including the LIPA, is not simply providing an alternate worldview or “educating the
masses” concerning the reality of their social situation.
Existing in such fractured, chaotic social environment produces profound affects
upon the individual character, and further suggests that “integrating” one’s knowledge
and experience with one’s interests or “power” must entail a process where individuals
not only link events and facts with other events, but also intermingle events with their
existing conceptual and moral schema. He comments that:
One effect of . . . existing conditions has been to create in a large number of
persons an appetite for the momentary thrills caused by impacts that stimulate
nerve endings by whose connection with cerebral functions are broken. Then
stimulation and excitation are not so ordered that intelligence is produced. At the
same time the habit of using judgment is weakened by the habit of depending on
external stimuli. (LW 13: 94)
Such character traits originate in exposure to what, in Individualism Old and New he
claims to be a mass culture, rather than rife with propaganda from economic elites,
instead “confused and bewildered” (LW 5: 66)
due to “the effect of the increase in
number and diversity of unrelated facts that now play pretty continuously upon the
average person.” (LW 13: 96) This exposure to quick bursts of public information is
mirrored by the character daily social experience. Extended existence in such a state
leads to , “the tragedy of the ‘lost individual.’” He goes on to state that “individuals are
now caught up into a vast complex of associations, there is no harmonious and coherent
reflection of the import of these connections into the imaginative and emotional outlook
on life.” (LW 5: 81) When he refers to “associations” he does not mean political groups
6
An interesting shift occurs within Individualism Old and New concerning Dewey’s social analysis.
Dewey begins the work with an analysis very similar to that of Weber in that he decries the stultifying
effects of standardization in industry and bureaucratization, as is shown by the title of Chapter 2, “America
by Formula.” (LW 5: 50-57) But this work actually was produced as a number of serialized articles in the
New Republic beginning on April 24, 1929 and ending April 4, 1930, and the post-October chapters begin
to emphasize social confusion and the lack of understanding of the connection between social phenomenon
and individual life. See the “Textual Commentary” (LW 5: 513) for a history of the work’s production and
publication. This shift possibly occurred due to the confusion brought about by the Great Stock Market
Crash and the onset of the Great Depression.
9
Convention