Social development

“ In a word, it is the efficient functioning of every social group. The family, the community, the nation, and every minor group, will serve effectually the economic, cultural, social, and spiritual needs of the individuals of whom it is composed. Perfect functioning can follow only after a long period of progress. Such progress is the ideal that society sets for itself. In that process there must be full recognition of all the factors that enter into social life. There is the individual with his rights and obligations, who must be protected and encouraged to grow. ”

“ Reviewing the development in society of the conditions for the satisfaction of the individual will to live, and to live in the best way conceivable, we see in the progress of moral ideas the progress of discovery of the most reasonable manner of ordering the life of the individual and the form of social institutions under the contemporary environment. ”

“ But, beyond this main conception, it was implied throughout that there are such things as laws of social development, natural processes of rectification in society, and an adaptation of man to the conditions of social life. The scientific point of view was thus early assumed, and society was regarded not as a manufacture but as a growth. ”

“ And that the right interpretation of social phenomena is to be found in the cooperation of these factors from generation to generation follows inevitably.
Such an interpretation soon brings us to the inference that, of the aggregate results of men's desires seeking their gratifications, those which have prompted their private activities and their spontaneous co-operations have done much more toward social development than those which have operated through governmental agencies. ”

“ At a high level of development of productive forces responses to the dominant social order take the form of attempts of individuals to realize their self-powers, their capacities, to the level made possible by social development. ”

“ It has supplied for him a social group, persons to talk with, to play with, to work with. Inevitably he takes on their characteristics, and his life will continue to be narrow and to grow conservative and hard, unless he enlarges his experience, broadens his horizon, tries new activities, enjoys new associations, tests new methods of social control, and lets the forces that produce social change play upon his own life. ”

“ In home and in school the emphasis in education should be upon social rather than economic values, on the significance of social relationships and the opportunities of social intercourse in the home and the community, on the personal and social advantages of intellectual culture, on the importance of moral progress in the elimination of drunkenness, sexualism, poverty, crime, and war, if there is to be future social development, and on the value of such social institutions as the home, the school, the church, and the state as agencies for individual happiness and group progress. ”

“ The effect of the first in social development is to continue habits, customs, laws and methods, long after they have lost their original usefulness, and the effect of the other is to permit the growth of institutions and modes of thought from which the normal perceptions of men instinctively revolt. ”

“ What is a society? It is an organisation of human beings, alive, complex, exquisitely developed in co-ordinate inter-service. What is it for? It is for development, growth, progress, like any other living thing. How does a society improve? By combinations of individuals evolving social processes which react favourably upon the individual constituents, and develope in them better social faculties. For instance, early combinations of individuals evolve low forms of legal protection for the citizens of the early State. ”

“ These are the social interests that dominate his activity. Mankind has risen from the brute by the process that leads the individual up from the low level of life moulded by primitive desires to the high plane of a life directed by the broad interests of society at large. It is the task of education [347] to reveal this process, and to provide the stimuli that are needed for its continuance. ”

“ The first degree of prosperity in a rude population with few needs develops prolificness; a later degree of prosperity, accompanied by all the feelings and ideas stimulated by the development of education and a democratic environment, leads to a gradual reduction of prolificness. ”

“ Whether the immediate object be better housing, better working conditions, better use of leisure, or a long list of other objectives, the main purpose in these different social reforms still is to advance the development of our human kind by improving social relations. Finally, social research with its precious freight of original discovery in all the fields covered by social work, has also the secondary task of assembling known facts in order to reinterpret them for use in social reform, in group work and in case work. ”

“ One of the principal tasks of the new social system will be the education of the rising generation in keeping with its improved opportunities. Every child that is born, be it male or female, is a welcome addition to society. Society sees therein the prospect of its own perpetuity, of its own further development. ”

“ To science, the offspring of intellectual activity, we owe our increased facilities for travel; the gradually accumulating comforts of life; extended commercial advantages; national growth; social amelioration; increased power over the elements; and rapidly accumulating wealth. To mental development we owe civil freedom, social culture, and religious liberty; commerce, invention, arts, education, enterprise. ”

“ Beginning from the family unit and its various extensions, the human race has developed, with varying degrees of success, societies based on the clan, the tribe, the city-state, and most recently the nation. This progressively broader and more complex social milieu provides human potential with both stimulation and scope for development, and this development, in turn, has induced ever-new modifications of the social fabric. Humanity’s coming-of-age, therefore, must entail a total transformation of the social order. ”

“ The present condition of things appears to be, in great measure, a necessary accompaniment of our present phase of progress. Throughout the civilized world, especially in England, and above all in America, social activity is almost wholly expended in material development. ”

