WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Human Work cover

Human Work

Chapter 8: IV: SOME FALSE CONCEPTS Summary
By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Sociology

About This Book

A systematic examination of social and economic life that treats familiar facts as outcomes of underlying processes, arguing that widespread suffering, ignorance, and inefficient institutions persist despite material advances. The work analyzes social evolution, concepts and conduct, and exposes false assumptions while mapping the social soul and body. It traces economic processes — labor, specialization, production, distribution, and consumption — and contends that many hardships are socially produced and therefore preventable. The author advocates a scientific social physiology to diagnose social pathologies and recommends reorganization and enlightened policy as remedies.

IV: SOME FALSE CONCEPTS
Summary

The ego concept, based on pre-human status. Our separate consciousness not human. Human consciousness collective. “We” human, “I” animal. Absurdity of individualism in organism. Pleasure-in-impression theory. Animal basis. Pleasure through motory nerves as well as sensory, and in us far greater. Pay Concept, animal basis, logical extremes in Heaven and Hell. Other forces also operative. Woman labour. Slave labour. Shame and agony resultant in concepts of eternal torture. Wage labour. Want theory. Self-interest theory. Self-preservation not nature’s first law. Race-preservation. Pain concept: “Sweet uses of adversity.” Action and reaction equal. “Good to be born poor.” Pain only a message, always indicative of wrong. Defensive torture. Hazing. Evils of poverty. Abraham Lincoln. Illegitimate wealth. Dumbbells not dinner. Contempt for work, how derived. Veblen. Paradox of “independence.” Law of demand and supply.