The Lonely Crowd

by David Riesman

  Of course, social structures differ very much in the degree to which they evoke a social character that in the process of socialization fills up, crushes, or buries individuality. We may take, as extreme cases, the primitive societies of Dobu or Alor. People there seem to be so crushed from infancy on by institutionalized practices that, while they manage to do what their culture asks of them in the emotional tone which the culture fosters, they cannot do much more. The Rorschach tests taken of the Alorese, for instance, indicate that there is a good deal of characterological uniformity among individuals and that few reserves of depth or breadth exist beyond the cultural norm or what Kardiner calls the basic personality type. Such a society might die out as a result of its apathy and misery, especially when further disorganized by white contact, but it is hard to conceive of an internal rejuvenation led by the more autonomous members of the group. Caught between social character and rigid social institutions, the individual and his potentialities have little scope. Nevertheless, even in such a society there will be deviants; as Ruth Benedict has pointed out, we know of no cultures without them. However, before turning to see whether the extent of deviation may be related to population phase, it is necessary to understand more precisely what is meant by deviation.

  The “adjusted” are those whom for the most part we have been describing. They are the typical tradition-directed, inner-directed, or other-directed people—those who respond in their character structure to the demands of their society or social class at its particular stage on the curve of population. Such people fit the culture as though they were made for it, as in fact they are. There is, characterologically speaking, an effortless quality about their adjustment, although as we have seen the mode of adjustment may itself impose heavy strains on the so-called normal people. That is, the adjusted are those who reflect their society, or their class within the society, with the least distortion.

  In each society those who do not conform to the characterological pattern of the adjusted may be either anomic or autonomous. Anomic is English coinage from Durkheim’s anomique (adjective of anomie) meaning ruleless, ungoverned. My use of anomic, however, covers a wider range than Durkheim’s metaphor: it is virtually synonymous with maladjusted, a term I refrain from using because of its negative connotations; for there are some cultures where I would place a higher value on the maladjusted or anomic than on the adjusted. The “autonomous” are those who on the whole are capable of conforming to the behavioral norms of their society—a capacity the anomics usually lack —but are free to choose whether to conform or not.

  In determining adjustment, the test is not whether an individual’s overt behavior obeys social norms but whether his character structure does. A person who has the appropriate character for his time and place is “adjusted” even when he makes mistakes and does things which deviate sharply from what is expected of him —to be sure, the consequences of such mistakes may eventually produce maladjustment in character. (Much in the same way, a culture may be a going concern even if it behaves “irrationally” vis-À-vis its neighbors or material environment.) Conversely, just as nonconformity in behavior does not necessarily mean nonconformity in character structure, so utter conformity in behavior may be purchased by the individual at so high a price as to lead to a character neurosis and anomie: the anomic person tends to sabotage either himself or his society, probably both.1 Thus, “adjustment,” as the term is used here, means socio-psychological fit, not adequacy in any evaluative sense; to determine adequacy either of behavior or character we must study not only the individual but the gear box which, with various slips and reversals, ties behavior in with institutional forms. The person here defined as autonomous may or may not conform outwardly, but whatever his choice, he pays less of a price, and he has a choice: he can meet both the culture’s definitions of adequacy and those which (to a still culturally determined degree) slightly transcend the norm for the adjusted.

  These three universal types (the adjusted, the anomic, the autonomous), like our three historical types (tradition-directed, inner-directed, and other-directed) are, in Max Weber’s sense, “ideal types,” that is, constructions necessary for analytical work. Every human being will be one of these types to some degree; but no one could be completely characterized by any one of these terms. To put it in the extreme, even an insane person is not anomic in every sphere of life; nor could an autonomous person be completely autonomous, that is, not irrationally tied in some part of his character to the cultural requirements of his existence. Nevertheless, we can characterize an individual by the way in which one mode of adaptation predominates, and, when we study individuals, analysis by such a method provides certain helpful dimensions for descriptive and comparative purposes. We can also characterize a society by examining the relative frequency with which the three modes of adaptation occur in it, and the relative importance of the three types in the social structure.

  About the anomics who arise as by-products, so to speak, of the attempt to create inner-direction and other-direction, a good deal has been suggested in the foregoing pages. Even a society depending on tradition-direction will have a certain number of anomics, those constitutionally and psychologically unable to conform or feel comfortable in the roles such a society assigns to its regularly recurring deviants. Some of these people can exploit the kinship system to keep going, but in a society of any size there will be some who are pushed out of that tight web. To these somewhat idiosyncratic and accidental outcrops of anomic character, more complex societies undergoing more rapid change add the people who, once capable of adjustment, are thrust aside by the emergence of a new dominant type. Types brought up under a familial regime of tradition-direction may later find themselves misfits in a society by then dependent on inner-direction; likewise, the rise of other-direction may drive inner-directed as well as tradition-directed types into anomie. Reference has already been made to some of the possible political consequences of such anomic character types in America, how their political indifference can be mobilized by a crusade appealing to their inability to cope with the social demands of modern urban culture.

