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
The fact is we know little of this subject. Billy Sunday and the
Salvation Army, political bosses and labor agitators, know how to handle
crowds, but the rest of us can deal with individuals better than with
the mass; we have taken courses in first-aid to the injured, but we have
not yet learned what to do in a street riot or a financial panic.
Besides the group and the crowd and the mob, there is also the herd. The
satisfaction of the gregarious instinct must not be confused with the
emotion of the crowd or the true sense of oneness in the group. Some
writers draw analogies from the relation of the individual to the herd
to apply to the relation of man to society; such analogies lead to false
patriotism and wars. The example of the wild ox temporarily separated
from his herd and rushing back to the “comfort of its fellowship” has
adorned many a different tale. The “comfort” of feeling ourselves in the
herd has been given as the counterpart of spiritual communion, but are
we seeking the “comfort” of fellowship or the creative agonies of
fellowship? The latter we find not in herd life, but in group life.
Then besides the group, the crowd, the mob, the herd, there are numbers
as mere numbers. When we are a lot of people with different purposes we
are simply wearied, not stimulated. At a bazaar, for instance, far from
feeling satisfaction in your fellow-creatures, you often loathe them.
Here you are not swayed by one emotion, as in a crowd, nor unified by
some intermingling of thought as in a group.
It must be understood that I do not wish to make any arbitrary dictum in
regard to distinctions between the crowd and the herd, the crowd and
mere numbers, etc. I merely wish to point out that the subject has not
yet received sufficient study. What is it we feel at the midnight mass
of the Madeleine? It is not merely the one thought which animates all;
it is largely the great mass of people who are feeling the one thought.
But many considerations and unanswered questions leap to our mind just
here. All this is an interesting field for the further study and close
analysis of psychologists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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