Anniversary of Superversive 2
We celebrate the first year of the superversive literary movement with the second half of last week’s essay by that brilliant essayist, Tom Simon.
This essay I think is one of his best, and since I think he is perhaps the best essayist since essayist since Montaigne, that is saying quite a bit. Of course, I happen to be particularly interested in this topic, and his essay makes clear to me a personal puzzle touching why a writer I once respected and read avidly now bores and offends me.
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/10/27/superversive-blog-life-carbon-and-the-tao-part-two/
Here is a collection of his essays:
A collection of Mr. Simons excellent essays on Tolkien and our craft.
And here is the first part:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/10/15/superversive-literary-movement-anniversary-essay/
Let me quote a teaser:
Life, Carbon, and the Tao – Part Two
by
Tom Simon
What’s so special about the Tao?
Here I am using the term Tao the way C. S. Lewis used it in The Abolition of Man: meaning the basic principles of morality on which all civilized peoples have generally agreed. Here are some of the perennials: Don’t murder your neighbour, don’t steal from your neighbour, don’t mess around with your neighbour’s wife, don’t perjure yourself. Men have differed on the definition of neighbour, and some of the wide variation in human cultures is accounted for by that difference. Some peoples apply the Tao only to members of one’s own tribe, or one’s own nation. Some try to apply it to every human being without exception. And of course there are differences of detail, such as whether a man should marry one wife or four. But every culture that survives is based on the Tao, just as every life form is based on carbon; and the reasons, at bottom, are similar.
What the Tao does is to establish a minimum basis for safe dealings between human beings. If, every time you went into Starbucks, you had to seriously question whether the barrista would sell you a cup of coffee or shoot you on sight, I fancy that Starbucks, as a business, would not have lasted long. Fortunately, both you and the barrista subscribe to the Tao. Even if you don’t understand the reasons for the rules, you obey the rules, at least most of the time, because that is the only way that you can get along and do business together. Even to live together in a community requires the Tao. My neighbours lock their doors when they go out, it is true. But if I did not accept the Tao, locks would do them no good; I would smash the doors with an axe and help myself to their belongings. And if they did not accept the Tao, they would have no grounds to complain. No human being can live as a solo army, at war with the whole world. We are born weak and helpless, and most of us are weak and helpless again before we die; and we all have to sleep in between. The Tao literally keeps us alive when we cannot defend ourselves.
The basis of the Tao, in one word, is reciprocity. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or if that is too strong for you, take the formula of Confucius: “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.” Over tens of thousands of years, in the laboratory of daily life, in tribes and villages, cities and nations, we have boiled down the art of reciprocity; we have codified the things that none of us (when sane and healthy) wish done to us, and we agree not to do them to others. In almost every culture, this code is reinforced by the prevailing religion; but it is quite possible to accept the Tao without any religion at all. It is the common moral currency of humanity, and with the caveat noted above, it passes everywhere. Societies that reject the Tao do not hang together; and individuals who reject the Tao soon find themselves without any society.
When I turn from real life to fiction, I find a curious difference. In the stories of the past — in nearly all fiction before, say, the late nineteenth century, and all popular fiction until a much later date — the Tao is taken for granted; only there is a class of people who do not observe the Tao. These people are called criminals, or outlaws, or villains. In the older kind of fiction, the villain upsets the Tao to take advantage of a weaker party, and the hero restores the Tao by avenging the victim.
Consider the Odyssey. Odysseus was a sharp operator, maybe, but still a hero; he restored the Tao. Old Polyphemus, the Cyclops, violated the Tao in a pretty straightforward way: he ate his house guests. The Greeks set great store by the laws of xenia, or hospitality; and even we degenerate moderns, when our friends invite us to dinner, do not expect to be the dinner. Later, he restored the Tao in the matter of adultery, dealing with his wife’s suitors in a brusque but exemplary manner. (No, he could not have called the police. Odysseus was the King of Ithaca; he was the police.)
It is only we moderns, for the most part, who try to write fiction without the Tao.
Read the rest:
http://www.ljagilamplighter.com/2015/10/27/superversive-blog-life-carbon-and-the-tao-part-two/
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
