A Minimum of Meaning

In the previous post I reviewed, once again, Malinowski's text (the ~four pages pertaining to phatic communion), and came away with 30 questions that I should ideally be able to answer in my BA thesis in spring 2021. The first question reads, "What makes social intercourse free and aimless?" - This with an implicit understanding that the adjective "social" is, ideally, what makes intercourse free and aimless. In any case, the projected method was to look up terms like "social intercourse" in the many thousands of books from that era I have downloaded over the years from The Internet Archive - an invaluable online resource for this purpose, seeing as The Meaning and Meaning, which contains Malinowski's supplement, as well as innumerable other books from that era have lost their copyright and are thus fully legal to download.

I didn't get far in my search. Namely because the very first result Recoll threw up was the exact one I was so sorely missing these past years. So I had to take two weeks to read through Edward Alsworth Ross's Principles of Sociology (1920). I found answers to so many questions that I'm basically all set to write the next article. But focusing on Ross alone would not be sufficient. I've already read McDougall and Shand, who are known influences for Malinowski (Ross being, in this sense, an unknown). So in this one I'm going to revisit McDougall and see if there is still anything I could use. Unlike the previous post, this will be unstructured, stream-of-consciousness type of ordeal.

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The nature of instinct. "Professor William James, Lloyd Morgan, and G. F. Stout as the writers from whose works I have acquired my notions as to the nature of instinct and conation and their role in mental life" (McDougall 1916: x). I'll have to read each of them in due time if I wish to get at the core of this "instinct psychology" that was so popular in the early 20th century. I know it went out of fashion very soon after Malinowski's supplement and he himself took to behaviourism like a moth to a flame.

Vagueness. Sociologists recognize the value of psychology but theirs is mostly "the vague and extremely misleading psychology embodied in common speech" (McDougall 1916: 2). This is pretty much the case with Malinowski, who is no psychologist but whose text is chalk full of contemporary psychologisms - instinct, sentiment, and sympathy - which have gone out of fashion with such force that a 21st century person reading texts with these terms will have a very dim understanding of what is going on. It doesn't help that they are used interchangeably and interconnectedly, e.g. sympathy is sometimes an instinct, sometimes a sentiment.

Psychological hedonism. This is "the doctrine that the motives of all human activity are the desire of pleasure and the aversion to pain" (McDougall 1916: 8). This is presumably operative in Malinowski's "social pleasure and self-enhancement" (PC 5.5). In the same instance McDougall noted that happiness and pleasure are not synonymous terms, to which I commented that Shand likewise distinguished joy and pleasure. It may be possible, at some date, to distinguish pleasure, joy, and happiness according to their distinctions. Not all that important for the moment but an interesting thing in itself.

Postulating strange instincts. One of the main faults of instinct psychology is also that of faculty psychology - there is seemingly no agreement as to how many of them there are. Here McDougall writes that there is a trigger-happy tendency to postulate strange instincts of all kinds, to explain any and all tendencies noticed in human conduct, "as lightly and easily as a conjurer produces eggs from a hat or a phrenologist discovers bumps on a head" (McDougall 1916: 8). That this is truly the case is easy enough to show by compiling the numerous instincts postulated by McDougall himself, Shand, Ross, but also basically any writer from the period. One curious case that frequently comes to mind is E. R. Clay's lingual instinct. How do you know if a sentence is ungrammatical? Oh, due to the lingual instinct.

Moralisation of the individual. Quoting Hastings Rashdall on "the raw material [...] of Virtue and Vice" being the same, meaning "desires which in themselves [...] are simply non-moral", McDougall makes moralisation and socialisation synonymous and sets this question up as "the fundamental problem of social psychology". The human being in itself is "a creature in which the non-moral and purely egoistic tendencies are so much stronger than any altruistic tendencies" (McDougall 1916: 18), and the society surrounding that poor creature socializes him or her towards more altruistic tendencies. For my purposes, this is a tangential question that concerns manners in Ross's treatment, particularly how there is supposedly a tricle-down (not his term, but that is what it amounts to) of manners from the higher classes of society to the lower ones. The "uneducated classes", in short, are less moralized than the "educated" classes.

Innate tendencies. Malinowski substitutes this with "innate trends" (PC 3.3). Somewhere I've gone over the etymologies of "trends" and "tendencies", which is interesting in itself. Here, specifically, is a discussion of how the innate trend of gregariousness or sociability in the human species "no doubt varies greatly with the national character but remains true as a general rule" (PC 4.4). Thus, McDougall writes that there are "certain innate or inherited tendencies" in the human mind, which are "the essential springs or motive powers of all thought and action" (but not feeling?). These tendencies can be individual or collective, and "under the guidance of the intellectual faculties" they form and gradually develop "the character and will of individuals and of nations". Thus, "These primary innate tendencies have different relative strengths in the native constitutions of the individuals of different races" (McDougall 1916: 19). How does the universality of gregariousness or sociability remain true as a general rule? Writes McDougall: "but they are probably common to the men of every race and every age" (ibid, 19).

Instinct - a mysterious faculty. Complaining once more about the vagueness of the word "instinct", McDougall writes that it and the adjective form "instinctive" are used by contemporary writers "so loosely that they have almost spoilt them for scientific purposes" (McDougall 1916: 20-21). Interestingly, "the adjective "instinctive" is commonly applied to every human action that is performed without deliberate reflexion" (ibid, 21), which would make the exchange of words in phatic communion a form of instinctive languaging, as they "are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener" (PC 6.4), meaning that both speaking and hearing are instinctive in this particular sense. Further, McDougall writes that "the actions of animals are popularly attributed to instinct, and in this connexion instinct is vaguely conceived as a mysterious faculty, utterly different in nature from any human faculty" (ibid, 21). This is pretty much what Gregory Bateson (1969) had to say about them. To top it off, McDougall adds that these two words - "instinct" and "instinctive" - "are used with a minimum of meaning, generally with the effect of disguising from the writer the obscurity and incoherence of his thought" (ibid, 21). Well put.

The triad. I thought I can ignore it but it looks like I cannot. McDougall subscribes fully to the triad, as did numerous contemporaries. As elsewhere on this blog, I'll use (1), (2), and (3) to signify the three aspects. McDougall's particular take on it is that "The cognitive or intellectual processes" (3) "lends itself well to introspective discrimination, analysis, and description", while "the emotional" (1) and "conative" (2) "consciousness has but little variety of content, and that little is extremely obscure and elusive of introspection" (McDougall 1916: 7). Never mind that Peirce would not agree to this - thought, too, is pretty difficult to catch on the fly. What's important is that McDougall subscribes to triadism and uses it throughout. Thus, he writes that "There is every reason to believe that even the most purely instinctive action is the outcome of a distinctly mental process" (McDougall 1916: 26), and breaks down "the three aspects of all mental process" as follows (ordered in the sequence I'm accustomed to):

1. affective/emotional aspects of consciousness - "a feeling in regard to" some thing or object;
2. the conative aspects of consciousness - "a striving towards or away from that object";
3. the cognitive/intellectual aspects of consciousness - "a knowing of some thing or object";

The first and third are terminologically varied (it happens) and pretty standard - how we feel about something and what we know about that thing. The second is curious because he uses the term conative, which also made it to Roman Jakobson's scheme of linguistic functions. It doesn't surprise so much anymore, as I've met earlier uses of it, e.g. amongst authors in the Aristotelian Society, but it's still neat that it's so concrete. Conation is "an inclination (such as an instinct, a drive, a wish, or a craving) to act purposefully" (Merriam-Webster), from Latin conatio, "act of attempting" and/or conari, "to attempt". Effectively it stands for "desire" in the Ancient Greek triads, perhaps even "cupidity" ("a strong feeling of wanting to have something, especially money or possessions"). Whereas in Jakobson's scheme it stands for the imperative use of language - giving the other person a command to do something - here it stands for wanting to do or attempt to do something oneself, respective of the object (to strive towards or away from it). The overall point being that how we feel about something and whether we are drawn towards it or away from it is by and large unconscious, does not lend itself easily to introspection. I hope I don't get too bogged down in triadism here because I've already written a serviceable paper (in press) about its origins and it'll be some time before I want to go into it again. To avoid it here, I'll just skip over what McDougall writes about animal behaviour (his proto-Umwelt theory).

Sustaining pleasure. McDougall holds that the principle of hedonistic psychology errs by putting the cart before the horse, in a sense. Namely, that "pleasure and pain are not in themselves springs of action, but [...] serve rather to modify instinctive processes" (McDougall 1916: 43). This would be more poignant with regard to Jakobson's phatic function but perhaps it can still be worked into Malinowski's social pleasure and self-enhancement. Thus, McDougall writes that "pleasure tend[s] to sustain and prolong any mode of action, pain to cut it short" (ibid 43). In Jakobson's case it is more apparent because he emphasizes "prolonging" explicitly: the parrot talks only to prolong the presence of its trainers or audience. Analogously, the selfish monologueist (the blabbermouth who goes on and on about something irrelevant) tends to sustain and prolong the exchange of words (as a mode of action) because it is pleasurable. In this scenario, the hearer, the listener who is impatiently waiting for his or her turn to talk, is, in a sense, under pain to cut the speaker short.

Fluidity of emotions. This has very little import on phatic communion specifically, aside from perhaps the interplay of sympathies and antipathies, but since McDougall holds that emotions and conations are not readily available to introspection, "the emotions are fluid and indefinable, that they are in perpetual flux and are experienced in an infinite number of subtle varieties" (McDougall 1916: 45). As I commented when first reading the book, I agree with this view of emotions rather than the modern approaches which assume that emotions are as if logical symbols that can be operated on. I'm thinking of a specific paper I tried to read. A few years ago there was a conference, "Emotions: Rationality, Morality and Social Understanding" (Tartu, 7^th-9^th September 2017), and I tried to read one of the keynote speaker's, Mary Carman's "How Emotions do not Provide Reasons to Act" (2017; 10.1007/s11406-017-9896-y), and I just couldn't make heads or tails of it: "emotions have an intentional content that is assessable for correctness". Uhm, okay...

Rigid definition. Concerning the word "emotion", McDougall sets a terminological dictum, that words such as this, which are used in popular speech "loosely and somewhat vaguely", "have to undergo a certain specialisation and more rigid definition before they are fit for scientific use" (McDougall 1916: 47). This is worth going over because I think phatic communion exhibits the opposite tendency: a term wrought for scientific use entered popular speech (it is telling that the first notable use was in the New Yorker magazine in 1925) and became more loose and vague because of it. This is of course somewhat Malinowski's own fault because his definition is not very rigid - it is full of ambiguous language and seeming self-contradictions that don't exactly aid in getting the exact sense of it.

Fear of the unfamiliar. Discussing the instinct of fear, McDougall writes that simultaneously the most interesting and most difficult to understand aspect of its mode of operation is "the unfamiliar or strange as such": "Whatever is totally strange, whatever is violently opposed to the accustomed and familiar, is apt to excite fear both in men and animals, if only it is capable of attracting their attention" (McDougall 1916: 54). The discourse surrounding this is illuminating but not very useful for my purposes. A child will become fearful from "the facial contortions or playful roarings of a familiar friend" or "thrown into a paroxysm of terror by the approach of some hideous figure that he knew to be but one of his playfellows in disguise" (ibid, 54). Ross's discussion of the fear of the stranger is more easily connected with phatic communion.

Fear and social discipline. Further removed from fear of the stranger but still very interesting is the role of fear in social discipline. McDougall writes that "fear, once roused, haunts the mind; it comes back alike in dreams and in waking life, bringing with it vivid memories of the terrifying impression" (McDougall 1916: 55). It is well known that fear can easily form impressions which stick to memory better than anything. These terrifying impressions are "the great inhibitor of action, both present action and future action, and becomes in primitive human societies the great agent of social discipline through which men are led to the habit of control of the egoistic impulses" (ibid, 55). I drew a connection with Spencer (1876: 12-13), who wrote that the social state, i.e. living in society, forsters feelings that check impulsiveness. These being, first and foremost, "the fear of surrounding individuals", followed by "the instinct of sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings, the sentiment of justice". The idea seems to be that the presence of other people implies "checks upon the prompting of the simpler passions" (whatever they may be) because we fear the people around us, we desire their company, need them to get things, have warm feelings toward them, and lastly check our behaviour so as to not act unjustly.

Sliminess. "The manners or speech of an otherwise presentable person may excite the impulse of shrinking in virtue of some subtle suggestion of sliminess" (McDougall 1916: 56). Somewhat related to phatic communion: "If you describe a person or their manner as slimy, you mean that they appear to be friendly but in a way that you find unpleasant" and "If you describe a person as slimy, you mean that the person appears to be friendly but cannot be trusted and is not sincere" (Cambridge English Dictionary). That is, sliminess is "otherwise presentable", but there is "some subtle suggestion" that the person is not really all that friendly, that the friendliness is not sincere and cannot be trusted. The illustrative sentence from the same source is symptomatic: "He was the very worst kind of slimy salesman". Salespeople naturally must act friendly but their friendliness is not an end in itself but is a means to sell you some crap. As in pseudophatic communion (Haverkate 1988).

The impulse of self-assertion. Going under the heading of "The Instinct of Pugnacity and the Emotion of Anger", McDougall left a footnote which is really interesting, relating to several aspects of phatic communion. Anger is not as universal as fear, he writes, and adds that pugnacity is less manifest in the females of some species, probably including humans. Curiously, pugnacity "occupies a peculiar position in relation to the other instincts, and cannot strictly be brought under the definition of instinct proposed in the first chapter" (McDougall 1916: 59). So it might not even be an instinct, pulling the rug from under what little Malinowski says on the subject. Rather than being a "spring" or motive force, "The condition of its excitement is rather any opposition to the free exercise of any impulse, any obstruction to the activity to which the creature is impelled by any one of the other instincts" (ibid, 59). In other words, getting angry is not an instinct as much as a reaction to the twarting of instincts. In the footnote, he deals with a possible counter-argument to this interpretation: "if a man strikes me a sudden and unprovoked blow, my anger is effectually and instantaneously aroused, even when I am at the moment not actively engaged in any way" (ibid, 59; footnote). In reply he writes: "To raise this objection would be to ignore my consciousness of the personal relation and my personal attitude towards the striker" (McDougall 1916: 60). What he says next is particularly important, and touches upon that social pleasure and self-enhancement very generally: "The impulse, the thwarting of which in this case provokes my anger, is the impulse of self-assertion, which is habitually in play during personal intercourse" (ibid, 60). The context almost doesn't matter. The gist here is that personal intercourse involves self-assertion. If another person intentionally strikes me, he is striking my person. This emphasis might seem odd but is explained by what follows, that "if the blow came from a purely impersonal source" (e.g. a falling branch) or if it were "quite accidental", then no offense against one's self-assertion, one's self, was intended. Getting angry at inanimate objects or pure accidents is not sensible, it would be getting irrationally angry. But when someone intends to diminish us by striking a blow, it is a valid cause for anger. Yet, the main takeaway should be that personal intercourse is a play of egos, a field for self-assertion.

Self-feeling. The next section right after the one on pugnacity is a mouthful: "The Instincts of Self-abasement (or Subjection) and of Self-assertion (or Self-display), and the Emotions of Subjection and Elation (or Negative and Positive Self-feeling)". Whew. First of all, McDougall writes that "These two instincts have attracted little attention" (McDougall 1916: 62). I don't imagine many would agree that self-abasement and self-assertion even are instincts. He is relying on Théodule Ribot's The Psychology of the Emotions (1897), which I'd place as high as Sumner's Folkways in my future readings. In any case, McDougall noted the awkward translation of "self-feeling" from the French, yet this corresponds exactly with the Estonian word (enesetunne). In any case, McDougall puts forth his own equivalents, so that subjection = negative self-feeling and elation = positive self-feeling. The latter appears to be the more important, according to McDougall, "of the first importance for the psychology of character and volition" (ibid, 62). Thus: "The instinct of self-display is manifested by many of the higher social or gregarious animals, especially, perhaps, though not only, at the time of mating" (McDougall 1916: 62). It is commonsensical enough, and everyone has probably had the experience of someone bragging and boasting in order to impress the opposite sex.

Superfluous vigour. "Superfluous" might be redundant (superfluous) in this formulation, as vigour is "exuberant and resilient strength of body or mind; vitality. substantial effective energy or force" (Dictionary.com), as in already a superabundance of strength. McDougall namely begins this discussion with an example from the animal realm, with the self-display of a horse: "The muscles of all parts are strongly innervated, the creature holds himself erect, his neck is arched, his tail lifted, his motions become superfluously vigorous and extensive, he lifts his hoofs high in air, as he parades before the eyes of his fellows" (McDougall 1916: 62). There is a certain analogy to be found in phatic communion, yet again in that curious social pleasure and self-enhancement. Namely, the excessively talkative person is, in a sense, engaged in this kind of self-display. Talking more loudly and for longer than others - the competitors - a conversation devolves into a kind of pissing contest in which the stream is not urine, but "a flow of language" (PC 5.1), the semiotic equivalent of urine.

Boasting and swaggering. The instinct of self-display is "essentially a social one, and is only brought into play by the presence of spectators" (ibid, 62-63). McDougall goes on to discuss that "Such self-display is popularly recognised as implying pride" (ibid, 63), but immediately gets bogged down with the semantics of Shand's theory of sentiments. Animals don't have pride because pride implies self-consciousness. Is it an emotion or sentiment? Pride is obviously "the name of one form of the self-regarding sentiment, and such sentiment does imply a developed self-consciousness such as no animal can be credited with" (ibid, 63). Nevertheless, we recognize in animal self-displays the germ of that positive self-feeling he calls "elation" - which is another way of putting that we recognize that self-display appears to raise the creatures sense of self, that it gives it a positive emotion. "Self-enhancement" might be just this - feeling good about oneself, more exactly raising one's sense of sense. McDougall finds this instinct also in children: "before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring gaze and plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is practiced" (McDougall 1916: 63). Later on the child starts to request the admiring gaze - Watch me to this! to adults, and Can you do this? to peers. Significantly: "A little later, with the growth of self-consciousness the instinct may find expression in the boasting and swaggering of boys, the vanity of girls" (ibid, 64). This is reminiscent of a similar remark on Ross, who explicitly relied on McDougall: "the bragging lies of boys usually relate to what they can do, while girls are more apt to lie about their possessions" (Ross 1920: 109). This is exceedingly interesting from a triadic point of view if you know that the Ancient Greek firstness concerns possessions (wealth, body), and secondness concerns actions (honor, virtue).

Insanity. I cannot let it slip that McDougall connects exaggerated self-display with insanity, marking it as "the leading symptom" of the "general paralysis of the insane". Not sure what the word "paralysis" is doing there, but whatever. The topic is much the same as phatic subjects in general: irrational creatures who talk (children, parrots, "ideots", etc.). Thus: "The unfortunate patient is perpetually in a state of elated self-feeling, and his behaviour corresponds to his emotional state; he struts before the world, boasts of his strength, his immense wealth, his good looks, his luck, his family, when, perhaps, there is not the least foundation for his boastings" (McDougall 1916: 64). We have recently seen an illustration of this in the political realm: "I'm so young. I can't believe it, I'm the youngest person" and "I am perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young" says the diaper-wearing obese 72-year-old president, the oldest person to assume the presidency in the history of the country.

The pleasure of contact. Although I've long considered "contact" a Jakobsonian phatic trope, it would be absurd if this word did not show up here and there, though it does not in Malinowski's text (at least not in that of phatic communion, I've found him saying profound stuff about contact elsewhere). Thus, treating of parental tenderness, McDougall writes: "[Alexander] Bain taught that it is generated in the individual by the frequent repetition of the intense pleasure of contact with the young; though why this contact should be so highly pleasurable he did not explain" (McDougall 1916: 70). In my original comment I noted that this is analogous to Zuckerman's critique of Malinowski. It is understandable enough. If silence induces "unpleasant tension" (PC 4.6), talkativeness should be pleasurable; there is reportedly "social pleasure" (PC 5.5) at stake in who can talk more in a conversation; that the listener really listens is "quite essential for [the talker's] pleasure" (PC 5.6); and overall phatic communion should be "a pleasant atmosphere of polite, social intercourse" (PC 9.4). But why exactly should casual conversation be pleasant and pleasurable (question #25) is as if without a straight answer. With the subject of self-display (and self-feeling) we're as if approaching an answer (if not the answer).

Self-seeking feelings. Looking at the context, it becomes clear that the question is about "parental feeling" on the parents side. McDougall goes on by noting that some have explained the tender feelings of the parents with self-interest: parents take care of children because they expect the children to take care of them when they're in their old age: "the expectation by the parent of filial care in his or her old age" (McDougall 1916: 70). This he thinks absurd, something along the lines of the logic of Adam Smith's economic theory, an "attempt to reveal all altruism as arising essentially out of a more or less subtle regard for one's own welfare or pleasure" (ibid, 70). This view is encapsulated once again in Bain: "Tender feeling is as purely self-seeking as any other pleasure, and makes no inquiry as to the feelings of the beloved personality" (Bain; inMcDougall 1916: 71). The quotation continues: "It is by nature pleasurable, but does not necessarily cause us to seek the good of the object farther than is needful to gratify ourselves in the indulgence of the feeling" (ibid, 71). By this token, phatic communion is also self-seeking: casual social interaction is by nature pleasurable but (contra Mahaffy) does not aim to please but to gratify oneself in the indulgence of social pleasure.

Sympathetic pain. We cannot get around sympathy. McDougall takes it in its literal sense, which is something along the lines of co-suffering or together-suffering. Quoting Bain once again, we get the following definition: "the principle of sympathy [is] the prompting to take on the pleasures and pains of other beings, and act on them as if they were our own" (Bain; in McDougall 1916: 76). Bain immediately points out that sympathy is not a source of pleasure: "the primary operation of sympathy is to make us surrender pleasure and to incur pains" (ibid, 76). This makes it clear that he is using the word not in the sense some use sympathetic (likeable, pleasant) but in the sense of pity. Let's say someone says that their mother or father has just died. You surrender your pleasure - now you're thinking of your own dead parent(s) or their inevitable future death(s). You sympathize, you have incurred pains, are beset by a like mental anguish your conversation partner is troubled by. After a page and a half of discussing sympathy in relation with criminality, for some reason, McDougall reformulates the above-given as follows: "the sympathetic pain or pleasure we experience is immediately evoked in us by the spectacle of pain or of pleasure, and that we then act on it because it is our own pain or pleasure; and the action we take (so long as no other principle is at work) is directed to cut short our own pain and to prolong our own pleasure, quite regardless of the feelings of the other person" (McDougall 1916: 78). The example I gave above must now be specified a little: you know the acquaintance but you don't know the parent(s), haven't met them, don't know anything about them, etc. Their deaths, let's put it as cruelly as we can, you don't care about. The spectacle of pain now presented to you - I've already as if read into it that you can't feel anything for the actual deceased persons; the sympathetic pain in this case is purely reflective: another's loss makes you think about your own. Now, with Malinowski, you pour forth with "expressions of sympathy" (PC 2.3): I'm so sorry about your loss, etc. You express your condolences. What is actually going on now, and how is this "avowedly spurious on one side", as Malinowski put it? The Durkheimian reading of this situation would be that the condolence is merely expected, it is a sort of ritual, the situation calls for it. In this case we must assume that indeed the condolences do not "establish a common sentiment", as Malinowski put it - you don't know the deceased person(s) and you're in too good of a mood to start reflecting about your own relations and their eventual death(s). In this case, indeed, it is spurious. Bain and McDougall on the other hand seem to be aiming at the situation of actual sympathetic pain rather than mere expressions of sympathy: the others pain has become your pain. Now, "the action we take" (as McDougall put it), expressing condolences - is it "directed to put short our own pain [...] regardless of the feelings of the other person"? I'd like to think that the condolences are aimed to do both: to console the person who experiences loss, and stave off our own ideation about such things. I don't know what to do with this - McDougall says in several places that all this is perplexing.

