Notes - Mind Self and Society. Play, the Game, and the Generalized Other, Mead. PDF

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Notes - Mind Self and Society. Play, the Game, and the Generalized Other, Mead....

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Notes - Mind Self and Society. Play, the Game, and the Generalized Other, Mead.

- The social conditions under which the self arises as an object are language, one in play and one in the game.

- There is an organisation of play which is similar to the plays of a child. This plays of a child is

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similar to somethings found in the play of primitive people. This activity does not belong to the everyday life of the people when they deal with the objects about them since they have developed self-consciousness but the activity impacts their attitudes toward the forces about them, the nature upon which they depend; in their attitude toward this naturue which is vague and uncertain, there we have a much more primitive response; and that response finds it expression in taking the role of the other. The process which develops has come from situations similar to those in which little children play at being a parent, at being a teacher-vague personalities that are about them and which affect the and on which they depend. These personalities are which they take, roles they play and control the development of their own personality.

The fundamental difference between the game and play is - the child must have the attitudes of the other people in the game and these attitudes organise into a unit and that organisation controls the response of the child. A persons own acts is determined by the person’s assumption of the action of others in the game. - the organised community which gives the person the attitudes in the form of a unit is called the generalised other. The attitude of the generalised other is therefore the attitude of the whole community or group. - If the person is to develop a self he needs to take the attitudes of others but he also needs ato act toward different social projects which at any given time is is carrying out, or toward the various larger phases of the general social process which constitutes its life and of which these projects are specific manifestations. Basically he tales the attitudes of the organised social group to which he belongs toward the organised, cooperative social activity or set of such activities in which that group is part of, does he develop a complete self - The complex cooperative processes and activities and institutional functioning of organised human society are only possible if the individual in that society can take the attitudes of the other people to the organised social whole. - In the form of the generalised other is the way that social process influences the behabiour of the individuals. - By only taking the attitude of the generalised other toward himself, can he think. The person takes the organised social attitudes of the social group toward the social problems which the group faces and he reacts or responds to the problems in terms of the organised attitudes of the party. He therefore enters into a special set of social relations with the other indiivudals in the party and enters into various other special sets of social relations with other classes of inviduals. - The groups that the individuals are concrete social classes or subgroups such as political parties, clubs, social corporations. Other groups are abstract social classes or subgroups such as the class of debtors and the class of creditors, in terms of which their individual members are related to one another only more or less indirectly, and which only more or less indirectly function as social units. - A person’s membership in one of these social classes or subgroups enables him to have social relations with infinite number of other people who belong to these social classes or subgroups. This divides different human social communities from one another. - Out of the abstract social classes or subgroups, the one with the largest number of individual members and the one which enables the largest number of human individuals entering a social relation is the which is most inclusive and extensive. - The self after the two stages reaches its full development by organising the attitudiedes of others into a organised group of attitudes, and by thus becoming an individual reflection of the general pattern of the group behaviour in which it and the others are involved a pattern which enters as a whole into the individual’s experience in terms of these organised group attitudes, which which he takes toward himself.

- The game has a logic and there is a definite end for the self to get. The game is an illustration of

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the situation out of which an organised personality arises. A child becomes an organic member of society when he takes the other person’s attitude and allows that attitude of the other person to determine the thing he is going to do. The game is similar to life for the child since he takes the attitudes of those around him especially those who control him and who he depends on such as family. A child’s personality comes from the use of language. The content of the other which enters into one personality is the response in the individual which his gesture calls out un the other. A person’s personality comes from them belonging to a community because they take over the insitutions of that community into its own conduct.Then through a process of taking the different roles that the others take he gets the attitude of the members of the community. Self consciousness is the awakening in ourselves of the group of attitudes which we are arousing in others. Self consciousness refers to the ability to call out in ourselves a set of definite responses which belong to the others of the group. We cannot be ourselves without being members of a community where there are community of attitudes which control the attitudes of all. We cannot have rights without common attitudes. Selves can only exist when there is definite relationships with other selves....