A third pertinent aspect of the human condition concerns co-presence. A social situation may be defined (in the first instance), as any environment of mutual monitoring possibilities that lasts during the time two or more individuals find themselves in one another’s immediate physical presence, and extends over the entire territory within which this mutual monitoring is possible.
By definition, an individual’s activities must occur either in social situations or solitarily. Does which it will be, make a difference for the fatefulness of his moments?
For the special kind of consequentiality we are concerned with, the fateful kind involving the significant problematic bearing of one moment’s activity upon the next, it should not matter whether the event is socially situated or not. Our concern, after all, is with the later effects of an action, not its current condition. None the less, the difference between solitary and socially situated activities has a special relevance of its own.
Just as the individual always brings his body into every occasion of his activity and also the possibility of a fortuitous linking of an already consequential event to one that would otherwise be innocuous, so he brings himself as an upholder of conduct standards like physical adept-ness, honesty, alertness, piety, and neatness. The record of an individual’s maintenance of these standards provides a basis others use for imputing a personal make-up to him. Later they employ this characterization in determining how to treat him—and this is consequential. Of course, most of these standards are unthinkingly and consistently maintained by adults; they are likely to become aware of these norms only when a freak accident occurs or when, in their mature and ritually delicate years, they essay for the first time to ride a horse, skate, or engage in other sports requiring special techniques for the maintenance of physical aplomb.
In some cases solitary misconduct results in a record of damage that can later be traced to the offender. In many other cases, however, no such responsibility is found; either the effects of the misconduct are ephemeral (as in gestured acts of contempt) or they cannot be traced to their author. Only the conscience of the individual can make such activity consequential for him, and this kind of conscience is not everywhere found. However, when the conduct occurs in a social situation—when, that is, witnesses are present—then these standards become immediately relevant and introduce some risk, however low.
A similar argument can be made about opportunities to display sterling personal qualities. With no witnesses present, the individual’s efforts may have little identifiable lasting effect; when others are present, some kind of record is assured.
In social situations, then, ordinary risks and opportunities are confounded by expressions of make-up. Gleanings become available, often all too much so. Social situations thus become opportunities for introducing favorable information about oneself, just as they become risky occasions when unfavorable facts may be established.
Of the various types of object the individual must handle during his presence among others, one merits special attention: the other persons themselves. The impression he creates through his dealings with them and the traits they impute to him in consequence have a special bearing on his reputation, for here the witnesses have a direct personal stake in what they witness.
Specifically, whenever the individual is in the presence of others, he is pledged to maintain a ceremonial order by means of interpersonal rituals. He is obliged to ensure that the expressive implications of all local events are compatible with the status that he and the others present possess; this involves politeness, courtesy, and retributive responses to others’ slighting of self. And the maintenance of this order, whether during time off or time on is more problematic than might first appear.
A final word about social situations: The ceremonial order sustained by persons when in one another’s presence does more than assure that each participant gives and gets his due. Through the exercise of proper demeanor, the individual gives credit and substance to interaction entities themselves, such as conversations, gatherings, and social occasions, and renders himself accessible and usable for communication. Certain kinds of misconduct, such as loss of self-control, gravely disrupt the actor’s usability in face to face interaction and can disrupt the interaction itself. The concern the other participants have for the social occasion, and the ends they anticipate will be served through it, together ensure that some weight will be given to the propriety of the actor’s behavior.
I have argued that the individual is always in jeopardy in some degree because of adventitious linkings of events, the vulnerability of his body, and the need in social situations to maintain the proprieties. It is, of course, when accidents occur—unplanned impersonal happenings with incidental dire results—that these sources of fatefulness become alive to us. But something besides accident must be considered here.
The physical capacities of any normal adult equip him, if he so wills it, to be immensely disruptive of the world immediately at hand. He can destroy objects, himself, and other people. He can profane himself, insult and contaminate others, and interfere with their free passage.
Infants are not trusted to forego these easy opportunities (which in any case they are insufficiently developed to exploit fully) and are physically constrained from com-mitting mischief. Personal development is the process by which the individual learns to forego these opportunities voluntarily, even while his capacity to destroy the world immediately around him increases. And this foregoing is usually so well learned that students of social life fail to see the systematic desisting that routinely occurs in daily living, and the utter mayhem that would result were the individual to cease to be a gentleman. Appreciation comes only when we study in detail the remarkable disruption of social settings produced by hypomanic children, youthful vandals, suicidals, persons pathologically obsessed by a need for self-abasement, and skilled saboteurs. Although our coin-tossers can be relied upon not to hold their breath or run their heads up against a concrete wall, or spit on each other, or besmear themselves with their own fecal matter, inmates of mental hospitals have been known to engage in exactly these behaviors, nicely demonstrating the transformation of unproblematic consequential activity into what is fateful.
