Posts Tagged ‘C.K. Chesterton’

Mer Chesterton

onsdag, mai 28th, 2008

Jeg kom ikke langt før jeg fant enda flere perler. Denne karen skrev utrolig bra!

Dette må leses:

“But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

En perle

tirsdag, mai 27th, 2008

Jeg har lenge hørt om G.K. Chesterton. Jeg har hørt lovord fra mange kanter som har sagt og skrevet at han er den beste forfatteren i hele det 20. århundre. Dette var en person som skrev over 100 bøker, blant annet en god del i forsvar av den kristne tro.

Så jeg tenkte jeg skulle begynne å lese litt av han. Lastet ned Orthodoxy til Iphonen min og begynte å lese.

Jeg har bare lest et par kapittel enda, men jeg må si at basert på det jeg har lest, har han uten tvoil potensiale til å ta førsteplassen over de beste forfatterne jeg har lest. Hver setning inneholder godbiter som man aldri har tenkt på før. Dette er mannen som klarer å peke på gale ting i samfunnet som vi andre ikke klarer å sette ord på. Alt fylt med en god del humor og ironi. Her er et utdrag fra Orthodoxy:

Take first the more obvious case of materialism. As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but his cosmos is smaller t our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting people or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. The cosmos is about the t hole that man can hide his head in.