THE NEW STATE
By Mary Parker Follett

Chapter IV
The Group Process: The Collective Feeling

The unification of thought, however, is only a part of the social
process.  We must consider, besides, the unification of feeling,
affection, emotion, desire, aspiration -- all that we are.  The
relation of the feelings to the development of the group has yet to
be sufficiently studied.  The analysis of the group process is
beginning to show us the origin and nature of the true sympathy. 
The group process is a rational process.  We can no longer
therefore think of sympathy as "contagion of feeling" based on
man's "inherited gregarious instinct."  But equally sympathy cannot
belong to the next stage in our development -- the particularistic. 
Particularistic psychology, which gave us ego and alter, gave us
sympathy going across from one isolated being to another.  Now we
begin with the group.  We see in the self-unifying of the group
process, and all the myriad unfoldings involved, the central and
all-germinating activity of life.  The group creates.  In the group
we have seen, is formed the collective idea, "similarity" is there
achieved, sympathy too is born within the group -- it springs
forever from interrelation.  The emotions I feel when apart belong
to the phantom ego; only from the group comes the genuine feeling
_with_ -- the true sympathy, the vital sympathy, the just and
balanced sympathy.

  From this new understanding of sympathy as essentially involved
in the group process, as part of the generating activity of the
group, we learn two lessons: that sympathy cannot antedate the
group process, and that it must not be confused with altruism.  It
had been thought until recently by many writers that sympathy came
before the social process.  Evidences were collected among animals
of the "desire to help" other members of the same species, and the
conclusion drawn that sympathy exists and that the result is
"mutual aid."  But sympathy cannot antedate the activity.  We do not
however now say that there is an "instinct" to help and then that
sympathy is the result of the helping; the feeling and the activity
are involved one in the other.

  It is asked, Was Bentham right in making the desire for
individual happiness the driving force of society, or was Comte
right in saying that love for our fellow creatures is as "natural"
a feeling as self-interest?  Many such questions, which have long
perplexed us, will be answered by a progressive social psychology. 
The reason we have found it difficult to answer such questions is
because we have thought of egoistic or altruistic feelings as
preexisting; we have studied action to see what precedent
characteristics it indicated.  But when we begin to see that men
possess no characteristics apart from the unifying process, then it
is the process we shall study.

  Secondly, we can no longer confuse sympathy and altruism. 
Sympathy, born of our union, rises above both egoism and altruism. 
We see now that classification of ego feelings and alter feelings
is not enough, that there are always whole feelings to be accounted
for, that true sympathy is sense of community, consciousness of
oneness.  I am touched by a story of want and suffering, I send a
check, denying myself what I have eagerly desired in order to do
so, -- is that sympathy?  It is the old particularist sympathy, but
it is not the sympathy which is the product, which has come from
the actual intermingling of myself with those who are in want and
suffering.  It may be that I do more harm than good with my check
because I do not really know what the situation demands.  The
sympathy which springs up within the group is a productive
sympathy.

  But objects a friend, if I meet a tramp who has been drinking
whisky, I can feel only pity for him, I can have no sense of
oneness.  Yes, the tramp and I are bound together by a thousand
invisible bonds.  He is a part of that society for which I am
responsible.  I have not been doing my entire duty; because of that
a society has been built up which makes it possible for that tramp
to exist and for whiskey to be his chief pleasure.

  A good illustration of both the errors mentioned -- making
sympathy antedate the group process and the confusion of sympathy
and altruism -- we see frequently in the discussion of cooperation
in the business world.  The question often asked, "Does modern
cooperation depend upon self-interest or upon  sympathy?" is
entirely misleading as regards the real nature of sympathy. 
Suppose six manufacturers meet to discuss some form of union. 
There was a time when we should have been told that if each man
were guided entirely by what would benefit his own plant, trusting
the other five to be equally interested each in his own, thereby
the interest of all would be involved.  Then there came a time
when many thinkers denied this and said, "Cooperation cannot exist
without some feeling of altruism; every one of those manufacturers
must go to the meeting with the feeling that the interests of the
other five should be considered as well as his own; he must be
guided as much by sympathy as by self-interest."  But we are now
beginning to think that what these men need most is not altruistic
feelings but a consciousness of themselves as a new unit and a
realization of the need of that unit.  The process of forming this
new unit generates such realization which is sympathy.  This true
sympathy, therefore, is not a vague sentiment they bring with them;
it springs from their meeting to be in its turn a vital factor in
their meeting.  The needs of that new unit may be so different from
that of any one of the manufacturers alone that altruistic feelings
might be wasted!  The new ethics will never preach alter feelings
but whole feelings.  Sympathy is a whole feeling; it is a
recognition of oneness.  Perhaps social psychology has no more
interesting task than to define for us that true sympathy which is
now being born in a society which is shedding its particularistic
garments and clothing itself in the mantle of wholeness.

  To sum up: sympathy is not pity, it is not benevolence, it is one
of the goals of the future, it cannot be actualized until we can
think and feel together.  At present we confuse it with altruism
and all the particularist progeny, but sympathy is always a group
product; benevolence, philanthropy, tenderness, fervor, ardor,
pity, may be possible to me alone, but sympathy is not possible
alone.  The particularist stage has been necessary to our
development, but we stand now on the threshold of another age: we
see there humanity consciously generating its own activity, its own
purpose and all that it needs for the accomplishment of that
purpose.  We must now fit ourselves to cross that threshold.  Our
faces have turned to a new world; to train our footsteps to follow
the way is now our task.

  This means that we must live the group life.  This is the
solution of our problems, national and international.  Employers
and employed cannot be exhorted to feel sympathy one for the other;
true sympathy will come only by creating a community or group of
employers and employed.  Through the group you will find the
details, the fillingout of Kant's universal law.  Kant's
categorical imperative is general, is empty; it is only a blank
check.  But through the life of the group we learn the content of
universal law.

