Two quick notes
A postscript to my previous post and excerpts from Sri Aurobindo's essay “Conservation and Progress”
Jonathan Fink’s latest Silicon Bite opened with this magnificent line:
North Korea invades Europe and no one seems to care
This is his summary:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused North Korea of sending military personnel to Russia. And judging by the media coverage, this is not seen as a big deal. It may be worth spelling that out. Iranian drones batter Ukrainian cities, killing civilians daily. Approximately half the three million artillery shells Russia uses annually come from North Korea. And now North Korea is sending its own troops to invade European territory. This is not hyperbole, or clickbait. North Korea is literally involved in the invasion of a sovereign European democracy, involved in the slaughter of innocent European civilians, and apparently neither the media nor our esteemed leaders seem to give a rat’s arse about it. Is this the moment where history will judge that Western democracy faltered and failed?
My second note consists of two passages from a piece Sri Aurobindo published in the Arya in May 1916. It’s titled “Conservation and Progress” (Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, pp. 127‒32). I came across it this morning while getting on with my “day job,” which is producing the forthcoming comprehensive index for The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.
The partisans of the future call themselves the party of progress, the children of light and denounce the past as ignorant, evil, a mass of errors and abuses; their view alone has the monopoly of the light, the truth, the good — a light, good and truth which will equally be denounced as error and evil by succeeding generations.
The partisans of the present look with horror upon all progress as an impious and abominable plunge into error and evil and degeneration and ruin; for them the present is the culmination of humanity, — as previous “present” times were for all the preceding generations and as the future which they abhor will be for these unprogressive souls if they should then reincarnate; they will then defend it with the same passion and asperity against another future as they now attack it in the interests of the present.
The partisans of the past are of two kinds.
The first admit the defects of the present but support it in so far as it still cherishes the principles of the high, perfect, faultless, adorable past, that golden age of the race or community, and because even if somewhat degenerate, its forms are a bulwark against the impiety of progress; if they admit any change, it is in the direction of the past that they seek it.
A second kind condemn the present root and branch as degenerate, hateful, horrible, vicious, accursed; they erect a past form as the hope of a humanity returning to the wisdom of its forefathers. And to such quarrels of children the intellectuals and the leaders of thought and faith lend the power of the specious or moving word and the striking idea and the emotional fervour or religious ardour which they conceive to be the very voice and light and force of Truth itself in its utter self-revelation.
Nature makes good use of the struggle between these partisans and her method is necessary in our present state of passionate ignorance and egoistic obstinacy; but none the less is it from the point of view of a higher knowledge a pitiably ignorant struggle.
If we consider carefully we shall see that the past is indeed a huge force of conservation, but of conservation that is not immobile, but on the contrary offers itself as material for change and new realisation; that the present is the constant change and new actual realisation which the past desires and compels; and that the future is that force of new realisation not yet actual towards which the past was moving and for the sake of which it lived. Then we perceive that there is no real opposition between these three; we see that they are parts of a single movement.... Yet the human mind in its mania of division and opposition seeks to set them at strife and ranges humanity into various camps, the partisans of the past, the partisans of the present, the partisans of the future, the partisans of all sorts of compromises between the three forces. Nature makes good use of the struggle between these partisans and her method is necessary in our present state of passionate ignorance and egoistic obstinacy; but none the less is it from the point of view of a higher knowledge a pitiably ignorant struggle.
If you like Aurocafe, or any particular post, you can thank me by sharing it, and if you have a few bucks to spare, you can buy me a coffee.
Communication obviously exists: I shared this privately yesterday (against a painting of Spotted Elk by Karl Bodmer).
“The delusion of ‘progress’: Everything existed so we could exist. We, who are the absolute negation of Them. Modern finale: We don’t exist.
‘The Greek proposition is: “If such gods are to be worshipped, it follows that such men are to be honoured.” The Romans put in the minor premise: “But such men are in no way to be honoured.” The Christians draw the conclusion: “Therefore such gods are in no way to be worshipped.’’
Augustine, de civitate Dei, II.13, p.62, 426 AD)”
Btw, Nishida shared the same standpoint as Sri Aurobindo regarding a creative process that moves “from the made to the making”.