A Private Meditation on the Purpose and Necessity of Suffering,
and the Frivolity of the General Idea of Being 'Saved' (in the Religious Sense).
Do you not realize that suffering is necessary for the cleansing of the Soul?--that it cannot ever happen any other way? 'Baptism' may be symbolic of the cleansing, but the real thing comes from actual suffering.
Suffering saves us, not 'Jesus' or some other far-off fictional deity. That is the 'old lie'--that Jesus will save us from (from!!) our suffering and sin.
To believe in the 'Jesus' of the religionists is, after all, nothing other than to be weak, unmanly, and effeminate, not to mention disappointing and disgusting. (And I am referring here not to any actual person named 'Jesus' who may or may not have actually existed, but rather to the generally-held Twenty-First Century Western/American idea of the same, which is not by any means an identical thing.) The words of Beethoven are appropriate here:
O Freunde, nicht diese Tone!
You are capable of so much better than this! Live up to your potential as human beings--even, as children of the Living Father!
"There is nothing in your creed," said an astute and wise Roman Emperor once, "beyond the one word believe." And he (Julian) probably knew the early Christians much better than we, especially as he was their contemporary.
Learn to behold the 'God within you'! Your soul is a vehicle for the divine! 'God' is not "out there"--God is here, within you! Salvation comes not from without (as in the idea of "Jesus will save me"), but rather from within. You must save yourselves!
The fact that so few of you realize this (or accept this, which is far more important), is precisely the reason why so many of you live and die lost--"perduto." "Sons of Perdition" are you--banished to outer darkness, except that the 'darkness' is, once again, not "out there", but here, inside your own benighted souls.
And you have the power to redeem and save yourselves, but yet you don't use it!
Instead, you look to an all-powerful, mammoth father-figure, that is entirely the product of your own (and your ancestors') fancy and fear, to save you from yourselves and your own guilt and fear.
The incredible, sad, ironic fact is, that by placing your belief and trust in a 'Jesus' who will save you from your suffering (which is only a product of your guilt and fear), you thereby block yourselves from ever achieving true salvation, true cleansing, which cleansing indeed can only come about through the embracing or acceptance of your own suffering.
T.J.White, 4 September, 2002
_______________________
An Unrelated Addendum
It is their pathetic, pathological need for approval and acceptance from a 'father-figure' or an 'authority'-figure, which causes most Americans to give up their freedoms, and embrace an authoritarian, dictatorial form of government--a fascist-type government by Bureaucracy or Oligarchy. This is exactly what we see occuring even now in America--the one nation in all the world, with its heritage of respect for individual liberties and rights, precisely at the expense of government, where such a thing is most disheartening and dismaying to observe.
T.J.White, 8 September, 2002
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
An Anonymous Medieval English Quotation
How mow they thanne shryue that synne,
That seyn they haue no gylt therinne?
We Englys men theron shulde thinke.
(translation:)
How can anyone repent of any sin,
If he believes he is not guilty of it?
We Englishmen should really think about this matter.
(Translation by T.J.White)
That seyn they haue no gylt therinne?
We Englys men theron shulde thinke.
(translation:)
How can anyone repent of any sin,
If he believes he is not guilty of it?
We Englishmen should really think about this matter.
(Translation by T.J.White)
Another Useful Poem
"And So I Judged"
I dreamed Death came the other night,
And Heaven's gate swung wide--
With kindly grace an Angel came
And ushered me inside;
And there, to my astonishment,
Stood folks I'd known on Earth:
Some I'd judged and deemed unfit,
And some of little worth;
Indignant words rose to my lips,
But never were set free--
For every face showed stunned surprise--
No one expected ME!
Author Unknown
(to me at any rate)
I dreamed Death came the other night,
And Heaven's gate swung wide--
With kindly grace an Angel came
And ushered me inside;
And there, to my astonishment,
Stood folks I'd known on Earth:
Some I'd judged and deemed unfit,
And some of little worth;
Indignant words rose to my lips,
But never were set free--
For every face showed stunned surprise--
No one expected ME!
Author Unknown
(to me at any rate)
A Poem by Joaquin Miller
In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I hesitate to draw the line
Between the two, where God has not.
Joaquin Miller
(ne Cincinnatus Hiner Miller)
(1841-1913)
American poet
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I hesitate to draw the line
Between the two, where God has not.
Joaquin Miller
(ne Cincinnatus Hiner Miller)
(1841-1913)
American poet
Monday, January 10, 2005
Toward Understanding Persecution
All known life-forms exhibit the Nietzschean "Will to Power" (also known as the "Will to Live" and/or the "Survival Instinct/Reproductive Urge").
Individual life-forms cannot survive without at least the following two conditions obtaining:
(A) Destroying and consuming (in a sort of cannibalistic sense) other life forms as food (part of the struggle or competition for survival), and
(B) Reproducing their kind. This can be described as passing on their accumulated genetic heritage, which is each species' own unique recorded 'advice' (as it were) on how best to survive in the 'jungle'. In addition to merely reproducing, they must also do their best to see to it that more members of their family, tribe, nation, or species survive and reproduce than members of other families, tribes, nations, or species. This last is really only another adjunct or description of the above destructive impulse; that is, we may basically say that individual life-forms must destroy other life-forms in order to survive, whether as individual or species. This is the so-called "Law of the Jungle": kill or be killed.
Human beings, though (and this is part of what sets us apart from the other animals)--because of their more logical, reasoning, self-intuitive or reflective minds, and their capacity for highly-developed and highly-expressed emotion of altruism--are capable of significantly delaying and somewhat negating the above-described instinctive bio-survival/reproductive urge, and its attendant destructive impulse. Human beings, we may say, are thus not usually as dominated by this urge and its consequences as are most other species.
However, human beings are still somewhat under the influence of this destructive, self-perpetuating urge, to the degree that we are still animalian and still dominated by our animal genetic heritage (including instincts): we human beings still often seek to harm, persecute, or destroy minorities, which we may define as any individual or sub-group which is significantly different from the majority of the population of any given locale, and which thus seems to pose a threat to the individual/species bio-survival of the societal 'majority'.
This xenophobia and persecution would thus be perfectly explainable in terms of humankind's animal genetic heritage, instincts, and responses to the stimuli presented by other, significantly different people, but it would seem to be a stumbling-block, a primitive animal throwback, standing in the way of humankind's evident future evolutionary path--that is, toward greater use of reason, greater display of altruism, and less dependence upon violent, irrational, 'negative' animal emotion and instinct.
We would, of course, wish to see our species advance in this direction, and decry these recurrent primitive throwbacks of hatred, fear, and persecution. Why, we may (with justification) ask, does this bio-survival/reproductive urge (and its corollaries) still frequently cause human beings to seek to harm or destroy others? Why do reason and altruism (assumed to be growing, developing evolutionary traits native to human beings) seem to periodically fail?
The answers lie somewhere in the following area, I believe:
We may say that this persecution occurs because of the following:
One rather simple explanation is in terms of pure xenophobia: we may say that on a very basic , organic level--the level of simple organism versus organism--whatever is perceived as "not me" is therefore seen as something alien and foreign--something to be always cautiously on guard against as a potential threat to bio-survival; something, therefore, to be overcome and vanquished as a potential threat. This will all become much clearer if we picture ourselves on the level of the paramecium, for example. This very primitive and ancient instinctual urge or perception is offset somewhat--but never completely negated--by the additional survival instinct of altruism, that is, the urge toward nurturing our offspring as insurance toward the survival of the personal/tribal/species gene pool.
Another way of stating this would be to say that misunderstanding, fear and hatred are negative and undesirable primitive animal-like emotional reactions to perceived threats to the gene pool, and/or the bio-survival/reproductive urge, and to perceived violations of the cultural 'taboos' which are nominally structured to protect the same, and that
This misunderstanding, fear, and hatred can develop between individuals, or between individuals and groups, or between a 'majority' grouping and a minority or minorities, and that
These undesirable 'negative' emotional reactions occur--in individuals and in entire societies--because reason and altruism fail to counteract or control them.
WHY? Reason and Altruism (I believe) fail to control these undesirable emotional reactions usually because life and survival are still so often so precarious and uncertain for most human beings (as indeed for all other life-forms). In instances of inadequate or failed communication (which can lead to distrust and misunderstanding), and/or instances of unusually strong perceived threats to bio-survival, the gene pool, or 'taboos', most human beings will (naturally and understandably) be unable to interpose with reason and altruism (though this does not excuse them), and will instead react with hatred, fear and violence toward anything or anyone which seems to threaten "my life," "my offspring," "my family," "my tribe," etc., or any other aspect of the comfortable 'status quo' system which supports these ends, and provides most human beings with (necessary, we must remind ourselves) existential security, stability, and comfort. (And this definitely includes 'religious' structures.)
Most average human beings will continue to react in this manner until one or both of the following two conditions obtain:
(A) A substantial majority of individual human beings becomes sufficiently intelligent and knowledgable that reason and altruism must more frequently dominate over animal emotion and instinct (and this is of course an evolutionary process, as I have already said), and
(B) That life and survival are no longer precarious and uncertain for most human beings, and that they therefore may become more complacent and tolerant from lack of worry and extreme.
T.J.White, August, 1994
Individual life-forms cannot survive without at least the following two conditions obtaining:
(A) Destroying and consuming (in a sort of cannibalistic sense) other life forms as food (part of the struggle or competition for survival), and
(B) Reproducing their kind. This can be described as passing on their accumulated genetic heritage, which is each species' own unique recorded 'advice' (as it were) on how best to survive in the 'jungle'. In addition to merely reproducing, they must also do their best to see to it that more members of their family, tribe, nation, or species survive and reproduce than members of other families, tribes, nations, or species. This last is really only another adjunct or description of the above destructive impulse; that is, we may basically say that individual life-forms must destroy other life-forms in order to survive, whether as individual or species. This is the so-called "Law of the Jungle": kill or be killed.
Human beings, though (and this is part of what sets us apart from the other animals)--because of their more logical, reasoning, self-intuitive or reflective minds, and their capacity for highly-developed and highly-expressed emotion of altruism--are capable of significantly delaying and somewhat negating the above-described instinctive bio-survival/reproductive urge, and its attendant destructive impulse. Human beings, we may say, are thus not usually as dominated by this urge and its consequences as are most other species.
