Цитатник Англофила по выходным - 29: Консервативный публицист против либерального "права на счастье"
Довольно очевидное наблюдение: с некоторых пор стало модно быть "консерватором". И в жж, и в прессе нет недостатка в таких персонажах. За редким исключением, их писания вызывают у меня чувство раздражения. Провозгласи, что ты за укорененные в веках и в народном сознании традиции, что для тебя моральные нормы и вера в Бога не пустой звук (а для оппонентов, дескать, пустой) - и ты почему-то чуть ли не автоматически получаешь право глядеть на своего читателя свысока, снисходительно его поучая, как надо жить. В соответствии с традициями, конечно же - правда, почему-то больше с теми, что так или иначе сводятся к преклонению перед всякого рода государственным и религиозным начальством. При этом никак не обойтись без выражения презрения к любому "прогрессизму" и "индивидуализму", и тем более без дежурных проклятий в адрес туманно идентифицируемых "либералов" (хорошо, если не "либерастов") и "общечеловеков" (хорошо, если не "демшизы") с их "правами", по определению виноватых во всех бедах мира - и все это не ведающим сомнений, брезгливым (и брюзгливым) тоном. Интересно, что и те из этих почтенных господ, которые на словах "за рынок" и даже именуют себя "либеральными консерваторами", все равно на деле за такой рынок (и за такое общество), которые регулируются сверху. В результате получается какая-то не просто жесткая, а до вульгарности упрощенная картина мира. К тому же их апеллирующие ко всепрощающей вере проповеди почему-то часто оборачиваются нагнетанием если не ненависти, то нетерпимости ко всем, кто имеет несчастье не полностью разделять их единственно верные взгляды.
После такого вступления самое время сообщить, что сегодня я в своей цитатной рубрике копирую из газеты Daily Mail колонку, в которой как раз утверждается превосходство религиозного мировоззрения над либеральным. И где - ужас, ужас! - даже есть призыв похерить Европейскую Конвенцию Прав Человека. И тем не менее, этот текст у меня (человека во многих отношениях либерального и уж точно нерелигиозного) вызывает не раздражение, а желание задуматься. В центре колонки - вопрос: почему религиозные люди, казалось бы связанные своими весьма жесткими догмами и вытекающими из них обязанностями, чувствуют нередко себя счастливее, чем либералы, освобожденные от этих догм и обязанностей (как в смысле мировозренческом, так и юридическом - хотя бы на уровне всяческих Деклараций о правах человека, где право на счастье чуть ли не в качестве легальной нормы зафиксировано). Вот он и пишет: The paradox is that if you think of life as a series of duties - and of happiness as an undeserved blessing, rather than a right - you are likely to be much happier than if you think happiness is yours by right... If you're allowed to do anything you damn well like, after all - and then you find that you're still not happy - then life begins to seem utterly empty.
Автор Том Атли (Tom Utley) является именно что "консервативным" (или, если угодно, "либерально-консервативным") публицистом. Собственно, он является ведущим английским консервативным публицистом. Он, в сущности, моралист (не морализатор!), пишущий на социально-политические, часто сиюминутные, темы. Но эти темы всегда привязаны к событиям, случающимися с ним и его семьей. В данном конкретном случае его весьма общие рассуждения вызваны общением в больнице с его старой матерью, которая на минувшей неделе была на грани прощания с жизнью, но выкарабкалась. Не уверен, что это лучшая его колонка (кстати, при всем своем выраженном традиционализме о религии он в явном виде пишет нечасто). Но, как всегда, колонка написана очень ясно, логично, с фирменной самоиронией. Не возникает сомнений, что автор - один из нас, что он ищет ответы на сложные вопросы вместе с нами.
