In Good Company, a Letter to [Redacted]
Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice
[Redacted],
I finished your piece, thank you for sharing it with me. You share how one student wrote on social media a sentiment critical of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. In short time, they received a message claiming their statements about the Taliban were backwards, asserting that the Taliban are actually exceptionally good people. And if they venture to say otherwise again, the consequences will drown their foolishness in regret.
Threatened, the student deletes their post; they’ve switched to posting poetry. How telling it is that the same meaning, when only thinly veiled by prose, becomes invisible to the herd. They conceive the world as if it is rendered only by their eyes, unable or unwilling to peer beneath the surface. Afghanistan is not alone in the rising rates of this perennial disease. I see it here too.
It feels like our society is plunging headfirst into magical thinking, but better put, we’ve never emerged from it. Modern man is sorely deluded in this aspect. He inherits a society and wields its wealth and gadgets, but mistakes himself for having moved beyond the cave. He looks to his ancestors and cultures of the past millennia and thinks: how can anyone ever be so stupid? He hears of cruelty and thinks: how can anyone ever be so inhumane? He is of the same body, but thinks himself of higher mind. He is of the same heart, but thinks himself of higher sensitivity. He thinks he has examined his life, but dares not to recall and reflect on nightly dreams.
But I digress.
There is an undercurrent of social consciousness to your writing that reminds me of several writers. The essence of that common thread evades my words, but can be expressed as a willingness to reckon with the world as it is, to envision it as it could be, and to recognize we are responsible for making it so.
Vaclav Havel, of similar spirit, was an artist and leader writing in Czechoslovakia after the fall of a totalitarian regime. Recognizing, as you write, that “conditions are darker than before.”
If I talk here about my political — or, more precisely, my civil program, about my notion of the kind of politics and values and ideals I wish to struggle for, this is not to say that I am entertaining the naive hope that this struggle may one day be over. A heaven on earth in which people all love each other and everyone is hard-working, well-mannered, and virtuous, in which the land flourishes and everything is sweetness and light, working harmoniously to the satisfaction of God: this will never be. On the contrary, the world has had the worst experiences with utopian thinkers who promised all that. Evil will remain with us, no one will ever eliminate human suffering, the political arena will always attract irresponsible and ambitious adventurers and charlatans. And man will not stop destroying the world. In this regard, I have no illusions.
Neither I nor anyone else will ever win this war once and for all. At the very most, we can win a battle or two and not even that is certain. Yet I still think it makes sense to wage this war persistently. It has been waged for centuries, and it will continue to be waged — we hope — for centuries to come. This must be done on principle, because it is the right thing to do. Or, if you like, because God wants it that way. It is an eternal, never-ending struggle waged not just by good people (among whom I count myself, more or less) against evil people, by honourable people against dishonourable people, by people who think about the world and eternity against people who think only of themselves and the moment. It takes place inside everyone. It is what makes a person a person, and life, life.
So anyone who claims that I am a dreamer who expects to transform hell into heaven is wrong. I have few illusions. But I feel a responsibility to work towards the things I consider good and right. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to change certain things for the better, or not at all. Both outcomes are possible. There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.
I have attached Havel’s work, along with that of Paulo Freire, whose writing also invokes truth so plainly that it’s often banned in nations who wish to repress it. And lastly, I include one clip of the prophetic Boston activist, Kip Tiernan, who founded the nation’s first shelter for women. Tiernan is who made me aware of Havel.
All of this is to say, good article, you are in good company.
warmly,
austin