Two Cheers For Democracy
E.M. Forster wrote this in 1938. I'm quite certain I won't write anything more thoughtful than this today--or ever, for that matter--so instead of banging on about what I think of everything, I'll just commend it to your attention:
One must be fond of people and trust them if one isn’t to make a mess of life, and it is therefore essential that they shouldn’t let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must myself be as reliable as possible. And this I try to be. But reliability isn’t a matter of contract ... It is a matter for the heart. In other words, reliability is impossible unless there is a natural warmth. Most men possess this warmth, though they often have bad luck and get chilled. Most of them, even when they are politicians, want to keep faith. And one can, at all events, show one’s own little light here, one’s own poor little trembling flame, with the knowledge that it’s not only the only light that is shining in the darkness, and not the only one which the darkness doesn’t comprehend. Personal relations are despised today. They are regarded as bourgeois luxuries, as products of a time of fair weather which has now passed, and we are urged to get rid of them, and to dedicate ourselves to some movement or cause instead. I hate the idea of dying for a cause, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
I do hope you'll read it all, it would be a shame just to read that one paragraph, interesting though it is. I don't think you'll find a more valuable use for the next twenty-odd minutes than reading the whole thing through and thinking about it.
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Mar '11
Re: Two Cheers For Democracy
Clearly this was written before the age of Obama.
May '11
Re: Two Cheers For Democracy
That is a well crafted sentence and a profound hope. A lesser writer, such as I, would have instinctively chosen "but, if I had to choose" instead of "and if I had to choose" in order to balance one phrase with another.
Edited on Aug 3, 2011 at 9:36amJun '10
Re: Two Cheers For Democracy
The principle around which the military is built: You die for your buddies, and not your country.
Oct '10
Re: Two Cheers For Democracy
The author has Ron Paul down cold:
Parliament is often sneered at because it is a Talking Shop. I believe in it because it is a talking shop. I believe in the Private Member who makes himself a nuisance. He gets snubbed and is told that he is cranky or ill-informed, but he does expose abuses which would otherwise never have been mentioned..
Aug '10
Re: Two Cheers For Democracy
Thank you Claire, very timely for me.
Feb '11
Re: Two Cheers For Democracy
I can use some of this advice myself, so thank you. But I have some major reservations, or maybe causes for confrontation. This Doctrine of the Human Heart, if I can use that description, permits wickedness along with goodness, as the author concedes. It lacks discrimination. A Greek philosopher might say it forgets that God, not man, is the measure of all things. A Christian might counter that it lacks an understanding of Holiness; in the words of Keirkegaard it cannot examine reality in "the light of the eternal." You cannot simply feel your way to the truth, else all metaphors about blindness and vision would be made false. Can the blind feel their way along the road? This is not the case; the blind need clear-eyed companions or at least a dog.
Besides, erecting a dichotomy between the natural warmth emanating from the hearts of expansive secularists and people of Faith is wrong in theory, even if it is occasionally true in practice. Paul humanely prophesies to in his letter to Timothy that in the last days men will be "without natural [human] affection (callous and inhuman)..."