Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 82

This masterful or domineering temper, so common among social mammals, is the cause of the persecution of the sick and weakly. When an animal begins to ail he can no longer hold his own; he ceases to resent the occasional ill-natured attacks made on him; his non-combative condition is quickly discovered, and he at once drops down to a place below the lowest; it is common knowledge in the herd that he may be buffeted with impunity by all, even by those that have hitherto suffered buffets but have given none. But judging from my own observation, this persecution is not, as a rule, severe, and is seldom fatal.

2. The Rivalry of Social Groups[213]

Conflict, compet.i.tion, and rivalry are the chief causes which force human beings into groups and largely determine what goes on within them.

Conflicts, like wars, revolutions, riots, still persist, but possibly they may be thought of as gradually yielding to compet.i.tions which are chiefly economic. Many of these strivings seem almost wholly individual, but most of them on careful a.n.a.lysis turn out to be intimately related to group compet.i.tion. A third form, rivalry, describes struggle for status, for social prestige, for the approval of inclusive publics which form the spectators for such contests. The nation is an arena of compet.i.tion and rivalry.

Much of this emulation is of a concealed sort. Beneath the union services of churches there is an element, for the most part unconscious, of rivalry to secure the approval of a public which in these days demands brotherliness and good will rather than proselyting and polemics. Many public subscriptions for a common cause are based upon group rivalry or upon individual compet.i.tion which is group-determined.

The Rhodes scholarships are in one sense a means of furthering imperial interest. Christmas presents lavished upon children often have a bearing upon the ambition of the family to make an impression upon rival domestic groups. In the liberal policy of universities which by adding to the list of admission subjects desire to come into closer relations with the public schools, there is some trace of compet.i.tion for students and popular applause. The interest which nations manifest in the Hague Tribunal is tinged with a desire to gain the good will of the international, peace-praising public. The professed eagerness of one or both parties in a labor dispute to have the differences settled by arbitration is a form of compet.i.tion for the favor of the onlooking community. Thus in international relationships and in the life-process of each nation countless groups are in conflict, compet.i.tion, or rivalry.

This idea of the group seeking survival, mastery, aggrandizement, prestige, in its struggles with other groups is a valuable means of interpretation. Let us survey rapidly the conditions of success as a group carries on its life of strife and emulation. In order to survive or to succeed the group must organize, cozen, discipline, and stimulate its members. Fortunately it finds human nature in a great measure fashioned for control.

Collective pride or group egotism is an essential source of strength in conflict. Every efficient group cultivates this sense of honor, importance, superiority, by many devices of symbol, phrase, and legend, as well as by scorn and ridicule of rivals. The college fraternity's sublime self-esteem gives it strength in its compet.i.tion for members and prestige. There is a chauvinism of "boom" towns and religious sects, as well as of nations. What pride and self-confidence are to the individual, ethnocentrism, patriotism, local loyalty are to social unities. Diffidence, humility, self-distrust, tolerance, are as dangerous to militant groups as to fighting men.

Then too the group works out types of personality, hero types to be emulated, traitor types to be execrated. These personality types merge into abstract ideals and standards. "Booster" and "knocker" bring up pictures of a struggling community which must preserve its hopefulness and self-esteem at all hazards. "Statesman" and "demagogue" recall the problem of selection which every self-governing community must face.

"Defender of the faith" and "heretic" are eloquent of the Church's dilemma between rigid orthodoxy and flexible accommodation to a changing order.

With a shifting in the conflict or rivalry crises, types change in value or emphasis, or new types are created in adjustment to the new needs.

The United Stated at war with Spain sought martial heroes. The economic and political ideals of personality, the captains of industry, the fascinating financiers, the party idols, were for the time retired to make way for generals and admirals, soldiers and sailors, the heroes of camp and battleship. The war once over, the displaced types reappeared along with others which are being created to meet new administrative, economic, and ethical problems. The competing church retires its militant and disputatious leaders in an age which gives its applause to apostles of concord, fraternal feeling, and co-operation. At a given time the heroes and traitors of a group reflect its compet.i.tions and rivalries with other groups.

