Category Archives: Art and Ideas

R. D. Laing On The Absurdity Of Normal Men

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Psychoanalyst R. D. Laing on Normality:

“From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth century mother, the baby is subjected to those forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, and their parents, and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful. By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age……

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.

Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.”‘

“The Politics of Experience” (New York: Ballantine, 1967), pp. 58, 28.

My Comment

Laing is making an extreme statement, I realize. But there are insights in what he writes, as well, for instance,  when he says that habits are imposed on us early in life  to make us conform to certain ways of thinking and acting – habits which alienate us from our conscience and from our authentic self.

That’s close to the teaching of “mechanical man” in Gurdjieff’s writing.

The Hindu teaching about “vasanas” or sense impressions (that we cultivate) seems close too. The vasanas.drive us (through cause and effect) into mechanical action. The emphasis here is less on external conditioning as on our own unconscious role in creating mechanical patterns.

In Christianity, the closest teaching is the one in the Gospel about casting off  the “old man” and putting on the new. The “old ma”n conforms to the outward appearance of things; he’s driven by the “old Adam”. I take this to mean biological urge (one form of habit and enslavement), but surely it must also include conventions formed by society and by state, although we have to distinguish between these types as well.

Couldn’t that be why one of the teachings of the Gospel – a controversial teaching – is that the love of God comes before love of parents and family? And that it can bring a sword between family members?

If we set aside the theology for a moment, isn’t that close to Laing’s comments about our need to escape our family conditioning, a conditioning imposed on us often in the name of love?

All these traditions are very dissimilar and we can’t gloss over the differences, but the underlying phenomena are not that far apart, either. Laing’s conclusions can be  indiscriminate, but the questioning of childhood conditioning seems very useful.

Those are my thoughts, anyway, coming from my interest in how and why people become deluded or propagandized.

Hilaire Belloc On Prophecy And Time

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“On Anything,” Hilaire Belloc
Constable & Co., 1910

“The truth is that men pass under strong influences of time that fill them more than with wine, rather with an entirety of life. The time in which a man lives may be an exalted time or a weary one, but it fills him altogether, whether it is on fire or drowned. He can conceive, as a rule, nothing in the future different from the temper of his time, though there is all the past to teach him his folly. If he makes a picture of the future, that picture is a mere extension of his own tiny and ephemeral experience, and the more confidently certain he is of that future the more rigidly is it seen by the critical onlooker to be a puppet dressed up in the clothes of the present.

All these things Dunoyer’s careful book upon two men of the Revolutionary Tribunal, a monograph characteristic of that ceaseless and immense research which dignifies the modern French School of History, has suggested to my mind.

Now, whenever I read of the Revolution, in general or in particular, while that lesson of the folly of prophecy perpetually returns to me, yet something else rises from the page. In a certain sense, almost in a mystical sense, the periods of profound faith in a particular future were right. Not because the picture that they saw was true, but because those things outside time upon which they relied were and are true. And even to-day in the sheer anarchy and welter of the time we suffer there is a method of thought which has anchoring ground in the permanent fate of mankind. But what that method may be there is no space to discuss here.”

My Comment:

Belloc is less familiar to me than Chesterton, but it’s an ignorance I mean to remedy swiftly. I encountered him during childhood through his nonsense rhymes and modeled an early unpublished collection of light verse on them. I always meant to get around to reading more of him.

It’s one of the horrid things about governments that we have to spend so much time figuring out what new imposition they mean to levy on us that we have no time left over for things we actually enjoy. Some days I wonder if we wouldn’t be wiser to simply ignore what’s going on and live “underground,” hiding as much of our lives as we can from the powers that be.

The Belloc passage I posted expresses a conundrum that often troubles me and surfaced in an article I posted a while ago by Naomi Wolf, in which she compares the US government to the Nazis.  Joey Kurtzman correctly called this historically inaccurate. I concurred with Kurtzman, but still agreed that Wolf had said something “true,” even if partially inaccurate.