Я ценю его чрезвычайно высоко и читал его колонки - сначала по субботам, а потом по пятницам - много лет - в Daily Telegraph, а с некоторых пор - по пятницам же - в Daily Mail (в свое время эта смена издания широко комментировалась медийными наблюдателями - например "Mail poaches Telegraph columnist"). В Telegraph, впрочем, у него был еще - по средам - многолетний цикл "Father writes" (он отец четырех сыновей) - эта сага читалась как захватывающий роман очень английского воспитания. Писался этот цикл под псевдонимом Tom Kemp. Раз уж к слову пришлось, приведу ссылку на давнюю статью "A father writes: rumbled", где автор объясняется с читателями по поводу расщепления своей журналистской личности ("They also write in a similar way, with the same irritating mannerisms and the same over-indulgence in adverbs, which both are struggling vainly to check." - кстати, по стилю этот текст более типичный для данного автора, чем приводимый ниже). Дам и еще одну ссылку ("Some of my best friends are gay... but they shouldn't wed"), трехлетней давности - чтобы показать, как этот консервативный автор, не поступаясь принципами, пишет на гомосексуальную тему. И для полноты картины добавлю, что его отец, несмотря на свою слепоту, был одним из самых знаменитых английских журналистов 20 века. На его смерть в 1988 г. Маргарет Тэтчер, бывшая тогда премьер-министром, даже откликнулась специальным посланием, а затем написала предисловие к его посмертной книге и стала Патроном созданного в его честь Фонда. Которым Том Атли руководит.
Предисловие, как обычно, затянулось. Ниже - сама колонка. Понимаю, что вряд ли многие из моих френдов (даже и владеющие английским) продерутся через этот довольно длинный текст - с характерным же многоэтажным заголовком. А жаль...
"Last rites for my dear old mum, a bedside farce and why the rights culture robs us of happiness"
25th July 2008, by Tom Utley
My dear old mother was given the last rites in hospital on Tuesday night. At first, she said there was no need to trouble the priest, because everyone was making a fuss about nothing and she would be fine.
But when her doctors told her there was a 'moderate to high risk' that she wouldn't survive her operation, fixed for the following morning, she changed her mind and asked the nurse to fetch him. Better safe than sorry. By the time I arrived at the hospital after work, the priest had been and gone, having anointed her with the scented oil chrism and absolved her of her sins, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
I'm sorry to say I'm a very bad Roman Catholic (I would hardly call myself one at all these days, except that it's a life sentence). A true child of my generation, brought up in the enlightened 1960s, I've long been inclined to believe that the ancient rituals of my Church may be mere mumbo-jumbo.
Not so my mother. I'd be painting an entirely false picture of her if I said she was a pious goody-goody, who wore her religion on her sleeve. Quite the contrary. But though she'd say I was talking complete rubbish, I don't believe I've ever met a better Catholic, with a stronger faith.
Stoical
When I saw her on the eve of her operation, after the priest had gone, she was in the very best of spirits, laughing and chatting away as if nothing could have been further from her mind than the ordeal ahead of her.
If she was in the least bit frightened, she didn't show it. You'd have thought she was in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to have a tooth out, rather than to have a large chunk of her innards removed, in an extremely dangerous operation for an 81-year-old.
But then she'd been like that from the moment her advanced malignant tumour was discovered a month ago. She treated it as she did her lifelong hay fever - as one of life's little annoyances, a cross to be borne. Her generation, who lived through the war, was always much more stoical than mine.
Her only complaint on Tuesday night was that the doctors had forbidden her a glass of the wine my sisters had brought. Good, I told her. All the more for me.
I'd like to be able to report that when we said our goodbyes - knowing it might well be for the last time - all was peace and serenity, like the passing of Beth in Little Women. But if truth be told, it was more like Laurel and Hardy.
My mother was in an electrically adjustable bed, and she wanted the head-end raised so that she could read before going to sleep. She couldn't work out how to do it - and nor could her useless son. So the nurse came over and pressed the button. In slow motion, the bed-head duly rose... and knocked over the bedside table, spilling a beaker of medicinal red liquid all over the pillow and sheets.
A better son would have stayed until his mother was settled again. But that was how I left her, propped up awkwardly in bed - half amused and half annoyed - waiting for the nurse to come back with clean bedding. And that was my last memory of her.
But there will be more - many more, I hope. I rejoice to report that the operation seems to have gone well, my mother is very much alive and I'll be off to see her again as soon as I've finished this column.
When I thought we might lose her, however, it struck me more forcibly than ever what an enormous consolation it must be to have a firm religious faith.