Struggle forces upon the group the necessity of cozening, beguiling, managing its members. The vast majority of these fall into a broad zone of mediocrity which embodies group character and represents a general adjustment to life-conditions. From this medial area individuals vary, some in ways which aid the group in its compet.i.tion, others in a fashion which imperils group success. It is the task of the group both to preserve the solidarity of the medial zone and to discriminate between the serviceable and the menacing variants. The latter must be coerced or suppressed, the former encouraged and given opportunity. In Plato's _Republic_ the guardians did this work of selection which in modern groups is cared for by processes which seem only slightly conscious and purposeful.

The competing group in seeking to insure acquiescence and loyalty elaborates a protective philosophy by which it creates within its members the belief that their lot is much to be preferred to that of other comradeships and a.s.sociations. Western Americans take satisfaction in living in a free, progressive, hospitable way in "G.o.d's country."

They try not to be pharisaical about the narrowness of the East, but they achieve a sincere scorn for the hidebound conventions of an effete society. Easterners in turn count themselves fortunate in having a highly developed civilization, and they usually attain real pity for those who seem to live upon a psychic, if not a geographic, frontier.

The middle cla.s.s have a philosophy with which they protect themselves against the insidious suggestions that come from the life of the conspicuous rich. These, on the other hand, half expecting that simplicity and domesticity may have some virtue, speak superciliously of middle-cla.s.s smugness and the bourgeois "home." The less prosperous of the professional cla.s.ses are p.r.o.ne to lay a good deal of stress upon their intellectual resources as compared with the presumptive spiritual poverty of the affluent. Country folk encourage themselves by a.s.serting their fundamental value to society and by extolling their own simple straightforward virtues, which present so marked a contrast to the devious machinations of city-dwellers. Booker Washington's reiterated a.s.sertion that if he were to be born again he would choose to be a Negro because the Negro race is the only one which has a great problem contains a suggestion of this protective philosophy. This tendency of a group to fortify itself by a satisfying theory of its lot is obviously related to group egotism and is immediately connected with group rivalry.

The competing group derides many a dissenter into conformity. This derision may be spontaneous, or reflective and concerted. The loud guffaw which greets one who varies in dress or speech or idea may come instantly or there may be a planned and co-operative ridicule systematically applied to the recalcitrant. Derision is one of the most effective devices by which the group sifts and tests the variants.

Upon the small number of rebels who turn a deaf ear to epithets, ostracism is brought to bear. This may vary from the "cold shoulder" to the complete "boycott." Losing the friendship and approval of comrades, being cut off from social sympathy, is a familiar form of group pressure. Ridicule and derision are a kind of evanescent ostracism, a temporary exclusion from the comradeship. There are many degrees in the lowering of the social temperature: coolness, formality of intercourse, averted looks, "cutting dead," "sending to Coventry," form a progressive series. Economic pressure is more and more a resort of modern groups.

Loss of employment, trade, or professional practice brings many a rebel to time. All coercion obviously increases as the group is hard pressed in its conflicts, compet.i.tions, and rivalries.

These crises and conflicts of a competing group present problems which must be solved--problems of organization, of inventions of many kinds, of new ideas and philosophies, of methods of adjustment. The conditions of compet.i.tion or rivalry upset an equilibrium of habit and custom, and a process of problem-solving ensues. A typhoid epidemic forces the village to protect itself against the compet.i.tion of a more healthful rival. The resourceful labor union facing a corporation which offers profit-sharing and retiring allowances must formulate a protective theory and practice. A society clique too closely imitated by a lower stratum must regain its distinction and supremacy. A nation must be constantly alert to adjust itself to the changing conditions of international trade and to the war equipment and training of its rivals.

The theory of group rivalry throws light upon the individual. The person has as many selves as there are groups to which he belongs. He is simple or complex as his groups are few and harmonious or many and conflicting.

What skilful management is required to keep business and moral selves from looking each other in the eye, to prevent scientific and theological selves from falling into discussion! Most men of many groups learn, like tactful hosts, to invite at a given time only congenial companies of selves. A few brave souls resolve to set their house in order and to entertain only such selves as can live together with good will and mutual respect. With these earnest folk their groups have to reckon. The conflicts of conscience are group conflicts.

Tolerance is a sign that once vital issues within the group are losing their significance, or that the group feels secure, or that it is slowly, even unconsciously, merging into a wider grouping. Theological liberality affords a case in point. In the earlier days of sectarian struggle tolerance was a danger both to group loyalty and to the militant spirit. Cynicism for other reasons is also a menace. It means loss of faith in the collective ego, in the traditions, shibboleths, symbols, and destiny of the group. Fighting groups cannot be tolerant; nor can they harbor cynics. Tolerance and cynicism are at once causes and results of group decay. They portend dissolution or they foreshadow new groupings for struggle over other issues on another plane.

