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
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