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The Need To Exert Power, When Thwarted In The Open Fields Of Life, Is The More Likely To Assert Itself In Trifles.

-Charles Horton Cooley

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The Need To Exert

Charles Horton Cooley

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The Need To Exert Power, When Thwarted In The Open Fields Of Life, Is The More Likely To Assert Itself In Trifles.

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There Is Perhaps No Sort Of Self More Subject To Dangerous Egotism Than That Which Deludes Itself With The Notion That It Is Not A Self At All, But Something Else. It Is Well To Beware Of Persons Who Believe That The Cause, The Mission, The Philanthropy, The Hero, Or Whatever It May Be That They Strive For, Is Outside Of Themselves, So That They Feel A Certain Irresponsibility, And Are Likely To Do Things Which They Would Recognize As Wrong If Done In Behalf Of An Acknowledged Self.

Institutions - Government, Churches, Industries, And The Like - Have Properly No Other Function Than To Contribute To Human Freedom; And In So Far As They Fail, On The Whole, To Perform This Function, They Are Wrong And Need Reconstruction.

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The Idealist's Program Of Political Or Economic Reform May Be Impracticable, Absurd, Demonstrably Ridiculous; But It Can Never Be Successfully Opposed Merely By Pointing Out That This Is The Case. A Negative Opposition Cannot Be Wholly Effectual: There Must Be A Competing Idealism; Something Must Be Offered That Is Not Only Less Objectionable But More Desirable.

A Man May Lack Everything But Tact And Conviction And Still Be A Forcible Speaker; But Without These Nothing Will Avail... Fluency, Grace, Logical Order, And The Like, Are Merely The Decorative Surface Of Oratory.

To Get Away From One's Working Environment Is, In A Sense, To Get Away From One's Self; And This Is Often The Chief Advantage Of Travel And Change.

If The Man Succeeds In Becoming Indifferent To The Opinions Of His Neighbors He Runs Into Another Danger, That Of A Distorted And Extravagant Self Of The Pride Sort, Since By The Very Process Of Gaining Independence And Immunity From The Stings Of Depreciation And Misunderstanding, He Has Perhaps Lost That Wholesome Deference To Some Social Tribunal That A Man Cannot Dispense With And Remain Quite Sane.

One Of The Great Reasons For The Popularity Of Strikes Is That They Give The Suppressed Self A Sense Of Power. For Once The Human Tool Knows Itself A Man, Able To Stand Up And Speak A Word Or Strike A Blow.

The Most Effective Way Of Utilizing Human Energy Is Through An Organized Rivalry, Which By Specialization And Social Control Is, At The Same Time, Organized Co-operation.

When One Has Come To Accept A Certain Course As Duty He Has A Pleasant Sense Of Relief And Of Lifted Responsibility, Even If The Course Involves Pain And Renunciation. It Is Like Obedience To Some External Authority; Any Clear Way, Though It Lead To Death, Is Mentally Preferable To The Tangle Of Uncertainty.

To Cease To Admire Is A Proof Of Deterioration.

To Have No Heroes Is To Have No Aspiration, To Live On The Momentum Of The Past, To Be Thrown Back Upon Routine, Sensuality, And The Narrow Self.

The Literature Of The Inner Life Is Very Largely A Record Of Struggle With The Inordinate Passions Of The Social Self.

The Idea That Seeing Life Means Going From Place To Place And Doing A Great Variety Of Obvious Things Is An Illusion Natural To Dull Minds.

Selfishness Of The Stable Or Rigid Sort Is As A Rule More Bitterly Resented Than The More Fickle Variety, Chiefly, No Doubt, Because, Having More Continuity And Purpose, It Is More Formidable.

If Youth Is The Period Of Hero-worship, So Also Is It True That Hero-worship, More Than Anything Else, Perhaps, Gives One The Sense Of Youth. To Admire, To Expand One's Self, To Forget The Rut, To Have A Sense Of Newness And Life And Hope, Is To Feel Young At Any Time Of Life.

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The Mind Is Not A Hermit's Cell, But A Place Of Hospitality And Intercourse.

Faith In Our Associates Is Part Of Our Faith In God.

As Social Beings We Live With Our Eyes Upon Our Reflection, But Have No Assurance Of The Tranquillity Of The Waters In Which We See It.

There Is Hardly Any One So Insignificant That He Does Not Seem Imposing To Some One At Some Time.

The Need To Exert Power, When Thwarted In The Open Fields Of Life, Is The More Likely To Assert Itself In Trifles.

The Social Self Is Simply Any Idea, Or System Of Ideas, Drawn From The Communicative Life, That The Mind Cherishes As Its Own.

If We Divine A Discrepancy Between A Man's Words And His Character, The Whole Impression Of Him Becomes Broken And Painful; He Revolts The Imagination By His Lack Of Unity, And Even The Good In Him Is Hardly Accepted.

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If Love Closes, The Self Contracts And Hardens: The Mind Having Nothing Else To Occupy Its Attention And Give It That Change And Renewal It Requires, Busies Itself More And More With Self-feeling, Which Takes On Narrow And Disgusting Forms, Like Avarice, Arrogance And Fatuity.

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Presence Of Mind

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The Thing That Moves Us To Pride Or Shame Is Not The Mere Mechanical Reflection Of Ourselves But The Imagined Effect Of This Reflection Upon Another's Mind.