However, human beings are still somewhat under the influence of this destructive, self-perpetuating urge, to the degree that we are still animalian and still dominated by our animal genetic heritage (including instincts): we human beings still often seek to harm, persecute, or destroy minorities, which we may define as any individual or sub-group which is significantly different from the majority of the population of any given locale, and which thus seems to pose a threat to the individual/species bio-survival of the societal 'majority'.
This xenophobia and persecution would thus be perfectly explainable in terms of humankind's animal genetic heritage, instincts, and responses to the stimuli presented by other, significantly different people, but it would seem to be a stumbling-block, a primitive animal throwback, standing in the way of humankind's evident future evolutionary path--that is, toward greater use of reason, greater display of altruism, and less dependence upon violent, irrational, 'negative' animal emotion and instinct.
We would, of course, wish to see our species advance in this direction, and decry these recurrent primitive throwbacks of hatred, fear, and persecution. Why, we may (with justification) ask, does this bio-survival/reproductive urge (and its corollaries) still frequently cause human beings to seek to harm or destroy others? Why do reason and altruism (assumed to be growing, developing evolutionary traits native to human beings) seem to periodically fail?
The answers lie somewhere in the following area, I believe:
We may say that this persecution occurs because of the following:
One rather simple explanation is in terms of pure xenophobia: we may say that on a very basic , organic level--the level of simple organism versus organism--whatever is perceived as "not me" is therefore seen as something alien and foreign--something to be always cautiously on guard against as a potential threat to bio-survival; something, therefore, to be overcome and vanquished as a potential threat. This will all become much clearer if we picture ourselves on the level of the paramecium, for example. This very primitive and ancient instinctual urge or perception is offset somewhat--but never completely negated--by the additional survival instinct of altruism, that is, the urge toward nurturing our offspring as insurance toward the survival of the personal/tribal/species gene pool.
Another way of stating this would be to say that misunderstanding, fear and hatred are negative and undesirable primitive animal-like emotional reactions to perceived threats to the gene pool, and/or the bio-survival/reproductive urge, and to perceived violations of the cultural 'taboos' which are nominally structured to protect the same, and that
This misunderstanding, fear, and hatred can develop between individuals, or between individuals and groups, or between a 'majority' grouping and a minority or minorities, and that
These undesirable 'negative' emotional reactions occur--in individuals and in entire societies--because reason and altruism fail to counteract or control them.
WHY? Reason and Altruism (I believe) fail to control these undesirable emotional reactions usually because life and survival are still so often so precarious and uncertain for most human beings (as indeed for all other life-forms). In instances of inadequate or failed communication (which can lead to distrust and misunderstanding), and/or instances of unusually strong perceived threats to bio-survival, the gene pool, or 'taboos', most human beings will (naturally and understandably) be unable to interpose with reason and altruism (though this does not excuse them), and will instead react with hatred, fear and violence toward anything or anyone which seems to threaten "my life," "my offspring," "my family," "my tribe," etc., or any other aspect of the comfortable 'status quo' system which supports these ends, and provides most human beings with (necessary, we must remind ourselves) existential security, stability, and comfort. (And this definitely includes 'religious' structures.)
Most average human beings will continue to react in this manner until one or both of the following two conditions obtain:
(A) A substantial majority of individual human beings becomes sufficiently intelligent and knowledgable that reason and altruism must more frequently dominate over animal emotion and instinct (and this is of course an evolutionary process, as I have already said), and
(B) That life and survival are no longer precarious and uncertain for most human beings, and that they therefore may become more complacent and tolerant from lack of worry and extreme.
T.J.White, August, 1994
Monday, January 03, 2005
Various Thoughts on Nonconfornity
Human will begins in a "no." The "no" is a protest against a world we never made, and it is also the assertion of one's self in the endeavor to remold and reform the world.
Rollo May (b.1909), Existential therapist, humanist,
in Love and Will (1969)
[Quoted in Seldes, The Great Thoughts (1980), as
hereafter, unless otherwise stated.]
__________________
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950),
Maxims for Revolutionists
__________________
Men have always looked before and after, and rebelled against the existing order. But for their divine discontent men would not have been men, and there would have been no progress in human affairs.
Kabir (1400-1499),
Hindu philosopher and reformer
__________________
Innovators have done the greatest service to society. ...
John Addington Symonds (1840-1893),
in Sexual Inversion
__________________
As a child, ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson was, as he put it, "Reluctant to accept the straitjacket of a world I didn't comprehend."
from Birds Over America, quoted in Reader's Digest.
__________________
To be a revolutionary is to love your life enough to change it, to choose struggle instead of exile, to risk everything with only the glimmering hope of a world to win.
Andrew David Kopkind (b.1935),
American writer,
quoted in New York Times Magazine, November 10, 1968.
___________________
Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.
Howard Mumford Jones (1892-1980),
Primer of Intellectual Freedom (1949), "Introduction".
___________________
A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but often of free and secret love, and in this respect, too, the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry, and another for life.
Ellen Key (1849-1926),
Swedish writer and feminist,
quoted in Sprading, Liberty and the Great Libertarians (1913).
___________________
All art is based on non-conformity.
Ben Shahn (1898-1969),
American artist,
contribution, Atlantic, September 1957.
___________________
The degree of non-conformity present--and tolerated--in a society might be looked upon as a symptom of its state of health.
Ben Shahn, The Shape of Content (1957)
___________________
An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.
Orson Welles (1916-198?),
American actor and producer,
quoted in New York Times, August 7, 1966.
___________________
Art for me ... is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.
Emile Zola (1840-1902),
French novelist,
in Mes Haines (1866)
___________________
"I will not cease from mental fight," Blake wrote. Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. ... It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941),
British writer,
contribution, New Republic, October 21, 1940.
___________________
Art is always subversive. It's something that should NOT be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish painter and sculptor,
quoted in Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life With Picasso (1964).
___________________
Every artist and every poet is an anti-social being.
Picasso, quoted in Saturday Review, May 28, 1966
___________________
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, or, if he is a boxer, only his muscle? On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alert to the heart-rending, burning, or happy events in the world, moulding himself in their likeness.
How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people and because of an ivory-tower indifference, detach yourself from the life they bring with their open hands?
No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war, for attack and defense against the enemy.
Picasso, from a reply to criticism and attacks for joining the French Communist Party during the Spanish Civil War, quoted in Les Lettres Francaises (1944).
___________________
I am a radical of radicals, but I don't belong in any school.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892),
quoted in Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden.
___________________
Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril.
John Dewey,
Characters and Events (1929)
___________________
Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her own person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost; and not until we live in a society where each can exercise his right of sovereignty at all times without clashing with or violating that of others.
To require conformity in the appreciation of sentiments or the interpretation of language, or uniformity of thought, feeling, or action, is a fundamental error in human legislation--a madness which would only be equalled by requiring all to possess the same countenance, the same voice, or the same nature.
Josiah Warren (1799-1874),
American inventor, philosophical anarchist,
credited by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer with first proclaiming the sovereignty of the individual.
___________________
The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for
unfettered [*] freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views. [And perhaps have the chance to exchange error for truth. cf. John Stuart Mill]
C. Vann Woodward (b.1908),
American historian,
Woodward Committee, Report on Free Speech, New York Times, January 28, 1975.
* How can this word possibly be qualified, or otherwise limited? (T.J.W.)
____________________
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1895)
____________________
Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.
Earl Warren (1891-1974),
Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court,
Sweezey vs. New Hampshire (1957)
____________________
All political ideas cannot and should not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, who innumerable times have been the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted.
Earl Warren, op. cit.
____________________
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistence.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924),
28th President, U.S.A.,
Address, New York Press Club, May 9, 1912.
____________________
Theodore Roosevelt picked up this last phrase and, apparently not knowing that Jefferson had made a similar declaration, attacked Wilson as a dangerous radical. Compare the following:
As late as 1958, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when a representative of Americans for Democratic Action read a statement of Thomas Jefferson's, one of the Senators from the State of Utah, A.V. Watkins, denounced it as false and unbelievable. Confronted with the evidence--a letter from Jefferson to Madison in 1787, available in most history books in most of the nation's libraries--Senator Watkins declared, "If Jefferson were here and advocated such a thing, I would move that he be prosecuted." What Jefferson had written to Madison was simply this: "I hold that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing."
George Seldes, The Great Thoughts (1980), Introduction, "Censorship and Suppression".
___________________
Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization. ... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by [*] beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge. Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.
Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965),
U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
concurring opinion, Dennis et al. vs. U.S. (1951).
*I would here insert the words 'previously unpopular' (T.J.W.).
____________________
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to earn a living.
Bertrand Russell (1879-1970),
Skeptical Essays (1928), XII.
Rollo May (b.1909), Existential therapist, humanist,
in Love and Will (1969)
[Quoted in Seldes, The Great Thoughts (1980), as
hereafter, unless otherwise stated.]
__________________
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950),
Maxims for Revolutionists
__________________
Men have always looked before and after, and rebelled against the existing order. But for their divine discontent men would not have been men, and there would have been no progress in human affairs.
Kabir (1400-1499),
Hindu philosopher and reformer
__________________
Innovators have done the greatest service to society. ...
John Addington Symonds (1840-1893),
in Sexual Inversion
__________________
As a child, ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson was, as he put it, "Reluctant to accept the straitjacket of a world I didn't comprehend."
from Birds Over America, quoted in Reader's Digest.
__________________
To be a revolutionary is to love your life enough to change it, to choose struggle instead of exile, to risk everything with only the glimmering hope of a world to win.
Andrew David Kopkind (b.1935),
American writer,
quoted in New York Times Magazine, November 10, 1968.
___________________
Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.
Howard Mumford Jones (1892-1980),
Primer of Intellectual Freedom (1949), "Introduction".
___________________
A great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but often of free and secret love, and in this respect, too, the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry, and another for life.
Ellen Key (1849-1926),
Swedish writer and feminist,
quoted in Sprading, Liberty and the Great Libertarians (1913).
___________________
All art is based on non-conformity.
Ben Shahn (1898-1969),
American artist,
contribution, Atlantic, September 1957.
___________________
The degree of non-conformity present--and tolerated--in a society might be looked upon as a symptom of its state of health.
Ben Shahn, The Shape of Content (1957)
___________________
An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.
Orson Welles (1916-198?),
American actor and producer,
quoted in New York Times, August 7, 1966.
___________________
Art for me ... is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside of all the rules and all the demands of society.
Emile Zola (1840-1902),
French novelist,
in Mes Haines (1866)
___________________
"I will not cease from mental fight," Blake wrote. Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. ... It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941),
British writer,
contribution, New Republic, October 21, 1940.
___________________
Art is always subversive. It's something that should NOT be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish painter and sculptor,
quoted in Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life With Picasso (1964).
___________________
Every artist and every poet is an anti-social being.
Picasso, quoted in Saturday Review, May 28, 1966
___________________
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, or, if he is a boxer, only his muscle? On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alert to the heart-rending, burning, or happy events in the world, moulding himself in their likeness.
How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people and because of an ivory-tower indifference, detach yourself from the life they bring with their open hands?
No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war, for attack and defense against the enemy.
Picasso, from a reply to criticism and attacks for joining the French Communist Party during the Spanish Civil War, quoted in Les Lettres Francaises (1944).
___________________
I am a radical of radicals, but I don't belong in any school.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892),
quoted in Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden.
___________________
Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril.
John Dewey,
Characters and Events (1929)
___________________
Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her own person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost; and not until we live in a society where each can exercise his right of sovereignty at all times without clashing with or violating that of others.
To require conformity in the appreciation of sentiments or the interpretation of language, or uniformity of thought, feeling, or action, is a fundamental error in human legislation--a madness which would only be equalled by requiring all to possess the same countenance, the same voice, or the same nature.
Josiah Warren (1799-1874),
American inventor, philosophical anarchist,
credited by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer with first proclaiming the sovereignty of the individual.
___________________
The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for
unfettered [*] freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views. [And perhaps have the chance to exchange error for truth. cf. John Stuart Mill]
C. Vann Woodward (b.1908),
American historian,
Woodward Committee, Report on Free Speech, New York Times, January 28, 1975.
* How can this word possibly be qualified, or otherwise limited? (T.J.W.)
____________________
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1895)
____________________
Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.
Earl Warren (1891-1974),
Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court,
Sweezey vs. New Hampshire (1957)
____________________
All political ideas cannot and should not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, who innumerable times have been the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted.
Earl Warren, op. cit.
____________________
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistence.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924),
28th President, U.S.A.,
Address, New York Press Club, May 9, 1912.
____________________
Theodore Roosevelt picked up this last phrase and, apparently not knowing that Jefferson had made a similar declaration, attacked Wilson as a dangerous radical. Compare the following:
As late as 1958, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when a representative of Americans for Democratic Action read a statement of Thomas Jefferson's, one of the Senators from the State of Utah, A.V. Watkins, denounced it as false and unbelievable. Confronted with the evidence--a letter from Jefferson to Madison in 1787, available in most history books in most of the nation's libraries--Senator Watkins declared, "If Jefferson were here and advocated such a thing, I would move that he be prosecuted." What Jefferson had written to Madison was simply this: "I hold that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing."
George Seldes, The Great Thoughts (1980), Introduction, "Censorship and Suppression".
___________________
Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization. ... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by [*] beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge. Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.
Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965),
U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
concurring opinion, Dennis et al. vs. U.S. (1951).
*I would here insert the words 'previously unpopular' (T.J.W.).
____________________
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to earn a living.
Bertrand Russell (1879-1970),
Skeptical Essays (1928), XII.
____________________
To be nobody-but-myself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
e.e.cummings (1894-1963),
Letter to a high school editor, 1955.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Housman on Nonconformity
'The laws of God, the laws of man'
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
A.E.Housman (1859-1936),
quoted in "The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse"
Stephen Coote, editor.
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
A.E.Housman (1859-1936),
quoted in "The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse"
Stephen Coote, editor.
Orwell on Nonconformity
In a society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behavior is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.
George Orwell (1903-1950), ne Eric Blair,
from "Selected Essays",
quoted in Seldes, "The Great Thoughts" (1980).
George Orwell (1903-1950), ne Eric Blair,
from "Selected Essays",
quoted in Seldes, "The Great Thoughts" (1980).
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Freedom from Repression?
Justice demands that all be treated equally--that no one viewpoint be forced upon others who may wish to go their own way--that everyone should be free to go his own way, separate from majorities, if that be his wish, so long as no one else is deprived or harmed thereby.
Camille Paglia is quoted in the Spring, 1995 issue of "Free Inquiry" (pages 6-7) as saying that "the strange truncations, limitations, and repressions of Judeo-Christianity ... have produced the cult of the striving, heroic, turbulent, individual artist. ... [and that] this is part of the greatness of the West. It's based on neurosis and repression. ..."
Or, as interviewer Timothy Madigan paraphrased in the same article: "The artists are somewhat like oysters producing pearls from the irritants of their upbringing."
Firstly, let me say that I am inclined to agree with the accuracy of the above observations. But they raise, however, some intriguing questions--questions which I believe are important enough to deserve honest answers (or honest attempts at answers). Try (if you will) to sharpen your mind on THESE:
Do we not desire a just and equitable society--in other words, a society free from repressions? Do we not desire (as much as reasonably possible) to eradicate those very repressions that (apparently) have historically been the 'friction which produced great art'? Or do we, after all, really wish merely to preserve the 'status quo'--all for the sake of maintaining our present culture, so that still more 'great art' may continue to be produced?
Question: What sort of art would be produced in a society in which such frictions--such repressions--are largely absent? Would it perhaps be nothing more than a visual form of socio-political propagandising, or like the admittedly bland, passionless 'tractor art' of the mid-twentieth-century Soviet Union?
Question: Is adequate justice (or freedom from repression) really POSSIBLE or realistic in present human societies, given our continued ties to and dependence on the primitive, irrational animal emotions of fear, taboo, superstition, and intolerance (or xenophobia)? Are we perhaps fools to desire that the human race evolve away from this animalistic heritage, and to desire moreover that it happen in the short space OF OUR OWN LIFETIMES?
Question: Is a state of freedom from repression (or 'justice') even DESIRABLE in some instances, seeing that such a condition would (so it seems) eradicate the basis of friction which has historically produced great art (or artists)?
It would thus seem that to desire a society where repression is absent is to desire a society where great art or artists (as we have historically known them) WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE.
Question: If great art (and therefore culture) can only be produced under conditions of friction and repression, which do we then desire most--FREEDOM from that repression (and, presumably, more comfortable lives), or great art and culture, and lives made richer because of that culture?--because 'great' art is great, because it speaks more deeply, more directly, more RELEVANTLY, to the archetypes we perceive and feel, or to the strong emotions we experience over the courses of our lives.
Surely, then (I hasten to add), a life or society without great culture would be a fairly BLEAK one--at least to a sensitive, intelligent soul more finely attuned to the emotional or aesthetic content of life--to a human being with the feeling, sensitive soul of a poet (which is the defining hallmark of the true artist, as Thomas Mann said repeatedly earlier in this century).
Well, I frankly admit that I do not have any firm, final answers to these questions I have proposed; like many others before me, I merely seek answers--which phrase I suppose could be more accurately rendered as "I merely seek greater existential security or stability." In this, surely, I am not alone. More directly relevant to the above discussion, I will add that I myself desire both freedom from repression AND great culture. Perhaps I foolishly desire the impossible. ...
And yet ... and yet, we all of us, at some time or another, feel to say that justice and fairness MUST be actual possibilities, beyond mere abstract concepts, because our brains are capable of IMAGINING that they exist. And (more importantly), without the HOPE for a state of (eventual) justice and freedom, how could humankind continue to have the aspirations and the courage to continue living and struggling, and striving to make a better world? I therefore believe that these issues are of fundamental importance.
21 July, 1995--27 February, 1996.
Camille Paglia is quoted in the Spring, 1995 issue of "Free Inquiry" (pages 6-7) as saying that "the strange truncations, limitations, and repressions of Judeo-Christianity ... have produced the cult of the striving, heroic, turbulent, individual artist. ... [and that] this is part of the greatness of the West. It's based on neurosis and repression. ..."
Or, as interviewer Timothy Madigan paraphrased in the same article: "The artists are somewhat like oysters producing pearls from the irritants of their upbringing."
Firstly, let me say that I am inclined to agree with the accuracy of the above observations. But they raise, however, some intriguing questions--questions which I believe are important enough to deserve honest answers (or honest attempts at answers). Try (if you will) to sharpen your mind on THESE:
Do we not desire a just and equitable society--in other words, a society free from repressions? Do we not desire (as much as reasonably possible) to eradicate those very repressions that (apparently) have historically been the 'friction which produced great art'? Or do we, after all, really wish merely to preserve the 'status quo'--all for the sake of maintaining our present culture, so that still more 'great art' may continue to be produced?
Question: What sort of art would be produced in a society in which such frictions--such repressions--are largely absent? Would it perhaps be nothing more than a visual form of socio-political propagandising, or like the admittedly bland, passionless 'tractor art' of the mid-twentieth-century Soviet Union?
Question: Is adequate justice (or freedom from repression) really POSSIBLE or realistic in present human societies, given our continued ties to and dependence on the primitive, irrational animal emotions of fear, taboo, superstition, and intolerance (or xenophobia)? Are we perhaps fools to desire that the human race evolve away from this animalistic heritage, and to desire moreover that it happen in the short space OF OUR OWN LIFETIMES?
Question: Is a state of freedom from repression (or 'justice') even DESIRABLE in some instances, seeing that such a condition would (so it seems) eradicate the basis of friction which has historically produced great art (or artists)?
It would thus seem that to desire a society where repression is absent is to desire a society where great art or artists (as we have historically known them) WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE.
