The Saunterer

Simone de Beauvoir on how to escape old age

    Simone de Beauvoir’s advice for using one’s twilight years:

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning - devotion to individuals, to groups or to causes, social, political, and to intellectual or creative work. . . . One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of friendship, indignation, compassion. (Quoted from The Coming of Age, Simone de Beauvoir.)

    For a brief biography of Simone de Beauvoir, click here.

John Rock on the optimal family size

    Having n children means giving each 1/n of what they need to achieve their full potential. As John Rock wrote:

I would call our attention to the critical difference between procreation – bringing forth, begetting - and reproduction, that is making a copy, a likeness. Intellectually mature human beings do not reproduce, do not multiply themselves, when they merely beget. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 306.)

    For a brief biography of John Rock, click here.

Martha Gellhorn believed killing animals for science is unjustified

    There are ecologists that kill, ecologists that let live, and Martha Gellhorn disrespected the first and admired the second:

As you know, I set out on my ecologists’ hunt - who is doing what and where - full of faith plus hope and charity, eager to learn and ready to admire. Instead, within nine days my first unexpected doubt had turned into something far more grave. . . . I do not expect my opposition to what is going on will move mountains; I only hope, like one hurling (not throwing) a pebble into a pond, to create some effective ripples. . . . There is a small number of purely behavioral ecologists, who patiently and skillfully (and also bravely) observe animals and do not kill them. I admire and respect the pure behaviorists because they do not harm (and this is a rare talent in itself). An example is Hans Kruuk, who has been in the Serengeti for five years, studying hyenas. The upshot of his work is that the hyena is okay in his environment, belongs there, and the relation of prey and predator is working as nature intended. This is good news for the hyena as it prevents one of the nice Park Wardens from shooting hyena on sight on the grounds that they are nasty and there are too many of them. And the behavioral ecologists, even if there is nothing more positive they can do for wildlife then prove scientifically that it ought to be let alone, acquire knowledge which is fascinating and useful to us - an extension of our insight into our own behaviour. . . . But the patient men are few, as I’ve said, while the killer ecologists increase and thrive. Nothing has convinced me that this killing for science is justifiable. (Quoted from a letter to Raymond F. Dasmann, in Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn.)

    Click for brief biographies of Martha Gellhorn, of Raymond F. Dasmann, and of Hans Kruuk.

Mary Antin on the Jewish religion

    I am thinking of people who are their religion. I am thinking of what Mary Antin wrote:

History shows that in all countries where Jews have equal rights with the rest of the people, they lose their fear of secular science, and learn how to take their ancient religion with them from century to awakening century, dropping nothing by the way but what their growing spirit has outgrown. In countries where progress is to be bought only at the price of apostasy, they shut themselves up in their synagogues, and raise the wall of extreme separateness between themselves and their Gentile neighbors. There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews. (From page 111 of Mary Antin’s autobiography, The Promised Land, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911)

    For a brief biography of Mary Antin, click here.

Beaumont Newhall on the nature of creative photography

    To Beaumont Newhall what counts in creative photography - indeed in all art - is what is inside us:

The more I think of creative photography, the more I realize how true it is that what counts in art is what is inside of us. That is what separates the artist from the layman - the ability to recognize and the skill to transmit to others those observations and feelings. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 290.)

    For a brief biography of Beaumont Newhall, click here.

William Morris on beauty in landscape and in art

    These words of William Morris need to be understood:

[I want] that these islands which make the land we love should no longer be treated as here a cinder heap, and there a game preserve, but as the fair green garden of Northern Europe, which no man on any pretence should be allowed to befoul and disfigure. I want all the works of man’s hand to be beautiful, rising in fair and honourable gradation from the simplest household goods to the stately public building, adorned with the handiwork of the greatest masters of expression. . . . (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 278.)

    For a brief biography of William Morris, click here.

Jim Endersby on Darwin and Victorians

    The fossil record, according to Jim Endersby, raised disturbing questions in the minds of Victorians:

An ancient Earth was not inherently disturbing, but the fossil record made it clear that for most of its long history, the Earth had been uninhabited by people. If, as the Bible claimed, this planet had been made as a habitation for humanity, why had its creator taken so long to get the tenants in? And if God was such a great designer, why was almost everything he’d designed now extinct? (Quoted from “Creative designs?: How Darwin’s Origin caused the Victorian crisis of faith, and other myths,” by Jim Endersby, The Times Literary Supplement, 2007 March 16.)

    To learn about the Creation Museum, Petersburg, Kentucky, which answers such questions, click here. For Jim Endersby’s web page, click here.

Elizabeth Bishop on poetry and experiencing life

    Elizabeth Bishop believed that creating good poetry doesn’t depend on the poet’s experience:

And as to experience - well, think how little some good poets have had, or how much some bad ones have. There’s no way of telling what really is “experience” anyway, it seems to me. Look at what Miss Moore has done with what would seem to me like almost none, I imagine, and the more “experience” some poets have, the worse they write. (From One Art: Letters, by Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Giroux.)

    For a brief biography of Elisabeth Bishop, click here. For a brief biography of Marianne Moore, click here.

Mary Matthews Bray on Buddhism’s kindness to animals

    In her diary, Mary Matthews Bray wrote of Buddhism’s kindness to animals:

Out of Buddhism comes the gentleness and kindness, shown by men and women, not only to each other, but to all animals as well. Buddha's theory was, that life is a long endeavor to escape from suffering, and therefore to cause suffering is the unpardonable sin. Another reason for the extreme consideration shown to animals may be due to the fact, that Buddhism accepts the doctrine of the "Transmigration of Souls." Whoever fails to meet the demands of his religious code here, may have to pass through various stages of life - even animal life, before reaching Nirvana where re-birth ends at last. (Quoted from "Diary of Mary Matthews Bray," in A Sea Trip in Clipper Ship Days, Boston, Mass.: R G. Badger Co., 1920.)

Konrad Lorenz on the inhumanity of factory farming

    Jesus’s opposite: factory farmers. Hear Konrad Lorenz:

One doubts human ethics when one sees how animals are kept in close quarters for the purpose of financial gain. . . . [I mean] the production-line maintenance of animals, which is without a doubt one of the darkest and most shameful chapters in human culture. If you have ever stood before a stable where animals are being fattened and have heard hundreds of calves bleating, if you can understand the calf’s cry for help, then you will have had enough of those people who derive profit from it. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 311.)

    For a brief biography of Konrad Lorenz, click here.