I'm quite sure it was this that kept her so calm and apparently unafraid on the eve of her operation - and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it also gave her the strength to pull through it.
Indeed - although she herself would never say anything so revoltingly pious (and it's a bit rich, coming from a semi-heathen like me) - I reckon that her sense of her Christian duty of obedience to the will of the Almighty explains a great deal about her happiness throughout her long life.
Blessing
The paradox is that if you think of life as a series of duties (as she always has) - and of happiness as an undeserved blessing, rather than a right - you are likely to be much happier than if you think happiness is yours by right.
That's a sense that most of my generation have lost, if we ever had it.
All the emphasis, since the liberal reforms of the 1960s, has been on replacing Christian duties with human rights. In the process, I believe, we have diminished the stock of human happiness rather than increasing it.
Take marriage and divorce. The aim of the liberal reformers who introduced quickie divorces in 1969 was well-meaning enough - to free couples who were trapped in miserable marriages from which, until then, only the rich or the endlessly patient could escape.
But inevitably, as divorce became easier, couples began to think less of their Christian duty to try to make the best of their marriages and more of their right to the happiness of breaking free from them.
We all know what happened next. Many of those who divorced, believing that their husbands or wives had been responsible for their unhappiness, discovered that they were every bit as unhappy - or even more so - once they found themselves single again.
And now look. Only this week, the Institute for Public Policy Research has published a report finding - surprise, surprise - that huge numbers of those who divorced in the 1970s are lonely and depressed, having lost all contact with their children.
It's the same with casual sex, pornography, drugs and abortion. The liberalisation of the law and society's attitude to all of them was intended to free us of the shackles of Christian duty and promote our right to happiness. But hasn't it, in fact, caused considerably more unhappiness than it has ever cured?
Oblivion
In particular, millions of children are growing up without fathers - indeed, without boundaries of any kind to keep them on the straight and narrow.
This is surely what lies behind the current epidemics among teenagers, not only of knife crime but of binge-drinking and drug-taking, too. If you're allowed to do anything you damn well like, after all - and then you find that you're still not happy - then life begins to seem utterly empty. So why not get into a fight or drink yourself into oblivion?
Perhaps it's too late to swing the pendulum back again from our human rights towards our duty to others - parents, husbands, wives and children. As I never cease to argue, however, it would be a jolly good start to repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the wretched European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course, many if not most of the rights embodied in the charter spring from the same Judaeo-Christian system of ethics that has guided my mother throughout her life. It's just that the charter seems to get everything the wrong way round.
For example, the duty laid down in the Bible, 'thou shalt not kill', amounts to much the same as the 'right to life' enshrined in the charter.
But the difference is that there can be no sense of disappointment if we look upon life and its pleasures as blessings from above, rather than rights vested in us as human beings.
And here's one last thought: the 'right to life' will be no use to any of us when we're on our deathbeds, as all of us will be one day. The last rites, on the other hand, just may be.
После такого вступления самое время сообщить, что сегодня я в своей цитатной рубрике копирую из газеты Daily Mail колонку, в которой как раз утверждается превосходство религиозного мировоззрения над либеральным. И где - ужас, ужас! - даже есть призыв похерить Европейскую Конвенцию Прав Человека. И тем не менее, этот текст у меня (человека во многих отношениях либерального и уж точно нерелигиозного) вызывает не раздражение, а желание задуматься. В центре колонки - вопрос: почему религиозные люди, казалось бы связанные своими весьма жесткими догмами и вытекающими из них обязанностями, чувствуют нередко себя счастливее, чем либералы, освобожденные от этих догм и обязанностей (как в смысле мировозренческом, так и юридическом - хотя бы на уровне всяческих Деклараций о правах человека, где право на счастье чуть ли не в качестве легальной нормы зафиксировано). Вот он и пишет: The paradox is that if you think of life as a series of duties - and of happiness as an undeserved blessing, rather than a right - you are likely to be much happier than if you think happiness is yours by right... If you're allowed to do anything you damn well like, after all - and then you find that you're still not happy - then life begins to seem utterly empty.
