Comments on: Come out, come out

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:35:41 +0000

I do wonder what Tolstoy would have made of social progress since he didn’t seem to believe in it at the time he wrote War and Peace (or Anna Karenina). He specifically wrote that motives like liberty and progress (and writings about them) had nothing to do with phenomena such as the French revolution: “…nothing proves that the goal of mankind consists in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or civilization…” I think he was struck by the irony of the bloodshed that followed ostensibly liberating, enlightening events like the Reformation or the French Revolution. To him that disproves the notion that the people were yearning for a better life. I think it just shows how compartmentalized the human mind can be. We don’t have one will, we have many.

By: Ian Garrick Mason

Ian Garrick Mason — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:50:52 +0000

Thanks Sylvia. And what an entertaining coincidence that while I'm writing a post that says nothing is inevitable, your latest post is on Tolstoy's belief that everything is inevitable. I wonder how a War and Peace of Prop 6 would have been written...

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:21:35 +0000

Well said. We can move mountains, but not from the couch! I consider it my obligation to do what I can for the sake of those who can’t and in honour of those who came before me and made my life possible. We lose the battles we don’t show up for, and we lose the very ground we stand on if we take it for granted.