After looking at the secular reasons for compulsory military service and state violence in the last chapter, Tolstoy now wants to look at the Christian response to this situation, which is quite unlike traditional or conservative religious responses.
The Christian teaching is no legislation which, being introduced by violence, can at once change the lives of men. Christianity is another, newer, higher concept of life, which is different from the previous one. But the new concept of life cannot be prescribed; it can only be freely adopted. Now the new life-conception can be acquired only in two ways : in a spiritual (internal) and an experimental (external) way.Christianity does not provide a quick social answer to violence and is only a long-term solution without a shortcut. And this is what can be frustrating about pacifism and non-resistance, especially a historically conscious one like Tolstoy's. It is a overarching progressivism that acknowledges changes throughout history, a solution to make life better and more free for humanity, but at the same time, gives no immediate solutions to the issues we might find pressing at this moment. Humanity's social life will only change if humanity changes and remakes itself, not reforms its constitutions and institutions. And, unlike Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Protestantism, which has often been instituted by states, armies, or colonialists, Tolstoyian Christianity cannot be instituted at all. It can only progress through volunteerism. People cannot be forced to be non-resisters. They either have to change themselves from the inside and accept it on a so-called "spiritual" level, or they must do so through trial and error.
— the majority — are led only through a long path of errors, experiences, and sufferings to the recognition of the truth of the teaching and the necessity of acquiring it.People cannot be forced into Christianity or into a more progressive society. As on a personal level, life only improves through improvement over time and attempts to better oneself, our society can only improve via voluntary improvements of moral conception. This happens not only through human free will, which is a part of it, but also through historical necessities and determinism.
this corruption of Christianity, having brought men to the condition in which they now are, was a necessary condition for the majority of men to be able to receive it in its real significance.Christianity in its current state-approved and supporting variety was necessary for humanity to progress to a Christian non-resistant conception of life. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, this proves to be a rather weak argument, as progressive formations of life have usually shucked off Christianity and even countries that don't necessarily have a state religion have their conservative elements dominated by religion (though with alternative right-wing ideologies taking power, this may change and the idea of religious vocabulary having a place in the public sphere may be waning rather significantly over the next generation or two. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on what it is replaced with and since conspiracy personality cults or nationalism seem to be the strongest growing elements in today's political culture, it is difficult to say that we are progressing positively in this manner).
Before this there was one road, and now there are two of them, and it is impossible to walk as before, and one of the two roads must inevitably be chosen. Even so it has been impossible to say, ever since Christ's teaching was made known to men, "I will continue to live as I lived before, without solving the question as to resisting or not resisting evil by means of violence." It is inevitably necessary at the appearance of every struggle to solve the question, " Shall I with violence resist that which I consider to be an evil and violence, or not?"The essential question that Jesus's arrival on earth makes every human have to consider has nothing to do with the afterlife but is the rejection or acceptance of violence. For Tolstoy, his teaching was so radical and important that it has changed the way humanity has to look at moral problems. Evil cannot be defeated through violence or through evil itself and thus our essential moral choice is whether or not to be violent or not. Everything else flows through that.
The inadequacy of the principle of defining with authority what is evil and resisting it with violence, which was already obvious in the first centuries of Christianity, became even more obvious during the decomposition of the Roman Empire into many states of equal right, with their mutual hostilities and the inner struggles which took place in the separate states.And this is perhaps the most essential and best argument for nonviolence that Tolstoy has. One can reject or accept Jesus's teachings on a number of grounds and as Tolstoy knows himself, there is no real good reason for accepting a religion or another. But there is also no good reason to accept a social contract or not or accept whether violence should be used against a people or not. Because there cannot be an agreement, then there cannot be submission to an authority. Without voluntary submission, or if submission is gained involuntarily, then violence occurs. Violence is the suppression of freedom and equality and because it is always so and because people cannot agree when it should be employed and against whom, it should not be employed.
