Worth While

"Worth While" 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) 

It is easy enough to be pleasant
    When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
    When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
    And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
    Is the smile that shines through tears.

It is easy enough to be prudent
    When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
    Is luring your soul away;
But it's only a negative virtue
    Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honour on earth
    Is the one that resists desire.

By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
    Who had no strength for the strife,
The world's highway is cumbered today; 
    They make up the sum of life. 
But the virtue that conquers passion,
    And the sorrow that hides in a smile, 
It is these that are worth the homage on earth,
    For we find them but once in a while. 

It Comes to This . . .

After so many decades of seeking out the edgiest new wave, punk, ska, alternative rock, progressive rock, Celtic folk, bluegrass, heavy metal, acid jazz, jazz fusion, and any possible variation of musical fusions, it finally comes down to this: 

When I sit down to read, or to write, or to simply stare off into space while smoking my trusty Peterson pipe, filled with a pinch of glorious Erinmore Mixture, I now instinctively turn to my old CD's by the Electric Light Orchestra. 

Is it that I'm too old? Have I lost my mojo? Will I soon be scanning the obituary columns? 

I honestly no longer care what it says about me. I know what I like. I have also learned to be happy to let you like whatever it is that you happen to like. 

Is this what they call growing up? It's not half bad. Too bad it took so long. 

—4/2017 

A World Split Apart 9

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A FASHION IN THINKING 

Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. 

There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block successful development. 

In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons—maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. 

This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era. An example is the self-deluding interpretation of the state of affairs in the contemporary world that functions as a sort of a petrified armor around people’s minds, to such a degree that human voices from seventeen countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will be broken only by the inexorable crowbar of events. 

I have mentioned a few traits of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a survey, in particular to look into the impact of these characteristics on important aspects of a nation’s life, such as elementary education, advanced education in the humanities, and art.

Seneca, Moral Letters 76.2

But I am ashamed of mankind, as often as I enter the lecture hall. On my way to the house of Metronax I am compelled to go, as you know, right past the Neapolitan Theater. The building is jammed; men are deciding, with tremendous zeal, who is entitled to be called a good flute player; even the Greek piper and the herald draw their crowds. 
 
But in the other place, where the question discussed is: “What is a good man?” and the lesson which we learn is “How to be a good man,” very few are in attendance, and the majority think that even these few are engaged in no good business; they have the name of being empty-headed idlers. 
 
I hope I may be blessed with that kind of mockery; for one should listen in an unruffled spirit to the railings of the ignorant; when one is marching toward the goal of honor, one should scorn scorn itself. 
 
Proceed, then, Lucilius, and hasten, lest you yourself be compelled to learn in your old age, as is the case with me. Nay, you must hasten all the more, because for a long time you have not approached the subject, which is one that you can scarcely learn thoroughly when you are old. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 76 
 
I have noticed how most of the bigwigs develop an ability to appear deeply passionate about the fashionable causes they would otherwise neglect, and few topics will bring them more praise than a formulaic enthusiasm on improving education. Only a monster, after all, would fail to think about the children. 
 
You will be disappointed, however, if you expect there to be any wisdom behind the bluster. You will hear about test scores, so that everyone can go to college, and about math skills, so that everyone can become an accountant. Do not ask them to explain how learning elevates the soul, or why the way we learn is far more significant than what we learn; they will refer you to a consultant, who will then refer you to a table of statistics, oblivious to any context of a higher good. 
 
But do not be discouraged, since they are much like the flashy showmen Seneca had to walk past, obsessed with style over substance. You remain free to reflect upon the ends, not just get bogged down in the means. You may agree that only a fool chases philosophy as a career, while insisting that any man who wishes to be good must first embrace philosophy as a complete way of living. 
 
You will surely be mocked for having your head in the clouds, though what you are really doing is keeping your head above water, and yet you will not feel offended, because you know why your merit is in your own character, whatever the blowhards might say. Do not permit them to treat you like a tool: you were called to the dignity of growing into a master craftsman. 
 
As much as old age can refine and perfect a conscience, there is still an urgency to set off on this quest in the vitality of youth. Besides not knowing how much time I will actually be granted, it will take the whole of a life to create the best sort of life. 
 
