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“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain
“Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
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The quotation in the graffiti is from the introduction to Thomas Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy, "The Leviathan" (1651) in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Hobbes is the father of Western political philosophy. No one knows what percentage of humanity sees itself & its kind as Hobbes did, but surely the percentage is highest among members of the rich & ruling classes, & this has a great, deleterious effect upon the rest of us individually, upon our societies, upon our notions (especially our shibboleths about economics), & upon our history & final fate.
Therefore, my visitor might wish to read a little more about the views of Thomas Hobbes, excerpted from the introduction to "The Leviathan" referenced above:
- By the most noble and profitable invention of speech, names have been given to thoughts, whereby society and science have been made possible, and also absurdity: for words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.
- Reason is but reckoning; addition and subtraction are its processes, logic is “computation.” So far, man is regarded as if he were a thinking being only. But he is also active. The internal motions set up by the action of objects upon the senses become reactions upon the external world; and these reactions are all of the nature of tendencies towards that which “helps the vital motion,” that is, ministers to the preservation of the individual, or tendencies away from things of an opposite nature. Thus, we have appetite or desire for certain things, and these we are said to love, and we call them good. In a similar way, we have aversion from certain otherthings, which we hate and call evil. Pleasure is “the appearance or sense of good”; displeasure, “the appearance or sense of evil.” Starting from these definitions, Hobbes proceeds to describe the whole emotional and active nature of man as a consistent scheme of selfishness. The following characteristic summary [by Hobbes] comes from Elements of Law(1640):
"The comparison of the life of man to a race, though it holdeth not in every point, yet it holdeth so well for this our purpose, that we may thereby both see and remember almost all the passions before mentioned. But this race we must suppose to have no other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost; and in it: To endeavour, is appetite. To be remiss, is sensuality. To consider them behind, is glory. To consider them before, humility. To lose ground with looking back, vain glory. To be holden, hatred. To turn back, repentance. To be in breath, hope. To be weary, despair. To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation. To supplant or overthrow, envy. To resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage. To break through a sudden stop, anger. To break through with ease, magnanimity. To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity. To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep. To see another fall, disposition to laugh. To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity. To see one out-go we would not, is indignation. To hold fast by another, is to love. To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity. To hurt one’s-self for haste, is shame. Continually to be out-gone, is misery. Continually to out-go the next before, is felicity. And to forsake the course, is to die."
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