Question: If great art (and therefore culture) can only be produced under conditions of friction and repression, which do we then desire most--FREEDOM from that repression (and, presumably, more comfortable lives), or great art and culture, and lives made richer because of that culture?--because 'great' art is great, because it speaks more deeply, more directly, more RELEVANTLY, to the archetypes we perceive and feel, or to the strong emotions we experience over the courses of our lives.
Surely, then (I hasten to add), a life or society without great culture would be a fairly BLEAK one--at least to a sensitive, intelligent soul more finely attuned to the emotional or aesthetic content of life--to a human being with the feeling, sensitive soul of a poet (which is the defining hallmark of the true artist, as Thomas Mann said repeatedly earlier in this century).
Well, I frankly admit that I do not have any firm, final answers to these questions I have proposed; like many others before me, I merely seek answers--which phrase I suppose could be more accurately rendered as "I merely seek greater existential security or stability." In this, surely, I am not alone. More directly relevant to the above discussion, I will add that I myself desire both freedom from repression AND great culture. Perhaps I foolishly desire the impossible. ...
And yet ... and yet, we all of us, at some time or another, feel to say that justice and fairness MUST be actual possibilities, beyond mere abstract concepts, because our brains are capable of IMAGINING that they exist. And (more importantly), without the HOPE for a state of (eventual) justice and freedom, how could humankind continue to have the aspirations and the courage to continue living and struggling, and striving to make a better world? I therefore believe that these issues are of fundamental importance.
21 July, 1995--27 February, 1996.
To Mortify the Soul
Some years ago, after most of a lifetime spent producing what the world, in its vanity, is pleased to call 'works of art', I came to the realisation and determination that I would henceforth no longer produce any artificial, external 'art' of any great consequence, that the only work of 'art' of any value for me was the art of my own person or SOUL. My great work NOW is, therefore--as Whitman said, to create out of my own flesh and soul A GREAT POEM. This undertaking is, to my way of thinking, the greatest work of 'art' possible in a lifetime--to make one's own soul a great poem. And this is a work of art that most of the world will never see, or comprehend, because they "seeing, see not, and hearing, hear not"; they have not the "eyes with which to see" the glorious work I am in the process of producing--a soul refined and purified by the fires of trial and adversity. This is not so much a mortification of the flesh, as it is a mortification of the SOUL. What they THINK they see is a flat failure of a life (and recall that the same thing was said of Thoreau, by no less an eminent divine than Emerson); but oh! what they DO NOT see! THAT is where my true work lies!
16 February, 2003.
Most people spend an inordinate portion of their everyday lives assiduously avoiding life's pitfalls and the resultant pains; I, in contrast, try (as much as I can) to cultivate the direct, subjective emotional experience, not only of life's pure, simple, and sometimes unexpected joys, but also (and moreso, if it is possible) of life's pains and sorrows. Rather than fleeing from depression or sorrow, I try to cultivate them much as one might cultivate a rare, exotic hothouse bloom, yet realising all the while that the wild, lawless jungle of life, like some vast, primitive, ageless Amazon wilderness, is replete with both incredible beauty AND great peril--full of limitless possibility, yes, but also full of the potential for terror, death, and violent, wanton destruction.
My life is an unbelievably stressful balancing act--"a rope stretched over the abyss": some of the few who are acquainted with me at least suspect that I am light-years beyond their own preceptions or abilities. Some fewer of them still have seen occasional glimpses of the truth, and are no longer in any doubt. I am both the brightest hope and the greatest worry of my own family, a family which possesses both extraordinary brilliance and ability AND a tendency toward mediocrity and fearful, superstitious conformity--sometimes manifested in the selfsame individuals. If an individual's genetic make-up (in terms of personality) can be described as a random shuffling of the traits and abilities of one's ancestors, then, in my own case, most of the talents and brilliance which various of my forebears possessed, AS WELL AS many traits which most people today would unhesitatingly label "negative", have clearly and undeniably manifested themselves in my person.
I could even go so far as to correctly state that, in many ways, I am as fearless concerning the exploration of life and thought and (particularly) sexuality as was the infamous Marquis de Sade, despite the fact that I have no interest whatsoever in certain of his pet predilections. With others of them, however, that is most definitely NOT the case. ...
Suffice it to say that, for better or worse, I was dealt a hand by the Universe that was both a potentially winning hand and a potentially LOSING hand--at least in terms of its being very likely to strongly express itself in either direction: "success" or "failure"; or "good" or "bad" (as the world sees such matters, of course)--infinitely moreso, anyway, than in the average, hopelessly mediocre person.
August, 1998. (specific date unrecorded)
_______________________
The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
Henry James, Sr. (1811-1882),
American theologian,
letter to his two sons,
William James and Henry James, Jr.;
quoted in Seldes, "The Great Thoughts" (1980).
16 February, 2003.
Most people spend an inordinate portion of their everyday lives assiduously avoiding life's pitfalls and the resultant pains; I, in contrast, try (as much as I can) to cultivate the direct, subjective emotional experience, not only of life's pure, simple, and sometimes unexpected joys, but also (and moreso, if it is possible) of life's pains and sorrows. Rather than fleeing from depression or sorrow, I try to cultivate them much as one might cultivate a rare, exotic hothouse bloom, yet realising all the while that the wild, lawless jungle of life, like some vast, primitive, ageless Amazon wilderness, is replete with both incredible beauty AND great peril--full of limitless possibility, yes, but also full of the potential for terror, death, and violent, wanton destruction.
My life is an unbelievably stressful balancing act--"a rope stretched over the abyss": some of the few who are acquainted with me at least suspect that I am light-years beyond their own preceptions or abilities. Some fewer of them still have seen occasional glimpses of the truth, and are no longer in any doubt. I am both the brightest hope and the greatest worry of my own family, a family which possesses both extraordinary brilliance and ability AND a tendency toward mediocrity and fearful, superstitious conformity--sometimes manifested in the selfsame individuals. If an individual's genetic make-up (in terms of personality) can be described as a random shuffling of the traits and abilities of one's ancestors, then, in my own case, most of the talents and brilliance which various of my forebears possessed, AS WELL AS many traits which most people today would unhesitatingly label "negative", have clearly and undeniably manifested themselves in my person.
I could even go so far as to correctly state that, in many ways, I am as fearless concerning the exploration of life and thought and (particularly) sexuality as was the infamous Marquis de Sade, despite the fact that I have no interest whatsoever in certain of his pet predilections. With others of them, however, that is most definitely NOT the case. ...
Suffice it to say that, for better or worse, I was dealt a hand by the Universe that was both a potentially winning hand and a potentially LOSING hand--at least in terms of its being very likely to strongly express itself in either direction: "success" or "failure"; or "good" or "bad" (as the world sees such matters, of course)--infinitely moreso, anyway, than in the average, hopelessly mediocre person.
August, 1998. (specific date unrecorded)
_______________________
The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
Henry James, Sr. (1811-1882),
American theologian,
letter to his two sons,
William James and Henry James, Jr.;
quoted in Seldes, "The Great Thoughts" (1980).
Saturday, December 04, 2004
John Stuart Mill on Freedom, Individuality, and Nonconformity
From John Stuart Mill's 1859 treatise "On Liberty" (Chapter One):
In political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. ...
Society ... practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, ... penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them. ...
The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and have denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized. ...
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, ... that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any one of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. ...
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own mind and body, the individual is sovereign. ...
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. ...
(Chapter Two:)
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ...
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is always as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ...
It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error of prevailing against the dungeon and stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error ... The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it. ...
There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions. ... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. ...
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. ...
It can do truth no service to blink [i.e., overlook or ignore] the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teachings has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith. ...
Christian morality (so-called) has all the characters [i.e., 'characteristics'] of a reaction; ... Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinince from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good. ... It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give human morality an essentially selfish character. ... It is essentially the doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established. ...
(Chapter Three:)
Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters. ...
The mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ...
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. ...
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. ...
In political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. ...
Society ... practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, ... penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them. ...
The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and have denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized. ...
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, ... that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any one of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. ...
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own mind and body, the individual is sovereign. ...
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. ...
(Chapter Two:)
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ...
But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is always as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ...
It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error of prevailing against the dungeon and stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error ... The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it. ...
There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions. ... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. ...
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. ...
It can do truth no service to blink [i.e., overlook or ignore] the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teachings has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith. ...
Christian morality (so-called) has all the characters [i.e., 'characteristics'] of a reaction; ... Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinince from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good. ... It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give human morality an essentially selfish character. ... It is essentially the doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established. ...
(Chapter Three:)
Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters. ...
The mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. ...
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. ...
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. ...
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
The 'Outsider'
The 'Outsider' or 'genius' represents the type of human being who is in the evolutionary vanguard of the species: the 'Outsider' is what all human beings will one day be like--probably, as Erich Fromm said, thousands of years from now. The 'Outsider' literally is THAT far ahead of the rest of the human race, in terms of his emotional and intellectual development. And it is for this reason, then, that the 'Outsider' is such the social misfit that he now is--why he hates his fellow human beings so much; because to him, they scarcely even seem 'human', and because he is unfortunately born much too soon, in comparison to the level of development and awareness that the rest of humanity are still trapped at. Their frequent blind, slavish dependence upon primitive animal emotion and fear-based taboo strike him as not only unworthy of a so-called 'rational', 'mature', 'adult' human population, but still more characteristic of the LESSER ANIMALS than even a human CHILD.
The 'Outsider' represents the hopes and (subconscious) aspirations and strivings of the entire human race--indeed, of all life on this planet--the inexorable, unconscious pushing of all life to attain ever greater and greater levels of sentience, or awareness. So to the human race, he is (or SHOULD be) invaluable, priceless, in the same sense in which people like Socrates, Jesus, or even Einstein are usually thought of (mostly AFTER their deaths).
But alas, more often than not, the very opposite is in fact the case regarding the 'Outsider' and his relations with his peer society: more often than not, he finds himself shunned, hated, and persecuted, because he is in fact significantly different from his neighbours. His contemporaries can no more comprehend his mind and awareness of things than our primitive cave-man ancestors could have comprehended the conversation of even an ordinary assembly-line worker, or a 'sanitation specialist' of today's average world.