I now regret not listening to those of my elders who also happened to be my betters, when they prodded me to strike while the iron was hot; the beautiful irony is that we only appreciate the good advice after we no longer require it, and thus we hope to make it right by passing it on to the next generation. 
 
I like the old maxim: no one his deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time on my business.” It is the very fragility of life that finally teaches us to make virtue our sole vocation. 

—Reflection written in 10/2013 

A World Split Apart 8

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

THE DIRECTION OF THE PRESS 

The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word “press” to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it? 

Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? 

No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb. 

Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and are then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. 

Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation’s defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan “Everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality—these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas. 

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives? 

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: one discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. 

Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.

The Continence of Scipio 5

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, The Continence of Scipio (1751) 

Delphic Maxims 72

Δαπανῶν ἄρχου 

Govern your expenses 

IMAGE: Anonymous Italian, Bankers, from a Treatise on Avarice (c. 1340) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 76.1

Letter 76: On learning wisdom in old age  
 
You have been threatening me with your enmity, if I do not keep you informed about all my daily actions. But see, now, upon what frank terms you and I live: for I shall confide even the following fact to your ears. I have been hearing the lectures of a philosopher; four days have already passed since I have been attending his school and listening to the harangue, which begins at two o’clock. 
 
“A fine time of life for that!” you say. 
 
Yes, fine indeed! Now what is more foolish than refusing to learn, simply because one has not been learning for a long time?
 
“What do you mean? Must I follow the fashion set by the fops and youngsters?” 
 
But I am pretty well off if this is the only thing that discredits my declining years. Men of all ages are admitted to this classroom. 
 
You retort: “Do we grow old merely in order to tag after the youngsters?” 
 
But if I, an old man, go to the theater, and am carried to the races, and allow no duel in the arena to be fought to a finish without my presence, shall I blush to attend a philosopher’s lecture? 
 
You should keep learning as long as you are ignorant—even to the end of your life, if there is anything in the proverb. And the proverb suits the present case as well as any: “As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” 
 
For all that, there is also something which I can teach in that school. You ask, do you, what I can teach? That even an old man should keep learning. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 76 
 
I recall that point in the 1990’s when the university executives realized there was a quick buck to be made in “continuing education”, by convincing working adults to pay their hard-earned money for questionable programs, with the specious promise of ever-greater worldly success. It was pure marketing genius, because now the grown-ups were being told that learning wasn’t just for the kids anymore. 
 
It never had been, of course, unless you were tricked into treating a school as a sort of training program for a job, a tedious process where you escaped from the prison of the classroom into the prison of the office or the factory floor. Though I say it for a very different reason than the suits, the fact remains that learning is indeed a lifelong endeavor. 
 
Much will depend upon what we consider to be worth learning. If the goal is only to produce an obedient laborer, who operates the machines and fills out the paperwork, then a few years is more than sufficient. If, however, man was made for a more noble purpose, then his formation is an ongoing process, which continue as long as he can increase in wisdom and in virtue. 
 
I find it admirable when an older fellow seeks out a new trade, but I find it most impressive when a fellow of any age is willing to admit his own ignorance. Similarly, it is quite useful to master the three R’s for getting ahead in life, but it is absolutely necessary to master our own souls for living the best life. This demands the practice of philosophy, understood as a daily commitment to the true and the good, not merely as a haughty career. 
 
What could be more important than a guiding measure of right and wrong? Should I not be improving my conscience above all else? It is only through such a standard that any other condition or circumstance becomes beneficial or harmful, and I have yet to meet anyone who has no more work to do in perfecting the powers of understanding and of love. 
 
I am cautious around those who label themselves as experts, and I feel sadness when I see those who claim that learning is simply a chore for children. Such hasty assumptions come from confusing skill with wisdom, and efficiency with virtue; the man of character doesn’t have to go back to school, since he was always aware that he never left it. 
 
While we make a start of it when we are young, the most profound insights will often not arrive until we are old. 

—Reflection written in 10/2013 

A World Split Apart 7

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

THE DIRECTION OF FREEDOM  

Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well-founded and absolutely flawless. 

Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints. 