Cheerful company. Here we strike upon common theme which I've captured in the saying "Misery may love company but company does not love misery". McDougall concludes the topic of sympathetically induced pain by saing that it "simply inclines us, then, to avoid the neighbourhood of the distressed and to seek the company of the cheerful" (McDougall 1916: 78). His statement follows the discussion of sympathetically induced pain - it is (psychologically) easier to avoid people in distress. Something along this line can be found in Ross, though in a very different context. While discussing "egoistic society", which "apes the manners and amenities of good-will association" but is not actually that (see sliminess, above), he writes that "Cronies who are not good fellows show their yellowness when one of them falls into trouble"; "Then he is given to understand that no one cares to see his long face or listen to his tale of woe"; "For such fair-weather friendship the refrain is, "If you're out of health or money you need n't come around."" (Ross 1920: 112-113). The difference lies in the latter case not being a sympathetic company - the "egoistic society" is only interested in self-display. A fair-weather friend is "A person who is dependable in good times but is not in times of trouble" (Dictionary.com). This is an expression, trope, and/or idea that merits further examination somewhere further down the line.

Gregarious instinct. This "is one of the human instincts of greatest social importance" (McDougall 1916: 84). I've already treated, in the first paper on Malinowski's phatic communion (in Estonian), the gregarious instinct in Wilfred Trotter's book. In Malinowski's text there is this pair of words, "convivial gregariousness" (PC 7.6), which, curiously enough, is more-or-less a synonym of cheerful company. Unlike Trotter, McDougall has given a kind of source (though it may not be the definitive source, who knows): Francis Galton reportedly gave "the classical description of the operation of the crude instinct" (ibid, 84). The South African ox "displays no affection for his fellows, and hardly seems to notice their existence, so long as he is among them" - much like the modern city-dweller according to Ross - but "if he becomes separated from the herd, he displays an extreme distress that will not let him rest until he succeeds in rejoining it", and when he does so, he is "seeking the closest possible contact with the bodies of his fellows" (ibid, 84). Long story short, the gregarious animal cares none for its fellows until he loses them, in which case its erratic behaviour evidences, when generalized, "a mere uneasiness in isolation and satisfaction in being one of a herd" (ibid, 84). In human affairs, Malinowski translates this into the realm of linguistic activity: greetings and polite phrases "are needed to get over the strange and unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other in silence" (PC 4.6). Notice the similitude between "uneasiness" and "unpleasantness". In conjuction, the human being feels uneasiness not only when completely alone but also when surrounded by people who are unresponsive or do not speak a language s/he can understand. And the first clause may not even be true, as evidenced by the many people who enjoy solitude, the lonesome life, the great outdoors, and generally being away from other people: "Such was the American backwoods type who, when he could hear the sound of a neighbor's ax, reckoned "Folks are gittin' too crowded," and moved on" (Ross 1920: 100).

Imitation. McDougall connects imitation with gregariousness. I've yet to read Gabriel Tarde but the association is obvious: "the individual is born into a society of some sort and grows up in it, and the being with others and doing as they do becomes a habit deeply rooted in the instinct" (McDougall 1916: 84). I reckon this aspect will avail itself when I finally do read Tarde (or Giddins for that matter). Imitation is not explicitly present in phatic communion but this passage in McDougall has plainly influenced some other parts of Malinowski's writings: "The real rule guiding human behaviour is this: "what everyone else does, what appears as norm of general conduct, this is right, moral and proper"" (Malinowski 1922: 326-327). How being with others and doing as they do becomes rooted in the instinct, I do not know - how malleable are instincts? What are they, anyway?

Recreation. Addressing the gregarious instinct (or instinct of gregariousness), McDougall affirms that "almost all anthropologists agree that primitive man was to some extent gregarious in his habits" (McDougall 1916: 85). Likewise, "In civilised communities we may see evidence of the operation of this instinct at every hand" (McDougall 1916: 86). Except very few "highly cultivated" persons, "the one essential condition of recreation is the being one of a crowd" (ibid, 86). Not sure what the solitary recreations of the highly cultivated people are (opium?) but the point here seems to hold true: "The normal daily recreation of the population of our towns is to go out in the evening and to walk up and down the streets in which the throng is densest" (ibid, 86). Indeed, that is the normal daily recreation to this day. Likewise, people gather "to those resorts in which they are assured of the presence of a large mass of their fellows", such as all kinds of sport events (cricket, football): "Crowds of this sort exert a greater fascination and afford a more complete satisfaction to the gregarious instinct than the mere aimless aggregations of the streets, because all their members are simultaneously concerned with the same objects, all are moved by the same emotions, all shout and applaud together" (ibid, 86). This last description differs very little from the collective effervescence and union of sentiments described by Durkheim: "It is by uttering the same cry, pronouncing the same word, or performing the same gesture in regard to some object that they become and feel themselves to be in unison" (Durkheim 1915: 230).

Sociability. The gregarious instinct on the other hand "does not necessarily imply sociability of temperament" (McDougall 1916: 87). People can "live a most solitary, unsociable life" in "the thronged city" (ibid, 87). Like Galton's oxen, they are "unsociable but gregarious", that is, enjoy being in a crowd (or, on the contrary, get anxious when away from other people), but seem to hardly notice other people. On the basis of this observation McDougall postulates that the gregarious instinct is at the foundation of sociability but sociability itself "is a more complex, more highly developed, tendency" (ibid, 87). The gregarious instinct is responsible for social recreations and "the pleasure we find in attendance at the theatre, at concerns, lectures, and all such entertainments" "especially if the house is unanimous and loud in the expression of its feelings" (ibid, 87), but this does not necessarily imply that you become fast friends with all the theatre-goers present.

Another triad. In his treatment of "Some General or Non-specific Innate Tendencies" McDougall effectively expands the above triad (emotional, conative, and cognitive consciousness) into one of communication: each "involves an interaction between at least two individuals, one of whom is the agent, while the other is the person acted upon or patient" (McDougall 1916: 90-91). These three types of interaction, he writes, "are sometimes ascribed to special instincts" but "are more properly classed apart from the instinctive tendencies" (McDougall 1916: 90). Thus, he calls them "pseudo-instincts" (ibid, 90). Thus, expanding the overview of the first triad:

1. sympathy - [the communication of] affective/emotional aspects of consciousness - "a feeling in regard to" some thing or object; "an affective or emotional excitement of the agent induces a similar affective excitement in the patient";
2. imitation - [the communication of] the conative aspects of consciousness - "a striving towards or away from that object"; "the assimilation of the bodily movements of the patient to those of the agent";
3. suggestion - [the communication of] the cognitive/intellectual aspects of consciousness - "a knowing of some thing or object"; "some presentation, idea, or belief of the agent directly induces a similar presentation, idea, or belief in the patient";

Sympathy was a popular topic for decades before this, as evidenced by Susan Lanzoni's study "Sympathy in "Mind" (1876-1900)" (2009). Gabriel Tarde, as McDougall notes, brought imitation to the forefront. And suggestion was used extensively by Sigmund Freud.

Sympathy. It "generally implies a tender regard for the person with whom we are said to sympathise" (McDougall 1916: 92). This, is a "special and complex form of sympathetic emotion", "The fundamental and primitive form of sympathy is exactly what the word implies, a suffering with, the experiencing of any feeling or emotion when and because we observe in other persons or creatures the expression of that feeling or emotion" (ibid, 92). The "commonest example" in gregarious animals is "the spread of fear and its flight-impulse among the members of a flock or herd" (ibid, 92). Likewise, when "one of a pack of gregarious hunting animals, dogs or wolves, comes upon a fresh trail, sights the prey, and pursues it, uttering a characteristic yelp that excites the instinct of pursuit in all his fellows and brings them yelping behind him" (ibid, 92-93). These examples are curiously all vocal. QCQCQC

Cement. This is a common expression in my so-called "data-set", and there are some modern instances in which phatic communion is said to be such a "cement". Here it is sympathy: "Sympathy of this crude kind is the cement that binds animal societies together, renders the actions of all members of a group harmonious, and allows them to repeat some of the prime advantages of social life in spite of lack of intelligence" (McDougall 1916: 93). What's interesting about this quote is that he goes through all the pseudo-instincts in one sentence: (1) sympathy binds them together; (2) enables imitation; and (3) gives them some advantage despite the "lack of intelligence" - though few would agree today that animals lack intelligence. In any case, "cement" pops out to me because I found it in Ross, too: "The Mohammedan world still relies on religion as the cement of society and its schools teach little else than sacred lore" (Ross 1920: 596).

Careless company. McDougall repeats his discussion of how sympathetically induced pain "simply inclines us, then, to avoid the neighbourhood of the distressed and to seek the company of the cheerful" (McDougall 1916: 78; above). I'll briefly go over all the examples of "Human sympathy" he gives:

• "the wailing of other children" makes the child wail;
• "the sight of a smiling face, the expression of pleasure, provokes a smile";
• curiosity and anger "are communicated readily in this direct fashion from one child to another";
• "Laughter is notoriously infectious all through life";

Adults respond similarly: "A merry face makes us feel brighter; a melancholy face may cast a gloom over a cheerful company" (ibid, 94). All of these are illustrations of what we today would call emotional contagion. But now he goes over the argument he had with Bain above: "when we witness the painful emotion of others, when we experience sympathetic pain; when we see others terror-stricken or hear their scream of terror, we suffer a pang of fear though we know nothing of the cause of their emotion or are indifferent to it" (ibid, 94-95). The perplexity of his treatment of sympathy is reduced by this: my example was verbal, his is nonverbal, in which case we do not know that the other person's parent had died, we see only the gloomy face. Thus, "There are persons who are equisitively sympathetic in this sense of feeling with another, experiencing distress at the sight of of pain and grief, pleasure at the sight of joy, who yet are utterly selfish and are not moved in the least degree to relieve the distress they observe in others or to promote the pleasure that is reflected in themselves" (ibid, 95-96). Finally, "Their sympathetic sensibility merely leads them to avoid all contact with distressful persons, books, or scenes, and to seek the company of the careless and the gay" (McDougall 1916: 96). To Ross's "If you're out of health or money you need n't come around" I can now add that "joyous natures feel joy in all company that is not disobliging" (Shand 1914: 151). In all probability we have at hand the following sequence: Shand → McDougall → Ross. At this rate it's going to take me a whole week to get through my notes. Hence, going forward I'll skip the bits that aren't directly relevant for the purpose at hand.

Sentiment. "We owe to Mr. A. F. Shand the recognition of features of our mental constitution of a most important kind that have been strangely overlooked by other psychologists, and the application of the word "sentiments" to denote features of this kind" (McDougall 1916: 122). From my reading, Shand elaborated upon Darwin's book on emotional expressions. If it was strangely overlooked before Shand it remained overlooked after him. Shand's system was in fashion for like two minutes. Nevertheless, McDougall was one of the very few who took it seriously, and although it was said to be Malinowski's night-cubboard book, the one identifiable instance in which he did use it he missed the mark so completely it cannot be said to be anything else than utter failure. It is symptomatic that even McDougall's summary of Shand's theory of sentiments is obtuse and flowery. The definition he strikes upon goes as follows: a sentiment is "an organised system of emotional tendencies centred about some object" (ibid, 122). How very informative!

Pity and sorrow. As with pride and vanity, here's a very fine distinction. McDougall acknowledges that both are essentially painful tender emotions: "Pity in its simplest form is tender emotion tinged with sympathetically induced pain (McDougall 1916: 153). What distinguishes pity from sorrow is that the former "does not imply the existence of any sentiment of affection or love, as sorrow does, and is therefore a more transient experience, and one with less tendency to look before and after" (ibid, 153). When watching "the painful and mortal illness" of a stranger, there is sympathetically induced pain, but it is temporary because you do not love that stranger; when you're watching the same effects in a friend, on the other hand, "there is also pain arising from the prospect of the loss of the object of our sentiment of love, which makes the emotion a sorrowful one" (ibid 153). Sorrow, in a word, is "a self-regarding pain" - the suffering of a friend is personal, whereas you can pity the stranger but after he's out of sight he's out of mind.

Self-love. McDougall complains that "older moralists" have confounded self-love and self-respect. Here he gives a workable definition of self-love: it is "the self-regarding sentiment of the thoroughly selfish man, the meaner sort of egoist" so that "Such a man feels a tender emotion for himself, he indulges in self-pity; he may have little positive self-feeling and may be incapable of shame" (McDougall 1916: 161-162). In the "vampires" described by Ross we can recognize this type of self-love. To put it bluntly, the selfish man will talk and talk and talk without actually listening to others because he loves his own voice.

Active sympathy. It turns out that E. R. Clay's homogeneous sympathy is indeed comparable to McDougall's active sympathy. To reiterate, Clay distinguishes conviviality as homogeneous sympathy and pity as heterogeneous sympathy. In conviviality there is a "concurrence of emotions of the same kind" and it "enhance[s] a feeling of fellowship" (Clay 1882: 142). McDougall's active sympathy likewise "is of prime importance for the development of the sentiment of affection between equals" (McDougall 1916: 168). Heterogeneous sympathy, i.e. pity, "may be wholly one-sided" but active sympathy implies "some degree of reciprocation" (ibid, 168). Now, what makes "homogeneous" sympathy "active" consists in the following: "either party to the relation not only is apt to experience the emotions displayed by the other, but he desires also that the other shall share his own emotions; he actively seeks the sympathy of the other, and, when he has communicated his emotion to the other, he attains a peculiar satisfaction which greatly enhances his pleasure and his joy" (McDougall 1916: 168). The stuff of it is somewhat similar to the treatment of friendship (Ch. 9) in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, namely that we desire good for our friends for their own sake. Here, it is only slightly different: active sympathy involves a reciprocity of feelings. Moreover, "This relation of active sympathy is apt to grow up between any two persons who are thrown much together, if they are commonly stirred to similar emotions by similar objects; and that can only be the case if they have similar sentiments" (McDougall 1916: 168). This has broad implications for phatic communion. For one, what makes phatic communion phatic communion and not, say, sympathetic communion, is that people brought together by the mere need for company are not "thrown much together" but thrown together on that particular occasion. They are not already fast friends but may become so in due time. And secondly, "similar sentiments" may pair with Malinowski's "common sentiment" (PC 2.3), though it really feels like he is misusing the word "sentiment" on that occasion.

Conclusion. I was worrying without cause. In the rest of the book there is very little that can be connected with phatic communion. There are only two exceptions: "the fact that meaningless formalities and rites continue to surround almost all ancient institutions" (McDougall 1916: 350). Yet Malinowski does not deal with "ancient institutions". And secondly there is a very good long paragraph about the role of the sex instinct in "normal social intercourse" (McDougall 1916: 400-401), but Malinowski avoids anything to do with sex, at least in his early writings, like the plague. The latter instance has value in itself, and could eventually develop into an independent study of the role of sexual attraction in social intercourse but that is "future music" as they say.

Presently it looks like McDougall, at least, is a red herring. I was lead to him and Shand by this: "Malinowski made use of the contributions of both Gestaltists and behaviorists, but his main theoretical orientation was provided by an early socio-psychological approach of McDougall and Shand" (Symmons-Symonolewicz 1959: 40-41). It may be that I am simply reading the wrong book, as Symmons-Symonolewicz refers to Malinowski's review of McDougall's Group Mind. I've noticed that Ross, too, constantly notes (in margins) the "group mind" in this or that phenomenon but never explains it. It looks like McDougall is not fully off the hook until I've also read that one, but I don't expect it to be too relevant for phatic communion due to Malinowski's persistent resentment of "collective consciousness". I looked up specific words (communion, intercourse, sentiment, vanity), but nothing of interest came up - in that book McDougall uses "intercourse" only in "between nations". So I'm approximately 80% sure that I'm in the clear with McDougall and it would be very surprising indeed if Group Mind turned out to be more important than I thought.

I'm guessing that the situation with Shand is somewhat similar, as I don't recall his book being as on phatic as I found Ross's to be. So it looks like the thesis of my upcoming paper is going to be about how the influence of the known authors, who were popular at the time (there was even a notable dispute between McDougall and Shand on the nature of instincts or sentiments, or sympathy, or who-knows-what), is much lesser and less obvious that the influence of an unknown, a wildcard, this Ross fellow, in whose book the most cryptic parts of Malinowski's phatic communion find a perfect explanation. This is, well, both surprising and deflating. I had thought for a long time that the answers were hidden somewhere in or between McDougall and Shand, and now it turns out that the answers were much more simpler, and hidden elsewhere, in a book no-one notices but which clearly was open on Malinowski's table when he wrote about phatic communion. That's the surprising part. The deflating part is that, well, what if there are more such wildcards? What if I haven't yet reached the bottom and somewhere there is a further forgotten book containing passages that resolve issues I've been wrestling with for years? Have I finally reached the bottom of the barrel or has Boris more to hide?

---

Selleks, et oma psühhoanalüütiliste teooriate kriitikas kindel olla, kasutas Malinowski panuseid nii gestaltistidelt kui biheivioristidelt, aga tema põhiline teoreetiline orientatsioon põlvnes McDougalli ja Shandi varajasest sotsio-psühholoogilisest lähenemisest. Oma arvustuses McDougalli teosele The Group Mind rõhutas ta, sealjuures eitades raamatu keskset kontseptsiooni kui "jäänukit Hegelikust teooriast":

[...] McDougall oli üks esimesi, kes mõistis selgelt, et ühiskondlike uskumuste, kommete, ja käitumise küsimustes mängivad tundmus ja instinkt keskset rolli. Kaasaegsed uurimused on seda õpetust õigustanud, mõnel juhul mitte ilma liialdusteta. Ma arvan, et võin turvaliselt ennustada, et tuleviku etnoloogiat mõjutavad McDougalli seisukohad rohkem kui praegu.

Kuus aastat hiljem, raamatus Seks ja Repressioon Metsikus Ühiskonnas, ütleb Malinowski otseselt, et oluline osa tema teoreetilisest argumendist selles raamatus põhines "Shandilikel põhimõtetel", samas kui ühes oma hilisemas töös kirjeldab ta "McDougalli ja Shandi poolt edendatud tundmusteooriat" kui "kõige olulisemat panust kaasaegses psühholoogias". Pärast seda kaob see teooria vakiselt Malinowski kirjutistest, kuivõrd teda huvitab üha enam vajaduste kui tundmuste mõiste. (Symmons-Symonolewicz 1959: 40-41)

Principles of Sociology

Ross, Edward Alsworth 1920. Principles of Sociology. New York: The Century Co. [Internet Archive]

After a cataclysm which has destroyed in battle seven and a half million men and set civilization back at least a life time the world ought to be interested in the scientific study of human relations. Sociology was young what time the World War was incubating, but - it is a satisfaction to recall - her unregarded voice was ever lifted in protest against the dance toward the abyss. (Ross 1920: vii)

Cue human relationism.

Sociologists follow the methods of Science but they are by no means content to seek Knowledge for her own sake. They are not ashamed to avow an over-mastering purpose and that is - to better human relations. They confess that they are studying how to lessen the confusion, strife and mutual destruction among men and to promote harmony and team work. (Ross 1920: vii)

Everyone else are seeking knowledge for its own sake, and only sociologists have goals?

The will of enlightened man is so bent on directing, or, at least, influencing, the course of society, moreover the possibilities of social amelioration are so tempting, that the chief object in explaining society is to help people determine the best thing to do. (Ross 1920: viii)

What we learn from Kant is that enlightenment means first and foremost thinking for oneself, using your own mind. Here the enlightenment man takes on the responsibility of thinking for others, becoming the privileged man of the mind who directs or influences others. All is well until those others become enlightened, too.

We have no means of knowing what traits a female community [|] would develop, but we do know that the male community has a character of its own. In case it is too remote or rude to attract home-making women - e.g., in the Far North or on the rim of civilization - its population is a continual flux, for the men tire of a womanless life and presently return to "God's country" to marry and "settle down." Such a community becomes the theatre of a ruthless greed, for its denizens treat it not as home, but as merely a place for making money. Since they do not think of it as their children's country, they butcher the land, waste its resources and maltreat the indigenous population. No one cares for the future of the country. Each is in haste to gather the spoil and return home. (Ross 1920: 6-7)

Could this be why the U.S. is the way it is? Because they've retained an attitude towards their land as if it were no-man's land?

The adventuress, queen of the male community, is disowned and becomes the "fallen" woman as wives and mothers make their influence felt. From women, who love security and abhor the wanton creation of risk, emanates a sentiment against the furious gambling by which the male community relieves its ennui. Unable to use the saloon for sociability and recognizing in this demoralizing male resort its deadliest enemy, the home [|] attacks the saloon and prunes away its worst features. In the wake of women come schools, churches and shops to help them make homes which will attract more than the bar room. (Ross 1920: 7-8)

Stereotyped gender norms, huh. "Sociability" in singular.

This blind fecundity was encouraged by the Kaiser and the military caste as a great prop of their design of world conquest. His maxim that woman's existence should be bounded by the four K's (Kinder, Küche, Kleider, Kirche, i.e., children, kitchen, clothes and church) perfectly expresses the militarist and capitalist attitude toward proletarian increase. (Ross 1920: 8; footnote)

Didn't know about the clothes (Kleider).

Age composition may reflect itself very clearly in the collective spirit. The community with a large proportion in the early productive years, e.g., young and rapidly growing settlements and towns, displays unusual fluidity, energy, initiative and adaptability. On the other hand, an excess of young children and of the elderly lessens venturesomeness and makes for pessimism, timidity, and want of prompt decision. (Ross 1920: 11)

The margin reads: "The Psyche of a Community Reflects Its Age Composition".

Those who follow the lure of high wages in a foreign labor market will sub-represent their people in ability. The educated, the propertied, the established, the well-connected, having prospects at home, having no motive to submit [|] themselves to the hardships of the steerage. The children of the successful abide in their fatherland; only the children of the unsuccessful migrate, and it is very unlikely that such a stream will constitute a good sample of the beauty, brains and initiative of the stock. (Ross 1920: 13-14)

The educated (as opposed to the "uneducated" classes). And already we have a triad: (1) beauty; (2) initiative; and (3) brains.

The higher standards of cleanliness, decency and education cherished by the native element act on it like a slow poison. William does not leave so many children as 'Tonio because he will not huddle his family into one room, eat macarony off a bare board, work his wife barefoot in the field, and keep his children weeding onions instead of at school. (Ross 1920: 15)

Making a note that these (cleanliness, decency, and education) go together. Malinowski does not touch upon cleanliness, but his "phatic communion" does address decency - here I'm going to find out exactly how.

In a society governed from outside or above - Egypt, for example - the introduction of strangers, provided they are lawabiding and industrious, may do no harm. But a democratic society, in which government, laws, and moral standards are the outcome of common understanding, suffers as it becomes more heterogeneous in composition. The unworthy are able to slip into power because groups of worthy citizens are pulling different ways. When a people is so like-minded politically that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is ready to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who insist on threshing over again old straw - the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade - ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie untouched. (Ross 1920: 16)

The margin reads: "A Mixed Immigration Disintegrates the Social Mind". On the whole, this demonstrates that the sociologist, too, thought the stranger a natural enemy. Ross's must represent a primitive mind.

This high marriedness reflects, no doubt, rural life, relative ease of economic conditions among the common people, and a social position of woman which prompts her to scorn the irregular relations which a certain male element prefers. (Ross 1920: 16)

I wonder how Ross would look upon Tinder. It should not be possible in a societies where women are in a high social position.

The measurement of mental differences is yet in its infancy. Its technique is, however, rapidly developing and before long we may be able to ascertain with a fair degree of accuracy the natural mental capacity of any individual. When that time comes it may be possible to gauge the comparative brain power of races and of hybrids, to discriminate at immigration stations between the desirables and the undesirables, to discover what youth are worthy of being aided to a higher education, to find for each profession to grade of capacity requisite for success in it, or to sort out of a body of employees the ones available for responsibility and direction. (Ross 1920: 18)

"Edward Alsworth Ross (December 12, 1866 – July 22, 1951) was a progressive American sociologist, eugenicist, economist, and major figure of early criminology." (Wikipedia)

Despite the denunciation of cities by philosophers and the idealizations of the country by the poets, the cityward flow continues because its causes are fundamental. (Ross 1920: 20)

A Philosophy of Solitude, for example.

