Legal plunder

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Frédéric Bastiat - The Law (1850)

 
Among the husbands was Shalikov, the tax-collector—a narrow, spiteful soul, given to drink, with a big, closely cropped head, and thick, protruding lips. He had had a university education; there had been a time when he used to read progressive literature and sing students' songs, but now, as he said of himself, he was a tax-collector and nothing more.

Anton Chekhov - The Husband (1886)

In the prosperous year of 1856, incomes of between a hundred and a hundred and fifty pounds were chargeable with a tax of elevenpence halfpenny in the pound: persons who enjoyed a revenue of a hundred and fifty or more had the honour of paying one and fourpence. Abatements there were none, and families supporting life on two pounds a week might in some cases, perchance, be reconciled to the mulct by considering how equitably its incidence was graduated.

George Gissing - Born in Exile (1892)

That small, provincial misanthropy

Petty feelings of envy, vexation, wounded vanity, of that small, provincial misanthropy engendered in petty officials by vodka and a sedentary life, swarmed in his heart like mice.

Anton Chekhov - The Husband (1886)

We navigate through life by avoiding surprises, which are in effect, anomalies in the otherwise even flow of daily life. There are numerous examples such as a flat tyre on the car, bad weather, Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on the door and so on.

An obvious but major failing of modern life is how this natural avoidance has become far too petty for far too many people. We are hitting the problem good and hard here in the UK, where petty conflicts, absurd political expectations, irrational health advice, irrational health expectations and irrational expectation generally have degraded our ability to accept trade-offs.

We are losing sight of a fact of life that not every petty detail of daily life can be congenial, not every expectation met. The rational avoidance of anomalies, the one which evolved within us as human beings, it comes with trade-offs imposed by the real world. 

If we demand petty and unrealistic avoidance policies from government, then we end up electing liars as our Parliamentary representatives. We end up fostering a culture where lying is a basic tactic of the ambitious, even on a grand scale where billions are squandered and only the liars make a profit. 

The liars we elect and foster throughout our culture will purport to sell us a life without trade-offs, one where only other people have to accept the trade-offs. It doesn't work like that - not forever.

Strolling around

Meghan and Harry LIVE: Duchess 'in tears' after facing 'unfair criticism' over career move

Meghan Markle is "in tears" over the "unfair criticism" of her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, it has been claimed.

The Duchess of Sussex unveiled her latest business venture in March, initially intriguing fans with scant details about the brand. In a tantalising video filmed at her and Prince Harry's Montecito mansion, Meghan was seen cooking in the kitchen and strolling around their opulent family home grounds.


"And however that may be, my dear girl, you must think, you must realize how unclean, how immoral this idle life of yours is," Sasha went on. "Do understand that if, for instance, you and your mother and your grandmother do nothing, it means that someone else is working for you, you are eating up someone else's life, and is that clean, isn't it filthy?"

Nadya wanted to say "Yes, that is true"; she wanted to say that she understood, but tears came into her eyes, her spirits drooped, and shrinking into herself she went off to her room.

Anton Chekhov – Betrothed (1903)

The everlasting peace and aimless life

"I cannot stay here!" she said, wringing her hands. "I am sick of the house and this wood and the air. I cannot bear the everlasting peace and aimless life, I can't endure our colourless, pale people, who are all as like one another as two drops of water! They are all good-natured and warm-hearted because they are all well-fed and know nothing of struggle or suffering, . . . I want to be in those big damp houses where people suffer, embittered by work and need. . ."

Anton Chekhov – Verotchka (1887)


Because of where we are socially, it has been particularly easy to observe how a lack of hardship appears to stimulate imaginary hardships. We don’t have to imagine it, just scan the media to see imaginary hardships dominating our political insanities via ever expanding medical diagnoses and a range of confected deprivations.

A surprising number of people do not seem to find it easy to remain sane when there is no great survival pressure to be sane. Presumably reality will eventually force the issue towards something akin to those big damp houses where people suffer, embittered by work and need. . . The houses won’t be big, but apart from that there are unpleasant hints looming over our horizon.

Faith, Masters and Fetters

Faith

It is life that, little by little, case by case, enables us to observe that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but by other powers. And then it is the intellect itself which, taking note of their superiority, abdicates its sway to them upon reasoned grounds and consents to become their collaborator and their servant. It is faith confirmed by experiment.

Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu


Masters 

What would you have? The government has freed us from the dependence of serfdom--and many thanks to it! but the habits of slavery are too deeply ingrained in us; we cannot easily be rid of them. We want a master in everything and everywhere; as a rule this master is a living person, sometimes it is some so-called tendency which gains authority over us.... At present, for instance, we are all the bondslaves of natural science.... Why, owing to what causes, we take this bondage upon us, that is a matter difficult to see into; but such seemingly is our nature. But the great thing is, that we should have a master.