it reached the present point, — the complete obviousness of the fact that there is and there can be no external definition of evil which would be obligatory for all men.Contrary to many religious or ethical doctrines (and this is where Tolstoy differs himself from the deontological arguments or those such as Kant, in which otherwise he appears to follow), Tolstoy does not see a hope for a universal ethic or a moral code that everyone can accept. And this has not become more likely over the last 100 plus years. Good and evil are not concepts that can have definition outside of personal, culture, or legal (even legally we reject these terms and accept alternatives like legal/illegal or ethical/unethical) definitions. This is not moral nihilism or relativism, but a recognizing of subjectivity (it should be noted that subjectivity does not mean that there is no meaning, but that meaning starts with the subject rather than the object, that it does not exist "out there" but "in here") and the failure of synthesis in the enlightenment project. Even if moral failure had to do with lack of education, what education pattern should we follow? What moral teachers would direct this? How would we decide this? Not everyone would agree and instead, there would be furious debate. Because of this, it is impossible to define evil in a universalist sense so we cannot use force against what we believe to be evil because that is a suppression of freedom (why this and violence in itself is an evil and why those who agreed on what something evil is could not band together to violently suppress the evil is not entirely answered and can cause, if carried out logically, a regression loop into an all against all. Tolstoy seems content on using the Sermon on the Mount as the guiding tool).
The governments and the ruling classes do not now lean on the right, not even on the semblance of justice, but on an artificial organization which, with the aid of the perfections of science, encloses all men in the circle of violence, from which there is no possibility of tearing themselves away. This circle is now composed of four means of influencing men. All those means are connected and sustain one another, as the links in the ring of a united chain. The first, the oldest, means is the means of intimidation.Tolstoy's skepticism of "science" appears here again, as he sees it as a tool used to help the state and further violence. The state does not entrap humanity through justice or giving them what they desire but by placing them in the loop of violence, making them rely on violence to live their lives, forcing them to do the will of the state through violence, as well as causing them to participate in violence themselves. Intimidation is the tool the state understands the best and appears when officers and military personnel march the streets with their weapons, knock down doors, beat people, and murder them. Violence or the threat of violence to make people stay in line, obey the law, and serve the state is what governments do best.
The second means is that of bribery.But of course, as we have seen, violence only leads to retaliatory violence, so the state, in order to preserve internal order and simultaneously keep its power, provides goods, services, and money to people. This is incredibly cynical sounding of course and can even sound like the racist, classist conservative arguments of welfare and the social safety net being about social control. But the bribery need not be universal. A large chunk of the population can still be starving or struggling as long as there is a large enough number of those who have their wealth preserved or maintained enough to support the state and support the oppression, through violence, intimidation, or other means to keep the dissatisfied oppressed.
The third means is what I cannot call by any other name than the hypnotization of the people...This hypnotization begins at early youth in compulsory schools which are established for the purpose, and in which the children are instilled with world-conceptions which were peculiar to their ancestors and are directly opposed to the modern consciousness of humanity.State brainwashing begins at an early age, as children are conditioned to be nationalistic and believe things that humanity has progressed things beyond believing (just as the religious inundation of children by the church has been discussed by Tolstoy in this book). Just as in 1984 where the language is changed so future generations will not have the vocabulary to rebel against the state, modern society implants ideas into children's heads to get them to grow up as citizens that do not act against the status quo.
The fourth means consists in this, that with the aid of the three preceding means there is segregated, from the men so fettered and stupefied, a certain small number of men, who are subjected to intensified methods of stupefaction an brutalization, and are turned into involuntary tools of all those cruelties and bestialities which the governments may need.When the above methods do not work, oppressive societies throw undesirables into prisons and keep them out of society. Rebels, undesirables, leakers, protesters, and dissidents are placed into prison systems that societies use to segregate people and use them as slave labor. And this is all allowed thanks to the army of soldiers and police officers that the state keeps.
Intimidation, bribery, hypnotization, make men desirous to become soldiers; but it is the soldiers who give the power and the possibility for punishing people, and picking them clean (and bribing the officials with the money thus obtained), and for hypnotizing and enlisting them again as soldiers, who in turn afford the possibility for doing all this.The circle is closed, and there is no way of tearing one self away from it by means of force.Because this system is so enclosed, so self-sufficient, and so efficient in oppressing people, violence cannot work overthrow it. Just as violence fails on a moral level, it fails on a practical level because it will not break the loop nor solve the problems the violence is supposed to solve.
monarchists, conservatives, capitalists, who consider the socialistic, communistic, and anarchistic order to be evil ; and all these parties have no other means than force for the purpose of uniting men. No matter which of these parties may triumph, it will be compelled, for the materialization of its tenets, as well as for the maintenance of its power, not only to make use of all the existing means of violence, but also to invent new ones.Those who do break the loop and overthrow the state with violence must maintain their own social order through violence and because they themselves have seen the state loop broken through violence, they must oppress the citizens even further using their violence. This is eerie foreshadowing for what would happen next in Tolstoy's home country and Tolstoy isn't done with his correct predictions.
