Floating Timber

Ever heard of Isaiah Berlin?

I hadn't.  Then, I browsed the bookstore shelves at the coffeehouse and this book called The Crooked Timber of Humanity almost popped out of the line up and into my hands. I flipped the book over and read the back. I was hooked.  I am still hooked.  I have a crush of massive proportion on this book.

"Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden."

~ Immanuel Kant

'Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.'

or in other words

'Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.'

You had me at hello.

This is a book I read before bed, carry around with me everywhere I go, make notations in the margins of its pages, and read aloud to Nick at 7 AM.  By the way, it isn't the sort of book to read aloud.  I think he hates it when I do that.  It is a book to pour over.  It is a book you have a personal relationship with and then go and discuss with another who is reading it as well.  I'm handing it to him when I'm done, although I may have separation anxiety.  But, to read the words to him before he heads out the door isn't fair.

Mostly, this book has turned my burning desire for information of its sort into a torch with an eternal flame.  I crave more.  I would love to quote from the page words I have underlined but it is turning into an entirely underlined piece. 

I will give you this underlined portion:

Chapter: The Pursuit of the Ideal, page 13-14

"Happy are those who live under a discipline which they accept without question, who freely obey the orders of leaders, spiritual or temporal, whose word is fully accepted as unbreakable law; or those who have, by their own methods, arrived at clear and unshakeable convictions about what to do and what to be that brook no possible doubt.  I can only say that those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of forms of self-induced myopia, blinkers that may make for contentment, but not for understanding of what it is to be human."

How amusing are the words "freely obey"?  That struck me as a very particular choice he made when writing.  I wrote something that in my mind touched on the subject from the same angle.  It is Crumbs for Thought.  I have heard many different interpretations that upon hearing them make me so proud.  It is wonderful to hear people speak to me of what they took from something I wrote and posted.  Especially if it is different than what I intended and prompts us both to discuss the words at length.

    

Before I move on to something else I want to give you the book's information.

The Crooked Timber of Humanity

Chapters in the History of Ideas

Isaiah Berlin

Edited by Henry Hardy

Princeton University Press

Princeton, New Jersey

Back Cover:

"Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century- an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political pluralism. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our present century: between Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant- and sometimes genocidal- nationalism that convulses the modern world."

    

Yummy, folks.  This is delicious.

What I find particularly fascinating when researching Isaiah is the distortion of the term Liberalism.  I find the distortion less with Conservatism.  But, for instance, one of the ideas Liberalism embraces and stands for is Capitalism.  It calls for constitutions and in fact is the foundation of thought under the American Revolution because Liberalism opposes Fascism, Communism, and military dictatorship, fighting tyranny fiercely.  So, when you hear a confessed Liberal call for something that resembles any of the above… like an actual call for a dictator or to expand government to absurd proportions… think about how distorted this is to the origin of the political philosophy of Liberalism.

Now, Conservatism as a philosophy or attitude calls for less change, making slow steps toward any new way of life.  They, in principle, favor classes and aristocracy. Here are some excerpts to take note of:

These words are about Edmund Burke and the source is Wikipedia.  Edmund Burke’s relevance:

“In the United States, conservatism developed after the Second World War when Russel Kirk and other writers identified an American conservative tradition based on the ideas of Edmund Burke.”  

“He accepted the liberal ideals of private property and the economics of Adam Smith, but thought that economics should be kept subordinate to the conservative social ethic, that capitalism should be subordinate to the medieval social tradition and that the business class should be subordinate to aristocracy. He insisted on standards of honor derived from the medieval aristocratic tradition, and saw the aristocracy as the nation's natural leaders. That meant limits on the powers of the Crown, since he found the institutions of Parliament to be better informed than commissions appointed by the executive. He favored an established church, but allowed for a degree of religious toleration. Burke justified the social order on the basis of tradition: tradition represented the wisdom of the species and he valued community and social harmony over social reforms.”

Jeepers.

Like I said, I find less distortion with this term than Liberalism because without necessarily knowing it, many Conservatives are standing firm in principles that are in complete alignment with having a class system, allowing only a monitored amount of religious freedom and separation of church and state, and calling for a dominant royal or divine rule.  Even though they claim to be for the middle class, they seem to demand rule from a powerful executive office.  In general I find no mention of checks and balances from Conservatives and especially not from Liberals.

  

Anyway…

These are classical meanings of the two terms.  I find them super interesting.  Think of them and then flip on the tube and hear the people who label themselves one or the other speak about their beliefs.  It is so easy to find and read about.  No book required.  It is all one click away.

This is a boring examination of thoughts stemmed from this book.  It is enthralling and deals with so much more.  It delves into whether man, regardless of culture and time and circumstance, strives for the same end truth, the same ideal way of life or if these truths are incompatible, unable to be compared at all due to a vast difference in value systems.  This is just in the first few pages. And it is a “page turner” in my opinion, very well written and remarkably relevant to today just as it will be tomorrow and just as it was yesterday.  I think he had a timeless mind and interprets it, as his abilities have been described often, with eloquence.

Here’s your song of the day:  

I, again, just recently saw the video.  In my head different images roll during the song.  But it is still a good video and 'speaks' about an issue that I find important, two actually to me because I see a double meaning.  I will keep my own imagined video though.  

I wake up when I do because this song plays loudly in my head.  It seems that it has been chosen as my internal alarm or wake up call.  I wonder every morning, did I choose it?

This is Float On by Modest Mouse.