So, from the point of view of the 'history' which is to be written by the future, the 'Outsider' or 'genius' is very valuable, but from the point of view of his peer culture, he is usually just the opposite: an object of fear, mistrust, scorn, derision, and sometimes fury. To the living 'Outsider' alive in the present, his condition seems to him very often as one of unending MISERY, unless by some miracle he is able to come to truly know himself, and thus understand exactly what is going on.
9 May, 2000, from an earlier train of thought of around 1998.
________________________
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Arthur Schopenhauer, from Reputation.
The 'Outsider' represents the hopes and (subconscious) aspirations and strivings of the entire human race--indeed, of all life on this planet--the inexorable, unconscious pushing of all life to attain ever greater and greater levels of sentience, or awareness. So to the human race, he is (or SHOULD be) invaluable, priceless, in the same sense in which people like Socrates, Jesus, or even Einstein are usually thought of (mostly AFTER their deaths).
But alas, more often than not, the very opposite is in fact the case regarding the 'Outsider' and his relations with his peer society: more often than not, he finds himself shunned, hated, and persecuted, because he is in fact significantly different from his neighbours. His contemporaries can no more comprehend his mind and awareness of things than our primitive cave-man ancestors could have comprehended the conversation of even an ordinary assembly-line worker, or a 'sanitation specialist' of today's average world.
So, from the point of view of the 'history' which is to be written by the future, the 'Outsider' or 'genius' is very valuable, but from the point of view of his peer culture, he is usually just the opposite: an object of fear, mistrust, scorn, derision, and sometimes fury. To the living 'Outsider' alive in the present, his condition seems to him very often as one of unending MISERY, unless by some miracle he is able to come to truly know himself, and thus understand exactly what is going on.
9 May, 2000, from an earlier train of thought of around 1998.
________________________
Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and wishes him back again.
Arthur Schopenhauer, from Reputation.
Nobility or Greatness of Soul
According to my experience and knowledge, two main things account for the 'nobility' of individual human beings; this is therefore how I would define the phenomenon of 'nobility' (NOT, of course, in the sense of 'aristocrats'):
One, the fact that one continues to exist and to fight in the face of (and in spite of) incredible, overwhelming odds--to fight against a seemingly impersonal, apathetic universe which threatens at all times to completely overwhelm and defeat one. This is strength of character, and is my first criterion.
Two, to continue to fight KNOWING the power that the universe has over one. This requires DEPTH--depth of soul, depth of experience, depth of culture. Pascal, of course, wonderfully and poetically stated this point--perhaps better than I have seen it expressed elsewhere.
The first criterion expresses the Nietzschean sense of the individual--his primal strength of soul; the second, the Pascalian sense--his depth and breadth of soul. BOTH give to the individual that character which I would call true 'nobility' of soul; but NOT, I would say, either one of them separately.
For instance, one can be completely ignorant both culturally and in the sense of pure 'knowledge' (or experience) and yet still have enormous strength of character to continue to fight to exist. Street people, it seems to me, exhibit this trait. They exist, they survive, but they know not either who they are, nor where they might be going; and often--due to the immediacy of the problem of their mere survival, some would say--they do not even care to know any of these things.
Then there is the phenomenon of the person of fully knows his predicament, but has little or no strength of character to withstand it; and thus he frequently terminates his own existence.
It is only when and if the two traits are combined in one individual, I say, that we see the phenomenon of the 'noble' or 'great' soul--the MAHATMA (even if he also may eventually 'wreck' his own life): the great one, the great life, the noble example of a human life for us to wonder at and seek all our lives to try to emulate.
5 April, 1994.
One, the fact that one continues to exist and to fight in the face of (and in spite of) incredible, overwhelming odds--to fight against a seemingly impersonal, apathetic universe which threatens at all times to completely overwhelm and defeat one. This is strength of character, and is my first criterion.
Two, to continue to fight KNOWING the power that the universe has over one. This requires DEPTH--depth of soul, depth of experience, depth of culture. Pascal, of course, wonderfully and poetically stated this point--perhaps better than I have seen it expressed elsewhere.
The first criterion expresses the Nietzschean sense of the individual--his primal strength of soul; the second, the Pascalian sense--his depth and breadth of soul. BOTH give to the individual that character which I would call true 'nobility' of soul; but NOT, I would say, either one of them separately.
For instance, one can be completely ignorant both culturally and in the sense of pure 'knowledge' (or experience) and yet still have enormous strength of character to continue to fight to exist. Street people, it seems to me, exhibit this trait. They exist, they survive, but they know not either who they are, nor where they might be going; and often--due to the immediacy of the problem of their mere survival, some would say--they do not even care to know any of these things.
Then there is the phenomenon of the person of fully knows his predicament, but has little or no strength of character to withstand it; and thus he frequently terminates his own existence.
It is only when and if the two traits are combined in one individual, I say, that we see the phenomenon of the 'noble' or 'great' soul--the MAHATMA (even if he also may eventually 'wreck' his own life): the great one, the great life, the noble example of a human life for us to wonder at and seek all our lives to try to emulate.
5 April, 1994.
Mental Freedom
It is quite clear that any person who has managed to educate himself, who has managed to free himself from slavish submission to his society's socialisation, or subtle brainwashing--without feeling any shame, guilt, or fear because of being thus unique and different from the 'herd'--will have become very strong emotionally--very strong-willed, or strong-purposed, and will be quite capable of most any behaviour which his society may otherwise label as aberrant, deviant, anti-social, or violent--if such should be his wish. Such a person as this is truly free--and only this type of person is truly free.
His society, it is true, if it becomes aware of just how dangerously free he is (and his mental freedom can be a real danger to it), will quickly and inevitably try to imprison him, which is to say, to immediately and drastically try to curtail his mental (and physical) freedom. This is why it is often said that there is only a thin line between genius and insanity; and by 'genius' I mean mental freedom, brilliance of thought, and the daring, courageous strength of will to follow any impulse through to its logical conclusion, regardless of what consequences it might entail.
Quite simply, the 'herd', the mass of mankind, cannot easily or readily distinguish between 'insanity' and 'genius' (as I define it here); and thus it is that those few, rare souls who have found and followed a radically different vision or mindset will usually be perceived by the majority to be quite abnormal, quite the 'freak of nature'--possibly even quite insane--because, as stated, they possess a seemingly dangerous mental freedom: the usual rules of 'right' and 'wrong' mean little or nothing to them (and recall what Hesse had to say in this connection), and they are therefore very unpredictable in behaviour, and very uncontrollable; their majority will thus understandably fear them, and will nervously try to control (and imprison) them (though this is not to excuse such behaviour on the part of societal majorities).
Apollinaire was quite correct: Sade was, without question, just such a free spirit and mind as this. Nietzsche was another (also Whitman and Thoreau). Sade, if his intellect and depth of knowledge did not outshine Nietzsche's, at least dared to express his mental freedom in a far more direct and physical a manner than Nietzsche (evidently) did. Nietzsche apparently was more content to merely roam the field of the world mentally, without so much feeling the need to 'pull the nose of society', as it were, or to translate his natural impulses into physicality, action, or violence.
And other free minds have existed also, from age to age. Usually, they were either crucified, imprisoned, or burned at the stake--when they could be apprehended. Those who somehow eluded capture usually lived on the fringes of society, as outcasts, rogues, bandits, or even pirates. Every age has seen them; in the Middle Ages they were called variously as either 'Crusaders', or 'Vikings', and when those names no longer "covered a multitude of sins," poor Gilles de Rais was left holding the bag. He merely lacked the social event of sufficient magnitude to justify his untoward actions in the eyes of his majority. Very often in modern times, wars have provided this justification for modern man. It has been said before that every generation needs a good war, and here is the reason why.
I think it important to clarify here, for the weak, exactly what I mean: the Overman need not necessarily become a Sade, a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Dahmer. But he certainly can be, if that be his nature. The basic idea is to not be AFRAID to become ANYTHING, if it be your nature, or lot in life, to become it. Admit to every hidden impulse that resides within you; do not be afraid to accept and claim ANY part of yourself--your inner being. Poet, Painter, Saint, 'Sinner' or Rebel ... all are EQUAL possibilities to the Overman. He only knows that he will most definitely become SOMETHING, and would rather kill himself than become a spineless 'milquetoast' like so many of the quivering jellyfish he sees around him, who somehow pass for MEN, for real human beings. He has a passion for life and self-expression which WILL NOT BE DENIED, whatever may stand in the way.
One final word: compared to this GIANT, this brilliant, mentally-free SUPERMAN, the mass of mankind seem nothing so much as a mass of quivering, bewildered, fog-bound MICE. The Overman is the only one who can see and understand clearly. And it seems to me, if I remember correctly, that Nietzsche himself said much the same thing once, save that he used the word 'ape' instead of 'mouse'. The basic question for mankind: what is it to be--mice, or men?
"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" I choose to take my life into my own hands, to be beholden to and responsible to no one; to live my life for better or worse as myself, for myself, and by myself; I choose to be strong, to gather my will unto myself, and to give it free rein, to let it loose upon the world, be that for what others may call 'good' or for 'ill'; I choose, in short, to be a MAN.
31 March, 1995--11 February, 1999.
His society, it is true, if it becomes aware of just how dangerously free he is (and his mental freedom can be a real danger to it), will quickly and inevitably try to imprison him, which is to say, to immediately and drastically try to curtail his mental (and physical) freedom. This is why it is often said that there is only a thin line between genius and insanity; and by 'genius' I mean mental freedom, brilliance of thought, and the daring, courageous strength of will to follow any impulse through to its logical conclusion, regardless of what consequences it might entail.
Quite simply, the 'herd', the mass of mankind, cannot easily or readily distinguish between 'insanity' and 'genius' (as I define it here); and thus it is that those few, rare souls who have found and followed a radically different vision or mindset will usually be perceived by the majority to be quite abnormal, quite the 'freak of nature'--possibly even quite insane--because, as stated, they possess a seemingly dangerous mental freedom: the usual rules of 'right' and 'wrong' mean little or nothing to them (and recall what Hesse had to say in this connection), and they are therefore very unpredictable in behaviour, and very uncontrollable; their majority will thus understandably fear them, and will nervously try to control (and imprison) them (though this is not to excuse such behaviour on the part of societal majorities).
Apollinaire was quite correct: Sade was, without question, just such a free spirit and mind as this. Nietzsche was another (also Whitman and Thoreau). Sade, if his intellect and depth of knowledge did not outshine Nietzsche's, at least dared to express his mental freedom in a far more direct and physical a manner than Nietzsche (evidently) did. Nietzsche apparently was more content to merely roam the field of the world mentally, without so much feeling the need to 'pull the nose of society', as it were, or to translate his natural impulses into physicality, action, or violence.
And other free minds have existed also, from age to age. Usually, they were either crucified, imprisoned, or burned at the stake--when they could be apprehended. Those who somehow eluded capture usually lived on the fringes of society, as outcasts, rogues, bandits, or even pirates. Every age has seen them; in the Middle Ages they were called variously as either 'Crusaders', or 'Vikings', and when those names no longer "covered a multitude of sins," poor Gilles de Rais was left holding the bag. He merely lacked the social event of sufficient magnitude to justify his untoward actions in the eyes of his majority. Very often in modern times, wars have provided this justification for modern man. It has been said before that every generation needs a good war, and here is the reason why.
I think it important to clarify here, for the weak, exactly what I mean: the Overman need not necessarily become a Sade, a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Dahmer. But he certainly can be, if that be his nature. The basic idea is to not be AFRAID to become ANYTHING, if it be your nature, or lot in life, to become it. Admit to every hidden impulse that resides within you; do not be afraid to accept and claim ANY part of yourself--your inner being. Poet, Painter, Saint, 'Sinner' or Rebel ... all are EQUAL possibilities to the Overman. He only knows that he will most definitely become SOMETHING, and would rather kill himself than become a spineless 'milquetoast' like so many of the quivering jellyfish he sees around him, who somehow pass for MEN, for real human beings. He has a passion for life and self-expression which WILL NOT BE DENIED, whatever may stand in the way.
One final word: compared to this GIANT, this brilliant, mentally-free SUPERMAN, the mass of mankind seem nothing so much as a mass of quivering, bewildered, fog-bound MICE. The Overman is the only one who can see and understand clearly. And it seems to me, if I remember correctly, that Nietzsche himself said much the same thing once, save that he used the word 'ape' instead of 'mouse'. The basic question for mankind: what is it to be--mice, or men?
"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" I choose to take my life into my own hands, to be beholden to and responsible to no one; to live my life for better or worse as myself, for myself, and by myself; I choose to be strong, to gather my will unto myself, and to give it free rein, to let it loose upon the world, be that for what others may call 'good' or for 'ill'; I choose, in short, to be a MAN.
31 March, 1995--11 February, 1999.
Nietzsche, Whitman, and Thoreau
Whitman and Thoreau were living, breathing examples of what Nietzsche was later to term the "strong human being ... [from] the wilderness, a somehow freer and more dangerous environment and form of existence, where everything that is weapons and armor in the instinct of the strong human being has its rightful place, ... a natural human being, who comes from the mountains or from the adventures of the sea. ... the scientific character, the artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the merchant, the great discoverer. ..." [Twilight of the Idols, 45]
"For believe me," says Nietzsche, "the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be satisfied to live like shy deer, hidden in the woods!" [The Gay Science, 283]
_________________________
"Not suitable as a party member. Whoever thinks much is not suitable as a party member: he soon thinks himself right through the party."
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 579.
I now rephrase a few key words to make this more applicable to the modern age: Whoever thinks much is not suitable as a church-member: he soon thinks himself right through the church. I know this certainly happened in my own case. 'Church' dogma is so flimsy and wobbly that I sometimes wonder that more people do not pierce through it, and see it for the sham that it really is, than actually do. Doesn't say too much for the human race at large, generally speaking, does it? But then again, not much ever does.
16 February, 2003.
(See also Twilight of the Idols, 2).
"For believe me," says Nietzsche, "the secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities under Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you lovers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be satisfied to live like shy deer, hidden in the woods!" [The Gay Science, 283]
_________________________
"Not suitable as a party member. Whoever thinks much is not suitable as a party member: he soon thinks himself right through the party."
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 579.
I now rephrase a few key words to make this more applicable to the modern age: Whoever thinks much is not suitable as a church-member: he soon thinks himself right through the church. I know this certainly happened in my own case. 'Church' dogma is so flimsy and wobbly that I sometimes wonder that more people do not pierce through it, and see it for the sham that it really is, than actually do. Doesn't say too much for the human race at large, generally speaking, does it? But then again, not much ever does.
16 February, 2003.
(See also Twilight of the Idols, 2).
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Excerpts from Colin Wilson's "Religion and the Rebel"
SPIRITUAL HELL IS TO PLACE A MAN OF HIGH ABILITIES AND GREAT TALENT IN A POSITION WHERE HE WILL BE FRUSTRATED AND BORED, DENIED SELF-EXPRESSION. IT IS, IN SHORT, THE OUTSIDER'S POSITION IN THE WORLD.
[Emphasis added, as hereafter]
The Outsider could be compared to a man who has been hypnotised, and lowered into a cage full of apes. The hypnosis prevents him from understanding why he finds the apes so disgusting and stupid. He only knows that he detests them. He believes he is an ape too. His solution lies in deliberately fighting the hypnosis, in telling himself: I am not an ape; I must be something more than an ape. [This will be a] ...difficult matter if his hypnosis--his conditioning as an ape--inclines him to give up the struggle and become 'a member of the simian race' and a good citizen of the ape community.
THE OUTSIDER'S DESPAIR, IN FACT, COMES FROM HIS VISION OF THE VAST SEA OF MEDIOCRITY THAT MAKES UP HUMANKIND, AND HIS REBELLION AT THE IDEA OF BELONGING TO IT. The perfect example of this attitude is in Swift, whose loathing of human beings has frequently been called 'pathological,' insane, psychotic--although to any Outsider, it looks reasonable and normal enough. ...
WHEN THE OUTSIDER IS IN HIS EARLIEST STAGES--WHEN HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF[*] OR UNDERSTAND WHY HE IS 'OUT OF HARMONY' WITH THE REST OF HUMANKIND--HIS HATRED FOR MEN AND THE WORLD MAKES HIM AN UNBALANCED MISFIT, A MAN FULL OF SPITE AND ENVY, NEUROTIC, COWARDLY, SHRINKING AND WINCING. HIS SALVATION DEPENDS UPON THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SELF-UNDERSTANDING, SELF-KNOWLEDGE. IT IS ONLY WHEN HE BEGINS TO FIND HIMSELF THAT HE REALISES THAT HIS HATRED IS PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED: A HEALTHY REACTION TO A WORLD OF SICK HALF-MEN. ...
For the simplest way to define an 'Outsider' would be to say that he is a man for whom the world as most men see it is a lie and a deception. ... The fact that men need one another, that they live in close contact, means that they all impose their way of seeing on one another. This means that while a man is a member of society, it is impossible for him to achieve any vision of the world radically different from that of his fellow-men. ... COMPLETE ISOLATION--that is what the Outsider is driving at. He knows that, if he could only achieve it, there is a completely different way of seeing the world--a way so different that one might almost say that it would no longer be the same world. THE OUTSIDER'S FINAL PROBLEM IS TO BECOME A VISIONARY. THE FIRST AND MOST OBVIOUS STEP IS TO CUT HIMSELF OFF FROM OTHER PEOPLE, SO AS NOT TO BE CONDITIONED BY THEIR WAY OF SEEING. ...
The idea of hell is fundamental to the Outsider's way of thinking. He lives in a world of apes, whom he detests. He is told that 'religion' consists in loving your neighbour as yourself, and in practising the virtues of patience and charity. The most the Outsider can say is that he dislikes his neighbour just a little more than he dislikes himself. Most human beings strike him as being so stupid that they might as well be dead; consequently, he has none of the 'respect for human life' that most religions enjoin. His credo is a doctrine of self-expression, and if self-expression means war and murder, he unhesitatingly prefers it to the doctrine of peace and goodwill towards men. BY CONVENTIONAL STANDARDS, HE IS A DANGEROUS AND ANTI-SOCIAL MAN WHO SHOULD BE QUIETLY EXTERMINATED FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY.
* This idea of 'knowing yourself' is precisely the advice which the Delphic Oracle gave to Socrates: "gnothi seauton" (or "know thyself").
Also (by the way), Thoreau said much the same thing that Wilson says here, in his famous essay "Life Without Principle": that one cannot truly 'find oneself' or 'know oneself' unless one retreats to a profound state of isolation, much in the manner in which proverbial "prophets" have always had to go up into "the mountain" before they are able to return to mankind with a profound new vision of the Divine, or whatever else they saw or discovered. Joseph Campbell also makes this point in his book "Inner Reaches of Outer Space," at much greater length and depth than either Wilson or I have done here.
[Emphasis added, as hereafter]
The Outsider could be compared to a man who has been hypnotised, and lowered into a cage full of apes. The hypnosis prevents him from understanding why he finds the apes so disgusting and stupid. He only knows that he detests them. He believes he is an ape too. His solution lies in deliberately fighting the hypnosis, in telling himself: I am not an ape; I must be something more than an ape. [This will be a] ...difficult matter if his hypnosis--his conditioning as an ape--inclines him to give up the struggle and become 'a member of the simian race' and a good citizen of the ape community.
THE OUTSIDER'S DESPAIR, IN FACT, COMES FROM HIS VISION OF THE VAST SEA OF MEDIOCRITY THAT MAKES UP HUMANKIND, AND HIS REBELLION AT THE IDEA OF BELONGING TO IT. The perfect example of this attitude is in Swift, whose loathing of human beings has frequently been called 'pathological,' insane, psychotic--although to any Outsider, it looks reasonable and normal enough. ...
