Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3876

Authority

I am currently reading Walks And Talks Of An American Farmer In England by Frederick Law Olmsted. It is a fascinating book. It was written in 1850 when Olmsted was only twenty-eight years old and before he became the world’s leading landscape architect. Olmsted is a great diarist and writes in exhaustive detail that might seem oppressive to some but I find it very interesting. Pepys was very much like that also but was a very different person from Olmsted.

While on this trip to England Olmsted developed the theory that there is a link between man’s subservience to government or temporal authority and man’s image of God and his state of subservience to spiritual authority. It may not be a unique relationship but it is the first time that I had given it any thought. I quote below from his book:

A remark of one of the farmers, an Englishman, and a sensible fellow, upon these sentiments so generally held among our company, seemed to me true and well expressed. I think my observation of the lower class of Englishmen in the United States generally confirms it. “I have often noticed of my countrymen,” said he, “that when they cease to honor the king, they no longer fear God.” That is, as I understand it, when they are led to change the political theory in which they have been instructed, they must lose confidence in a religious creed which they owe about equally to the circumstances of their birth, neither having been adopted from a rational process in their minds. Seeing the childish absurdity of many forms which they have been trained to consider necessary, natural, and ordered of God, they lose confidence in all of their previous ideas that have resulted from a merely receptive education, and religion and royalty are classed together as old fashioned notions, nursery bugbears, and romances. It is partly the result of the abominable masquerade of words which is still constantly played off in England on all public occasions, clothing government with antiquated false forms of sacredness. The simple majesty and holy authority that depends on the exercise of justice, love and good judgment, so far from being made more imposing by this mummery, is lost sight of; while all the folly , indiscretion, and injustice of the administration of the law by fallible and unsanctified agents, is inevitably associated in the minds of the ignorant with all that is holy and true.

The only idea now, these, our shipmates, entertain of Christianity, seems to be that it is the particular humbug by which the clergy make people think that they must support them in purple and fine linen, just as royalty is the humbug on which the Queen is borne and government the humbug by which the aristocracy are carried on their shoulders: all of course in combination.

He uses lots of commas, doesn’t he? I am finding the book fascinating however and just thought that you would be interested in this bit.

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oxsan


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Registered: Jan 2004
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Posts: 2042

I too find it interesting how sources of legitimacy change over time and how this reflects changes in the collective consciousness of various ages. The rise of literacy amongst the working classes has, thankfully, led to a more cynical and less gullible electorate (in the developed world, anyway). This means that politicians can't get away with talking out of their ass as much; their language has become clearer and more reasonable. And people are more inclined to see people in suits as just that- people in suits. Rationalism and realism tend to benefit the lower classes over all. I'm reminded of two quotes:

"A man can die only for a cause he does not understand."-Hitler

"I must dazzle and astonish..."-Napolean

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