Antisocial behavior

“ We now see them manifest a pathologic emotionalism, an unbounded egotism, a relentless vindictiveness and an apparently total disregard of consequences. Frictions with the surrounding world, which a normal individual meets in an ordinary manner with a view towards an efficient adaptation to existing conditions, were reacted to by them in a distinctly antisocial manner, with methods entirely void of consideration of the rights of others, an attribute so essential for a proper concourse with man. ”

“ THE ANTI-SOCIAL INDIVIDUALS. The anti-social individuals are included in a group that has adequate intelligence, but has a certain dullness of perception in regard in social customs. They are disinclined to work, are lazy, untruthful, irritable, vain, self-satisfied, and most important of all, are incapable of any deep emotion. ”

“ The problem of abnormality—crime, vagabondage, prostitution, alcoholism, etc. How far is abnormality the unavoidable manifestation of inborn tendencies of the individual, and how far is it a matter of deficient social organization,—the failure of institutional influences? There is a quantitative difference of efficiency between individuals, but if there is hardly a human attitude which if properly controlled and directed could not be used in a socially useful and productive way, must there remain a permanent qualitative difference between socially normal and anti-social actions? ”

“ When we have sufficiently determined causal relations we shall probably find that there is no individual energy, no unrest, no type of wish, which cannot be sublimated and made socially useful. From this standpoint the problem is not the right of society to protect itself from the disorderly and anti-social person, but the right of the disorderly and anti-social person to be made orderly and socially valuable. ”

“ To this group also belong those high-strung individuals with early antisocial tendencies, who from childhood show a marked degree of egotism and self-love; who are very vindictive and revengeful in their reaction to frictions in social life. Upon falling into the hands of the law, they are incapable of adjustment to the new situation, react in an insane and wild manner to the prison routine, and, in consequence, frequently commit grave offenses during imprisonment. ”

“ We must distinguish between social and anti-social passion, the one favoring the conditions of life for the species and collectivity, the other antagonistic to the development of the collectivity. In the first case, we have love, injured honor, etc, which are passions normally useful to society, and aberrations of which may be excused more or less according to individual cases. On the other hand, we have inexcusable passions, because their psychological tendency is to antagonize the development of society. ”

“ Those aggressive impulses inherited from the pre-social state—those tendencies to seek self-satisfaction regardless of injury to other beings, which are essential to a predatory life, constitute an anti-social force, tending ever to cause conflict and eventual separation of citizens.—Herbert Spencer, Synthetic Philosophy. ”

“ Even when a new period of socialization shall have simplified life, each individual must still be considered separately, each personality approached with utmost reverence, accepted for values and possibilities which when developed displace asocial behavior. The problems of sexual disharmony, retarded emotion, affectional distress, which send people of wealth to the sanitarium or divorce court, lead the poor to delinquency. The future court of domestic relations may become a clinic for all. ”

“ THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERWORLD
The public conscience of the social world has been stirred in recent days by the dangers which threaten from an antisocial world that lurks in darkness. The sociologists recognize that it is not a question of vicious and criminal individuals, but one of an antisocial atmosphere, of immoral traditions and surroundings, through which crime flourishes and vice is fostered. They speak of a social underworld, and mean by it that whole pitiable setting in which the gangs of thieves and the hordes of prostitutes live their miserable lives. ”

“ Most important for the purpose of our investigation is the fact that there are certain stimuli to which all of us who live in the same society re-act in the same way without being able to express the reasons for our actions. A good example of what I refer to are breaches of social etiquette. A mode of behavior that does not conform to the customary manners, but differs from them in a striking way, creates, on the whole, unpleasant emotions; and it requires a determined effort on our part to make it clear to ourselves that such behavior does not conflict with moral standards. ”

“ Then there is the extraordinary class of people whom we may describe by a stronger term than those already employed. We find not only the unsocial, the negatively unfit, those whom society puts away with pity in its heart; there are also the antisocial, the class whom we usually designate as criminals. These persons, like the others, are variations; but they seem to be variations in quite another way. They do not represent lack on the intellectual side always or alone, but on the moral side, on the social side, as such. ”

“ There is, thus, from the earliest times, a certain form of elimination of the anti-social character which results in the gradual formation of an emotional and mental disposition that habitually and instinctively falls into line with the requirements of the social whole. ”

“ Yet in a broad empirical way it is easy to distinguish the moral qualities favorable to communal life. The complete social person is marked, fundamentally, by industry, self-control, kindliness, perseverance and the ability to subordinate present pleasure to future welfare. Anti-social persons embody the opposite characteristics—shiftlessness, violence, brutality, predatory tendencies, viciousness and impatience at restraint. Of course these qualities, social and anti-social, combine in all sorts of mixtures in all sorts of persons. ”

“ In this mood he totally disregards the laws of society and seizes every opportunity that presents itself to prey upon it and he thus becomes an anti-social being. Through all ages up to the present, society has at the cost of much effort and suffering been progressing, stage by stage, towards a higher order. ”

“ We saw in the records given at the end of the last chapter that very rapid and positive gains are being made in the treatment of delinquency, but for a fundamental control and the prevention of anti-social behavior a change in the general attitudes and values of society will be necessary.
Up to the present, society has not been able to control the direction of its own evolution or even to determine the form of life and relationships necessary to produce a world in which it is possible and desirable for all to live. Common sense has not been adequate to these problems. ”

“ We have succeeded to a large extent in dealing with our combative instincts by developing sports and the competition of business, and we have largely sublimated our hate instinct in dealing with various forms of anti-social conduct as exhibited in the so-called "criminal." ”

