Reviews for The Importance of Civility

The average rating for The Importance of Civility based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-08 00:00:00 GIAMPAOLO ZANON I found this to be a non-inspiring book that is more about basic social interactions, with a focus on the reduction of victimization that about civility.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-08-05 00:00:00 Joseph Penski Folkways A study of the Sociological importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals Sumner was professor of political and societal science during the early 1900. This book was his attempt to introduce his own treatment of the mores. Written in truthfulness and directed by a clear vision of mind the book offers interesting insights to the motivated reader. Folkways is written as a treatise, it holds 728 sections ordered in 20 chapters. page I. Fundamental notions of the folkways and of the mores 1 II. Characteristics of the mores 75 III. The struggle for existence 119 IV. Labor, wealth 158 V. Societal selection 173 VI. Slavery 261 VII. Abortion, infanticide, killing the old 308 VIII. Cannibalism 329 IX. Sex mores 342 X. The marriage institution 395 XI. The social codes 417 XII. Incest 479 XIII. Kinship, blood revenge, primitive justice, peace unions 493 XIV. Uncleanness and the evil eye 509 XV. The mores can make anything right and prevent condemnation of anything 521 XVI. Sacral harlotry, child sacrifice 533 XVII. popular sports, exhibitions, drama 560 XVIII. Asceticism 605 XIX. Education, history 628 XX. Life policy, virtue vs. success 639 A few thoughts from the book. (sec. 24 suggestion ; suggestibility) What has been called the psychology of crowds consists of certain phenomena of suggestion. A number of persons assembled together, especially if they are enthused by the same sentiment or stimulated by the same interest, transmit impulses to each other with the result that all the impulses are increased in a very high ratio. In other words, it is an undisputed fact that all mental states and emotions are greatly increased in force by tansmission from man to man, especially if they are attented by a sense of the concurrence and cooperation of a great number who have a common sentiment or interest. ¨The element of psychic coercion to which our thought process is subject is the characteristic of the operations which we call suggestive.¨ There is a thrill of enthusiasm in the sense of moving with a great number. There is no deliberation or reason. Therefore a crowd may do things which are either better or worse that what individuals in it would do. The crowd has no greater guarentee of wisdom then an individual would have. In fact, the participants in a crowd almost always throw away all the powers of wise judgement which have been acquired by education, and submit to the control of enthusiasm, passion, or animal impulse. A crowd always has a common stock of faiths, prejudices, loves and hates, and pet notions. The common stock is acted on by the same stimuli, in all the persons, at the same time. ¨Suggestibility is the natural faculty of the brain to admit to any ideas whatsoever, without motive, to assimilate them, and eventually to transform them rapidly into movements, sensations, and inhibitions.¨ (sec. 34 Definition of the mores) When the elements of truth and right are developed into doctrines of welware, the folkways are raised to another plane. They then become capable of producing inferences, developing into new forms, and extending their constructive influence over men and society. then we call them the mores. The mores are the folkways, including the philosophical and ethical generalizations as to societal welware which are suggested by them, and inherent in them, as they grow. (sec. 55 Organization of the masses) Masses of men who are on a substantial equality with each other never can be anything but hopeless savages. The eighteenth- century notion that men in a state of nature were all equal is wrong-side up. Men who were equal would be in a state of nature such as was imagined. (sec. 59 Agitation) Every impulse given to the masses is, in its nature, spasmodic and transitory. No systematic enterprise to enlighten the masses ever can be carried out. Campaigns of education contain a fallacy. Education takes time. It follows that popular agitation is a desperate and doubtful method. The masses, as the great popular jury which, at last, by adoption or rejection, decides the fate of all proposed changes in the mores, needs stability and moderation. Popular agitation introduces into the masses initiative and creative functions which destroy its judgement and call for quite other qualities. (sec. 70 Group interests and folkways) *Since the group interests override the individual interests, the selection and determination of group purposes is a function of the greatest importance and an act of the greatest effect on individual welfare. The interests of the society or nation furnish an easy phrase, but such phrases are to be regarded with suspicion. Such interests are apt to be interests of a ruling clique which the rest are to be compelled to serve. On the other hand, a really great and intelligent group purpose, founded on correct knowledge and really sound judgement, can infuse into the mores a vigor and consistent character which will reach every individual with educative effect. The essential condition is that the group purpose shall be ¨founded on correct knowledge and really sound judgement.¨ The interests must be real, and they must be interests of the whole, and the judgement as to means of satisfying them must be correct. (sec. 72 Might and right) Nothing but might has ever made right, and if we include in might (as we ought to) elections and the decisions of courts, nothing but might makes right now. We must distinguish between the anterior and the posterior view of the matter in question. If we are about to take some action, and are debating the right of it, the might which can be brought to support one view of it has nothing to do with the right of it. If a thing has been done and is established by force (that is, no force can reverse it), it is right in the only sense we know, and rights will follow from it which are not vitiated at all by the force in it. There would be no security at all for rights if this were not so. we find men and parties protesting, declaiming, complaining of what is done, and which they say is not ¨right,¨ but only force. An election decides that those shall have power who will execute an act of policy. The defeated party denounces the wrong and wicked of the act. It