The Pacifist Manifesto

[MultipleTentacles]

1. We intend to strive hard in our goal to increase, increase, increase all that is good according to our contexts.
2. But not too hard--we intend to temper our desires and live within reasonable expectations.
3. All that is bad has no place in our world, we intend to work efficaciously to do away with it.
4. But not using any means--we intend to avoid violence, extortion, and all other tainted action.
5. Literature has up to now magnified aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist. We want to exalt movements of real ecstasy, authentic reverie, and immovable grace--the inspired breath, the triumphant mundanities, the excellent path of the wise.
6. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by speed. A fraction-of-a-second retrieval of knowledge, an accelerated understanding, is more beautiful than muted stillness.
7. But not too much speed--we observe that speed and stillness are the same: for one thing to be in motion, another thing must be still.
8. Beauty only exists in struggle--except when it exists in resolution. There is no masterpiece that has not both.
9. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of not looking behind, forward, up, down, and every direction? Time and space are alive right now. We are living in the absolute, if we see but one thing accurately.
10. We want to glorify war--when nobody is hurt or killed. No war is successful if unbounded corpses blight the earth.
11. But not too much war--after all, we are pacifists.

[Flux]

Interesting. I agree with most of what you said, and especially like how you tempered statements 1, 3, and 6 with reminders of moderation in the number immediately following.

I'm not sure if I agree with you about the literature though. Surely, I agree that much of literature is violent. But that's because it reflects themes that really exist in our world. I don't think that literature should be glorifying or advocating the negative, but to have negative themes in literature is what helps us process and deal with negative themes in real life. Personally, I feel that literature which only "of real ecstasy, authentic reverie, and immovable grace" would ring false, unless, as in real life, it is something that occurs against the background of misfortune of various degrees. Then again, I may be misreading you on this point.

[MultipleTentacles]

Thank you.

I agree that literature has to have negative themes, but the negative themes are for the purpose of overcoming them. My point is therefore somewhat skewed, because it only talks of the happy stuff. I disagree that most of literature is violent because it reflects reality. I think it's violent because violence is titillating, and actually I think this is extremely detrimental to society. Society is much more violent now than earlier this century, I think, because younger kids are getting exposed to more violence in the media. I didn't use to think this, but nobody exists in a vacuum--this literature has to have some effect. And now, we live in an age of school shootings, and bullying and young sexuality is getting a little out of hand.

However, I take artistic license, because this is primarily an ironic reference to an obscure text by the name of "Manifesto of Futurism" written by a modernist fascist: <http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html>. See particularly the 11 point enumeration in the middle of the text, as that is what I'm responding to. :thumbsup: