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Practical Agitation
It is the ambition of the agitator to use the machinery of government to make men more unselfish. In so far as he succeeds in this, he is creating a living church, the only sort of State church that would be entirely at one with our system, because it would be merely a representation in the formal government of a spirit abroad among the people. Campaign platforms are merely creeds. “I believe in Civil Service Reform” is a way of saying “I do not believe in theft,” and the phrase was a fragmentary and incomplete formulation of the greater truth. It was the sign that a movement was beginning among the people due to reawakening instinct, reawakening sensibility. It was the forerunner of all those changes for the better that have been spreading over our administrative government during the last thirty years. A quiet revolution has been going forward under our eyes, recorded step by step. It is only because our standards have been going up faster than the reforms came in that we believe the evils are growing worse. Such changes go on all the time all over the world, but the value and rarity of this one come from its unity and coherence. Such a thing might happen in Germany or in England, but you could not disentangle the forces. Thirty years ago politics was thought to be no occupation for a gentleman. It was a matter of bar-rooms, ballot-box-stuffing, rolls of dirty bills. You had as little to do with it as possible. You voted your party ticket, you paid your taxes. You bribed the ashman and the policeman at your uptown house, and the clerk of the court, the inspector, the custom-house agent, and the commissioner of jurors at your office. That subtle change of attitude in the citizen towards his public duty which is now in progress, has in it something of the religious. The whole matter becomes comprehensible the moment we cease to think of it as politics, and see in it a widespread and perfectly natural reaction against an era of wickedness. Had our framework of government afforded no outlet to the force, had our ills been irremediably crystallized into formal tyranny, we should perhaps have witnessed great revivalist upheavals, sacraments, saints, prophets, prostrations, and adoration. As it is, we have seen deadly pamphlets, schedules, enactments, documents which it required our whole attention and our whole time to understand; and behind each of them a remorseless interrogator with a white cravat and a face of iron. What motive drives them on? What oil fills their lamps? Who feeds them? These horrid things they bring, these instruments forged by unremitting toil, technical, insufferable,—they are the cure. With such levers, and with them only, can the stones be lifted off the hearts of men. They are the alternatives of revolution.
104 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 11, 2021
5 people want to read
About the author
John Jay Chapman
172 books2 followersJohn Jay Chapman (1862-1933) was an American author.
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July 14, 2019
Book notes for a review
Practical Agitation
John Jay Chapman
Not the anti-Alinksy but the Anti-Americanism more than that, the Anti-Machiavelli-Castiglioni
A moral treaty as practical as moral is.
Very pleasurable reading - one of the essential books - a reading for life to be re-read constantly. As a program of life for young man and as a contemplative stand point and re-ignition for the seasoned political activist.
The examples and images in every page are brilliant flashes of light.
The dichotomy
“The self interested man has address. Ideas on the contrary fly free across all men”
“we are somewhere between the faith distance healer and the gambler who hurts his family”
Something on love the sinner and hate the sin:
On beauty:
I wonder how much contact he had with good Jesuits as his ideas are similar to PCO’s.
“If you look at something for enough years you become that thing you look at. - you have to find occasion - an audience could take you two years or could take you six hundred - the ideal must persist.”
Persistent Prayer
And the contemplation of God, Nobility, etc
He talks on Christendom.
The political reform he proposed is exactly what happened in Brazil. His confrontation with Tammany Hall is the same confrontation Brazil did with Communism these decades.
If JJC was alive in the time of comunism (book is from 1900 and he died in 1920), he would be a formidable anti-communist. He did not see its rise in America, but he planted a seed to the recent Tea Party (2000s) and other counter revolutionary movements.
He not only talked about culture in its essence, but he published arts critics and children’s plays among his large collection of published works.
His son was the first man to die in an aircraft in WWI and has a collection of letters with him.
He published on Harvard classical readings of his time. Would translate from Greek and publish on philosophy of the Greeks. A true American without Americanism it seems!
Left wing would try to take some of his sentences out of context as they talk about injustices and against the system and comparing the system with a church, and quote them, but the risk of someone reading the whole work and getting in touch with his way of talking about morals...
He teaches the true leadership, the political leadership, the moral action!