This I take to be the substance of what Belloc is saying. Our predictions are always intensely colored by the particular time in which we live and thus are  always suspect. But at moments of crisis – revolutionary moments – we can nonetheless correctly predict the direction of the future, not because of any perspective lent to us by the time in which we live, but because of something outside time, some truth beyond particularity. That is what seizes us and speaks through us…

PS: I corrected the title of this post, from “Hilaire Belloc on the effect of time” to “Hilaire Belloc on prophecy and time” for the sake of clarity.

Carson Versus Marks On Libertarianism And Scarcity

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An interesting exchange from The Libertarian Alliance’s website on libertarianism and scarcity, with Kevin Carson responding to Paul Marks’ critique of his work:

[Marks]

“Neither land nor capital are [sic] “artificially scarce” – they are just scarce (period).  There are billions of people and only a certain amount of land and machinery?  .[T]he idea that land and capital are only scarce [emphasis mine] compared to the billions of people on Earth because of either wicked governments or wicked employers (or both) is false.”

[Carson]

First, simply to get the second part of Mr Marks’ statement out of the way, I nowhere asserted that all scarcity of land and capital is artificial.  I argued only that they were more scarce, as a result of state-enforced privilege, than they would otherwise be, and that returns on land and capital were therefore higher than their free market values.  In any case, as Franz Oppenheimer observed, most of the scarcity of arable land comes not from natural appropriation, but from political appropriation. And the natural scarcity of capital, a good which is in elastic supply and which can be produced by applying human labor to the land, results entirely from the need for human labor for its creation; there is no fixed limit to the amount available.

But getting to his main point, that land and capital are not artificially scarce, I’m not sure Mr Marks is even aware of his sheer audacity.  In making this assertion, he flies in the face of a remarkable amount of received libertarian wisdom, from eminences as great as Mises and Rothbard.  As a contrarian myself, I take my hat off to him.

Still, I wonder if he ever made the effort to grasp the libertarian arguments, made by Rothbard et al, that he so blithely dismisses.  Is he even aware of the logical difficulties entailed in repudiating them?  Does he deny that state enforcement of titles to land that is both vacant and unimproved reduces the amount available for homesteading? Does he deny that the reduced availability of something relative to demand is the very definition of “scarcity,” or that the reduction of supply relative to demand leads to increased price?  Or is his argument rather with Rothbard’s moral premises themselves, rather than the logical process by which he makes deductions from them?  I.e., does he deny that property in unimproved and vacant land is an invalid grant of privilege by the state, and thereby repudiate Locke’s principle of just acquisition?

It seems unlikely, on the face of things, that Mr Marks would expressly repudiate Mises and Rothbard on these points.  After all, elsewhere in his critique he cites Human Action and Man, Economy and State as authorities.  Perhaps he just blanked out on the portions of their work that weren’t useful for his apologetic purposes.

In any case, if he does not repudiate either Rothbard’s premises or his reasoning, Mr Marks has dug himself into a deep hole.  For by Rothbard’s Lockean premises, not only the state’s own property in land, but “private” titles to vacant and unimproved land, are illegitimate. Likewise, titles derived from state grants are illegitimate when they enable the spurious “owner” to collect rent from the rightful owner – the person who first mixed his labor with the land, his heirs and assigns.  And the artificial scarcity of land resulting from such illegitimate property titles raises the marginal price of land relative to that of labor, and forces labor to pay an artificially high share of its wages for the rent or purchase of land….”

Indian Business Students Drive Sales Of Mein Kampf

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“Sales of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s autobiography and apologia for his anti-semitism, are soaring in India where business students regard the dictator as a management guru.
Booksellers told The Daily Telegraph that while it is regarded in most countries as a ‘Nazi Bible’, in India it is considered a management guide in the mould of Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese”.

Sales of the book over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year.

Several said the surge in sales was due to demand from students who see it as a self-improvement and management strategy guide for aspiring business leaders, and who were happy to cite it as an inspiration.

“Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we’re happy to sell it to them,” said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book.

“They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it”.

More at The Telegraph, UK”

My Comment

April 20 was Hitler’s birthday and I suppose the anniversary provides the justification for stories like these.  Mein Kampf is a book that I’ve never read myself and haven’t felt curious enough to read, either . It’s apparently selling briskly to Indian students, not for its anti-semitism but for the inspiration it provides management students.