Generally people must reside where they get their living. Nevertheless, social, æsthetic and educational advantages have a bearing upon the local distribution of population. (Ross 1920: 22)

Another triad: (1) asethetic; (2) social; and (3) educational.

Once the country was a magnet for the wealthy because feudal tradition had haloed the life of the country gentleman. The townsman retiring rich withdrew with his dependents and servants to a mansion on an estate. This exodus of the leisured to the country offset a little the rush of the ambitious in the other direction. But, the world over, the rôle of country gentleman appeals less, while the passion of the wealthy for city excitements, amusements, and dissipations seems to grow. (Ross 1920: 22)

The language is similar to "passion for power and wealth" (PC 3.3) but the meaning is not.

It is the producer rather than the consumer who betters his lot by removing to the city. A man with several dependents is shy of going where living is dear. The city therefore drains from the country the yoing unencumbered adults, leaving an excess of children and aged. A third of our city-dwellers are in the age group 25 to 44 years, but only a quarter of our country-dwellers. No wonder the growing city throbs with energy and hope while the traits characteristic of the depleted countryside are deliberateness, reserve and convervatism. (Ross 1920: 23)

The margin reads: "The Psyche of the City Is that of the Young and Active".

In view of the niggardly satisfaction the city affords the mating instinct, no wonder a market for female virtue springs up in the city. (Ross 1920: 24)

More proof that the word "virtue" is truly meaningless.

Perhaps the trait most distinctive of those who follow the call of the distant city when farming stagnates is the spirit of initiative. They have it in them to make a start, in spite of home ties, the bonds of habit, and the restraints of prudence. Had they not emigrated, their spirit of initiative would have shown itself along other lines. (Ross 1920: 24)

The language of "ties of union".

A heavy outflow of this element need not leave the community poorer in physique, or brains, or character, except as these are correlated with initiative, but it does leave it poorer in natural leaders. (Ross 1920: 24)

Another triad: (1) physique; (2) character; and (3) brains.

Often one sees a depressing slump in the religious, social, and recreative life of a neighborhood, following the moving away of two or three families of initiative. Usually those who insist upon and know how to get good schools, vigorous churches, and abundant means for social enjoyment, are a minority, often a very small minority. (Ross 1920: 25)

Something of substance done with the triads! Presumably, the recreative life of social enjoyment is (1); the social [edification] in good schools is (2); and the religious life in vigorous churches is (3), but I may be mistaken - the religious should ideally be the fourth and is here intruding upon the third.

The continual departure of young people who would in time have become leaders result eventually in a visible moral decline of the community. The roads are neglected, which means less social intercourse and a smaller turnout to school and church and public events. (Ross 1920: 25)

Noted for the connection between roads and social intercourse.

The church gets into a rut, fails to start up the social and recreative activities which bind the young people to it, and presently ceases to be a force, perhaps even goes to pieces. Frivolity engrosses the young because no one organizes singing schools, literary societies, or debating clubs. (Ross 1920: 25)

The church uses social and recreational activities to "bind" young people to itself. Start early!

In New England there are rural counties which have been losing their best for three or four generations, leaving the couarse, dull and hidebound. The number of loafers in some slackwater villages of the Middle States indicates that the natural pacemakers of the locality have gone elsewhere to create prosperity. (Ross 1920: 26)

Define:hidebound - "of a domestic animal : having a dry skin lacking in pliancy and adhering closely to the underlying flesh"; "having an inflexible or ultraconservative character".

The world over, the psychology of city people is notably different from that of country people. The urban type lives on surfaces, life being so crowded with impressions that there is little energy left for reflection. Compare the sights and sounds which hail one in the street with those one meets in the country lane. Compare the big head-lines, chromatic print, dramatic posters and palpitant lights which must be used in order to reach the city mind with the meek announcement posted at the crossroad. The former measures the intensity of the competition to arrest attention. The things the urbanite noticingly looks at or listen to it in a day are generally many times more numerous than those that impinge on the farmer's mind. As a result, one country-dweller sinks into stagnation the machinery of his rusty mind moving slowly and only in response to a strong stimulus. The mind of another grinds on itself mulling over his narrow personal experience, his little stock of inherited dogmas, his scanty fund of scrappy uncoördinated information gleaned from his weekly newspaper. (Ross 1920: 27)

The "competition to arrest attention" hints towards "phatic images", the measures necessary to catch attention. The city naturally offers more advertising and flashy images.

The city atmosphere quickens the creaking rustic mind, making for alertness, impressibility and promptness of response; also for snap-shot judgments and shallow thinking. (Ross 1920: 27)

Wit instead of knowledge (cf. Locke 1741a: 117).

For him to let himself go in respect to the instincts centering about reproduction is almost as disastrous in its effects as for him to give free rein to his pugnacious instinct, his destructive instinct, or his acquisitive instinct. (Ross 1920: 32)

Instinct psychology at large. What the hell is the destructive instinct?

Owing to the break-up of custom, our economic wants expand faster than ever before. People will not limit themselves to the traditional standard of comfort of their class. Wants and tastes once confined to the social elect spread resistlessly downward and infect the masses. Advertising, window-dressing, conspicuous consumption, waves of fashion and stories of the life of modish people carry the craving for luxuries hithero looked upon as the prerogative of the well-to-do, down among the millions of limited means and these, in their eager haste to gratify these new wants, keep down their increase. (Ross 1920: 34)

"The elect" an odd designation for the wealthy, as if someone chose them to be the blessed ones.

Whether a young couple shall avoid progeny, content themselves with a child or two, or undertake to rear a real family, depends much on the current opinion about children. (Ross 1920: 35)

Two children not a real family.

It is possible, moreover, for public opinion to discourage immoderate fecundity. When each trudges the road by himself, it is solely his own affair how many bundles he loads himself with. But when we go by train, it is everybody's concern how many bundles a passenger brings aboard. The more one brings, the fewer others can bring and the greater the general discomfort. Hence, an opinion grows up as to what is a reasonable amount of luggage for a passenger to travel with. (Ross 1920: 36)

Children are luggage.

Wherefore should it practise family prudence if hungry strangers may crowd in and occupy at the table the places it had reserved for its children? (Ross 1920: 37)

Xenophobia so thick you could cut it with knife.

From the standpoint of the brotherhood of man such an acknowledgment would be most desirable. But there is no blinking the fact that it would handicap the advanced peoples and in time cause the world's population to consist more of unthinking races and less of thinking aspiring races. (Ross 1920: 37)

There are whole races of people who do not think!

Another error consists in identifying social forces with human needs rather than human wants. Usually need means what we think people ought to want; but human nature, including its follies, vanities and lusts, is in the members of society, and must be reckoned with. Nothing is more foolish than to imagine that all the defects in people flow from defects in society and will vanish [|] if only weorganize society on right lines. Some of the traits developed in man a hundred centuries ago make trouble now and will have to be allowed for æons hence. (Ross 1920: 41-42)

Humans are naturally defective, and cannot be perfected. Note, too, the triad: (1) lusts; (2) vanities; and (3) follies.

No sooner have we arrived at the truth first emphasized by Ward that the social forces are human desires than we come upon new forms of error. The "organic" conception of society pictures the desires of individuals as running together into a collective desire for the social welfare. This generalized desire for certain results would be the cause of the "social organs" functioning. Thus Spencer is apt to attribute an institution either to the individual's sense of a common interest or to the common sense of an individual interest and to overlook the rôle of special desires behind a particular institution. In accounting for monogamy, he stresses too much its good results and ignores the rôle of male sexual jealousy. He thinks the force which calls customary rules into being is "the consensus of individual interests." (Ross 1920: 42)

The margin readS: "Errors of the Organicists". The main stuff here is exactly what Malinowski argued against Durkheim with regard to religious ideas. There is also a contemporaneous philosophical discussion about "general will" (e.g. Laird's "The group mind and the general will", 1923).

As a matter of fact, there worked along with the general desire to safeguard individual interests such special motives as the love of fair play and spmyathy with the resentment of the wronged man. He states that "governing agencies, during their early stages, are at once the products of aggregate feeling, derive their powers from it, and are restrained by it." But in fact along with the aggregate feeling works the instinct to dominate - once known as "the love of power" and rebaptized "the will to power" - which, although animating only a few, may push government beyond what the aggregate feeling approves. On the other hand, another instinct - the impatience with restraint - may keep government below what the aggregate feeling demands. (Ross 1920: 42)

This discussion is about Spencer's "Principles of Sociology" (Vol. II), dealing in particular with the relationship between public opinion and law (cf. Spencer 1899: 525).

To contemporary psychology, man comes into the world with a rich endowment of dispositions or instincts which, in the words of MacDougall, "are the mental forces which maintain and shape all the life of individuals and societies." Without them the human organism would lie inert "like a wonderful clockwork whose [|] mainspring had been removed or a stream engine whose fires had been drawn." Thorndike declares, "The behavior of man in the family, in business, in the state, in religion, and in every other affair of life, is rooted in his unlearned, original equipment of instincts and capacities." In Veblen's judgment the instincts are "the prime movers in human behavior." "Nothing falls within the human scheme of things desirable to be done except what answers to these native proclivities of man. These native proclivities alone make anything worth while and out of their workings emerge not only the purpose and efficiency of life but its substantial pleasures and pains as well." (Ross 1920: 42-43)

A synopsis of instinct psychology. It was preceded by centuries of faculty psychology, and immediately followed by behaviourism.

Sometimes the baulked disposition persists and we suffer an inner bleeding, a loss of nervous energy accompanied by a vague distress or unrest. (Ross 1920: 43)

A vague uncharted feeling.

Whether the acquisitive instinct shall lead to commercial crime or to innocent collecting, whether innate pugnacity shall find satisfaction [|] in fighting or in antagonistic sports, whether the impulse to self-assertion shall seek fulfilment in self-display and boasting or in solid achievement, whether curiosity shall instigate to prying or to study, depend on training, leadership and dominant ideas. (Ross 1920: 43-44)

I think I've found the substance of Malinowski's "self-enhancement" (PC 5.5).

There is no end to the illustrations of instinct in the life of societies. In the earlier stages the pugnacious instinct impels man to wreck everything he holds deal, almost as if he were possessed by a demon. On the basis of his observations in Central Borneo, MacDougall remarks, "The people are very intelligent and sociable and kindly to one another within each village community; but [...] the neighboring villages and tribes live in a state of chronic warfare; all are kept in constant fear of attack, whole villages are often exterminated, and the population is in this way kept down very far below the limit at which any pressure on the means of subsistence could arise. This perpetual warfare, like the squabbles of a roomful of quarrelsome children, seems to be almost wholly and directly due to the uncomplicated operation of the instinct of pugnacity. No material benefits are sought; a few heads and sometimes a slave or two are the only trophies gained; and if one asks of an intelligent chief why he keeps up this senseless practice of going on the war path, the best reason he can give is that unless he does so his neighbors will not respect him and his people, and will fall upon them and exterminate them." (Ross 1920: 44)

This is from the very same An Introduction to Social Psychology, which I did read and notate but while working 12h shifts, so very little of it stuck to my mind. It turns out that I may have to re-read both McDougall and Shand (perhaps even Trotter and Freud).

The instinct of pugnacity, however, is not at the root of most modern wars. The World War sprang from the conflict of rival imperialisms. Behind these imperialisms was the greed of certain influential financial or business groups secretly molding the foreign policy of government. (Ross 1920: 45)

(((Them)))

Politics has been a male affair and male pugnacity cropped out in American politics as soon as the Jacksonian movement brought to self-consciousness masses of unthinking instinctive voters. The citizens divided into two hostile camps, filled political discussion with fighting words like "campaign," "battle," "enemy," "chiefs," "slogan" and "banner," and imported military features such as uniforms, marching companies and torchlight prrocessions. The one dread of politicians has been public apathy, and their one hope was "spirit," i.e., a groundless hatred of opponents. The winning party celebrated a "victory," declared "To the victors belong the spoils," and with the general approval of the voters of both parties proceeded to convert the salaried offices to private or party advantage. It is to be hoped that women voters will rid politics of these childish manifestations of male pugnacity. (Ross 1920: 45)

Toxic masculinity ("male pugnacity") and partisan politics ("two hostile camps" with "a groundless hatred of opponents").

The gregarious instinct is one of the chief architects of modern society. The sensational growth of cities is not due solely to [|] economic causes. The multitude attracts men as the candle attracts moths. Many who grew up in the country and never found it dull, become restless in it after they have learned to vibrate with the crowd. Slum dwellers develop a morbid passion for huddling and no "garden city" apostle can persuade them to exchange the slum with its high rents, congestion, ugliness, dirt and disease for the roomy and wholesome suburb. (Ross 1920: 45-46)

The heading reads "The gregarious instinct in society".

The swarming of young women out from the home into places of congregate work owes something to the gregarious impulse. The factory, which pays only three-fifths as much as domestic service, never lacks hands while the kitchens stand empty because they are lonely. (Ross 1920: 46)

Factory offers company.

The original driving force behind the scientific movement was the instinct of curiosity. It was also behind the religious speculations which, when they had crystallized into a regulative dogmatic system, obstructed further inquiry. The passion to probe deeper is so imperious in the stronger minds that every persecution of research and sceptical speculation has produced its martyrs. (Ross 1920: 47)

Gather information until you have a sufficient store to start ignoring new information.

The strength of the instinct of self-expression may be gauged from what happens when it is released after being long pent up. After the Revolution of 1917 the Russians interested in political ideas went on a "spree." There was no end of public meetings and speakers. People went about from one meeting to another all Sunday and never tired of listening to utterances which formerly would have cost the utterer a jail sentence. There was a veritable passion for "demonstrating." Every political group delighted to parade the street carrying banners or transparencies blazoning its sentiments. Besides the motive of spreading one's ideas there was sheer pleasure in self-expression, like the whooping of children let out of school. (Ross 1920: 47)

Ivan Orav went from one meeting to another so much that he wore out his legs and became some inches shorter.

We only confine offenders and, since they are well-warmed and fed and not overworked, we imagine our prison system humane. The fact is, shutting a man up in a tiny cell in a great steel cage may torture the mind as the thumb screw tortures the body. It so violates the instinct for liberty that alienists have had to recognize a new disease, "confinement insanity." More enlightened than we, posterity will condemn our ignorant cruelty in breaking men who in a convict logging or road-building camp would have kept sane. (Ross 1920: 49)

Not posterity. The present. The U.S. still uses solitary confinement with startling liberality, and the horror stories of people ending up in solitary confinement for weeks and months for trivial offenses are unending. Wikipedia says that "20% of prisoners are in solitary confinement at some point during their prison career".

Less and less is the instinct of workmanship stimulated as the minute subdivision of tasks makes labor a monotonous repetition. Handicraft gives way to machine-tending, which is so little absorbing that, it is said, mental deficients make the best machine tenders! Small zest can workers feel who do not understand the relation of their own product to the finished article. Finally comes scientific management which takes all planning away from the ordinary worker, leaving him a meaningless mechanical job at which no craftsmanship can be exercised and from which, therefore, no joy can be derived. (Ross 1920: 50)

Alienation.

Behind the movement for a more democratic control of industry lies something more than agitation, viz., a suppressed demand of human nature. (Ross 1920: 50)

Amen

There are certain great complexes which contribute to satisfy a number of our innate cravings. Among them are Wealth, Government, Religion, and Knowledge. Each of them appeals to so many sides of human nature that for most men it becomes an object of abiding concern and desire. These derived social forces may be called interests. (Ross 1920: 51)

Take away religion (which should be fourth, as I remarked above) and you have pretty much the original Pythagorean triad.

When in maidens' eyes gold "gilds the straitened forehead of the fool," gold will be prized as a means of winning the coveted mate. When entertainment is expensive, money is sought in order to gratify one's sociable needs. When it is believed that the gods covet rich presents, men will seek the wherewithal for costly sacrifices and sanctuaries. When wealth gives lordship over others, the ambitious will rowel hard in the pursuit of fortune. (Ross 1920: 51)

Women are gold-diggers, going out is expensive, and money makes the world go round. Tropes as old as age.

When gold cannot shake the nobleman's pride of caste, the statesman's patriotism, the soldier's honor, the wife's fidelity, the servant's loyalty, the scholar's veracity, the official's sense of duty, the artist's devotion to his ideal, wealth is cheap. But when maidens wed senile monkey bags, youths swarm about the homely heiress, judges take bribes, experts sell their opinions to the highest bidder and genius champions the course it does not believe in, wealth is held dear. (Ross 1920: 52)

A difficult to estimate because those who do sell themselves this way do not make it public, at least in most cases. The wife does not announce her infidelity, the maiden professes true love to the senile money bag, and the expert is quite insistent that s/he is objective.

The advance of technique constantly augments this power. Thus the introduction of perfumes and spices gave new sensuous gratifications, spiritous liquors provided a short-cut to social pleasure, armor opened a way to safety in battle, the coming in of battle enabled heads of kine to be trophies as well as scalp locks and captives. (Ross 1920: 53)

Alcohol is a social technique.

A primary factor in the religious interest has been the desire to experience ecstasy. Primitive peoples know and highly value this enlargement of consciousness and no one who has seen persons "getting happy" at a camp meeting will doubt the reality or the seductiveness of such states. (Ross 1920: 54)

Religious people just want to get high with no supply.

With the advent of collective worship, religious feasts endear themselves as occasions of intense social pleasure. Moreover, the common worship of the gods for public ends makes them agents of social discipline, props of order, bulwarks of family, property, and state. (Ross 1920: 55)

Hey, look, free meals and a welcoming company!

No wonder that men have suffered themselves to be hewed in pieces rather than give up their gods, that at times one has looked upon all co-worshippers as friends and all deniers of one's god as enemies. (Ross 1920: 55)

They believe in the same god slightly differently. Get 'em!

The intellectual interest has far outgrown the craving for knowledge inspired by the instinct of curiosity. For one thing intellectual subtlety, always a coveted species of prowess, gratifies the instinct for self-assertion. Even in the early stages of culture a reputation for extraordinary wisdom brings the sage fame, favor and wealth. Later, learning confers distinction and has a value in bread-winning and mate-winning. As for real [|] knowledge, it has been means as well as end. Its branches were first cultivated as badges of leisure-class superiority. Later the sciences were promoted because they relieve pain, prolonged life, brought military victory and vastly augmented the production of wealth. (Ross 1920: 56-57)

Knowledge as "cultural capital" is the most valuable type of capital, and can be most profitably exchanged for financial capital (bread-winning) and social capital (mate-winning). By relieving pain, prolonging life, etc. knowledge is a means, but as a badge of superiority it is an end?

The vulgar wonder why the Chinese toil so hard, the Jews trade, the English follow sport, and the Germans engage in philosophical speculation, until some one tells them, "It's in the blood." Then they go away satisfied. (Ross 1920: 59)

Miks sakslased filosofeerivad? See on neil veres.

Nevertheless, after making due allowance for the moulding of a people's psyche by the products of its social evolution, there remain veritable differences in race mind. There is a mountain of evidence that the Northern peoples of Europe (Irish, Scotch, Scandinavians, Slavs) and most nature peoples are more intemperate than Southern races like the Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and Semites. The latter have known strong drink for some thousands of years and their members possessed of an uncontrollable love of vinous exhilaration drank themselves to death long ago. If the physical environment can thus mould the appetite it is likely that other contrasts have been produced by processes we do not yet understand. (Ross 1920: 60)

In a few thousand years, enough Northern Europeans will drink themselves to death that those who survive will not take to the drink. Bingo-bango, evolution.

As advocate he makes a hardheaded [|] plea without sentiment and as after-dinner speaker he lacks wit and fancy. (Ross 1920: 62-63)

Never mind the slurs against Scandinavians, this "after-dinner speaker" ordeal I must look into, now that I've found that Kant may have influenced Mahaffy in this regard to a considerable extent.

Scandinavians care little for the social side of their labor unions. They do not warm up to the employer who treats them "right." As teachers they do not attach their pupils to them. These unsociable sons of the North do not shine as bar tenders, salesmen, canvassers, commercial travellers or life insurance solicitors. (Ross 1920: 63)

Tropes of sociability reversed upon the Scandinavians.

The prolificacy of the Negroes in the American South is so great that, were it not largely offset by an appalling infant death rate, the colored people would soon overwhelm the whites. If health officers and social workers put forth as much effort to lower the death rate of colored children as they do to lower that of white children, this overwhelming would actually take place. [|] Under these circumstances it is the duty of the more intelligent race to use its superior efficiency against its own expansion and in furtherance of Negro expansion? (Ross 1920: 65-66)

This explains a lot. Instead of mortality rates, now the police are actively killing and imprisoning black people for being black. America is a mess.

"In Norse mythology," says Whitbeck, "heaven was a place of warmth and hell, a place of cold and mist, but in the religions of Palestine and Arabia hell is a place of heat - eternal fire. To the Arab of the desert paradise was dreamed of as an oasis, or a garden, always having flowing water, shade trees, and fruit." To the ancient Hebrews, a settled people surrounded by marauding desert tribes, walls were the symbol of safety and hence heaven or the "New Jerusalem" is a walled city with gates of precious stones and streets of gold. (Ross 1920: 69)

What is Estonian heaven like? A moderately warm summer?

As consumers, on the other hand, men free themselves from the limitations of their loyalty and draw upon the whole world. Amid Alaskan snows the miner enjoys tropical fruits, tea from China, coffee from Brazil, sugar from Cuba. Besides, if he likes, he may read poetry inspired by palm trees and coral islands, listen to music that takes its motif from shepherd's pipe or temple bells, and enter imaginatively into the life and thoughts of any group of men on the globe. (Ross 1920: 72)

Something positive.

Now that he is leaping into aerial highways, he disdains the rivers, mountain chains, wastes, jungles, swamps, and tundras which once shut communities in so many cells. More and more, the obstacles to the fellowship and mutual aid of peoples and races are found in the human mind rather than in Nature. (Ross 1920: 72)

Politics and culture. Constant border conflicts in present times show that we are very far off indeed from a world of fellowship and mutual aid.

The primordial social grouping arose out of urgent needs and seems to have been a band of mothers with their children. Awing to his restlessness the male was probably no such stable member of the earlier human group as the woman. "The woman was the social nucleus, the point to which he returned from his wanderings. In this primitive stage of society, however, the bond between woman and child was altogether more immediate and constraining than the bond between woman and man. The maternal instinct is reinforced by necessary and constant association with the child. We can hardly find a parallel for the intimacy of association between mother and child during the period of lactation; and, in the absence of domestic animals or suitable foods, and also, apparently, from simple neglect formally to wean the child, this connection is greatly prolonged. (Ross 1920: 77)

The phrase "constant association" is the most striking - this I came across in La Barre's Human Animal. The quote is from Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex (Thomas 1907: 57).

Mere identity of origin counts for little in preparing groups for unity. The question is, what have they in common? The sense of community whether of belief, of taste or of feeling - and the feeling may be either affection or aversion toward persons or things - begets sympathy and draws men together. To the same class belong recognition of a common ancestry, the use of a common speech, the prizing of a common literature. (Ross 1920: 82)

Very very broadly the stuff of phatic communion. This is what phatic communion wishes it could be about.

The independent tribes of the Sahara are knit together by the religious confraternities which count their fanatical adherents in all the tribes from one end of the desert to the other. Such a confraternity is known as saouaia. Its members are khouan or brothers. Its chief is khalif or mahdi. Since the sole bond among the tribes has been community of religious sentiment, which is especially developed among pastoralists, it is religious sentiment which has become protector of the commercial caravans traversing the desert in the face of hostile tribes. (Ross 1920: 83)

I'm getting flashbacks of Dune, as I did from from the mentions of Beni Israel and Tamerlane on the previous pages. Noted here for the language of "bonds", and the role of sentiments.

