| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even
by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But
this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a
hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses,
whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work,
but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is
expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow
limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant
fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic
triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality
appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: but a fractional portion of the series of hillocks containing veins of
silver, and as yet unquarried. Nor is the silver-bearing region
gradually becoming circumscribed. On the contrary it is evidently
extending in wider area from year to year. That is to say, during the
period in which thousands of workers[3] have been employed within the
mines no hand was ever stopped for want of work to do. Rather, at any
given moment, the work to be done was more than enough for the hands
employed. And so it is to-day with the owners of slaves working in the
mines; no one dreams of reducing the number of his hands. On the
contrary, the object is perpetually to acquire as many additional
hands as the owner possibly can. The fact is that with few hands to
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: world) have displayed their luxuriant growth, we see each of them
return to its root. This returning to their root is what we call the
state of stillness; and that stillness may be called a reporting that
they have fulfilled their appointed end.
2. The report of that fulfilment is the regular, unchanging rule. To
know that unchanging rule is to be intelligent; not to know it leads
to wild movements and evil issues. The knowledge of that unchanging
rule produces a (grand) capacity and forbearance, and that capacity
and forbearance lead to a community (of feeling with all things).
From this community of feeling comes a kingliness of character; and he
who is king-like goes on to be heaven-like. In that likeness to
|