More mischievously, the article goes on to insinuate a link between Gandhi and the Nazis.

There was one, but nothing that would please any Nazi-hunter. Gandhi was not unusual in seeing the European war as intra-imperial and seemed to think that satyagraha would work on the Germans as well as it had done on the British.

He went so far as to advise  Jews to let themselves fall before the Nazis as a kind of sacrificial gesture that would turn the consciences of their oppressors. Many scholars have – unsurprisingly – reacted to this with repugnance, but the advice was more a symptom of Gandhian quixotry than anti-Semitism – conscious or unconscious.

Solzhenitsyn On Conscience

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Alexandr Solzhenitsyn on developing a point of view:

“In First Circle, the young diplomat Innokenty Volodin lived a life of prosperity and comfort. As the privileged child of a hero of the Revolution he had married into a prominent family and advanced in the Soviet diplomatic service. But he became alienated from it all: he “lack(ed) something: he didn’t know what” (p. 341).
Upon examining the old fashioned ideas of his deceased mother in her diaries, his perspective on life changed from one of an Epicurean pleasure-seeking to one of ethical regard. He developed a “point of view”: Up to then the truth for Innokenty had been: you have only one life.

Now he came to sense a new law, in himself and in the world: you also have only one conscience. And just as you cannot recover a lost life, you cannot recover a wrecked conscience [p. 345]

Moral choices are often the consequence of accumulated culture, happenstance or social institutions, and as such judging others’ moral choices must be done with compassion and humility. Solzhenitsyn contemplates rather extensively his rejection of an offer to join the Soviet internal police force, the NKDV, when he was a young communist in Rostov in the late 1930’s:

“The NKVD school dangled before us special rations and double or triple pay …
It was not our minds that resisted but something inside our breasts. People can shout at you from all sides: “you must!”… inside our head can be saying also: “You must!” But inside your breast there is a sense of revulsion, repudiation. I don’t want to. It makes me feel sick. Do what you want without me; I want no part of it …. Without even knowing it ourselves, we were ransomed by small change in copper that was left from the golden coins our great-grandfathers had expended, at a time when morality was not considered relative and when the distinction between good and evil was very simply perceived by the heart.” —

[Gulag Archipelago, p. 160].

This leads to a rather subtle and non-judgmental view of good and evil. Evil is very real and very wrong, but no human being is authorized to become too self-righteous in its condemnation: but for the grace of God go I.

In Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn says quite emphatically:

“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now. If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

“Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t.” [p. 169]

“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of
Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.”

A Depression Ditty

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Alan G, the banker’s man
Cut the rate and away he ran
The books were cooked,
The thieves have booked,
Now Ben Bernanke’s
On the hook…

I’ve decided that treating this whole business as a tragedy/calamity doesn’t do it justice. Ridicule, taunting, and scorn are the proper responses.

And some of that needs to be directed at our own selves.

We’ve lived comfortably in a society where “branding” and “image” are everything – substance is nothing.

We’ve lived comfortably with a two-tier education where brilliant people are routinely overlooked in favor of empty suits with friends in high places.

We were comfortable with millions of people all over the world subsidizing “free markets”..

We were comfortable with the morals and manners of the gangsters who are our elites, as long as the pendulum was swinging our way.

Now that it’s stopped and hit us, we’ve changed our tune.

How Much Land Does A Man Need?

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“How Much Land Does a Man Need?” — Leo Tolstoi
Sections VII – IX

“Pahom lay on the feather-bed, but could not sleep. He kept thinking about the land.

“What a large tract I will mark off!” thought he. “ I can easily do thirty-five miles in a day. The days are long now, and within a circuit of thirty-five miles what a lot of land there will be! I will sell the poorer land, or let it to peasants, but I’ll pick out the best and farm it. I will buy two oxteams, and hire two more laborers. About a hundred and fifty acres shall be plough-land, and I will pasture cattle on the rest.”

