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
Our definition of individuality must now be “finding my place in the
whole”: “my place” gives you the individual, “the whole” gives you
society, but by connecting them, by saying “my place in the whole,” we
get a fruitful synthesis. I have tried hard to get away from any
mechanical system and yet it is difficult to find words which do not
seem to bind. I am now afraid of this expression—my place in the whole.
It has a rigid, unyielding sound, as if I were a cog in a machine. But
my place is not a definite portion of space and time. The people who
believe in their “place” in this sense can always photograph their
“places.” But my place is a matter of infinite relation, and of
infinitely changing relation, so that it can never be captured. It is
neither the anarchy of particularism nor the rigidity of the German
machine. To know my place is not to know my niche, not to know whether I
am cog no. 3 or cog no. 4; it is to be alive at every instant at every
finger tip to every contact and to be conscious of those contacts.
We see now that the individual both seeks the whole and is the whole.
First, the individual, biology tells us, is never complete, completeness
spells death; social psychology is beginning to show us that man
advances towards completeness not by further aggregations to himself,
but by further and further relatings of self to other men. We are always
reaching forth for union; most, perhaps all, our desires have this
motive. The spirit craves totality, this is the motor of social
progress; the process of getting it is not by adding more and more to
ourselves, but by offering more and more of ourselves. Not appropriation
but contribution is the law of growth. What our special contribution is,
it is for us to discover. More and more to release the potentialities of
the individual means the more and more progressive organization of
society if at the same time we are learning how to coördinate all the
variations. The individual in wishing for more wholeness does not ask
for a chaotic mass, but for the orderly wholeness which we call unity.
The test of our vitality is our power of synthesis, of life synthesis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account