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. 

On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. 

And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency—all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are quite a number of such cases. 

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of this world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. 

Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society. There is a multitude of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state by resorting to means outside the legal framework.

Man's Search for Meaning 12

Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2°F, we began to dig up the topsoil, which was frozen hard, in order to lay water pipes. By then I had grown rather weak physically.

Along came a foreman with chubby rosy cheeks. His face definitely reminded me of a pig's head. I noticed that he wore lovely warm gloves in that bitter cold. For a time he watched me silently. I felt that trouble was brewing, for in front of me lay the mound of earth which showed exactly how much I had dug.

Then he began: "You pig, I have been watching you the whole time! I'll teach you to work, yet! Wait till you dig dirt with your teeth—you'll die like an animal! In two days I'll finish you off! You've never done a stroke of work in your life. What were you, swine? A businessman?"

I was past caring. But I had to take his threat of killing me seriously, so I straightened up and looked him directly in the eye. "I was a doctor—a specialist."

"What? A doctor? I bet you got a lot of money out of people."

"As it happens, I did most of my work for no money at all, in clinics for the poor."

But, now, I had said too much. He threw himself on me and knocked me down, shouting like a madman. I can no longer remember what he shouted.

I want to show with this apparently trivial story that there are moments when indignation can rouse even a seemingly hardened prisoner—indignation not about cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it.

That time blood rushed to my head because I had to listen to a man judge my life who had so little idea of it, a man (I must confess: the following remark, which I made to my fellow prisoners after the scene, afforded me childish relief) "who looked so vulgar and brutal that the nurse in the out-patient ward in my hospital would not even have admitted him to the waiting room." 

—from Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning 

A World Split Apart 6

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

LEGALISTIC LIFE 

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law, though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert. 

Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. 

Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses. 

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

Stobaeus on Stoic Ethics 12

And the Stoics also say that the wise man does everything which he does well—obviously. 

For in the sense that we say that the flute player or kithara player does everything well, it being understood that we refer to what the one does in his flute playing and the other in his kithara playing, in the same sense we say that the prudent man does everything well, both what he does and, by Zeus, what he does not do too. 

For they thought that the opinion that the wise man does everything well follows from his accomplishing everything in accordance with right reason and, as it were, in accordance with virtue, which  is a craft concerned with one’s entire life. 

Analogously, the base man too does everything which he does badly and in accordance with all the vices. 

A World Split Apart 5

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

WELL-BEING 

When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence. Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. 

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. 

In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: The constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.

The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. 

So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one’s nation must be defended in an as yet distant land? 

Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask.

Seneca, Moral Letters 75.7

“But as for me,” you say, “I hope that it is in me to rise to a higher rank than that!” 
 
I should pray, rather than promise, that we may attain this; we have been forestalled. We hasten towards virtue while hampered by vices. I am ashamed to say it; but we worship that which is honorable only in so far as we have time to spare. 
 
But what a rich reward awaits us if only we break off the affairs which forestall us and the evils that cling to us with utter tenacity!Then neither desire nor fear shall rout us. Undisturbed by fears, unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor of the gods; we shall know that death is no evil and that the gods are not powers of evil. 
 
That which harms has no greater power than that which receives harm, and things which are utterly good have no power at all to harm. There await us, if ever we escape from these low dregs to that sublime and lofty height, peace of mind and, when all error has been driven out, perfect liberty. 
 
You ask what this freedom is? It means not fearing either men or gods; it means not craving wickedness or excess; it means possessing supreme power over oneself. And it is a priceless good to be master of oneself. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 75 
 
The naysayers, found in a variety of different ideological tribes, will scold the Stoics for being so naïve. How could those befuddled philosophers possibly claim that we have the choice to be good? Just look at the world around us, and it should be obvious why biological urges, financial markets, and the social pressures to conform must determine all of our behavior. 
 
Put the jumbled mass of the big picture aside for a brief moment, and then focus solely on what is inside of you. Regardless of the circumstances, and however formidable the compulsions, you have the power right now to form a judgment about what you consider to be beneficial or harmful. You possess the freedom to follow through on that estimation, and to act upon your convictions. You may make of the impressions what you wish. 
 
