More on Success--Chesterton

In earlier discussion of whether my friends and I are failures, I missed our strongest defender-- G.K. Chesterton.  Under the title is an essay that I could never succeed in surpassing on the subject.  But I will make some comments on his comments just so I can be close enough to be warmed by the embers of his wordsmithing.

"To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful.  That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide."

This is not what is normally meant we worry about success or failure:  "You are a success at having spent far more money than you have earned."  "You are a success at not paying bills on time and incurring late fees."

For years I have restricted my New Years' resolutions to a plan to eat a little more, gain some more weight and get less exercise.  These are resolutions I can keep.

Chesterton uncovers the real aim when we talk about success:  success in obtaining money or worldly position.  He then exposes the self-help books that pretend to teach success.  There are only two ways to success at any decent occupation, say, bricklaying or writing books:  "One is by doing very good work, the other is by cheating. Both are much too simple to require any literary explanation. If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so."

Accepting this and doubting that at this stage that I can get any impressive measure at obtaining money or worldly position, I have decided to merely pretend I have done so.  Please spread the word that wrote the great American Epic poem and then moved on to invent the perpetual motion machine.  For these I won back to back Nobel prizes in literature and science.  My Olympic Gold medal was only in curling, but it shows I am well rounded.  

Chesterton then looks at the surest way to riches:  There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only "instinct" I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as "the sin of avarice."

My Dear Old Dad used to say, "Behind every great fortune is a great crime."  I'm not sure he thought this was a bad idea:  he would have enjoyed both the fortune and the crime.  However, the game was to look at the great fortune and find the crime that preceded it:  smuggling, war-profiteering, consumer fraud, monopoly, theft, murder.

Why shouldn't we view someone who hoards too much wealth the same way as we view someone who drinks too much whiskey or shoots too much heroin?  In all these cases, the harm both to the addict and society is great-- I would suggest greater in the case of the rich man.  After all Jesus never warned against alcohol or drugs.

But Jesus must have meant something when he said,...I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  Matthew 19:24

Chesterton makes the point about lust:  Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust; what shall we say of books that inflame the viler passions of avarice and pride? 

Of the Disadvantage of Greatness.

Why not aspire to greatness? Especially when young, why not decide to be CEO or President of Something or Congressman from Somewhere or Lord Mayor of London?

Why can't I sleep on silk sheets, eat salmon roe and wear diamonds the size of horse-dung? Why can't I have a trophy car, long and sleek and maybe a horse or dog bought from the very cover of the Horse and Dog Lovers Gazette?

Or a jet. "No, damn it, I don't want the King Air today. Get the Hawker ready."

At my age, rejecting greatness has a faint odor of sour grapes and laziness. But looking back, I feel blessed to have failed in all of my periodic spasms of ambition.

As always for me, GOAB leads the discussion on this issue (his essay is hidden under the title). By the way, for all of you Montaigne lovers, although the link provides a reference to a different translator, my favorite is one Donald M. Frame. This version of The Complete Essays will be available at the Brownsville Public Library just as soon as I return it.

GOAB immediately acknowledges that he is ill-suited for the pursuit of greatness: "To eschew greatness is a virtue, its seems to me, which I, who am only a gosling, could attain without great striving." Yes, the laziness factor. This then, in moderation, is virtue in itself. If a little Sloth can curb a great deal of Pride, Avarice and Lust, how can it be all bad?

He then gives the proper means of growth: "When I think of growing, it is in a lowly way, with a contsrained and cowardly growth, strictly for myself: in resolution, wisdom, health, beauty, and even riches."

And then to the jugular: "But that prestige, all that powerful authority, oppresses my imagination."

GOAB then goes forward with the many disadvantages of greatness: Your jokes are always funny and your advice is always wise. And the only skill you can develop is managing horses, because they, at least, will not let you win.

He shows that greatness in itself it to be avoided, and gives the reasons why.

Shakespeare also makes the point in Henry IV, Part 2. King Henry says:

How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

And then,

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Even if we cannot accept wholesale the argument of GOAB and King Henry that greatness in itself is not worthwhile. Certainly, the easier argument is that life is just too short to bother.

Why isn't there more advantage to wealth and power in life? It is the problem with death. As G.K. Chesterton describes in one of his Father Brown stories:

"There is in the world a very aged rioter and demagogue who breaks into the most refined retreats with the dreadful information that all men are brothers, and wherever this leveller went on his pale horse it was Father Brown's trade to follow."

Communist Cuba Dabbling in Distributism

Bloggers (the few I have met and as best I can tell from reading) seem endlessly fascinated by whether and if so, how much, their blog is being read. I confess this fault. I put one of the free counters on the blog and it is something of a utilometer of my personal happiness. Each little tick of the counter is another little squirt of dopamine.