Evangelical churches are drawing together with mutual tolerance to present a united front against modern skepticism and cynicism which are directed against the older faiths and moralities.

The subjective side of group rivalry offers an important study. The reflection of the process of control in personal consciousness is full of interest. The means by which the rebellious variant protects himself against the coercion of his comrades have been already suggested in the description of ridicule and epithet. These protective methods resolve themselves into setting one group against another in the mind of the derided or stigmatized individual.

A national group is to be thought of as an inclusive unity with a fundamental character, upon the basis of which a mult.i.tude of groups compete with and rival each other. It is the task of the nation to control and to utilize this group struggle, to keep it on as high a plane as possible, to turn it to the common account. Government gets its chief meaning from the rivalry of groups to grasp political power in their own interests. Aristocracy and democracy may be interpreted in terms of group antagonism, the specialized few versus the undifferentiated many. The ideal merges the two elements of efficiency and solidarity in one larger group within which mutual confidence and emulation take the place of conflict. Just as persons must be disciplined into serving their groups, groups must be subordinated to the welfare of the nation. It is in conflict or compet.i.tion with other nations that a country becomes a vivid unity to the members of const.i.tuent groups. It is rivalry which brings out the sense of team work, the social consciousness.

3. Cultural Conflicts and the Organization of Sects[214]

It is a.s.sumed, I suppose, that contradictions among ideas and beliefs are of various degrees and of various modes besides that specific one which we call logical incompatibility. A perception, for example, may be pictorially inconsistent or tonically discordant with another perception; a mere faith unsupported by objective evidence may be emotionally antagonistic to another mere faith, as truly as a judgment may be logically irreconcilable with another judgment. And this wide possibility of contradiction is particularly to be recognized when the differing ideas or beliefs have arisen not within the same individual mind but in different minds, and are therefore colored by personal or partisan interest and warped by idiosyncrasy of mental const.i.tution. The contradictions of, or rather _among_, ideas and beliefs, with which we are now concerned, are more extensive and more varied than mere logical duels; they are also less definite, less precise. In reality they are culture conflicts in which the opposing forces, so far from being specific ideas only or pristine beliefs only, are in fact more or less bewildering complexes of ideas, beliefs, prejudices, sympathies, antipathies, and personal interests.

It is a.s.sumed also, I suppose, that any idea or group of ideas, any belief or group of beliefs, may happen to be or may become a common interest, shared by a small or a large number of individuals. It may draw and hold them together in bonds of acquaintance, of a.s.sociation, even of co-operation. It thus may play a group-making role.

Contradictory ideas or beliefs, therefore, may play a group-making role in a double sense. Each draws into a.s.sociation the individual minds that entertain it or find it attractive. Each also repels those minds to whom it is repugnant, and drives them toward the group which is being formed about the contradictory idea or belief. Contradictions among ideas and beliefs, then, it may be a.s.sumed, tend on the whole to sharpen the lines of demarcation between group and group.

These a.s.sumptions are, I suppose, so fully justified by the everyday observation of mankind and so confirmed by history that it is unnecessary now to discuss them or in any way to dwell upon them. The question before us therefore becomes specific: "Are contradictions among ideas and beliefs likely to play an _important_ group-making role in the future?" I shall interpret the word important as connoting quality as well as quant.i.ty. I shall, in fact, attempt to answer the question set for me by translating it into this inquiry, namely: What kind or type of groups are the inevitable contradictions among ideas and beliefs most likely to create and to maintain within the progressive populations of the world from this time forth?

Somewhat more than three hundred years ago, Protestantism and geographical discovery had combined to create conditions extraordinarily favorable to the formation of groups or a.s.sociations about various conflicting ideas and beliefs functioning as nuclei; and for nearly three hundred years the world has been observing a remarkable multiplication of culture groups of two fundamentally different types.

One type is a sect, or denomination, having no restricted local habitation but winning adherents here and there in various communes, provinces, or nations, and having, therefore, a membership either locally concentrated or more or less widely dispersed; either regularly or most irregularly distributed. The culture group of the other type, or kind, is a self-sufficing community. It may be a village, a colony, a state, or a nation. Its membership is concentrated, its habitat is defined.

