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
But although we say that the individual is never complete, it is also
true that the individual is a being who, because his function is
relating and his relatings are infinite, is in himself the whole of
society. It is not that the whole is divided up into pieces; the
individual is the whole at one point. This is the incarnation: it is the
whole flowing into me, transfusing, suffusing me. The fulness, bigness
of my life is not measured by the amount I do, nor the number of people
I meet, but how far the whole is expressed through me. This is the
reason why unifying gives me a sense of life and more unifying gives me
a sense of more life—there is more of the whole and of me. My worth to
society is not how valuable a part I am. I am not unique in the world
because I am different from any one else, but because I am a whole seen
from a special point of view.[22]
That the relation of each to the whole is dynamic and not static is
perhaps the most profound truth which recent years have brought us.[23]
We now see that when I give my share I give always far more than my
share, such are the infinite complexities, the fulness and fruitfulness
of the interrelatings. I contribute to society my mite, and then society
contains not just that much more nourishment, but as much more as the
loaves and fishes which fed the multitude outnumbered the original seven
and two. My contribution meets some particular need not because it can
be measured off against that need, but because my contribution by means
of all the cross currents of life always has so much more than itself to
offer. When I withhold my contribution, therefore, I am withholding far
more than my personal share. When I fail some one or some cause, I have
not failed just that person, just that cause, but the whole world is
thereby crippled. This thought gives an added solemnity to the sense of
personal responsibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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