More sophisticated bloggers apparently have more sophisticated counters and get additional squirts from learning how widely read they are, based on area codes I guess.

I know this all runs counter to my blogging goal as taken from the Granddaddy of All Bloggers:

"I have no thought of serving either you or my own glory. My powers are inadequate for such a purpose. I have dedicated it to the private convenience of my relatives and friends, so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habits and temperament. Thus reader...you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivoulous and vain pursuit."

Indulge my pride, though as a tell you based on certain empirical evidence I have a celebrity reader. It was only Friday past when I urged an economic system based on medieval Catholicism, distributism. Two days later, I see the headlines, "Cuba to Lend Land--In a bid to boost agricultural production, Raul Castro's government is lending Cuba's unused land to private farmers and cooperatives."

It is obvious to me: Raul Castro has been reading my blog. Not only that, I have converted him to distributism. Let me say it again: RAUL CASTRO IS ONE OF MY READERS!!!!

Now it is important I carefully cultivate this first new convert to distributism. First, how to address him? We distributists are anti-hierarchical and I hardly think either Mr. President or General Castro are appropriate.

Nor can I bring myself to say, "Comrade." First, I don't know if this will be part of the distributist tradition. I have not seen the word yet in Chesterton or Hilloc. Also, since we have not met, this may overly familiar. On the other hand, "Raul" or even "Raulito" feels OK, for some reason. Maybe because of that guy who sells the eye surgery on TV.

I am so happy to have you on board, Raulito, that I will happily serve as consultant. To that end, I will be reading medieval Church history and economic and legal forms. More to the point, though, Raulito, I would suggest we approach an appropriate order to come in and help run things. I suggest we avoid the more warlike groups like the Hospitallers of Jerusalem in favor of say, Franciscans or Cistercians.

Now that I know you (Raulito) are a reader, I'll give little hints along the way.

This transition from Cuban Communism to distributism should in some ways be quite smooth, because there are not big landowners with whom we must deal. On the other hand the human rights issues have been a problem in Cuba since they were reported by Bartolome de las Casas, but, hey, human rights is the whole idea behind distributism.

Now if only George W. will start reading.

Replacing Capitalism

This is a red alert post. That is, an idea that came to me in the wee hours of the morning that I want to run up the flag pole. It is also wildly outside my area of knowledge, much less expertise: economics.

I did have an economics class once in 1969. I made a good grade, but it was one of the classes that the University of Texas set up to make sure the football team kept its grades up. It was me and the National Champion Longhorns and we all made A's. Texas fight.

Nonetheless, you don't have to be a physician to notice that the surgeon cut off your healthy leg and left the one with gangrene.

This evening, allow me to restate the obvious: capitalism has failed to create a humane, even livable society for most people, and has produced a truly wretched society for many. Socialism has its own problems. Let's move to something that worked for a thousand years in Europe.

Let's discuss "distributism."

Belloc, Chesterton and Day are the most important proponents of distributism. Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton were two English Catholic writers of the early 20th Century. Dorothy Day was the American founder of the Catholic Worker of around the same time who supported distributism.

Belloc wrote that distributism was the system of private and collective ownership of land that had developed to support a just distribution of wealth during a 1000 years of Catholic influence in Europe. He did not view it as a new system, but rather, a return to a just system that had been replaced by the Servile State (the name of his book) that capitalism had produced. The introductory quotation in his book is:

". . . If we do not restore the Institution

of Property we cannot escape restoring
the Institution of Slavery; there
is no third course."

Chesterton in What's Wrong with the World describes the problems with capitalism by arguing the capitalists are against property:

I am well aware that the word "property" has been defied in our time by the corruption of the great capitalists. One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are the enemies of their own limitations. They do not want their own land; but other people's.

Distributists, then, are defenders of property. But there is no right to have as much property as you want. The metaphor is marriage. Just because you are in favor of marriage does not mean you defend the right of a man to have as many wives as he wants. Nor should he have as many houses as he wants.

If King Solomon has a thousand wives, there must be nearly as many men without wives. Similarly, every billionaire has monopolized the wealth to sustain thousands. So people starve.

To modernize the argument. Saying Gates should be able to have all the wealth he can accumulate does not defend property any more than allowing him to round up a million women into a personal harem would defend the institution of marriage.

Dorothy Day endorsed the distributist society and in the Catholic Worker mission statement argued how to get there:

A complete rejection of the present social order and a non-violent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values. This can only be done by direct action since political means have failed as a method for bringing about this society.

