oscar wilde – most people are other people
[image: Yu Jinyoung - arrested motion]
most people are other people. their thoughts are other people’s opinions. their lives a mimicry. their passions a quote. – Oscar Wilde
Huge quote. Every chapter of a be you book starts with it.
Imagine, if we could just get 8 billion people to believe – what the world needs most, is you.
Authentically, only, non-regretfully, ..you.
from people telling other people what to do ness.. any form of m\a\p
we need to org around legit needs.. get back/to us
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from Oscar’s soul of man:
(more/updated notes at this link)
“The Soul of Man under Socialism” is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds a libertarian socialist (social anarchist) worldview. The creation of “The Soul of Man” followed Wilde’s conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin.
In The Soul of Man Wilde argues that, under capitalism, “the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them”: instead of realising their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away.
Thus, caring people “seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it” because, as Wilde puts it, “the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”
Wilde did not see kindness or altruism per se as a problem; what worried him was its misapplication in a way which leaves unaddressed the roots of the problem: “the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, ..
the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good” while preserving the system.
link to entire essay.. and again.. link to my updated notes/quotes – soul of man
some resonating parts..
They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
..and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community.
Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him.
Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work. No form of compulsion must be exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others. And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.
Of course, authority and compulsion are out of the question. All association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary associations that man is fine.
Under the new conditions Individualism will be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am not talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such poets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent and potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.
So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.
What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never have.
What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not wounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction.
The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
It will be a marvellous thing – the true personality of man – when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, … It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be.
It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is.
The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor.
..man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is.
It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him.
High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. ‘He who would be free,’ says a fine thinker, ‘must not conform.’ And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of over-fed barbarism amongst us.
..a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime. It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.
When each member of the community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere with anyone else. Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.
The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
s this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other. An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman.
Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.
They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions – one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.
The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.
An unhealthy work of art, on the other hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-fashioned, and common, and whose subject is deliberately chosen, not because the artist has any pleasure in it, but because he thinks that the public will pay him for it. In fact, the popular novel that the public calls healthy is always a thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public call an unhealthy novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art.
The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.
One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great and individual men.
It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.
..Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It knows that people are good when they are let alone.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of ones neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he?
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Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. – Oscar Wilde
yet.. public ed permeates us so.. that we end up not us..
ie:
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via Maria:
Maria Popova (@brainpicker)
A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public.
Oscar Wilde, witty and wise as ever, on art:
http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/08/27/oscar-wilde-on-art/
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.
no govt and/or all as govt
And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It knows that people are good when they are let alone.
What man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly.When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilized, more himself. Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
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more about Oscar..
on wikipedia
official site:
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116 years after Oscar Wilde’s death, the prison that housed him opens its doors
In 1895 Wilde wrote “The Importance of Being Earnest,” which many consider his masterpiece.
Shortly after, at the height of his fame, a series of libel accusations between Wilde and Scottish nobleman John Douglas revealed that Wilde had been engaged in romantic relationships with men. And one of those men just happened to be John Douglas’ son.
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Wilde was charged with “gross indecency” and months later ended up in Reading prison, where he spent two years in cell C.3.3.
His time there changed him forever. His final piece of writing was “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” — a haunting poem about an execution he witnessed while serving his prison sentence. Once a prolific and energetic author, Wilde spent his final years in exile, writing only sparingly
A few short years after being released from Reading, he died in 1900 at the age of 46.
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In fact, the “indecency” law that put Wilde in prison remained in effect until 1967. It was the same law that sentenced Alan Turing to chemical castration in 1952 — not to mention the thousands of others history has forgotten.
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Just like Turing, Wilde made incredible contributions to culture that still move us and affect us today. Yet, he died in a world that disgraced him for who he loved and who he was.
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Even if you can’t attend in person, it’s worth remembering this piece of history. It’s what allows us to keep moving further and further away from it, into a future where people are celebrated and accepted for who they love, not punished for it.
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Oscar Wilde’s aphorism on punishment speaks to #KaliefBrowder tragic predicament @BiellaColeman
“A community is infinitely more brutalised by habitual employment of punishment than it is by occasional occurrence of crime” Oscar Wilde
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Patti Smith reading his letter he wrote in prison.. in prison..
When Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854–November 30, 1900) was incarcerated for being homosexual, he set out to be reborn within the walls of the infamous Reading Prison and recorded that quest for rebirth on the hundred pages of a stunning 50,000-word letter to Sir Alfred “Bosie” Douglas — the love of Wilde’s life and the subject of his exquisite love letters. Titled De Profundis, it chronicled Wilde’s effort to transmute his suffering into a spiritual journey toward self-transcendence. The letter was originally published in 1905, five years after Wilde’s untimely death from cerebral meningitis likely triggered by an old prison injury, and was later reissued in De Profundis and Other Prison Writings (public library
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quote from share via Amy:
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on utopia
a map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing.. – oscar wilde
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getting us back to not yet scrambled ness
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wilde quote: ed is an admirable thing.. but it is well to remember from time to tiem that nothing worth knowing can be taught
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/numbalum89/status/1005231439552630784
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in Daniel Pinchbeck‘s how soon is now:
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wilde: by consuming a man w what he possesses, it has led individualism entirely astray.. it has made gain not growth its aim.. so man thought the important thing was to have and did not know that the important thing is to be.. the true perfection of man lies not in what man has but in what man is’
to have or to be.. wilde not us law.. property
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wilde: ‘when private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist’
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from Jason H’s the divide:
8 – from charity to justice
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prevention is always better than cure.. learn to pay attention to systems and not just symptoms..
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oscar wilde: ‘their remedies do not cure the disease. they try to solve the problem of poverty for instance by keeping the poor alive. but this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.. the altruist virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.. just as the worse slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves.. prevented horror of system being realised by those who suffered from ti and understood by those who contemplated it.. people who do most harm are people who try to do most good. charity degrades and demoralises..
huge.. and w ubi.. poverty would still be possible.. we need to zoom out further.
ie: schmachtenberger meta law.. all the way to meadows undisturbed ecosystem
wilde’s words: 1\ while charity may indeed improve lives of poor in an immediate, temp sense, it then returns them straight back into the conditions that produced their poverty in the first place.. in the end.. nothing actually changed
ie: w ubi.. what’s to keep prices from going up.. (on food, wifi, healthcare).. so that the ubi amount becomes insignificant
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2\ wilde goes a step further.. he argues that charity not only distracts our attention from causes.. from rot at centre of system.. but also obscure the nature of the problem from those who suffer it.. charity can detract from people’s ability to directly challenge the forces that degrade them in first place and strips them of political agency.. though usually unintentional on part of humanitarian.. it smooths over contradiction of a deeply flawed system.. and allows system to continue a bit longer
this is student voice ness.. in regard to school..
wilde makes another critical intervention: ‘it is immoral to use private property to alleviate the horrible evils that results from the institution of private property.. both immoral and unfair‘
huge
to the extent that charity is enable by the accumulation of surplus wealth it can never be an meaningful solution – for the very processes by which wealth is accumulated are those that produce poverty in the first place..
huge
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The Downfall of Oscar Wilde: “Our society has become generous towards Wilde’s specific behaviour – but it remains intransigently moralistic in identical ways towards a huge number of other errors and transgressions.”
Read more: https://t.co/g9MsNnvhJ6 https://t.co/Y6IIlb07xm
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife/status/1283363314131767297
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be you. 