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It Is Surely A Matter Of Common Observation That A Man Who Knows No One Thing Intimately Has No Views Worth Hearing On Things In General.

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To Persuade Is More Trouble Than To Dominate, And The Powerful Seldom Take This Trouble If They Can Avoid It.

So Far As Discipline Is Concerned, Freedom Means Not Its Absence But The Use Of Higher And More Rational Forms As Contrasted With Those That Are Lower Or Less Rational.

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A Person Of Mature Years And Ripe Development, Who Is Expecting Nothing From Literature But The Corroboration And Renewal Of Past Ideas, May Find Satisfaction In A Lucidity So Complete As To Occasion No Imaginative Excitement, But Young And Ambitious Students Are Not Content With It. They Seek The Excitement Because They Are Capable Of The Growth That It Accompanies.

No Matter What A Man Does, He Is Not Fully Sane Or Human Unless There Is A Spirit Of Freedom In Him, A Soul Unconfined By Purpose And Larger Than The Practicable World.

A Person Of Definite Character And Purpose Who Comprehends Our Way Of Thought Is Sure To Exert Power Over Us. He Cannot Altogether Be Resisted; Because, If He Understands Us, He Can Make Us Understand Him, Through The Word, The Look, Or Other Symbol.

The Passion Of Self-aggrandizement Is Persistent But Plastic; It Will Never Disappear From A Vigorous Mind, But May Become Morally Higher By Attaching Itself To A Larger Conception Of What Constitutes The Self.

Freedom Is The Opportunity For Right Development, For Development In Accordance With The Progressive Ideal Of Life That We Have In Conscience.

The Human Mind Is Indeed A Cave Swarming With Strange Forms Of Life, Most Of Them Unconscious And Unilluminated. Unless We Can Understand Something As To How The Motives That Issue From This Obscurity Are Generated, We Can Hardly Hope To Foresee Or Control Them.

Each Man Must Have His I; It Is More Necessary To Him Than Bread; And If He Does Not Find Scope For It Within The Existing Institutions He Will Be Likely To Make Trouble.

Every General Increase Of Freedom Is Accompanied By Some Degeneracy, Attributable To The Same Causes As The Freedom.

It Happens From Time To Time In Every Complex And Active Society, That Certain Persons Feel The Complexity And Insistence As A Tangle, And Seek Freedom In Retirement, As Thoreau Sought At Walden Pond. They Do Not, However, In This Manner Escape From The Social Institutions Of Their Time, Nor Do They Really Mean To Do So; What They Gain, If They Are Successful, Is A Saner Relation To Them.

A Strange And Somewhat Impassive Physiognomy Is Often, Perhaps, An Advantage To An Orator, Or Leader Of Any Sort, Because It Helps To Fix The Eye And Fascinate The Mind.

We Have No Higher Life That Is Really Apart From Other People. It Is By Imagining Them That Our Personality Is Built Up; To Be Without The Power Of Imagining Them Is To Be A Low-grade Idiot.

An Artist Cannot Fail; It Is A Success To Be One.

So Far As Discipline Is Concerned, Freedom Means Not Its Absence But The Use Of Higher And More Rational Forms As Contrasted With Those That Are Lower Or Less Rational. A Free Discipline Controls The Individual By Appealing To His Reason And Conscience, And Therefore To His Self-respect; While An Unfree Control Works Upon Some Lower Phase Of The Mind, And So Tends To Degrade Him. It Is Freedom To Be Disciplined In As Rational A Manner As You Are Fit For.

There Is No Way To Penetrate The Surface Of Life But By Attacking It Earnestly At A Particular Point.

Each Man Must Have His I; It Is More Necessary To Him Than Bread.

In The Days Of Witchcraft It Used To Be Believed That If One Person Secretly Made A Waxen Image Of Another And Stuck Pins Into The Image, Its Counterpart Would Suffer Tortures, And That If The Image Was Melted The Person Would Die. This Superstition Is Almost Realized In The Relation Between The Private Self And Its Social Reflection. They Seem To Separate But Are Darkly United, And What Is Done To The One Is Done To The Other.

Since Freedom Is Not A Fixed Thing That Can Be Grasped And Held Once For All, But A Growth, Any Particular Society, Such As Our Own, Always Appears Partly Free And Partly Unfree. In So Far As It Favors, In Every Child, The Development Of His Highest Possibilities, It Is Free, But Where It Falls Short Of This It Is Not.

Society Is An Interweaving And Interworking Of Mental Selves. I Imagine Your Mind And Especially What Your Mind Thinks About My Mind And What My Mind Thinks About What Your Mind Thinks About My Mind. I Dress My Mind Before You And Expect That You Will Dress Yours Before Mine. Whoever Cannot Or Will Not Perform These Feats Is Not Properly In The Game.

I Is A Militant Social Tendency, Working To Hold And Enlarge Its Place In The General Current Of Tendencies. So Far As It Can It Waxes, As All Life Does. To Think Of It As Apart From Society Is A Palpable Absurdity Of Which No One Could Be Guilty Who Really Saw It As A Fact Of Life.

When We Hate A Person, With An Intimate, Imaginative, Human Hatred, We Enter Into His Mind, Or Sympathize -- Any Strong Interest Will Arouse The Imagination And Create Some Sort Of Sympathy.

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