ON VIRTUE
Milosz, Czeslaw
Czeslaw Milosz On Virtue The word virtue derives from vir, man, while courage best characterizes man. -CICERO Virtue, virtus, is that strength of character from which arise the qualities...
...Or, relating this to an individual fate, a parable of someone who toiled for decades, suppressed all his own needs, saving his money to someday finally ‘‘enjoy life” and who then realizes that it is too late for he no longer has any desires left...
...There is a large element of uncertainty here, and no one can measure the extent of the erosion nor judge how today’s virtue differs from virtue a hundred years ago...
...In their works three American writers, Thoreau, Whitman, and Melville, sketched out, leaving room to grow, all the problems that torment their heirs...
...This solidarity can also be called conformism...
...A parable of humanity producing machines which produce other machines which produce other machines...
...I am afraid but I forbid myself fear...
...A dragon that stretches out its neck every few seconds and belches smoke, an advertisement for a bulldozer company...
...No one outside of America is aware how deeply the revolutionary gospel has been influenced by a religious admiration for nature and an obsessive guilt at its poisoning and pollution by business and industry...
...For a revolutionary this is nothing more than the dull, insipid life of yokels and provincial boors...
...In that agricultural valley, not really rural since there’s a lot of smoke from sawmills and paper mills in the air, changing beliefs and convictions have been completely absorbed by the normal course of life repeated from generation to generation...
...Technology is virtue condensed, conwlidated in tangible forms...
...I have spent holidays in the country, in Oregon for example, in the little town of Myrtle Point, Coos County...
...It manifests itself in situations that exist independent of our will, and it commands us to behave in one definite way and no other...
...There is no doubt however that a writer whose principal concern is the manly fortiiudo of his heroes remains more or less insensitive to revolutionary slogans...
...The history of mankind is astonishing in its endless example of virtue keeping societies, nations, and civilizations alive, the virtue of leaders and soldiers, torturers and tortured, saints and criminals, captains and crews, landlords and tenants...
...Perhaps Ahab was a mente captus, but he had, in its highest form, the virtue that represses its possessor and others as well...
...For a revolutionary this is nothing more than the dull, insipid life of yokels and provincial boors...
...The pom-pom girls, ages ranging from sixteen to six, the smallest ‘onss struggling awkwardly with their batons, sticking out their tongues...
...Clubs, associations, lodges...
...In that agricultural valley, not really rural since there’s a lot of smoke from sawmills and paper mills in the air, changing beliefs and convictions have been completely absorbed by the normal course of life repeated from generation to generation...
...One of the most virtuous peoples, the Germans, brought to power a madman more dangerous than Captain Ahab, for he was not commanding a ship but a nation which was obedient to him to the end, to the final catastrophe...
...This conclusion is not entirely devoid of logic, especially since the poverty of the lower classes in Conrad‘s England was truly horrendous, but the logic is none too exacting either...
...The history of mankind is astonishing in its endless example of virtue keeping societies, nations, and civilizations alive, the virtue of leaders and soldiers, torturers and tortured, saints and criminals, captains and crews, landlords and tenants...
...AMERICAN VIRTUE, primarily that of rural America, feeds on naivetk, ignorance, and ordinary dullness...
...If, for better or worse, our planet has been subjugated by technology, it most likely did not occur because of some impersonal, inevitable laws of development, but because of the virtue of the groups, clans, and classes whose self-discipline created the necessary conditions...
...In Britain, West Germany, and Japan, socialist movements are on the rise...
...This solidarity can also be called conformism...
...82 CZESLAW MILOSZ can be set forth against virtue, for it fosters obedience and is an agent of order, of whatever sort that order may be, splendid or sordid...
...Social Policy, in an ongoing symposium, is presenting a broad spectrum of views on this newly emerging question...
...If machines are virtue consolidated in matter, they can replace the efforts of the human will, but their cybernetic brains will not have to battle emotions, which do not exist in metal hearts...
