The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular governmentFollett, Mary Parker
Science
The new state : $b Group organization the solution of popular government
Follett, Mary Parker
Democracy; Political participation; Social psychology; State, The
First, we do not follow right merely, we create right. It is often
thought vaguely that our ideals are all there, shining and splendid, and
we have only to apply them. But the truth is that we have to create our
ideals. No ideal is worth while which does not grow from our actual
life. Some people seem to keep their ideals all carefully packed away
from dust and air, but arranged alphabetically so that they can get at
them quickly in need. But we can never take out a past ideal for a
present need. The ideal which is to be used for our life must come out
from that very life itself. The only way our past ideals can help us is
in moulding the life which produces the present ideal; we have no
further use for them. But we do not discard them: we have built them
into the present—we have used them up as the cocoon is used up in making
the silk. It has been sometimes taught that given the same situation,
the individual must repeat the same behavior. But the situation is never
the same, the individual is never the same; such a conception has
nothing to do with life. We cannot do our duty in the old sense, that is
of following a crystallized ideal, because our duty is new at every
moment.
Moreover, the knowledge of what is due the whole is revealed within the
life of the whole. This is above everything else what a progressive
ethics must teach—not faithfulness to duty merely, but faithfulness to
the life which evolves duty. Indeed “following our duty” often means
mental and moral atrophy. Man cannot live by tabus; that means
stagnation. But as one tabu after another is disappearing, the call is
upon us deliberately to build our own moral life. Our ethical sense will
surely starve on predigested food. It is we by our acts who
progressively construct the moral universe; to follow some preconceived
body of law—that is not for responsible moral beings. In so far as we
obey old standards without interpenetrating them with the actual world,
we are abdicating our creative power.
Further, the group in its distributive aspect is bringing such new
elements into the here and now that life is wholly changed, and the
ethical commands therein involved are different, and therefore the task
of the group is to discover the new formulation which these new elements
demand. The moral law thus gathers to itself all the richness of
science, of art, of all the fulness of our daily living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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