IV. Practical Gambles
The human condition ensures that eventfulness will al-ways be a possibility, especially in social situations. Yet the individual ordinarily manages his time and time off so as to avoid fatefulness. Further, much of the eventfulness that does occur is handled in ways that do not concern us. There are many occasions of unavoided fatefulness that are resolved in such a way as to allow the participants to remain unaware of the chances they had in fact been taking. (The occurrence of such moments, for example while driving, is itself an interesting subject for study.) And much of the fatefulness that occurs in consequence of freakish, improbable events is handled retrospectively; only after the fact does the individual redefine his situation as having been fateful all along, and only then does he appreciate in what connection the fatefulness was to occur. Retrospective fatefulness and unappreciated fatefulness abound, but will not be considered here.
And yet of course there are extraordinary niches in social life where activity is so markedly problematic and consequential that the participant is likely to orient himself to fatefulness prospectively, perceiving in these terms what it is that is taking place. It is then that fateful situations undergo a subtle transformation, cognitively reorganized by the person who must suffer them. It is then that the frame of reference employed by our two small boys is brought into serious life by serious men. Given the practical necessity of following a course of action whose success is problematic and passively awaiting the outcome thereof, one can discover an alternative, howsoever costly, and then define oneself as having freely chosen between this undesirable certainty and the uncertainty at hand. A Hobson’s choice is made, but this is enough to allow the situation to be read as one in which self-determination is central. Instead of awaiting fate, you meet it
at the door. Danger is recast into taken risk; favorable possibilities, into grasped opportunity. Fateful situations become chancy undertakings, and exposure to uncertainty is construed as willfully taking a practical gamble.23
Consider now the occupations where problematic con-sequentiality is faced and where it would be easy to define one’s activity as a practical gamble voluntarily taken:
1. There are roles in commerce that are financially dan-gerous or at least unsteady, subjecting the individual to relatively large surges of success and failure over the short run; among these are market and real estate speculators, commercial fishermen,24 prospectors.
2. There are roles in industry that are physically dan-gerous: mining, high construction work,25 test piloting, well-capping.
3. There are the “hustling” jobs in business enterprise where salesmen and promoters work on a commission or contract-to-contract basis under conditions of close competition. Here income and prestige can be quickly gained and lost due to treacherous minor contingencies: a tem-porary let-up in effort, the weather, the passing mood of a buyer.
4. There are performing jobs filled by politicians, actors, and other live entertainers who, during each stage appearance, must work to win and hold an audience under conditions where many contingencies can spoil the show and endanger the showman’s reputation. Here, again, any let-up in effort and any minor mishap can easily have serious consequences.
5. There is the soldier’s calling26 and the policeman’s lot—stations in public life that fall outside the ordinary categories of work, and make the incumbent officially responsible for undergoing physical danger at the hands of persons who intend it. The fact that these callings stand outside civilian ranks seems to reinforce the notion of self-determination.
6. There is the criminal life, especially the lesser non-racketeering varieties, which yields considerable opportunity but continuously and freshly subjects the individual to gross contingencies—to physical danger, the risk of losing civil status, and wide fluctuations regarding each day’s take.27 “Making it” on the street requires constant orientation to unpredictable opportunities and a readiness to make quick decisions concerning the expected value of proposed schemes—all of which subject the individual to great uncertainties. As already seen, getting to and getting away from the scene of a crime subjects the participants to the fateful play of what would ordinarily be minor incidents.
7. A further source of fatefulness is to be found in arenas, in professional spectator sports whose performers place money, reputation, and physical safety in jeopardy all at the same time: football, boxing, and bullfighting are examples. Sterling Moss’s vocation is another:
.... motor-racing on the highest level, in the fastest, most competitive company, grand prix driving is the most dangerous sport in the world. It is one of the riskiest of man’s activities. Motor-racing kills men. In one recent year the mortality rate was twenty-five percent, or one out of four. These are odds to be compared with those cited for fighter pilots and paratroopers.28
8. Finally, there are the recreational non-spectator sports that are full of risk: mountain climbing, big game hunting, skin diving, parachuting, surfing, bob-sledding, spelunking.
V. Adaptations
Uneventful moments have been defined as moments that are not consequentially problematic. They tend to be dull and unexciting. (When anxiety is felt during such moments it is felt for eventful ones slated to come later.) Yet there are many good reasons to take comfort in this uneventful-ness and seek it out, voluntarily foregoing practical gambles along with risk and opportunity—the opportunity if only because it is so often related to the risk. The question is one of security. In uneventful situations, courses of action can be managed reliably and goals progressively and predictably realized. By such self-management the individual allows others to build him into their own plans in an orderly and effective way. The less uncertain his life, the more society can make use of him. It is understandable then that the individual may make realistic efforts to minimize the eventfulness—the fatefulness—of his moments, and that he will be encouraged to do so. He engages in copings.