...Social Policy Magazine Suite 500, 184 Fifth Avenue New York,New York 10010 $10 a year, $18 for 2 years, $25 for 3 years...
...His seamen do not hesitate to sacrifice their lives so that what must be done is done, and they do not reflect on what is served by their efforts...
...Virtue also takes such a form...
...and is not money a standard of measure in the duels of men, is it not admitted that, empirically, the “best” man wins...
...Whoever their captain, leader, mlonarch may be, they do what they are told because they must...
...I, however, have a wonderful time on such holidays in the country, and applaud them...
...Again beautiful horses ridden by the children of farm families, boys and girls, long-legged, lean, straight in the stirrups, the costumes always changing, for one group follows another, the Caballeros, the River Rangers, the Coos Rangers...
...Amtong the revolt’s many ingredients, the strongest is probably the dream of a return...
...Much regal beauty-the queens of the meloln growers, of the fishermen, of the county, the town...
...Moreover, for Melville, Queequeg has a different sort of fortitudo than the virtue of white men: the (oriental) dissolution of the individual in the cosmic flow, in the universal cycle turning life into death and death into life so that everything is accepted and actions are performed almost impersonally through submission to the great rhythm...
...The parade down main street, the American flag, the beautiful horses of the sheriff and his men, decorated saddles inlayed with silver...
...Perhaps Ahab was a mente captus, but he had, in its highest form, the virtue that represses its possessor and others as well...
...They create needs in order to stimulate ceaselass competition, which requires self-repression...
...The Lodge3 of the Temple of the Orient: shopkeepers dressed up as oriental kings in broad silk galligaskins, turbans, slippers with pointed toes, painted-on moustaches, pipe fifes and pound drums...
...Victory falls (pthumously) to the latter, a pagan with no care for tomorrow, who lives in an eternal now, devoid of any ambition to prove his worth here or in the hereafter, free of any impulse toward self-repression...
...Undoubtdy...
...To negate virtue one must oppose industry with idleness, puritanical repression of urges with their instantaneous gratification, tomorrow with today, alcohol with marihuana, moderation in the display of emotion with shameless emotionality, the isolation of the individual with the collective, calculation with carelessness, sobriety with ecstasy, racism with the blending of the races, obedience with political rebellion, stiff dignity with poetry, music, and dance...
...The United States is a land of virtue...
...In the United States, John Kenneth Galbraith uses the term now to describe his social vision, and Michael Harrington and the New Democratic Socialists are calling for a resurgent socialism in an era of advanced capitalism...
...When Christianity was respected, sincerely or insincerely, Melville rejected Christianity...
...When Christianity was respected, sincerely or insincerely, Melville rejected Christianity...
...Perhaps virtue leans toward the conservative or reactionary...
...There is a large element of uncertainty here, and no one can measure the extent of the erosion nor judge how today’s virtue differs from virtue a hundred years ago...
...Since nature is not a loving mother but ravages and murders us without qualms if we find ourselves beˆore it without weapons or tools, virtue must be held in high esteem, for it alone permits the effective use of weapons and tools...
...In the United States, John Kenneth Galbraith uses the term now to describe his social vision, and Michael Harrington and the New Democratic Socialists are calling for a resurgent socialism in an era of advanced capitalism...
...The pom-pom girls, ages ranging from sixteen to six, the smallest ‘onss struggling awkwardly with their batons, sticking out their tongues...
...This character has been invented by vindictive writers hostile to virtue...
...But those were not simple decisions and both sides displayed great fortitude in the War for Independence, just as both sides did later on in the Civil War, an especially bloody oonflict for the 19th century...
...Perhaps, but there is one other possibility that should not be excluded: perverse History, in order to check humanity’s too rapid progress, could throw its temporary support to systems that idolize economic inefficiency and privation, where everyone labors feverishly from morning till night with paltry results...
...Victory falls (pthumously) to the latter, a pagan with no care for tomorrow, who lives in an eternal now, devoid of any ambition to prove his worth here or in the hereafter, free of any impulse toward self-repression...
