Cities and towns; Social psychology; Sociology; Sociology, Urban
The number and variety of professions and occupations carried on within
the limits of a community would seem to be one measure of its
competency, since in the wider division of labor and the greater
specialization—in the diversities of interests and tasks—and in the vast
unconscious co-operation of city life, the individual man has not only
the opportunity, but the necessity, to choose his vocation and develop
his individual talents.
Nevertheless, in the struggle to find his place in a changing world
there are enormous wastes. Vocational training is one attempt to meet
the situation; the proposed national organization of employment is
another. But until a more rational organization of industry has somehow
been achieved, little progress may be expected or hoped for.
_c_) _The cultural and political organization._—Competition is never
unlimited in human society. Always there is custom and law which sets
some bounds and imposes some restraints upon the wild and wilful
impulses of the individual man. The cultural and political organization
of the community rests upon the occupational organization, just as the
latter, in turn, grows up in, and rests upon, the ecological
organization.
It is this final division or segment of the communal organization with
which community-center associations are mainly concerned. Politics,
religion, and community welfare, like golf, bridge, and other forms of
recreation, are leisure-time activities, and it is the leisure time of
the community that we are seeking to organize.
Aristotle, who described man as a political animal, lived a long time
ago, and his description was more true of man then than it is today.
Aristotle lived in a world in which art, religion, and politics were the
main concerns of life, and public life was the natural vocation of every
citizen.
Under modern conditions of life, where the division of labor has gone so
far that—to cite a notorious instance—it takes 150 separate operations
to make a suit of clothes, the situation is totally different. Most of
us now, during the major portion of our waking hours, are so busy on
some minute detail of the common task that we frequently lose sight
altogether of the community in which we live.
On the other hand, our leisure is now mainly a restless search for
excitement. It is the romantic impulse, the desire to escape the dull
routine of life at home and in the local community, that drives us
abroad in search of adventure. This romantic quest, which finds its most
outrageous expression in the dance halls and jazz parlors, is
characteristic of almost every other expression of modern life.
Political revolution and social reform are themselves often merely
expressions of this same romantic impulse. Millennialism in religion,
the missionary enterprises, particularly those that are limited to
“regions beyond,” are manifestations of this same wish to escape
reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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