It is impressive how he mentions the resonance of soul that honest people have among themselves. That the moral act has. He explains the transcendency of action without talking about religion. As morals and culture are rooted on religion, his religious backbone can be easily seen - he was in an age of mobs of false Catholic Irish in NYC - were in a era of false Catholics everywhere.
He talks about the value of indignation - a very American concept, but also very important.
Impressive how this book was a confirmation on my method of action - you know something you denounce it! He insists a lot on it, just like AA and PCO would do.
“What we want is the raising of general standards” p 17
Thiefs and hypocrites - biblical meanings? - courage, honesty, independence, pledge, loyalty
The role of the enthusiast and the freedom he has to have - the leader only keeps a relationship with him. And ask the public to help him.
The force of a small number of men.
By influences, fulfilling the will of Tonybee, John Stuart Mill, Kant, Tolstoi, William Loyd Garrison
World fund of unselfishness
Arts and the wit of mankind
“Life is ugly and necessary, art is beautiful and impossible.”
Poetry realm of imagination x practical life - PCO said the same
Cultivated man has his back broken - good books are only written by men who has not their back broken - whose vital energy circulated through their entire system in one sweep - unitary philosophy/ not a duplicate
Week spot is the present - he has to be protected there
Almost prophet of cybernetics
“Every form of idealism appeals to him, as long as it does not ask him to budge out of his armchair”
Work
Blurring edges of vision on the plate and on the mind - nullifying oneself
Pleasing the boss/ pleasing the public
This experience changes the attitude of the whole human being towards his whole life
Wash away pickles and irregularities of personal feeling / individuality / private opinion
Same as any corrupt man / but the higher faculties are not protected by law
Similar to selling own vote
Artist is the easiest of all man to upset
Reading people / synergy / harmony
Using minds and bodies ina direct way
Free from the illusion that the argument is the main point / not preoccupied with formulated knowledge but with character as spontaneous persons
Focus the intelectual apparatus so that the vibrations of his formulated thought shall correspond and fall with the direct and spontaneous vibration of his audience
Truth / discovery of law / art
Genius - express the laws of his construction / reveal own natural history
Comprehensible to others
Our world now is blind and mad! One century made it mad.
“Virtues spread themselves by direct propagation; and the vices likewise. Our people are deficient in righteous indignation.” - the seed / force
Courage arouses courage / faith arouses faith
Light your fire and foment it
Virtue a mode of motion / an attitude of mind in a human organism that enables him to transmit virtue to others
My commentary - virtue is rational and will / voce is will and sensibility suppressing reason
Vices are co related and breed one another in transitu
Lighter forms in later catchers
Avoid another’s guilty side and you reinforce it -
Devrient preparing for king Lear
Odious offensive - show in which direction your machinery really goes round
Interpose and stop it or lose your sensibility
A law of growth is involved / use or lose says nature
Negligence
So important how PCO taught to do internal execration
Condone is support / neglect is confirm /
Through blindness
Chief support to evil in the world - don’t fight it and don’t see it
We also support every good in the world
What ratio?
Character degrades / low spirits show up
A doubt/ an injustice / a blindness - destroy the spirit in a night
Dependency of status quo and no fight for virtue
Who is the most injured by tyranny?
All man share responsibility
—-
Lincoln’s anedoctes and fables
Sheer panthomine but vehicle of the word
Platt - prohibited cartoons on the politicians
Moral awakening is acoimpanies by pain - child who steals and confesses
Education - pain turning to happiness
Genius does not makes - he sees
—-
I guess it is further from me due to my sins of my life - let my innocence be restored
—-
Cumulative forces of unselfish force - heroes / mathematicians - continue on forever
Invisible by its contemporaries
Man who wants something has an address - the one who wants nothing for himself, disappears, lives as an influence in the minds of others
A song, a theory, a proposition
Villain self for self / Heroe sacrifice for principle
Moral law - discovered law whereby truth prevailed - Any truce with evil meant defeat for the cause of righteousness - rested by experience / in constant operation / cannot escape
Profit - great man / seeking truth / proclaiming it / refusal of the world / his isolation and apparent failure / however what he said had always the same content / an appeal to man in the matters of right and wrong / accepted in the end
But only example teach this moral law
—-
Deep approval of man should be the concern / not bickerings of contemporary misunderstandings
Act / explain afterwards
Justification lays with events==> occasion
Slaves of the age / we can only see the principles society reveals!!!