...The virtuous do not question...
...here one should ponder how and when virtue, though basically indisposed to mutterings and seditious acrimony, gives itself-once past a certain threshold-into the service of revolution...
...Virtue: to be thirteen years old, jump up every day at dawn to feed, water, and brush your own horse, bullock, ram, to learn everything that could ensure victory in the livestock competition...
...A band wearing false noses and Tyrolean hats goes by in a truck...
...The narrator of Moby Dick is set between Captain Ahab in whom the virtue and madness of Western Christian man are fused and the Polynesian, Ouequeg...
...Until now virtue has had to be exercised in the struggle with nature and the struggle among men in which the losers met with extermination...
...Or, relating this to an individual fate, a parable of someone who toiled for decades, suppressed all his own needs, saving his money to someday finally ‘‘enjoy life” and who then realizes that it is too late for he no longer has any desires left...
...Does it offer a potentially fruitful direction or is it simply an antiquated construct regurgitated now to paper over the present dearth of radical ideology...
...At the same time its philosophy, opposed to the concept of Original Sin, deprives discipline of its basis and elevates today above a temporal or posthumous tomorrow...
...A band wearing false noses and Tyrolean hats goes by in a truck...
...The mind, always somewhat skeptical, whispers its varims doubts concerning our goals, even the smallest of them, when all our efforts should be directed toward their fulfillment...
...and is not money a standard of measure in the duels of men, is it not admitted that, empirically, the “best” man wins...
...I do not believe that what I am doing has any meaning but I forbid myself to believe it...
...The mind, always somewhat skeptical, whispers its varims doubts concerning our goals, even the smallest of them, when all our efforts should be directed toward their fulfillment...
...Virtue has not been absent in heretics, renegades, and revolutionaries but, in general, it does not coexist very well with the anxious mind and the restless imagination...
...The myths of advertising are in themselves contradictory...
...So, too, in Sweden, Denmark, and Canada...
...Where the struggle with nature has imposed upon men the neckssity of organization, thus dividing them into those who give orders and those who carry them out, the oppressors and the oppressed, the master cannot dispense with virtue without endangering his position as master while the slave is compelled to virtue by his desire to survive and to outwit his master...
...One Polish critic reproached Joseph Conrad for glorifying the heroism of the crew in his tales of the sea...
...Trucks each csrrying me felled tree measuring more than a meter in diameter-the drivers are those who took first place in the professional competition, an event that 84 makes sensa in this region of sawmills...
...Trucks each csrrying me felled tree measuring more than a meter in diameter-the drivers are those who took first place in the professional competition, an event that 84 civilization were being paid homage, Melville did not believe in the beneficial results of industry and commerce...
...So, too, in Sweden, Denmark, and Canada...
...I am afraid but I forbid myself fear...
...It would simply be light-mindedness not to see the seeds of de struction here, of the whole country by a new civil war, or of the whole world...
...Where the struggle with nature has imposed upon men the neckssity of organization, thus dividing them into those who give orders and those who carry them out, the oppressors and the oppressed, the master cannot dispense with virtue without endangering his position as master while the slave is compelled to virtue by his desire to survive and to outwit his master...
...They act in this way because others like themselves are close at hand and they must be loyal to them, in solidarity with them...
...Any social system must appeal to the virtue of its workers, sailors, and soldiers or cease to exist...
...But, in times of peace as well, these same farmers, workers, shopkeepers, and bookkeepers gave proof of their merits, going to work each morning in acceptance of the rule: “who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat...
...I do not believe that what I am doing has any meaning but I forbid myself to believe it...
...The course of nearly every election leads one to suppose that there is nothing so foolish that it cannot be used as bait if only it is familiar enough, that is, does not bear the stamp of having been imported from overseas...
...All this is quite typical and could be found in hundreds of small towns and counties across America...
...The United States is a land of virtue...
...I, however, have a wonderful time on such holidays in the country, and applaud them...