Pahom lay awake all night, and dozed off only just before dawn. Hardly were his eyes closed when he had a dream. He thought he was lying in that same tent and heard somebody chuckling outside. He wondered who it could be, and rose and went out, and he saw the Bashkir Chief sitting in front of the tent holding his sides and rolling about with laughter. Going nearer to the Chief, Pahom asked: “What are you laughing at?” But he saw that it was no longer the Chief, but the dealer who had recently stopped at his house and had told him about the land. Just as Pahom was going to ask, “Have you been here long?” he saw that it was not the dealer, but the peasant who had come up from the Volga, long ago, to Pahom’s old home. Then he saw that it was not the peasant either, but the Devil himself with hoofs and horns, sitting there and chuckling, and before him lay a man barefoot, prostrate on the ground, with only trousers and a shirt on. And Pahom dreamt that he looked more attentively to see what sort of a man it was that was lying there, and he saw that the man was dead, and that it was himself! He awoke horror-struck.

“What things one does dream,” thought he.

Looking around he saw through the open door that the dawn was breaking.

“It’s time to wake them up,” thought he. “We ought to be starting.”

He got up, roused his man (who was sleeping in his cart), bade him harness; and went to call the Bashkirs.

“It’s time to go to the steppe to measure the land,” he said.

The Bashkirs rose and assembled, and the Chief came too. Then they began drinking kumiss again, and offered Pahom some tea, but he would not wait.

“If we are to go, let us go. It is high time,” said he.
VII.

The Bashkirs got ready and they all started: some mounted on horses, and some in carts. Pahom drove in his own small cart with his servant and took a spade with him. When they reached the steppe, the morning red was beginning kindle. They ascended a hillock (called by the Bashkirs a shikhan) and dismounting from their carts and their horses, gathered in one spot. The Chief came up to Pahom and stretching out his arm towards the plain:

“See,” said he, “all this, as far as your eye can reach, is ours. You may have any part of it you like.”

Pahom’s eyes glistened: it was all virgin soil, as flat as the palm of your hand, as black as the seed of a poppy, and in the hollows different kinds of grasses grew breast high.

The Chief took off his fox-fur cap, placed it on the ground and said:

“This will be the mark. Start from here, and return here again. All the land you go round shall be yours.”

Pahom took out his money and put it on the cap. Then he took off his outer coat, remaining in his sleeveless under-coat. He unfastened his girdle and tied it tight below his stomach, put a little bag of bread into the breast of his coat, and tying a flask of water to his girdle, he drew up the tops of his boots, took the spade from his man, and stood ready to start. He considered for some moments which way he had better go – it was tempting everywhere.

“No matter,” he concluded, “I will go towards the rising sun.”

He turned his face to the east, stretched himself, and waited for the sun to appear above the rim.

“I must lose no time,” he thought, “and it is easier walking while it is still cool.”

The sun’s rays had hardly flashed above the horizon, before Pahom, carrying the spade over his shoulder, went down into the steppe.

Pahom started walking neither slowly nor quickly. After having gone a thousand yards he stopped, dug a hole, and placed pieces of turf one on another to make it more visible. Then he went on; and now that he had walked off his stiffness he quickened his pace. After a while he dug another hole.

Pahom looked back. The hillock could be distinctly seen in the sunlight, with the people on it, and the glittering tires of the cart-wheels. At a rough guess Pahom concluded that he had walked three miles. It was growing warmer; he took off his under-coat, flung it across his shoulder, and went on again. It had grown quite warm now; he looked at the sun, it was time to think of breakfast.

“The first shift is done, but there are four in a day, and it is too soon yet to turn. But I will just take off my boots,” said he to himself.

He sat down, took off his boots, stuck them into his girdle, and went on. It was easy walking now.

“I will go on for another three miles,” though he, “and then turn to the left. This spot is so fine, that it would be a pity to lose it. The further ones goes, the better the land seems.”

He went straight on for a while, and when he looked round, the hillock was scarcely visible and the people on it looked like black ants, and he could just see something glistening there in the sun.

“Ah,” though Pahom, “I have gone far enough in this direction, it is time to turn. Besides I am in a regular sweat, and very thirsty.”

He stopped, dug a large hole, and heaped up pieces of turf. Next he untied his flask, had a drink, and then turned sharply to the left. He went on and on; the grass was high, and it was very hot.