  The anomics include not only those who, in their character, were trained to attend to signals that either are no longer given or no longer spell meaning or success. They also may be, as has just been said, those who are overadjusted, who listen too assiduously to the signals from within or without. Thus we have seen that in a society dependent on inner-direction there may be over-steered children and oversteered adults, people of too tight superego controls to permit themselves even the normal satisfactions and escapes of their fellows. Likewise, among those dependent on other-direction, some may be unable to shut off their radar even for a moment; their overconformity makes them a caricature of the adjusted pattern—a pattern that escapes them because they try too hard for it.

  We have seen, for example, the effort of the other-directed person to achieve a political and personal style of tolerance, drained of emotion, temper, and moodiness. But, obviously, this can go so far that deadness of feeling comes to resemble a clinical symptom. The psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson, observing soldiers hospitalized for apathy in World War II, writes of them:

  The most striking characteristic of the apathetic patient is his visible lack of emotion and drive. At first glance he may seem to be depressed; closer scrutiny, however, reveals lack of affect. He appears slowed up in the psychic and motor responses; he shows an emptiness of expression and a masklike facies … They behave very well in the ward, complying with all the rules and regulations. They rarely complain and make no demands … these patients had no urge to communicate their sufferings and no insight into their condition.2

  My own belief is that the ambulatory patients in the ward of modern culture show many analogous symptoms of too much compliance and too little insight, though of course their symptoms are not so sudden and severe. Their lack of emotion and emptiness of expression are as characteristic of many contemporary anomics as hysteria or outlawry was
characteristic of anomics in the societies depending on earlier forms of direction.

  Taken all together, the anomics—ranging from overt outlaws to catatonic types who lack even the spark for living, let alone for rebellion—constitute a sizable number in America. Quite a little is known about them in terms of personality type, social class, “preference” in illness, and so on. In fact, social science and psychiatry have until recently been preoccupied with understanding the anomic and suggesting therapies, just as medicine has been concerned with fighting the external agents that make people sick rather than with understanding the internal mysteries that keep them well. Indeed, it is usually not too difficult to explain why someone is anomic, since the tragedies and warpings of life, like germs, are omnipresent, and any personal disaster can be traced back to its “cause.”

  We obviously know much less about those whom I call autonomous. Many will even deny that there are such people, people capable of transcending their culture at any time or in any respect. Those who become autonomous in our own society, for instance, seem to arise in a family background and class or regional setting that have had quite different consequences for others. In fact, autonomous, adjusted, and anomic types can be brothers and sisters within the same family, associates on the same job, residents in the same housing project or suburb. When someone fails to become autonomous, we can very often see what blockages have stood in his way, but when someone succeeds in the same overt setting in which others have failed, I myself have no ready explanation, of this, and am sometimes tempted to fall back on constitutional or genetic factors—what people of an earlier era called the divine spark. Certainly, if one observes week-old infants in a hospital crÈche, one is struck with the varieties in responsiveness and aliveness before there has been much chance for culture to take hold. But, since this is a book about culture and character. I must leave such speculations to others.

  It seems reasonable to assume that a decisive step in the road toward autonomy is connected with the social shifts I have linked to the curve of population. To put this in the negative, it is difficult, almost impossible, in a society of high population growth potential, for a person to become aware of the possibility that he might change, that there are many roles open to him, roles other people have taken in history or in his milieu. As the philosopher G. H. Mead saw, this taking the role of the other leads to becoming aware of actual differences and potential similarities between the other and the self. That is why culture contact alone does not lead people to change when their interpretations of the contact spring out of a tradition-directed mode of life. High population growth potential, tradition-direction, and the inability of the individual to change roles—to think of himself as an individual capable of such change—these, as we saw, go together.

  For centuries the peasant farmers of Lebanon suffered from invasions by Arab horsemen. After each invasion the peasants began all over again to cultivate the soil, though they might do so only to pay tribute to the next marauder. The process went on until eventually the fertile valleys became virtual deserts, in which neither peasants nor nomads could hope for much. The peasants obviously never dreamed they could become horsemen; the marauders obviously never dreamed that they too might become cultivators of the soil. This epic has the quality not of human history but of animal life. The herbivores are unable to stop eating grass though they eat only to be devoured by the carnivores. And the carnivores cannot eat grass when they have thinned out the herbivores. In these societies dependent on tradition-direction there is scarcely a notion that one might change character or role.

