The Feral Underclass
7th April 2004, 10:35
I was reading Peter Kropotkin's essay called 'Anarchist Morality' and he quotes this young nihilist from Tzarist Russia. I wanted to share it with everyone. Maybe there can be a debate.
"I will be immoral! I will be immoral and why should I not? Because the bible wills it? But the bible is just a collection of Babylonian and Hebrew traditions, traditions collected and put together like the Homeric poems, or as is being done still with Basque poems and Mongolian legends. Must I then go back to the state of mind of the half civilized people of the east?
Must I be moral because Kant tells me of a categoric imperative, of a mysterious command which comes to me from the depths of my own being and bids me be moral? But why should this "catagoric imperative" exercise a greater authority over my actions than that other imperative, which at times may command me to get drunk. A word, nothing but a word, like the words 'Providence' and 'Destiny,' invented to conceal our ignorance.
Or perhaps I am to be moral to oblige Bentham, who wants me to believe that I shall be happier if I drown to save a passerby who has fallen into a river than if I watched him drown?
Or perhaps because such has been my education? Because my mother taught me morality? Shall I then go and kneel down in church, honour the Queen, bow before a judge I know to be a scoundrel, simply because our mothers, our good ignorant mothers, have taught us such a pack of nonsense.
I am prejudiced - Like everyone else. I will try to rid myself of prejudice? Even though immorality be distasteful, I will yet force myself to be immoral, as when I was a boy I forced myself to give up fearing the dark, churchyards, ghosts and dead people - all of which I had been taught to fear.
It will be immoral to snap a weapon abused by religion; I will do it, were it only to protect against the hypocrisy imposed on us in the name of a word to which the name morality has been given."
"I will be immoral! I will be immoral and why should I not? Because the bible wills it? But the bible is just a collection of Babylonian and Hebrew traditions, traditions collected and put together like the Homeric poems, or as is being done still with Basque poems and Mongolian legends. Must I then go back to the state of mind of the half civilized people of the east?
Must I be moral because Kant tells me of a categoric imperative, of a mysterious command which comes to me from the depths of my own being and bids me be moral? But why should this "catagoric imperative" exercise a greater authority over my actions than that other imperative, which at times may command me to get drunk. A word, nothing but a word, like the words 'Providence' and 'Destiny,' invented to conceal our ignorance.
Or perhaps I am to be moral to oblige Bentham, who wants me to believe that I shall be happier if I drown to save a passerby who has fallen into a river than if I watched him drown?
Or perhaps because such has been my education? Because my mother taught me morality? Shall I then go and kneel down in church, honour the Queen, bow before a judge I know to be a scoundrel, simply because our mothers, our good ignorant mothers, have taught us such a pack of nonsense.
I am prejudiced - Like everyone else. I will try to rid myself of prejudice? Even though immorality be distasteful, I will yet force myself to be immoral, as when I was a boy I forced myself to give up fearing the dark, churchyards, ghosts and dead people - all of which I had been taught to fear.
It will be immoral to snap a weapon abused by religion; I will do it, were it only to protect against the hypocrisy imposed on us in the name of a word to which the name morality has been given."