On Methods of Implementing a National Morale Program

This is an experimental paper in several ways. The social scientist is confronted with the need to attempt to translate his abstractions into workable and practical rules. If he is to do so, he faces several tasks. His abstractions must to a degree become cruder, because the tools are not yet developed for applying more refined formulations. A student of Chinese culture can warn an American export firm of the different meaning of red in Chinese culture, or twins in a West African tribe suggest alterations in the use of red or twins as advertising symbols. If, however, he attempts to translate his insight into the character structure, the characteristic organizations of experience of different peoples, into action, the problem is one with which we have only just begun to cope. In this paper I have assumed that we can't assume a type of American character structure.' Specialists will immediately demur - in this stratified, sectionalized, heterogeneous and rapidly changing society, with its divergent European historical sources, any statement about American character, unless corrected for all these factors, plus race and religion, is hopelessly crude. But the problem I have set myself is how the applied anthropologist might help to implement a national morale program. I have taken as given the present political structure of this country, the trend towards centralized planning in Washington, the probability that this trend will be accentuated in these emergency times. Where, I asked, can we find a rationale which might guide such wholesale planning? That was the first question. And the second was: How can we include in the plan itself a compensatory element for the crudeness, the disregard of local, class, and religious differences, which it had to include. Finally, there is the problem that faces all those who would see science applied, that of communication. With this I have experimented also. I have tried to write this statement in a way which would make it at least partially meaningful to the working statesman.