There is left but one sphere of human activity which is not usurped by the governmental power, — the domestic, economic sphere, the sphere of the private life and of labour. But even this sphere, thanks to the struggle of the communists and socialists, is slowly being usurped by the governments, so that labour and rest, the domicile, the attire, the food of men will by degrees be determined and directed by the governments, if the wishes of the reformers are to be fulfilled.State communism brought with it the regulation of all facets of life, a complete rejection of private life away from government and a complete repression of freedom. Of course, Tolstoy was no fan of capitalism, so we should not interpret this attack of communism to from the right but instead from an anarchist point of view, understanding that government regulation and the constant creep into the public life would only bring with it oppression, not the utopia wished for by the reformers (most likely an intentional insulting use of vocabulary by Tolstoy).
For the majority of men, as its teacher has said, Christianity could not be realized at once, but had to grow, like an immense tree, from a small seed. And so it grew and has spread, if not in reality, at least in the consciousness of the men of our time.Tolstoy takes the Parable of the Mustard Seed to not be a metaphor about the propagation of Christianity through the form of evangelism, but as a literal interpretation of how Jesus's teachings enter the consciousness of humans and as a metaphor for moral progressivism.
I think it is Max Miiller who tells of the surprise of an Indian converted to Christianity, who, having grasped the essence of the Christian teaching, arrived in Europe and saw the life of the Christians. He could not recover from his astonishment in the presence of the reality, which was the very opposite of what he had expected to find among the Christian nations. If we are not surprised at the contradiction between our beliefs, convictions, and acts, this is due only to the fact that the influences which conceal this contradiction from men act also upon us. We need only look upon our life from the standpoint of the Indian, who understood Christianity in its real significance, without any compromises and adaptations, and upon those savage bestialities, with which our life is filled, in order that we may be frightened at the contradictions amidst which we live, frequently without noticing them.Christianity looks nothing like the teaching of Jesus and instead looks like conservative national politics. To live a true Christian-life, according to Tolstoy, compromise and adaptation is impossible. Wishing or fighting for reforms or better institutions misses the point because it does not grow the moral consciousness of humanity, which can only be changed from the inside. The adaptations of Christianity has changed Christianity more than it has changed our institutions, which is why the teachings of Jesus have been replaced with a theological nationalism. The only true way to live free is to live as Jesus did, rejecting the religious and political institutions of his day rather than fighting violently for revolution, protecting wealth, or trying to preserve culture and order. Only in acting this way will humanity and the way humanity is oppressed change.
in Germany, whence comes the universal military service, Caprivi said openly, what before was carefully concealed, that the men who had to be killed were not merely the foreigners, but the working people, from whom come the majority of the soldiers.The army is about suppressing dissidents, not protection. The average citizen is oppressed by the large armies of the country, which is the ultimate contradiction, as those armies are made up of average citizens that are drafted into the army. The institution of the military is used to suppress the very kind of people with whom the army is made up of. This is the ultimate contradiction of government, especially capitalistic democracies, in which people vote for their own oppression.
Every savage has something sacred for which he is prepared to suffer and for which he will make no concessions. But where is this sacredness for a man of our time?Unlike the ancients or uneducated societies, our moral consciousness knows better. We know that violence is wrong and that we cannot truly believe in what the government asks us to believe. We have no excuse and yet, nothing changes in our behavior or our institutions.
"Yes, but what is to be done?" people frequently ask, in sincere perplexity. "If all should refuse, it would be well; otherwise I alone shall suffer, and no one will be helped by it." And, indeed, a man of the social concept of life cannot refuse. The meaning of his life is the good of his personality. For the sake of his personality it is better for him to submit, and he submits.And this is why the world does not change. Too many people, concerned for their own well-being and their own comfort claim that things cannot change because people who stand against the institutions will be swept aside. So, with concern for their selves and families, these people throw up their hands and support the system, and this happens again and again for multiple changes. And this is why the state's greatest power is not intimidation, bribery, hypnotism, nor segregating undesirables, but defeatism. If, because of general comfort, lack of imagination, or fear of being alone or contrarian, people are afraid to reject the institutions that rule humanity, then the institutions will not change or become unnecessary, but only grow in power.
No comments:
Post a Comment