Disdain fashionable things. Especially ideas.
Disdain fashionable things. Especially ideas.
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Fashionable ideas are the ones that, Q.E.D., did come down in the last shower. They lie there, sparkling like jewels in the fresh grass. Most of them will evaporate but one or two will by capillary action, soak into the soil and may nourish the roots of something profound. But — better to wait for that to germinate than drink it off the blades before it can, right?
Disdain beauty-pageant politics. If a political angle seems ridiculously simple — so obvious, whether from the left or right that even a child could grasp its transparent eternal veracity — yet somehow it hasn’t taken hold in the world, that’s because it is ridiculous and childlike.
If an idealistic political idea has exploded from nowhere, unprompted by technological revolution nor the emergence of generations-long grievance, presume it is a fashion that will soon be obliterated by the massed forces of opportunism, cynicism, impatience, and the general practical need to get on with the tawdry business of making ends meet, at one end, and turning a profit, at the other. If you like it, enjoy it while you can. If you don’t, bide your time: it will pass soon enough.
Idealisms are fragile: if they stay soft, they bend to the vicissitudes of the world, but do not impact it. If they crystallise, they fracture and get blown away by the complex system we live in.
“Imagine no possessions...” — wait a minute whose grand piano is that? And whose stately home? OH IT’S YOURS, JOHN?