If there is anything in human psychology to be counted upon, it may be urged that when man is satiated with restless seeking for the remote which yields no enduring satisfaction, the human spirit will return to seek calm and order within…
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
No one knows how much of the frothy excitement of life, of mania for motion, of fretful discontent, of need for artificial stimulation, is the expression of frantic search for something to fill the void caused by the loosening of the bonds…
That happiness which is full of content and peace is found only in enduring ties with others, which reach to such depths that they go below the surface of conscious experience to form its undisturbed foundation.
But there is something deep within human nature itself which pulls toward settled relationships.
Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.
A man who has not been seen in the daily relations of life may inspire admiration, emulation, servile subjection, fanatical partisanship, hero worship; but not love and understanding, save as they radiate from the attachments of a near-by…
It has also been said that if a man love not his fellow man whom he has seen, he cannot love the God whom he has not seen.
It is said, and said truly, that for the world’s peace it is necessary that we understand the peoples of foreign lands.
There is no substitute for the vitality and depth of close and direct intercourse and attachment.
The theory, as far as it relies upon associations which are remote and indirect, would if carried into effect soon be confronted by all the troubles and evils of the present situation in a transposed form.
But these ties can be counted upon for an enduring and stable organization, which at the same time is flexible and moving, only as they grow out of immediate intercourse and attachment.
It is true that ties formed by sharing in common work, whether in what is called industry or what are called professions, have now a force which formerly they did not possess.