...This does not mean that they are simply robots...
...The human being is worthy of admiration because he suffers so much and remains undaunted in spite of it...
...No one can deny strength of character to Ghengis Khan and his commanders, nor can it be denied to the knights Cortez and Pisarro, nor to the capitalist ascetics who tormented themselves as much as they did others, nor to the generations ‘of peasants who supported their families by hard labor on small plots of land...
...Through virtue it arose and achieved its technical might...
...Amtong the revolt’s many ingredients, the strongest is probably the dream of a return...
...any invention we name iwas realized under conditions of more or less open and active force, compulsion, exploitation, with severe sanctions imposed on weakness...
...One Polish critic reproached Joseph Conrad for glorifying the heroism of the crew in his tales of the sea...
...At the same time its philosophy, opposed to the concept of Original Sin, deprives discipline of its basis and elevates today above a temporal or posthumous tomorrow...
...His seamen do not hesitate to sacrifice their lives so that what must be done is done, and they do not reflect on what is served by their efforts...
...But breakdowns, though in a somewhat less violent form, are not limited to individuals...
...The long-haired revolutionary, more often than not raised in a big city in a quite well-to-do family, has no idea how a few thoughtless edicts can be enough to ruin agriculture and set the lives of farm children on a completely new course, not necessarily a better one...
...Any social system must appeal to the virtue of its workers, sailors, and soldiers or cease to exist...
...imagination throws bridges from the present to the next hour or day, which is not healthy...
...When progress and ON VIRTUE 83 in the name of satisfying tomorrow that which I feel is my need, I deny myself its satisfaction today...
...The long-haired revolutionary, more often than not raised in a big city in a quite well-to-do family, has no idea how a few thoughtless edicts can be enough to ruin agriculture and set the lives of farm children on a completely new course, not necessarily a better one...
...Translated by RICHARDLOURIE 0 social policy SYMPOSIUM ON SOCIALISM Socialisn+wd apprehension of it-seems to be alive in so-called advanced industrial countries...
...Does not the best mean the braver, the more competent, the more tenacious, the m’ore industrious...
...In the background there is the permanent conviction that we have gone too fur, or, that virtue ha3 taken us too far, hence the readiness to smash machines, those guardians of the house of bondage...
...A dragon that stretches out its neck every few seconds and belches smoke, an advertisement for a bulldozer company...
...If, in the countries that are called socialist, the workers, sailors, and soldiers we= to perform their duties out of love Eor the national economy, nobody would lift a finger...
...It was also their hands that made the cannon, machine guns, tanks, and shells with which they were to slaughter each other...
...Literature and film have sufficiently acquainted us with the image of the breakdown of the respcctable citizen who always did what was expected of him, worked from-till, earned a living and then suddenly-often as a result of meeting a demon-woman-discovers the emptiness, the absurdity of his way of life...
...In the background there is the permanent conviction that we have gone too fur, or, that virtue ha3 taken us too far, hence the readiness to smash machines, those guardians of the house of bondage...
...To negate virtue one must oppose industry with idleness, puritanical repression of urges with their instantaneous gratification, tomorrow with today, alcohol with marihuana, moderation in the display of emotion with shameless emotionality, the isolation of the individual with the collective, calculation with carelessness, sobriety with ecstasy, racism with the blending of the races, obedience with political rebellion, stiff dignity with poetry, music, and dance...
...Social Policy, in an ongoing symposium, is presenting a broad spectrum of views on this newly emerging question...
...CICERO Virtue, virtus, is that strength of character from which arise the qualities indispensable for standing up to the world-wurage, resolution, perseverance, control of the constantly changing emotions and impulses...
...Here virtue, unfortunately, seems to consist primarily of repression and renunciation...
...The hidden withering of Christianity and the pressure of the myths of advertising (primarily the sexual myth or the myth of the Islands of Happiness where what is natucal is god) cannot help but weaken the Puritan sense of moderation...