Ivan Turgenev – Smoke (1867)


Fetters

Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity--that is, to what distinguishes man from the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living. You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't free them from their fetters by that; on the contrary, you bind them in closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the number of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got to pay the Zemstvo for drugs and books, and so toil harder than ever.

Anton Chekhov – An Artist’s Story (1896)

And so we watch

A curlew probes the Wells mud in search of something tasty

Like peasant children, we passed our days and nights in the fields and the woods, looked after horses, stripped the bark off the trees, fished, and so on.... And, you know, whoever has once in his life caught perch or has seen the migrating of the thrushes in autumn, watched how they float in flocks over the village on bright, cool days, he will never be a real townsman, and will have a yearning for freedom to the day of his death.

Anton Chekhov – Gooseberries (1898)

While on holiday in Norfolk we took the opportunity for a spot of bird watching. We are definitely not bird-watchers in anything resembling a knowledgeable sense but these days it is something we enjoy. However –

There is a however. A faint shadow lurks in a corner of my mind as I sit there in the hide contentedly gazing through my binoculars while listening to the conversation of other bird watchers. I listen to what they say in case a little of their expertise permeates in my direction. It’s a pleasant way to pass an hour or so but that shadow doesn’t go away, so what is it?

It is something to do with the way we isolate ourselves from the natural world even when taking an interest in it, even when sitting in a cold hide surrounded by marsh peering through binoculars. Somehow modern interest in the natural world as endlessly presented by the BBC misses the point. Of course it would miss the point because it’s the BBC but to acknowledge that isn’t the point either. However assiduously pursued, an interest in the natural world is not a particularly deep involvement. It can’t be – we have isolated ourselves too well.

As Chekhov wrote, the natural world induces a yearning for freedoms we cannot possibly attain in the modern world. If ever we did it would not be the modern world. We can’t live as the birds live – we just can’t. We can’t even want to live as the birds live because we’d hate life away from our comforts, our health, our multifarious protections, our cup of coffee afterwards. And a cake.

Modern life is vastly better than having to stick your beak in the mud all day, but there is a price. Fortunately we are so far removed from the natural world that we don’t often see the price. But sometimes, in the peripheral vision of life, sometimes we catch the shadow of what cannot be.

English bitters

He drank little and was now only drunk from one glass of English bitters. The revolting bitters, made from nobody knows what, intoxicated everyone who drank it as though it had stunned them. Their tongues began to falter.

Anton Chekhov - In the Ravine (1900)

Chekhov is describing a wedding and presumably this is a reference to Angostura bitters rather than English beer which is not at all revolting. Maybe they drank it neat.

Chekhov on petty analysis

The trouble is that youth makes its demands, and our philosophy has nothing in principle against those demands, whether they are good or whether they are loathsome. One who knows that life is aimless and death inevitable is not interested in the struggle against nature or the conception of sin: whether you struggle or whether you don't, you will die and rot just the same.

Secondly, my friends, our philosophy instils even into very young people what is called reasonableness. The predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst us. Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by petty analysis. 

Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold people--it's no use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity. That virtue is only known to those who are warm, affectionate, and capable of love. 

Anton Chekhov - Lights, a short story published in 1888

Chekhov on smoking

“By the way, Yevgeny Petrovitch, I should like to ask you to speak to Seryozha. To-day, and the day before yesterday, I have noticed that he is smoking. When I began to expostulate with him, he put his fingers in his ears as usual, and sang loudly to drown my voice."

Yevgeny Petrovitch Bykovsky, the prosecutor of the circuit court, who had just come back from a session and was taking off his gloves in his study, looked at the governess as she made her report, and laughed. "Seryozha smoking... " he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I can picture the little cherub with a cigarette in his mouth! Why, how old is he?"

"Seven. You think it is not important, but at his age smoking is a bad and pernicious habit, and bad habits ought to be eradicated in the beginning."

"Perfectly true. And where does he get the tobacco?"

"He takes it from the drawer in your table."

"Yes? In that case, send him to me." When the governess had gone out, Bykovsky sat down in an arm-chair before his writing-table, shut his eyes, and fell to thinking. He pictured his Seryozha with a huge cigar, a yard long, in the midst of clouds of tobacco smoke, and this caricature made him smile; at the same time, the grave, troubled face of the governess called up memories of the long past, half-forgotten time when smoking aroused in his teachers and parents a strange, not quite intelligible horror.

It really was horror. Children were mercilessly flogged and expelled from school, and their lives were made a misery on account of smoking, though not a single teacher or father knew exactly what was the harm or sinfulness of smoking. Even very intelligent people did not scruple to wage war on a vice which they did not understand.

Yevgeny Petrovitch remembered the head-master of the high school, a very cultured and good-natured old man, who was so appalled when he found a high-school boy with a cigarette in his mouth that he turned pale, immediately summoned an emergency committee of the teachers, and sentenced the sinner to expulsion.

This was probably a law of social life: the less an evil was understood, the more fiercely and coarsely it was attacked.

Anton Chekhov – Home (short story published in 1887)