“ And social work is the development of the chance for all of us to participate more abundantly in our common need to live.
"As fast as in you lies, let your civic societies look farther than conserving or planting or beautifying, or even cleaning. ”

“ Constant Factors in Social Phenomena.—Our study of social life has made it plain that it is a complex affair, but it has been possible to classify society in certain groups, to follow the gradual extension of relations from small groups to large, and to take note of the numerous activities and interests that enter into contemporary group life. ”

“ We may now turn to those deeper currents of change which together make up social progress; including all distinct advance from lower to higher forms of intelligence, sentiment and character, as well as from lower to higher types of social life ”

“ I use this word in no narrow or conventional sense, but meaning the development of the whole being in the line of the highest strength and efficiency of the various parts. Every effort of the philanthropist, the social reformer, and the Government must be invoked to prevent degradation and degeneration in the poorer classes, and raise them to a better status. The laws of healthy development must be taught, and the consequences of their neglect in the habits of life be shown. ”

“ He pointed out that for three centuries the best minds had been devoted to material science and had neglected societary problems.XIII-18 Material institutions should be modified and made to harmonize with the underlying laws of social evolution. A moral reorganization of society must precede and direct the material and political reorganization.XIII-19
Social improvement is a result of mental development. This development favors the preponderance of the noblest human tendencies. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress. ”

“ We may say that the education of early life forms the very foundation of the social structure.
Like clay in the hands of the potter, so is man in the hands of his community. Society fashions the beliefs, the desires, the aims, the strivings, the knowledge, the ideals, the character, the minds, the very selves of its constituent units. ”

“ On the whole, they are prepared for the gradual disentanglement of men from the Normal Social Life altogether, and they look for new ways of living and new methods of human association with a certain adventurous hopefulness. ”

“ Like the political and economic ones, major social institutions--cultural, educational, rehabilitative, and others--should be generally organized with the well-being and dignity of man as the essential measure of success. ”

“ The industrial, economic, domestic, civil, military, aesthetic, moral, religious, and intellectual condition of each community, is given in a systematic way, which brings out the relations of these social factors ”

“ The gradation in the changes that mark the social man justifies a corresponding gradation in the traits that distinguish the social aggregate from other aggregates.
The organic concept of society has taught us to look upon mutual aid, division of labor, formation of industrial groups, specialization and exchange with its facilities for communicating and transporting, as the underlying features of society, corresponding to the growing unlikeness of organs and functions, interdependence of parts and unity seen in living bodies. ”

“ This society now publishes books and tracts upon the moral, economical, physiological, political, financial, religious, medical and social phases of the reform. We have the writings of over two hundred different persons in almost every walk and station in life. We already have a literature of no mean character. Its influence is not only felt in every State and Territory in the land, but in every country on the globe. ”

“ These are the bases of civil and polite society; namely, manners, conversation, lucrative labor, and public action, whether political, or in the leading of social institutions. We have much to regret, much to [Pg 95] mend, in our society; but I believe that with all liberal and hopeful men there is a firm faith in the beneficent results which we really enjoy; that intelligence, manly enterprise, good education, virtuous life, and elegant manners have been and are found here, and, we hope, in the next generation will still more abound. ”

“ With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, knowing the intensity of the different national desires for progress and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires, we could realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in our civic life. ”

“ Importance of social environment I take the explanation of the differences that distinguish communities to be this: That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions and laws. Into the web woven by each society (or rather, into these webs, for each community above the simplest is made up of minor societies that overlap and interlace each other) the individual is received at birth and continues until his death. ”

“ An effective society must be composed of effective individuals. In no other way can a high social standard be maintained. The growth of the individual, in a modern community depends, in large measure, on the way in which he uses his leisure. ”

“ We shall have, of course, to enlarge our family and social life, not in the petty spirit of present day Social Reform, hammering at small details and belittling our immediate past, but with a larger idea and more generous impulses. ”

“ I promise to further social welfare; to promote the idea that prosperity consists essentially in persons and only incidentally in things; to be true to this faith in public and in private, in work and in play ”

“ The whole measure of progress in a generation is the measure in which the children improve in physical and mental quality, in social co-ordination, in opportunity, upon their parents. Nothing else matters in the way of success if in that way the Good Will fails.
Let us now consider how such matters stand in our world at the present time, and let us examine them in the light of the Socialist spirit. ”

“ Let us for a moment consider the character and extent of the impulses which the influx of the newcomers imparts to the social organism. The nature of these impulses is two-fold; the increase of numbers adds power to the community, and the diversity of interests which is an inevitable concomitant of increased population, brings wealth, culture, and all the higher gains of human effort. ”