In Homeric Greece along with survivals of the old narrow tribal sentiment showing itself in inter-tribal booty raids, in piracy and in the desire to compete with strangers and beat them, appears a broadening factor. Greek receptivity of mind and eagerness for advance undermined kin-group feelings and worked toward mingling and nationalization. "Toward this end," says Keller, "one of the chief contributors is a body of traditions connected with strangers, suppliants, guests and guest-friends. Since the stranger became at once a guest and since the guest was forever afterward a guest-friend, this body of ideas and practices is appropriately called guest-friendship." (Ross 1920: 83)

An exception to Malinowski's "primitive mind" that views the stranger as a natural enemy. Quote from Homeric Society: A Sociological Study of the Iliad and Odyssey (Keller 1902: 298-299).

We see, then, that again and gain culture spreads among tribes and peoples which are in no relation whatever to one another and makes them willing to enter into relations, or work together, when the need comes. Thanks to the unprecedented facilities of intercourse and communication we are in the midst of an epoch of immense diffusion which cannot but smooth the way toward some kind of social synthesis of humanity. (Ross 1920: 84)

One can hope that the World Wide Web can facilitate the social synthesis of humanity across the globe.

The goal of this development - a goal which we approach but never quite attain - is the suppression of distance. As we approach it, human groupings are transformed in type. They are [|] less dominated by geography and more by affinity and preference. They are less a product of circumstances and more a product of choice. Social bonds become less and less territorial, more and more intrinsic and purely human. "Neighbor" means less; "comrade" and "friend" more. Eventually, it would seem, human society will be made up of numerous free-forming, closely interlacing social organisms extending all over the civilized world. (Ross 1920: 84-85)

The margin is especially interesting: "Forced or "Political" Association will make way for Free Association". Ross turns out to be a utopian thinker?

What makes us a society? Is it that we have certain things in common - language, religion, art, science, industrial technique? Or is it that we do something together? The fact is both likemindedness and cooperation enter into our idea of society. Therefore, we cannot do better than adopt the definition framed by Giddings: "Any group or number of human individuals who cultivate acquaintance and mental agreement, and who, knowing and enjoying their own likemindedness, are able to work together for common ends, is a Human Society." (Ross 1920: 86)

Nice. Both code and message. Quote from Inductive Sociology (Giddings 1901: 6).

It is helpful to distinguish between primary association, i.e., the union of individuals or families into a social group and secondary association, i.e., the union of existing groups into a larger group. Primary association occurs either by growth, multiplication, or by coming together, congregation. The union of groups, conjugation, is either free or forced, i.e., by alliance or by conquest. (Ross 1920: 86)

Of course "union" figures in these distinctions.

There is safety in numbers and hence, for the sake of mutual protection, people who derive no economic advantage from their association may come together and stay together. An isolated family dares not wait till it has expanded into a trible able to take care of its own. Fear has been a great group builder. Aggregation, by increasing the power and the temptation to aggress, has been a cause of aggregation in neighbors or rivals. Hence, the [|] making of war or the dread of war, has continually forced men into unions for which they felt no inclination. (Ross 1920: 87-88)

And the other side in "fear or pugnacity" (PC 3.3). Both of these are supposed to be "instincts and innate trends". While pugnacity was clearly described as an instinct by McDougall, this is probably an innate trend.

Consequently it was in the city that the immemorial kinship groupings first broke down. The old families had to admitstrangers into the social organization and the bond of common residence succeeded to the bond of common blood as the chief social tie. (Ross 1920: 88)

Voila! Bonds of union are social ties!

The other way is for the regiment to break up into companies and occupy and govern districts. Each captain rules within his district but bonds of sympathy and tradition unite the dispersed companies. On anniversaries they join in some religious or patriotic festival. (Ross 1920: 91)

The language of bonds sure is complex and variegated.

The compounding and recompounding of men by force has immensely accelerated social integration. At present all mankind are embraced in not more than half a hundred sovereign group-units. Had the fraternal teachings of Buddha and Jesus, of Epictetus and Francis and George Fox been followed, such a stage of massing might not have been reached for thousands of years. (Ross 1920: 93)

Evidently the deaths and sufferings of innumerable millions not important as long as there are large empires that homogenize their subjects.

Distinguishing according to the social bond - which depends not only upon the mode of origin of the society but also upon its stage of development - Giddings recognizes the following kinds of society: (Ross 1920: 93)

From Giddings' Readings in Descriptive and Historical Society:

1. Sympathetic - "their chief social bind is sympathy" [The Greek Kindred; The English Kindred]
2. Congenial - "a community made up of like spirits" "drawn together" "to an opportunity for pleasure or improvement" [|] "such is the communistic brotherhood". "Similarity of nature and agreement in ideas constitute the social bond" [The Christians at Jerusalem; The Huguenots in England; Skaneateles; A London Suburb]
3. Approbational - "A general approbation of qualities and conduct is practically the only social bond" [California]
4. Despotic - "The social bonds of this community are despotic power and a fear-inspired obedience" [Conquest of the Canaanites; Israel under the Judges; The Roman Empire under Constantine; Norman England]
5. Authoritative - "Reverence for authority is the social bond" [Ancient Egypt; France under Catherine; England under the Tudors]
6. Conspirital - "Intrigue and conspiracy are the social bonds" [Conspiracy of Abimelech; Conspiracy of Peisistratos; etc.]
8. Contractual - "The social bond is a covenant or contract" [The League of the Iroquis; Conneticut]
9. Idealistic - "Comprehension of mind by mind, confidence, fidelity, and an altruistic spirit of social service are the social bonds" [The Sylvian Association; The United States]

In tribal mythologies we find sympathy or natural brotherhood theories. The society of congenial spirits suggests the consciousness-of-kind theories voiced in the proverb, "Birds of a feather flock together," in the saying of Empedocles that "Like desires like," and in the word of Ecclesiasticus that "All flesh consorteth according to kind, and a man will cleave to his like." (Ross 1920: 95)

Giddings and his consciousness of kind.

The observations upon human beings of "wild" upbringing who at various times have been brought among civilized people show them to be characterized by a vegetative type of existence, automatic reactions, unconsciousness of self, inability to learn the use of language, absent of social emotions, and indifference to human companionship. Self-consciousness, the rise of personality, and the ordinary capacity for thought and emotion are impossible without the give-and-take of life in society. (Ross 1920: 96)

The "vegetative type of existence" reminiscent of Kierkegaard, who wrote that most people are like that, lacking a self. The philosopher was obviously hyperbolic. The phraseology here is reminiscent of "the give and take of utterances which make up ordinary gossip" (PC 7.6).

The struggles of the social self against death are pathetic. In an Italian prison Pellico gained new life when he could wave a handkerchief at a fellow-prisoner, and his spirits rose at the mere sight of a human being. In cellular confinement prisoners devise many ingenious signals to convey sympathy. In Russian prisons the "politicals" developed a clever code of taps on walls or pipes as a means of communicating. In their mad thirst for companionship the immured make pets of mice, rats, and birds, even spiders, ants, and flies. In lieu of anything better, a flower or a struggling plant may furnish support to the starving social self. Incorrigible prisoners have been softened and transformed by having small animals to pet or even a flower box to tend. (Ross 1920: 97)

"There is in all human beings the well-known tendency to congregate, to be together, to enjoy each other's company." (PC 3.2)

The prisoner finds relief from his loneliness by tearing pictures out of books and newspapers and fastening them on his walls. If he has a latent artistic talent he lines his cell with drawings, which almost always represent human heads or figures. If he writes he is likely to produce autobiography, the most intimate of all literary forms. Thus, "Every trifle wrought in confinement; every color stain upon prison walls; every nonsense couplet; and every attempt at biography or philosophy, represents an effort of loneliness to people the waste of hours to which the physical presence of others is denied. It is an effort to multiply the spirits of one's own personality when all other avenues of intercourse are closed." (Ross 1920: 98)

Quote from "Psychical Relations of Society and Solitude" (Small 1891: 56).

Still, terrible as is solitude, some souls prefer it to too much society. Various motives lead one to wish to be much by himself. Men of genius voluntarily turn recluse in order to create original works. In the words of Ruskin, "An artist should be fit for the best society and should keep out of it." Thoreau puts it: "The reason of isolation is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar; and when we soar the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none left." Even when they seek communion, geniuses are so fretted or bored by the chatter of commonplace persons that they prefers to be alone. In his Letters Wagner confesses: "I always feel it to be a useless and utterly [|] resultless proceeding to converse with any one." "Nothing agrees with me like solitude." Schopenhauer thought that "Who does not love solitude loves not freedom." (Ross 1920: 98-99)

Wagner's confession could nowadays be called a phatic complaint. Curious that the word "communion" even makes an appearance.

Wordsworth prizes

that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.

Zimmermann declares, "Who lives with wolves must join in their howls." Cicero writing to Atticus avers that, excepting the dear friend he is addressing, he loves nothing so well as solitude; which Thoreau thought one person to the square mile is enough and wrote, "I never found the companion who was so companionable as solitude." On the other hand 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." (Ross 1920: 99)

Zimmerman's quip reminds me of this: "It is by uttering the same cry, pronouncing the same word, or performing the same gesture in regard to some object that they become and feel themselves to be in unison." (Durkheim 1915: 230) - Hume on the other hand what we discussed in a lecture about Kant's views of social intercourse during dinner (in his Anthropology). It would make sense that Kant would echo Hume.

Gifted men who are far above or ahead of their time and 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. The world never forgives their being different. (Ross 1920: 99)

Juri Lotman was such a case. It was probably in the documentary, "Lotman's World", where someone said that that in the last years of his life he found no-one to share his thoughts with.

We must, in short, recognize the existence of two opposite types. The sociable man wants to join any crowd he happens to come upon. He is glad to be one of a great congregation, a procession, a regiment, enjoys moving in step or cheering in concert with a thousand others. If he possesses a weighty secret, it presses him to communicate it and, if he curbs the impulse, he falls mentally ill. The individualist, on the contrary, prefers the trackless wood to the beaten path, empty rooms to full ones, small congregations to large ones, wilderness to towns, fields to thoroughfares. Such was the American backwoods type who, when he could hear the sound of a neighbor's ax, reckoned "Folks are gittin' too crowded," and moved on. (Ross 1920: 100)

The sociable man vs the individualist. That the latter "prefers the trackless wood to the beaten path" a Pythagorean symbol. The tendency of the sociable man to join large gatherings leads to the discussion of mobs and crowds.

What is it the sociable man craves? The mere sight of others? No, "a crowd is not company." Not the presence of others but reciprocity of feeling relieves the ache in the breast. That one is dear who seems to care about us. One of the worst forms of college hazing is the "silent treatment," feigning that the obnoxious messmate does not exist. To the friendless newcomer the loneliness of the great city is hardly less cruel than that of the far hill farm. Hosts of acquaintances or admirers cannot still the thirst of the heart like a single friend. (Ross 1920: 100)

In Malinowski's phatic communion it is indeed "the mere presence of others" that is "a necessity for man". On the other hand, where he writes that "the reciprocity is established by the change of rôles" (PC 5.6), he is not at all considering "reciprocity of feeling" but only the reciprocity in being a speaker and hearer in turn ("the change of rôles").

In a crowd the country-bred man quickly assumes personal attitudes toward those about him, while the townsman in the press holds himself spiritually aloof. City congestion has bred in him the habit of regarding the ordinary fellowman as a mere moving bulk to be avoided as one avoids a rolling stone. (Ross 1920: 101)

The margin readS: "The Demand Curve for Companionship Falls Steeply". The "personal attitudes" of the country-bred man sounds like the "bonds of personal union" (PC 9.1). How the city-dweller regards "the ordinary fellowman" is well put; the point being that he regards them as "nonpersons".

Sympathetic association has, indeed, an almost magical value. After the San Farncisco fire it was remarked that families that had lost all and were camped in the parks were by no means downhearted. The secret was that the universal sympathy and helpfulness were meat and drink to the starved social self. The sudden fellowship that springs up in hours of disaster - like the sinking of the Titanic - is found so sweet that the survivos form an association and meet annually in order to revive it. Just as the loveliest flowers grow nearest the toe of the glacier, so the sweetest intimacies spring up among those sharing the most terrible experiences. In war "comrade" becomes a sacred word, and the bonds uniting trenchmates and messmates often lsat through life. So comforting in this perfect fellowship that soldiers will joke and whistle amid horrors that would drive a solitary man out of his wits. (Ross 1920: 105)

Phatic communion during natural disasters has become a genre of its own. As to "the bonds uniting trenchmates", see "The binding tissue of words which unites the crew of a ship in bad weather, the verbal concomitants of a company of soldiers in action" (PC 8.2).

The we-feeling is not the outcome of mere juxtaposition, but depends on certain favoring circumstances. One is crisis, which sweeps away conventional barriers and gives free play to the social instincts of deeply moved persons. Another is harmony of interests. In the trenches, the exploring party, the strikers' colony, one loses that habit of eyeing the fellow-man as an actual or potential competitor which grows up in a society like ours characterized by pecuniary emulation. Conversation brings to light mental differences as well as resemblances, but, on the whole, no doubt, it gives birth to more sympathies than antipathies. "It is a trait of civilized man," says Tarde, "to love to talk in everything that he does, to talk eating, working, loving. It is as far from the mute love-making, working, loving. It is as far from the mute love-making of teh Arabs and Hebrews to our vivacious wooing as from silent meals to hilarious feasts. Conversation is the circulation of general sympathy through even our most private joys." Pleasuring together favors the spread of the we-feeling. Eating, drinking, acting, playing together, the enjoying in common of music, drama, or spectacles are time-honored means of fostering general fellowship. Owing to its relaxing effect on inhibitions, the consuming together of alcoholic drinks has been greatly relied on for thawing egos and setting up warm currents of good feeling. (Ross 1920: 106)

This "harmony of interests" might be what Malinowski meant by "all the types of social sentiments" (PC 3.3). That conversation "on the whole [...] gives birth to more sympathies than antipathies" reflected in "Always the same emphasis on affirmation and consent, mixed perhaps with an incidental disagreement which creates the bonds of antipathy" (PC 5.3). Don't think I didn't notice Tarde in this. His La Logique Sociale sadly does not appear to be available in English (in the Internet Archive).

Psychology early gained an individualistic slant from its probing of the senses and the intellect and only lately has it plumbed the instincts and emotions - man's social side. (Ross 1920: 107)

Perhaps why instincts, sympathy, and sentiments figure so large in this treatment of man's sociable use of language.

The commercial spirit, which prompts people to associate on the basis of reciprocal entertainment and service, taints fellowship with calculation and inhibits that generous self-abandon which is the finest flower of friendship. (Ross 1920: 109)

Very well put. You do not have to guard yourself in the company of a true friend.

Do people come together solely to commune with and enjoy one another? By no means. To the shrewd eye much social life is a veiled struggle to expand one's personality at another's expense. One eats another like the beasts of the jungle. Children, whose nature lies near the surface, plainly strive to convert their playfellows into an admiring circle, to use them to intensify their feelings of self. They keenly compete for notice from companions or superiors. Boys swell up and swagger about, talk in unnatural tones, "play big," and "show off." They do "stunts" eagerly shouting "Looky" as they stand on their heads or hang by thir toes. They thrill with superiority as they stalk about on stilts or on tin cans tied to their feet. They vie in boasting, "daring," playing the "smart Aleck," and making up tall stories of their wonderful feats or hairbreadth escapes. It is significant that the bragging lies of boys usually relate to what they can do, while girls are more apt to lie about their possessions. (Ross 1920: 109)

Holy shit. This lights Malinowski's view of conversation as striving to gain "the greater share of social pleasure and self-enhancement" (PC 5.5) on fire and kicks it down the hill. Hot damn, I was not expecting to find something like this. Good show, Ross, good show!

To shrink or put down the selves of others gives much the same satisfaction as to exalt one's own self. It is, after all, the margin of superiority between one's self and another's self which feeds one's sense of importance. In the teasing, badgering, and hectoring of small children, red-haired girls, cross-eyed or hare-lipped boys, peddlers, outlanders, and Chinamen, the object is not always the infliction of pain; it may be the exalting one's self-importance by mortifying and depreciating another. (Ross 1920: 111)

"Self-enhancement" at the expense of diminishing others.

It would be rash then to assume that wherever people come together to enjoy one another's company there is affection. Braggarts must have listeners, skinflints will have their cronies. The self-conceited by no means resign themselves to solitude. The utterly selfish mental invalid may be an utter cormorant for sympathy. In such cases the individual foregathers with others not from love but to gain a sounding-board for his "I," to exalt his own self by bringing under or exploiting other selves. Many egoists of the purest water are on the constant lookout for sympathizers, admirers, or satellites. In a pinch such vampires can find satisfaction even in one another, for each endures the plaint or brag of the others for the sake of having attention when his turn comes to blow the trumpet. (Ross 1920: 112)

This is the passage that convinced me that I must undertake to read this book. The implications of it I've spelled out elsewhere, and will do so shortly in my second paper (in Estonian) about Malinowski's phatic communion.

Egoistic society apes the manners and amenities of good-will association, but its hollowness shows in a variety of ways. Under velvet endearments women stretch their claws and scratch like cats. Each lady of an exploitive social circle keeps books, as it were, and will not set out cake when she is hostess if the others have been serving only wafers; or if she offers cake it is to triumph over the rest. Stingy beldames calculate it costs less to attract company by spiced gossip than by spiced refreshments [|] Roistering egoists watch that no one skips his turn to stand treat. Cronies who are not good fellows show their yellowness when one of them falls into trouble. Then he is given to understand that no one cares to see his long face or listen to his tale of woe. For such fair-weather friendship the refrain is, "If you're out of health or money you need n't come around." (Ross 1920: 112-113)

The margin reads "Traits of Egotic Association". That Malinowski's phatic communion is primarily this kind of "egoistic society" shows by his confusion of Shand's "self-regarding sentiments" (vanity, ambition for power and wealth, etc.) for "social sentiments". Was it conscious obfuscation on Malinowski's part? In any case this passage describes what happens when conversation is viewed as a transaction meant for self-enhancement.

It is the rôle of good manners to sweeten social intercourse by deleting or refining the struggle among the "I's." The well-bred refrain from such irritants as conspicuousness in dress, loudness of speech, boasting, self-display, monopoly of conversation, controversy, rudeness, the humiliating of others. The best manners call for the constant subordination of the claims of one's self to the claims of the selves of others. When all in a circle act up to this standard, association becomes in the highest degree enjoyable provided that real congeniality exists. In the best circles of the South the harmonization of the demands of different egos has become a fine art. The way in which a well-bred Southener will let the conversation take any direction you seem to wish, always playing up to your lead and suppressing his own preference, reveals the secret of the oft-noted "charm" of southern society. In eighteenth-century France the higher social class developed manners of a suavity before unknown and the spread of these over the world has put many peoples in debt to the French. Throughout Spanish America one finds diffused an older, unselfish, but less sympathetic, manner that grew up among the hidalgos of Spain. (Ross 1920: 113)

The crux here is that Malinowski's phatic communion errs on the side of "monopoly of the conversation" so heavily that he seems to be saying, overall, that his native Trobriand islanders lack manners.

The percolation down among the people of the manners wrought out in a leisure class is a very important step in socialization. Politeness is, to be sure, a poor substitute for good-will and respect for the rights of others, but where these traits do not yet exist it is more valuable. Its function is not to sweeten the relation of kinsfolk, friends, or lodge-brothers but to lessen the chafing between strangers, colleagues, or rivals. Wherever, as in South America, good manners have become the heritage of all classes, even peons, muleteers and deckhands, the contacts of men give rise to few quarrels and brawls. Good manners cannot, of course, do away with such hostility as arises from conflict of interests; but they go far to prevent troubles which have [|] their origin in the naïve assertion of the "I" in human intercourse. (Ross 1920: 113-114)

The point here seems to be that the higher classes have perfected the art of polite conversation, and this art percolates down to the lower classes. That's point one. The second point seems to be that polite conversation is not meant to make friends but to lessen the frictions of strangers. This has broad implications for the politeness tradition of phaticity.

The disturbing state of mind we term "self-consciousness" is rather our consciousness of others; of others, however, as noticing and appraising one's self. For many children the first experiences of figuring in the minds of another are extremely upsetting. Some unable to bear an unfamiliar eye cover the face or hide themselves. Under the stranger's gaze the bashful child blushes, makes random movements, twists its body, pulls at its clothing, puts its finger in its mouth, or bites its nails. Muscular co-ordination goes by the board, so that it drops or spills things, stumbles over trifling objects, and finds its hands and feet become alien. It may giggle, laugh nervously, stammer, or even lose voice and word memory. In stage fright the symptoms match closely those of extreme fear. Even the experienced speaker finds discomfort in the "cold" or "unsympathetic" stare. (Ross 1920: 114)

All no doubt very true. The looking glass self.

However, if closer acquaintance reveals a kindly attitude in others, children cease to shrink from their attention and even begin to court it. "In the youngest children," say Hall and Smith, "'showing off' seems to be the simple, openly expressed desire for recognition and sympathy, the step in the extension of the consciousness of self which naturally succeeds the baby's development of self through the investigation of the limits of its own body." (Ross 1920: 114)

Phatic in Jakobson's sense: courting attention.

Some never develop much beyond this childish stage. I recall a clever young college instructor who in every conversation was obviously occupied with the impression he was making. After he had touched off an epigram you could see him busily priming the next one, in the meantime playing not the slightest attention to your remarks unless they dripped compliment. The callow monologist would make the round of his acquaintances like a landlord collecting rents and then retire to his den to gloat over the admiration he believed he had excited. (Ross 1920: 115)

An addition to the discussion on "social pleasure and self-enhancement". Define:callow - "immature or inexperienced: a callow youth. (of a young bird) featherless; unfledged".

In a light-draft mind preoccupied with one's reflected self shows itself as vanity. The vain man, unlike the constructive and stable sort, cannot hold steadily to an idea of his worth. He cannot fix past social approval as a durable part of his thought of himself, cannot get the habit of taking his merits for granted. Hence his self-feeling is subject to great ups and downs. Let people show admiration or envy of him and he treads on air; but in a trice some slight or rebuff has cast him into the depths. His nature lacks a flywheel to carry him past the "dead points" in [|] his experience. He cannot keep up his self-confidence with the huzzas of last year or even last month; he needs his praise fresh. Such constant dependence is a weakness and will be exploited if it is worth while to do so. The vain man who happens to be rich or powerful or influential is an easy mark for sycophants and toadies, since he swallows gratefully the flattery that buoys his soul in hours of self-distrust. One who skilfully feeds the vain man his needed ration of "taffy" makes himself indispensable. Vanity, too, may be played upon to make one a tool of others. The vain are easy to get the better of and are always burning their fingers pulling other people's chestnuts out of the fire. (Ross 1920: 116-117)

Hence why we call someone vain who requires constant appraisal. The moral of the story here is to be satisfied with the little praise you are afforded for admirable feats, and not expect it at every turn.

To pant for recognition, to yearn to impress one's personality deeply upon one's people or one's time, is the essence of ambition. The ambitious youth thinks he thirsts to "do something" or to "be somebody," but his thirst would not be slaked by a success nobody noticed or acknowledged. Really what he craves is to figure potently in the minds of others, to be greatly loved, admired, or feared. The mere notoriety-seeker is less nice and hankers to be read about ol talkd about even if the self reflected is far from impressive. This type that would rather be butt than cipher is kin to the lunatic with a mania for self-exhibition. (Ross 1920: 117)

I'm very much on the right track. Malinowski's list of social sentiments includes "ambition, vanity, passion for power and wealth" (PC 3.3). Vanity in the previous paragraph, ambition in this one, and passion for power and wealth in the next one.

Less dependent than the ambitious is the power-seeker who slakes his thirst for self-effectuation by molding the destinies of others but cares nothing for recognition by them. The returing financier or unofficial Warwick, who secretly pulls the wires that make politicians dance, finds his pleasure in seeking the puppets obey his will. Beyond him is the achiever, careless whether the public he benefits ever learns of his existence; but even he needs an inner circle who understand and appreciate his achievement. (Ross 1920: 117)

Thus, "passion for power" is manifested in a desire for control, the satisfaction gained from power as such.

