self-maintenance

68:2.2While the level of in­tel­li­gence has con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the rate of cul­tural prog­ress, so­ci­ety is es­sen­tially de­signed to lessen the risk el­e­ment in the in­di­vid­ual’s mode of liv­ing, and it has pro­gressed just as fast as it has suc­ceeded in less­en­ing pain and in­creas­ing the plea­sure el­e­ment in life. Thus does the whole so­cial body push on slowly to­ward the goal of des­tiny—ex­tinc­tion or sur­vival—de­pend­ing on whether that goal is self-main­te­nance or self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance orig­i­nates so­ci­ety, while ex­ces­sive self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

68:2.3So­ci­ety is con­cerned with self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-main­te­nance, and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, but hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion is wor­thy of be­com­ing the im­me­di­ate goal of many cul­tural groups.

68:2.11Van­ity con­tributed might­ily to the birth of so­ci­ety; but at the time of these rev­e­la­tions the de­vi­ous striv­ings of a vain­glo­ri­ous gen­er­a­tion threaten to swamp and sub­merge the whole com­pli­cated struc­ture of a highly spe­cial­ized civ­i­liza­tion. Plea­sure-want has long since su­per­seded hunger-want; the le­git­i­mate so­cial aims of self-main­te­nance are rapidly trans­lat­ing them­selves into base and threat­en­ing forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance builds so­ci­ety; un­bri­dled self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion un­fail­ingly de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

68:2.9The func­tion of mar­riage in evo­lu­tion is the in­sur­ance of race sur­vival, not merely the re­al­iza­tion of per­sonal hap­pi­ness; self-main­te­nance and self-per­pet­u­a­tion are the real ob­jects of the home. Self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion is in­ci­den­tal and not es­sen­tial ex­cept as an in­cen­tive in­sur­ing sex as­so­ci­a­tion. Na­ture de­mands sur­vival, but the arts of civ­i­liza­tion con­tinue to in­crease the plea­sures of mar­riage and the sat­is­fac­tions of fam­ily life.

84:0.2Mat­ing is purely an act of self-per­pet­u­a­tion as­so­ci­ated with vary­ing de­grees of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion; mar­riage, home build­ing, is largely a mat­ter of self-main­te­nance, and it im­plies the evo­lu­tion of so­ci­ety. So­ci­ety it­self is the ag­gre­gated struc­ture of fam­ily units. In­di­vid­u­als are very tem­po­rary as plan­e­tary fac­tors—only fam­i­lies are con­tin­u­ing agen­cies in so­cial evo­lu­tion. The fam­ily is the chan­nel through which the river of cul­ture and knowl­edge flows from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other.

84:0.3The home is ba­si­cally a so­ci­o­logic in­sti­tu­tion. Mar­riage grew out of co-op­er­a­tion in self-main­te­nance and part­ner­ship in self-per­pet­u­a­tion, the el­e­ment of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion be­ing largely in­ci­den­tal. Nev­er­the­less, the home does em­brace all three of the es­sen­tial func­tions of hu­man ex­is­tence, while life prop­a­ga­tion makes it the fun­da­men­tal hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, and sex sets it off from all other so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

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.

82:3.2There al­ways have been and al­ways will be two dis­tinct realms of mar­riage: the mores, the laws reg­u­lat­ing the ex­ter­nal as­pects of mat­ing, and the oth­er­wise se­cret and per­sonal re­la­tions of men and women. Al­ways has the in­di­vid­ual been re­bel­lious against the sex reg­u­la­tions im­posed by so­ci­ety; and this is the rea­son for this age­long sex prob­lem: Self-main­te­nance is in­di­vid­ual but is car­ried on by the group; self-per­pet­u­a­tion is so­cial but is se­cured by in­di­vid­ual im­pulse.

50:5.52. The se­cu­rity age. Just as soon as the prim­i­tive hunter can spare any time from the search for food, he turns this leisure to aug­ment­ing his se­cu­rity. More and more at­ten­tion is de­voted to the tech­nique of war. Homes are for­ti­fied, and the clans are so­lid­i­fied by mu­tual fear and by the in­cul­ca­tion of hate for for­eign groups. Self-preser­va­tion is a pur­suit which al­ways fol­lows self-main­te­nance.

84:5.1In self-per­pet­u­a­tion woman is man’s equal, but in the part­ner­ship of self-main­te­nance she labors at a de­cided dis­ad­van­tage, and this hand­i­cap of en­forced ma­ter­nity can only be com­pen­sated by the en­light­ened mores of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion and by man’s in­creas­ing sense of ac­quired fair­ness.