Who can stop you? What force can hinder you? If your reasoning is sound, you are thus willing to sacrifice everything else for the sake of your supreme good. If a love of money, or of fame, or of comfort dissuaded you, that was only because you yourself decided that they were more important. It’s as simple, and as difficult, as that. 
 
The obstacle to liberty isn’t out there—it’s in here. Your character may not change the world to fit your desires, but it will change your desires to finally be at peace with the world. How much you want it will be settled by how thoroughly you comprehend the good within it, not by how anyone or anything else threatens or entices you. 
 
This is why the Stoic is confident in his progress, and this is why he can overcome his own hesitation. He will no longer make cheap excuses, since he understands how the malady was always self-inflicted. Virtue will be as accessible as the time and effort we are willing to give it. 
 
Could it be that those naysayers see a clever escape from their responsibilities, and a convenient snare for getting you to obey their whims? If so, it isn’t the fault of an inherently corrupt human nature, but of their own personal opinions. They remain as free to rise to the heights as the next man: they just don’t want to. 

—Reflection written in 10/2013 

IMAGE: Hieronymus Bosch, Ascent of the Blessed (c. 1505) 

Greek Cooking

A World Split Apart 4

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

A DECLINE IN COURAGE 

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There remain many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life. 

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. 

And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. 

Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

Seneca, Moral Letters 75.6

The second class is composed of those who have laid aside both the greatest ills of the mind and its passions, but yet are not in assured possession of immunity. For they can still slip back into their former state.
 
The third class are beyond the reach of many of the vices, and particularly of the great vices, but not beyond the reach of all. 
 
They have escaped avarice, for example, but still feel anger; they no longer are troubled by lust, but are still troubled by ambition; they no longer have desire, but they still have fear. And just because they fear, although they are strong enough to withstand certain things, there are certain things to which they yield; they scorn death, but are in terror of pain. 
 
Let us reflect a moment on this topic. It will be well with us if we are admitted to this class. The second stage is gained by great good fortune with regard to our natural gifts and by great and unceasing application to study. 
 
But not even the third type is to be despised. Think of the host of evils which you see about you; behold how there is no crime that is not exemplified, how far wickedness advances every day, and how prevalent are sins in home and commonwealth. 
 
You will see, therefore, that we are making a considerable gain, if we are not numbered among the basest. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 75 
 
Well, I would have liked to be in the first class, and I am certain it is not beyond my abilities, but there is still so much more work to be done. I constantly teeter on the edge. 
 
Am I perhaps blessed to be in the second class? Are the worst of the vices behind me? While I would have thought so a decade ago, I now recognize that the most shocking vices are not necessarily the most harmful, for those that creep can be more deadly than those that roar. I believe my simmering resentment is currently my greatest foe, and it is not yet subdued. 
 
I am a mixed bag, and so I recognize myself most in Seneca’s third class. The excesses of my youth have largely faded, thanks to small acts of daily reflection and self-discipline, even as far deeper defects remain. At least I have become acutely aware of them, conscious of how those shifty impulses will not deliver what they promise. I confront them anew every morning. 
 
As helpful as it is to categorize, I sometimes catch myself getting caught up in the technicalities, losing sight of the greater goal. Catalogue it however you wish, but as long as progress is being made, however slow or faltering, I am living as Nature intends. I should not become smug, or rest on my laurels, and neither should I become cynical, or despair about my potential. The work being done is worthy, despite the absence of bells and whistles. 
 
The pessimists will say that no man can be perfect, though I propose that they are working from the wrong standard. No, he cannot be twenty feet tall, with muscles made of steel, and with laser beams streaming from his eyes, and yet what he can surely do is to approach every circumstance with a collected understanding, and to treat every neighbor with a gentle respect. 
 
If he makes an error of judgment, because he is not a god, and his capacities are finite, he will learn from it, and he will correct it. He now comprehends too much to regress. And there you have the virtuous man, fulfilling his natural vocation. The man of character is inspiring rather than stodgy, caring rather than cold. 
 
Because they are made free, as creatures of judgment, people can be remerkably wicked. For this very same reason, they can also be remarkably honorable. Do not underestimate the power of virtue, for while it is subtle, it is also indomitable. The only obstacle to steady advancement is our own thinking. 