It is rather a fine type that is captivated by the idea of recognition by the unborn. A man who shrinks from newspaper publicity may revel in imagining his name in a stained glass window, carved on a portal, or attached to a street. As between wide fame and lasting fame the more imaginative prefer the latter, counting it better to be remembered by posterity than to be the popular idol of one's time. (Ross 1920: 117)

Numerous self-reflections on this blog attest that I'm veering towards this type, considering this blog and my sparse but well-researched publications sufficient to grant a little recognition from posterity. My end-goal is to write something that would someone reading it a hundred years or several after go ooh, this is some good shit.

The sage has no such childlike faith in the power of money, but realizes that he must leave to the unforced gratitude of his fellows the cherishing of his name and service. (Ross 1920: 118)

Render a valuable service and people will have a reason to remember your name.

The scheming social climber sacrificing old friends and risking countless snubs in the hope of ultimate recognition by people of his position is about as social asa lizard; others interest her only as looking-glasses to reflect a pleasing image of herself. In the evil trinity religion bids us renounce, "the world, the flesh, and the devil," the "world" stands for the faults that spring from solicitude for one's social image, such as worldly ambition, affectation, vanity, vainglory, boastfulness, and arrogance. (Ross 1920: 118)

Lizard quip well put. The list of "worldly" faults more-or-less a list of what Malinowski wrote were social sentiments.

While boys are taken up with what they are doing, girls live much in their imagination of how they appears to others. They blush more readily, until the arrival of adolescence they are more bashful than boys, and their clothes consciousness is more acute. It is no such task to get a girl in her early teens to keep herself presentable as to get a boy to do so. The girl catches subtle shades in the personal attitude of others which the boy misses, is more subject to affectation, falls more readily into acting rôles, will make greater sacrifices to convention, and lives more in terror of being "talked about." (Ross 1920: 119)

This "clothes consciousness" is stereotypically also attributed to homosexual men. The character of Mateo from the TV show Superstore comes to mind. Mateo was almost nothing but "clothes consciousness".

By wit, will, or worth the individual woman may slip from under the thumb of the individual man, but never is the sex free from the collective domination of the male sex. (Ross 1920: 123)

A triad: (1) worth; (2) will; and (3) wit.

"But why should women be so subordinated?"
"Because women are very hard to control. You can never tell what they will be up to. At the bottom of every trouble there is a woman." (Ross 1920: 124)

Evidently the Confucian view of women is comparable to the Islamic: women are simply too powerful or wicked to allow them any real power in society. Later on, Ross writes: "The saracenic civilization was intensely male and hence it is not surprising that the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights" harp continually on the "malice and craft" of women." (ibid, 133)

This pernicious custom of child marriage, which is said to cause one-fourth of the women to die prematurely while another fourth are made invalids for life, [|] developed out of the hyperbolic notions of the Brahmins regarding purity. Their idea is that no wife is pure who has ever felt love for another man than the one she marries. In order therefore that the man may have a wife whose thoughts have never dwelt even momentarily upon another, the girl must be married before the dawning of her sex consciousness. (Ross 1920: 124-125)

And just like that a lost a considerable portion of what respect I had for Brahmins.

In old Japan the military class - nobles and samurai - comprising 4 or 5 per cent. of the people absolutely dominated the rest. They went laways armed and the slightest offense by one of the swordless was paid for with a stroke. The peasant might be cut down by passing swordmen for no other purpose, than to test the edge of a new blade. The elaborate politeness of the Japanese is reminiscent of the time when an absequious manner was a matter of life or death. Whenever the higher nobility travelled the common people were expected to fall upon the ground in obeisance. Failure to do so met with instant death at the hands of feudal retainers. (Ross 1920: 126)

How quaint. Miss a beat of aizuchi and die.

Under the old regime in Russia, the Tsar through the Oberprocuror of the Holy Synod held the Church captive and by means of twenty thousand village priests was able to disseminate among his credulous subjects any lie which suited his purposes as, e.g., that the massacre of 1500 on "Red Sunday" in 1905 was caused by English and Japanese spies who incited the Petrograd workmen to march upon the palace simply in order to have them killed! (Ross 1920: 131)

Some things never change. After the hit HBO show Chernobyl, Russian state TV aired its own patriotic retelling of Chernobyl story with a CIA spy involved with the accident.

Ignorance. The spread of secular knowledge unsettles dominion in so far as it rests on ideas. The Romanoffs generally cherished the brutish ignorance of their subjects as the brightest jewels of their crown. They did what they could to make difficulties for the zemstvos in their policy of plating schools among the common people. Tsarism feared all teaching it did not control and no association or individual might open a school without express authorization. Gymnasium and university were subject to the most high-handed interferences in order that the young scholars they turned out might be "reliable" and "safe." (Ross 1920: 131)

And what effects it has had! A century after the Romanovs were shot and bayoneted to death their nation is still one of belligerent idiots subject to an elderly street thug.

Egotic. The ego dilates and glories in signs of abasement and devotion on the part of others. The Roman master exacted of his on-hangers (clientes) that they should attend him when he showed himself in public and thereby greaten his dignity. Later the great senatorial landowner required of his tenants-at-will that they should periodically pay him their obsequium or humble respects. The feudal king exacted homage of his fiefholders, Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King," expected his loyal courtiers to gather at the Ox-Eye window of his palace to observe his going to bed and his getting up. (Ross 1920: 135)

Egotic exploitation. "Signs of abasement" makes it almost semiotic. That the "ego dilates" one explanation of the "self-enhancement".

All about us we see one human being making use of another, the wife becoming a barren parasite, the husband becoming a loafer on the earnings of his wife, the gown son hanging about home living on his parents, one brother or sister absorbing the earnings of another, friend taking advantage of friend and such like. The thing is common and its rule is simple. In any sentimental relation the one who cares less can explain the one who cares more. In the man-woman relation and the mother-child relation we see this very plainly. (Ross 1920: 136)

The margin reads: "The Law of Personal Exploitation". What makes a relation sentimental?

Wealth, which is economic power may be converted into many other kinds of power - political, legal, social, ecclesiastical, religious, etc.; but these in turn can be converted into wealth. Rich men may use their money to get into politics, but once there they may use their political power to gain more money. They may use their money to acquire for themselves more legal rights and then use their legal rights to gain more money. They may use their money to win a control over needy men and use this control to gain more money. Thus the formula for the exploitive utilization of riches is Wealth - Power - More Wealth. (Ross 1920: 138)

Probably why Malinowski conflates the "passion for power and wealth", as they are in some measure interchangeable.

By bribery the wealthy shift the main burden of taxation upon those too poor to bribe. Thus the great landowners of the Roman Empire bought or wheedled for themselves individual or [|] collective immunities from visitation by the tax gatherers. From their tenants they raised small armies and drove away the revenue officers. They bribed the officials until the tax registers became a tissue of frauds. If fresh taxes were imposed they saw to it that the burden fell on others. If the emperor granted a remission of taxes they saw to it that the lion's share of the benefit fell to them. (Ross 1920: 138-139)

Some things never change. Donald Trump, the "multimillionaire", paid $750 in taxes a year. Joe Biden, the "people's candidate", has a tax plan in which the wealthy pay less than in the tax plan of a wealthy candidate, Mike Bloomberg. Politics is a grift.

There is no greater error than to suppose with the anarchists that the state is the one great engine of exploitation. Often government offers the sole check upon the power of the rich to hire armed men to work their will upon small proprietors whose lands they covet. (Ross 1920: 140)

That's why most anarchists also oppose corporations and exploitative market forces in general.

It is so much easier to rob the blind than the seeing that all exploiting classes resist the extension of popular enlightenment, or if, for efficiency's sake they educate the common people, they give this education a strong dynastic or ecclesiastical flavor, as they did in the case of the Prussian Volksschulen. (Ross 1920: 143)

This we see even today. Trump administration is trying to abolish public schools. Without a public option parents have no other recourse than to put their children in a private or religious school. The effort is in every way to produce further generations of poorly educated religious folks because they are easier to manipulate.

Exploiters invent or exaggerate unlikeness in order to justify themselves. The Southern master insisted the negro had no soul or made out his bondage to be God's punishment laid upon the descendants of Ham who failed in respect to Father Noah. Aristotle justifies slavery by imagining a difference in the natures of masters and slaves. For centuries the English have striven to convince the world that the Irish are incapable of governing themselves. Islam prohibited the enslavement of the faithful but approved that of "infidels." (Ross 1920: 151)

And the American black population overcorrected by becoming overwhelmingly religious.

Forced labor being unknown to American law the operators of Southern lumber or turpentine camps until lately provided themselves with the negro labor they could not attract by wages by having able-bodied negroes arrested on some flimsy or trumped-up charge. By paying their fines when they were sentenced to the chain-gang to work out these fines the operators gained control of the negroes' labor power at a trifling expense. (Ross 1920: 155)

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Labor organization is rightly hated by employers for its [sic] destroys much of their economic advantage. Modern economic analysis weakens the kept classes because, by tracing their high social position to privilege rather than to intrinsic superiority, it dissipates their prestige. The doctrine that all are equally sons of God undermines the conviction that "God will think twice before he damns a person of quality." (Ross 1920: 156)

There is a psychological phenomena that if you happen to achieve success you'll start thinking that you are deserving of success, and others just aren't. People born into wealth are quite sure that they've earned everything they got.

A military empire held together by self-interest or fear crumbles under heavy blows. On the other hand, when loyalty is roused and sentiments of sympathy and justice stir others to act on behalf of the losing side, an equilibrium is in sight. (Ross 1920: 159)

The sentiment of justice is familiar from Spencer. But is sympathy a sentiment?

Interference of interests is likely to engender hatred, for our innate pugnacity is stirred against those who continually come between us and our goal. (Ross 1920: 159)

Is it innate if the cause is external?

A society, therefore, which is riven by a dozen oppositions along lines running in every direction, may actually be in less danger of being torn with violence or falling to pieces than one split along just one line. For each new cleavage contributes to narrow the cross clefts, so that one might say that society is sewn together by its inner conflicts. It is not such a paradox after all if one remembers that every species of collective strife tends to knit together with a sense of fellowship the contenders on either side. (Ross 1920: 165)

Social groups may be knit together into a tissue on the basis of (race or class) conflict.

When the war began, the Americans were a mass of husbandmen, merchants, mechanics and fishermen; but the necessities of the country gave a spring to the active powers of the inhabitants, and set them on thinking, speaking and acting, in a line far beyond that to which they had ever been accustomed. (Ross 1920: 174)

A triad: (1) speaking; (2) acting; and (3) thinking. Speaking taken as "expression".

Altho competition for customers, or patrons, or clients, or subscribers, or employment, or office, or for friends and backers, is prompted by individual aims, it discharges the broad social function of assigning to each his place in the social system. Since we do not come into the world with our future calling and station stencilled on the forehead, we discover what we are fit for by the experimental method. By a series of competitions we test the impression we make on others, rate our powers in terms of other men's powers, and determine whether or not we may aspire to the more eligible occupations and posts. Competition in this sense need not be conscious or contentious. From our school days on judgments are formed about us of which we are unaware, but which go to determine our careers. (Ross 1920: 181)

The parents, nurses and doctors were baffled as to why the baby had "semiotics" stencilled on its forehead, as none of them knew what it meant.

The better the selective agencies the more quickly, economically and accurately competitors ares ifted. The time will come when an hour with graded tests of mental ability will fix an applicant's caliber for better than a bushel of estimates by his acquaintances. (Ross 1920: 183)

And after that will come a time when educators all across the board will complain endlessly how standardized aptitude tests negatively impact actual education practice, how it is used to systematically disenfranchize black and brown children, etc.

The electoral canvass is a species of competition and with the growth of popular government has come a need of definin what constitutes improper electioneering. Vote buying, personation, treating voters, betting in order to influence an election, deceiving illiterate voters, contributing to churches or charitable institutions during a campaign, providing conveyanges for voters, forging campaign literature, publishing false statements of the withdrawal of candidates, keeping electors from the polls, intimidating electors, influencing employees - these and other pernicious practices of political contestants have been prohibited either because they drive good men out of politics or because they enable a minority candidate to win. (Ross 1920: 185)

"Personation is a primarily-legal term, meaning 'to assume the identity of another person with intent to deceive'. It is often used for the kind of voter fraud where an individual votes in an election, whilst pretending to be a different elector." Hadn't heard of this word. "Publishing false statements of the withdrawal of candidates" done to both Bernie Sanders and Howie Hawkins. "Keeping electors from the polls" achieved by both parties by closing polling stations or stowing them away in obscure unmarked places. "Intimidating electors" what Trump wishes to achieve by encouraging his followers to go and keep an eye on the polling places, carrying weapons. It was banned in the 1980s and repealed in 2018. What a time we're living in.

Furthermore, by putting age in the saddle, it subjects society to the reign of blind conservatism. The open-mindedness, enthusiasm, and decision of young men are needed to break the crust of custom continually forming in society. Under a system of promotion by seniority only rarely is it possible for a young man to attain to a responsible position. (Ross 1920: 186)

What an image. The crust of custom.

If paid puffery, kowtowing, assurance, blowing your own trumpet, female influence and such like regularly win, then the field will be abandoned by every one who will not stoop to such methods. (Ross 1920: 188)

An explanation to "when his turn comes to blow the trumpet" (Ross 1920: 112; above).

The tendency of our time is just the other way - attracting good men by holding out a certain life career instead of throwing them away like squeezed lemons at the end of their prime, without caring what becomes of them. We now perceive that ease of mind is a condition of mental and especially originative work and this condition cannot be realized without security of tenure. (Ross 1920: 190)

For the very same reason students should be able to take up the amount of course-work they desire rather than a stipulated amount.

The folly of keeping men on tender-hooks after this period was illustrated in the university whose president, having imbibed big-business ideals, let it be known that no man, not even a world-renowned ideals, let it be known that no man, not even a world-renowned professor, "owned his job." The mature scholar might be displaced if he proved unproductive. Each professor was expected to report annually what he had published in the past year. The result was that professors dared not embark on a large and important research project which might not come to fruition for years, but busied themselves on a succession of small investigations which would yield something to publish every year. Thus did the "efficiency policy" defeats itself. (Ross 1920: 191)

Hence the publish or perish culture of even established professors publishing utter trite just to have an impressive list of publications under their belt.

The prevalent opinion among rough old farmers when they are by themselves and talking freely is that women generally are touchy, unstable, flighy, vain, irresponsible and sly. But their women folk gathered about a quilting frame agree that for the most part, men are coarse, sensual, self-willed, violent, egoistic and unreasonable. Each opinion has something in way of solid fact to go on. (Ross 1920: 194)

Gender stereotypes.

The female is to be adorned, modest, self-abnegating, gentle, retiring and domestic because it suits the male to have her so. The world over, presumptuous man has not only formed his own conceptions of what women ought to be and to do, but has ever brought about an emotional acceptance of these conceptions by woman herself. (Ross 1920: 195)

Internalised misogyny.

In the course of a long period of social peace the consciousness of class fades, national or cosmopolitan feeling becomes strong, and society is deemed an outgrowth of natural fellowship and the spirit of cooperation. Morals, law and state are regarded as consistent one-piece creations of conscience or reason. Conversely, a period of sharp conflict establishes the idea that society is not born of good will, but is the arena of contending groups which, however, have more to gain by sticking together than by going asunder. The social order is looked upon [|] as a balance of opposing forces, while laws and institutions are seen as compromises rather than products of logic. (Ross 1920: 198-199)

This seems natural enough, and comes up frequently when the theories of Hobbes and Machiavelli are discussed, as they fall on the second position - living during a period of sharp conflict, and having corresponding aspects to their social theories.

To beat the labor unions employers pose as champions of "industrial freedom," as unselfish upholders of the "open shop" principle that the workman may work where and for whom he pleases and under such conditions as he deems fit. In resisting the demand for a legal working day they profess disinterested solicitude for the freedom of the wage earner to contract for such length of day as may seem good to him. Workingmen pressing for the exclusion of Oriental low-wage labor assume the noble role of protector of Christian civilization against the heathen. (Ross 1920: 199)

This would lead to an economic interpretation of why the Proud Boys, for example, claim to "love Western civilization", and then yell at a darker-skilled American-born woman that she's an "Arab". The economic aspect would make the most sense with the anti-Mexican sentiments of the Trump supporters, the dey dook our jerbs crowd.

Any riving of society along other lines - racial, tribal, sectional, creedal - lessens its cleavage along the line of class. (Ross 1920: 202)

Define:riving - "1. To rend or tear apart. 2. To break into pieces, as by a blow; cleave or split asunder".

Instructive is the change of front of the church with respect to the Fransciscans. The religion of poverty and love propagated by Francis of Assisi took possession of the whole church. The most beautiful chants of the Middle Ages and the greatest sermons originated among the Fransciscans and the Dominicans closely related to them. New life was given to art and scholarship. All the great scholars of the thirteenth century - Thomas of Aquinas, Bonaventura, Albertus - were of the begging orders. (Ross 1920: 210)

Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus.

In China the activity of the Christian missionaries is forcing the native faiths to assume higher forms in order to survive. Chinese scholars are reading into the Confucian classics elevated moral ideas which they have unconsciously imbibed from Christian literature. There is, indeed, a movement which frankly calls itself "Confucio-Christianity." In some parts, under the spur of missionary competition, the Confucians band together and send out wandering gospellers of their own to spread the doctrines of the sage at fairs and festivals. (Ross 1920: 214)

Same with Mahayana Buddhists in Japan (cf. Gordon 1911).

A political party camouflages its aristocratic principles with leaders or candidates who are extra-approachable and democratic in manner. (Ross 1920: 217)

"He is offering himself nearly eight decades later not as larger than life but as ordinary Joe, a preeminently approachable man" while effectively responsible for racially discriminative police policies, having scorned that he doesn't care for the plight of young people, and in his administration nothing would fundamentally change. Just like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden is a Republican personating a Democrat.

It is logical that the new should often strive to arrest public attention by sensationalism. [...] The leaders of new departures in art or literature excite curiosity and awe by long hair, flowing ties, unfashionable cut of dress, bizarre actions, and studied unintelligibility. (Ross 1920: 219)

"Studied unintelligibility" is so damn well put. They who, as Locke diagnosed, abuse and mistreat language.

Philosophic individualism makes great headway for a time, and the doctrines of anarchism have a seductiveness of their own. The teaching of the superiority of the artist to all conventions including the Ten Commandments will always meet with response. "Free verse" is a rallying cry, while symbolism is welcomed as losing the artist from the trammels of the actual. The "free election of studies" is a winning cry for an assault on the fixed curriculum. (Ross 1920: 219)

By the number of times "anarchism" has passed through these pages, I'd say they do.

For a while people may turn from the hard-won and age-sifted truth to follow bubble promises and iridescent sophisms. (Ross 1920: 220)

Pungent expressions, like the "studied unintelligibility", above.

The Englishman not only regards fighting with the fists as a proper means of settling personal differences, but he is inordinately proud of the practice. He idealizes it and cherishes it as a precious national institution. The Asiatic, on the other hand, regards physical encounter - save in extremity - as befitting barbarians, and in the Englishman's propensity to strike or kick those who have offended him he sees nothing but a violent and oncontrolled temper. (Ross 1920: 223)

Even Americans are baffled by the fist-happy English. I recall one comediat rationalizing the difference with socialized medicare. What's a few punches when you won't go into medical bankruptcy from getting your injuries treated.

"It is one of the most curious features of Austro-Hungarian life that there is not one of the many races that make up the inhabitants of the Dual Monarchy that is not regarded with hatred, or fear, or aversion or contempt by all the others." Palmer, "Austro-Hungarian Life in Town and Country," p. 122. (Ross 1920: 224)

Is that why Malinowski, originating from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, thought that fear and pugnacity against strangers was natural?

Toleration does not imply equal sympathy. The law of sympathy is thus stated by Pearson: "The natural history of morality begins with the kin, spreads to the tribe, to the nation, to allied races, and ultimately to inferior races and lower types of life, but even with decreasing intensity. The demands upon the spirit of self-sacrifice which can be made by our kin, by our countrymen, by Europeans, by Chinamen, by Negroes, by Kaffirs, and by animals, may not be clearly defined, but, on the average, they admit of rough graduation, and we find in practice, whatever be our fine philosophies, that the instinct to self-sacrifice wanes as we go down in the scale. The man who tells us that he feels to all men alike, that he has no sense of kinship, that he has no patriotic sentiment, that he loves the Kaffir as he loves his brother, is probably deceiving himself." "National Life from the Standpoint of Science," pp. 39-50. (Ross 1920: 225; footnote)

"He will be disposed, other things being equal, to sympathize with a relative as against a fellow-townsman, with a fellow-townsman as against a mere inhabitant of the same county, with the latter as against the rest of the country, with an Englishman as against a European, with a European as against an Asiatic, and so on until a limit is reached beyond which all human interest is lost" (Trotter 1921: 122-123).

Unless they suspect witchcraft, natural men are more tolerant of alien ways than culture men. (Ross 1920: 226)

"In the case of even friendly strangers a certain amount of mistrust - of evil magic as well as of actual bad intentions - may have operated" (Malinowski 1913: 165).

Culture men, on the other hand, cherish standards which make them intolerant of many features in the life of nature men, e.g., nudity, uncleanliness, trophy-hunting, "witch-smelling," infanticide, slavery, polygamy, and such like. (Ross 1920: 248)

I don't even know what to say to this. Are "culture men" wrong by being intolerant of slavery?

Furthermore, toleration is furthered by regulated avoidance. In a mixed population the rules of intercourse embrace certain reticences which all know and act upon and which lessen friction between the unlike. In India ethnic elements the most diverse are able to dwell intermingled, circulate freely, and have dealings together by observing a strict etiquette of non-interference, and even inattention, respecting one another's diet, family life, social customs and religious practices. (Ross 1920: 227)

A probable prototype of Goffman's civil inattention.

Finally, toleration of non-essential differences is promoted by mutually advantageous contacts and relations. Buying and selling, borrowing and lending, fellowship in associations, team work, citizensly cooperation oblige us to judge others as individuals and break up our lump judgments of them according to some exterior [|] peculiarity in food, garb, or rite. (Ross 1920: 227)

Stereotypes are "lump judgments".

Altho petty groupings may be prompted by craving for fellowship, all large permanent groupings - when they are not the product of conquest - exist for some purpose, which without them could be attained not at all or else not so well. In a word they are cooperations. This is why In union there is strength. If there be no call to cooperate, In union there is weakness; for no degree of likemindedness reconciles people to being held together in an organization which is not doing anything for them. (Ross 1920: 238)

Phatic communion in this sense a "petty grouping", prompted only by the craving for fellowship. Note, too, that phatic communion is purposeless by definition.

Gone were nearly all the peoples Tacitus describes and praises. They had torn one another to pieces through inability to cooperate politically, to form a strong and stable state. We find only Franks, Alamans, Saxons; not tribes but mere bands or fighting hordes; for Franks = warriors, Alamans = all sorts of men, Saxons = axe men. These wandering bands accompanied by their women, children, lites and serfs were without attachment to the soil, settled life, and the idea of fatherland. They no longer had stable traditions, customs, laws, elders and assemblies. (Ross 1920: 239)

This is definitely some trivia I have to store in my memory.

Where the political bond is weak, the invasion at once disorganizes the state, upsets minds, shatters characters and in this growing disorder the invasion succeeds. (Ross 1920: 240)

Another type of "bond". It is once again tempting to form a triad here: (1) state; (2) characters; and (3) minds.

Each crop has its own bearing on cooperation. In the chestnut belt of France, for example, the main task is not the tending of the trees, but the gathering of the nuts. Since there is here no chance for the exercise of superior diligence, skill, or foresight, the nuts are gathered in common. Young and old, women and men join in the task and the nuts collected are a common stock for the whole family. Seeing there are no advantages in going apart, there is no tendency for the married son to set up for himself. On the other hand, the culture of the vine is individualistic. Nothing is gained by cooperation, so that the married son sets up his household as soon as possible and there goes on a constant division and sub-division of vineyard properties. The vine, therefore, does not nourish the sentiment of solidarity. (Ross 1920: 241)

Yet another type of sentiment. The connection with the type of crop is interesting.

