Social Psychology
Chapter 7: The Nature of Conventionality
Edward Alsworth Ross
Table of Contents | Next | Previous
By "conventionality" is meant a psychic plane resulting from the deliberate, non-competitive, non-rational imitation of contemporaries. The qualifying terms "deliberate," "non-competitive ... .. non-rational," "of contemporaries," differentiate it respectively from the psychic planes laid by mob mind, fashion, rational imitation, and custom.
Conventionality reaches to the very framework of our lives
Conventionality imitation is far more radical, essential, and controlling in our lives than mob mind or fashion. It is not a passing flare-up like mob mind. It does not play over the mere surface of life like fashion. Often it supplies the governing beliefs, world-views, and ideals which determine our attitude toward the world and toward our fellow-man. We flatter ourselves that these are a faithful expression of our truest individuality, an outgrowth from our inmost selves; but this is nearly always an illusion. Says James: [1] "As a matter of fact we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why. Mr. Balfour gives the name of 'authority' to all those influences, born of the intellectual climate, that make hypotheses possible or impossible for us, alive or dead. Here in this room., we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the beauty of fighting for 'the doc-
(111) -trine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner clearness, and probably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might possess. His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else. Our faith is some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
Imitation furnishes many of the postulates of our thinking
It is not easy for us to realize how nearly to the very core of our lives conventionality sends its influence. To drive home the truth, let us dissect a number of deep-seated beliefs that, despite their air of validity, can be shown to be of illegitimate origin, and - for most people - of purely conventional acceptance.
That Manual Labor is Degrading. - This, though rarely avowed, is widely acted upon. Says Miss Addams: [2] " To get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line. A working-man's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are superior to factory or even office work. 'Teacher' in the vocabulary of many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry,
(112) and the name is indiscriminately applied to women of a certain dress and manner. The same desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano, or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand. The overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much the same source, and from the conviction that 'an education' is wasted if a boy goes into a factory or shop." In the Philippines manual labor is so despised that the ilustrados, i.e., the learned, "will engage in industrial occupations that do not soil the hands, but they are careful not to prejudice their social position by any lapse, no matter how trivial or transient, toward the supposed lower vocation of the manual worker."
Laborers accept the upper-class stigma on manual labor
Now, it is natural that the shamefulness of manual labor should become an article of faith among the small minority who are exempt from it. Not only is the notion congenial to them, but the more people they can persuade to adopt it, the more they are looked up to and envied. It is strange, however, that the great working masses uncritically accept a notion that sets them at odds with the basis of their livelihood and depresses their social status. Acquiescence in it is like the man's sawing off the limb he is sitting on. Why, then, do they fall in with the idea? Simply because it comes to them with the prestige of upper-class approval.
That Pecuniary Success is the Only Success. - Miss Addams [3] observes that " a certain kindly contempt for her abilities which often puzzles the charity visitor may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the visited families hold. Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and kind-
(113) -heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still admiration, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to accumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one sense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect."
Laborers accept and apply the commercial standard of human worth
Manifestly, these poor people do not reach this money standard of success through their own experience. Isolated from other social classes, the workers would probably appraise one another by a composite standard, the chief elements of which would be efficiency and character. The cash yardstick they so naively apply has been borrowed from the commercial class which they look up to as their superiors. It is quite natural for business men to measure one another's pith by the amount of money " made," because the volume of profit reaped, under the rules of the game, is a fairly adequate measure of business efficiency, the only practical measure, in fact. But outside the world of business their cash standard is a gross misfit. Artists, thinkers, writers, scholars, engineers, army and navy officers, and the members of the learned professions steadfastly refuse to rate one another by it and resent its appli-
(114) -cation to themselves. Industrial workers, too, have their own means of testing one another's prowess, and they would never have taken up the business man's criterion but for the great prestige the commercial class has in their eyes.
