The New State

in politics. Neighbors now often meet for one object or two or three, and then when these are accomplished think that they need not meet again until there is another definite end to be gained. But in the meantime there should be the slow building up of the neighborhood consciousness. A mass-meeting will never do this. But this neighborhood consciousness is far more important than to get a municipal bathhouse for a certain district. If the bathhouse is considered the chief thing, and no effort made to get the neighborhood group together again until something else, a playground for instance, is wanted, this time perhaps not enough cohesion and concentration of purpose can be obtained to secure the playground. The question, in neighborhood organization is⁠—Is our object to get a new playground or to create methods by which playgrounds will become part of the neighborhood consciousness, methods which will above all educate for further concerted effort? If neighborhood organization is one among many methods of getting things, then it is not of great value; if, however, it is going to bring about a different mental life, if it will give us an open mind, a flexible mind, a cooperative mind, then it is the greatest movement of our time. For our object is not to get certain things, or to have certain things; our object is to evolve the kind of life, the way of thinking, within which these specific things will naturally have place. We shall make no real progress until we can do this.

Bernard Shaw has said of family life that it is often cut off equally from the blessings of society and the blessings of solitude. We must see that our neighborhood associations are so organized that we do get the advantages of society.

The second way of creating an integrated neighborhood is by learning and practising a genuine discussion, that is, a discussion which shall evolve a true collective purpose and bring the group will of the neighborhood to bear directly on city problems. When I speak of discussion I mean always the kind of discussion which is called out by a genuine group. The group idea, not the crowd idea, is to come from discussion. What is the remedy for a “ruthless majority”? What is the remedy for an “arrogant minority”? Group discussion. Group discussion will diminish suggestion as a social force and give place to interpermeation.

When we advocate discussion as a political method, we are not advocating the extension of a method already in use. There is little discussion today. Talk to air our grievances or as a steam-valve for the hotheaded, the avowed intention sometimes in the organization of so-called “discussion” societies, is not discussion. People often speak of “self-expression” as if it were a letting off of steam, as if there were something inside us that must be let out before it explodes. But this is not the use to which we must put the powers of self-expression; we must release these powers not to be wasted through a safety valve, but to be used constructively for the good of society. To change the metaphor, we must not make a petty effort to stem a stream which cannot and should not be stemmed but helped to direct itself.

Do we have discussion in debating societies? Never. Their influence is pernicious and they should be abolished in colleges, schools, settlements, Young Men’s Christian Associations, or wherever found. In these societies the men as a rule take either side of the question allotted to them, but even if they choose their side the process of the debate is the same. The object is always to win, it is never to discover the truth. This is excellent training for our present party politics. It is wretched preparation for the kind of politics we wish to see in America, because there is no attempt to think together. Some one to whom I said this replied, “But each side has to think together.” Not in the least: they simply pool their information and their arguments, they don’t think together. They don’t even think; that artificial mental process of maintaining a thesis which is not yours by conviction is not thinking. In debating you are always trying to find the ideas and facts which will support your side; you do not look dispassionately at all ideas and all facts, and try to make out just where the truth lies. You do not try to see what ideas of your opponent will enrich your own point of view; you are bound to reject without examination his views, his ideas, almost I might say his facts. In a discussion you can be flexible, you can try experiments, you can grow as the group grows, but in a debate all this is impossible.

One of the great advantages of the forum movement is that here we are beginning to have discussion.83

Let us analyze briefly the advantages of discussion. Genuine discussion is truth-seeking. First, then, it presses every man to think clearly and appreciatively and discriminatingly in order to take his part worthily. What we need above everything else is clear thinking. This need has been covered over by the demand for “honest” men, but hardly anyone would say today, “Give the management of your city over to a group of the most honest men you can find.” A group of honest men⁠—what a disconcerting picture the phrase calls up! We want efficient men, thinking men, as well as honest men. Take care of your thinking and your morals will take care of themselves⁠—is a present which would have benefited certain reform campaigns.

The first advantage of discussion then is that it tends to make us think and to seek accurate information in order to be able to think and to think clearly. I belong to a civic conference lunch club which meets once a month to discuss civic questions. On one occasion the program committee discovered a few days before the luncheon