BOOK II

THE FORCES SHAPING SOCIETY

PART IV-SOCIETY AND ITS CULTURAL

HERITAGE

BY

MALCOLM M. WILLEY

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

CHAPTER I

ORDERLINESS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR

1. Our Modern Tendency to Stress the Unusual. The twentieth century is often referred to in more or less seriousness as the "jazz age." By this it is usually implied that things and individuals are moving fast, that changes are rapid, that extraordinary movements are dominating, and that nervous energy is being expended in enterprises that are unreasoned and planless. The unusual seems to be prevailing, and what the next day may bring forth appears often as a matter of guess or speculation. It is the unique that is uppermost. Nothing seems dependable.

This tendency to think of social and individual behavior in terms of the unusual is nowhere better reflected than in the modern newspaper. Here are stressed those things that are different while the expected events and the routine happenings find little or no place. News is now defined as something out of the ordinary. Thus we find one of the largest daily papers in New England, in its instruction book to its reporters, stating this principle:

The Telegram wants immediate news of murders, suicides, fires, explosions, robberies, railway wrecks, shootings, stabbings, drownings, poisoning cases, epidemics, quarantine for contagious disease, arrest or pursuit of offenders on serious charges, absconding officials, increase or reduction in wages, strikes, riots, violent storms, floods, serious injury to people, deaths, marriages, results of sporting events, resignations of town officials, resignations of pastors, elections of new town officials or pastors, town meetings, big business transfers, important building or industrial enterprises, and all unusual happenings. The UNUSUAL counts in getting news. . . . Always watch out for the UNUSUAL.

Small wonder, then, that with newspapers built upon this conception and with countless other stimulations of a similar sort impinging on us constantly that most of us tend to minimize the normal events of daily life, and to overlook the great regularities that actually underlie most of the things that we do in the extended course of our lives.

2. The Actual Order in Modern Society. It is the overlooked regularities in social life, however, that, from the point of view of understanding group behavior, are most important. From the standpoint of social organization it is the habitual things that are most fundamental. And, surprising as it may seem at first thought, it is habitual and regular activity that dominates the lives of all individuals. It is out of this regular and habitual activity that social order develops. It is only by careful scrutiny that we can see how much of our daily activity is, after all, prescribed for us, and how little represents our own volition. Let us attempt this scrutiny for a moment and only in sufficient detail to demonstrate the point.

Within an hour of seven o'clock in the morning most of us rise. Our first step is to perform a fairly elaborate toilet. The entire body, or at least certain parts of it, is washed. If we are men the face is shaved, for hair upon the chin and cheeks is not generally acceptable. We dress: for men and women each a standard type of garment, pressed and folded in the latest fashion. From season to season this may differ, but always we attempt to change in conformity with thousands of others who are like ourselves.

Dressed, we descend to breakfast, where the ubiquitous morning paper greets us. Our food is of a standard type, served in a standard order, prepared in a standard way. Never does a soup or roast appear upon our table for this meal; never do we have dessert. There is a formula to which we rigidly conform, unquestioning, unthinking a series of breakfast habits that has us in its grip.

We start to our school, or our work. If it is winter we put on our felt hats and topcoats, all of a kind; if it is summer, a straw hat is enough. Perchance it rains, rubbers, umbrellas, or the slicker appear, and we move about dry shod. As we begin the day we meet our friends, and greet them with the same familiar salutations. To a lady we doff our hat. Three hours of work, and then we stop. Lunch follows. Here a different combination of foods, served in a different manner and prepared in another way is upon the table. This time there is no cereal, no toast, and we take the coffee at the end. Back once more to school or work,

A few more hours and the day is done. Home again. Dinner. Again a different set of foods for us, served in regular order, eaten in a different way with certain definite table implements, following definite customs. Friday-that means fish. Saturday night in New England that means baked beans. Roast pork-please pass the

apple sauce. The formula we found at breakfast still applies, worked out in different detail for each meal. Why do we not sometimes begin with nuts, and end with soup? Or serve roasts at breakfast, and cornflakes in the evening?

Day in, day out, week by week, month by month, and year by year, our lives run the accustomed course prescribed by our social groups. Customs of education, customs of business, our part as citizens and voters, our family customs, religious customs, our social customs, our play customs, and many others to all of these we conform in a manner identical with our adherence to the food customs. Nowhere are things haphazard; the procedure in courting a member of the opposite sex is prescribed by rules and customs as invariable as the rules that cause certain foods to be served at certain times, or definite clothes worn for various occasions. Every aspect of life, from morning until night, and from the ceremonies of birth. to those of the funeral, is dominated by a formula of behavior that exacts compliance from us all.1 These ways of doing things are not altogether our own; they were not initiated by us; they are group ways that we have acquired.

This somewhat detailed though sketchy description of certain obvious behavior should serve to show that the characteristic thing about human behavior is not sporadicity, but orderliness. The thoughts we think, the things we do, and the things we employ in doing them, are not left to us to develop at the moment according to our own whims or inclinations, but, for the most part, are given to us ready made; we absorb them. The result is the great preponderance of habitual or conformitory performance over unique or individualistic behavior. This does not mean, as we shall see, that social behavior is a thing of drab uniformity; it does mean, that it is a thing within which orderliness prevails.

Orderliness in social behavior is a characteristic that is universal. It is found among the most primitive of societies as well as in the most advanced. Nothing could be further from the truth than the conception held by many people of primitive men as naked savages, running wild in forests, scalping each other at will, each man being a

1 It must not, of course, be thought that every member of society has precisely the same customs. The formula of behavior does vary from class to class, and from group to group. The essential point is that every individual is a member of some class and group, and as such is subject to the customs of behavior of such class and group.