Neighborhood without mutual aid is likely to beget bickering, cliquism and feuds. Farmers often lose their social traits when there is nothing they do together with their hands or their minds. They may be individually prosperous, yet fail to provide themselves with good roads, good schools, and opportunities for stimulating social intercourse. (Ross 1920: 245)

"Bickering, cliquism and feuds" the stuff of "bonds of antipathy".

Payne declares the primitive functional cleavage is between workers and warriors. (Ross 1920: 247)

The third cleavage, that of "rulers", is a later formation for obvious reasons.

A learned class dominating in matters of religion, morals, education and law, is possible owing to the prestige which learning has in ages of general ignorance. The priest and scribes of Israel, the Druids, the Christian clergy of the Middle Ages, and the literati of China are examples. Such a class aspires to do all the thinking for the people, is contemptuous of the folk culture, exaggerates the worth and difficulty of its learning, and discredits or suppresses the unprofessional thinkers and teachers. It rarely exploits the people, but it covets power and likes to be distinguished by privileges and insignia, such as benefit of clergy, special representation in government, monopoly of certain offices, academic degrees, cap and gown, academic professions, functions and honors. The differentiation of the learned professions, so that each is held in check by all the rest, the provision of free education culminating in the university, and the great increase in the number of callings which utilize the well-educated, have done away with the possibility of a unified and self-conscious learned class. (Ross 1920: 250)

This is the third cleavage, the philosophers and, ideally (at least in Socrates' Republic), the "philosopher princes".

Not all men are fit for solitary work. Many a man finds in working on a team an inspiration and a stimulus he can find nowhere else. The fellowship of his mates, the leadership of his superior, the spur of rivalry, and the hope of promotion provide powerful incentives which he would miss as an isolated worker. (Ross 1920: 258)

Naturally. Who has ever argued that all men are fit for solitary work?

To the more enterprising in an organization the prospect of rising is the only thing in it which lends interest to the future. Otherwise the years stretch away in full view of retirement, pension, and death. A cut-and-dried future is revolting to the high-spirited, although it may attract the plodder. Chance of advancement introduces that element of adventure, of surprise, which induces the ambitious young man to enter army, navy, public service, or corporate service, instead of carving out a career for himself. (Ross 1920: 264)

Without the slightest prospect of advancement, a job is not a career. When the bioanalyst or helpdesk worker in an IT company finds out that there's nowhere to move upwards ther, they immediately start thinking about switching professions.

Since honor is coveted as well as money, honor should be as carefully graduated and as punctually paid. A non-discriminating treatment of those on different rungs of the organization ladder flings away a precious means of stimulation. (Ross 1920: 265)

Wealth and honour are hereby covered. What's missing is once again the third - a good job should, besides wealth and honour, appeal to the intellect and enable some measure of self-development, self-improvement, some increase in knowledge.

Owing to chance, circumstances, and faults of leaders, any local association for general objects is subject to vagary and fatuousness unless it is steadied by membership in a general organization, which of necessity has attained to clear-cut aims and rational methods. (Ross 1920: 267)

Define:fatuousness - "Foolish or silly, especially in a smug or self-satisfied way". Suspiciously similar-sounding to "phatic".

In the organization of effort, the movement is from the one toward the many, i.e., from the controlling purpose to the coordinated efforts of the various persons who contribute to its accomplishment. In the organization of will, the movement is from the many toward the one, i.e., from the wills of individual members to the single purpose which comes to direct and unify the activities of the group. (Ross 1920: 269)

Effort and will the two sides of secondness, the intention of doing something and actually doing something. Wouldn't have thought that this is connected with the problem of the one and the many, but in a social sense it most definitely is.

The shift from direct democracy to a representative system may come about as a conseqence of mere growth in membeship. When an assembly includes more than four or five hundred, oratory and crowd-feeling are apt to run away with good judgment. Advocates of sane and conservative policies are often hissed down, rational deliberation is easily upset. The history of the ekklesia, or general assembly of Athens, shows what happens in a gathering so large as to induce in both speakers and hearers the theatrical spirit. At this point it is necessary to form a small representative body to take over all questions which cannot be answered by a simple "Yes" or "No." (Ross 1920: 274)

Today we have the technology to resume to direct democracy but political apathy works against such a development.

The thinking of many men has resulted in a whole composed of congruous elements fitted together as steel beams are fitted together into a bridge span. The process of thus articulating ideas from different minds may be termed "the organization of thought." (Ross 1920: 283)

Mõttekorrastus.

Worn path and made road are collective products, but the makers of the former knew not what they did. Until writing or printing made it possible to fix and identify the product of the individual artist or thinker, the organizing of thought into stable forms must have gone on mainly in an unconscious way. That greatest storehouse of thought, language, came into being by a process which scholars described as growth, rather than production. Tarde gives all the credit of language to word inventors, forgetting that every word or phrase they coined had to run the gauntlet of the tribe. Only those which struck their fellows as pat or fit survived, and these were trimmed or twisted to suit better the tongues or minds of the users. (Ross 1920: 285)

Thus, there is a sharp point behind the expression "the growth of language". It grows almost as if by itself.

One reason the verses of Negro folk-songs are so broken and fragmentary is that they originated in the communal excitement of the religious assembly. "A happy phrase, a striking bit of imagery, flung out by some individual was taken up and repeated by the whole congregation. Naturally the most expressive phrases, the lines that most adequately voiced the deep, unconscious desires of the whole people, were remembered longest and repeated most frequently. There was, therefore, a process of natural selection by which the best, the most representative verses, those which most adequately expressed the profounder and more permanent moods and sentiments of the Negro, were preserved and became part of the permanent tradition of the race." (Ross 1920: 286)

Exactly the mechanism by which Durkheim hypothesized religious ideas are born. The margin reads: "Even Today Negro Folk-songs Are Springing from the Communal Mind". Source for the quote: Park, "Publications of the American Sociological Society," Vol. XIII, p. 55.

Apart from this, many minds are keyed to their best only when at grips with other congenial minds. The conditions that rouse the subconscious self to utmost productivity vary greatly for different people. In olden time intellectuals sought the monastic cell; to-day they shut out distraction by means of a soundproof sky-lit studio at the top of the house. Some are most visited by ideas in darkness, or in artificial light. The born orator, on the other hand, is never so inspired as before "a sea of faces." Some get their best thoughts on an express train, while I know of an eminent mathematician who took his hardest problems to the opera, where the lights and the stir gave his intellect a rare edge. [|] I myself have never had such free and onward thinking as in the thronged noisy street of far, strange cities, where I knew not a word nor a soul. (Ross 1920: 289-290)

I imagine that the latter situation, as a stranger in a strange land, may be quite stimulating for mental activity, though I lack the personal experience of it.

One welcomes the opportunity to air his prejudices. Another loves to hear himself talk. This disputant thinks he is in a tourney, while that one knows nothing on the subject, but will display his versatility. If any one participant lacks respect for others, good manners, or a love of truth greater than love of self, the discussion turns into fireworks, a sparring match, or a monologue. (Ross 1920: 290)

The latter is the case I'm having trouble with. The only substantive courses I have this semester are taught by a fellow who loves the sound of his voice so much that he never passes on the turn to speak. What are supposed to be an hour and a half long seminars turn into two hour monologues.

Thanks to our growing dependence on the vast impersonal organization that goes on far above our heads, reading is taking the place of oral intercourse as a source of ideas. Machinery and shop supervision are squeezing spoken discussion out of the working hours of wage-earners, while the reading habit restricts it in their leisure. Most urban minds feed on newspapers as silkworms feed on mulberry leaves. Upon the consciousness of multitudes the daily sheet stamps impressions, ideas, and beliefs, just as the Hoe press prints endlessly the same thing upon miles of white paper. (Ross 1920: 294)

Nothing wrong with that - otherwise ideas would have the poor staying power and plasticity of human memory.

It is certain, however, that he who wrests new secrets from the Sphinx must watch the product of his co-workers everywhere and keep in constant and vital touch with everything that every creative mind the world over is doing in his field. Bound closely together by their special societies and journals, the attackers of the same problem in many lands form, as it were, a single band of treasure-seekers digging in neighboring spots for buried gold. (Ross 1920: 299)

My band is that of "phaticists". Not sure if we're wresting any new secrets from the Sphinx, though.

But the paradise of the formalist is the school, because it works with the mind, and the mind is something we know little about. In less advanced countries one comes upon such atrocities as making pupils learn by rote, parrot-like recitations of the text-book, primers made up of the sayings of sages, natural science taught without materials or laboratory. (Ross 1920: 308)

The parrot-figure I found already in Locke. Still collecting instances, though.

The demand for thorough social reconstruction which has made such a stir in the last half-century gives color to the notion that people err chiefly in underestimating the stability of society. But it is likely that, taking one age with another, for one who looks upon society as a living plastic thing there are ten thousand who imagine the world will go on forever as they have known it. Even minds that have caught the idea of flux do not expect change to invade all departments or anticipate the changes which actually occur. Wisdom does not qualify men to read the social future, for the wise and farsighted testators have faild as egregiously as the ignorant in forecasting society's path of development. (Ross 1920: 310)

Similarly, the common person lives his day-to-day life without considering that his life will some day end. We tend to live as if we lived forever.

It needs but little acquaintance with the tendencies in well-endowed and therefore financially independent institutions of learning to convince one that but for the state universities - which are obliged to make their work a broad social service - they would have persisted in excluding women, requiring the classics, stressing the "culture" or enjoyment studies dear to the leisure class, and equipping youth for "sucess" rather than for usefulness. (Ross 1920: 314)

"Culture" still used in the sense of "high culture".

As a body gains wealth and popularity, it holds its members by benefits, so that they will tolerate a concentration of authority which would wreck a young society. (Ross 1920: 317)

"Popularity", for all intents and purposes, a synonym for "honour".

Thus the body becomes machine rather than organism. Without voice the rank and file lose the genial we-feeling that once warmed their hearts. They stick to the organization for the benefits it gives or the opportunities it offers, but their loyalty is less pure than when it was truly theirs. (Ross 1920: 317)

Difficult to feel as if you are a significant part of something that does not take any input from you.

Finally the institution becomes an end in itself. The university exists for the benefit of its dons. The state prison is conducted as a provider of cheap labor for the prison contractor. A local charity becomes the means of enhancing the social prestige of the ladies back of it. (Ross 1920: 318)

Evidently not a new phenomenon. Which would explain why it is so widespread (U.S., Russia, Brazil, China, etc. - in a word all the largest and most populous countries in the world practice prison slave labour).

Public funds should never be given to an educational institution not under public control. (Ross 1920: 318)

Betsy DeVos.

When the intermingling of men of different kindreds had broken down the tribal system and substituted the tie of a common worship for the tie of blood, not all the members of the community could be thought of as children of its god. (Ross 1920: 326)

Ties and bonds.

But by far the commonest basis of aristocracy is wealth. A great fortune not only exempts a family from humilific employments and enables it to bedazzle with a splendid style of living, but through nearly all history it has commanded ennoblement. (Ross 1920: 326)

Define:humilific - "That humiliates or tends to humiliate; humiliating".

From Diocletian on, the rankings of the servants of the state fixed degrees of social distinction. Says Bury:

In the time of Constantine only those who had held the highest official rank, consul, proconsuls, or prefects, were members of the senate. The new forms of court ceremony, which were instituted by Aurelian and Diocletian and elaborated by their successors, gave to such personages precedence over lesser dignitaries, and they were distinguished by the title of clarissimi, "most renowned."

(Ross 1920: 333)

From John Bagnell Bury's "History of the Later Roman Empire," Vol. VI, p. 39.

While conditions continue static, the struggle for wealth, power, or prestige alters [|] only slowly the social landscape. From one generation to the next its features remain much the same. Generally the high can stay up, while the low must stay down. Wealth, income, social power, sometimes even place and office, pass from father to son, even if brains do not. Individual differences in ability and character bring about some interchanges between the social strata, but not many. (Ross 1920: 359-360)

Wealth and honor are passed on to children. Intelligence is a different beast.

In order that these dungheap fortunes may be sublimated into social luster they undergo a process of legitimation, whereby ill-gotten wealth is made to look precisely like well-gotten wealth. The gatherer of tainted money may have to endure lifelong odium, but his descendants, when they get ready to retire from acquisition and devote themselves to enjoyment, may exchange it for sweet-smelling forms of property which will yield less dividend but more prestige. Then, too, as the crimes, frauds, and treacheries which lie at the base of family pride and pretension recede a little into the past, they are quickly hidden under a veil of oblivion. (Ross 1920: 340)

"Tell me, O philosopher, is either the rich man unjust, or the heir of the unjust man? For in this case there is no medium." (Taylor 1818: viii)

Great difference in social status presently give rise to contrasts in character which serve to accentuate and justify these differences. Normally, the personal ideal that grows up within a hereditary upper class is to be proud, free-handed, and high-spirited. If the class is also a martial and ruling class, its ideal will include courage and domineering will. Born to wealth and power, the members of a privileged order not infrequently manifest an independence of character, a frankness of speech, a simplicity of manner, and a dignity of bearing which are interpreted as natural traits of the aristoi or best. Hence, it is possible to popularize the myth that the nobility had its origin in the deliberate promotion of the best, and that its raison d'être is social service. (Ross 1920: 341)

Easier to become a well-adjusted person when financial troubles aren't constantly crushing your spirit and taking a constant toll on your bodily health.

Good breeding. A leisure class always gives great attention to the arts of social intercourse and cultivates the impulses appropriate to pleasure association. Those "to the manner born" despise parvenus as lacking the gracious self-effacing ways of "gentle" folk, and insist that nothing but breeding can form the soul of the gentleman or lady. When wealth shifts to new families, dignity, quietness, and refinement are the emphasized assets of the old element. (Ross 1920: 352)

In connection with the resentment towards taciturnity Malinowski attributed to the "primitive mind", I asked rhetorically if the "civilized mind" sees taciturnity as friendliness and good character. Turns out that the answer is an affirmative.

Possession of an ornamental culture. Another test by which the born members of the leisure class fend off the pushful bourgeois is the possession of lore and skill which the self-made have had no time to acquire. Such lore will be as remote as possible from the knowledge underlying the useful arts and professions. It will have to do with means of self-expression and sources of enjoyment rather than with the utilitarian branches. Thus Dill observes of the aristocracy in later Roman society:

This class, separated from the masses by pride of birth and privilege and riches, was even more cut off from them by its monopoly of culture. An aristocrat, however long his pedigree, however broad his acres, would have hardly found himself at home in the circle of Sidonius if he could not turn off pretty vers de société or letters fashioned in that euphuistic style which centuries of rhetorical discipline had elaborated. The members of that class were bound to one another by the tradition of ancestral friendships, by common interests and pursuits, but not least by academic companionship and the pursuit of that ideal of culture which more and more came to be regarded as the truest title to the name of Roman, the real stamp of rank.

Learning, however, may serve as a quite independent basis of distinction. (Ross 1920: 353)

"Euphuism is a peculiar mannered style of English prose. It takes its name from a prose romance by John Lyly. It consists of a preciously ornate and sophisticated style, employing a deliberate excess of literary devices such as antitheses, alliterations, repetitions and rhetorical questions. Classical learning and remote knowledge of all kinds are displayed. Euphuism was fashionable in the 1580s, especially in the Elizabethan court."

As society becomes aristocratic, humane feeling becomes class-bound. Thus an English newspaper gave thanks that while six hundred persons lost their lives in a Chicago theater fire, none of them was of any distinction. On the other hand, tenderness for the highborn makes even-handed justice impossible. It was easy to find law for imprisoning Stead, the fearless London journalist who in his "Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon" exposed the villanies of men in high social position, but none was found for punishing the villains themselves. (Ross 1920: 361)

Something like the Panama Papers of its time.

Hence, the weak man, finding no shelter in the public powers, became an ambact, i.e., he sought teh support of some strong man and paid for it with service. He addressed himself to one of the great men and besought protection against all other grandees. (Ross 1920: 361)

"From the Gallic ambactos (“servant”) → see amb- and actus for Latin equivalents of the elements of the Gallic word meaning properly “the one who turns around”; → see anculus for the Latin equivalent."

Between the official and the local nobles soon grew up such fellow-feeling and mutual favor that ordinarily no man of humble station could win a lawsuit against a noble. Accordingly the weak man seeking justice had to provide himself with a powerful patron. (Ross 1920: 361)

I was waiting for "fellow-feeling" to turn up.

To talk of freedom of contract between an omnipotent Hebridean Chamberlain and a poor Highland crofter is a trick of verbal legerdemain. (Blackie; in Ross 1920: 363)

Define:legerdemain - "1. sleight of hand displays legerdemain with cards and coins. 2. a display of skill or adroitness a remarkable piece of diplomatic legerdemain". Source is John Stuart Blackie, "Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws," pp. 136-137.

In born dependents, servility, sycophancy, lying, and petty thievery are as natural as it is natural for a starving crop to be yellow; yet these by-products of pressure are pointed to as proofs of a poor moral endowment. Against a background of such faults stand out the more brilliantly the high spirit; manliness, and sense of honor of the hereditary superiors. Character-contrasts social in origin are interpreted as inborn. To divert attention from their underpinning of privilege, the superiors point to the low-caste and say: "Look, they are the dull-witted, the incapable; we are the well-born, the fittest. Our mastership and our reward are of Nature's own giving. We are the cream that rises to the top of the milk." (Ross 1920: 367)

Exactly the stuff of American racists who do everything they can to worsen the public education in "inner city" schools and then point to the lower test scores of black and brown children as proof of their natural intellectual inferiority.

Every enlargement of personal freedom has been resisted by the powerful as a blow aimed at the foundations of society. To take away the creditor's power over the person of the insolvent debtor would, it was claimed, cut off the poor from borrowing. To set free the serf from the glebe would result in untilled fields and tramp-infested roads. To abolish the master's power to whip or jail the worker who did not serve through the period of labor agreed on would kill enterprise by legalizing strikes. (Ross 1920: 373)

Thus, socialized healthcare would result in long waiting lines. Rather that uncountable millions have no access to healthcare than access that was slightly inconvenient.

The industrial classes in Cuba are so saturated with the Hispanic culture that social distinctions can scarcely be maintained. Says a Bulletin of the United States Department of Labor:

Cuba is one of the most democratic countries in the world. Nowhere else does the least-considered member of a community aspire with more serene confidence to social equality with its most exalted personage. The language, with its conventional phrases of courtesy shared by all classes, the familiar family life of proprietor and [|] servant, master and apprentice, a certain simplicity and universality of manners inherited from pioneer days, and a gentleness of temperament that may be both climatic and racial, which shrinks from giving offense by assuming superiority of rank in intercourse with others, have al contributed to render class assumptions externally less obvious in Cuba than in most other countries where equally great differences of race, culture, and fortune exist.

(Ross 1920: 376-377)

Having the same "current phrases of intercourse" (PC 2.3) evidently a mark of social equality.

The anti-social haughtiness that, after two or three generations of divorce from hard work, grows in a family like a fungus on a dead tree may be forestalled by inheritance taxes so steeply graded as to thwart the money-moker's endeavor to endow his line for all time. (Ross 1920: 382)

Is this the general name for that "dignity, quietness, and refinement" (Ross 1920: 352)?

On the other hand, from the social point of view, the envied idle rich not only have no claim to special consideration, but appear as the drones of a hive, the camp followers of an army, the stowaways of a ship, the deadbeats of a business. Leisure, to be sure, is honorable in those who, after having fought a good fight, retire betimes to rest and enjoy. But unearned leisure is an altogether different thing. So far as the interests of society are concerned, the hale man who all his life does nothing to balance his account with his fellow-men is a sheer parasite. That he lives upon the income of property he has inherited does not make his position less degrading. After all, a man's account is with his own generation rather than with his forbears. What the heir consumes costs the toil and sweat of his contemporaries; so that society may well say to him, "This is what we are doing for you; now what are you doing for us?" (Ross 1920: 384)

Parasite is such a loaded word. The rich man, according to the etymology of the word, sits and eats alongside the workers but doesn't contribute to making the food on the table happen. He's the person who lives on others: "A person who lives on other people's efforts or expense and gives little or nothing back."

The Teutonic doctrine that war is an inter-group test of fitness to survive is a superstition befitting Central Africa. No doubt race quality is one factor in deciding which side wins. But when one considers the weight of other factors such as comparative size of the belligerent peoples, their natural defenses, their access to the highways of commerce, their mineral resources, their stage of industrial development, their training in technique, their degree of specialization upon warfare, and the like, the assumption that the victors in modern warfare are a "superior" breed, while the vanquished are an "inferior" breed, is worthier of gorillas than of rational beings. (Ross 1920: 387)

And yet this superstition still circulates a hundred years later, especially among fascist types whose side lost the last great war.

The right way to check the infecundity of the superior women is not to bar them from walks now open to them but to shift the social emphasis. Brilliant girls covet careers because the career is honored. Many of them would be content as mothers if motherhood were equally honored. But this is impossible until superior motherhood is differentiated from commonplace motherhood, which in turn awaits a marking system by which superior children can be discriminated from commonplace children. (Ross 1920: 393)

This talk of superiority is eery.

By "socialization" is meant here the development of the we-feeling in associates and their growth in capacity and will to act together. (Ross 1920: 395)

Probably not how we would define socialization today.

Sons of the same land have a capacity for mutual sympathy from the identity of their early impressions from the physical environment. Not that they will love one another - unless they meet homesick in a far country - but when they have to choose between strangers and their countrymen, they will prefer the latter. The recurrent unheeded impressions constitute, as it were, the stable background of individual experience. When people discover that they have the same background they are pleased and draw together. (Ross 1920: 395)

The law of sympathy (cf. Ross 1920: 225) at work.>

From the reminiscences exchanged on an "old settlers' day" it is evident that what knit the hearts of the pioneers was the vivid experiences they passed thru together - intense social pleasure at merry makings and celebrations as well as suffering and anxiety caused by floods, draughts, blizzards, prairie fires, and Indian outbreaks. If foreign-born are interspersed among native settlers such experiences bring them all into sympathetic relations, and then the interchange of ideas gradually assimilates them. (Ross 1920: 396)

The actual "social sentiments" that enable the creation of ties between people. The heading is "Emotional Community" and the margin reads: "Strong Common Emotions Link Hearts Together".

Has one emotion the same value as another for generating fellow feeling? It is likely that the expansive emotions enlarge the heart more than do the depressive emotions. Golden moments, when one escapes from confining walls and beholds large horizons, when one has a delicious and unwonted sense of free and onward life, beget the we-feeling. Religious conversion [|] is such an experience, and it ought to show itself in a greater force and range of sympathy and love. (Ross 1920: 369-397)

Positive emotions more sociable than negative ones.

During the early days of the first Russian revolution people were exalted out of themselves. Absolute strangers met each other and suddenly talked like old friends. In a milk shop people would help themselves and leave the right pay. (Ross 1920: 397)

This is enabled by the "atmosphere", the over-all emotional mood of a particular moment in time.

A master experience is likely to segregate those who have had it. The converted come into fellowship, for the unrenegate cannot understand them. Russian revolutionaries with antithetical principles are brothers while they are hounded and persecuted, but not afterward. To war veterans the civilian is forever an outsider. Simple sea-faring men are never quite themselves with "landlubbers." Motherhood may inspire a sisterly feeling among women. A kind of free-masonry invites lovers of outdoors or wilderness hunters. Those who have been "up against it" or "down to the bottom dollar" are of a fraternity to which the darlings of fortune can never belong. (Ross 1920: 397)

This "master experience" is a bit more specific that merely "common experience" (in Ruesch's interpretation of communization, for example).

From savage life to our own, eating and drinking together has been favorite reviver of good feeling and the seal of amity. Nor have intoxicants and narcotics beet without a social rôle. They have been, in the words of Giddings, "the crude excitants of social feelings in crude natures." Feasting together begets [|] a genial and expansive frame of mind. The ancient village community set such store by it that every available opportunity, such as the commemoration of the ancestors, the religious solemnities, the beginning and the end of field work, the births, the marriages, and the funerals, were seized upon to bring the community to a common meal. (Ross 1920: 397-398)

The communion of food. The heading reads "The common meal" and the margin reads: "Feasting Together Overcomes Pointless Suspicion and Reserve".