Philosophy of other ages does us little good
We see no connection between the truth we know in print and the counterpart in real life
In a perfect virtuous era a cheat would not perform a fraudulent trade
Seer- man with sharp eyes for cause and effect / sees social truth / but have storms of moral passions...
On dark ages - standards multiplied - makeshift theories - one rule for social conduct / another for business / another for politics
Same with arts - age that cannot produce art / produce philosophy of art - reasons for existence (past)
Revival of interest on the way the world looks is the precursor of painting / perception of everyone quickening - beginning of a better era
Art / literature and the moral atmosphere which makes a society worth moving in - spiritual revival.
Political life in which men are honest (political reform/run by ideals) will come as quickly as fast as the public develops ideas and not before.
Sees country as a series of trade interests
Always the work of young man
Before minds worn into ruts by a particular business
Direct language of humanity is native and plain - invisible waves of forces who rule the world using fictions and phrases - strike the heart of the youth and the vibrations of instinctive passion that shake his frame
—-
Was he maybe moralist Protestant?! - I don’t see it in him at the moment
Practical Agitation
John Jay Chapman
Not the anti-Alinksy but the Anti-Americanism more than that, the Anti-Machiavelli-Castiglioni
A moral treaty as practical as moral is.
Very pleasurable reading - one of the essential books - a reading for life to be re-read constantly. As a program of life for young man and as a contemplative stand point and re-ignition for the seasoned political activist.
The examples and images in every page are brilliant flashes of light.
The dichotomy
“The self interested man has address. Ideas on the contrary fly free across all men”
“we are somewhere between the faith distance healer and the gambler who hurts his family”
Something on love the sinner and hate the sin:
On beauty:
I wonder how much contact he had with good Jesuits as his ideas are similar to PCO’s.
“If you look at something for enough years you become that thing you look at. - you have to find occasion - an audience could take you two years or could take you six hundred - the ideal must persist.”
Persistent Prayer
And the contemplation of God, Nobility, etc
He talks on Christendom.
The political reform he proposed is exactly what happened in Brazil. His confrontation with Tammany Hall is the same confrontation Brazil did with Communism these decades.
If JJC was alive in the time of comunism (book is from 1900 and he died in 1920), he would be a formidable anti-communist. He did not see its rise in America, but he planted a seed to the recent Tea Party (2000s) and other counter revolutionary movements.
He not only talked about culture in its essence, but he published arts critics and children’s plays among his large collection of published works.
His son was the first man to die in an aircraft in WWI and has a collection of letters with him.
He published on Harvard classical readings of his time. Would translate from Greek and publish on philosophy of the Greeks. A true American without Americanism it seems!
Left wing would try to take some of his sentences out of context as they talk about injustices and against the system and comparing the system with a church, and quote them, but the risk of someone reading the whole work and getting in touch with his way of talking about morals...
He teaches the true leadership, the political leadership, the moral action!
It is impressive how he mentions the resonance of soul that honest people have among themselves. That the moral act has. He explains the transcendency of action without talking about religion. As morals and culture are rooted on religion, his religious backbone can be easily seen - he was in an age of mobs of false Catholic Irish in NYC - were in a era of false Catholics everywhere.
He talks about the value of indignation - a very American concept, but also very important.
Impressive how this book was a confirmation on my method of action - you know something you denounce it! He insists a lot on it, just like AA and PCO would do.
“What we want is the raising of general standards” p 17
Thiefs and hypocrites - biblical meanings? - courage, honesty, independence, pledge, loyalty
The role of the enthusiast and the freedom he has to have - the leader only keeps a relationship with him. And ask the public to help him.
The force of a small number of men.
By influences, fulfilling the will of Tonybee, John Stuart Mill, Kant, Tolstoi, William Loyd Garrison
World fund of unselfishness
Arts and the wit of mankind
“Life is ugly and necessary, art is beautiful and impossible.”