The distributist economy would be a combination of private property and community property. It would be a return to the Christian economy of the Middle Ages. Belloc describes that earlier society like this:

There was common land, but it was common land
jealously guarded by men who were also personal proprietors
of other land. Common property in the village
was but one of the forms of property, and was
used rather as the fly-wheel to preserve the regularity
of the co-operative machine than as a type of holding
in any way peculiarly sacred. The Guilds had property
in common, but that property was the property
necessary to their co-operative life, their Halls, their
Funds for Relief, their Religious Endowments. As
for the instruments of their trades, those instruments
were owned by the individual members, not by the
guild, save where they were of so expensive a kind as
to necessitate a corporate control.

Thomas Storck argues (cited in the link under the title) that following the teachings of justice of the Church leads inexorably to distributism:

The justification of private property that the popes have made is always tied, at least as an ideal, to ownership and work being joined. Thus Leo XIII: "The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many people as possible to become owners" (Rerum Novarum, no. 35), and this teaching is repeated by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (nos. 59-62, 65), by John XXIII in Mater et Magistra (nos. 85-89, 91-93, 111-115), and by John Paul II in Laborem Exercens (no. 14). If "as many people as possible...become owners," then that fatal separation of ownership and work will be, if not removed, at least its extent and influence will be lessened.

The invisible hand snatches away food, housing and health care from those who need it. The traditional economies of Catholic Europe offered a better way.

There is nothing that fails like success. -- G.K. Chesterton

Another of my big dozen books is Tolstoy's War and Peace. There are several books that have been watershed events that changed my world view. I read War and Peace when I was in my mid-forties. By most measures of success in life, it is fortunate I did not read it earlier. On the other hand, had I read and understood and applied Tolstoy's lessons when I was in my twenties, I could have avoided a couple of decades of hollow pursuits, meaningless losses and empty victories.

The immediate impact of reading the book was wrecking my view of history; Tolstoy destroys the Great Man approach to history. I was not completely sold on Great Man histories, even before Tolstoy. I had read enough economic determinism to figure economics was the real driving force. But I did think the big names must have made some difference.

Tolstoy showed that Napoleon, regardless of what he thought he was leading, was just the guy stuck in the front of the mass movement of people from West to East. If anyone had any control of a battle or political victory, it was some guy in a trench who was deciding whether or not to fight or run. The heroes at the top, regardless of what they thought, were not controlling events.

Reading Tolstoy was a full summer's effort. I had to stop and read a biography of Napoleon and a history of the Napoleonic wars to follow the story. I had trouble following name changes and family relationships and military ranks, so circling back in the book took me a while.

Whether or not it is "The World's Greatest Novel," I don't know. I am still haunted by certain scenes. A death at battle. The burning of Moscow. I also read some of the critic's surveys. Harold Bloom, for instance, in The Western Canon, features the short story Hadji Murad. Bloom basically took the approach, "That Tolstoy is an unmatched writer, but if you read his essays on law, religion and politics, he's just a nut." (I can't find the quote, but this is the impression I got). Many other critics seemed to take a similar view of Tolstoy's later work.

The approach is much like what you see written about Ezra Pound--good poet, but insane and a fascist traitor.

After I finally worked my way through War and Peace, I could not get enough of Tolstoy. I still rank Resurrection by Tolstoy as my favorite novel. It is about the legal system, a murder case, prison and the interaction between classes, so it harmonizes well with experiences in my life. Tolstoy wrote a version of the gospels, The Gospel in Brief, that I preferred to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He wrote essays on government, politics, war and religion such as The Kingdom of God is Within You that word for word persuaded me that I should change the way I lived life. I decided not to run for County Chairman (or anything else) again, I quit trying to get rich and began to try to get broke, and within a couple of years I quit filing lawsuits and started representing indigent criminal defendants (this greatly facilitated the prior goal).

Kathy was surprisingly accepting of all of this weirdness.

As the years have past, I have had to back off (at least for now) on some of the Tolstoyan lifestyle to sort of a Tolstoy Light. I found I was too middle class to suffer so much. It was a pain trying to live without a house, so the bank and I have been buying another one. I got tired of the long hours. And I kept getting rid of more money than I had to give, not so much out of generosity, but out of not really knowing how much money I had.

After I became powerless and broke, as you might imagine, I got a whole new set of friends. Not a lot of the old ones stuck around, but the ones who did were keepers. Another change was I was able to quit spending time with people I didn't like. I have to lie a lot less, even to Kathy. A don't take Prozac anymore. I don't have to worry about how to invest the 401K plans or keeping up with a beach house, a Hummer, a Rolex or a swimming pool. That junk is fortunately all gone. I sleep through the night. I am willing to get out of bed in the morning.

Some book!