...Were it not for the abilities of selfdiscipline and self-denial, the conflicts that pitted men against each other would not have been so merciless...
...Instead of enjoying a day offfrom work I hit on the idea ‘of devoting that day to fashioning a tool that will make my work easier tomorrow...
...No one outside of America is aware how deeply the revolutionary gospel has been influenced by a religious admiration for nature and an obsessive guilt at its poisoning and pollution by business and industry...
...The solidarity of the colonialists proved stronger than their loyalty to the English king...
...In their works three American writers, Thoreau, Whitman, and Melville, sketched out, leaving room to grow, all the problems that torment their heirs...
...With the exception of a relatively small number of administrators the remainder of the citizenry will be delivered from the afllictions and the triumphs fortitude provides...
...Moreover, for Melville, Queequeg has a different sort of fortitudo than the virtue of white men: the (oriental) dissolution of the individual in the cosmic flow, in the universal cycle turning life into death and death into life so that everything is accepted and actions are performed almost impersonally through submission to the great rhythm...
...And, abve all, the one better able to repress his own temporary whims, fears, dreams, despair, cravings...
...It manifests itself in situations that exist independent of our will, and it commands us to behave in one definite way and no other...
...The greatest batdefields of our century-Verdun in World War I and the Russian plains in World War 11-are enduring testimony to the unbelievable courage of the most ordinary, most anonymous men, villagers and town-dwellers, in the uniform of the French and German, and the German and Russian infantries...
...Technology is virtue condensed, conwlidated in tangible forms...
...The ship, however, is the property of shipowners who sent it to sea with a oargo of gds to be sold for a profit...
...They create needs in order to stimulate ceaselass competition, which requires self-repression...
...Thus, Joseph Conrad is, indirectly, a defender of the established order, that is, capitalism...
...81 ARGUMENTS can be set forth against virtue, for it fosters obedience and is an agent of order, of whatever sort that order may be, splendid or sordid...
...The Lodge3 of the Temple of the Orient: shopkeepers dressed up as oriental kings in broad silk galligaskins, turbans, slippers with pointed toes, painted-on moustaches, pipe fifes and pound drums...
...This character has been invented by vindictive writers hostile to virtue...
...One of the most virtuous peoples, the Germans, brought to power a madman more dangerous than Captain Ahab, for he was not commanding a ship but a nation which was obedient to him to the end, to the final catastrophe...
...It was also their hands that made the cannon, machine guns, tanks, and shells with which they were to slaughter each other...
...Virtue in the Western sense of it is not only open to the malice of today’s imitators of Queequeg, it also succumbs to erosion from within, for, ultimately, it needs a certain complex of conventional beliefs to ensure its safety from the subversive whisperings of the mind and imagination...
...For that simple reason virtue has no love for squabblers and skeptics...
...Virtue has not been absent in heretics, renegades, and revolutionaries but, in general, it does not coexist very well with the anxious mind and the restless imagination...
...The critic’s conclusion seems simply to mean that virtue in people working in my affairs is praiseworthy whereas it merits disapproval in those who work for my opponent...
...The ship, however, is the property of shipowners who sent it to sea with a oargo of gds to be sold for a profit...
...81 Milosz On Virtue The word virtue derives from vir, man, while courage best characterizes man...
...Or, to return to the literature of the sea which always depicts the crew, a miniature society, pitted against an element respresenting the universe, we see it in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, with Captain Ahab obsessed by the pursuit of the white whale which gives him neither rest nor respite...
...Until now virtue has had to be exercised in the struggle with nature and the struggle among men in which the losers met with extermination...
...How appropriate is socialism for America today...
...The human being is worthy of admiration because he suffers so much and remains undaunted in spite of it...
...For that simple reason virtue has no love for squabblers and skeptics...
...Thus, Joseph Conrad is, indirectly, a defender of the established order, that is, capitalism...
...The virtuous do not question...
...The solidarity of the colonialists proved stronger than their loyalty to the English king...
