The coarsest and bluntest knife which ever broke a pencil into pieces instead of sharpening it is a good thing in so far as it is a knife. It would have appeared a miracle in the Stone Age. What we call a bad knife is a good knife not good enough for us; what we call a bad hat is a good hat not good enough for us; what we call bad cookery is good cookery not good enough for us; what we call a bad civilization is a good civilization not good enough for us. We choose to call the great mass of the history of mankind bad, not because it is bad, but because we are better. This is palpably an unfair principle. Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.Now it has appeared to me unfair that humanity should be engaged perpetually in calling all those things bad which have been good enough to make other things better, in everlastingly kicking down the ladder by which it has climbed. It has appeared to me that progress should be something else besides a continual parricide; therefore I have investigated the dust-heaps of humanity, and found a treasure in all of them. I have found that humanity is not incidentally engaged, but eternally and systematically engaged, in throwing gold into the gutter and diamonds into the sea.
He would have understood the statue-toppling, and come up with a good description of it.
3 comments:
There are many things, that as Chesterton writes them we think "Well, of course, it's obvious." Then we notice that the "obvious" thing is not even widely recognised. We are even worse at this a hundred years later than we were then.
Back in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, there were foes of slavery who saw that at the time, any ban on it would go unenforced (or else be repealed at head-spinning speed). However, codes to restrict what masters could do to slaves were still feasible, and while highly unsatisfactory would still at least do some good. It is a grave injustice to treat fair-for-their-day steps to mitigate an evil one cannot eliminate with willing complicity in it.
God has drawn flack in this regard as well. It doesn't help that cultural contexts often need explanation. Also, in giving us free will God willingly waived His power over any unwilling heart.
Also, this proto-lightsaber would prove its maker a dunce in the Galaxy Far, Far Away; but in real life, with a much lower technological level, it proves its makers geniuses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey_EjSzKFWQ
Post a Comment