Greetings!
And welcome to another of my fuzzy-headed open thread posts for the Street Prophets group. Of course, the Street is open to the public as most streets are. All are welcome to join in the conversation or just post whatever is on their minds today-- or tomorrow, or next Thursday... These diaries are supposedly open to new comments for an entire week. So please, if you do wander through more than an hour after this was posted, there's no such thing as a "late" comment in a Marko diary. It's open until it's closed.
I've been reading a book that was first published in 1917. It had been whomping me over the head repeatedly. And the resonating has grown to a deafening level of reverberation with it rattling around just in my own empty head. I thought I'd share a bit of it below.
Are you familiar with Bertrand Russell? He was a favorite thinker of one of my favorite teachers in high school. And for some reason, despite Bertie's boney face staring down at me for a couple of years from a poster prominently displayed in Dr. Jones' classroom, only last week did I finally bother to actually begin reading any of Bertrand Russell's work.
And I chose "Political Ideals"
In dark days, men need a clear faith and a well-grounded hope; and as the outcome of these, the calm courage which takes no account of hardships by the way. The times through which we are passing have afforded to many of us a confirmation of our faith. We see that the things we had thought evil are really evil, and we know more definitely than we ever did before the directions in which men must move if a better world is to arise on the ruins of the one which is now hurling itself into destruction. We see that men's political
dealings with one another are based on wholly wrong ideals, and can only be saved by quite different ideals from continuing to be a source of suffering, devastation, and sin.
That's the opening paragraph of the first chapter. Can you kinda see where this is going? I think we seem to be in a similar time filled with destructive politics.
Here's some snippets from the following paragraphs that caused a few of the lumps on my poor noggin:
Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. There is nothing for the politician to consider outside or above the various men, women, and children who compose the world.
. . .
To begin with, we do not want all men to be alike. We do not want to lay down a pattern or type to which men of all sorts are to be made by some means or another to approximate. This is the ideal of the impatient administrator. A bad teacher will aim at imposing his opinion, and turning out a set of pupils all of whom will give the same definite answer on a doubtful point.
. . .
Not only teachers, but all commonplace persons in authority, desire in their subordinates that kind of uniformity which makes their actions easily predictable and never inconvenient. The result is that they crush initiative and individuality when they can, and when they cannot, they quarrel with it.
. . .
Every man has it in his being to develop into something good or bad: there is a best possible for him, and a worst possible. His circumstances will determine whether his capacities for good are developed or crushed, and whether his bad impulses are strengthened or gradually diverted into better channels.
. . .
The food and clothing of one man is not the food and clothing of another; if the supply is insufficient, what one man has is obtained at the expense of some other man. This applies to material goods generally, and therefore to the greater part of the present economic life of the world. On the other hand, mental and spiritual goods do not belong to one man to the exclusion of another. If one man knows a science, that does not prevent others from knowing it; on the contrary, it helps them to acquire the knowledge. If one man is a great artist or poet, that does not prevent others from painting pictures or writing poems, but helps to create the atmosphere in which such things are possible. If one man is full of good-will toward others, that does not mean that there is less good-will to be shared among the rest; the more good-will one man has, the more he is likely to create among others. In such matters there is no possession , because there is not a definite amount to be shared; any increase anywhere tends to produce an increase everywhere.
. . .
The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest. This is no new discovery. The Gospel says: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" The thought we give to these things is taken away from matters of more importance. And what is worse, the habit of mind engendered by thinking of these things is a bad one; it leads to competition, envy, domination, cruelty, and almost all the moral evils that infest the world. In particular, it leads to the predatory use of force. Material possessions can be taken by force and enjoyed by the robber. Spiritual possessions cannot be taken in this way. You may kill an artist or a thinker, but you cannot acquire his art or his thought. You may put a man to death because he loves his fellow-men, but you will not by so doing acquire the love which made his happiness. Force is impotent in such matters; it is only as regards material goods that it is effective. For this reason the men who believe in force are the men whose thoughts and desires are preoccupied with material goods.