...AMERICAN VIRTUE, primarily that of rural America, feeds on naivetk, ignorance, and ordinary dullness...
...Then the annual exhibits-stalls of cows, horses, sheep, pigs, domestic fowl, ribbons for first and second place, honorable mention...
...There is no doubt however that a writer whose principal concern is the manly fortiiudo of his heroes remains more or less insensitive to revolutionary slogans...
...Clubs, associations, lodges...
...The courage (fortitudo)of which Cicero speaks may reside in the evil and the good, the wise and the foolish...
...The next day I hit on the idea that it is worthwhile to devote a great many days offto the making of a tool that will permit the fashioning of other tools in a shorter time, and so on...
...I would like to lie in the sun but I get up and go because I must...
...The protest of the other America, now many millions strong, takes the form of hatred for virtue, for it is virtue which requires one to join the “rat race,” to accept the given, achieve, act, strive, conform to the morals of one’s neighbor...
...I have worked enough, now I will take a rest, but I do not because I have in advance designated the hour, or the year, when I will be free to rest...
...But breakdowns, though in a somewhat less violent form, are not limited to individuals...
...I have spent holidays in the country, in Oregon for example, in the little town of Myrtle Point, Coos County...
...Here virtue, unfortunately, seems to consist primarily of repression and renunciation...
...This conclusion is not entirely devoid of logic, especially since the poverty of the lower classes in Conrad‘s England was truly horrendous, but the logic is none too exacting either...
...Virtue: to be thirteen years old, jump up every day at dawn to feed, water, and brush your own horse, bullock, ram, to learn everything that could ensure victory in the livestock competition...
...A few girls are dressed up as squaws...
...Since nature is not a loving mother but ravages and murders us without qualms if we find ourselves beˆore it without weapons or tools, virtue must be held in high esteem, for it alone permits the effective use of weapons and tools...
...Undoubtdy...
...Virtue also takes such a form...
...Literature and film have sufficiently acquainted us with the image of the breakdown of the respcctable citizen who always did what was expected of him, worked from-till, earned a living and then suddenly-often as a result of meeting a demon-woman-discovers the emptiness, the absurdity of his way of life...
...A parable of humanity producing machines which produce other machines which produce other machines...
...Were it not for the abilities of selfdiscipline and self-denial, the conflicts that pitted men against each other would not have been so merciless...
...But, in times of peace as well, these same farmers, workers, shopkeepers, and bookkeepers gave proof of their merits, going to work each morning in acceptance of the rule: “who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat...
...How appropriate is socialism for America today...
...The parade down main street, the American flag, the beautiful horses of the sheriff and his men, decorated saddles inlayed with silver...
...But is not the entire growth of America the quest for profit, the worship of the golden calf, the rule of the dollar...
...A few girls are dressed up as squaws...
...And, abve all, the one better able to repress his own temporary whims, fears, dreams, despair, cravings...
...here one should ponder how and when virtue, though basically indisposed to mutterings and seditious acrimony, gives itself-once past a certain threshold-into the service of revolution...
...Does it offer a potentially fruitful direction or is it simply an antiquated construct regurgitated now to paper over the present dearth of radical ideology...
...The place of honor is given to primitive man who has nom of civilization’s repressions, is not ashamed of his instincts, the rhythm of whose body is joined with those of nature...
...The greatest batdefields of our century-Verdun in World War I and the Russian plains in World War 11-are enduring testimony to the unbelievable courage of the most ordinary, most anonymous men, villagers and town-dwellers, in the uniform of the French and German, and the German and Russian infantries...
...If I regarded nature sentimentally, I would treat virtue with less respect...
...However, it is perfectly probable that a great change is gradually occuring and that there will be less and lass virtue simply because a smaller number of virtuous people ensures the efficient functioning of society as a whole...
...Perhaps virtue leans toward the conservative or reactionary...
...The next day I hit on the idea that it is worthwhile to devote a great many days offto the making of a tool that will permit the fashioning of other tools in a shorter time, and so on...
