One effect of growing
experience is to render what is unreal uninteresting. Momentous alternatives in
life are so numerous and the possibilities they open up so varied that
imagination finds enough employment of a historic and practical sort in trying
to seize them.
A child plans Towers
of Babel; a mature architect, in planning, would lose all interest if he were
bidden to disregard gravity and economy.
The conditions of
existence, after they are known and accepted, become conditions for the only
pertinent beauty. In each place, for each situation, the plastic mind finds an
appropriate ideal. It need not go afield to import something exotic. It need
make no sacrifices to whim and to personal memories.
It rather breeds out
of the given problem a new and singular solution, thereby exercising greater
invention than would be requisite for framing an arbitrary ideal and imposing
it at all costs on every occasion.
George Santayana - The Life of Reason
To my mind this is the problem with politics – maintaining
both a plastic mind and some level of
interest in the ebb and flow of political debate. So many political narratives are nothing more than framing an arbitrary ideal and imposing it at all costs on every
occasion.
For those with a plastic
mind it won’t do - the world is too complex, particular cases too varied. So however important the issues, interest is bound to sag when
faced yet again with those arbitrary ideals.
I don't even need to give examples because you will know lots of them already.
I don't even need to give examples because you will know lots of them already.
4 comments:
Just a thought, did Hunter Gatherers need plastic minds and did politics only begin to arise as societies became more fixed in locations and organised? Then with media and ideologies the simpletons began to take over?
Demetrius - interesting thought. My father came across Masai warriors in Kenya during the war. He always said their independence would eventually be destroyed by bureaucrats.
a new and singular solution
Meaning solution applicable to that case specifically?
James - yes, or more often a solution adapted to that particular case. As people do when allowed to.
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