WHEN THE OUTSIDER IS IN HIS EARLIEST STAGES--WHEN HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF[*] OR UNDERSTAND WHY HE IS 'OUT OF HARMONY' WITH THE REST OF HUMANKIND--HIS HATRED FOR MEN AND THE WORLD MAKES HIM AN UNBALANCED MISFIT, A MAN FULL OF SPITE AND ENVY, NEUROTIC, COWARDLY, SHRINKING AND WINCING. HIS SALVATION DEPENDS UPON THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SELF-UNDERSTANDING, SELF-KNOWLEDGE. IT IS ONLY WHEN HE BEGINS TO FIND HIMSELF THAT HE REALISES THAT HIS HATRED IS PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED: A HEALTHY REACTION TO A WORLD OF SICK HALF-MEN. ...
For the simplest way to define an 'Outsider' would be to say that he is a man for whom the world as most men see it is a lie and a deception. ... The fact that men need one another, that they live in close contact, means that they all impose their way of seeing on one another. This means that while a man is a member of society, it is impossible for him to achieve any vision of the world radically different from that of his fellow-men. ... COMPLETE ISOLATION--that is what the Outsider is driving at. He knows that, if he could only achieve it, there is a completely different way of seeing the world--a way so different that one might almost say that it would no longer be the same world. THE OUTSIDER'S FINAL PROBLEM IS TO BECOME A VISIONARY. THE FIRST AND MOST OBVIOUS STEP IS TO CUT HIMSELF OFF FROM OTHER PEOPLE, SO AS NOT TO BE CONDITIONED BY THEIR WAY OF SEEING. ...
The idea of hell is fundamental to the Outsider's way of thinking. He lives in a world of apes, whom he detests. He is told that 'religion' consists in loving your neighbour as yourself, and in practising the virtues of patience and charity. The most the Outsider can say is that he dislikes his neighbour just a little more than he dislikes himself. Most human beings strike him as being so stupid that they might as well be dead; consequently, he has none of the 'respect for human life' that most religions enjoin. His credo is a doctrine of self-expression, and if self-expression means war and murder, he unhesitatingly prefers it to the doctrine of peace and goodwill towards men. BY CONVENTIONAL STANDARDS, HE IS A DANGEROUS AND ANTI-SOCIAL MAN WHO SHOULD BE QUIETLY EXTERMINATED FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY.
* This idea of 'knowing yourself' is precisely the advice which the Delphic Oracle gave to Socrates: "gnothi seauton" (or "know thyself").
Also (by the way), Thoreau said much the same thing that Wilson says here, in his famous essay "Life Without Principle": that one cannot truly 'find oneself' or 'know oneself' unless one retreats to a profound state of isolation, much in the manner in which proverbial "prophets" have always had to go up into "the mountain" before they are able to return to mankind with a profound new vision of the Divine, or whatever else they saw or discovered. Joseph Campbell also makes this point in his book "Inner Reaches of Outer Space," at much greater length and depth than either Wilson or I have done here.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Trading Diamonds for Dust
Every day of my life, I observe so many people living what can only be described as tawdry, mediocre lives, utterly devoid of any striving for the beautiful, the noble, the great, excellent, or sublime. I see these people willingly surrounding themselves with a desolate, hopeless, tawdry mediocrity--both physically and spiritually--which to me would be mind-numbing, the very death of my feeling, sensitive soul; and I cannot help but think that they have willingly traded their diamonds for dust, or more accurately, for the very filth of sewers: that they have literally sold their birthright for a 'mess of pottage.'
For the earth was not always like this. When this area was first taken from the native peoples by those of European descent (among whom were many of my own ancestors), this land was literally a realm of magic and wonder, and the native peoples who lived here KNEW this fact. I KNOW it, for I have read some of the first-hand accounts describing it (without hyperbole) as such. It was a land of FEW inhabitants, covered from head to foot by a vast, ancient forest, and filled with sparkling, clear waters, brilliant, many-hued flowers of all description, and populated with a remarkable variety of fauna--all of which, besides existing in its own right, might also have served and benefitted the REASONABLE use of mankind.
But what has European-American mankind done with these treasures--their very inheritance (if it can be called theirs) from God himself? Being dull and unimaginative, and utterly failing to see and understand the miraculous WEALTH all around their very eyes, they have, therefore, only wantonly slaughtered, burned, and destroyed, virtually everywhere they ever went.
DESTROYED?! Theirs is a usage that is so voracious, and so devastatingly complete, that it utterly annihilates in the process of devouring! The hapless mother Earth, it can only be said, they have repeatedly and shamelessly RAPED--all in the name of greed, which of course they justify under the rubric of the "necessity" of their own existence. The shorthand description for all of this boils down to only one small two-word term: profit-making.
All of which is to say (evidently) that the 'business' of profit-making (which they call the business of survival, as if the need for their survival is an excuse for amoral rape and wanton destruction) outweighs all other possible considerations--even the most fundamental ones of the planet itself, or of our brother and sister creations, the animals.
And this is why I have always maintained that the 'businessman' has, ultimately, absolutely no morals whatsoever (and never can have any) beyond the one moral of his own exigency, his own greed. Whatever is necessary to further the ambition of his greed--THAT, and that alone, is his moral purpose.
But even the most dull and unimaginative among us also shares, to some degree, in this terrible tragedy of the soul: for most people, as I have said, willingly relinquish their rich potential (which indeed all were once born with) for a life and environment of the mundane, tame, and mediocre--and think themselves well-off for having done so!--such is the depth of their delusion. And then, by and by, some of them may perchance wonder what is missing in their lives--what(if anything) they may have done wrong.
Suffice it to say that I personally want no part of such a sorry, pathetic world as this one which mankind has created for itself--much as typical infants, if left to themselves, will eventually soil the cribs in which they lie--that I daily, even hourly, recoil in horror and flee (as best I may) from such monstrosities. Isolation--especially of the thoughts in my mind--the only holy Temple left to me--is my only apparent hope of salvation.
Dear God--only ONCE let them walk along a leaf-strewn path through a Spring or Autumn woodland, and truly SEE the miracles of God which indeed their eyes behold, but which their puny animal minds and souls can never comprehend!
Only ONCE let them see, and comprehend!
November 8, 2002
For the earth was not always like this. When this area was first taken from the native peoples by those of European descent (among whom were many of my own ancestors), this land was literally a realm of magic and wonder, and the native peoples who lived here KNEW this fact. I KNOW it, for I have read some of the first-hand accounts describing it (without hyperbole) as such. It was a land of FEW inhabitants, covered from head to foot by a vast, ancient forest, and filled with sparkling, clear waters, brilliant, many-hued flowers of all description, and populated with a remarkable variety of fauna--all of which, besides existing in its own right, might also have served and benefitted the REASONABLE use of mankind.
But what has European-American mankind done with these treasures--their very inheritance (if it can be called theirs) from God himself? Being dull and unimaginative, and utterly failing to see and understand the miraculous WEALTH all around their very eyes, they have, therefore, only wantonly slaughtered, burned, and destroyed, virtually everywhere they ever went.
DESTROYED?! Theirs is a usage that is so voracious, and so devastatingly complete, that it utterly annihilates in the process of devouring! The hapless mother Earth, it can only be said, they have repeatedly and shamelessly RAPED--all in the name of greed, which of course they justify under the rubric of the "necessity" of their own existence. The shorthand description for all of this boils down to only one small two-word term: profit-making.
All of which is to say (evidently) that the 'business' of profit-making (which they call the business of survival, as if the need for their survival is an excuse for amoral rape and wanton destruction) outweighs all other possible considerations--even the most fundamental ones of the planet itself, or of our brother and sister creations, the animals.
And this is why I have always maintained that the 'businessman' has, ultimately, absolutely no morals whatsoever (and never can have any) beyond the one moral of his own exigency, his own greed. Whatever is necessary to further the ambition of his greed--THAT, and that alone, is his moral purpose.
But even the most dull and unimaginative among us also shares, to some degree, in this terrible tragedy of the soul: for most people, as I have said, willingly relinquish their rich potential (which indeed all were once born with) for a life and environment of the mundane, tame, and mediocre--and think themselves well-off for having done so!--such is the depth of their delusion. And then, by and by, some of them may perchance wonder what is missing in their lives--what(if anything) they may have done wrong.
Suffice it to say that I personally want no part of such a sorry, pathetic world as this one which mankind has created for itself--much as typical infants, if left to themselves, will eventually soil the cribs in which they lie--that I daily, even hourly, recoil in horror and flee (as best I may) from such monstrosities. Isolation--especially of the thoughts in my mind--the only holy Temple left to me--is my only apparent hope of salvation.
Dear God--only ONCE let them walk along a leaf-strewn path through a Spring or Autumn woodland, and truly SEE the miracles of God which indeed their eyes behold, but which their puny animal minds and souls can never comprehend!
Only ONCE let them see, and comprehend!
November 8, 2002
Thomas Mann's views on homosexuality
That mature masculinity reaches out its arm, showing itself to be tender towards masculinity which is softer and more beautiful--
I find in this nothing unnatural, and a great deal that is edifying, a great deal of high humanity.
The moment of youth comes into play here, or a magic that the feelings are prone to confuse with beauty, so that youth, unless disfigured by flaws that cause too much discomfort, will most often be perceived as beauty, even by itself, as its smile unmistakably indicates. It has charm--a manifestation of beauty which by its nature oscillates between the masculine and the feminine. A boy of seventeen is not beautiful in the sense of mature masculinity. Nor is he beautiful in the sense of a simply hypothetical femininity--that would be most unappealing. But undeniably, the charm of youthful beauty always inclines a little towards the feminine in both spirit and form. That lies in its essence, its tender relation towards the world and the world's to it, based on and expressed in its smile. At seventeen, it is true, one can be lovelier than woman or man, lovely like woman and man, lovely in both ways and all ways, pretty and beautiful, to a degree that turns the heads of both men and women.
In Gesammelte Werke, Vol.4, pp. 394-95; quoted in Hayman, op. cit., pp. 390-91.
I find in this nothing unnatural, and a great deal that is edifying, a great deal of high humanity.
Excerpted from a letter of Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
to Carl Maria von Weber, dated July 4, 1920;
quoted in Ronald Hayman,
Thomas Mann:A Biography (1995), page 250.
