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Rasselas (Johnson: VIII)
I thought I could finish this in two posts and an hour or two, if you can believe it.
Continued from this.
Ch 27
Rasselas tells Nekayah that she's just being negative, and Imlac himself wasn't as discouraging, he might as well have listened to him. She's just finding what she wanted to find, not what's really going on!
Shut up, Rasselas. #teamnekayah
He's fairly become convinced that power and conquest aren't the way to happiness, because you have enemies and so many things can go horribly wrong. Interestingly, he specifically talks about what Imlac told him back in the beginning—that you have to delegate to ministers to govern a wide realm, and can't possibly keep track of what every single one of them is doing, so ignorant/evil ministers can exploit subjects, mislead him, or betray him. Giving favours to anyone insults others, and since there are always so many more people than favours, the majority of everyone are always pissed off.
Nekayah thinks those people are dumbasses.
Rasselas points out that resentment isn't always unreasonable; people can hide their real characters, and it's natural to resent an inferior person being favoured above you, and the most well-meaning person in the world is going to be biased by personal feeling. The more you have to do, the higher the opportunity of doing the wrong thing, there are always evil people you have to struggle against, and sometimes good ones too who don't understand what's going on. So power isn't the way, which means living modestly must be it. People whose sphere of influence is actually restricted to what they can do, who personally knows everyone he trusts, without the authority to raise fear/hope/whatever. He concludes with—jfc, Rasselas— "Surely he has nothing to do but love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy."
Nekayah says that nobody can know if someone being perfectly virtuous would make them perfectly happy since nobody is perfect. But certainly how people seem and how good they are don't seem to have much to do with each other. Good and evil alike are subject to awful things, whether political upheaval or famines or natural disasters or whatever. All that virtue can give you is a clear conscience and hope for a better life hereafter that allows you to endure patiently. But, quite reasonably, she ends with, "remember that patience must suppose pain."
Ch 28
Rasselas condescendingly tells her ("my dear princess") that she's making a rhetorical mistake by bringing in examples of drastic disasters, which are essentially outliers. Most people live pretty okay lives without disaster, and regardless of the political situation. They need to focus on the personal, what happiness you get by working for it and working for the happiness of others. Companionate marriage is clearly part of fundamental human nature, so it must be a route to happiness.
*squints*
Nekayah responds that she thinks marriage might actually just be one of the "innumerable modes of human misery." (I love her, lol.) She lists all the many things that make marriages miserable, and says she's inclined to think "that marriage is rather permitted than approved," and that nobody would voluntarily lock themselves into the compact if not for passion.
Rasselas fairly says that she just said celibacy is worse than marriage; however bad both may be, only one thing can be worst of all. He adds sententiously, "Thus it happens when wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other, and leave the mind open to truth."
PUNCH HIM, NEKAYAH.
She doesn't punch him, but she does respond sharply that she didn't expect to be accused of dishonesty rather than struggling with large ideas. Just as it's difficult to visually compare two vast, complex landscapes, it's difficult to compare two vast, complex concepts—we can easily understand things that are straightforward, but not entire systems, and it's natural to vacillate back and forth in judging them. The more she thinks about one, the worse that one seems.
Rasselas says they shouldn't make things worse by arguing.
Shut up, Rasselas.
Of course, then he keeps arguing, saying that if you're going to argue that marriage is an evil because miserable marriages exist, you might as well argue that life itself is an evil because misery exists. The world has got to be populated one way or another.
Nekayah says that populating the world is 1) not their problem and 2) not a problem, clearly. Heh.
Continued from this.
Ch 27
Rasselas tells Nekayah that she's just being negative, and Imlac himself wasn't as discouraging, he might as well have listened to him. She's just finding what she wanted to find, not what's really going on!
Shut up, Rasselas. #teamnekayah
He's fairly become convinced that power and conquest aren't the way to happiness, because you have enemies and so many things can go horribly wrong. Interestingly, he specifically talks about what Imlac told him back in the beginning—that you have to delegate to ministers to govern a wide realm, and can't possibly keep track of what every single one of them is doing, so ignorant/evil ministers can exploit subjects, mislead him, or betray him. Giving favours to anyone insults others, and since there are always so many more people than favours, the majority of everyone are always pissed off.
Nekayah thinks those people are dumbasses.
Rasselas points out that resentment isn't always unreasonable; people can hide their real characters, and it's natural to resent an inferior person being favoured above you, and the most well-meaning person in the world is going to be biased by personal feeling. The more you have to do, the higher the opportunity of doing the wrong thing, there are always evil people you have to struggle against, and sometimes good ones too who don't understand what's going on. So power isn't the way, which means living modestly must be it. People whose sphere of influence is actually restricted to what they can do, who personally knows everyone he trusts, without the authority to raise fear/hope/whatever. He concludes with—jfc, Rasselas— "Surely he has nothing to do but love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy."
Nekayah says that nobody can know if someone being perfectly virtuous would make them perfectly happy since nobody is perfect. But certainly how people seem and how good they are don't seem to have much to do with each other. Good and evil alike are subject to awful things, whether political upheaval or famines or natural disasters or whatever. All that virtue can give you is a clear conscience and hope for a better life hereafter that allows you to endure patiently. But, quite reasonably, she ends with, "remember that patience must suppose pain."
Ch 28
Rasselas condescendingly tells her ("my dear princess") that she's making a rhetorical mistake by bringing in examples of drastic disasters, which are essentially outliers. Most people live pretty okay lives without disaster, and regardless of the political situation. They need to focus on the personal, what happiness you get by working for it and working for the happiness of others. Companionate marriage is clearly part of fundamental human nature, so it must be a route to happiness.
*squints*
Nekayah responds that she thinks marriage might actually just be one of the "innumerable modes of human misery." (I love her, lol.) She lists all the many things that make marriages miserable, and says she's inclined to think "that marriage is rather permitted than approved," and that nobody would voluntarily lock themselves into the compact if not for passion.
Rasselas fairly says that she just said celibacy is worse than marriage; however bad both may be, only one thing can be worst of all. He adds sententiously, "Thus it happens when wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other, and leave the mind open to truth."
PUNCH HIM, NEKAYAH.
She doesn't punch him, but she does respond sharply that she didn't expect to be accused of dishonesty rather than struggling with large ideas. Just as it's difficult to visually compare two vast, complex landscapes, it's difficult to compare two vast, complex concepts—we can easily understand things that are straightforward, but not entire systems, and it's natural to vacillate back and forth in judging them. The more she thinks about one, the worse that one seems.
Rasselas says they shouldn't make things worse by arguing.
Shut up, Rasselas.
Of course, then he keeps arguing, saying that if you're going to argue that marriage is an evil because miserable marriages exist, you might as well argue that life itself is an evil because misery exists. The world has got to be populated one way or another.
Nekayah says that populating the world is 1) not their problem and 2) not a problem, clearly. Heh.