“ An anti-social spirit is found wherever one group has " interests of its own " which shut it out from full interaction with other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is protection of what it has got. ”

“ The quarrels of individuals, indeed, are frequently the operations of unhappy and detestable passions, malice, hatred, and rage. If such passions alone possess the breast, the scene of dissention becomes an object of horror; but a common opposition maintained by numbers, is always allayed by passions of another sort. Sentiments of affection and friendship mix with animosity; the active and strenuous become the guardians of their society; and violence itself is, in their case, an exertion of generosity, as well as of courage. ”

“ Crime is anti-social—is prompted by self-regarding feelings and checked by social feelings. The natural prompter of right conduct to others, and the natural opponent of misconduct to others, is sympathy ”

“ As each recognises that the anti-social tendencies are the bestial tendencies in man, and that man in evolving further must evolve out of these, each also feels it part of his personal duty to curb these in himself, and so to rise further from the brute. ”

“ The actions born out of the desire may not fall into the society's framework which accepts certain actions as socially acceptable and certain others as anti-social. But you are concerned only about values. ”

“ Such interferences, tending in any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour, or to the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect evil upon ourselves, through the re-action which they produce in the feelings of our neighbour and of society, and also the offence which they give to our own conscientiousness and benevolence. On the other hand, when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action of the contrary kind, the tendency of which is towards our own benefit. ”

“ I have a larger life to consider than that which is made up of my personal pains and pleasures; I have inherited sympathies and acquired attachments; the good will of my fellow-man is much to me, and I feel that, apart from the support and assistance that they render me and apart from the activities I exercise as a member of society, I should be a miserably contracted creature. Shall I therefore in the interests of my narrower self make war upon my larger and better self by pursuing anti-social courses of action? ”

“ Not only are they free from the egotism, insensibility, laziness, and lack of moral sense peculiar to the ordinary criminal, but their abnormality consists in the excessive development of noble qualities, sensibility, altruism, integrity, affection, which if carried to an extreme, may result in actions forbidden by law, or worse still, dangerous to society. ”

“ This mental and moral heredity, over-leaping all boundaries of blood and natural kinship, spreads light and good influence or an immoral contagion through the community. And thus, in sheer self-defence, society passes laws setting limits to the oppression of the poor and weak, lest, degraded and brutalized, they become breeding centres of physical and moral disease in the community. ”

“ The prudish and hypocritical attitude of society is universally regarded as the main cause of all-pervading diffusion of the social evil, furthered by a most flagrant ignorance on one hand and a morbid curiosity produced by this attitude on the other. ”

“ But anti-social acts ultimately tend to weaken society. Hence they ultimately tend to diminish the prosperity of the whole, and therefore tend to harm the selfish individual.” All this is irrelevant, in case the social consequences cannot return upon the selfish individual’s head during his lifetime. ”

“ They are, indeed, always changing. Therefore, in regard to all matters which belong to the sphere of what we commonly call morals, there are in every community some who approve of a given act, others who disapprove of it, yet others who regard it with indifference. In such a shifting sphere we cannot legislate with the certainty of carrying the whole community with us, nor can we properly introduce the word "crime," which ought to indicate only an action of so gravely anti-social nature that there can be no possibility of doubt about it. ”

“ The struggle against the anti-social ego-maniac, his expulsion from the social body, are necessary functions of the latter; and if it is not capable of accomplishing it, it is a sign of waning vital power or serious ailment. Toleration, and, above all, admiration, of the ego-maniac, be he one in theory or in practice, is, so to speak, a proof that the kidneys of the social organism do not accomplish their task, that society suffers from Bright’s disease. ”

“ Such a distinction exists, but it cannot be made sharply because there are a large number of intermediate anti-social acts which some sections of the community regard as major, while others regard them as minor, or even, in some cases, as not anti-social at all. The only convenient test we can apply is the strength of the social reaction—provided we are dealing with an act which is definitely anti-social, injuring recognized rights, and not merely an unusual or disgusting act. ”

“ In a word, they believed—even those who longed to believe otherwise—the exact reverse of what seems to us self-evident; they believed, that is, that the anti-social qualities of men, and not their social qualities, were what furnished the cohesive force of society. ”

“ If all the human industries which have owed and still owe their prosperity to his propensities were to be obliterated, there would be a large array of unemployed in the morning but a healthier world. The bully, or prevailer by brute force, the snob, the cynic, the parasite, the trimmer, and the conceited egotist are others prominent in the category, without regard to criminals and unvarnished offenders against whose noxious behavior men have protected themselves by positive law. ”

“ Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means the least social or the least sensitive, will become violent, and will even feel that their violence is social and not anti-social, that in striking when and how they can, they are striking, not for themselves, but for human nature, out-raged and despoiled in their persons and those of their fellow sufferers. ”

“ Negative behavior on the part of young people reportedly involves their manner of speech and dress, which "offends common decency," their creation of public disturbances, their apathy toward work, and the fact that many of them have become cynical and infatuated with "wrong beliefs." ”

“ Any degree of social instinct developed in the course of social evolution only assists in rendering social punishments of all sorts the more felt; and thus each increment of advance assists in further advance. Men who persist in action antagonistic to social demands, action which they themselves acknowledge to be immoral, may yet feel the condemnation of society so much, that, even while yet persisting, they destroy their vitality by alcoholism or other excesses to drown regret and remorse; habit chains them, in many cases, where the condemnation of others reaches them only late. ”