Poetry realm of imagination x practical life - PCO said the same
Cultivated man has his back broken - good books are only written by men who has not their back broken - whose vital energy circulated through their entire system in one sweep - unitary philosophy/ not a duplicate
Week spot is the present - he has to be protected there
Almost prophet of cybernetics
“Every form of idealism appeals to him, as long as it does not ask him to budge out of his armchair”
Work
Blurring edges of vision on the plate and on the mind - nullifying oneself
Pleasing the boss/ pleasing the public
This experience changes the attitude of the whole human being towards his whole life
Wash away pickles and irregularities of personal feeling / individuality / private opinion
Same as any corrupt man / but the higher faculties are not protected by law
Similar to selling own vote
Artist is the easiest of all man to upset
Reading people / synergy / harmony
Using minds and bodies ina direct way
Free from the illusion that the argument is the main point / not preoccupied with formulated knowledge but with character as spontaneous persons
Focus the intelectual apparatus so that the vibrations of his formulated thought shall correspond and fall with the direct and spontaneous vibration of his audience
Truth / discovery of law / art
Genius - express the laws of his construction / reveal own natural history
Comprehensible to others
Our world now is blind and mad! One century made it mad.
“Virtues spread themselves by direct propagation; and the vices likewise. Our people are deficient in righteous indignation.” - the seed / force
Courage arouses courage / faith arouses faith
Light your fire and foment it
Virtue a mode of motion / an attitude of mind in a human organism that enables him to transmit virtue to others
My commentary - virtue is rational and will / voce is will and sensibility suppressing reason
Vices are co related and breed one another in transitu
Lighter forms in later catchers
Avoid another’s guilty side and you reinforce it -
Devrient preparing for king Lear
Odious offensive - show in which direction your machinery really goes round
Interpose and stop it or lose your sensibility
A law of growth is involved / use or lose says nature
Negligence
So important how PCO taught to do internal execration
Condone is support / neglect is confirm /
Through blindness
Chief support to evil in the world - don’t fight it and don’t see it
We also support every good in the world
What ratio?
Character degrades / low spirits show up
A doubt/ an injustice / a blindness - destroy the spirit in a night
Dependency of status quo and no fight for virtue
Who is the most injured by tyranny?
All man share responsibility
—-
Lincoln’s anedoctes and fables
Sheer panthomine but vehicle of the word
Platt - prohibited cartoons on the politicians
Moral awakening is acoimpanies by pain - child who steals and confesses
Education - pain turning to happiness
Genius does not makes - he sees
—-
I guess it is further from me due to my sins of my life - let my innocence be restored
—-
Cumulative forces of unselfish force - heroes / mathematicians - continue on forever
Invisible by its contemporaries
Man who wants something has an address - the one who wants nothing for himself, disappears, lives as an influence in the minds of others
A song, a theory, a proposition
Villain self for self / Heroe sacrifice for principle
Moral law - discovered law whereby truth prevailed - Any truce with evil meant defeat for the cause of righteousness - rested by experience / in constant operation / cannot escape
Profit - great man / seeking truth / proclaiming it / refusal of the world / his isolation and apparent failure / however what he said had always the same content / an appeal to man in the matters of right and wrong / accepted in the end
But only example teach this moral law
—-
Deep approval of man should be the concern / not bickerings of contemporary misunderstandings
Act / explain afterwards
Justification lays with events==> occasion
Slaves of the age / we can only see the principles society reveals!!!
Philosophy of other ages does us little good
We see no connection between the truth we know in print and the counterpart in real life
In a perfect virtuous era a cheat would not perform a fraudulent trade
Seer- man with sharp eyes for cause and effect / sees social truth / but have storms of moral passions...
On dark ages - standards multiplied - makeshift theories - one rule for social conduct / another for business / another for politics
Same with arts - age that cannot produce art / produce philosophy of art - reasons for existence (past)
Revival of interest on the way the world looks is the precursor of painting / perception of everyone quickening - beginning of a better era
Art / literature and the moral atmosphere which makes a society worth moving in - spiritual revival.
Political life in which men are honest (political reform/run by ideals) will come as quickly as fast as the public develops ideas and not before.
Sees country as a series of trade interests
Always the work of young man
Before minds worn into ruts by a particular business
Direct language of humanity is native and plain - invisible waves of forces who rule the world using fictions and phrases - strike the heart of the youth and the vibrations of instinctive passion that shake his frame
—-
Was he maybe moralist Protestant?! - I don’t see it in him at the moment
Displaying 1 of 1 review