Even now, when we wish to weave a bond of fellowship or to fire men to join in a generous undertaking, we gather them about the banquet board. Indeed, to "break bread together" has a symbolic, even a mystical, significance, and we will not sit at meat with those against whom we intend to draw a color line or a social line. (Ross 1920: 398)

"The breaking of silence, the communion of words is the first act to establish links of fellowship, which is consummated only be the breaking of bread and the communion of food." (PC 4.5)

In olden time the larger societies provided for periodical assemblage in order not to disintegrate into bickering local groups or social classes. The socializing value of such assemblage lies in this: that in one another's presence people are deeply moved in the same way at the same time and are conscious of their community of emotion. (Ross 1920: 398)

Heading: "Role of the festival"; margin: "Social Significance of the National Festival". This is what Estonians experience during their Song Festivals.

There are no festivals [...] which have not the virtue of binding for the moment all souls into one bundle, united by a dominant feeling. (Ross 1920: 399)

The "bond" figure spelled out. Part of a quote, probably Tarde, though it's not clear - the quotation marks do not close and the citation is missing. // I deduce that when a paragraph begins with a quotation mark and doesn't end one, it's supposedly an implied blockquote.

A people without letters, arts, or trade, living in scattered rural settlements, has little to keep alive mutual interest. [|] Wanting are the ties created by education, travel, news, common literature and central authority. But at the periodical religious feast a common emotion lifts the people to a consciousness of their oneness. (Ross 1920: 399-400)

The ties created by education, travel, news, common literature and central authority exactly the complicated stuff that Malinowski didn't explore, perhaps because it would have been too difficult to do so.

Perception of resemblance, however, is not the only thing that socializes. We are drawn toward the unlike if consistently they are found to be helpful to us, and become alienated from even our kindred if continually they give in our way. In other words, community of interest tend to socialize, whereas clash of interest leads in time to coolness and ill-will. Interest does not work so immediately and dramatically as likeness and difference, but it produces great effects if there be given time for it to work. (Ross 1920: 405)

Makes a lot of sense. Community of interest is more significant than mere consciousness of kind, because someone very alike may have competing interests whereas someone very different could be very helpful.

Hearty cooperation in matters of moment is indeed a great socializer. Fellow feeling quickly develops among fighters in the same cause. "Comrade" is a word to conjure with. Agitated by strong common emotions - fear, anxiety, grief, and elation - those who have long striven shoulder to shoulder against the same foe become dear to one another. (Ross 1920: 406)

"Words like "comrade" have a type of linguistic use which Malinowski labels phatic communion whereby "ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words."" (Pieris 1951: 500)

The cultivation of the sentiment of nationality in despised or down-trodden peoples - the Celtic Irish, the Poles, the Czechs, the Letts, the Lithuanians, the Armenians, etc. - has been a means of socializing them and saving them from discouragement and degradation. But after a people have achieved "self-determination" the further sharpening of their consciousness of nationality has the opposite effect, for it obstructs the natural growth of good will and brotherhood among the peoples. (Ross 1920: 407)

He mentions Letts and Lithuanians but not Estonians.

Crowd intoxication takes people out of themselves, and their sharing of an intense emotion begets sympathy. A series of crowd unisons socializes a people and prepares them for action in concert. (Ross 1920: 408)

Rahvamassi joovastus. There is but a small step from "action in concert" to "concerted action"

Friendly intercourse may become less general, while clannishness and sectarianism grow until the people are divided by internal frontiers which are no less real for being invisible. (Ross 1920: 419)

Friendly social intercourse.

The suppression of free inquiry protects religious unity only by chaining the mind and impeding intellectual progress. An established state religion, secure in its endowments, is likely to lose much of that appealing warmth and life which make it a social bond. The relentless persecution of heresy foments internal strife and weakens the race by extirpating the more daring and original minds. (Ross 1920: 421)

Religion is a social bond.

New light on heredity causes us to be condemned for having children if our stock is bad and for not having children if our stock is superior. (Ross 1920: 426)

How do I find out if my stock is bad?

The sentiment of sympathy prompts to the punishment of cruelty to animals, the suppression of infanticie, and the protection of the dead from desecration. Sympathy with the affronted divinity leads to social repression of profanity, blasphemy and sacrilege. Sympathy with the feelings of the victim of wrong yields that "moral indignation" which impels the community to interfere with aggressions which do not directly concern it. (Ross 1920: 427)

Only two of these merit any consideration. Which one does not? Here's a clue: the one that does not exist.

Some of the instruments society employs are directed upon the will: others are used to influence the feelings; while still others are addressed to the judgment. In the first group are Social Suggestion, Custom and Education, which use direct means to give the will a certain bent, and Public Opinion, Law and Religious Belief, which employ punishments and rewards. Among the instruments which appeal to the feelings are Social Religion, Personal Ideas, Ceremony, Art and Personality. Enlightenment, Illusion and Social Valuation are addressed to the judgment. (Ross 1920: 429)

Triadic! The margin gives away that it follows the (quasi-Pythagorean) theory of soul: "The Instruments of Control Bear on Different Sides of the Soul". Thus: (1) feelings - Social Religion, Personal Ideals, Ideals, Ceremony, Art and Personality; (2) will - Social Suggestion, Custom and Education; (3) judgment - Enlightenment, Illusion and Social Valuation.

In the same way the "lady," who was once one of the women folk of the lord of the castle, has become the ideal of at least half the women in our society. (Ross 1920: 431)

The rest of the paragraph addresses the formation of the personal ideal of the "gentleman".

Pleasures which are exclusive or collision-provoking, such as those of the palate or of sex, are constantly depreciated. Then society "appreciates" the safe pleasures - those which, like companionship or sport, are cooperative; those, like the enjoyment of nature, music or art, which are inexclusive; those, like health or beauty or humor or knowledge, which can be expanded without clash with others; and those which, being ideal, do not wastefully consume strength. The pursuit of such joys confirms and stabilizes association and it is no wonder that by high appraisals society lures men in this direction. (Ross 1920: 431)

Social intercourse is a "safe" pleasure.

The higher means of social control ought to emanate from many minds of divers experiences and interests. They ought to be spontaneous products of a consensus. If, in fact, they are foisted upon society by some scheming group, then society, much as it may control its individual members, is itself controlled. This we may call super-social control. There is no better example of it than the deliberate moulding of German education, ideals and public opinion for thirty years before the World War by an influential group headed by the Kaiser which had determined to use the German people in a vast design of aggression and conquest. (Ross 1920: 433)

The stuff of conspiracy theories.

If a docent showed himself critical of the fictions of racial superiority, of cultural superiority, of "encircling by envious enemies," and of the necessity of a "preventive war" - which were the chief means of deluding the people - there was no academic career for him. (Ross 1920: 434)

These same fictions are still operative today. America is simultaneously number one and at the same time other countries are "laughing at" it.

The personal influence of the Kaiser in giving the German mind the desired set was very great. In innumerable addresses from the throne and after-dinner speeches he gave public thought its key. He had a talent for coining short, pithy, catchy sayings such as "our future lies on the sea," "a place in the sun," "the mailed fist," "oceans unite; they do not sever." (Ross 1920: 435)

Looking forward to reading more about dinner socialization in Kant's Anthropology.

If government is not to control the people as the German Imperial Government did, but is to be controlled by them, it should have no hand in the processes whereby the people make up their minds about it. It should not manufacture sentiment for itself nor meddle with the incubation of public opinion. (Ross 1920: 436)

Chomsky's famous "manufacture of consent" originally came from Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, as everyone knows, but it turns out that the ideas and similar phrasing were common at the time.

For an annual payment a company furnishes the protection for which one used to rely on one's kinfolk. The result is that the claims of kindred are not so generally acknowledged. Why keep up intimacy with all the relatives when some of them are such dreadful bores? So friendship, or preferential association, gains on kinship, and the sphere of personal choice is enlarged. (Ross 1920: 441)

Insurace companies turn out to be the biggest threat to "family values".

In the early Middle Ages the relation of the individual to the group was all or nothing. But to-day, thanks to the money economy, people are able to form unions for special purposes into which they enter not with their entire personality but only with a limited contribution. Cooley puts this admirably when he says: "In primitive society membership is intimate and exclusive, the individual putting his whole personality into it. But as groups become numerous and complex there comes to be a kind of parcelling out of personal activities into somewhat impersonal functions, with special associates in each function." (Ross 1920: 446)

Instead of personal unions we have impersonal unions.

The type produced in Russia under the village system is very susceptible to mob mind. He yields to fits of emotion and outbreaks of violence among his fellows which the man who has been individualized by handling a farm is able to resist. (Ross 1920: 447)

I knew that "mob mind" had to show up sooner or later.

In our cities with their heterogeneity Mrs. Grundy is less terrible than she is in the towns and neighborhoods, where every one knows every one else and the paucity of interest causes all to concern themselves with the doings of each. (Ross 1920: 449)

The homogeneous or heterogeneous constitution of the population is an aspect of gossip.

Says Sumner: "There could be no definition of a heretic but one who differed in life and conversation from the masses around him. This might mean strange language, dress, manners or greater restraint in conduct. Pallor of countenance was a mark of a heretic from the fourth century to the twelth." (Ross 1920: 452)

Why you talk funny? You a heretic?! Source: William Graham Sumner's Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1906).

Into the production of a good or a service may enter various motives which hold the profit motive in check, viz.,

1. Pleasure in creative activity.
2. Pride in the perfection of one's product.
3. Accepted standards of technical excellence which forbid the putting forth of a ware or a service which falls below a certain degree of merit.
4. Abhorrence of sham or humbug in one's work. Desire to render loyal service, to market genuine goods.
5. Solicitude for the welfare of the customer or patron, prompting one to refuse to supply him with that which will disappoint, defraud, or harm him.
6. Doing one's work as a service to society.

There is commercialization when the profits motive gains the [|] upper hand of these nobler motives. In case the relations between producer and consumer, or between server and served, continue in the same intimacy, the profits motive will not play a greater rôle unless the motives which limit it are weakened. In such a case commercialization would be the result and proof of moral decay. (Ross 1920: 461-462)

Good stuff. Alienated work, on the other hand, debases most of these.

Hence, it strives for excellence and sincerity in its goods and acts on the maxim, "the satisfied customer is the best advertisement." Owing to its conspicuousness it is sensitive to public opinion. It feels obliged to maintain a reputation so good that it can draw into its service men of the highest character. Its treatment of labor is so well-known among workingmen that, if it acquires a bad name, it will be unable to attract labor of the best quality. Therefore, the great corporations take the lead not only in square-dealing with the customer, but in looking after the safety, health, and welfare of their employees. (Ross 1920: 463)

Somewhat naive. Knowledge that Amazon employees work under inhumane conditions, are constantly monitored, have to piss into bottles, and earn a pittance while the dragon on top becomes the richest person in the world, and so on - all of it hinder a very small minority of conscientious customers from using its services.

While engineers and architects are at liberty to patent their inventions, the medical profession has always set its face against secret remedies and the patenting of a means of relieving human suffering, insisting that it is a part of the physician's honor not to restrict the use of a medicine for the purpose of private gain, but to give it freely to the world. The doctors' fight with the makers of proprietary medicines is a war to the knife between the professional spirit and the commercial spirit. There can be no doubt as to which is the true friend of the social welfare. (Ross 1920: 476)

Again, somewhat naive. It would ideally be so but actual practice is something very different. Look at insulin, for example. It was not patented by the good people who first discovered how to produce it. Then the ghouls took it over and now people die because they are unable to pay the exorbitant price of the drug.

The psychology, however, underlying the strong aversion to advertising in all the professions is, doubtless, the fear lest competition degenerates into an undignified scramble for business by all manner of self-laudation, falsehood and depreciation of rivals. (Ross 1920: 476)

Blowing one's own trumpet.

 

It is well to discriminate between the regulative institution and the operative institution. The former is a mould to which the relations, attitudes or behavior of individuals are required to conform; or, if you like, a channel in which activity must flow. Thus the intimate relations of a man and a woman are canalized in marriage, which is fixed and sanctioned in law and in public opinion. So the relations between parents and children are moulded to as tandard by the institution of the family. Property and contract are regulative institutions which normalize the relations and conduct of individuals in respect to objects of ownership. (Ross 1920: 485)

When Whitney wrote that language is an institution, he probably had something like this in mind. A regulative institution canalizes individual conduct. An operative institution, on the other hand, is one from which one can obtain a service.

The gifted in each field of service never allowed mechanism to come between them and their ministry, but usually they know how to use mechanism for their purposes. In their hands the structure becomes again human and plastic. It may be, as Emerson says, that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man," but it need not be always the shadow of the same man. Under the stimulus of vital personalities an ossified or decadent institution may be, as it were, reborn, and start on a fresh career. (Ross 1920: 489)

Very well put. An institution has the aspect of whoever is at the healm.

This willingness to take trouble to spread one's convictions and ideals, or to support those who do it for one, is praiseworthy because it is disinterested. Moreover, when it is untainted by fanaticism and intolerance, it may be a blessing to society. For the propagative impulse extends the planes of agreement which bind individual minds into a social mind. (Ross 1920: 491)

Oma veendumuste ja ideaalide levitamine köidab üksikud mõistused ühiskondlikuks mõistuseks.

The ruling aspiration of the followers of science is to advance the frontiers of knowledge, whereas the followers of religion, convinced that already they are in possession of absolute and final truth, give themselves up to disseminating it. The idea of a revelation of religious truth excludes the idea of search for religious truth. Their great concern, therefore, is to carry the "glad tidings" to those ignorant of it. (Ross 1920: 494)

Scientists look for truth, religionists convince themselves that they already have it.

There is no creative artist who does not yearn to communicate his vision to as many persons as possible. He may pretend to address only the elect, but this air of exclusiveness is sheer affectation. The writer who has passed his youth in a garret living on a crust feels it is all made up to him if in the end the public is moved by his work. Artistic and poetic genius is an extraordinarily intense form of sympathy, which can satisfy itself only by creating a new world of living beings. (Ross 1920: 495)

It looks like anything can be formulated as a form of sympathy.

Because of the knowledge it presupposes, the number of people fit to receive culture is infinitely smaller than the number fit to receive religion. It is no reflection on culture that its missionaries are not found among remote and untutored peoples. But why is it that its followers do not cultivate even the home field with that devout energy so often found in the followers of religion? The reason seems to be that the man of culture is rarely without a feeling of superiority. He is apt to treat uncultivated people as Philistines, as a lower order of humanity. The religious man, on the contrary, does not regard his ineffable religious experience as a personal merit, but as a "grace." He burns to impart the secret of it to others, for they are quite as capable of having it as he himself. (Ross 1920: 498)

"Culture" still in the sense of "high culture", i.e. theatres and museums.

Most of us are mentally lazy. We are loath to put our minds to a stretch, to concentrate our powers upon an intricate matter. Little problems involving only a few factors may challenge and stimulate us like the situations in a game of chess, but we shun complex problems which call for sustained thinking. Hence, we shrink from recognizing a changed situation, from re-thinking our task. Indolently we roll along in the rut of habit and precedent until a stone in the rut or an obstacle in the road twists us out of it. Absorbed in their daily round, few pause to ask themselves: "Is this thing of any use?" "Am I doing any real good?" The ability to see one's activity in a true perspective is a rare gift. (Ross 1920: 502)

Mental habits and automatization here treated as "ossification".

Men persist in futility and cling to forms void of meaning because they lack imagination and the power of constructive thought. To take things as he finds them and to do things as they always have been done is the recourse of the numbskull in office. Mediocrity loves to follow the groove. Therefore see to it that all important posts in society are manned by the talented. (Ross 1920: 507)

More harping on the mediocre unthinking man of habits.

Not only has the I-feeling gained on the we-feeling, but the bonds uniting successive generations may fail, so that there is less veneration for forefathers and less concern for posterity. (Ross 1920: 511)

Enesetunne.

The flower of the race is wasted in war, or trampled under in civil strife or drawn to centers where, a prey to wants and ambitions which interfere with breeding, it becomes glorious but sterile, fecund in deeds, ideas and graces, but not in children. (Ross 1920: 516)

A triad: (1) graces; (2) deeds; and (3) ideas.

Transmutations are changes of an involuntary character due to the difficulty one generation has in accurately reproducing the copy set by its predecessor. The speech of our ancestors underwent the unnoticed sound-shiftings recorded in Grimm's law. Refracted through generations of scribes, pictographs shrivel into conventional ideographic characters. Natural gestures became fossilized into meaningless forms. Coins minted first as tiny spades or knives drift into unrecognizable shapes. (Ross 1920: 526)

The ossification of "set phrases" or "phatic utterances" likewise a result of slow transmutation over time.

Now, there are other unwilled social changes the cause of which is to be sought not in society but under or outside society. The growth of population, the production of the man of [|] inventive genius, do not occur in the societal cycle but in the biotic cycle under it. The accumulation of wealth happens in the economic process which underlies men's social relations. The interaction of societies and the cross-fertilization of cultures illustrate how society may be pulled out of its orbit by outside forces. We may call these factors of social change stimuli and their result social growth. (Ross 1920: 527-528)

Economic process occurs alongside other social interactions.

The abolition of serfdom, as now the woman's movement and social legislation, spread largely by national example. A true social evolution obeying resident forces has nearly disappeared from the face of the earth, seeing that to-day the germs of every new social arrangement are blown throughout the world, and peoples at the most diverse stages of culture are affected by the jurisprudence, the laws, and the organization of the advanced societies. (Ross 1920: 538)

Nothing our modern-day "social darwinists" cannot rationalize and trivialize away.

Last come the condition-making inventions embodied in languages, sciences, and speculations. Languages support the inter-mental activities by which like-mindedness spreads. The building of concepts and generalization about the physical world is indispensable to the progress of mechanical invention. Speculations about the Unseen determine to what extent men's groupings and institutions shall acquire sanctity by being bound up with the gods. The revolutions in ideas wrought by founders of religion reverberate in society almost as much as the revolutions in production wrought by mechanical inventors. (Ross 1920: 539)

These "inter-mental activities" sound even more technical the countersigns of thought.

The Hebrew prophets who originated worship without sacrifice, and the Reformers who proclaimed "justification by faith," consciously severed the tie that binds layman to priest. With his principle that the ties of kinship should be wholly subordinated to the ties of belief, Mahomet gave a new basis to Arab society. (Ross 1920: 539)

More "tie"-language. "Ties of belief" - usuühendus.

In these days of close-knit economic inter-dependence among nations and universal publicity, for a nation to cultivate the naïve ego-centrism which prevailed in the stage of national self-sufficiency indicates that it does not realize what kind of a world it is living in. (Ross 1920: 542)

Modern conservatives are very keen to point out what kind of a world we are living in, and to exaggerate the dangers. Thus, at a time of unprecedented safety in the immediate region, their primary objective is to secure safety. From what? The result is an ironic state of affairs in which conservative Swedes and Finns immigrate to Estonia because their own countries have, according to them, too many (dark skinned) immigrants.

The prospect ahead is dazzling. Science and invention have put mankind in possession of the means of ridding themselves forever of plague, famine, penury, overpopulation, ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, fanaticism, despotism, slavery, and caste. They have only to do everywhere what is now being done with success somewhere. But men's ideas of human relations are those of an earlier and simpler time. (Ross 1920: 543)

We haven't achieved these in a century. As to "men's ideas of human relations", phatic communion is a valid point in case.

The solitary confinement of prisoners had to be given up because it violated the social side of human nature. Social reformers like Fourier and Robert Owen assumed that God made man good and that his faults came from living in a bad social system. If the surroundings were made right, man's inborn bent for harmony with his fellows would insure the success of a communistic order. Since Darwin traced the descent of man, however, we are not at liberty to view human nature in such a rosy light. Man's disposition was evolved long ago as a part of his equipment for survival and includes some instincts which are at odds with social harmony. Accordingly communism is a defunct ideal and the one powerful protest of our time is not against competition but against private capitalism. (Ross 1920: 549)

These would be the instincts of fear and pugnacity.

This is why superior drinks, foods, narcotics, materials, tools, implements, methods of production and means of enjoyment make their way rapidly among peoples and races; while superior sex morals, forms of the family, upbringing of children, relations between parents and children, status of social classes, treatment of the weak, relief of the poor, types of recreation, and political institutions make their way slowly or not at all. Since their merit is not so evident and appealing as that of a reaper or a bicycle, people reject them and persist in the bad old ways of their ancestors. Here again we come upon justification of the right type of foreign missions, for to-day along with the propagation of the elements of the Christian religion goes propagation of the best moral standards, family type, class relatios, civic ideals, educational methods and governmental policies in vogue in the country which sends out the missionary. (Ross 1920: 562)

How do you measure the superiority of morals? The polygamist mormons, too, send out missionaries. Are they also spreading their inferior sex morals by doing so?

The effective social standards constitute, as it were, a trestle by means of which, a people rises farther and farther above the plane of its instincts. If the higher standards were broken down, it would sink to the barbarian level. If all gave way, it would find itself on the moral plane of savages. (Ross 1920: 564)

The distinguishing characteristic between savage and civilized - "social standards". Note that "the moral plane" is evidently the aspect in which Malinowski equivalizes the savage and the uneducated classes.

Wherever a collective mind has been organized, there standards are likely to appear. The boy's gang, the underworld, the "sporting" circle, the "smart set," "Bohemia," "Wall Street," the "peculiar" sect, the "colony" of foreign born, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, may develop norms of its own for judging conduct. In case they conflict with the standards enforced in general society, sooner or later strain will develop. (Ross 1920: 565)

This "collective mind" still not explained in this book. The margin reads: "Every Class and Intimate Circle Develops Standards of its Own".

The whites fix the legal, political and economic status of the Indians but have almost no influence upon their collective mind. (Ross 1920: 565)

A triad: (1) economic; (2) political; and (3) legal.

Among our live standards are that a man should keep a promise made for consideration received, a man should support his wife, a woman should stand by her husband in trouble, chivalry in the treatment of women, deference toward the aged, "put up or shut up," "live and let live," "boost, don't knock," "don't flinch, don't foul, hit the line hard," "let the other fellow have his say," "if you play the game at all, play it for all it is worth." (Ross 1920: 566)

Turns out that "the reciprocity is established by the change of rôles" (PC 5.6) due to a social standard.

"In modern English-speaking society," writes Sumner, "the 'gentleman' is the name of the man-as-he-should-be. The type is not fixed and the definition is not established. It is a collective and social ideal. Gentlemen are a group in society who have selected a code and standard of conduct as most conducive to [|] prosperous and pleasant social relations. Therefore manners are an essential element in the type. A gentleman is one who has been educated to conform to the type, and that he has the cachet is indicated by his admission to the group. Novels develop and transmit the ideal; clubs aret he tribunal of it." "A gentleman of a century ago would not be approved now." "In the eighteenth century he patronized cock fights and prize fights and he could get drunk, gamble, tell falsehood and deceive women without losing caste." "A gentleman of to-day in the society of a century ago would be thought to have rowdy manners. Artificial manners are not in the taste of our time; athletics are." "It appears now that he must have some skill at sports nad games." (Ross 1920: 567-568)

This raised Sumner's Folkways higher in my list of readings. Evidently the art of conversation Mahaffy described was that of gentlemen.

Often social standards originate with an upper class. In tropical South America only the gente decente take care to safeguard the chastity of their daughters. As the masses rise economically and respond to church and school and good reading matter, they will imitate the gente decente as regards the association of young people. In respect to bathing, outdoor sports, frankness of speech and aversion to boasting the English aristocracy have been pace-setters for English and Americans. Bushido, the moral code of Japan, originated with the samurai. The nobility of Russia were the channel by which Western standards got among the Russian people. (Ross 1920: 569)

Somehow "boasting" is constantly at the center of attention in disscussions of social intercourse.

Stratification extends the we-feeling among those of the same social condition. Socialization makes people ready to cohere into a group when an occasion for union presents itself. Professionalization necessitates a union of those within the same profession to formulate its standards and to expose, punish or cast out practitioners who ignore these standards. (Ross 1920: 575)

Socialization creates coherence and leads to (bonds of) union.