The moment of youth comes into play here, or a magic that the feelings are prone to confuse with beauty, so that youth, unless disfigured by flaws that cause too much discomfort, will most often be perceived as beauty, even by itself, as its smile unmistakably indicates. It has charm--a manifestation of beauty which by its nature oscillates between the masculine and the feminine. A boy of seventeen is not beautiful in the sense of mature masculinity. Nor is he beautiful in the sense of a simply hypothetical femininity--that would be most unappealing. But undeniably, the charm of youthful beauty always inclines a little towards the feminine in both spirit and form. That lies in its essence, its tender relation towards the world and the world's to it, based on and expressed in its smile. At seventeen, it is true, one can be lovelier than woman or man, lovely like woman and man, lovely in both ways and all ways, pretty and beautiful, to a degree that turns the heads of both men and women.
In Gesammelte Werke, Vol.4, pp. 394-95; quoted in Hayman, op. cit., pp. 390-91.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
To me, the two most profound statements in all holy writings (aside from Jesus' immortal doctrine) are these: "God is love," and "God is light." Taken separately, we may say that if it is true that God is love (the word 'is' being an equal sign), then it is also true that LOVE is GOD. An equally true statement would be that LIGHT is also GOD. And by this I infer that since light is merely frequency-patterns transmitted over space and time, the act of COMMUNICATING (that is to say, using frequency transmissions) must also be synonymous with the words 'love,' 'light,' and 'God.' Taken together, all of the above statements amount to a new (and much more profound) definition of the term 'God.' But how many can accept such a radical departure? And yet, the evidence has been before our very eyes for nearly two thousand years! Has it really taken mankind so very long to thus expand his mindset or world-view?
27 May--7 July, 1997.
How may we define man as being separate from the other forms of life on this planet?
By the degree of his self-awareness, by the degree of his awareness of his environs (and this includes other forms of life), by the degree of his ability to communicate (and the level of complexity of his communications), and by the degree of his ability to manipulate his environment to suit his own needs or wishes.
What defines a 'civilised' society? Or--better yet--how can we determine when and if one particular society is more (or less) 'civilised' than another? This is a question that has plagued many for years, and yet I can't see how such a simple answer could have escaped notice for so long:
A society is more (or less) 'civilised' based upon the level of complexity of its technical know-how, the level of complexity of its social organisation, the level of its manipulation or domination of the environment to suit man's needs or wishes, and by the degree of its dependence (both individually and collectively) upon primitive animal emotion or instinct. In other words, a society becomes more 'civilised' than another when its constituent members (or a safe majority thereof) become more fully HUMAN (and less animal-like) than the members of another society--which may, indeed, be 'civilised' in its own right, only less so than another which finds itself in the evolutionary vanguard of the species. Or what else could Nietzsche have possibly meant?
30 June--7 July, 1997.
27 May--7 July, 1997.
How may we define man as being separate from the other forms of life on this planet?
By the degree of his self-awareness, by the degree of his awareness of his environs (and this includes other forms of life), by the degree of his ability to communicate (and the level of complexity of his communications), and by the degree of his ability to manipulate his environment to suit his own needs or wishes.
What defines a 'civilised' society? Or--better yet--how can we determine when and if one particular society is more (or less) 'civilised' than another? This is a question that has plagued many for years, and yet I can't see how such a simple answer could have escaped notice for so long:
A society is more (or less) 'civilised' based upon the level of complexity of its technical know-how, the level of complexity of its social organisation, the level of its manipulation or domination of the environment to suit man's needs or wishes, and by the degree of its dependence (both individually and collectively) upon primitive animal emotion or instinct. In other words, a society becomes more 'civilised' than another when its constituent members (or a safe majority thereof) become more fully HUMAN (and less animal-like) than the members of another society--which may, indeed, be 'civilised' in its own right, only less so than another which finds itself in the evolutionary vanguard of the species. Or what else could Nietzsche have possibly meant?
30 June--7 July, 1997.
Pantheism== The belief that "God" or "deity" exists everywhere in the universe surrounding us-as, for instance, in the air, the water, the flowers, the animals, human beings, and even the stars themselves.
Mysticism==The belief that it is possible, in this mortal life, to obtain a personal, inward spiritual awareness of, and communion with, the Divine. Example: As in an inward spiritual awakening or experience. Many shallow-minded people would call this "being born again." I say it is much deeper than that--much more profound and far-reaching in its results or consequences.
My theology, while definitely admitting and including the above two statements, really begins and ends with one simple formula, found in the first epistle of St.John (the "Beloved"):
GOD IS LOVE.
Simple logic will then tell us that if "God" (the Divine) is the same thing as "Love", then therefore everything that is "Love" is also "Divine" (or God). All expressions of love, therefore, are expressions of the Divine and of the Divine Will--even those expressions which some narrow-minded and prejudiced persons are pleased to negatively judge and condemn. To love another human being, in a selfless and "Christlike" manner, that is to say, is to give expression to the Divine, to let the Divine flow through one, as it were, thus transforming oneself into a vehicle whereby the Divine becomes expressed in the physical world: a means whereby 'the Word may become made Flesh'.
This, in my opinion, is all that "religion" should ever need to be. "Anything more or less than this cometh of evil."
What are the two greatest commandments? According to Jesus, they are to love God (which is LOVE, right?) with all one's heart, might, mind and strength, and to love one's neighbour as oneself. They are both about love, correct? Basically restated, they are: Love LOVE with your entire being, and love your fellow-man as much as you love yourself. Basically, the idea is (as constantly as is humanly possible) to have a heart filled with Divine Love--toward "deity" and toward one's fellow-beings.
St.Paul said in Romans that a person truly filled with Divine Love will not murder, lie, cheat, steal, or do any other thing to harm his neighbour; or at least, if he should by mistake and due to his frail human nature do something of the sort anyway, he will be sorry therefor, and will honestly try to make amends and avoid repeating the mistake.
Shakespeare's ideal of love was unconditional love:
...love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Ah, no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on Tempests and is never shaken:
It is the Star to ev'ry wandering Bark. ...
(Sonnet No.116)
Which was merely a rephrasing of St.Paul's standard, the famous passage found in First Corinthians, Chapter 13 (Shakespeare obviously knew his Bible):
...Love is patient and kind, love does not envy... love never seeks repayment, nor is provoked to anger; love does not rejoice in harm to others, but rejoices in the truth. LOVE NEVER GIVES UP!
(Emphasis added)
Now I here freely admit that I am a human being, too. It is just as hard for me sometimes to actually live what I am saying here. But I know that I know better. And I do try at all times to conscientiously live this ideal, as should we all. I never said that it was easy, only that it is what we should all be doing (myself included).
"This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."
(St.John 15:12-13)
Notice here that Jesus said "friends." He did not say, "wife," or "husband," "father," or "mother," or even "children." No, he said "friends." And I find this very significant. Some would perhaps say that it would be even more significant to voluntarily give up one's life for a total stranger, but that is not really based on conscious, full-knowing LOVE, is it? That would rather be a form of Altruism--somewhat more remote than intimate, personal LOVE, which has full knowledge and awareness of all a friend's faults and failings, and yet is still willing to sacrifice for him.
Mysticism==The belief that it is possible, in this mortal life, to obtain a personal, inward spiritual awareness of, and communion with, the Divine. Example: As in an inward spiritual awakening or experience. Many shallow-minded people would call this "being born again." I say it is much deeper than that--much more profound and far-reaching in its results or consequences.
My theology, while definitely admitting and including the above two statements, really begins and ends with one simple formula, found in the first epistle of St.John (the "Beloved"):
GOD IS LOVE.
Simple logic will then tell us that if "God" (the Divine) is the same thing as "Love", then therefore everything that is "Love" is also "Divine" (or God). All expressions of love, therefore, are expressions of the Divine and of the Divine Will--even those expressions which some narrow-minded and prejudiced persons are pleased to negatively judge and condemn. To love another human being, in a selfless and "Christlike" manner, that is to say, is to give expression to the Divine, to let the Divine flow through one, as it were, thus transforming oneself into a vehicle whereby the Divine becomes expressed in the physical world: a means whereby 'the Word may become made Flesh'.
This, in my opinion, is all that "religion" should ever need to be. "Anything more or less than this cometh of evil."
What are the two greatest commandments? According to Jesus, they are to love God (which is LOVE, right?) with all one's heart, might, mind and strength, and to love one's neighbour as oneself. They are both about love, correct? Basically restated, they are: Love LOVE with your entire being, and love your fellow-man as much as you love yourself. Basically, the idea is (as constantly as is humanly possible) to have a heart filled with Divine Love--toward "deity" and toward one's fellow-beings.
St.Paul said in Romans that a person truly filled with Divine Love will not murder, lie, cheat, steal, or do any other thing to harm his neighbour; or at least, if he should by mistake and due to his frail human nature do something of the sort anyway, he will be sorry therefor, and will honestly try to make amends and avoid repeating the mistake.
Shakespeare's ideal of love was unconditional love:
...love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Ah, no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on Tempests and is never shaken:
It is the Star to ev'ry wandering Bark. ...
(Sonnet No.116)
Which was merely a rephrasing of St.Paul's standard, the famous passage found in First Corinthians, Chapter 13 (Shakespeare obviously knew his Bible):
...Love is patient and kind, love does not envy... love never seeks repayment, nor is provoked to anger; love does not rejoice in harm to others, but rejoices in the truth. LOVE NEVER GIVES UP!
(Emphasis added)
Now I here freely admit that I am a human being, too. It is just as hard for me sometimes to actually live what I am saying here. But I know that I know better. And I do try at all times to conscientiously live this ideal, as should we all. I never said that it was easy, only that it is what we should all be doing (myself included).
"This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."
(St.John 15:12-13)
Notice here that Jesus said "friends." He did not say, "wife," or "husband," "father," or "mother," or even "children." No, he said "friends." And I find this very significant. Some would perhaps say that it would be even more significant to voluntarily give up one's life for a total stranger, but that is not really based on conscious, full-knowing LOVE, is it? That would rather be a form of Altruism--somewhat more remote than intimate, personal LOVE, which has full knowledge and awareness of all a friend's faults and failings, and yet is still willing to sacrifice for him.
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