If there be a saving
way, at all, it is obviously this: Substitute health and happiness for wealth
as a world-ideal; and translate that new ideal into action by education from
babyhood up.
To do this, states
must reorganise the spirit of education — in other words, must introduce
religion; not the old formal creeds, but the humanistic religion of service for
the common weal, the religion of a social honour which puts the health and
happiness of all first and the wealth of self second. The only comfort in the
situation is the curious fact that, underneath all else, the sociability
inculcated in modern nations by quick communications and incessant intercourse
is already tending toward the formation of this new humanistic religion.
The real and supreme
importance of the League of Nations consists in its power of giving such a mood
the first chance it has ever had in international affairs. For it must freely
be confessed that, without this chance in international affairs, there is no
hope that the mood will be adopted and fostered nationally.
John
Galsworthy – Castles in Spain (1927)
In Galsworthy’s day many intelligent middle class people thought
like this in spite and because of the Great War. They were not afraid to express
their faith in a kind of universal secular bonhomie overseen by the benign gaze
of the League of Nations.
How times have changed. The optimism of secular idealism has
faded, its language tangled in caveats. Politically, secular optimism has
become furtive, technical and rather weird.
Yet one Galsworthy phrase seems prescient to me, especially
in the light of mass air travel and the internet: the sociability inculcated in modern nations by quick communications
and incessant intercourse. Global sociability – maybe that’s our route to a
more pragmatic optimism.
If so, then the stumbling block becomes obvious. Our
political class has no wish to be sociable with the electorate because they don’t
yet see us as their moral and intellectual equals, let alone their superiors.
4 comments:
Yet within a few years the Nazis were using modern communications to brainwash the populace.
Hope you're right.
Sackers - this quote set me wondering about Nazi propaganda too.
Did it rely on coerced assent or belief? Both of course, but to what degree?
I think it played on anger - middle class people had lost everything, the working class had lost theor jobs, and there's also the little-reported plight of German mothers who killed their children rather than let them starve slowly.
But there was the scientific exploitation of the media - the skilfully written and directed films and imagery. I'm not sure how much work has been done on nazi propaganda in the Thirties.
Plus the use of the education system. My mother was bullied by staff and pupils to try to force her to join the Party; her father, a gentleman farmer who saw the Nazis for the scum they were, refused to let her.
Our mother was an extraordinary woman, and I am deeply sorry that she didn't see the development of her grandchildren.
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