The real, the instinctive motives behind the activities of Right Thinkers (for little or nothing is done in this world for purely intellectual reasons and only an instinctive source can provide the energy required for vigorous action) are fear, envy, and self-assertiveness—fear of the unfamiliar and of that which violates the implicitly accepted taboos, envy of those who amuse themselves by doing things which the Right Thinkers have have been brought up to consider immoral, and the self-assertive, tyrannical desire to compel all men to conform to their own standards of belief and conduct.Related post: Let's Stop Somebody from Doing Something!
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, August 09, 2014
Right Thinkers
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), "Moral and Immoral," Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), pp. 77-84 (at 82):