Leo Tolstoy’s “On Labour and Luxury”
Grand and genuine deeds are always simple and modest.
An "Earth-Twin" planet may have just been discovered by science some 600 light-years away, but these tourists can't resist sampling a pastoral mode of existence that may yet become redundant and be soon confined to the museum of human memory. Indeed, apart from ancient temple ruins, tourists are drawn to Cambodia partly by its largely pre-industrial appeal and the novelty of an “exotic” place and culture – School of Vice [tour.angkorvisitor.com]
Finding balance between modernity through social development and preserving rural ways of life could provide the key to Cambodia's sustainable development. Some 80 per cent or more of Cambodia's population still reside in the countryside where they continue to remain largely untouched by the benefits of science and education that are taken for granted by their counterparts in post-industrial countries--School of Vice [rontravel.com]
Words always possess a clear significance until we deliberately attribute to them a false sense.
The Wretchedness of our Life: --However much we rich people may
reform, however much we may bolster up this delusive life of ours
with the aid of our science and art, this life will become, with
every year, both weaker and more diseased; with every year the number
of suicides, and the refusals to bear children, will increase; with
every year we shall feel the growing sadness of our life; with every
generation, the new generations of people of this sphere of society
will become more puny.
The Inconsistency of our Life with our Conscience: --however we may
seek to justify our betrayal of humanity to ourselves, all our
justifications will crumble into dust in the presence of the
evidence. All around us, people are dying of excessive labour and of
privation; we ruin the labour of others, the food and clothing which
are indispensable to them, merely with the object of procuring
diversion and variety for our wearisome lives. And, therefore, the
conscience of a man of our circle, if even a spark of it be left in
him, cannot be lulled to sleep, and it poisons all these comforts and
those pleasures of life which our brethren, suffering and perishing
in their toil, procure for us. But not only does every conscientious
man feel this himself,--he would be glad to forget it, but this he
cannot do.
The new, ephemeral justifications of science for science, of art for
art, do not exclude the light of a simple, healthy judgment. The
conscience of man cannot be quieted by fresh devices; and it can only
be calmed by a change of life, for which and in which no
justification will be required.
Two causes prove to the people of the wealthy classes the necessity
for a change of life: the requirements of their individual welfare,
and of the welfare of those most nearly connected with them, which
cannot be satisfied in the path in which they now stand; and the
necessity of satisfying the voice of conscience, the impossibility of
accomplishing which is obvious in their present course. These
causes, taken together, should lead people of the wealthy classes to
alter their mode of life, to such a change as shall satisfy their
well-being and their conscience.
And there is only one such change possible: they must cease to
deceive, they must repent, they must acknowledge that labour is not a
curse, but the glad business of life. "But what will be the result
if I do toil for ten, or eight, or five hours at physical work, which
thousands of peasants will gladly perform for the money which I
possess?" people say to this.
become a more cheerful, a healthier, a more alert, and a better man,
and that you will learn to know the real life, from which you have
hidden yourself, or which has been hidden from you.
The second result will be, that, if you possess a conscience, it will
not only cease to suffer as it now suffers when it gazes upon the
toil of others, the significance of which we, through ignorance,
either always exaggerate or depreciate, but you will constantly
experience a glad consciousness that, with every day, you are doing
more and more to satisfy the demands of your conscience, and you will
escape from that fearful position of such an accumulation of evil
heaped upon your life that there exists no possibility of doing good
to people; you will experience the joy of living in freedom, with the
possibility of good; you will break a window,--an opening into the
domain of the moral world which has been closed to you.
"But this is absurd," people usually say to you, for people of our
sphere, with profound problems standing before us,--problems
philosophical, scientific, artistic, ecclesiastical and social. It
would be absurd for us ministers, senators, academicians professors,
artists, a quarter of an hour of whose time is so prized by people,
to waste our time on anything of that sort, would it not?--on the
cleaning of our boots, the washing of our shirts, in hoeing, in
planting potatoes, or in feeding our chickens and our cows, and so
on; in those things which are gladly done for us, not only by our
porter or our cook, but by thousands of people who value our time?
But why should we dress ourselves, wash and comb our hair? Why should
we hand chairs to ladies, to guests? Why should we open and shut
doors, hand ladies, into carriages, and do a hundred other things
which serfs formerly did for us? Because we think that it is
necessary so to do; that human dignity demands it; that it is the
duty, the obligation, of man.
And the same is the case with physical labour. The dignity of man,
his sacred duty and obligation, consists in using the hands and feet
which have been given to him, for that for which they were given to
him, and that which consumes food on the labour which produces that
food; and that they should be used, not on that which shall cause
them to pine away, not as objects to wash and clean, and merely for
the purpose of stuffing into one's mouth food, drink, and cigarettes.
This is the significance that physical labour possesses for man in
every community; but in our community, where the avoidance of this
law of labour has occasioned the unhappiness of a whole class of
people, employment in physical labour acquires still another
significance,--the significance of a sermon, and of an occupation
which removes a terrible misfortune that is threatening mankind.