Pahom began to grow tired: he looked at the sun and saw that it was noon.

“Well,” he thought, “I must have a rest.”

He sat down, and ate some bread and drank some water; but he did not lie down, thinking that if he did he might fall asleep. After sitting a little while, he went on again. At first he walked easily: the food had strengthened him; but it had become terribly hot and he felt sleepy, still he went on, thinking: “An hour to suffer, a life-time to live.”

He went a long way in this direction also, and was about to turn to the left again, when he perceived a damp hollow: “It would be a pity to leave that out,” he thought. “Flax would do well there.” So he went on past the hollow, and dug a hole on the other side of it before he turned the corner. Pahom looked towards the hillock. The heat made the air hazy: it seemed to be quivering, and through the haze the people on the hillock could scarcely be seen.

“Ah!” Thought Pahom, “I have made the sides too long; I must make this one shorter.” And he went along the third side, stepping faster. He looked at the sun: it was nearly half-way to the horizon, and he had not yet done two miles of the third side of the square. He was still ten miles from the goal.

“No,” he thought, “though it will make my land lop-sided, I must hurry back in a straight line now. I might go too far, and as it is I have a great deal of land.”

So Pahom hurriedly dug a hole, and turned straight towards the hillock.
IX.

Pahom went straight towards the hillock, but he now walked with difficulty. He was done up with the heat, his bare feet were cut and bruised, and his legs began to fail. He longed to rest, but it was impossible if he meant to get back before sunset. The sun waits for no man, and it was sinking lower and lower.

“Oh dear,” he thought, “if only I have not blundered trying for too much! What if I am too late?”

He looked towards the hillock and at the sun. He was still far from his goal, and the sun was already near the rim.

Pahom walked on and on; it was very hard walking but he went quicker and quicker. He pressed on, but was still far from the place. He began running, threw away his coat, his boots, his flask, and his cap, and kept only the spade which he used as a support.

“What shall I do,” he thought again, “I have grasped too much and ruined the whole affair. I can’t get there before the sun sets.”

And this fear made him still more breathless. Pahom went on running, his soaking shirt and trousers stuck to him and his mouth was parched. His breast was working like a blacksmith’s bellows, his heart was beating like a hammer, and his legs were giving way as if they did not belong to him. Pahom was seized with terror lest he should die of the strain.

Though afraid of death, he could not stop. “After having run all that way they will call me a fool if I stop now,” thought he. And he ran on and on, and drew near and hear the Bashkirs yelling and shouting to him, and their cries inflamed his heart still more. He gathered his last strength and ran on.

The sun was close to the rim, and cloaked in mist looked large, and red as blood. Now, yes now, it was about to set! The sun was quite low, but he was also quite near his aim. Pahom could already see the people on the hillock waving their arms to hurry him up. He could see the fox-fur cap on the ground and the money on it, and the Chief sitting on the ground holding his sides. And Pahom remembered his dream.

“There is plenty of land,” though he, “but will God let me live on it? I have lost my life, I have lost my life! I shall never reach that spot!”

Pahom looked at the sun, which had reached the earth: one side of it had already disappeared. With all his remaining strength he rushed on, bending his body forward so that his legs could hardly follow fast enough to keep him from falling. Just as he reached the hillock it suddenly grew dark. He looked up – the sun had already set! He gave a cry: “All my labor has been in vain,” though he, and was about to stop, but he heard the Bashkirs shouting, and remembered that though to him, from below, the sun seemed to have set, they on the hillock could still see it. He took a long breath and ran up the hillock. It was still light there. He reached the top and saw the cap. Before it sat the Chief laughing and holding his sides. Again Pahom remembered his dream, and he uttered a cry: his legs gave way beneath him, he fell forward and reached the cap with his hands.

“Ah, that’s a fine fellow!” exclaimed the Chief. “He has gained much land!”

Pahom’s servant came running up and tried to raise him, but he saw that blood was flowing from his mouth. Pahom was dead!

The Bashkirs clicked their tongues to show their pity.

His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed….”

