Force” is not eliminated but is transformed in use and direction by ideas and sentiments made possible by means of symbols.
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
Thus there is generated what, metaphorically, may be termed a general will and social consciousness: desire and choice on the part of individuals in behalf of activities that, by means of symbols, are communicable and shared by all…
Events cannot be passed from one to another, but meanings may be shared by means of signs.
Recollection and foresight are possible; the new medium facilitates calculation, planning, and a new kind of action which intervenes in what happens to direct its course in the interest of what is foreseen and desired.
As symbols are related to one another, the important relations of a course of events are recorded and are preserved as meanings.
Only when there exist signs or symbols of activities and of their outcome can the flux be viewed as from without, be arrested for consideration and esteem, and be regulated.
Human associations may be ever so organic in origin and firm in operation, but they develop into societies in a human sense only as their consequences, being known, are esteemed and sought for.
But no amount of aggregated collective action of itself constitutes a community.
But association itself is physical and organic, while communal life is moral, that is emotionally, intellectually, consciously sustained.
It is not a natural possession but is a fruit of the community when its action is directed by its character as a community.
It denotes effective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in each, irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities.
Equality does not signify that kind of mathematical or physical equivalence in virtue of which any one element may be substituted for another.