Can the vast, innumerable and intricate currents of trans-local associations be so banked and conducted that they will pour the generous and abundant meanings of which they are potential bearers into the smaller intimate unions of human beings living in immediate contact with one another?
Dewey explores the challenge of channeling broader associations into meaningful local interactions.
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In short, private acts may be socially valuable both by indirect consequences and by direct intention.
If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between “facts” and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussion.
But he does so only at the cost of repression of those of his potentialities which can be realized only through membership in other groups.
There are even those who hold that the presumption is always that social loss will result from agents of the public doing anything which could be done by persons in their private capacity.