The Ways and Power of Love by Pitirim Sorokin

Author:Pitirim Sorokin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love, eros, agape,

Trials and Pains of Reintegration of Behavior

i

No Automatic Instantaneous Reintegration In the study of altruistic arrangement and rearrangement of group membership in the preceding chapters it has been stated that one’s harmonious group affiliations result in a concordantly harmonious integration of one’s egos, values, drives, and activities.

The statement being true, it does not mean that a harmonious group membership automatically and instantaneously produces an altruistic harmonization of egos, values, biological drives, and overt activities. It means only that if an individual starts earnestly to work over his group

affiliations, he will also be working over his egos, values, drives, and overt actions; and vice versa. A change along each of the three lines indicated

requires strenuous effort on the part of the individual.

Let us look more closely at what happens with one’s egos, values, and actions when one drops membership in a previous group and acquires it in a new organization. When an individual drops membership in an im

portant group, say, his occupational group, this cuts off the very roots of his occupational ego, values, and activities. He ceases to perform during six or eight hours daily his occupational activity; about one-third of his time thus becomes unfilled; his occupational office and environment, his bosses, co-workers, and subordinates likewise fall out of his life; his oc

cupational values and standpoint become unimportant; his occupational wages or income ordinarily stop; his occupational rights and duties, interests and ambitions lose their ground. Finally, his occupational ego withers. In brief, with dropping or losing a given occupational position, the occupational ego, values, and activities lose their fountainhead, and are bound to dry up and sooner or later to die.

In the total field of one’s egos, values, and activities, the membership termination eventually produces an empty, blank spot or “ debris ” where before were the occupational ego, values, and activities. With a proper

modification the same can be said of severing an affiliation with any im

portant group.

When one becomes — willingly or not — a member of a new group — for example, when he is drafted into the army or marries and sets up his own family — the new membership leads to the “ installing ” in the field

of one’s egos-values-activities of a new member: the army or the family ego, values, and activities. Such an installation seriously changes the inner world and the external behavior of the respective person. If dia

gramed, the change would show itself in the form of the appearance of a new ego, with its activities and values, where before was a blank, empty space. If one simultaneously takes membership in many important groups or if one of the new groups becomes dominant, a drastic revolution oc

curs in the total field of his personality, in his inner world as well as his external behavior.

Stressing the basic importance of the structure and change of one’s

group membership, I do not contend that the corresponding changes in the total field of one’s personality occur synchronously, immediately, and automatically 'with those in group affiliations. As

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