is done. The whole history of mankind is a series of acts which are open to doubt, dispute, and criticism, as to their right and justice, but all subsequent history has been forced to take up the consequences of those acts and go on. The disputents about ¨rights¨ often lose sight of the fact that the world has to go on day by day and dispute must end. It always ends in force. The end always leaves some complaining in terms of right and rights. They are overborne by force of some kind. Therefore might has made all the right which ever has existed or exists now. If it is proposed to reverse, reform, or change anything which ever was done because we now think that it was wrong, that is a new question and a new case, in which the anterior view alone is in place. It is for the new and future cases that we study historical cases and form judgements on them which will enable us to act more wisely. If we recognize the great extent to which force now enters into all which happens in society, we shall cease to be shocked to learn the extent to which it has been active in the entire history of civilization. The habit of using jural concepts, which is now so characteristic of our mores, leads us into vague and impossible dreams of social affairs, in which metaphysical concepts are supposed to realize themselves, or are assumed to be real. (sec. 167 Ruling classes. Special priviledges. Corruption of the mores.) In every societal system or order there must be a ruling class or classes; in other words, a class gets control of any society and determines its political form or system. The ruling class, therefore, has the power. Will it not use the power to divert social effort to its own service and gain? It must be expected to do so, unless it is checked by institutions which call into action opposing interests and forces. There is no class which can be trusted to rule society with due justice to all, not abusing its power for its own interest. The ruling classes in mediaevel society were warriors and ecclesiastics, and they used all their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of other classes. Modern society is ruled by means of the middle class. In honor of the bourgeoisie it must be said that they have invented institutions of civil liberty which ¨secure¨ to all safety of person and property. (sec. 507) Rudeck´s book is really a chapter in the history of the mores. The above are the conclusions which seem to be forced upon him, but he recoils from them in dismay. The conclusions are unquestionably correct. They are exactly what history teaches. They ought to be accepted and used for profit. The fact that people are indifferent to the history of their own mores is a primary fact. We can only accept it and learn from it. It shows us the immense error of that current social discussion which consists in bringing ¨ethical¨ notions to the criticism of facts. The ethical notions are figments of speculation. Criticism of the mores is like criticising one´s ancestors for the physique one has inherited, or one´s children for being, in body and mind, one´s children. ¨Existing morality does present itself as a purely accidental product of the forces which act without sense or intelligence,¨ but the product is in no true sense accidental. It is true that there are no ethical forces in history. *Let us recognize the facts and the consequences. Some philosophers make great efforts to interpret ethical forces into history, but they play with words. There is no development of the mores along any lines of logical or other sequence. The mores shift in endless readjustment of the modes of behavior, effort, and thinking, so as to reach the greatest advantage under the conditions. ¨the people allow all kinds of mores to be forced on them by work of their own hands,¨ that is, by the economic and political arrangements which have been unconsciously forced on them by their instinctive efforts to live well. That is just what they do, and that is the way in which mores come to be. (sec. 531 Human self-selection by taboo and other-worldliness) Laws against incest and all caste rules which arbitrarily limit the number of persons whom a given individual may marry may be ragarded as blind attempts of mankind to practice some kind of self-selection. Sex selection inside the human race is the highest requirement which life now addresses to man as an intelligent being, and the very highest result which our science could produce would be to give us trustworthy guidance in a policy of sex selection. The law of incest was an instinctive effort in the same direction. The problem is the same now as it always has been,- to refine and correct the standards and to determine their relative importance. (sec. 536 Family education) No doubt the folkways about kinship are produced in connection with views about interests, and in connection with views about procreation, and impressions produced by experience. The mother and children live in constant contact and intimacy. The family grows into an institution which takes its nature from the tradtional and habitual behavior of its members to each in daily life. Use and wont have here a great field for their constructive operation. Each family (mother and children) is independent and makes its own world, in which nearly all its interests are enfolded. There are constantly recurring occasions for acts of a reciprocal character, and such acts especially build up institutions. The family is also an arena in which sympathies are cultivated, which does not mean that they are always nourished and developed. Habits are formed and discipline is enforced. Rules are accepted from custom and enforced by authority and force. Rights and duties are enforced as facts long before they are apprehended as concepts. (sec. 670 Amusement need the control of educated judgment and will) The history shows that amusements are a pitfall in which good mores may be lost and evil ones produced. They require conventional control and good judgment to guide them. This requirement cannot be set aside. Amusements always present a necessity for moral education and moral will. This fact has impressed itself on men in all ages, and all religions have produced Puritan and ascetic sects who sought welfare, not in satisfying but in counteracting the desire for amusement and pleasure. their efforts have proved that there is no solution in that direction. There must be an educated judgment at work all the time, and it must form correct judgments to be made real by a cultivated will, or the whole societal interest may be lost without the evil tendency being perceived.