Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm)
Dearest Poggio. I'm just back from some time with the bird monks of Suffolk. Ruing your home coming. I've prepared your lesson plan as requested.
Lorenzo
Dedication to the Republic of Geneva -
Now then...is that how your compliment read? With the benefit of time and space, I’m sure I’m not sure. Not knowing the place and recognizing all the people, it wasn't clear to Poggio who was on the panel nor who/how Geneva was being run at the time, I suspect Jaques was busting balls here — (A: he was)
This is the first time that my mind goes to concept of increasing the scope of where and how a human defines their citizenship.
The lesser the laws we feel compelled to force on others, the sweeter and longer lasting the impunity we grant ourselves. The trick is to realize this: lightening the overall load is the goal, not shedding or sharing one’s yoke with another. Accept some higher power and/or insatiable curiosity (Science and Wonder are not mutually exclusive) then it follows that we know nothing.
Second time - where to me, he harkens a concept of citizenship as something bigger than country.
See quote above — “…all the rest are necessarily at his discretion.” — So true. When a person establishes their own sense of purpose, and has moved past the concepts of guilt and fear (be it from written law, familial/societal approval, personal doubting and sabotaging) - watch out. This is the wisdom in the adage “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it” This is where my friend Alex speaks to us.
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-1918-1956-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0813332915
this essay b/c of these authors -- any relevance to today’s political commentary is serendipitously rock hard.
Pundits from both sides seem happy to frame the argument in terms of Nationalism vs. Globalism.
There is a reason (separate discussion) why so much of our Science Fiction (dystopian AND utopian) centers around the One World Order - X Corp, whatever….
See 5a - where he mentions building a ‘tolerance’ to liberty here, I’m seconding that motion in 5a. How the most acclimated amongst us must set a good example for the other party-goers! (life=the party)
- 10, 11. — You hear Jefferson in here..."I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
-Excerpted from a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816.
His discussion of the City and her stylings/her vibe - in the feminine context is interesting. Was Rousseau a dandy? What was his reputation in affairs of the heart and domestic life? He seems to be simultaneously praising and denouncing the ‘Housewives of Geneva’ lifestyle??
PREFACE
- And how shall man hope to see himself as nature made him, across all the changes which the succession of place and time must have produced in his original constitution?
We as modern western humans with google and high speed internet, have a distinct data advantage over Jaques and his contemporaries. Science points towards humans being wholly animal. A strange mix of chemicals and electricity that behaves in ways not dissimilar to ants, bees, monkey’s, plants, virus’s, etc… The beauty (sinisterness) of our question is in that despite this abundance of data and seeming understanding, the answer eludes. Shameless plug: Science and Wonder are not mutually exclusive, they are bound.
- “…to modify his primitive condition” — Here’s an exam question - Contrast the differences between ‘advancement’ and ‘evolution’. If we can agree on the data that today’s world is safer, pound-for-pound, acre-for-acre, than it has been in our known history - how then does ‘evil’ (fill in the blank) still exist? Do we not still act, with sufficient context, in the same ways as our ‘derogative adjective’ ancestors? I fear my Geneva, has left most citizen's with a deficit of tacit acknowledgment, much less understanding of their true nature.
Answer: The origin of the inequality of man is the mostly inconceivable magnitude and unforgiving force driven nature of the universe. Natural law authorizes nothing, Natural law allows or does not. (Debate) (ps - I hope that last sentence he wrote here can be translated something like - “Mind blown, hell if I know”
(Origin of Species published ~100 years after this essay)
- The confidence to say - "which no longer exists, perhaps never did exist, and probably never will exist;…” and then continue the thought (in some detail ;-) — that’s at the foundation of my personal philosophy - ‘believe’ less, ‘be skeptical’, it cuts both ways and allows you to move between social groups and build empathy’
"What experiments would have to be made, to discover the natural man? And how are those experiments to be made in a state of society?” — We’ve done a few…My readings consistently support a survive, procreate, and protect at all costs bias. Like most biology.
"In proceeding thus, we shall not be obliged to make man a philosopher before he is a man. “ - Yes.