Social ostracism

“ You cannot, my dear Oqua, educated as you were in the most advanced thought of this altruistic civilization, realize the almost irresistible power of prejudices when they have been incorporated into the education of a people for thousands of years. They constitute a race belief, the correctness of which the people seldom, if ever, heard questioned. When I assumed male attire and associated myself with men in the ranks of labor, I knew that I invited not only social ostracism, but laid myself liable to arrest and imprisonment, if my disguise was discovered. ”

“ Even when penal laws are relaxed, social ostracism will have a similar, though perhaps a weaker effect. Prizes offered to one form of opinion, and losses inflicted on others, will necessarily make a difference in their relative success. ”

“ If social ostracism is to be attempted in this business, I confess a feeling of revolt would master me completely. My people have lived here for generations. I have been born and brought up here. I never have done a mean, dishonorable or cowardly thing in my life, so far as I know. ”

“ You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these, and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million. ”

“ Combined with the straits of that land-famine, the over-increase of population became such an unqualified evil that the common sense of the peasants originated a system of ostracism, attaching infamy and social excommunication to the preliminaries as well as to the results of marriage before a specified age. ”

“ Social ostracism for opinion's sake, personal violence or threats toward persons entertaining political views opposed to those entertained by the majority of the old citizens, prevents immigration and the flow of much-needed capital into the States lately in rebellion. ”

“ Touching their opinion, I have only to say that it can hardly be considered fair or conservative. Under the forcing influence of social ostracism, they have reasoned impatiently and have been helped to conclusions by quick sympathies or resentments. ”

“ Instead of speaking out the truths that were in them, they must have kept their peace, or have confined themselves severely to the ordinary platitudes of their age and nation. Why ruin yourself by announcing what you feel and believe, when all the reward you will get for it in the end will be social ostracism, if not even the rack, the stake, or the pillory? ”

“ Deeds conflicting with general social standards are punished by penalties which are larger as the conflict is greater in the eye of the state. The individual who lays himself liable to legal punishment or social ostracism is foolish as well as, in very many cases, bad; of course, it is possible that his conduct may rise above the moral standards as well as that it may fall below them. ”

“ It is precisely the point where the highest natures and the lowest sometimes apparently meet; since to act in opposition to custom may be due to the loftiest motives—may be the spiritual exaltation of the reformer, braving social ostracism for the sake of an idea, or may spring, on the other hand, from purely rebellious promptings of an anti-social egoism, which recognises no law higher than that of personal gratification. ”

“ Although this is naturally a democratic country, social ostracism is not unknown amongst us. The daughter of any one who "keeps a window," or is at all engaged in trade, is as effectually excluded from society as if she were a moral leper, and although her attainments, intellectually and otherwise, be far superior to those of her more favored sister, (who is very frequently both stupid and uninteresting) , her chances of an invitation are small indeed, until her father is in a position to head a subscription list or an election fund, and then, presto! ”

“ In a small community, the prince or the councilman or the sheriff is under the constant surveillance of neighbors, and their opinion of his behavior is not without influence; either the desire to retain their good will or the fear of retribution bears on his official acts. He must live with them, just as a merchant must live with his customers, and social ostracism is too heavy a price to pay for indulging the passion for power which his position generates. ”

“ These various remedies are good enough so far as they go, but the only permanent and effective remedy is the education of public opinion to a point where it will use its influence to check the stream of divorces. Social ostracism is a powerful weapon in the hands of any community that wishes to use it. The immediate need is to educate the American people in the homes, in the schools, and in the churches, so that they may appreciate the gravity of the problem and insist upon its being properly solved. ”

“ And there are some customs which, while not actually laws, exert quite as strong an influence upon the average citizen as the duly enacted235 statutes. The fear of social ostracism is often quite as effective a check upon the inclinations of an individual as the fear of legal punishment.
Now, as every man is the slave of general laws and customs, so, in a lesser sense, is he the slave of his own personal habits. And oddly enough this is more often true of good habits than of bad ones. ”

“ Ryerson in this controversy involved personal odium and the certainty of social ostracism. It also involved, what is often more fatal to a man's courage and constancy, the sneer and the personal animosity, as well as ridicule, of a powerful party whose right to supremacy is questioned, and whose monopoly of what is common property is in danger of being destroyed. ”

“ I wish the shadow of the gaol to extend no further than the road whereon it lies. Henceforth, we are acquaintances with a common interest at heart. Isn't it monstrous that a state-fixed degree of misconduct should earn a man social ostracism? Parents are generally inclined to rule extra tenderness towards a child whose peccadilloes have brought him a whipping. ”