...All this is quite typical and could be found in hundreds of small towns and counties across America...
...The difference between us is that, for me, all the frameworks that permit the daily practice of virtue are very fragile, it is easy to destroy them, as I was able to convince myself observing ideologically planned regimes at close range...
...CICERO Virtue, virtus, is that strength of character from which arise the qualities indispensable for standing up to the world-wurage, resolution, perseverance, control of the constantly changing emotions and impulses...
...Kisses are thrown, smiles...
...The two faces of technology, one beneficent, one malevolent, have their counterpart in the two faces of virtue, one of which is death’s helper...
...Although technological progress can be imagined in a world of universal brotherhood, gentleness, and peace, nothing of the sort has happened as yet...
...Social Policy Magazine Suite 500, 184 Fifth Avenue New York,New York 10010 $10 a year, $18 for 2 years, $25 for 3 years sensa in this region of sawmills...
...If, for better or worse, our planet has been subjugated by technology, it most likely did not occur because of some impersonal, inevitable laws of development, but because of the virtue of the groups, clans, and classes whose self-discipline created the necessary conditions...
...Czeslaw Milosz On Virtue The word virtue derives from vir, man, while courage best characterizes man...
...The cars of candidates running for local office of the state senate: “Vote for...
...Although technological progress can be imagined in a world of universal brotherhood, gentleness, and peace, nothing of the sort has happened as yet...
...Again beautiful horses ridden by the children of farm families, boys and girls, long-legged, lean, straight in the stirrups, the costumes always changing, for one group follows another, the Caballeros, the River Rangers, the Coos Rangers...
...Perhaps, but there is one other possibility that should not be excluded: perverse History, in order to check humanity’s too rapid progress, could throw its temporary support to systems that idolize economic inefficiency and privation, where everyone labors feverishly from morning till night with paltry results...
...Floats with goddesses of plenty representing Progress or the blessings of Pomona...
...When progress and ON VIRTUE 83 Western civilization were being paid homage, Melville did not believe in the beneficial results of industry and commerce...
...This does not mean that they are simply robots...
...In Britain, West Germany, and Japan, socialist movements are on the rise...
...The difference between us is that, for me, all the frameworks that permit the daily practice of virtue are very fragile, it is easy to destroy them, as I was able to convince myself observing ideologically planned regimes at close range...
...But those were not simple decisions and both sides displayed great fortitude in the War for Independence, just as both sides did later on in the Civil War, an especially bloody oonflict for the 19th century...
...I would like to lie in the sun but I get up and go because I must...
...The narrator of Moby Dick is set between Captain Ahab in whom the virtue and madness of Western Christian man are fused and the Polynesian, Ouequeg...
...Floats with goddesses of plenty representing Progress or the blessings of Pomona...
...Or, to return to the literature of the sea which always depicts the crew, a miniature society, pitted against an element respresenting the universe, we see it in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, with Captain Ahab obsessed by the pursuit of the white whale which gives him neither rest nor respite...
...The course of nearly every election leads one to suppose that there is nothing so foolish that it cannot be used as bait if only it is familiar enough, that is, does not bear the stamp of having been imported from overseas...
...The myths of advertising are in themselves contradictory...
...imagination throws bridges from the present to the next hour or day, which is not healthy...
...It would simply be light-mindedness not to see the seeds of de struction here, of the whole country by a new civil war, or of the whole world...
...The hidden withering of Christianity and the pressure of the myths of advertising (primarily the sexual myth or the myth of the Islands of Happiness where what is natucal is god) cannot help but weaken the Puritan sense of moderation...
...The cars of candidates running for local office of the state senate: “Vote for...
...If, in the countries that are called socialist, the workers, sailors, and soldiers we= to perform their duties out of love Eor the national economy, nobody would lift a finger...
...I have worked enough, now I will take a rest, but I do not because I have in advance designated the hour, or the year, when I will be free to rest...
