Self-Discipline

Gesellschaft.  It’s an unusual word; a word of German origin.  It is a word that I did not learn until I took the Graduate Record Exam in Sociology.  Nonetheless it is an important word.  It is a term that all of us who live in the United States should know.

A Gesellschaft society is a mass society.  It is a society that is made up of many thousands, and often millions, of participants.  There are so many that most are strangers to one another.

And yet it is also a society in which these strangers are dependent upon one another.  Most do not grow their own food, or sew their own clothing, or construct their own homes.  They depend upon others to provide these services in exchange for the services they provide.

Members of Gesellschaft communities must therefore be able to count on the reliability of these strangers.  They must be confident that these others will furnish what is required.  They have to be sure that their food is not tainted and that their automobiles will not fall apart the moment they are driven out of the showroom.

Above all, they must be certain that they can walk down the street without being molested and that unknown drivers will not suddenly swerve out of their lane on the highway.

This requires that such strangers exercise restraint.  They must be so reliably self-disciplined that they do what is expected of them.  If they cannot control themselves—without external constraints—the world becomes a dangerous place, with interpersonal cooperation almost impossible.

The consequences for a Gesellschaft community when a significant number of its members do not exhibit self-discipline were in display in Baltimore several weeks ago.  There, hundreds, if not thousands, of young men lost control and vandalized their city.

Once the police were withdrawn from the streets, chaos broke out.  Without someone to stop them, the rioters could not stop themselves from heaving stones, setting fires, or looting stores.  They did not possess the personal controls to keep their anger in check.

Most young people learn these controls in their families of origin.  Nonetheless many inner-city young people do not come from traditional two parent homes.  They are raised by single mothers who do not have the time, or the physical strength, to keep adolescent males within bounds.

Self-discipline, however, is inculcated by reliable external controls.  Children are taught to say please and thank you, and to refrain from stealing their friend’s toys, by parents who will not let them get away with such transgressions.

But what happens when unassisted mother’s are unable to do this?  What are we—as a society—to do when thousands, and perhaps millions, of our children never learn self-discipline?

A Gesellschaft society must impose social order if it is to survive.  It cannot allow its members to do whatever they want.  The results would be disastrous.  Over the long haul such a society would disintegrate into anarchy.

And so we enforce order.  That’s why we have police forces.  They are asked to impose external discipline on persons who do not possess the internal resources to do so.  A cop’s job is to make sure that the rules are followed by individuals who may not be inclined to honor them.

But what happens when the police become the enemy?  If the constituents of the thin blue line are punished for imposing restraints, where will the requisite discipline come from?  Probably nowhere.

Young people who do not do what they ought to do must sometimes be forced to.  If we assume that everyone in our society possesses the same self-discipline as members of the middle class, all is lost.  Our fall will be more precipitous than that of the Roman Empire.

We cannot abandon external controls where self-discipline is absent.  Doing so would be a form of social suicide.  Sacrificing our police on the alter of a liberal fantasy is a prescription for fatal disarray.

Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University