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Attitude Bogardus
Attitude Bogardus
( 47) and fang behavior, that he is natively warlike, ferocious, and savage
received great impetus from a false interpretation of Darwinism. It is also
true as Kropotkin [10]and others have indicated, that man is inherently
social. There is in evolution a social and communicative background without
which even social conflict would be impossible.
David Hume, one of the first close observers in social psychology, asserted
that every pleasure languishes and every pain becomes more cruel when
experienced apart from the company of others.[11] "Let all the powers
serve one," declared Hume, "and he will still be miserable till he be given at
least one man to enjoy them with him.[12] All the data on isolation
constitute a negative but vital testimony to the significance of a general
social attitude.[13] E. A. Ross gives several excellent illustrations :
Hume confesses, "I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves when
not supported by others," and George Sand cries, "I care but little that I am
growing old but that I am growing old alone." De Senancour, author of
"Obermann," renounces the world, yet wishes there might be at his end one
friend to "receive his adieu to life." Cowper exclaims:
Gifted men who are far above or ahead of their time are likely to be so
neglected, misunderstood, or hawked at that in despair they turn
misanthrope and hold aloof from their kind. The biographies of genius are
full of tragedies of expansive souls, yearning for communion and sympathy,
yet finding their offerings ignored or rejected, so that they end eating out
their hearts in their loneliness.[14]
The sex attitude arises from the complementary nature of the sexes,
physically, mentally, and socially. The sex impulses make the race possible,
and hence their urge remains strong. The regulation of them has always
constituted a grave social problem. All tribes and peoples have struggled
with this Hercules among social problems. In the United States a far-
reaching conflict is in progress between the forces of commercialized vice
and those of chastity. The widespread and appalling use of hotels and
apartment houses by "mistresses" who are supported by men, some of
whom are so-called "respectable" persons, and the congregating of
prostitutes around army cantonments are symptoms of the level to which
the sex attitude may fall. The sublimation of the sex urge into monogamic
conjugal love and parental attitude testifies to the heights to which the sex
attitude may attain.
A little child is generally rated as the chief social value known to mankind.
The presence and needs of the child create new relationships between the
husband and wife and set up the parental attitude with all its self-sacrificing
implications. Parents and children constitute society's most important
institution, and the parental attitude is of primary significance.
Without parental care the offspring early begins the struggle for existence,
against great odds, and with little opportunity for normal development. With
one parent to give a protecting and directing care, the
( 49) offspring has a fair chance for self development and for rendering
useful service to society. When both parents intelligently co�perate in the
process of family building, the children are thus given the advantage of the
experience of two elders, and are protected from the harsher phases of the
struggle for existence, for a time sufficient to enable them to mature, and to
learn the fundamental principles of co�perative living. With parental care
the children develop filial love as well as fraternal love.
The loss of the influence of two worthy parents is so great that children
who grow up outside the family have few chances to become socialized
members of society. In studying the home conditions of delinquents, the
writer has found that the broken or unfit home of one type or another [15] is
a leading factor in the majority of delinquency cases. The loss to a child of a
socially-minded and sympathetic parent is irreparably great, and the loss of
two such parents is beyond comprehension. No public or private institution is
equivalent as a substitute. It is an established principle of modern
philanthropy that the best alternative for the child's own home—if it fails—is
a home with foster parents who are wisely selected and who maintain a
home that is reasonably suited to the temperament and needs of the child.
Upon entry into school the child's play group increases rapidly in
( 52) institutions with fundamentally similar aims.[16] (5) Trick plays and
winning by deceit are emphasized.
The emphasis today is being placed upon eight hours for work, eight hours
for sleep, and eight hours for leisure of which one-half is to be given over to
amusements and recreation. Although this formula is not adopted rigidly it
indicates that an increasing proportion of the life of the average person is
being devoted to amusements and is producing a leisure time problem of
serious proportions. The pace, stress, and complexity of modern urban life
demand that regular hours daily be set aside for recreation. The questions
arise: Does it matter how one plays? and, Is it anybody's business how one
spends his leisure hours? From the standpoint of group welfare it matters
greatly how the individual plays; whether he dissipates or builds up his
energies, for his loss or gain is the direct loss or gain of his groups. In the
case of the young particularly, the nature of play means not only immediate
tearing down or building up, but also the formation of lifelong habits.
Animals which have been attracted by sounds that are very strange have
probably been decoyed, and consequently have sooner or later lost their
lives. Those individuals, either animal or human, which are never attracted
by anything that is new remain mediocre or else they retrograde. Those who
are aroused by stimuli that are moderately strange avoid violent destruction
and at the same time escape decadence. A highly differentiated form of the
moderately strange is represented by "signs of concealment or stealth,"
which immediately arrest attention and produce inquisitiveness. Individuals
who manifest a reasonable degree of curiosity survive best. In primitive
society the inquiring and hunting patterns are conspicuous. We still use the
vocabulary of hunting and fishing. Says Weeks:
We hunt for lost articles and "fish" for compliments. A man "hunts" a job.
People make "killing" remarks.[18]
(54)
The tendency of psychic energy to organize itself into personal units leads
to the concepts of "me" and "mine." The "mine" tendency denotes
acquisitiveness. The acquisitive attitude is manifested very early in life.
