Monthly Archives: December 2015

Donald Keene

Not far from the British Museum was Gordon Square, where Arthur Waley live. Waley had been my inspiration for years—the great translator who had rendered The Tale of Genji into Japanese but also Chinese works. […]

Various people had told me that it was difficult to keep a conversation going with Waley. If he was bored, he did not take pains to conceal it. A friend related that on one occasion, when Waley had a particularly tedious visitor, he took two books from his shelf and invited the visitor to go with him to the park in Gordon Square and, seated on separate benches, read a book. Even though it did not take Waley long to decide whether or not it was worth conversing with another person, he was not the kind of snob who has interested only in important people. On the contrary, he had such a wide variety of acquaintances that he might be described as a collector of unusual people. If I happened to inform an Australian clavichordist or a group of Javanese dancers or a Swiss ski teacher that I taught Japanese literature, I might be asked if I knew Arthur Waley, a friend of theirs.

Waley was a genius. The word genius is sometimes used in Japan for any foreigner who can read Japanese, but Waley knew not only Japanese and Chinese but also Sanskrit, Mongol, and the principal European languages. Moreover, he knew these languages not as a linguist interested mainly in words and grammar but as a man with an unbounded interest in the literature, history, and religion of every part of the world. He loved poetry written in the language he knew, and if he did not know a language that was reputed to have good poetry, he did not begrudge the time needed to learn it. Late in life he learned Portuguese in order to read the poetry of a young friend.

Donald Keene, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan, New York, 2008, pp. 71-72

Nick Cooney

Working on issues that affect us, that our friends work on, or that captivate our attention form good starting points for realizing the importance of working to create social change. It is to effective activism what recycling is to an environmentally sustainable lifestyle: it’s the place that pretty much everyone starts out at. But it shouldn’t be an end- point. Once we’ve developed the spirit of social concern, once we’ve seen the value in working to create a better world, we need to move forward in becoming more thoughtful about how we spend the limited amount of time and energy we have. We need to begin choosing our activist work from a utilitarian perspective: How can I do the most good? How can I reduce the most suffering and destruction of life? Slogans like “practice random acts of kindness” feel good and are easy to put into practice. But if we don’t take our activism more seriously than that, our motive is probably a desire to feel good about ourselves, to help ourselves or those close to us, or to act out our self-identity. The endpoint of authentic compassion is a desire to do the most good that one can, to be as effective as possible in creating a world with less suffering and destruction and more joy. Figuring out how we can do the most good takes careful thought over a long period of time, and it means moving into new and possibly uncomfortable areas of advocacy. But the importance of taking our activism seriously and approaching it from this utilitarian perspective cannot be overstated. It will mean a difference between life and death, between happiness and suffering, for thousands of people, for thousands of acres of the ecosystem, and for tens of thousands of animals.

Nick Cooney, Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us about Creating Social Change, New York, 2011, pp. 22.23

Nick Cooney

Consider for a moment how you came to be doing the type of activist work you’re doing now. Which of the following better describes what led you down this path?

(a) One day, or perhaps over a period of time, you thought to yourself: “I don’t like suffering and injustice. I don’t like unnecessary death and destruction. How can I reduce as much suffering and destruction of life as possible?”

(b) Personal or circumstantial reasons led you to do the type of work you do: the issue is interesting to you, the issue affects you and your loved ones personally, your friends are involved in this type of work, you had been hearing about it a lot in the media, etc.

Chances are that most of us came to be involved in the work we’re doing for personal or circumstantial reasons. It’s much rarer that someone will make a dispassionate decision to try to create as much change as possible, as described in scenario (a).

Nick Cooney, Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us about Creating Social Change, New York, 2011, p. 20

Leon Louw

There are no irreversible situations or ‘laws’ of history of the kind popularised as mistaken and dangerous old Marxist recipes. The outcomes in human affairs will always depend on what we are capable of doing every day. Paradoxically, communists and socialists who beat the drum of ‘historical determinism’ never thought they could leave history to roll in on the wheels of inevitability. Socialists in general work more diligently at influencing history than the supposed defenders of freedom.

Leon Louw, ‘The War of Ideas: Lessons from South Africa’, in Colleen Dyble & Bridgett Wagner (eds.), Taming Leviathan: Waging the War of Ideas Around the World, London, 2008, p. 159

Janet Radcliffe Richards

Although people do usually seem to think of feminists as being committed to particular ideologies and activities, rather than to a very general belief that society is unjust to women, what is also undoubtedly true is that feminism is regarded by nearly everyone as the movement which represents the interests of women. This idea is perhaps even more deeply entrenched than the other, but it is a very serious matter for feminism that it should be thought of in both these ways at once. This is because of what seems to be an ineradicable human tendency to take sides. While it would be ideal if everyone could just assess each controversial problem on its own merits as it arose, what actually happens is that people usually start by deciding whose side they are on, and from then onwards tend to see everything that is said or done in the light of that alliance. The effects of this on the struggle for sexual justice have been very serious. The conflation of the idea of feminism as a particular ideology with that of feminism as a concern with women’s problems means that people who do not like what they see of the ideology (perhaps because they are keen on family life, or can’t imagine a world without hierarchies, or just don’t like unfeminine women) may also tend to brush aside, explain away, sneer at or simply ignore all suggestions that women are seriously badly treated. Resistance to the feminist movement easily turns into a resistance to seeing that women have any problems at all.

Janet Radcliffe Richards, The Ssceptical Feminist: A Philosophical Enquiry, London, 1980, pp. 2-3

Dylan Matthews

Morality in foreign policy isn’t about bombing bad guys. It’s about helping people. And usually, the best way to do that won’t involve bombings at all.

Dylan Matthews, ‘The Best Way the US Could Help Syrians: Open the Borders’, Vox, September 4, 2015

Tynan

No one thinks that they make bad jokes, but everyone knows some people that do, so there’s an obvious disconnect. Some people consistently make bad jokes, and don’t realize it. You might be one of these.

Tynan, Superhuman Social Skills: a Guide to Being Likeable, Winning Friends, and Building Your Social Circle, 2015