institutions

69:0.3Civ­i­lized man takes great pride in the char­ac­ter, sta­bil­ity, and con­ti­nu­ity of his es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tions, but all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions are merely the ac­cu­mu­lated mores of the past as they have been con­served by taboos and dig­ni­fied by re­li­gion. Such lega­cies be­come tra­di­tions, and tra­di­tions ul­ti­mately meta­mor­phose into con­ven­tions.

69:1.1All hu­man in­sti­tu­tions min­is­ter to some so­cial need, past or pres­ent, not­with­stand­ing that their overde­vel­op­ment un­fail­ingly de­tracts from the worth-while­ness of the in­di­vid­ual in that per­son­al­ity is over­shad­owed and ini­tia­tive is di­min­ished. Man should con­trol his in­sti­tu­tions rather than per­mit him­self to be dom­i­nated by these cre­ations of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

69:1.31. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-main­te­nance. These in­sti­tu­tions em­brace those prac­tices grow­ing out of food hunger and its as­so­ci­ated in­stincts of self-preser­va­tion. They in­clude in­dus­try, prop­erty, war for gain, and all the reg­u­la­tive ma­chin­ery of so­ci­ety. Sooner or later the fear in­stinct fos­ters the es­tab­lish­ment of these in­sti­tu­tions of sur­vival by means of taboo, con­ven­tion, and re­li­gious sanc­tion. But fear, ig­no­rance, and su­per­sti­tion have played a promi­nent part in the early ori­gin and sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ment of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions.

69:1.42. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-per­pet­u­a­tion. These are the es­tab­lish­ments of so­ci­ety grow­ing out of sex hunger, ma­ter­nal in­stinct, and the higher ten­der emo­tions of the races. They em­brace the so­cial safe­guards of the home and the school, of fam­ily life, ed­u­ca­tion, ethics, and re­li­gion. They in­clude mar­riage cus­toms, war for de­fense, and home build­ing.

69:1.53. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. These are the prac­tices grow­ing out of van­ity pro­cliv­i­ties and pride emo­tions; and they em­brace cus­toms in dress and per­sonal adorn­ment, so­cial us­ages, war for glory, danc­ing, amuse­ment, games, and other phases of sen­sual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. But civ­i­liza­tion has never evolved dis­tinc­tive in­sti­tu­tions of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

81:5.5So­ci­ety thus be­comes a co-op­er­a­tive scheme for se­cur­ing civil free­dom through in­sti­tu­tions, eco­nomic free­dom through cap­i­tal and in­ven­tion, so­cial lib­erty through cul­ture, and free­dom from vi­o­lence through po­lice reg­u­la­tion.

69:0.2When hu­man be­ings long main­tain so­cial groups, such ag­gre­ga­tions al­ways re­sult in the cre­ation of cer­tain ac­tiv­ity trends which cul­mi­nate in in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion. Most of man’s in­sti­tu­tions have proved to be labor­sav­ing while at the same time con­tribut­ing some­thing to the en­hance­ment of group se­cu­rity.