That Civic Worth is measured by Pecuniary Success. Again we draw upon Miss Addams limnings of the plain people of Chicago. "During one of the campaigns a clever cartoonist drew a poster representing the successful alderman in portraiture drinking champagne at a table loaded with pretentious dishes and surrounded by other revelers. In contradistinction was his opponent, a bricklayer, who sat upon a half-finished wall, eating a meagre dinner from a working-man's dinner-pail, and the passerby was asked which type of representative he preferred, the presumption being that at least in a working-man's district the bricklayer would come out ahead. To the chagrin of the reformers, however, it was gradually discovered that, in the popular mind, a man who laid bricks and wore overalls was not nearly so desirable for an alderman as the man who drank champagne and wore a diamond in his shirt-front. The district wished its representative 'to stand up with the best of them,' and certainly some of the constituents would have been ashamed to have been represented by a bricklayer." [4] In this case the industrial masses apply an alien worth-standard which clashes not only with their experience and common sense, but with their interests as well. To the comrade who can fitly represent and champion them they prefer the misrepresentative who measures up to the standard of the business man. They borrow a standard which makes all workers zeros when they might just as well have a
(115) touchstone (say efficiency) which would make some of them integers. Here we come on one secret of Labor's via dolorosa. In the struggle of interests in society no class can get its dues so long as it is infatuated with the standards, aims, and leaders of a rival class. The lot of labor can hardly be improved until working-men renounce "bourgeois" thinking and "bourgeois" valuations. It remains to be seen whether their true policy is to work out valuations all their own-as the "class conscious" laborites declare-or to press on to universally valid standards of human achievement and worth.
We adopt leisure-class opinion touching conservatism
That Conservatism is Good Form, whereas Radicalism is Vulgar. -Veblen [5] points out that conservatism "has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence to conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our notions of respectability." " Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. The first and most unreflected element in that instinctive revulsion and reprobation with which we turn from all social innovators is this sense of the essential vulgarity of the thing. So that even in cases where one recognizes the substantial merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman, still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be associated, and from whose social contact one must shrink. Innovation is bad form." With most of us a blind attachment to the past savors of the gentle, the scholarly, the superior; whereas a critical attitude toward the traditional coupled with an enthusiasm
(116) for what might be is felt to be crude and low-class. This perverse conservatism is inexplicable save as a downward percolation from the leisure class which, by reason of its exemption from those economic stresses which urge to change and its dependence on vested interests and privileges for its exalted position, is instinctively hostile to innovation.
Women find unwomanly that which their lords disapprove
That Things are Beautiful in Proportion as they are Costly. -Says Veblen: [6] "While men may have set out with disapproving an inexpensive manner of living because it indicated inability to spend much, and so indicated a lack of pecuniary success, they end by falling into the habit of disapproving cheap things as being intrinsically dishonorable or unworthy because they are cheap." " So thoroughly has this habit of approving the expensive and disapproving the inexpensive been ingrained into our thinking that we instinctively insist upon at least some measure of wasteful expensiveness in all our consumption, even in the case of goods which are consumed in strict privacy and without the slightest thought of display." " We find things beautiful, as well as serviceable, somewhat in proportion as they are costly. With few and inconsequential exceptions, we all find a costly hand-wrought article of apparel much preferable, in point of beauty and of serviceability, to a less expensive imitation of it, however cleverly the spurious article may imitate the costly original; and what offends our sensibilities in the spurious article is not that it falls short in form or color, or, indeed, in visual effect in any way. The offensive object may be so close an imitation as to defy any but the closest scrutiny; and yet so soon as the counterfeit is detected, its aesthetic
(117) value, and its commercial value as well, declines precipitately. " [7]
That the Consumption of Stimulants or Narcotics by Women is Unwomanly. - Veblen[8] 'argues that " the greater abstinence of women is in some part due to an imperative conventionality, and that this conventionality is, in a general way, strongest where the patriarchal traditionthe tradition that the woman is a chattel - has retained its hold in greatest vigor." " This tradition says that the woman, being a chattel, should consume only what is necessary to her sustenance, - except so far as her further consumption contributes to the comfort or the good repute of her master. The consumption of luxuries, in the true sense, is a consumption directed to the comfort of the consumer himself, and is, therefore, a mark of the master. Any such consumption by others can take place only on the basis of sufferance. In communities where the popular habits of thought have been profoundly shaped by the patriarchal tradition, we may accordingly look for survivals of the tabu on luxuries, at least to the extent of a conventional deprecation of their use by the unfree and dependent class. This is more particularly true as regards certain luxuries, the use of which by the dependent class would detract sensibly from the comfort or pleasure of their masters, or which are held to be of doubtful legitimacy on other grounds. In the apprehension of the great conservative middle class of Western civilization the use of these various stimulants is obnoxious to at least one, if not both, of these objections; and it is a fact too significant to be passed over that it is precisely among these middle classes of the Germanic culture, with their strong surviving
(118) sense of the patriarchal proprieties, that the women are to the greatest extent subject to a qualified tabu on narcotics and alcoholic beverages."
