Eiman > Recent Status Updates

It is a rule that whatever is divided must compete. We have been wrong to believe that competition invariably results in the triumph of the best. Divided, body and soul, man and woman, producer and consumer, nature and technology, city and country are thrown into competition with one another. And none of these competitions is ever resolved in the triumph of one competitor, but only in the exhaustion of both.

We must learn again to think of our energy, not as something to be saved, but as something to be used and to be enjoyed in use. We must understand that our strength is strength of body and that this strength cannot thrive except in useful, decent, satisfying work. There is no such thing as a reservoir of bodily energy. By saving it —as our ideals of labor-saving and luxury bid us to do — we simply waste it.

To boast that now "95 percent of the people can be freed from the drudgery of preparing their own food" is possible only to one who cannot distinguish between these kinds of work. The former deputy assistant secretary cannot see work as a vital connection; he can see it only as a trade of time for money, and so of course he believes in doing as little of it as possible, especially if it involves the use of the body

Without the household -as a unifying ideal, as a practical circumstance of mutual dependence and obligation, requiring skill, moral discipline, and work -husband and wife find it less and less possible to enact their marriage. Without much in particular that they can do for each other, they have a scarcity of practical reasons to be together. They may
"like each other's company" but that is a reason for friendship.

‘Thus housewifery, once a complex discipline acknowledged to be one of the bases of culture and economy, was reduced to the exercise of purchasing power. As housekeeping became simpler and easier, it also became more boring…It became easier for her to believe that what she did was not important. And this heightened her anxiety and made her even more avid and even less discriminating as a consumer.’

"finding your-self" the pseudo-ritual by which the identity crisis is supposed to be resolved…it seems likely that the identity crisis is, one of the genres of self-indulgence…it is the easiest form of self- flattery-a way to construe procrastination as a virtue - based on the romantic assumption that "who I really am" is better in some fundamental way than the available evidence would suggest.’

‘The arguments that rise out of the machine metaphor —arguments for cheapness, efficiency, labor-saving, economic growth, —all point to infinite industrial growth and infinite energy consumption. The moral argument points to restraint. Much as we long for infinities of power and duration, we have no evidence that these lie within our reach, much less within our responsibility.‘

‘In an automated kitchen, in a gleaming, odorless bathroom, in year-round air-conditioning, in color TV, in an easy chair, the world is redeemed. The modern house is not a response to its place, but rather to the affluence and social status of its owner.’

‘the highly simplified role of the modern household with respect to the production and preparation of food: it has set itself increasingly aside from production and preparation and become more and more a place for the consumption of food produced and prepared elsewhere. The modern home, even more than the government and universities, has institutionalised the divisions and fragmentations of modern life.’

‘The consumer wants food to be as cheap as possible. The producer wants it to be as expensive as possible. Both want it to involve as little labor as possible.’

‘He tried to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.’

‘It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false.’

‘There also the further back he looked the more life there had been. There had been more of what was good in life and more of life itself.’

‘The typical present-day conservationist will fight to preserve what he enjoys; he will fight whatever directly threatens his health; he will oppose any ecological violence large or dramatic enough to attract his attention. But he has not yet worried much about the impact of his own livelihood, habits, pleasures, or appetites.’

…the seedsman. The household that produces some or all of its own food will have a proportionately greater influence. The household that can provide some of its own pleasures will not be helplessly dependent on the entertainment industry, will influence it by not being helplessly dependent on it, and will not support it thoughtlessly out of boredom.’

‘…the responsible consumer must also be in some way a producer. Out of his own resources and skills, he must be equal to some of his own needs. The household that prepares its own meals in its own kitchen with some intelligent regard for nutritional value, and thus depends on the grocer only for selected raw materials, exercises an influence on the food industry that reaches from the store all the way back to…

‘People whose governing habit is the relinquishment of power, competence, and responsibility, and whose characteristic suffering is the anxiety of futility, make excellent spenders. They are the ideal consumers. By inducing in them little panics of boredom, powerlessness, sexual failure, mortality, paranoia, they can be made to buy (or vote for) virtually anything that is "attractively packaged."’

‘A responsible consumer would be a critical consumer, would refuse to purchase the less good. And he would be a moderate consumer; he would know his needs and would not purchase what he did not need; he would sort among his needs and study to reduce them. In our time the rule among consumers has been to spend money recklessly.’

‘It is rarely considered that this average citizen is anxious because he ought to be — because he still has some gumption that he has not yet given up in deference to the experts. He ought to be anxious, because he is helpless. That he is dependent upon so many specialists, the beneficiary of so much expert help, can only mean that he is a captive, a potential victim.’

‘The fact is, however, that this is probably the most unhappy average citizen in the history of the world. He has not the power to provide himself with anything but money, and his money is inflating like a balloon and drifting away, subject to historical circumstances and the power of other people. From morning to night he does not touch anything that he has produced himself, in which he can take pride.’

“Yes,” said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full meaning of his grief. “I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.”

‘Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.’

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.”

‘Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had longed for years to be better than he was - who had taken his selfish passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that he had walked with them as a devout quire, till now that a terror had risen among them, and they could chant no longer, but threw out their common cries for safety.’

‘He had never liked the makeshifts of poverty, and they had never before entered into his prospects for himself; but he was beginning now to imagine how two creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common, might laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far they could afford butter and eggs.’

“I don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am righteous. God forbid. I don't know everything. A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life clear. That's a bad punishment. If it is so with you, - well, I'm very sorry for you. But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go on working with you.”

“I shall never forget what you have done,” Fred answered. “I can't say anything that seems worth saying - only I will try that your goodness shall not be thrown away.”

The conversation about Mary, between Mr Farebrother and Fred at the gambling inn….Iconic

‘It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal. The first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost their limbs.’

The beginning of a fracture in an initially happy marriage…

‘At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and her consciousness had room to expand; her past was come back to her with larger interpretation.’