The Saunterer

Charles Darwin on the benefits of poetry and music

    Possibly if the young mothers of the world heeded Charles Darwin’s advice, their children would grow up with greater moral character than most of them are now destined for:

. . . if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. (Quoted from Charles Darwin’s Autobiography, New York: Henry Schulman Inc., 1950, p. 67.)

    For a brief biography of Charles Darwin, click here.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on how to have a solid marriage

    Saint-Exupéry tells below the secret of having a solid comradeship of any kind. I remind my Sauntering self that marriage is a comradeship, so he also is telling the secret of having a solid, self-respecting marriage:

No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. (Quoted from Wind, Sand and Stars, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, p. 195.)

    Saint-Exupéry had no solid marriage. That is to say he and his wife did not look outward on the same high values, in a union of the same high effort.  For a brief biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, click here.

George Bernard Shaw on a silly social habit

    As George Bernard Shaw saw it:

If you do things merely because you think some other fool expects you to do them, and he expects you to do them because he thinks you expect him to expect you to do them, it will end in everybody doing what nobody wants to do, which is in my opinion a silly state of things.

    For a brief biography of George Bernard Shaw, click here.

Why we need dark nighttime skies

    Mike Jablonski, a crusader against light pollution, sent us a 3-minute YouTube video from the Pinky Show that excels in saying how dark nighttime skies are necessary to the human soul. Please click here to see it.

Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell on the need for solitude

    Solitude, believed Florida Scott-Maxwell, is an oasis in a world crowded with people:

Even motoring, as it once was, required an almost empty road, and what sort of climber likes a crowded mountain peak? It is undeniable that one needs the absence of others to enjoy the magic of many things. I deny that these are privilege. They are necessities that man may know himself, and that man may know nature when she is unsullied by him. So vital are these joys that I am convinced that crowds endanger our quality; with them, in them, we become unworthy of each other. And what do we live by and for but that evanescent achievement, the merit of mankind? (Quoted from The Measure of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell, New York: Knopf, 1968, p.23.)

    Population reduction will raise the quality of humankind.

    Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) was a writer, playwright, suffragist, and psychologist who studied with Carl Jung in Scotland and England.

Mary Somerville on the vileness of hunting animals

    On the vileness of hunting innocent animals, Mary Somerville wrote more than one hundred years ago:

We English cannot boast of humanity, however, as long as our sportsmen find pleasure in shooting down tame pigeons as they fly terrified out of a cage. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 276.)

    Nor can America boast of humanity as long as it allows what you’ll see by clicking here. For a brief biography of Mary Somerville, click here.

John Muir naturalists on the true meanings of “natural resources” and “rational man”

    John Muir naturalists are those with John Muir’s beliefs, as extracted from his collected writings and applied to today. I have spoken for them in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p.157:

    John Muir naturalists are for making known the true meanings of certain words and terms, used glibly by those for development, that subtly suggest that keeping nature whole is wrongheaded.
    “Natural resources” is one of these. Meaning the raw stuff of nature, it carries the connotation that forests, bogs, swamps, animals, rivers, gravel, clay and the like are inferior to finished stuff that can be made with them. Redwood trees are labeled a natural resource, implying they are inadequate to the board feet of timber they can be sawed into and rung up on cash registers. Cougars and bears are labeled natural resources, implying they are better used by those who will pay for their experience of shooting them.
    Similarly, everything that John Muir naturalists believe goes against a term economists invented, “rational man.” This term lends an air of wisdom to whatever the greatest number do. The truth is, the so-called rational man is the majority materialistic person, intent of more and more possessions, diversions, and conveniences, and having them sooner than later, and as cheaply as possible. So-called rational man scarcely believes in leaving well enough alone. So-called rational man is the reason nature is less when we get up than when we went to bed. So-called rational man would label cumulus clouds a natural resource, could someone find a way to project advertisements on the sides and bottoms. So-called rational man is John Muir’s foolish man.

    For a brief biography of John Muir, click here.

Edgar Degas on the need for solitude

    Unless almost every day of the year you can have seven hours of pure solitude a day, put away your dream of doing great creative work. Included in this view are artists, notes Edgar Degas:

It seems to me that if one wants to be a serious artist today and create an original little niche for oneself, or at least ensure that one preserves the highest degree of innocence of character, one must constantly immerse oneself in solitude. There is too much tittle-tattle. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 284.)

    For a brief biography of Edgar Degas, click here.

Margaret Fuller on the false start that is America

    Margaret Fuller believed that America should start over:

The country needs to be born again; she is polluted with the lust of power, the lust of gain.

    For a brief biography of Margaret Fuller, click here.

Religion is killing the natural world

    Jack E. McClellan of St. George, Utah, puts his finger on the enemy that maximizes the destruction of nature: 

A while back the pope asked young Catholics to lighten their footprint on the Earth by keeping the air and water pure. I find it ironic - and very telling - that he did not mention the very reason the Earth’s air and water are being polluted and over-used, and the plants and animals stomped to pulp and extinction: Too many people.
    It’s about time (way past time, actually) for the pope to declare that indiscriminate breeding is no longer a directive of God. “Multiply and replenish” has long been fulfilled. And perhaps, too, it’s time for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to receive a revelation that two kids - or maybe three if you slip up - are quite enough. (Letter to the editor, The Salt Lake Tribune, October 2, 2007)