“ The stigma of public opinion alone would, however, suffice to reduce the frequency of premature marriages; for, in the island of Corsica, where the recognition of their baneful tendency is based on purely economical considerations (the perils of over-population) , the dread of social ostracism has proved more deterrent than the fear of poverty and starvation. ”

“ Many who were disposed to accept and abide by the new order of things, dared not express their real [Pg 12] sentiments from fear of social and political ostracism. Men of intelligence and education, but who had allowed the thirst for power and political preferment to absorb and swallow up the promptings of their better nature, had begun the process of gaining over to their interests the very worst elements in the social circle beneath them, with a view to carrying out their unholy designs. ”

“ Their demands are not to be treated with ridicule, for under all their extravagance lurk truths of momentous import. Who can think of the thousands and hundreds of thousands of the sex, whose utmost labors hardly keep off cold and starvation—of the wretched notions of education and life, which so enfeeble the poor and corrupt the affluent—of the false social system which is so ready to smile upon the destroyer of innocence, and curse the victim of his arts ”

“ 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. ”

“ He who sees in the struggle something artificial, produced by bad men, may perhaps attribute to the creator of the disturbance bad motives for this knavery, for this frivolous and malicious upsetting of social rest. ”

“ Thus society is incessantly bringing forth beings who are incapable of an honorable and industrious life, and who are full of anti-social feelings. It does homage to them when success crowns their crimes, and sends them to the penitentiary when they are unlucky. ”

“ They consist in labor and self-denial repeated over and over again in learning and doing. When the people whose claims we are considering are told to apply themselves to these tasks they become irritated and feel almost insulted. They formulate their claims as rights against society—that is, against some other men. In their view they have a right, not only to pursue happiness, but to get it; and if they fail to get it, they think they have a claim to the aid of other men—that is, to the labor and self-denial of other men—to get it for them. ”

“ This lowering of the level of general morality causes the most immoral part of society to come more and more to the top ; and an immoral public opinion is formed which not only permits, but even approves crimes, robberies, debauchery, and murder itself. Thus a vicious circle is set up: the evil elements of society, evoked by the social struggle, throw themselves hotly into public activity corresponding to the low level of their morality, and this activity again attracts to itself yet worse elements of society. ”

“ So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or [29] moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? ”

“ Those of one class, not realizing what they are and what they might be, take life as it comes, believe that they are born to be slaves, and content themselves with the little that is given them in exchange for their labor. But there are others, on the contrary, who think, who study, and who, looking about them, discover social iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at seeing others suffer? ”

“ These are extreme instances, but they are also in a measure representative of a frightfully general social evil.
Is it any wonder if asylums for the insane gape for such men? There comes to them at last a season of business embarrassment; or, when they get to be fifty or thereabouts, the brain begins to feel the strain, and just as they are thinking, "Now we will stop and enjoy ourselves," the brain, which, slave-like, never murmurs until it breaks out into open insurrection, suddenly refuses to work, and the mischief is done. ”

“ False ideas of shame, absurd contempt for useful work, become obsolete conceptions. These exist only in our society of drones, where to do nothing is regarded as an enviable lot, and the worker is despised in proportion to the hardness and disagreeableness of his work, and in proportion to its social usefulness. ”

“ In more mature minds the socially unregulated scheme may be admirably elaborated and executed, corresponding in ingenuity with the most complete business or scientific plan and yet remain dangerously immoral because its application is in a form not sanctioned by society. In the following astonishing case we have an anti-social pursuit of a problem executed with all the ardor and resources of a Pasteur. ”

“ As unbending an order of aristocracy exists here as in any old court of Europe; and if an unfortunate individual is known ever to have appeared in an inferior circle, the ostracism banishes him for ever from the double refined society of this upper order of store keepers. ”

“ No unsociableness, no misanthropy can resist it. The charm is too profound. The single threat of ostracism, I do not say of expulsion to the realms above, which would be a death sentence, but of banishment beyond the limits of the usual corporate life, is sufficient to arrest the most criminal natures on the slope of crime. ”

“ Impropriety of conduct, disobedience, immorality and rude pleasure-seeking, such as is especially noticeable among the youth of our higher educational institutions—the gymnasia, polytechnics, universities, etc.—vices that are incited and promoted by the existing demoralization and unrest of domestic life, by the poisonous influence of social life such as the immoral literature that wealth procures—all these will likewise have vanished. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Only the workers in the darkest places of our great cities know how large illegitimacy looms as a factor in the social disintegration that leads to the prison, to the mad-house, to the hospitals, to the casual wards, and to the streets. Only the eye of the scientist can vision in the relation of the unhonored child to its mother the seed of that evil which one day shall become the dishonor of the dishonorable man. ”