  If Arabs could imagine becoming cultivators, and vice versa, it would not necessarily follow that the symbiotic ecology of the two main groups would change. These tradition-directed types might still go on doing what they realized they need not do. Nevertheless, once people become aware, with the rise of inner-direction, that they as individuals with a private destiny are not-tied to any given ecological pattern, something radically new happens in personal and social history. Then people can envisage adapting themselves not only within the narrow confines of the animal kingdom but within the wide range of alternative possibilities illustrated—but no more than illustrated—by human experience to date. Perhaps this is the most important meaning of the ever renewed discovery of the oneness of mankind as a species: that all human experience becomes relevant.

  The Arab who can see himself as a peasant, even though he would be, for reasons of temperament or other factors, unable to make so radical a shift, has already gained a new perspective on the relation: Arab-peasant. He may conceive of structuring it in some other way, by manipulation rather than by force, for instance. But if he did that, he would change, and so would the peasant: their relations could never again have the old animal-like simplicity.

  The more advanced the technology, on the whole, the more possible it is for a considerable number of human beings to imagine being somebody else. In the first place, the technology spurs the division of labor, which, in turn, creates the possibility for a greater variety of experience and of social character. In the second place, the improvement in technology permits sufficient leisure to contemplate change—a kind of capital reserve in men’s self-adaptation to nature—not on the part of a ruling few but on the part of many. In the third place, the combination of technology and leisure helps to acquaint people with other historical solutions—to provide them, that is, not only with more goods and more experiences but also with an increased variety of personal and social models.

  How powerful such an influence can be the Renaissance indicates. Then, a richer picture of the past made it possible to live toward a more open future. Italians, newly rich and self-conscious, tried to imitate Greeks; and northern peoples, such as the Elizabethan English, tried to imitate Italians. The inner-directed character type emerged as the dominant type from the new possibilities created at this period; he built both those possibilities and the limits he put on them into his character. From the masses of the tradition-directed there arose many mobile ones who decided that they could be “horsemen” and no longer had to be “cultivators”; and the new technology and new lands beyond the sea gave them the necessary physical and intellectual store for the shift, while at the same time making it possible for the cultivators to support more noncultivators. Ever since, in the countries of transitional population growth, men have robbed the earth of its fruits and the farmer of his progeny in order to build the industrial civilization (and the lowered birth rate) of today. In this process the farmer’s progeny had to learn how to become something other than cultivators.

  Today again, in the countries of incipient population decline, men stand on the threshold of new possibilities of being and becoming—though history provides a less ready, perhaps only a misleading, guide. They no longer need limit their choices by gyroscopic adaptation but can respond to a far wider range of signals than any that could possibly be internalized in childhood. However, with the still further advance of technology and the change of frontiers from production to consumption, the new possibilities do not present themselves in the same dramatic form of passing from one class to another, of joining one or another side —the exploiting or the exploited—in the factory and at the barricades. In fact, those, namely the Communists, who try to structure matters according to these older images of power, have become perhaps the most reactionary and most menacing force in world politics.

  In a society of abundance that has reached the population phase of incipient decline, the class struggle alters as the middle class expands until it may number more than half of the whole population in occupational terms, with an even larger proportion measured in terms of income, leisure, and values. The new possibilities opening up for the individual are possibilities not so much for entering a new class but rather for changing one’s style of life and character within the middle class.

  Under these conditions autonomy will not be related to class. In the era dependent on inner-direction, when character was l
argely formed for work and at work, it made a great deal of difference whether one owned means of production or not. Today, however, the psychological advantages of ownership are very much reduced in importance; character is increasingly formed for leisure and during leisure—and both leisure and means of consumption are widely distributed. Thus, adjusted, autonomous, and anomic outcomes are often the result of very impalpable variations in the way people are treated by and react to their education, their consumer training, and, generally, their encounters with people—all within the broad status band of the middle class.

  To be sure, there may be correlations, as yet unnoticed, between autonomy and occupation. Work is far from having lost its relevance for character even today. And occupational status affects leisure status. Those who are potentially autonomous may select some occupations in preference to others; beyond that, the day-by-day work experiences of members of different occupational groups will shape character. On the whole, however, it seems likely that the differences that will divide societies in the phase of incipient population decline will no longer be those between back-breaking work on the one hand and rentier status on the other, between misery and luxury, between long life and short life—those differences that dominated the thinking of men as varied as Charles Kingsley, Bellamy, Marx, and Veblen during the era of transitional population growth. Most people in America today—the “overprivileged” two thirds, let us say, as against the underprivileged third—can afford to attend to, and allow their characters to be shaped by, situational differences of a subtler nature than those arising from bare economic necessity and their relations to the means of production.

  II. The Autonomous among the Inner-directed