Iris Murdoch - The Book And The Brotherhood

‘But there's no such thing as history! Your theory is based mistake. All it comes to is wreck the nearest thing and imagine something good will automatically come about! You combine irrational pessimism with irrational optimism! You foresee terrible things, but you also think that you can understand the future and control it and love it! Marxism has always "saved" its extremely improbable hypotheses by faith in a Utopian conclusion. And you accuse me of believing in God!'

`Yes. Absolute pessimism and absolute optimism, both are necessary.'

`Is that what's called dialectical thinking?'

`You've always been too frightened of talking nonsense, that's why you could never really do philosophy. I am not a utopian, I don't imagine that the state will wither away or the division of labour will cease or alienation will disappear. Nor do I think that we shall have full employment or a classless society or a world without hunger in any future that we can conceive of now. It's the wasteland next. Of course I think this society, our so-called free society, is rotten to the corem- it’s oppressive and corrupt and unjust, it's materialistic and ruthless and immoral, and soft, rotted with pornography and kitsch. You think this too. But you imagine that in some way all the nice things will be preserved and all the nasty things will become less nasty. It can't be like that, we have to go through the fire, in an oppressive society only violence is honest. Men are half alive now, in the future they’ll be puppets. Even if we don't blow ourselves up the future will be; by your nice standards, terrible. There will be a crisis authority, of sovereignty, technology will rule because it will have to rule. History has passed you by, everything happens fast now, we have to run to stay in the same place, let alone get a step ahead to see where we are. We've got to rethink everything -'

`Wait a minute,' said Gerard. He felt his heart beating faster, he felt hot and took off his jacket. 'You say men will be puppets and technology will rule, but surely, whether you call yourself a Marxist or not, you must be working against such a society, not for it! All right, the present is imperfect and the future looks grim, but we must just hold onto what’s good, hold onto our values and try to weather the storm. You say rethink everything, but in the light of what? We must be pragmatic and hopeful, not in love with despair! Wecan’t know the future, Marx couldn't predict the future, and he was looking into one a good deal steadier than ours. We must defend the individual -'

‘What individual?'

‘Come of it,'said Gerard.

‘The bourgeois individual won't survive this tornado, he has already disintegrated, he has withered, he knows he's a fiction. I am not in love with despair, I am in love if you like with a good society which doesn't yet exist. But one cannot even glimpse that society unless one understands the collapse of this one.’

‘I suppose you see yourself as a commissar in a world state of puppets who can't read or write! The elite would have the books, the rest would be watching television!'

‘ We won't be there, we are trash, we deserve nothing not even whipping, of course we are in pain, we are living through our own dissolution, all we can do -'

The telephone began ringing in the hall. Patricia opened the door. It’sRose, wanting you.'

‘Oh hell,' said Gerard, and went out closing the door behind him.

Rose’s voice was anxious and apologetic. 'Oh, my dear- are you all right?’

‘Of course, I'm all right!'

‘I’m terribly sorry I didn't ring sooner, I'm away from the flat – I’ve had a rather odd morning, I'll tell you later. I would rung sooner only I couldn't find a telephone box. How did it go?’

‘How did what go?'

‘You talk with Crimond!'

‘It’s still going on.'

‘Can’t you get rid off him? Is it -?'

Rose, could you ring later on sometime? Sorry, I must go now.’ He put down the telephone and hurried back into the dining room.

Crimond had got up and was studying one of the pictures representing a geisha in a boat.

‘Don’t go, David. Do sit down.'

Crimond was looking more relaxed. Enlivened by the argument he looked younger and less tired. 'Did Rose think I'd done you a mischief?'

`She was anxious!'

`I hope I've dealt an intellectual wound.'

`Not yet!'

`I have to go soon -'

`Sit down.'

They sat down. There was a moment's silence.

`You were saying all we can do -'

`Yes,' said Crimond, 'we've got to understand suffering, express suffering, see it, breathe it -'

'The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together – until now."'

`Yes -'

`You don't imagine you can abolish suffering!'

`You should reflect upon the assumptions which underlie that remark!'

`All right – not all, but most?'

`Most, much – we've got to think about the whole of history, about all the people who went under and were trodden on, and think of it as part of what's happening now wherever people are crushed or frightened or hungry -'

`This is self-indulgent rhetoric,' said Gerard. 'And as for Marxism, it may not make them hungry, but it certainly makes them frightened!'

`That's a cheap point. We have to try to see further and hope more. Right thinking is difficult in a wrong world. We have to think in terms of an entirely new person, a new consciousness, a new capacity for happiness, a kind of happiness the human race hasn't yet dreamt of. The individual you rate so highly, best personified of course in yourself, is just a cripple, half a person, well, he was half once, now he's just a whining sliver- and he's one of the lucky ones. There are immense sources of spiritual energy which are completely untapped -'

`Your theory is schizophrenic, you talk about a crisis of authority and men being puppets and going through the fire and the next moment it's spiritual energy and new people with new happiness – But what happens in between? Your ideas lead straight into tyranny – and you imagine you can see the ideal society just beyond it! You said you weren't a utopian -‘

‘The utopian impulse is essential, one must keep faith with idea that a good society is possible -'

‘There is no good society,' said Gerard, 'not like you think, society can't be perfected, the best we can hope for is a decent society, the best we can achieve is what we've achieved now, human rights, individual rights, and trying to use technology to feed people. Of course things can improve, there can be less hunger and more justice, but any radical change will be for the worse – and your dreams will only make us lose what we have.-‘

‘Do you seriously mean,' said Crimond, 'that you cannot conceive of any social system which is better than western parlamentary democracy?'

`No. I cannot. Of course there can be -'

‘Yes, yes, little improvements, as you say.'

‘Large improvements. And of course tyrannies can keep people alive who would starve under freedom, but that's a different point. A free society -'

'I don't think you know what freedom means. You imagine it’s just economic tinkering plus individual human rights. But you can't have freedom when all social relations are wrong, unjust, irrational – when the body of your society is diseased, deformed – we must clear the ground -'

'A democracy can change itself -'

‘Can you see this bourgeois democracy changing itself? Come! We've got to see it all, Gerard, we've got to live it all, we’ve got to suffer it all, we've got to see how disjointed it all is. You think of yourself as an open-minded pluralist – but you've got a simple compact little philosophy of life, all unified, all tied up comfortably together, a few soothing ideas which let you off thinking! But we must think – and that's what's such hell, philosophy is hell, it's contrary to nature, it hurts so, one must make a shot at the whole thing and that means failing too, not really being able to connect, and not pretending that things fit when they don't – and keeping hold of the things that don't fit, keeping them whole and clear in their almost fittingness - oh God, it's so hard -'