> In any case, it suffers a little for what I think is the naive thesis of "if only mankind could cooperate like the animals do, we would live in a utopia." Of course, mankind has demonstrated through thousands of years of history that tribes of men can't really cooperate in any grand sense, so the point seems rather moot.
In one paragraph you say that his biological observations are still held in high regard. (Nothwithstanding that the science of such things was farily “underdeveloped”, he protested… you know, like how people massively protest against Darwin’s theories, from about the same era?) Then you take a dump on those same observations in the next paragraph because people who have lived in class societies, under strict hierachies (that’s all of recorded history, yes) weren’t nice to each other? Well… why do you think anarchists proposed an alternative to that?
You know what is utopian? To build a society on such a flawed human nature as what we have, centred around our selfish shortcomings—basing socity on on subjugation, oppression, and exploitation, so that (predictably) the ones who are vile and strong will take as much for themselves as they can and exploit the rest—see history—and for us collectively to doom ourselves by ruining the planet by pillaging it of its resources and all kinds of ecological balance. That’s utopian!
But congrats on your ebook project. Your pathetic little gloss demonstrates how classic literature is often wasted like pearls before swine.
In one paragraph you say that his biological observations are still held in high regard. (Nothwithstanding that the science of such things was farily “underdeveloped”, he protested… you know, like how people massively protest against Darwin’s theories, from about the same era?) Then you take a dump on those same observations in the next paragraph because people who have lived in class societies, under strict hierachies (that’s all of recorded history, yes) weren’t nice to each other? Well… why do you think anarchists proposed an alternative to that?
You know what is utopian? To build a society on such a flawed human nature as what we have, centred around our selfish shortcomings—basing socity on on subjugation, oppression, and exploitation, so that (predictably) the ones who are vile and strong will take as much for themselves as they can and exploit the rest—see history—and for us collectively to doom ourselves by ruining the planet by pillaging it of its resources and all kinds of ecological balance. That’s utopian!
But congrats on your ebook project. Your pathetic little gloss demonstrates how classic literature is often wasted like pearls before swine.