The Organization Man

CHAPTER 25 The Web of Friendship

830 THE ORGANIZATION MAN cHAPTER 25 The Web of Friendship IN SUCH CHARACfERISTICS AS BUDGETISM THE ORGANIZATION MAN IS SO similar from suburb to suburb that it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing a "mass society." On the surface the new suburbia does look like a vast sea of homogeneity, but actually it is a congregation of small neighborly cells-and they make the national trends as much as they reflect them. The groups are temporary, in a sense, for the cast of characters is always shifting. Their patterns of behavior, however, have an extraordinary permanence, and these patterns have an influence on the individual quite as powerful as the traditional group, and in many respects more so. Propinquity has always conditioned friendship and love and hate, and there is just more downright propinquity in suburbia than in most places. Yet in the power of the group that we see in suburbia we can see something of a shift in values as well. Just as important as the physical reasons is a responsiveness to the environment on the part of its members, and not only in degree but in character it seems to be growing. In suburbia friendship has become almost predictable. Despite the fact that a person can pick and choose from a vast number of people to make friends with, such things as the placement of a stoop or the direction of a street often have more to do with determining who is friends with whom. When you look at the regularities of group behavior, it is very easy to overlook the influence of individual characteristics, but in suburbia, try as you may to bear this in mind, the repetition of certain patterns makes the group's influence abundantly obvious. Given a few physical clues about the area, you can come close to determining what could be called its How of "social traffic," and once you have determined this, you The Web of Friendship 331 may come up with an unsettlingly accurate diagnosis of who is in the gang and who isn't. Now this may be conformity, but it is not unwitting conformity. The people know all about it. When I first started interviewing on this particular aspect of suburbia, I was at first hesitant; it is not very flattering to imply to somebody that they do what they do because of the environment rather than their own free will. I soon found out, however, that they not only knew quite well what I was interested in but were quite ready to talk about it. Give a suburban housewife a map of the area, and she is likely to show herself a very shrewd social analyst. After a few remarks about what a bunch of cows we all are, she will cheerfully explain how funny it is she doesn't pal around with the Clarks any more because she is using the new supermarket now and doesn't stop by Eleanor Clark's for coffee like she used to. I believe this awareness is the significant phenomenon. In this chapter I am going to chart the basic mechanics of the gang's social life and what physical factors determine it, but it is the awareness of the suburbanites themselves of this that I want to underline. They know full well why they do as they do, and they think about it often. Behind this neighborliness they feel a sort of moral imperative , and yet they see the conflicts also. Although these conflicts may seem trivial to others, they come very close to ·the central dilemma of organization man. FoR COMPREHENDING THESE CONFLICTS, PARK FOREST IS AN EXCELLENT looking glass. Within it are the principal design features found separately in other suburbs; in its homes area the 6o x 125 plots are laid out in the curved superblocks typical of most new developments , and the garden duplexes of its rental area are perhaps the most intense development of court living to be found anywhere. Park Forest, in short, is like other suburbs, only more so. Some might think it a synthetic atmosphere, and even Park Foresters , in a characteristically modern burst of civic pride, sometimes refer to their community as a "social laboratory." Yet I think there is justification for calling it a natural environment. While the architects happened on a design of great social utility, they were not trying to be social engineers-they just wanted a good basic design that would please people...