Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 1. A Methodological Note on Valuations and Beliefs - 3. Valuation Dynamics
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
An American Dilemma
1034
backward, because In looking backwards, any development can be organized into any
scheme, if it is general enough.
Before leaving the subject of social dynamics, we must qualify our remarks to
recognize the existence of social statics. By stressing the instability of valuations we
do not deny that there is an enormous amount of resistance to change. There is a
great deal of practically mechanistic causation in human life, almost completely
divorced from valuations. People do strive to keep their valuation conflicts under
control. They want to keep them off their minds, and they are trained to overlook
them. Conventions, stereotypes, and convenient blind spots in knowledge about social
reality do succeed in preserving a relative peace in people’s conscience. Even more
important, perhaps, is the fact that there arc only a few hours a day free from the
business of living, and that there are so many ‘‘pleasant” things to do during these
few hours. Most people, most of the time, live a routine life from day to day and
do not worry too much. If it could be measured, the amount of both simple and
opportune ignorance and unconcernedness about social affairs would undoubtedly be
greater than the amount of knowledge and concern.
But to stress these things is not to invalidate the dynamic theory we have presented.
Modern people do have conflicting valuations, and the spread of knowledge and the
increase of interrelations are more and more exposing them. Changes in the material
environment also keep minds from becoming settled. If we call the relative absence
of change in modern society “stability,” we must recognize that it is not such as is
envisaged in the theory of the folkways and mores. There is instability at bottom,
a balancing of forces in conflict with each other^ and there is continuously the
possibility of rapid, and even induced, change, the direction of which is not altogether
predetermined by trends and natural forces.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