Автор Том Атли (Tom Utley) является именно что "консервативным" (или, если угодно, "либерально-консервативным") публицистом. Собственно, он является ведущим английским консервативным публицистом. Он, в сущности, моралист (не морализатор!), пишущий на социально-политические, часто сиюминутные, темы. Но эти темы всегда привязаны к событиям, случающимися с ним и его семьей. В данном конкретном случае его весьма общие рассуждения вызваны общением в больнице с его старой матерью, которая на минувшей неделе была на грани прощания с жизнью, но выкарабкалась. Не уверен, что это лучшая его колонка (кстати, при всем своем выраженном традиционализме о религии он в явном виде пишет нечасто). Но, как всегда, колонка написана очень ясно, логично, с фирменной самоиронией. Не возникает сомнений, что автор - один из нас, что он ищет ответы на сложные вопросы вместе с нами.
Я ценю его чрезвычайно высоко и читал его колонки - сначала по субботам, а потом по пятницам - много лет - в Daily Telegraph, а с некоторых пор - по пятницам же - в Daily Mail (в свое время эта смена издания широко комментировалась медийными наблюдателями - например "Mail poaches Telegraph columnist"). В Telegraph, впрочем, у него был еще - по средам - многолетний цикл "Father writes" (он отец четырех сыновей) - эта сага читалась как захватывающий роман очень английского воспитания. Писался этот цикл под псевдонимом Tom Kemp. Раз уж к слову пришлось, приведу ссылку на давнюю статью "A father writes: rumbled", где автор объясняется с читателями по поводу расщепления своей журналистской личности ("They also write in a similar way, with the same irritating mannerisms and the same over-indulgence in adverbs, which both are struggling vainly to check." - кстати, по стилю этот текст более типичный для данного автора, чем приводимый ниже). Дам и еще одну ссылку ("Some of my best friends are gay... but they shouldn't wed"), трехлетней давности - чтобы показать, как этот консервативный автор, не поступаясь принципами, пишет на гомосексуальную тему. И для полноты картины добавлю, что его отец, несмотря на свою слепоту, был одним из самых знаменитых английских журналистов 20 века. На его смерть в 1988 г. Маргарет Тэтчер, бывшая тогда премьер-министром, даже откликнулась специальным посланием, а затем написала предисловие к его посмертной книге и стала Патроном созданного в его честь Фонда. Которым Том Атли руководит.
Предисловие, как обычно, затянулось. Ниже - сама колонка. Понимаю, что вряд ли многие из моих френдов (даже и владеющие английским) продерутся через этот довольно длинный текст - с характерным же многоэтажным заголовком. А жаль...
"Last rites for my dear old mum, a bedside farce and why the rights culture robs us of happiness"
25th July 2008, by Tom Utley
My dear old mother was given the last rites in hospital on Tuesday night. At first, she said there was no need to trouble the priest, because everyone was making a fuss about nothing and she would be fine.
But when her doctors told her there was a 'moderate to high risk' that she wouldn't survive her operation, fixed for the following morning, she changed her mind and asked the nurse to fetch him. Better safe than sorry. By the time I arrived at the hospital after work, the priest had been and gone, having anointed her with the scented oil chrism and absolved her of her sins, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
I'm sorry to say I'm a very bad Roman Catholic (I would hardly call myself one at all these days, except that it's a life sentence). A true child of my generation, brought up in the enlightened 1960s, I've long been inclined to believe that the ancient rituals of my Church may be mere mumbo-jumbo.
Not so my mother. I'd be painting an entirely false picture of her if I said she was a pious goody-goody, who wore her religion on her sleeve. Quite the contrary. But though she'd say I was talking complete rubbish, I don't believe I've ever met a better Catholic, with a stronger faith.
Stoical
When I saw her on the eve of her operation, after the priest had gone, she was in the very best of spirits, laughing and chatting away as if nothing could have been further from her mind than the ordeal ahead of her.
If she was in the least bit frightened, she didn't show it. You'd have thought she was in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to have a tooth out, rather than to have a large chunk of her innards removed, in an extremely dangerous operation for an 81-year-old.
But then she'd been like that from the moment her advanced malignant tumour was discovered a month ago. She treated it as she did her lifelong hay fever - as one of life's little annoyances, a cross to be borne. Her generation, who lived through the war, was always much more stoical than mine.