One basic technique is physical care. The individual handles himself so as to minimize the remote danger of accidental injury to his body. He does not tip his chair too far back or daydream while crossing a busy intersection.29 In both the matter of exercising physical care and the need for doing so, idle pursuits make the same claims as obli-gated, serious ones. Some care must always be exerted. Taking care is a constant condition of being. Thus it is one of the central concerns that parents in all societies must impress upon their young,30 the injunction being to “take care” and not become unnecessarily involved in avoidable fatefulness.
Another means of controlling eventfulness, and one al-most as much employed as physical care, is sometimes called providence: an incremental orientation to long-range goals expressed through acts that have a very small additive long-term consequence. The work of building up a savings account is an example; the acquisition of seniority at a workplace and working one’s way up by the gradual acquisition of training are two others. The raising of a large family might also qualify. The important point here is that any one day’s effort, involving as it does only a small increment, can be sacrificed with little threat to the whole. Here is the Calvinistic solution to life: once the individual divides his day’s activities into ones that have no effect and others having a small contributive consequence, nothing can really go wrong.
Another standard means of protecting oneself against fatefulness is insurance in whatever form, as when house-holders invest in candles and spare fuses, motorists in spare tires, and adults in medical plans. In this way the cost of possible trouble can be easily spread over the whole course of the individual’s life, a “converting of a larger contingent loss into a smaller fixed charge.”31
Systems of courtesy and etiquette can also be viewed as forms of insurance against undesired fatefulness, this time in connection with the personal offense that one individual can inadvertently give to another. The safe management of face to face interaction is especially dependent on this means of control.
Note that the availability and approval of risk-reducing measures creates a new contingency, a new basis for anxiety. When an untoward event occurs during a moment meant to be uneventful, and the event spills over the boundary of the moment and contaminates parts of the individual’s life to come, he faces a double loss: the initial loss in question plus that of appearing to himself and others as having failed to exercise the kind of intelligent control, the kind of “care,” that allows reasonable persons to minimize danger and avoid remorse.
These, then, are some of the means—largely avoidant—by which the individual realistically copes with situations of fatefulness. Another issue must now be considered, which is easy to confuse with this—defensive behavior.
Anticipated fateful activity creates anxiety and excite-ment. This is implied in the notion that the utility of what is bet is likely to be quite different from the utility of betting it. Also, as suggested, the individual often feels remorse when something undesirable happens, the chance of which he had failed to reduce, and disappointment when something desirable does not, the occurrence of which he had failed to assure. Any practice that manages the affective response associated with fatefulness—affects such as anxiety, remorse and disappointment—may be called a defense.32
When we shift consideration from the management of fatefulness to the management of an affective state associated with it, we are required to review again the phases of a play. For in fact there are situations in which objectively inconsequential phases of play are responded to with a sense that they are fateful. Our individual, about to open the letter containing examination results, may feel excited and anxious to the point of engaging in little rituals of propitiation and control before casting his eyes on the awful news. Or, when the nurse approaches him with in-formation about the condition of his wife and gender of
his child, he may feel that the moment is fateful; as he may when the hospital staff returns with news gleaned from a biopsy performed on him to see whether a growth is malignant or benign. But it should be plain that these moments are not really fateful, merely revelatory. In each case the individual’s fate has been determined before he entered the news-acquiring situation; he is simply apprised of what is already in force, of something that, at this late date, he can do nothing about. Opening a letter or analysing a bioptic section cannot generate or determine a condition, but only reveal what has already been generated.33
Just as disclosures can create the excitement and concern of fate being generated, so can settlements, that is, occasions when crucial matters known to have been determined in a particular way are finally executed. Thus, in modern Europe, a condemned man’s last walk has not been fateful even though each step has brought him closer to death; his execution was merely dramatic, it was his trial that was fateful. In the eighteenth century, when many death sentences were passed and most of these commuted, the trial was not as fateful as the period following it. Very recently, of course, with the agitation against capital punishment, the post-trial period has again become appreciably fateful.
Now we can return to consider defenses, if only in a passing manner, in order to bring a much discussed topic into relationship with the subject-matter of this paper.
The most obvious type of defense, perhaps, is the kind that has no objective effect on fate at all, as in the case of ritualistic superstitions. The behavior said to be true of boxers will serve as an example:
Interaction Ritual Page 18