From The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Short Stories, by Leo Tolstoi

De Crevecoeur: Letters From An American Farmer

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The following is a description of Nantucket from De Crevecoeur’s Letters From An American Farmer, a literary account of the political principles informing the Declaration of Independence and Paine’s Common Sense:

“My simple wish is to trace them throughout their progressive steps from their arrival here to this present hour; to enquire by what means they have raised themselves from the most humble, the most insignificant beginnings, to the ease and the wealth they now possess; and to give you some idea of their customs, religion, manners, policy, and mode of living.

This happy settlement [Nantucket] was not founded on intrusion, forcible entries, or blood, as so many others have been; it drew its origin from necessity on the one side and from good will on the other; and ever since, all has been a scene of uninterrupted harmony. Neither political nor religious broils, neither disputes with the natives, nor any other contentions, have in the least agitated or disturbed its detached society. Yet the first founders knew nothing either of Lycurgus or Solon; for this settlement has not been the work of eminent men or powerful legislators forcing nature by the accumulated labours of art.

This singular establishment has been effected by means of that native industry and perseverance common to all men when they are protected by a government which demands but little for its protection, when they are permitted to enjoy a system of rational laws founded on perfect freedom. The mildness and humanity of such a government necessarily implies that confidence which is the source of the most arduous undertakings and permanent success. Would you believe that a sandy spot of about twenty-three thousand acres, affording neither stones nor timber, meadows nor arable, yet can boast of an handsome town consisting of more than 500 houses, should possess above 200 sail of vessels, constantly employ upwards of 2000 seamen; feed more than 15,000 sheep, 500 cows, 200 horses; and has several citizens worth 20,000L. sterling! Yet all these facts are uncontroverted. Who would have imagined that any people should have abandoned a fruitful and extensive continent filled with the riches which the most ample vegetation affords; replete with good soil, enamelled meadows, rich pastures, every kind of timber, and with all other materials necessary to render life happy and comfortable, to come and inhabit a little sand-bank to which nature had refused those advantages, to dwell on a spot where there scarcely grew a shrub to announce, by the budding of its leaves, the arrival of the spring and to warn by their fall the proximity of winter?

Had this island been contiguous to the shores of some ancient monarchy, it would only have been occupied by a few wretched fishermen, who, oppressed by poverty, would hardly have been able to purchase or build little fishing barks, always dreading the weight of taxes or the servitude of men-of-war. Instead of that boldness of speculation for which the inhabitants of this island are so remarkable, they would fearfully have confined themselves within the narrow limits of the most trifling attempts; timid in their excursions, they never could have extricated themselves from their first difficulties. This island, on the contrary, contains 5,000 hardy people who boldly derive their riches from the element that surrounds them and have been compelled by the sterility of the soil to seek abroad for the means of subsistence. You must not imagine, from the recital of these facts, that they enjoyed any exclusive privileges or royal charters or that they were nursed by particular immunities in the infancy of their settlement. No, their freedom, their skill, their probity, and perseverance have accomplished everything and brought them by degrees to the rank they now hold.…”

“Letters From an American Farmer,” by J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur (1735-1813) reprinted from the original ed., with a prefatory note by W.P. Trent and an introduction by Ludwig Lewisohn. New York, Fox, Duffield, 1904.

The Gita On Equanimity

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“Neither by study of the Vedas, nor by austerity, nor by charity, nor by ritual, can I be seen in this form as you have seen Me. (11.53)
However, through single-minded devotion alone, I can be seen in this form, can be known in essence, and also can be reached, O Arjuna. (11.54)
The one who does all works for Me, and to whom I am the supreme goal, who is my devotee, who has no attachment, and is free from enmity towards any being attains Me, O Arjuna.”

Bhagavad Gita, translated by Ramanand Prasad, Chapter 11: 53-55

My Comment

Free from enmity…well, you try. And what if you free yourself of enmity, but your enemies don’t remember to free themselves?

The teaching of equanimity in the Gita is very hard for me. Very much in the western tradition, I like my emotions…and cultivate them. But there are times when the Gita’s teaching becomes overwhelmingly necessary. Now is one of those times.