To say that physical labour is an insignificant occupation for a man
of education, is equivalent to saying, in connection with the
erection of a temple: "What does it matter whether one stone is laid
accurately in its place?" Surely, it is precisely under conditions
of modesty, simplicity, and imperceptibleness, that every magnificent
thing is accomplished; it is impossible to plough, to build, to
pasture cattle, or even to think, amid glare, thunder, and
illumination. Grand and genuine deeds are always simple and modest.
And such is the grandest of all deeds which we have to deal with,--
the reconciliation of those fearful contradictions amid which we are
living. And the deeds which will reconcile these contradictions are
those modest, imperceptible, apparently ridiculous ones, the serving
one's self, physical labour for one's self, and, if possible, for
others also, which we rich people must do, if we understand the
wretchedness, the unscrupulousness, and the danger of the position
into which we have drifted.
What will be the result if I, or some other man, or a handful of men,
do not despise physical labour, but regard it as indispensable to our
happiness and to the appeasement of our conscience? This will be the
result, that there will be one man, two men, or a handful of men,
who, coming into conflict with no one, without governmental or
revolutionary violence, will decide for ourselves the terrible
question which stands before all the world, and which sets people at
variance, and that we shall settle it in such wise that life will be
better to them, that their conscience will be more at peace, and that
they will have nothing to fear; the result will be, that other people
will see that the happiness which they are seeking everywhere, lies
there around them; that the apparently irreconcilable contradictions
of conscience and of the constitution of this world will be
reconciled in the easiest and most joyful manner; and that, instead
of fearing the people who surround us, it will become necessary for
us to draw near to them and to love them.
A man sets up what he imagines to be his own peculiar library, his
own private picture-gallery, his own apartments and clothing, he
accumulates his own money in order therewith to purchase every thing
that he needs; and the end of it all is, that engaged with this
fancied property of his, as though it were real, he utterly loses his
sense of that which actually constitutes his property, on which he
can really labour, which can really serve him, and which will always
remain in his power, and of that which is not and cannot be his own
property, whatever he may call it, and which cannot serve as the
object of his occupation.
Words always possess a clear significance until we deliberately
attribute to them a false sense.
If the life of a man is filled with toil, and if he knows the
delights of rest, he requires no chambers, furniture, and rich and
varied clothing; he requires less costly food; he needs no means of
locomotion, or of diversion. But the principal thing is, that the
man who regards labour as the business and the joy of his life will
not seek that relief from his labour which the labours of others might
afford him. The man who regards life as a matter of labour will
propose to himself as his object, in proportion as he acquires
understanding, skill, and endurance, greater and greater toil, which
shall constantly fill his life to a greater and greater degree. For
such a man, who sees the meaning of his life in work itself, and not
in its results, for the acquisition of property, there can be no
question as to the implements of labour. Although such a man will
always select the most suitable implements, that man will receive the
same satisfaction from work and rest, when he employs the most
unsuitable implements. If there be a steam-plough, he will use it;
if there is none, he will till the soil with a horse-plough, and, if
there is none, with a primitive curved bit of wood shod with iron, or
he will use a rake; and, under all conditions, he will equally attain
his object. He will pass his life in work that is useful to men, and
he will therefore win complete satisfaction.
And the position of such a man, both in his external and internal
conditions, will be more happy than that of the man who devotes his
life to the acquisition of property. Such a man will never suffer
need in his outward circumstances, because people, perceiving his
desire to work, will always try to provide him with the most
productive work, as they proportion a mill to the water-power. And
they will render his material existence free from care, which they
will not do for people who are striving to acquire property. And
freedom from anxiety in his material conditions is all that a man
needs. Such a man will always be happier in his internal conditions,
than the one who seeks wealth, because the first will never gain that
which he is striving for, while the latter always will, in proportion
to his powers. The feeble, the aged, the dying, according to the
proverb, "With the written absolution in his hands," will receive
full satisfaction, and the love and sympathy of men.
What, then, will be the outcome of a few eccentric individuals, or
madmen, tilling the soil, making shoes, and so on, instead of smoking
cigarettes, playing whist, and roaming about everywhere to relieve
their tedium, during the space of the ten leisure hours a day which
every intellectual worker enjoys? This will be the outcome: that
these madmen will show in action, that that imaginary property for
which men suffer, and for which they torment themselves and others,
is not necessary for happiness; that it is oppressive, and that it is
mere superstition; that property, true property, consists only in
one's own head and hands; and that, in order to actually exploit this
real property with profit and pleasure, it is necessary to reject the
false conception of property outside one's own body, upon which we
expend the best efforts of our lives. The outcome to us, that these men
will show, that only when a man ceases to believe in imaginary
property, only when he brings into play his real property, his
capacities, his body, so that they will yield him fruit a hundred-
fold, and happiness of which we have no idea,--only then will he be
so strong, useful, and good a man, that, wherever you may fling him,
he will always land on his feet; that he will everywhere and always
be a brother to everybody; that he will be intelligible to everybody,
and necessary, and good. And men looking on one, on ten such madmen,
will understand what they must all do in order to loosen that terrible
knot in which the superstition regarding property has entangled them,
in order to free themselves from the unfortunate position in which
they are all now groaning with one voice, not knowing whence to find
an issue from it.
Taken from: online-literature.com
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