To a very great extent, as everybody knows, American colonization proceeded through the formation of religious communities. Such were the Pilgrim and the Puritan commonwealths. Such were the Quaker groups of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Such were the localized societies of the Dunkards, the Moravians, and the Mennonites.

As late as the middle of the nineteenth century the American people witnessed the birth and growth of one of the most remarkable religious communities known in history. The Mormon community of Utah, which, originating in 1830 as a band of relatives and acquaintances, cl.u.s.tered by an idea that quickly became a dogma, had become in fifty years a commonwealth _de facto_, defying the authority _de jure_ of the United States.

We are not likely, however, again to witness a phenomenon of this kind in the civilized world. Recently we have seen the rise and the astonishingly rapid spread of another American religion, namely, the Christian Science faith. But it has created no community group. It has created only a dispersed sect. It is obvious to any intelligent observer, however untrained in sociological discrimination he may be, that the forces of Protestantism, still dividing and differentiating as they are, no longer to any great extent create new self-sufficing communities. They create only a.s.sociations of irregular geographical dispersion, of more or less unstable or shifting membership. In a word, the conflicting-idea forces, which in our colonial days tended to create community groups as well as sects, tend now to create sectarian bodies only--mere denominational or partisan a.s.sociations.

A similar contrast between an earlier and a later stage of culture group-making may be observed if we go back to centuries before the Protestant Reformation, there to survey a wider field and a longer series of historical periods.

It is a commonplace of historical knowledge that in all of the earliest civilizations there was an approximate identification of religion with ethnic consciousness and of political consciousness with both religious and race feeling. Each people had its own tribal or national G.o.ds, who were inventoried as national a.s.sets at valuations quite as high as those attached to tribal or national territory.

When, however, Roman imperial rule had been extended over the civilized world, the culture conflicts that then arose expended their group-creating force in simply bringing together like believers in sectarian a.s.sociation. Christianity, appealing to all bloods, in some measure to all economic cla.s.ses, and spreading into all sections of the eastern Mediterranean region, did not to any great extent create communities. And what was true of Christianity was in like manner true of the Mithras cult, widely diffused in the second Christian century.

Even Mohammedanism, a faith seemingly well calculated to create autonomous states, in contact with a world prepared by Roman organization could not completely identify itself with definite political boundaries.

The proximate causes of these contrasts are not obscure. We must suppose that a self-sufficing community might at one time, as well as at another, be drawn together by formative beliefs. But that it may take root somewhere and, by protecting itself against destructive external influences, succeed for a relatively long time in maintaining its integrity and its solidarity, it must enjoy a relative isolation. In a literal sense it must be beyond easy reach of those antagonistic forces which const.i.tute for it the outer world of unbelief and darkness.

Such isolation is easily and often possible, however, only in the early stages of political integration. It is always difficult and unusual in those advanced stages wherein nations are combined in world-empires. It is becoming well-nigh impossible, now that all the continents have been brought under the sovereignty of the so-called civilized peoples, while these peoples themselves, freely communicating and intermingling, maintain with one another that good understanding which const.i.tutes them, in a certain broad sense of the term, a world-society. The proximate effects also of the contrast that has been sketched are generally recognized.

So long as blood sympathy, religious faith, and political consciousness are approximately coterminous, the groups that they form, whether local communities or nations, must necessarily be rather sharply delimited.

They must be characterized also by internal solidarity. Their membership is stable because to break the bond of blood is not only to make one's self an outcast but is also to be unfaithful to the ancestral G.o.ds; to change one's religion is not only to be impious but is also to commit treason; to expatriate one's self is not only to commit treason but is also to blaspheme against high heaven.

But when a.s.sociations of believers or of persons holding in common any philosophy or doctrine whatsoever are no longer self-sufficing communities, and when nations composite in blood have become compound in structure, all social groups, cl.u.s.ters, or organizations, not only the cultural ones drawn together by formative ideas, but also the economic and the political ones, become in some degree plastic. Their membership then becomes to some extent shifting and renewable. Under these circ.u.mstances any given a.s.sociation of men, let it be a village, a religious group, a trade union, a corporation, or a political party, not only takes into itself new members from time to time; it also permits old members to depart. Men come and men go, yet the a.s.sociation or the group itself persists. As group or as organization it remains unimpaired.

