She had feelings that she believed to be thoughts; she had likes and dislikes that she believed to be thoughts; she had impulses she believed to be thoughts; her mind was full of shifting and flying pictures that she believed to be thoughts; it was also full of echoes of what she had heard and read, and these she usually believed to be thoughts original with her. Words were fluent upon her lips without her knowing or wondering how they got there; yet she was sure they expressed truths and she easily became angry, or grieved, if they were challenged.
Booth Tarkington - Claire Ambler (1928)
Among the items of the suite was a three-legged milking-stool in deal covered with white enamel paint heightened by salmon-tinted bows of imitation silk. Society had recently been thunderstruck by the originality of putting a milking-stool in a drawing-room; its quaintness appealed with tremendous force to nearly all hearts; nearly every house-mistress on seeing a milking-stool in a friend’s drawing-room, decided that she must have a milking-stool in her drawing-room, and took measures to get one.
Arnold Bennett - These Twain (1915)
But there can be little doubt, I think, that if some form of Collectivism is imposed upon England it will be imposed, as everything else has been, by an instructed political class upon a people partly apathetic and partly hypnotized. The aristocracy will be as ready to “administer” Collectivism as they were to administer Puritanism or Manchesterism; in some ways such a centralized political power is necessarily attractive to them.
G. K. Chesterton – What’s Wrong With The World (1910)
5 comments:
The Chesterton quote certainly hits the spot.
And as a corollary...
Just like evolutionary novelties and social fashions, the novelties do not have to be beneficial or 'true' as long as they can be used to signal evolutionary or social 'fitness'.
So size of antlers signals male fitness and posh milking stools signal social status and wealth. Until the display becomes more burdensome than beneficial. Which is why there are no more Irish Elk and the nouveau riche tend to fade within a generation or two.
The Aristocracy and Elites that endure, however, have discovered how to turn any social upheaval to their benefit... even if their support seems counter-intuitive at the time.
Jannie - and over a century old. Some things don't change.
DJ - yes, go along with whichever trends are strongest seems to be the way for elites and the politically ambitious to endure. Don't be tied down by integrity, honesty or even reality. We see the rule being followed too, it isn't hidden.
A good way of looking at factors which are leading us to perdition. Most people are little better than meme-replicating machines, and there is a set of memes about knowing better than others and being confident enough to enforce one's own preferences.
Sam - yes most people are meme-replicating machines. We all do it, but the trick is to know when you are doing it, but it isn't at all easy to know what to say when required to respond to confident meme-replication.
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