Nevertheless, social processes are not the only creators of groups. What is necessary in order that men should feel themselves to be one and therefore stand together is that they should be aware of essential common traits distinguishing them from others, or of a momentous common interest which can be protected and advanced only by collective effort. Therefore, whatever marks off certain persons from others or establishes among them a community of interest is a group-maker. (Ross 1920: 575)

Sounds almost like whatever stands for anything else is a sign. Anything that establishes a community of interest is a group-maker. In the case of phatic communion, language is the group-maker.

Class lines divide so that, as in rural England or Russia of the Tsars, one lives in his class rather than in his neighborhood. Reading, giving the companionship of historical or imaginary characters, lessens social dependence upon neighbors. Correspondence and travel admit one to other circles than that of the vicinage. Once parish was coextensive with local community and neighbors were co-worshippers; but now, thanks to sectarianism, half a dozen starveling churches will struggle to exist in a community which might furnish a single fair-sized congregation. (Ross 1920: 576)

Ross's treatment of art and literature is so neat. When reading books, you are enjoying the company of the author(s) and characters.

Just as those who dreamed of One People were looked upon as bad tribesmen until the dream became reality; just as those who dreamed of One Nation were looked upon as bad citizens until the dream became reality; so [|] those who dream of a super-national society will be deemed bad patriots until the dream becomes reality. (Ross 1920: 577-578)

Conjugation (cf. Ross 1920: 86; above) is inevitable.

Instead of the position of the party reflecting the view of the majority of its members - as is the bland accepted theory - the position of the majority of its members is likely to reflect the view of the party. Here is the secret of the fruitlessness of English political democracy as long as English politics was a series of sham battles between "Liberal" and "Conservative" parties until the "invisible government" of one and the same social class. Only when a formidable party arose, built and officered by bona fide representatives of labor, was Privilege seriously menaced. (Ross 1920: 582)

100 years later this is America.

Some speculative thinkers insist that the endeavor to institutionalize a thing so intimate and personal as mating and care of the young goes against the grain, is foredoomed to failure and will be abandoned as mankind becomes more enlightened. They hail the modern latitude of divorce and the tendency of the law to individualize the members of the family as harbingers of an era of greater freedom when society will no longer force upon men and women a single rigid pattern of relation. They anticipate that sex relations between the mature will become a private matter as in many modern societies religion from being a social institution has become a private matter. (Ross 1920: 583)

This is by and large the case, as illustrated by the numerous cases of conservative politicians preaching family values being unveiled as serial cheaters or homosexuals. In Estonia this is bitter-sweet, and more bitter than sweet, as the local conservative party turns out to be a harbinger of pedophiles. The conservative ethos seems to be a hypocritical one: a single rigid pattern for thee and greater private freedom for me.

Thanks to the march of invention, the volume of light-running machinery has become so great that industry offers an illimitable field for the employment of girls and women. On account of being able to accept a lower wage than the man, especially the man of family, requires, they are continually substituted for men in the industrial field and rarely experience lack of employment. (Ross 1920: 584)

The wage gap may have made sense back when most women got married, and even then it is dubious, but why does it still persist?

The open door to self-support lessens woman's interest in the protected economic position of the wife. She is harder to win and harder to keep than when matrimony was the sole career open to her. (Ross 1920: 584)

So, marriage was a form of economic enslavement.

More serious are certain spiritual changes which attack the family from the inside and work against its success and stability. One of these is the decay of religious belief. Fraternal religions is stronger than ever among us, but fewer people are willing to bear conjugal unhappiness because they believe it to be God's will. For myriads the religious sanction to marriage has crumbled away, leaving it a galling yoke if they are not well-mated. (Ross 1920: 585)

So conjugal unhappiness is God's will?

These traits of the adaptive or self-subordinating [|] type of character are yielding ground to the traits of self-interestedness, self-assertiveness and love of self-direction. (Ross 1920: 586-587)

A mangled triad. Only (2) self-assertiveness is certain.

Now that for innumerable young people marriage has no religious sanction, it is essential that they be imbued with the ethical conception of marriage. The romantic conception from the principle "Love cannot be forced" deduces that the newly-wedded can only hope that the attachment will last, but that they can do nothing to keep it alive. Experience shows, however, that will-attitude is a very essential thing in a lasting and happy union. If lovers enter upon marriage with a lively sense of obligation and with a firm resolve to make such sacrifices as may be necessary to insure its success, their attachment is far more likely to endure than if they obey only their impulses. So fine a thing as the concord of two persons living one life is rarely to be had without determined effort. Sex attraction fluctuates and its contribution to conjugal harmony is uncertain. On the other hand, admiration, respect, and the sense of duty stabilize the bond of sentiment. (Ross 1920: 589)

The bond of what now? It looks like Malinowski was into the language of ties and bonds because it is one of pre-scientific human relationism in marriage and family discourse.

The true policy, therefore, is to impart sound ideals of marriage and family in the schools to all of sufficient age; to fix these ideals everywhere in social tradition, so that the young shall meet them at every turn; and to make the social atmosphere frosty toward foolish nad frivolous ideals of marriage. (Ross 1920: 590)

Recording this only because of the phrase. Malinowski's own usage is much earlier, from his review of Durkheim.

But, since the Church cherished aims and ambitions of its own, it proved to be by no means a pliant, manageable institution. Moreover, certain later developments have sadly impaired its value as a binder. (Ross 1920: 595)

A binder full of women choir boys?

The Mohammedan world still relies on religion as the cement of society and its schools teach little else than sacred lore. In Spain and Portugal education plays but a slight rôle in comparison with religion. (Ross 1920: 596)

A figurative synonym for "ties of union".

Now even our high schools have a working-class clientele whose home environment and social heritage make them often contemptuous of the type of culture offered them. They have voracious appetites for hearty intellectual fare which will not be satisfied with tidbits of culture carefully selected and often denatured. For this reason to the sons of farmers and day laborers [|] the school seems out of touch with life and the less far-sighted quit it as soon as possible for the paying job. (Ross 1920: 599-600)

God damn. This is how I feel about the university. Especially when it comes to careful selection and denaturing. Why am I reading something incomprehensible from Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia in a course on Estonian philosophical thought?

The evolutionary origin of our race supplies the missing key to the conflicts between instinct and reason, between impulse and purpose, which were puzzling so long as man was supposed to have been turned off at a stroke by the Creator. Thanks to the evidence that our inborn tendencies established themselves as aids to survival under primitive condition.s Mencius' doctrine of the goodness of original human nature as well as Calvin's doctrine of its total depravity no longer present themselves as horns of an unescapable dilemma. Far from being a simple, consistent thing, man's nature appears to be a tangled skein. (Ross 1920: 604)

These "inborn tendencies" paraphrased as "innate trends" (PC 3.3).

But, owing to the grip of heredity, an instinct may outlast the wild life in which it was serviceable. Within the brief historic period the conditions of living have so immensely changed that not a few of man's original tendencies have become a handicap to the possessor or a menace to society. In our present stage, for example, the teasing, tormenting, and bullying impulses make trouble and should be curbed; while, for the sake of social peace, the fighting impulses must be guided into safe channels. The latter-day doctrine that every natural tendency is good is as wide of the truth as the venerable dogma of original sin. (Ross 1920: 605)

The instinct of pugnacity expanded.

Teachers, clergymen, employers, magistrates, and drillmasters - in a word, the whole corps of man-tamers - find themselves continually baffled by the waywardness of human nature. Efficiency is ever being ripped up by man's inborn restlessness, wanderlust, gregariousness, self-assertiveness, or thirst for excitement. It is these traits that hinder people from living according to some pattern held up to them - the sage's "life of reason," the saint's "godly life." So that all that is authoritative in ourselves or in society has sought to repress the instincts in the interest of rational purpose. (Ross 1920: 605)

Humans would rather pull tricks and make of fun rather than be the efficient, rational computing machines they are required to be by inhuman institutions. How ever inconvenient!

But the husbandman, working with growing things out of doors and in touch with domestic animals, in a glad child of nature compared with the modern factory-worker, feeding metal plates to a punching machine for ten hours a day. (Ross 1920: 606)

Been there, done that. M00.

The professions appeal less to the cave man in us, though, to be sure, the trial lawyer tastes the joy of battle, the preacher may think of himself as wrestling with Satan, while the engineer may delight in besting snowslide or quicksand. If on the whole they are less piquant than business and speculation, the professions offer the excitement of variety and uncertainty, put intermittent strains on the attention, and set problems which stimulate curiosity and the instinct of workmanship. Unlike the maker of the fiftieth part of a pin, the professional man feels the elation that comes from following a job right through to the anticipated end. (Ross 1920: 606)

That is where alienation comes in. A factory worker doesn't produce anything from start to finish, s/he's only responsible for a small part of the line. He bends it, she rivets, but both do the exact same operation all day long and get nothing else out of their work than drudge and near-minimum wage. The instinct of workmanship they apply elsewhere, whether at home or out in the world, where doing a job right means something.

Experienced campers know better than to let a "tenderfoot" party turn it without a camp fire. The brightening of spirits in the circle as the genial blaze gnaws its way out of the heaped wood has its root doubtless in the selection that went on among the earlier generations of our race. Those who did not respond to the fire's charm wandered too far into the dark and were pounced on. We are descended from such as took comffort in fire at night and kept close to the red protector. (Ross 1920: 608)

"When a number of people sit together at a village fire" (PC 1.2). The margin is just the best: "Fire Magic".

Like townspeople, the dwellers on lonely farms suffer from "baulked disposition," but their trouble comes from quite another quarter. In the open country what irks is not so much lack of the stimuli Nature provides as lack of society. Gray days of toil, alone or with grave, still elders, are zestless to the child of a race that went always in bands. The farm youth craves elbow touch, eyebeam, voices, the call of his kind, concerted rhythmic response. After an autumn of hard work amid sere stalks and under leaden skies, his thrills will come, not from "camping out," but from social "bee," dance, charivari, or religious revival. Foot-loose, he will seek the city, bathe himself in throngs, and make up for months of flatness by a prolonged spree in motion-film theaters, vaidevilles, and amusement parks. (Ross 1920: 609)

Good stuff. The margin reads: "What the Farm Youth Misses" - society.

Alcoholism by no means indicates either a physiological demand for stimulant or a specific craving for strong drink. Many hope for relief from the mental depression produced by living against the native grain. What a far cry from the running, striking, throwing, hunting, stalking, and fighting Nature fitted us for to the few endlessly repeated movements of the modern factory [|] operative! The discipline, the monotony, the meaninglessness of one's minute fragment of a task, the dreary surroundings in industrial towns, make life more irksome than ever before it has been for free workers. The series - herdsman, husbandman, craftsman, artisan - constitutes a curve away from the instinctive, which finds its terminus in the machine-tender. (Ross 1920: 609-610)

Alienation meets the stark reality of a factory worker.

Recreation, then, there must be, if people gone stale are not to poison themselves with drugs. But what shall serve for recreation is far from being a private question. Still less can it be left to the conscience of commercial amusement caterers. Because they touch and awaken the instincts, and because the instincts may call out the jungle self, amusements have always given rise to many of the chief ethical problems in society. The experience of civilized peoples with certain sports which rouse the aboriginal instincts of combat make it clear that we have here to do with a very serious matter. (Ross 1920: 610)

Oh god. That "true self". For some reason I'm thinking of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Why do they still make superhero movies where characters punch each other, if not to satisfy the subconscious cravings of the instinct of pugnacity? The feelies in Huxely's BNW comes to mind. Instead of realistic sensory experiences via touch we are presented with monkey-like behaviour disguised as science fiction.

A host of diversions appeal openly or subtly to the primal and masterful mating instinct. Promiscuous erotic dancing, "girl" shows, risqué plays, the nude in art, and the daring in literature allure because they are saturated with sex suggestion. Great cities and old civilizations become corrupt because they so abound in means of titillating desire. The fact that man is the only species possessing arts for whetting sex appetite justifies, in respect to the relations between the sexes, a discipline and a surveillance to which no other creature needs submit. No doubt if amusement caterers were given a perfectly free course - no check from police or public opinion, from current standards of decency, or from the steadying influence of elders - sensuality would be excited to such a pitch that marriage and home would be broken down and race continuance imperiled. (Ross 1920: 613)

Ross seems to agree with Fourier, that if there were regular, public, organized orgies then marriage would be done away with. Why bring the cow home when there's a whole herd waiting to be milked?

As the practice of tax-dodging becomes known, a resentment is inspired which promts other persons to evade their taxes. This in turn becoming known creates still wider zones of resentment and evasion, until finally only moral heroes declare all their taxable property. The experience of several American states shows that in from five to eight years a stiffening of the tax laws designed to bring to light more personal property runs through such a cycle of demoralization ending in a state of things as bad as ever. (Ross 1920: 634)

One can only imagine how resentful might be the American who knows that one of the largest companies in the country (Amazon) pays 0 taxes, and the "millionaire" real-estate mogul president pays $750 a year.

One important factor in the upbuilding of England's Indian empire has been adherence to the policy of truth-telling on the part of the English administrators. The result is that Indian leaders and statesmen accept official statements at par value and rely serenely upon the fulfilment of England's promises. (Ross 1920: 636)

On face value.

The giving of tips to waiters, after it has become general and customary, is of no benefit to them. The starvation wage received by porters in "standard" sleeping-cars in comparison with those of "tourist" sleeping-cars proves that the generosity of the traveling public has been anticipated and capitalized by their employer, the sleeping-car company. (Ross 1920: 641)

It is truly amazing that this still persists in America.

The "tricks of the trade," business "shrewdness," lying by advertisement, newspaper prevarication, the wiles of the bar and the ruses of diplomacy are serious enough in their way, but they do not greatly hamper the honest functional people who are striving to render genuine service. What most hurts them is the tendency of the unworthy to simulate every type of trait which has won social approval, in order to steal prestige from it. This taking on the popular hue is like that coloration and mimicry one finds among the lower forms of life, save that it is acquisitive rather than protective. The simulator usually aims to traffic on the prestige he filches from the simulated. (Ross 1920: 653)

It looks like this might be connected with the ordeal with "boasting", which is a kind of simulation.

How a monarch who had become "the fountain of hnor" was able to trade upon the passion of his ambitious subjects to share in the prestige of the feudal nobility is indicated in one of the Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes:

The King of France is the most powerful prince in Europe. He has no gold mines, like his neighbour the King of Spain - but he has greater riches than he, because he draws them from the vanity of his subjects, more inexhaustible than any mine. He has undertaken and maintained great wars, having no other funds than titles of honour for sale, and by a prodigy of human vanity and pride, his troops are paid, his places filled, and his fleets equipped.

From the courtier example there spread quickly through society a deceptive glaze of manner. In one of his sermons Bosuet declares:

Never have people lived so much on caresses, on kisses, on words chosen to bear witness to a perfect cordiality, yet if we could pierce to the bottom of all hearts, if a divine light could disclose suddenly all that conventionality and good taste, interest and fear hold so well hidden, then what a strange spectacle!

(Ross 1920: 654)

Related to the ambition, vanity, passion for power and wealth. Honour and pride are related concepts. Conventionality and manner, in a sense, hide these self-regarding sentiments. Margin reads "Deceptive Courtesy".

Hence, when he has a hard case, he hides himself in a maze of technical minutiae or a cloud of big words which can only mystify and befog the court. (Ross 1920: 655)

Vague uncharted nebulae.

Once power has passed from classes to masses, there springs up the professional politician, a man unembarrassed by princilpes, loyalty, or public spirit, whose sole and abiding concern is the gaining and keeping of office. In a way he is the modern courier. [...] A thousand times the political conservatives have thus exposed him without persuading the people to return to class government. They remember that the governing class cost them quite as much as the politicians and insulted them in the bargain. In order to maintain himself the politician must be able to drive off the field the real leaders, the men of positive character and conviction, who have gained popular support for their ideas. This he does by impudently outbidding them at every point. His patriotism is loftier, his rhetoric more glowing, his promises more bazzling. Beside him the truth-teller who makes no mealy-mouthed professions, nor promises more than he can perform, seems halting and timid. (Ross 1920: 658)

Joe Biden. He didn't even outbid Bernie Sanders. He had the support of the establishment behind him. Even Barack Obama threw his weight in to sway the democratic nomitation from Sanders, who had popular support for his ideas. Now the nominee is Biden, who has no ideas to speak of, and a long history of bad policies, including civil forfeiture. I recently learned that in Estonian there's a special word for the professional politician, politikaan (cf. Tarvel 1989: 23), which can be translated as political leach.

A new departure in art or literature has scarcely won recognition ere its originators are trodden under by the rush of charlatans and notoriety-seekers who convert the thing into a caricature of itself. Dissect symbolism, cubism, or futurism in their heyday and how small the core of sincerity! One reason why "the new broom sweeps clean," "what is new is always fine," is that the new, lacking prestige, suffers little from the presence of impostors. The young political party, the religious order in the flush of youth, the new religious movement, the developing branch of knowledge, the literary departure not yet recognized, the experiment in philanthropy, the new-born public service such as sanitation or forestry, is likely to be in the hands of the sincere. Therefore it may do better and reach higher than later, after its success has attracted to it sycophants and charlatans. (Ross 1920: 660)

The stuff of center and periphery in literary semiotics. New departures taking place in the periphery gain in popularity and move to the center, where it loses its sincerity and becomes a thing to be merely imitated.

Groups and interests wear masks as well as individuals. Freedom being dear to man, selfish interests use it as a stalking-horse [|] - leagues for "medical freedom," "industrial freedom," "free Canal," "freedom of the seas," etc. "Personal liberty" is a fig leaf for the liquor traffic. Rich men unite to fight socialistic measures under the name of "Liberty and Property Defense League." But their concern for liberty is a tittle compared with their concern for property. A movement for the defense of the family turns out to be a mask for brewers fighting equal suffrage. (Ross 1920: 660-661)

How little changes in a hundred years! Modern defenders of "family values" is likewise the camp of sexists and homophobes. It is odd that those who defend the family should be so much filled with hate.

From the humbler classes proceed impostors in quest of gain; from the higher classes impostors in quest of respectability, dignity, reputation, honors, or public office. (Ross 1920: 661)

By this token, it should be the highest "educated classes" whose speech is full of boasting and self-enhancement.

The timely recognition of merit may be as serviceable to society as the prompt elimination of the fraud. A university or a scientific institution ought to function as a testing laboratory, its degrees and appointments as certificates of purity of scholarship. To waive aside diplomas and degrees as "toys for the babyhood of science" is to overlook their value in protecting the public against mountebanks possessing the phrases and trappings of learning but not its substance. A learned society with its honors and medals and programs may render a like service. (Ross 1920: 663)

What is the substance of learning?

Hence the photo-plays fall into well-marked types - the Far West play, the ante-bellum Old South play, the detective play, the drama of the big-city underworld, the historical pageant type, the play with the child-woman heroine, etc. Who can detect in these productions the personality of the maker? Yet that personality gives the stamp of true art. No wonder they all die a natural death in a few months! (Ross 1920: 666)

Pretty much what film critics talk about today, too. Marvel and Star Wars movies have become committee products with no discernible personality, and a few months, if even that, after they've been released no-one remembers them. Thanks, Disney!

The dead count as a social element, for their recorded experience and transmitted institutions may be stalwart factors in the life of their descendants. When the living acknowledge an initial [|] presumption in favor of whatever has survived from teh past, yet preserve toward it a scritinizing critical attitude, the generations are in proper balance. But when present reason is held weaker than that of some golden or classical age so that the living are powerless to free themselves from the yoke of the past, we have the rule of the dead. (Ross 1920: 674-675)

Tradition is peer pressure from the dead.

The embryo Pasteur or Edison was so intimidated by the universal opinion that wisdom died with the sages that he could bring forth nothing. Thus the social atmosphere lost the stimulating ozone it had in the old inspired days when the Chinese invented gunpowder, block-printing, banknotes, porcelain, the compass, the compartment boat and the taxicab. (Ross 1920: 675)

An interesting addition to the "social atmosphere" figure.

The subjection of the living to the dead flouts the law that life is correspondence to environment. Hence, the stiffening of traditions and institutions is a kind of rigor mortis. The idea that sages should mark a groove for society for all time trips on the fact that society ceaselessly changes. Finding itself in a plight unforeseen by its ancestors, a people casts about for an adjustment. Conservatives, who brand this quest as folly or sacrilege, deny society the sacred right of self-determination. (Ross 1920: 676)

It really shows that Ross was a progressive. There have been so many fragments in this book to build a pretty coherent case against conservatism. Too bad his Wikipedia page tells of racism and modern (American) progressives wouldn't touch him.

Male irrationality comes out again in the needless taking of chances. Human reason labors continually to eliminate hazard, and all insurance rests on the reasonable desire to substitute certainty for risk. Yet men who sweat for their money will gamble away their week's wage in an evening. No one, however, has ever seen working women regularly risk their wages on a card. Women have an instinct for security and strive to lessen lisk, while men fatuously create it. In gold-mining camps recklessness is habitual, and to save himself a little trouble in handling explosives and timbering shafts the miner endangers the life he is toiling to enrich. After the arrival of wives men gain a rational view and learn to shun needless dangers. (Ross 1920: 677)

Toxic masculinity. The previous paragraph was about how "Militarized Business", how "many disinterested men feel that stopping the sale of diseased meat or "doctored" cannod goods is unfair interference, like depriving prize fighters of their best blows and ruses" (ibid, 677), in other words, toxicity caused by masculinity.

The boy's upbringing is not shaped to please the other sex, but everything in the upbringing of the girl - her foot binding, "tottering lily" gait, hairdressing, skill in embroidery, innocence, ignorance, obedience - is obviously a catering to the male. (Ross 1920: 679)

A triad? (1) Innocense; (2) obedience; and (3) ignorance.

They teach that it is dangerous to speak disrespectfully of a clergyman, to fail to salute him in passing, to cross him, or to sue him at law. The lives of eminent preachers written by their professional brethren abound in edifying stories designed to the end that clergyman be regarded with fear and awe. (Ross 1920: 682)

Neat.

His ideal is high wages, big salaries, and fat dividends, so that whatever stands in the way of maximizing these "hurts business" and is anathema. He cannot see that there are business profits which cost some of us ten times their worth in salubrity, or quiet, or peace of mind. Such a man is tender with poisonous smelter fumes, grade crossings, [|] factory smoke, and noisy advertising, because he can realize the money cost of suppressing them, but not the harm which they do. So long as business men of this limited vision lay their spell upon the public mind, "success" means the same as "business success" - that is, making money. A candidate's trump card is the promise of a "business" administration. (Ross 1920: 685-686)

Donald Trump nearly epitomizes "The Bias of the Business Mind", with the exception that he doesn't care for the high wages of workers, as is illustrated by him frequently not paying his. His is not a "Business Mind" but a Huckster Mind. See the word "trumpery".

A school board must be a "business" board, scholars should be picked and officered by a business man as university president, and the ultimate control of churches, colleges, and charities is left to the solid men of business whose money makes these possible. (Ross 1920: 686)

The post office is losing money!

The great contribution of this profession is their appreciation of the vast importance of definite, known, and enforcible rights in the economic development of society. (Ross 1920: 688)

Almost a sensible triad: (1) definite; (2) enforcible; and (3) known.

As corrective of unwholesome social tendencies the leadership of those who do not have to work for a living may be most salutary. This class may temper male ascendancy by diffusing that idealization of woman which grew up with mediaeval chivalry and gave birth to "lady" worship. Its love of pleasure may serve to counteract the morbid asceticism and "other-worldliness" which sometimes radiates from the clergy. Taking the enjoyer's point of view rather than the trader's, this class may check commercialism by insisting on valuing a thing or an activity by what it can add to life and not by what it will fetch. (Ross 1920: 688)

The only problem here is the word "class", as if leisure was reserved only to those at the very top of society. The utopian ideal - fully automated gay luxury communism or whatever - would automate every field of labour to such an extent that all humans will be without the necessity to work, and would instead enjoy leisure and fulfil their instinct of workmanship by producing quality stuffs for the love of it.