The Maholian Way - Part Four: Introductory Comments
Robert Salter
Such fictional depictions of escape from the rat-race are of course based on the fact that many people do escape in real life. Some come to our attention because their escapes become the subject of their art – such as the Tahitian paintings of Gauguin, and the writings of Australian authors, George Johnston and Charmian Clift, from the Greek island they moved to in the 1950s.
One can question how viable and sustainable these escapes are. While Parisian street life, Greek islands and Tahitian beaches have obvious appeal, there are certainly challenges for any outsider seeking to build a permanent life in such settings. Will the appeal start to wear off after the five hundredth ouzo or tropical swim? What to do for work, not just to earn money but to be creative, and even to do good for others? And, while many new friendships may be formed, is it okay to be so cut of from family and friends who have been part of one’s life to that point? That said, it has to be acknowledged that many people do rise to these challenges, so on this point I will simply leave these questions posed.
There is, however, a more significant problem with the escape option: it is not an option for whole populations. However boring and dehumanising mainstream society and its economic system may be, the fact is it’s the current way through which most material needs get met. It’s the context in which socks and sausages and sofas get made and sold, buses get driven, insurance policies are written and sick people are treated. Whole populations can’t go off to Paris or Corfu. And those who do escape often end up as the minstrels and fools, the dressers and decorators for the leaders and operatives of the systems they despise. Moreover, the argument that the vast majority wouldn’t want to escape because they are quite happy with their lot needs to be questioned. While many people are indeed happy in work and life, there are many others who find work uninteresting and life unsatisfying, but don’t seek change because they don’t see it as a possibility.
Wouldn’t it be better if they did have access to alternatives? If the way ordinary needs were met could be humanised, made more enjoyable, enriching, exciting even? And not just as the exception but as the norm. As soon as you start to ask these questions you are moving towards the reform option. This too has a long history, a history of political tracts and economic treatises, of utopian visions and experimental communities, of gradual reform and revolutionary change. Most of these have followed a blueprint, a plan of what the good life would look like and how it would be achieved and maintained. And herein lies a contradiction. Blueprints generally try to avoid problems and steer people down the right path by prescibing some options and proscribing others. In other words, they create ordered systems that seriously limit choices. But in doing so they often sow the seeds of their own destruction. For a start, their prescriptions may be – and often are – seriously flawed. As well, however, people in the modern world want a degree of freedom and choice, and they don’t want systems that have all the answers, because that leaves them no room to come up with their own answers, their own interpretations, ideas and solutions. Thus they frequently voice their opposition to such prescriptions and such order loudly and clearly.
So the utopian visions of, say, The Communist Manifesto or of Thomas More’s original Utopia give birth to the dystopian visions of Nineteen eighty-four and Animal Farm. In the dystopia the answers are all wrong, but because the system’s subjects have no freedom they have no power to correct these wrongs.
There is, however, a more significant problem with the escape option: it is not an option for whole populations. However boring and dehumanising mainstream society and its economic system may be, the fact is it’s the current way through which most material needs get met. It’s the context in which socks and sausages and sofas get made and sold, buses get driven, insurance policies are written and sick people are treated. Whole populations can’t go off to Paris or Corfu. And those who do escape often end up as the minstrels and fools, the dressers and decorators for the leaders and operatives of the systems they despise. Moreover, the argument that the vast majority wouldn’t want to escape because they are quite happy with their lot needs to be questioned. While many people are indeed happy in work and life, there are many others who find work uninteresting and life unsatisfying, but don’t seek change because they don’t see it as a possibility.
Wouldn’t it be better if they did have access to alternatives? If the way ordinary needs were met could be humanised, made more enjoyable, enriching, exciting even? And not just as the exception but as the norm. As soon as you start to ask these questions you are moving towards the reform option. This too has a long history, a history of political tracts and economic treatises, of utopian visions and experimental communities, of gradual reform and revolutionary change. Most of these have followed a blueprint, a plan of what the good life would look like and how it would be achieved and maintained. And herein lies a contradiction. Blueprints generally try to avoid problems and steer people down the right path by prescibing some options and proscribing others. In other words, they create ordered systems that seriously limit choices. But in doing so they often sow the seeds of their own destruction. For a start, their prescriptions may be – and often are – seriously flawed. As well, however, people in the modern world want a degree of freedom and choice, and they don’t want systems that have all the answers, because that leaves them no room to come up with their own answers, their own interpretations, ideas and solutions. Thus they frequently voice their opposition to such prescriptions and such order loudly and clearly.
So the utopian visions of, say, The Communist Manifesto or of Thomas More’s original Utopia give birth to the dystopian visions of Nineteen eighty-four and Animal Farm. In the dystopia the answers are all wrong, but because the system’s subjects have no freedom they have no power to correct these wrongs.
- Page 69
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