SOCIETY AND HAPPINESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 815, 11 March 1955, Page 5

SOCIETY AND HAPPINESS

Sir,-To reappear within the purview of an old friend, after being out of touch for several years, in the form of an assailant in a literary free-for-all) must cause regret; however I feel I cannot allow to pass unchecked James K. Baxter’s recent remarks under this head. First, his terms are distressingly vague -not at all necessary even for a poet, for compare Lucretius or Demetrius, to say nothing of Ovid and his "On Paint- — oo

ing the Face’; poets can be exact in their usage. What does Mr. Baxter intend by "Society"? All very well calling it "that mechanical mother we have invented for ourselves," but that but adds confusion to the doubt and clarifies not at all. Now, there is a term, employed exactly by social anthropologists, and which I believe conveys the sense intended by Mr. Baxter when he used his all-embracing and naught-retaining "Society"; that word is "Culture." Although bitter arguments go on between such rival schools of social anthropology as the Structuralists, Functionalists and Configurationists, none of them has, I am certain, ever envisaged culture as a man-invented mechanical mother, nor is it likely that one ever will. Culture (a human group together with the totality of its environment forming one whole) is a dynamic, functioning organism, in which each part is illimitably interactively correlated with all other parts, and each is necessary for the functioning of the whole. Mankind and culture are inseparables, and culture always implies some socially recognised forms: of inter-human relationships within the culture. The types of such relations vary very markedly from such extremes as: One group serving another as a special ceremonial foodsupply; in-law avoidance; organised homo-sexuality; and open enmity, to a profiteering minority; religious semiwithdrawal; or a complete sex in a subservient state to the other. The happiness of the individual depends upon his degree of adaptation to the needs of the efficient functioning of his particular culture. Each: person is conditioned by precept of his elders, by experiences, etc., as nearly | as possible into the -individual-type ‘suited to ‘enter into those dynamic interactions which are the functions of his culture. The nearer the efficiency ideal, the more exact the adaptation, the less stress and friction, and the greater the happiness; and vice versa.

GUY

POWELL

(Auckland).