That thing conscience,
which obsesses and rides some people to destruction, did not trouble him at
all. He had no consciousness of what is currently known as sin. There were just
two faces to the shield of life from the point of view of his peculiar
mind-strength and weakness. Right and wrong? He did not know about those. They
were bound up in metaphysical abstrusities about which he did not care to
bother.
Good and evil? Those
were toys of clerics, by which they made money. And as for social favor or
social ostracism which, on occasion, so quickly followed upon the heels of
disaster of any kind, well, what was social ostracism? Had either he or his
parents been of the best society as yet? And since not, and despite this
present mix-up, might not the future hold social restoration and position for
him? It might.
Morality and
immorality? He never considered them. But strength and weakness--oh, yes! If
you had strength you could protect yourself always and be something. If you
were weak--pass quickly to the rear and get out of the range of the guns.
Theodore Dreiser - The Financier (1912)
Strong or weak? Who wins in the end? Even in
Dreiser’s day it was possible to cast this as a misleading dichotomy.
To be morally strong is fine but to be strong without a corresponding moral
strength is to be a blight on civilised society however successful one might
be. Such was Frank Cowperwood, Dreiser’s anti-hero.
How about the wider aspects of political strength though - such as the strength of a democracy?
For example
Sweden's new ambassador to Iceland has caused a stir, after warning that Sweden is "in the process of dismantling democracy" and could be on a slippery slope towards technocracy or a dictatorship.
Håkan Juholt, a former leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party and ambassador to Iceland since September, made the comments in an interview with the Svenska Dagbladetnewspaper.
"How old is your son? Four?" he asks the reporter.
"When he is old he won't be living in a democracy but in a technocracy, or a dictatorship. It's sad as hell. I am sorry to say it, but I am 100 percent sure. We are in the process of dismantling democracy."
Later in the interview, he says: "I don't think the threat is a dictatorship with tanks rolling on Sergel's Square (a well-known square in central Stockholm), but an expert rule where we do not let the citizens' values govern the country. Democracy is slipping through our fingers. Fewer people want to be elected, the parties are toning down their ideology. Sure, I see a risk that it may become a dictatorship in the long run."
We need to be democratically strong in the face of moral and political complexities which leech away our democratic integrity but clearly we are not. Where has that strength disappeared to, the strength to demand our long-term advantage in political arguments? The West was strong in Dreiser’s day and perhaps that strength is not something to be too nostalgic about, but weakness is likely to be worse and our current mania for political correctness could easily be construed as weakness. It probably would have been so construed in Dreiser’s day - a weakness both moral and political.
For example
Håkan Juholt, a former leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party and ambassador to Iceland since September, made the comments in an interview with the Svenska Dagbladetnewspaper.
"How old is your son? Four?" he asks the reporter.
"When he is old he won't be living in a democracy but in a technocracy, or a dictatorship. It's sad as hell. I am sorry to say it, but I am 100 percent sure. We are in the process of dismantling democracy."
Later in the interview, he says: "I don't think the threat is a dictatorship with tanks rolling on Sergel's Square (a well-known square in central Stockholm), but an expert rule where we do not let the citizens' values govern the country. Democracy is slipping through our fingers. Fewer people want to be elected, the parties are toning down their ideology. Sure, I see a risk that it may become a dictatorship in the long run."
We need to be democratically strong in the face of moral and political complexities which leech away our democratic integrity but clearly we are not. Where has that strength disappeared to, the strength to demand our long-term advantage in political arguments? The West was strong in Dreiser’s day and perhaps that strength is not something to be too nostalgic about, but weakness is likely to be worse and our current mania for political correctness could easily be construed as weakness. It probably would have been so construed in Dreiser’s day - a weakness both moral and political.
It is unfortunate that we no longer find it easy to cast
important political debates in terms of strength and weakness, unfortunate that
we cannot disentangle political strength from the demeaning and debilitating clamour of
political signalling. If political virtue-signalling is the only game then there might be some justification for playing it, but it clearly isn't. The underlying game being played, particularly at an international level, is the old one - realpolitik. Unfortunately this may be the real game, but that is not how it is presented in our mass media and the false presentation is a serious weakness because too many seem to accept it as real.
For example, in a number of crucial respects the UK is stronger than most other EU members. In which case why would the UK even contemplate EU membership and the prospect of being dragged down to the mean?
For example, in a number of crucial respects the UK is stronger than most other EU members. In which case why would the UK even contemplate EU membership and the prospect of being dragged down to the mean?