Ouch, I hadn't made that connection before. It seems to be a perfect match for wars for oil and trickle down economics...
The possessive impulses, when they are strong, infect activities which ought to be purely creative. A man who has made some valuable discovery may be filled with jealousy of a rival discoverer. If one man has found a cure for cancer and another has found a cure for consumption, one of them may be delighted if the other man's discovery turns out a mistake, instead of regretting the suffering of patients which would otherwise have been avoided. In such cases, instead of desiring knowledge for its own sake, or for the sake of its usefulness, a man is desiring it as a means to reputation. Every creative impulse is shadowed by a possessive impulse; even the aspirant to saintliness may be jealous of the more successful saint. Most affection is accompanied by some tinge of jealousy, which is a possessive impulse intruding into the creative region. Worst of all, in this direction, is the sheer envy of those who have missed everything worth having in life, and who are instinctively bent on preventing others from enjoying what they have not had. There is often much of this in the attitude of the old toward the young.
. . .
Political and social institutions are to be judged by the good or harm that they do to individuals. Do they encourage creativeness rather than possessiveness? Do they embody or promote a spirit of reverence between human beings? Do they preserve self-respect?
In all these ways the institutions under which we live are very far indeed from what they ought to be.
Institutions, and especially economic systems, have a profound influence in molding the characters of men and women. They may encourage adventure and hope, or timidity and the pursuit of safety.
. . .
Fear of destitution is not a motive out of which a free creative life can grow, yet it is the chief motive which inspires the daily work of most wage-earners. The hope of possessing more wealth and power than any man ought to have, which is the corresponding motive of the rich, is quite as bad in its effects; it compels men to close their minds against justice, and to prevent themselves from thinking honestly on social questions while in the depths of their hearts they uneasily feel that their pleasures are bought by the miseries of others. The injustices of destitution and wealth alike ought to be rendered impossible. Then a great fear would be removed from the lives of the many, and hope would have to take on a better form in the lives of the few.
. . .
Democracy is a device--the best so far invented--for diminishing as much as possible the interference of governments with liberty. If a nation is divided into two sections which cannot both have their way, democracy theoretically insures that the majority shall have their way. But democracy is not at all an adequate device unless it is accompanied by a very great amount of devolution. Love of uniformity, or the mere pleasure of interfering, or dislike of differing tastes and temperaments, may often lead a majority to control a minority in matters which do not really concern the majority.
And there I'll leave you. I could just copy and paste the whole thing, but I do need to get a few other things done today. So I'll be leaving off blockquoting my way through Bertrand Russell's work. I hope to finish reading all of "Political Ideals" this weekend. I think working my way through the eBook catalog of his work may end up being my light summer reading list. I suppose my old teacher, Dr. Jones is probably long dead at this point, but, even a quarter century since the last time I saw him, he's still making me think and bringing other people's good thoughts into my life. So much of what Russell writes about creative versus possessive, good versus bad and the role of politics in not allowing democracy to become the majority oppressing the minority and instead be an engine for the promoting of individual rights seems to mesh so well with my own views.
So, any favorite writers you'd like to share? There may be a bit of Pratchett and Vonnegut on my reading list this summer too... and there was a book in Czech that someone recommended to me the other night... um, oh my poor dull brain.
Aha! "Chrám i tvrz" by Pavel Eisner. I have to have a Czech book or three on my reading list at all times. I may have to stop by my favorite local used book store to find a copy of that one. Supposedly it's filled with the peculiarities and beauty of the Czech language from one of its more devoted students.
What's on your summer reading list? What authors have surprised you with their political insights? Are you astounded that Ted Cruz reads Dr. Seuss stories without understanding them? Are you not surprised that you never hear about Republicans writing about their fascination with any philosophers other than Ayn Rand? -- and what a poor excuse for a philosophy she presented.
Have at it folks, the floor's open.
So is the thread.