gree with the traditional one. The modern "social unrest,"
like the immigrant problem, is a sign of the lack of participation and
this is true to the degree that certain elements feel that violence is
the only available means of participating.

3. Assimilation and the Mediation of Individual Differences

In general, a period of unrest represents the stage in which a new
definition of the situation is being prepared. Emotion and unrest are
connected with situations where there is loss of control. Control is
secured on the basis of habits and habits are built up on the basis of
the definition of the situation. Habit represents a situation where the
definition is working. When control is lost it means that the habits are
no longer adequate, that the situation has changed and demands a
redefinition. This is the point at which we have unrest--a heightened
emotional state, random movements, unregulated behavior--and this
continues until the situation is redefined. The unrest is associated
with conditions in which the individual or society feels unable to act.
It represents energy, and the problem is to use it constructively.

The older societies tended to treat unrest by defining the situation in
terms of the suppression or postponement of the wish; they tried to make
the repudiation of the wish itself a wish. "Contentment," "conformity
to the will of God," ultimate "salvation" in a better world, are
representative of this. The founders of America defined the situation in
terms of participation, but this has actually taken too exclusively the
form of "political participation." The present tendency is to define the
situation in terms of social participation, including demand for the
improvement of social conditions to a degree which will enable all to
participate.

But, while it is important that the people who are members of the same
community should have a body of common memories and a common
apperception mass, so that they may talk intelligibly to one another, it
is neither possible nor necessary that everything should have the same
meaning for everyone. A perfectly homogeneous consciousness would mean a
tendency to define all situations rigidly and sacredly and once and
forever. Something like this did happen in the Slavic village
communities and among all savage people, and it was the ideal of the
medieval church, but it implies a low level of efficiency and a slow
rate of progress.

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