No contrast between the male and female nervous systems that should cause the one to benefit by stimulants and sedatives and not the other has ever been brought to light. Among the American pioneers the women smoked as freely as the men. The same is to be observed among people, like the negroes of the South, too spontaneous and easy-going to accept the burden of conventionality. On the other hand, in circles relatively emancipated from patriarchal ideas the like practice occurs. It is amusing to witness the horror of a convivial Southerner at the use of the mint julep and the cigar among women of the "swagger set." The subtleties of the conventional view are edifying. A lady of the old school, known to the writer, feels that "it doesn't look right," is in fact "shocking," for a lady unattended to enter a restaurant, seat herself at a table, and order a cocktail. The lady who drinks the cocktail a gentleman has ordered for her is blameless, as is also the unaccompanied lady who orders a "soft" drink; but to order a cocktail is " unladylike " !
"The spirit of the age" is a plane established by imitation
"The spirit of the age" reigns because of unconscious imitation. It took men a long time to discover the atmosphere , because everything is seen through that medium. Likewise, it has taken long to realize that "the spirit of the age" is a conventionality, because it is a spiritual atmosphere in which all minds are bathed and through which everything is viewed. Well says Chesterton:[9] "We see nothing 'dogmatic' in the inspiring, but certainly most startling, theory of physical science, that we should
(119) collect facts for the sake of facts, even though they seem as useless as sticks and straws. This is a great and suggestive idea, and its utility may, if you will, be proving itself, but its utility is, in the abstract, quite as disputable as the utility of that calling on oracles or consulting shrines which is also said to prove itself. Thus, because we are not in a civilization which believes strongly in oracles or sacred places, we see the full frenzy of those who killed themselves to find the sepulchre of Christ. But being in a civilization which does believe in this dogma of fact for fact's sake, we do not see the full frenzy of those who kill themselves to find the North Pole. I am not speaking of a tenable ultimate utility which is true both of the Crusades and the polar explorations. I mean merely that we do see the superficial and aesthetic singularity, the startling quality, about the idea of men crossing a continent with armies to conquer the place where a man died. But we do not see the Tsthetic singularity and startling quality of men dying in agonies to find a place where no man can live - a place only interesting because it is supposed to be the meeting place of some lines that do not exist."
To be sure, the intellectual élite - perhaps one per cent of one per cent - will have what seem to them good and sufficient grounds for their manner of thinking. But when their way of thinking comes to be "the spirit of the age," these grounds are quite left out of sight, and all but the one in ten thousand will give you flimsy excuses rather than solid reasons for believing as he does. " The thing is in the air" - that is enough to make the vogue of anything that is congenial to the current way of thinking of people.
(120)
SUMMARY
Much of our thinking proceeds from assumptions which have been accepted uncritically because they are "in the air."
The judgments of the leisure class are adopted by the classes below them as superior and authoritative.
In many matters the leisure class is competent to lead; but in respect to social progress, human worth, efficiency, labor, etc., its judgments are so warped by its peculiar situation that they are valueless.
The acceptance of leisure-class views on such matters sets the active classes at odds with their work and their interests.
Working-men defer unduly to business men, and borrow from them standards which mislead them as to their true line of effort.
Women, instead of finding for themselves the right adjustment to life, follow male opinion as to what is proper and womanly.
EXERCISES
I. Why are we blind to the extent of our indebtedness to our own society and our own time, and therefore apt to imagine our individuality much more pronounced than it actually is?
2. Why is it that such generally admired beauties of person or costume as the bandaged foot, the high heel, the wasp waist, the full skirt, and the long train are such as incapacitate from all useful work? [See Veblen, 170-172.]
3. What is the root of the conventionality that the fast horse is more beautiful than the draught horse?
4. What is the genesis of the notion that a divinity or saint is honored by a periodical abstention from productive labor on the part of the votary? [See Veblen, 309-310-1
5. In what respects do the standards of morality and propriety current among women reflect the male attitude? [See Thomas, "Sex and Society," 168-172.]