The economic advantage secured by this plasticity and renewableness is beyond calculation enormous. It permits and facilitates the drafting of men at any moment from points where they are least needed, for concentration upon points where they are needed most. The spiritual or idealistic advantage is not less great. The concentration of attention and of enthusiasm upon strategic points gives ever-increasing impetus to progressive movements.

Let us turn now from these merely proximate causes and effects of group formation to take note of certain developmental processes which lie farther back in the evolutionary sequence and which also have significance for our inquiry, since, when we understand them, they may aid us in our attempt to answer the question, What kind of group-making is likely to be accomplished by cultural conflicts from this time forth?

The most readily perceived, because the most pictorial, of the conflicts arising between one belief and another are those that are waged between beliefs that have been localized and then through geographical expansion have come into compet.i.tion throughout wide frontier areas. Of all such conflicts, that upon which the world has now fully entered between occidental and oriental ideas is not merely the most extensive; it is also by far the most interesting and picturesque.

Less picturesque but often more dramatic are the conflicts that arise within each geographical region, within each nation, between old beliefs and new--the conflicts of sequent, in distinction from coexistent, ideas; the conflicts in time, in distinction from the conflicts in s.p.a.ce. A new knowledge is attained which compels us to question old dogmas. A new faith arises which would displace the ancient traditions.

As the new waxes strong in some region favorable to it, it begins there, within local limits, to supersede the old. Only then, when the conflict between the old as old and the new as new is practically over, does the triumphant new begin to go forth spatially as a conquering influence from the home of its youth into regions outlying and remote.

Whatever the form, however, that the culture conflict a.s.sumes, whether serial and dramatic or geographical and picturesque, its antecedent psychological conditions are in certain great essentials the same. Men array themselves in hostile camps on questions of theory and belief, not merely because they are variously and conflictingly informed, but far more because they are mentally unlike, their minds having been prepared by structural differentiation to seize upon different views and to cherish opposing convictions. That is to say, some minds have become rational, critical, plastic, open, outlooking, above all, intuitive of objective facts and relations. Others in their fundamental const.i.tution have remained dogmatic, intuitive only of personal att.i.tudes or of subjective moods, temperamentally conservative and instinctive. Minds of the one kind welcome the new and wider knowledge; they go forth to embrace it. Minds of the other kind resist it.

In the segregation thus arising, there is usually discoverable a certain tendency toward grouping by s.e.x.

Whether the mental and moral traits of women are inherent and therefore permanent, or whether they are but pa.s.sing effects of circ.u.mscribed experience and therefore possibly destined to be modified, is immaterial for my present purpose. It is not certain that either the biologist or the psychologist is prepared to answer the question. It is certain that the sociologist is not. It is enough for the a.n.a.lysis that I am making now if we can say that, as a merely descriptive fact, women thus far in the history of the race have generally been more instinctive, more intuitive of subjective states, more emotional, more conservative than men; and that men, more generally than women, have been intuitive of objective relations, inclined therefore to break with instinct and to rely on the later-developed reasoning processes of the brain, and willing, consequently, to take chances, to experiment, and to innovate.

If so much be granted, we may perhaps say that it is because of these mental differences that in conflicts between new and old ideas, between new knowledge and old traditions, it usually happens that a large majority of all women are found in the camp of the old, and that the camp of the new is composed mainly of men.

In the camp of the new, however, are always to be found women of alert intelligence, who happen also to be temperamentally radical; women in whom the reasoning habit has a.s.serted sway over instinct, and in whom intuition has become the true scientific power to discern objective relations. And in the camp of the old, together with a majority of all women, are to be found most of the men of conservative instinct, and most of those also whose intuitive and reasoning powers are unequal to the effort of thinking about the world or anything in it in terms of impersonal causation. a.s.sociated with all of these elements, both male and female, may usually be discovered, finally, a contingent of priestly personalities; not necessarily religious priests, but men who love to a.s.sert spiritual dominion, to wield authority, to be reverenced and obeyed, and who naturally look for a following among the non-skeptical and easily impressed.

Such, very broadly and rudely sketched, is the psychological background of culture conflict. It is, however, a background only, a certain persistent grouping of forces and conditions; it is not the cause from which culture conflicts proceed.