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How to live in two worlds without confusing them or ourselves
Author(s) -
Johnson Earl S.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6629(197704)5:2<189::aid-jcop2290050216>3.0.co;2-z
Subject(s) - morality , politics , object (grammar) , beauty , corporation , state (computer science) , sociology , law , environmental ethics , aesthetics , epistemology , political science , philosophy , computer science , linguistics , algorithm
Every modern society is bimodal, composed of two communities. These differ in such ways as sacred and secular, personal and impersonal, familial and political, static and changing, security and liberty as major values, customary and legal, communal morality and individual ethics, and unity and separation of society and state. Illustrations of these and other differences are given—a corporation disguised as a person, morals and ethics in their „proper” places, two loci of evil in men and in institutions, Nature as an object of enjoyment and as a thing to be exploited, and beauty as simply there and as something to be analyzed. If the bifurcations of modern society are to be mended, their origins must first be known and understood for what they portend for the integrity of the family and the neighborhood. A society is an organic structure and must be understood as such. Ad hoc remedies are futile.