016.txt

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their physical needs they often set up artificial goals
for themselves. In many cases they then pursue these
goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that
they otherwise would have put into the search for
physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman
Empire had their literary pretensions; many European
aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time
and energy in hunting, though they certainly didn't need
the meat; other aristocracies have competed for status
through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few
aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.

39. We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an
activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that
people set up for themselves merely in order to have some
goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the qake
of the "fulfillment" that they get from pursuing the
goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of
surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much
time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself
this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to
satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort
required him to use his physical and mental faculties in
a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously
deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer
is no, then the person's pursuit of goal X is a surrogate
activity. Hirohito's studies in marine biology clearly
constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty
certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time
working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order to
obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt
deprived because he didn't know all about the anatomy and
life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the
pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate
activity, because most people, even if their existence
were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they
passed their lives without ever having a relationship
with a member of the opposite sex. (But pursuit of an
excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can
be a surrogate activity.)

40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is
necessary to satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough
to go through a training program to acquire some petty
technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the
very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only
requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and,
most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society
takes care of one from cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an
underclass that cannot take the physical necessities for
granted, but we are speaking here of mainstream society.)
Thus it is not surprising that modern society is full of
surrogate activities. These include scientific work,
athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and
literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder,
acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the
point at which they cease to give any additional physical
satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses
issues that are not important for the activist
personally, as in the case of white activists who work
for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These are not
always PURE surrogate activities, since for many people
they may be motivated in part by needs other than the
need to have some goal to pursue. Scientific work may be
motivated in part by a drive for prestige, artistic
creation by a need to express feelings, militant social
activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue
them, these activities are in large part surrogate
activities. For example, the majority of scientists will
probably agree that the "fulfillment" they get from their
work is more important than the money and prestige they
earn.

41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are
less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals (that is,
goals that people would want to attain even if their need
for the power process were already fulfilled). One
indication of this is the fact that, in many or most
cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate
activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the
money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth.
The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves
on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself
to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue
surrogate activities will say that they get far more
fulfillment from these activities than they do from the
"mundane" business of satisfying their biological needs,
but that is because in our society the effort needed to
satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to
triviality. More importantly, in our society people do
not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by
functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In
contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy
in pursuing their surrogate activities.


AUTONOMY

42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be
necessary for every individual. But most people need a
greater or lesser degree of autonomy in working toward
their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their
own initiative and must be under their own direction and
control. Yet most people do not have to exert this
initiative, direction and control as single individuals.
It is usually enough to act as a member of a SMALL group.
Thus if half a dozen people discuss a goal among
themselves and make a successful joint effort to attain
that goal, their need for the power process will be
served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down
from above that leave them no room for autonomous
decision and initiative, then their need for the power
process will not be served. The same is true when
decisions are made on a collective basis if the group
making the collective decision is so large that the role
of each individual is insignificant. [5]

43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little
need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak
or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some
powerful organization to which they belong. And then
there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be
satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good
combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing
fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind
obedience to his superiors).

44. But for most people it is through the power process
having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining
the goal -- that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense
of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate
opportunity to go through the power process the
consequences are (depending on the individual and on the
way the power process is disrupted) boredom,
demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings,
defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration,
hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism,
abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating
disorders. etc. [6]


SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any
society, but in modern industrial society they are
present on a massive scale. We aren't the first to
mention that the world today seems to be going crazy.
This sort of thing is not normal for human societies.
There is good reason to believe that primitive man
suffered from less stress and frustration and was better
satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is
true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive
societies. Abuse of women was common among the Australian
aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of
the American Indian tribes. But it does appear that
GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have
listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common
among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of
modern society to the fact that that society requires
people to live under conditions radically different from
those under which the human race evolved and to behave in
ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the
human race developed while living under the earlier
conditions. It is clear from what we have already written
that we consider lack of opportunity to properly
experience the power process as the most important of the
abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects
people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with
disruption of the power process as a source of social
problems we will discuss some of the other sources.

47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern
industrial society are excessive density of population,
isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of
social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale
communities such as the extended family, the village or
the tribe.

48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and
aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and
the isolation of man from nature are consequences of
technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were
predominantly rural. The Industrial Revolution vastly
increased the size of cities and the proportion of the
population that lives in them, and modern agricultural
technology has made it possible for the Earth to support
a far denser population than it ever did before. (Also,
technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it
puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For
example, a variety of noise-making devices: power mowers,
radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is
unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are
frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted,
people who use the devices are frustrated by the
regulations. But if these machines had never been
invented there would have been no conflict and no
frustration generated by them.)

49. For primitive societies the natural world (which
usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework
and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world it
is human society that dominates nature rather than the
other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly
owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable
framework.

50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the
decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically
support technological progress and economic growth.
Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make
rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy
of a society without causing rapid changes in all other
aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid
changes inevitably break down traditional values.

51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent
implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together
traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration
of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact
that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals
to move to new locations, separating themselves from
their communities. Beyond that, a technological society
HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is
to function efficiently. In modern society an
individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only
secondarily to a smallscale community, because if the
internal loyalties of small-scale communities were
stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities
would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the
system.

52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation
executive appoints his cousin, his friend or his
co-religionist to a position rather than appointing the
person best qualified for the job. He has permitted
personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system,
and that is "nepotism" or "discrimination," both of which
are terrible sins in modern society. Would-be industrial
societies that have done a poor job of subordinating
personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the system are
usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus
an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those
small-scale communities that are emasculated, tamed and
made into tools of the system. [7]

53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of
communities have been widely recognized as sources of
social problems. But we do not believe tbey are enough to
account for the extent of the problems that are seen
today.

54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and
crowded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have
suffered from psychological problems to the same extent
as modern man. In America today there still are uncrowded
rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in
urban areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in
the rural areas. Thus crowding does not seem to be the
decisive factor.

55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during
the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably
broke down extended families and small-scale social
groups to at least the same extent as these are broken