Her only complaint on Tuesday night was that the doctors had forbidden her a glass of the wine my sisters had brought. Good, I told her. All the more for me.
I'd like to be able to report that when we said our goodbyes - knowing it might well be for the last time - all was peace and serenity, like the passing of Beth in Little Women. But if truth be told, it was more like Laurel and Hardy.
My mother was in an electrically adjustable bed, and she wanted the head-end raised so that she could read before going to sleep. She couldn't work out how to do it - and nor could her useless son. So the nurse came over and pressed the button. In slow motion, the bed-head duly rose... and knocked over the bedside table, spilling a beaker of medicinal red liquid all over the pillow and sheets.
A better son would have stayed until his mother was settled again. But that was how I left her, propped up awkwardly in bed - half amused and half annoyed - waiting for the nurse to come back with clean bedding. And that was my last memory of her.
But there will be more - many more, I hope. I rejoice to report that the operation seems to have gone well, my mother is very much alive and I'll be off to see her again as soon as I've finished this column.
When I thought we might lose her, however, it struck me more forcibly than ever what an enormous consolation it must be to have a firm religious faith.
I'm quite sure it was this that kept her so calm and apparently unafraid on the eve of her operation - and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it also gave her the strength to pull through it.
Indeed - although she herself would never say anything so revoltingly pious (and it's a bit rich, coming from a semi-heathen like me) - I reckon that her sense of her Christian duty of obedience to the will of the Almighty explains a great deal about her happiness throughout her long life.
Blessing
The paradox is that if you think of life as a series of duties (as she always has) - and of happiness as an undeserved blessing, rather than a right - you are likely to be much happier than if you think happiness is yours by right.
That's a sense that most of my generation have lost, if we ever had it.
All the emphasis, since the liberal reforms of the 1960s, has been on replacing Christian duties with human rights. In the process, I believe, we have diminished the stock of human happiness rather than increasing it.
Take marriage and divorce. The aim of the liberal reformers who introduced quickie divorces in 1969 was well-meaning enough - to free couples who were trapped in miserable marriages from which, until then, only the rich or the endlessly patient could escape.
But inevitably, as divorce became easier, couples began to think less of their Christian duty to try to make the best of their marriages and more of their right to the happiness of breaking free from them.
We all know what happened next. Many of those who divorced, believing that their husbands or wives had been responsible for their unhappiness, discovered that they were every bit as unhappy - or even more so - once they found themselves single again.
And now look. Only this week, the Institute for Public Policy Research has published a report finding - surprise, surprise - that huge numbers of those who divorced in the 1970s are lonely and depressed, having lost all contact with their children.
It's the same with casual sex, pornography, drugs and abortion. The liberalisation of the law and society's attitude to all of them was intended to free us of the shackles of Christian duty and promote our right to happiness. But hasn't it, in fact, caused considerably more unhappiness than it has ever cured?
Oblivion
In particular, millions of children are growing up without fathers - indeed, without boundaries of any kind to keep them on the straight and narrow.
This is surely what lies behind the current epidemics among teenagers, not only of knife crime but of binge-drinking and drug-taking, too. If you're allowed to do anything you damn well like, after all - and then you find that you're still not happy - then life begins to seem utterly empty. So why not get into a fight or drink yourself into oblivion?
Perhaps it's too late to swing the pendulum back again from our human rights towards our duty to others - parents, husbands, wives and children. As I never cease to argue, however, it would be a jolly good start to repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the wretched European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course, many if not most of the rights embodied in the charter spring from the same Judaeo-Christian system of ethics that has guided my mother throughout her life. It's just that the charter seems to get everything the wrong way round.
For example, the duty laid down in the Bible, 'thou shalt not kill', amounts to much the same as the 'right to life' enshrined in the charter.
But the difference is that there can be no sense of disappointment if we look upon life and its pleasures as blessings from above, rather than rights vested in us as human beings.
And here's one last thought: the 'right to life' will be no use to any of us when we're on our deathbeds, as all of us will be one day. The last rites, on the other hand, just may be.