At the best no society has ever succeeded in regulating the behavior of all its members satisfactorily all the time. There are crimes of passion, of avarice, of revenge, even in face-to-face communities where the control is most perfect. In the Hebrew code there were ten offenses for which the punishment was death by stoning. One of the examples cited above from the Russian mir was concerned with horse stealing. And the sexual passions have never been completely contained within the framework of marriage. But communities have been so powerful that all members have acknowledged the code and have been ready to repent and be forgiven. And forgiveness has been one of the functions of the community, sometimes more particularly the function of the God of the community. A dying reprobate (the anecdote is attached to Rabelais) has been represented as saying, “Dieu me pardonnera. C’est son métier.” The community usually wishes to forgive and restore the offending member. It wants no breach in its solidarity and morale. And as long as the offender wishes to be forgiven and restored the code is working. The code is failing only if the sinner does not recognize it and does not repent. And when crime and prostitution appear as professions they are the last and most radical expressions of loss of family and community organization.
CHAPTER III
THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF BEHAVIOR
From the foregoing it appears that the face-to-face group (family-community) is a powerful habit-forming mechanism. The group has to provide a system of behavior for many persons at once, a code which applies to everybody and lasts longer than any individual or generation. Consequently the group has two interests in the individual,—to suppress wishes and activities which are in conflict with the existing organization, or which seem the starting point of social disharmony, and to encourage wishes and actions which are required by the existing social system. And if the group performs this task successfully, as it does among savages, among Mohammedans, and as it did until recently among European peasants, no appreciable change in the moral code or in the state of culture is observable from generation to generation. In small and isolated communities there is little tendency to change or progress because the new experience of the individual is sacrificed for the sake of the security of the group.
But by a process, an evolution, connected with mechanical inventions, facilitated communication, the diffusion of print, the growth of cities, business organization, the capitalistic system, specialized occupations, scientific research, doctrines of freedom, the evolutionary view of life, etc., the family and community influences have been weakened and the world in general has been profoundly changed in content, ideals, and organization.
Young people leave home for larger opportunities, to seek new experience, and from necessity. Detachment from family and community, wandering, travel, “vagabondage” have assumed the character of normality. Relationships are casualized and specialized. Men meet professionally, as promoters of enterprises, not as members of families, communities, churches. Girls leave home to work in factories, stores, offices, and studios. Even when families are not separated they leave home for their work.
Every new invention, every chance acquaintanceship, every new environment, has the possibility of redefining the situation and of introducing change, disorganization or different type of organization into the life of the individual or even of the whole world. Thus, the invention of the check led to forgery; the sulphur match to arson; at present the automobile is perhaps connected with more seductions than happen otherwise in cities altogether; an assassination precipitated the World War; motion pictures and the Saturday Evening Post have stabilized and unstabilized many existences, considered merely as opportunity for new types of career. The costly and luxurious articles of women’s wear organize the lives of many girls (as designers, artists, and buyers) and disorganize the lives of many who crave these pretty things.
In the small and spatially isolated communities of the past, where the influences were strong and steady, the members became more or less habituated to and reconciled with a life of repressed wishes. The repression was demanded of all, the arrangement was equitable, and while certain new experiences were prohibited, and pleasure not countenanced as an end in itself, there remained satisfactions, not the least of which was the suppression of the wishes of others. On the other hand the modern world presents itself as a spectacle in which the observer is never sufficiently participating. The modern revolt and unrest are due to the contrast between the paucity of fulfillment of the wishes of the individual and the fullness, or apparent fullness, of life around him. All age levels have been affected by the feeling that much, too much, is being missed in life. This unrest is felt most by those who have heretofore been most excluded from general participation in life,—the mature woman and the young girl. Sometimes it expresses itself in despair and depression, sometimes in breaking all bounds. Immigrants form a particular class in this respect. They sometimes repudiate the old system completely in their haste to get into the new. There are cases where the behavior of immigrants, expressing natural but random and unregulated impulses, has been called insane by our courts.
Case No. 37 represents despair, case No. 38 revolt, Nos. 39 and 40 extraordinarily wild behavior.
37. There is a saying about the peacock, “When she looks at her feathers she laughs, and when she looks at her feet she cries.” I am in the same situation.
My husband’s career, upon which I spent the best years of my life, is established favorably; our children are a joy to me as a mother; nor can I complain about our material circumstances. But I am dissatisfied with myself. My love for my children, be it ever so great, cannot destroy myself. A human being is not created like a bee which dies after accomplishing its only task.