Over the past couple of years I've been exploring early progressive thought. Yesterday I stumbled across the following passage that immediately hit a chord:
The misery of the people is not caused by individuals, but by an order of Society by which they are bound together in a way that puts them in the power of a few, or, more often, of one man: a man so depraved by his unnatural power - that he is always in an unhealthy state and suffering more or less from a mania of self-aggrandizement, which is not noticed in him only because of his exceptional position.The writer is discussing the ruling caste of his day, "Nicholas or Alexander, Louis or Napoleon, Frederic or William, Palmerstone or Gladstone, McKinley or anyone else."
The only part of the Press that reaches them, and which seems to them to be the expression of the feelings of the best of the people or their best representatives, exalts all their words and deeds, however silly and wicked they may be, in the most servile manner. All who surround them, men and women, cleric or lay, all these people who do not value human dignity, vie with each other in flattering them in the most refined manner, agree with them in everything, and deceive them continually, making it impossible for them to know life as it is. These men might live to be a hundred and never see a real, free man, and never hear the truth.
The essay, "Anarchism. Thou Shalt Not Kill," was written by Leo Tolstoy. It's undated but is one of forty essays/lectures published in the 1905 book, "The Meaning of Modern Life." I was able to snag a first edition in remarkably good condition cheap, cheap, cheap.
I wonder what Count Tolstoy would have made of the current president, the Mango Mussolini, DJ Trump. I'm sure he would be very familiar with the character flaws and the servile acolytes who surround him.
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
5 comments:
.. I look upon Donald Trump more as an 'inflatable' .. very much the puffery of the GOP.. and the failure of the American Democrats.. indeed the failure of a nation.. that has lost whatever collective mind it has been parked upon in some backlot of a Walmart.. by a dumpster full of cardboard patriotism.. some sort of 'we are the champions of the world' .. and are really just a collective dumping ground for garbage. They sell out at the first opportunity.. Aint no 'Born in the USA' Springsteen.. its more some fake echo of Copperhead Road.. meets Monty Python and the daze of yore.. No Top Gun.. Its American Psycho.. The crash n burn gonna be spectacular.. Hell, it already is..
Sal, I also wonder if America has gone too far to recover without some sort of revolutionary upheaval, something of the sort that Jefferson foretold would be necessary from time to time. There are so many destabilizing forces in play at the moment, climate breakdown being one of them. Each is, to some degree, debilitating to a functioning, viable liberal democracy. The synergy is or should be as troubling outside America as it is inside, especially to a country that shares thousands of miles of undefended border with the US. Yet I get the impression we're just along for the ride.
Tolstoy might conclude that we have learned nothing, Mound.
Reading Tolstoy's essay, Owen, the despots of his day were a bit different than their modern descendants. In Tolstoy's time they were a much more murderous lot than they are today because that sort of thing is somewhat harder to get away with - sanctions, etc. However in their attitudes and support structures they seem indistinguishable.
I find myself thinking of a bit I read where this king, of a Persia analogue, mentioned to a courtier that he liked eggplant. The man went off on a speech praising the wonders of eggplant. The king then announced that he had changed his mind, he despised eggplant. The courtier immediately went into a diatribe on the evils of eggplant.
The king said, "But you were praising eggplant to the skies just a moment ago!"
The courtier replied, "I am your courtier, not the eggplant's. I have to say what pleases you, not what pleases the eggplant."
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