Why would the UK even contemplate immigration from weaker
states unless each individual immigrant has more to offer than most of the
current population? Why not seek and demand strength over weakness? Surely it
is strong to do so and weak to forego the opportunity.
Perhaps those are not the best points to be made because
airing them is liable to degenerate into futile political moralities and yet more signalling. Perhaps the
real point is to cast the net wider and ask why we no longer value the general
ideal of strength - because in the public arena we do not value it adequately. That is the core
weakness, the one which saps our political vitality and prevents us from
realising that it is better to be strong than weak.
4 comments:
Dreiser's point is an update of the view first expounded by Plato, in the Republic. He puts it into the mouth of Thrasymachus, a sophist who takes the position that justice is merely the name for superior strength, and there is no need to search for higher values.
Your question about strength and our position regarding Europe and the rest of the world ties in with this in an intriguing manner. I suspect that those people who encourage mass immigration of those who do not make us stronger have two main motivations. The first is that they are guided by some of those "higher values", and think that it is somehow virtuous to help others. They see the use of force in our past, don't like it, and want to somehow make amends. They are the soft and emotionally incontinent liberals. The second is more about realpolitik on a domestic level. Some people think that the way to get stronger is to have more workers, because a booming economy will always need them in the long run. Merkel springs to mind, and probably also May.
The latter group are worth trying to persuade, because they are at least realistic. They might be able to understand that the result of their policies will be an ant-hill society and environmental disaster; all GDP and no quality of life. The former group, though, need to be marginalised, and we need to reorganise our schools and universities so as not to produce any more of the daft sods.
From the title I thought at first you might be discussing nuclear forces.
But absent communally held values and myths, we may well move towards dog-eat-dog.
Dear A K (if one may be so awkwardly familiar!), again I must say I am so fond of your postings. I like your predilection for the slightly more obscure semi-modern novelists at the dawn of what we would call the modern age and admire your ability to extract current value from their insights. As an omnivorous reader, I recognise a talent and admire your ability to recall these telling (antique or not so antique?) passages.
Which is more than I can. I’m a preoccupied person and more of an impressionist. No, not the Tommy Cooper or orthodontal type. I just notice silly but telling little things out the corner of my eye and remember them. I’ve got people to do the details – ten years later, I think well I was pretty much right about that, regrettably.
For instance, just this evening mooching around Tesco and wondering why, oddly in a time of choice and plenty, the tinned fish aisle had degenerated to six different brands of tuna when I noticed the slogan on the exquisitely manufactured, entirely one time ‘outer’ carton of Rustlers microwaveable burgers (a relatively new product, with each mini-meal preserved in its own superb plastic packaging, which will likely last longer than its heedless and chubby consumers). ‘What a time to be alive!’ it said.
First thought is, well, that’s presumptuous crap (the poor cows and I might differ, at a minimum) if ever I saw it and quite possibly wrong but it’s actually an extraordinary ‘reach back’ to, or folk memory derived from, some bloviating (lovely and apposite word) poet around the time of the French revolution. What bliss it was in that dawn, etc – Wordsworth, without checking? Yeah, that was unalleviated great…
Second thought is, especially given its odd provenance, that is cynical but not untypical shite. Who, apart from the oleaginous oaf who thought of this, the committee who sanctioned it, the shelf stackers (most doubtful) and me actually attends to this duplicitous and pervasive gloop.
I think my main point would be: How did so many people get to be so just so uninformed and thick (not too strong a word) so relatively quickly, with so many advantages but such little gratitude? I’m all for excoriating politicians, but to be frank it’s like looking in a disturbing mirror.
People need to learn the difference between, in the amusing and fabulously telling phrase, Shit and Shinola. Whether they will, in time and sufficiently, or not is a whole other matter. Ah hae mee doots mon...
All the very best
Sam - yes the daft sods are a problem, but I don't see how they can be sorted out unless their daftness acquires some kind of obvious penalty. That doesn't seem to be the case at the moment. Your latter group may be satisfied with a situation which is all GDP and no quality of life - hard to tell because they may take the view that GDP always provides solutions.
Sackers - maybe the communally held values and myths are a work in progress. They often seem to be just that.
Clacket - I find those slightly more obscure semi-modern novelists fascinatingly readable in that they are modern enough for empathy but still not our world. Their world held possibilities which were never realised and are now forgotten. Perhaps that implies that they were really impossibilities.
Other possibilities such as Rustlers microwaveable burgers - they could not have been foreseen. With hindsight we may think we know how this culinary phenomenon came to be, but could it have been prevented? Probably not and that's a core problem.
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