The Ghost in the White House: Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Ghost in the White House: Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want
John Stuart Mill · en
There are three courses we might take in the Put-Through Clan in dealing
with our town. (1) We can stand for disciplining capital and labor into
shape by passing laws and heaping up penalties. (2) We can let them see
how much better they can make things by sicking them on to each other and
having them discipline each other. (3) We can make fun of both of them
until they make fun of themselves and each class begins disciplining
itself. Then general self-discipline will set in. We propose to
indulge--each group of us in the Put-Through Clan--the labor group in the
town, the employer group and the public group, in self-disciplining
ourselves, until the thing is made catching out of sheer shame and
decency in others.
Sec. 3. _Psycho-Analysis._
The scientific basis for psycho-analysis for a town, or for a labor
union, or for a Republican or Democratic Party, is found in the facts
that have been stated by Mathias Alexander in his book and demonstrated
by his work.
Professor John Dewey in his introduction to Mr. Alexander's book speaks
of what Mr. Alexander stands for, as Completed Psycho-analysis.
As Alexander's technique for pulling one particular man, soul and body,
together, is precisely the technique I have in mind for pulling a nation
together, I want to dwell on it a moment longer before applying it to the
Put-Through Clan.
The first thing a man is always fooled about is his own body and in
everything else he is fooled about, he just branches out from that.
The Put-Through Clan proceeds upon the idea that this is as true of his
political or social or industrial body to which he belongs as it is of
his first one.
Reform must be self-reform first.
If it is true that the majority of ideas and decisions most people think
they make with their minds are really made for them and handed up to them
by their bodies--if it is true that what people quite commonly use their
minds for is to keep up appearances, to give rational-looking excuses and
reasons for their wanting what their stomachs and livers and nerves make
them want, the way to persuade people nowadays is to do what Christ
did--get their minds out from under the domination of their bodies.
If it is true that when a man goes to his dentist with a toothache, he
finds he does not know which side of his mouth it is on, it is likely to
be still more true of all the rest of his ideas about himself--his ideas
about his ideas.
If everything about us, about most of us is more or less like this, as
Alexander says--wires or nerves all twisted, sensory impressions upside
down, half of what is inside our bodies mislaid half the time, the way to
change people's minds is to change them toward the bodies they are with
and that they are nearest to, first. Then we can branch out and educate
others--even educate ourselves.