—Reflection written in 10/2013 

IMAGE: Henry Fuseli, Virtue Reclaiming Youth from the Arms of Vice (c. 1807) 

A World Split Apart 3

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

CONVERGENCE

But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. 

But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development bears little resemblance to all this. 

The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this can hardly suit anyone. 

If I were today addressing an audience in my country, in my examination of the overall pattern of the world’s rifts I would have concentrated on the calamities of the East. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 75.5

I have often before explained the difference between the diseases of the mind and its passions. And I shall remind you once more: the diseases are hardened and chronic vices, such as greed and ambition; they have enfolded the mind in too close a grip, and have begun to be permanent evils thereof. 
 
To give a brief definition: by “disease” we mean a persistent perversion of the judgment, so that things which are mildly desirable are thought to be highly desirable. 
 
Or, if you prefer, we may define it thus: to be too zealous in striving for things which are only mildly desirable or not desirable at all, or to value highly things which ought to be valued but slightly or valued not at all.
 
“Passions” are objectionable impulses of the spirit, sudden and vehement; they have come so often, and so little attention has been paid to them, that they have caused a state of disease; just as a catarrh, when there has been but a single attack and the catarrh has not yet become habitual, produces a cough, but causes consumption when it has become regular and chronic. 
 
Therefore, we may say that those who have made most progress are beyond the reach of the “diseases”; but they still feel the “passions” even when very near perfection. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 75 
 
The Stoics stressed the unity of all being, and thus it is no surprise that they also stressed the unity within each person. While other schools of philosophy speak of separate parts of the soul, or even as if there are many souls together in one body, Stoicism seeks to join our various actions under a single governing principle, the power of judgement. 
 
Thinking and feeling, for example, are not isolated events, or somehow inherently opposed to one another, but my mood is ultimately measured by my understanding, such that the impressions of benefit and harm reflect my values. Whenever a dissonance between them seems to remain, I have the freedom to examine what the emotions are truly telling me about myself, and to adjust the habits of my convictions. 
 
I appreciate how Seneca describes the way a conscience can charge ahead, while the passions can drag behind. Strictly speaking, whenever the Stoics discussed the passions (apatheia), they meant unhealthy feelings, out of harmony with reason, as distinct from healthy feelings (eupatheia), in harmony with reason; in my own head, I call such emotions disordered or ordered, just so I won’t falsely assume that any powerful desire or aversion is a bad thing. 
 
I am all too familiar with the struggle of coming to terms with old urges, which will often outstay their welcome, long after the liberation of a new insight. I choose to be patient with them, knowing why they have their own momentum, and how I retain the power to make of them what I will: a hurt, or a fear, or a lust can always be transformed. 
 
My mind might be on the way to healing, though my feelings might still be ailing. Give it care. Give it attention. Give it time. Be responsible for yourself. The source of the disease is in the estimation, and the symptoms of the disease are in the temperament. Permit the effects to catch up with the cause. 
 
I am regularly told I read far too many ancient myths, when I should really be concerned with the here and now. Yet I take those very tales from the distant past as guides for the immediate present, since all truth is timeless. Lately, I think of Ixion, who first succumbed to rage, and then was seduced by lust, and then was tortured on a wheel for all of eternity. Here was a fellow who was enslaved by his passions, instead of occupied with mastering them. 
 
Sick in the head, and so sick in the heart. Progress is from the top to the bottom. 

—Reflection written in 10/2013 

IMAGE: Jules-Elie Delaunay, Ixion (1876) 

 

A World Split Apart 2

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

CONTEMPORARY WORLDS 

There is the concept of the Third World: Thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world, and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as uniform. 

For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in Communist captivity. And while it may be that in past years Japan has increasingly become, in effect, a Far West, drawing ever closer to Western ways (I am no judge here), Israel, I think, should not be reckoned as part of the West, if only because of the decisive circumstance that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion.

How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered peoples’ approach to life. It all seemed an overwhelming success, with no geographic limits. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society’s fragility. 

We now see that the conquests proved to be short-lived and precarious (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account.