...The practice of virtue is difficult, it demands great will power, and, for that reason, the hatred of one’s superiors, the mocking of them and of the goals they set, the incitement to revolt are rejected as factiousness, anarchy, weakness, a temptation that must be overcome if one does not wish to be derelict in one’s duty...
...Fortune magazine alarmingly notes the “possibility that, at some point within the next ten years, we will find ourselves a capitalist island in an international socialist sea...
...Virtue in the Western sense of it is not only open to the malice of today’s imitators of Queequeg, it also succumbs to erosion from within, for, ultimately, it needs a certain complex of conventional beliefs to ensure its safety from the subversive whisperings of the mind and imagination...
...If machines are virtue consolidated in matter, they can replace the efforts of the human will, but their cybernetic brains will not have to battle emotions, which do not exist in metal hearts...
...There is even one genuine Indian leading a team of sheep dogs...
...The courage (fortitudo)of which Cicero speaks may reside in the evil and the good, the wise and the foolish...
...The protest of the other America, now many millions strong, takes the form of hatred for virtue, for it is virtue which requires one to join the “rat race,” to accept the given, achieve, act, strive, conform to the morals of one’s neighbor...
...Does not the best mean the braver, the more competent, the more tenacious, the m’ore industrious...
...But is not the entire growth of America the quest for profit, the worship of the golden calf, the rule of the dollar...
...They act in this way because others like themselves are close at hand and they must be loyal to them, in solidarity with them...
...Kisses are thrown, smiles...
...The two faces of technology, one beneficent, one malevolent, have their counterpart in the two faces of virtue, one of which is death’s helper...
...any invention we name iwas realized under conditions of more or less open and active force, compulsion, exploitation, with severe sanctions imposed on weakness...
...With the exception of a relatively small number of administrators the remainder of the citizenry will be delivered from the afllictions and the triumphs fortitude provides...
...Much regal beauty-the queens of the meloln growers, of the fishermen, of the county, the town...
...82 CZESLAW MILOSZ Repression: in the name of satisfying tomorrow that which I feel is my need, I deny myself its satisfaction today...
...The critic’s conclusion seems simply to mean that virtue in people working in my affairs is praiseworthy whereas it merits disapproval in those who work for my opponent...
...The place of honor is given to primitive man who has nom of civilization’s repressions, is not ashamed of his instincts, the rhythm of whose body is joined with those of nature...
...Then the annual exhibits-stalls of cows, horses, sheep, pigs, domestic fowl, ribbons for first and second place, honorable mention...
...Through virtue it arose and achieved its technical might...
...Whoever their captain, leader, mlonarch may be, they do what they are told because they must...
...The practice of virtue is difficult, it demands great will power, and, for that reason, the hatred of one’s superiors, the mocking of them and of the goals they set, the incitement to revolt are rejected as factiousness, anarchy, weakness, a temptation that must be overcome if one does not wish to be derelict in one’s duty...
...Fortune magazine alarmingly notes the “possibility that, at some point within the next ten years, we will find ourselves a capitalist island in an international socialist sea...
...Translated by RICHARDLOURIE 0 social policy SYMPOSIUM ON SOCIALISM Socialisn+wd apprehension of it-seems to be alive in so-called advanced industrial countries...
...There is even one genuine Indian leading a team of sheep dogs...
...However, it is perfectly probable that a great change is gradually occuring and that there will be less and lass virtue simply because a smaller number of virtuous people ensures the efficient functioning of society as a whole...
...If I regarded nature sentimentally, I would treat virtue with less respect...
...Instead of enjoying a day offfrom work I hit on the idea ‘of devoting that day to fashioning a tool that will make my work easier tomorrow...
...No one can deny strength of character to Ghengis Khan and his commanders, nor can it be denied to the knights Cortez and Pisarro, nor to the capitalist ascetics who tormented themselves as much as they did others, nor to the generations ‘of peasants who supported their families by hard labor on small plots of land...
Vol. 22 • January 1975 • No. 1
