer fellowship—dominated by good ideals—should
bring the sympathetic and moral motives to diligence and efficiency
into more general action, and relegate the ‘work or starve’ motive
more to the background. Some of us love our work and are eager to
do it well; others have to be driven. Is this because the former
are naturally a superior sort of people, because the work itself is
essentially more inviting, or because the social conditions are such
that sympathy and fellowship are more enlisted with it? Allowing
something for the first two, I suspect the third is the principal
reason. What work is there that would not be pleasant in moderate
quantities, in good fellowship, and in the feeling of service? No great
proportion, I imagine, of our task. Washing dishes is not thought
desirable, and yet men do it joyfully when they go camping together.
Class organization is not, as some people assert, necessarily hostile
to freedom. All organization is, properly, a means through which
freedom is sought. As conditions change, men are compelled to find new
forms of union through which to express themselves, and the rise of
industrial classes is of this nature.
In fact, the question of freedom, as applied to class conditions, has
two somewhat distinct aspects. These are:
1. Freedom to rise from one class into another, freedom of individual
opportunity, or _carrière ouverte aux talents_. This is chiefly for the
man of exceptional capacity and ambition. It is important, but not
more so than the other, namely:
2. Freedom of classes, or, what is the same thing, of those individuals
who have not the wish or power to depart from the sphere of life in
which circumstance has placed them. It means justice, opportunity,
humane living, for the less privileged groups as groups; not
opportunity to get out of them but to be something in them; a chance
for the teamster to have comfort, culture and good surroundings for
himself and his family without ceasing to be a teamster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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