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Quote of the Day: Two-for-One from Edmund Burke
On this day in 1790 Edmund Burke published an epistolary pamphlet, Reflections on the Revolution in France. It was prescient for the time and still seems so today. The magic of it, which gives so much prescience, is that it encapsulates large dollops of knowledge of human nature. In a thousand years, it shall be as relevant as it was in the Eighteenth Century and is now in the Twenty-First.
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
When Burke speaks of the “spirit of innovation,” he is not speaking mainly of technical achievements and new devices. He is speaking more of innovations to the social contract. Technical innovations can certainly change the social contract if we allow them to do so, but there is always a choice of directions to go.
Where trade and manufactures are wanting to a people, an the spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies their place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time, poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter? I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings of the assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.
Savagery and brutality are parts of human nature. So is yearning for higher things: order, nobility, the coming together of religion, and the divine. We make our choices as to what we will pursue. We also choose in how we educate our children.
What have you chosen? And how have you shown those choices in your life?
Published in Group Writing
That second one feels eerily familiar.
It’s been knocking around for over 200 years. It may have come this way before, although not through me.
I didn’t mean familiar to Ricochet, I meant familiar to America.
The first quote is also very appropriate for the USA of today.
I had the same thought.
I’m glad the quote is resonating for others as it did for me.
Take this one and think of some of our new luminaries like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This should be required reading in schools. Fat chance.
Probably the record for the longest “sentence” within a Quote of the Day.
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Is that a challenge?
I haven’t done a word count. But I found this online, after remembering my mother reading it to me long ago:
Looks like someone signing up for Quote of the Day to me. 😈
Fear not, America! Just because it has never worked anywhere in the past doesn’t mean it won’t work here and now!
We’re smarterer now.
With apologies to @she and others, only the Brits could write sentences like that. (J/K)
Not now. Another time, inshallah.
Excellent choice, @arahant. I’m a fan of Burke, and have always appreciated that he essentially says that you don’t just throw out the old for the novelty of the new. I think I try to live that way; sometimes that leads to a life of caution, but I also think it can lead to wisdom when we make smart choices. Thank you.
Gotta say, Burke is an interesting figure. He saw the American Revolution as worthy, and clearly understood what was happening in France was not. Burke was not against change or progress. In fact, he embraced it. But he was for holding dear the things that make us human, especially the intergenerational obligation that tends to slow us down long enough to think. He wanted change to come in measured doses to avoid costly mistakes. In this way, he understood the price of precipitous action – a concept I was taught, and have taught. It is the concept of unintended consequences. Social engineers and collectivists embrace progress too often forgetting to consider the implications.
Up until the internet, I was amazed at how little technology had changed us since Burke’s time. Mail, mass transit, telegraphs, and telephones leave a written or recordable record of our thoughts, but we can limit what is seen when we use them and still benefit. There are work arounds to these technologies.
But the internet is a temptress that taps into our interests, our thoughts, and thereby our motivations and emotions. Nothing before has so fully exposed us for all the world to see, track and imagine who we are, what we think and what we believe. And it is almost impossible to avoid, too tempting for abuse. Tie it together with cell phone tracking, cashless transactions, facial recognition and CCTV everywhere, and you have a very good way to follow anyone and everyone, all the time. You can even get into their minds – if you so desire.
Surprisingly, the Europeans who have less to lose if Instagram, Twitter or Facebook lose a little lustre, are leading in regulation to limit what the internet can do with our personal information. But at the same time the Europeans, being sympathetic toward the collective, may also be more easily tempted to tap it for whatever security reasons they might imagine.
Simultaneously, the Chinese are masters of all the technologies that can lead to mind control. They have lept beyond the old Soviet model of physical observation and limitations on print, photo and communication (transport/voice/mail) to permit human monitors to track citizens and instead embrace new software to adapt Big Data to the mission of keeping an eye on things, people and society at large. And this gives one pause. Brave New World meets Burke.
My problem with reading Burke and Reflections on the Revolution in France in particular is that it is like reading stream of consciousness where I have no key into what he has written. He is saying something very exact about specific events in France – on a particular day in this case – the 6th of October, 1789. And I have no idea what happened on the 6th of October. It’s a couple of paragraphs beyond what you’ve cited.
As I recall from my college days, Gustave Flaubert could give them a run for their money.
Anyone else listen to the recent Rico podcast about Burke? It was great.
I really liked this article.* What beautifully written and profound prose from Burke!
*Still would, even if you re-worded the quoted sentence a little. But it’s not important because I am sure it didn’t cause anyone else to scratch his or her head even though it wasn’t itching.
I would like to say that I have chosen not to lie. But really, I am genetically programmed to be bad at lying. On average people prefer lies anyway.
Yep that is certainly right. I mean, had Edmund Burke ever gotten to the seventh level of any video game?
Today’s winner!