The Saunterer

Czeslaw Milosz on why people believe myths

    People, Czeslaw Milosz wrote, believe myths because myths give positive effects that believing logical truths don’t:

“Myth” is a highly respected word; the glow of ancient Greece is reflected from it, the glory of demigods and heroes. Lately, however, it has taken on a new meaning. It appears to designate every truth, every system of meaning, which is accepted not because of its logical necessity, but through an act of will. People believe in myth not because they simply believe but because they yearn to believe in it, because they have faith in its positive effects. (Quoted from Legends of Modernity: Essays and letters from occupied Poland, 1942 - 1943, by Czeslaw Milosz; Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005.)

    For a brief biography of Czeslaw Milosz, click here.

Osbert Burdett on how industrialism enslaves

    Industrialism is the worst kind of master because it has no feelings (and the sweatshops of the garment trade are only the start of current instances). Hear Osbert Burdett:

Industrialism establishes a state of slavery more corrupting than any previously known in the world because the master is not a man but a system, and the whip an invisible machine. With this it is impossible to enter into any but inhuman relations, and in such an inversion of humanity all the instincts become perverted at their source. (Quoted from The Beardsley Period: An Essay in Perspective, Osbert Burdett, Osbert, New York: Cooper Square Publishers,1925.)