Childhood and adolescence abound with expressions of the impulse to make
collections—of stamps, butterflies, dolls, marbles, birds'eggs. This tendency
continues through maturity; and to it there may be traced some of the
world's finest libraries and art galleries, as well as acquisitions of land, even
landed estates. So strong and persistent is the acquisitive attitude, that men
continue to accumulate riches long after they have acquired enough property
for the needs of themselves and their children.[20]
Modern civilization owes its rise in part to private accumulations of wealth.
It is reserve wealth which makes leisure from manual labor possible ; it is
this leisure which has given some persons opportunities to make socially
beneficial inventions. If all persons had to spend all their working time in
satisfying the physical needs of life, there would be little leeway for social
advance.
( 55)
Property has so many attractive forms, and its possession makes possible
so many of the comforts of life and gives so much social power and status
that it has become a leading social value in Western civilization. Accordingly
the acquisitive attitude has developed until at times the social control of it
has become hopeless. The acquisitive attitude has made civilization possible,
and yet it may destroy civilization. It is developed largely through social
heritage and current stimuli. If it is not socialized it bids fair to rend
civilization in twain.
Again, combativeness has led to the blood feud. If you cannot reach the
person who has wronged you, then kill an innocent relative. As a result of
these tendencies, an elaborate system of personal habits of revenge and
destructiveness are established. Social habits or customs easily become
organized out of personal habits of combative revenge; social institutions
such as the family and neighborhood become involved, and the blood-feud
originating perhaps in blunt combative impulses reaches the level of an
imperious social custom.
Although a heritage from the days of fang and claw, the fighting impulses,
in modified forms, are essential to individual and group progress. In early
days they were commonly expressed in the physical combat between
individuals. In the modern civilized nation-group, individuals as a rule do not
resort to physical clash in order to settle disputes, but turn to discussion and
argument and to "due process of law" in the organized courts. Thus their
fighting energies are not used to destroy their fellow beings, but are diverted
into intellectual contests.
The struggle for existence in the biological world which takes place largely
upon the plane of physical strength and cunning has a counterpart among
humans in the struggle for food, position, power. Habit and custom are also
organizing the quiet, constructive, pervasive influence of love and similar
spiritual forces into helpful, educational, and religious patterns that are in
fundamental combat with militarism and ruthless forms of commercialism.
As a class the "fittest"to survive are undergoing an evolution from the lowest
levels of brute strength to shrewd forms of mental efficiency and strength,
and then to socialized personalities motivated by love.
( 59) modern war is so far from being instinctive that it "has to be taught
laboriously and systematically by such atrocious devices as the bayonet
drill," which in itself represents a gross violation of most of man's instinctive
tendencies.[26] War has to be taught as evidenced by the efforts of "those
literary patriots who are always ready to shed their last drop of ink in the
cause of their country."[27]
When war is gone, there will be need for the fighting spirit. Then
individuals and groups will still have to fight personal and social evils. They
will assail not the best people of the enemy state, but the evil in all peoples.
The struggles against social evils will always demand, as far as one can now
see, the socialized exercise of combativeness. The combative attitude needs
reorganization so that it will no longer support war and militarism as leading
social institutions. When excess emphasis on property, territory, selfish
individual and national power is being cut down then the combative attitude
may simultaneously be reorganized against sin, vice, and crime rather than
against races and peoples ; it may then further the development of
wholesome social attitudes and values, and contribute to progress.
The instinctive bases of the pacific attitude well up when shooting and
murder are suggested to the ordinary person as normal conduct for him, or
to the new recruit when fighting requires him to bayonet dying men or to kill
women and children. The training in hating the "enemy"that the soldier goes
through before he can kill with cold steel is convincing evidence showing that
the pacifist attitude is as fundamental as the killing attitude. But mankind
has built "glory" and "patriotism" around
( 60) the latter so generally that the importance of the former attitude has
been overlooked. When put to the supreme test in time of national war, its
exponents are treated with ignominy and incarcerated. It may be as full of
the "do and die" spirit, as pugnaciousness, but for constructive rather than
destructive purposes.
The rivalrous attitude grows out of personal contests for selfish possession
and creates sentiments of jealousy. It includes emulation or the desire to
equal or excel without attempting to unhorse an opponent. It includes
mirrored behavior, for it prompts one "to do whatever another does that
wins praise." [29] Sometimes it is kept alive "by the fear that some one else
will not play fair." [30]
( 61)
CHANGES IN ATTITUDE
PRINCIPLES
5. The sex attitude leads to such extremes as commercialized vice and the
purest types of love and chastity.
( 62)
13. The socialized attitude is an organization of all the other attitudes for
social purposes.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
PROBLEMS
1. Why has the basic social nature of human beings been so commonly
overlooked?
4. Why do the working classes on holidays rush to the places where the
crowds are?
6. Why do people become "chummy" when sitting around the hearth fire?
( 63)
13. What are the leading forces that are opposing the parental impulses?
14. How far is it true that general life does not rise above the level of
family life?
15. How do you rate the slogan: An automobile before owning a home?
16. Why is it work for a mason to pile up brick, and play for a small boy to
pile up blocks?
17. Why is work hard and play easy to a child even when the latter
requires the expenditure of more energy?
18. Why is it play to a boy to clear brush from a lot for a baseball diamond
and work to clear the same lot at his parent's command?
24. Why do "some men begin to enjoy giving away, late in life, what they
have given their best years to accumulate ?"
( 64)
Howerth, I. W., "The Great War and the Instinct of the Herd," Intern. Jour.
of Ethics, XXIX: 174-87.
Ribot, Th., The Psychology of the Emotions (Scribners, 1911), Part II, Ch.
VI.
Notes