An Immodest Proposal introduction
An Immodest Proposal Author’s note
Moving into the future with any sense of progress or expectation of productive improvement is extremely difficult in today’s world. If I can’t find within myself a future I can abide, there is no future. The ends do justify the means, even if the means no longer guarantee any eventual outcome. In this instance of future creation, I guess the means are the ends, and no amount of fantasy thinking will change this.
Even if there is no future in being a daydream believer, this doesn’t mean we should stop believing in the present.
I will bring this message to those around me, in the present and in all things, big and small, as often as I can, with as much creative imagination I can bring to it in the moment, and I need to create for myself as many of those moments as I can.
This is not a “self-help” book, although you are welcome to help yourself to any or all of the points, speculations, observations, and/or suppositions outlined within this immodest proposal.
This book is not a text book. I do not teach people what I know or think I know. I set a goal for myself and then learn my way to it, and invite my “students” to learn along with me on the journey of discovery in facilitating change.
In 1729 Johnathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, (for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick)
Juvenalian satire, named for the writings of the Roman satirist Juvenal, disagreed with the opinions of the public figures and institutions of the Empire and actively attacked them through his literature, abrasively ridiculing societal structures. “He utilized the satirical tools of exaggeration and parody to make his targets appear monstrous and incompetent.”
Juvenal, unlike Horace, known for his mild, witty, and indulgent “Horatian” satire, attacked public officials and governmental organizations through his satires, regarding their opinions as not just wrong, but evil.
Following in this tradition, Juvenalian satire addresses perceived social evil through scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule. This form is often pessimistic, characterized by the use of irony, sarcasm, moral indignation and personal invective, with less emphasis on humor. Strongly polarized political satire is often classified as Juvenalian.
A Juvenal satirist’s goal is generally to provoke some sort of political or societal change because he sees his opponent or object as evil or harmful.
Jonathan Swift has been established as an author who “borrowed heavily from Juvenal’s techniques in [his critique] of contemporary English society.”
What follows I call An Immodest Proposal.
Some may call it An Indecent Proposal or An Impossible Conjecture, because there is nothing modest or benign or steadfast contained in this informed educated rant. It challenges the accepted norms of our society in ways that most communities take for granted as the standard greater operating principle of the status quo.
I am not anti-business, so long as the business-as-usual primary goal in the even exchange of goods and services between persons is based on an equal exchange of social power as well, with one business wielding no undue superior power to the detriment of another.
The opportunity and means for success needs to be accessible to all, or none, depending on how one defines success. Social Democracy defines the former, Anti-Social Autocracy defines the latter. An overt social democracy is what this Proposal enjoins, and will fight for with every immodest word.
If this endeavor is not your cup of tea, stop reading right now and put this book back on the shelf, and make a hole for social progress to move through. Progressive change is going to happen, with or without obstacles and deviations, and we would rather have you with us in this mission than against.
“Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.” — Klaatu “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951)
Before you continue reading this blog, I must reveal that I am not an economist, nor a financial advisor, a gambler nor an investing dues-paying member of the Wall Street Party. My interest lies in freeing society from the constrictions placed upon caprice and wishful thinking by the dominant economic ideology, and embracing the creative imagination of economic innovation. A sanguine sober look at what needs to change in society, to move it past the severe economic log jam it is currently experiencing.
I am an artist, by nature and by trade, following my calling as defined by what James Hillman in his book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling is my Daimon.
If you are at all interested in reading this blog further look up Daimon and Hillman’s book. I’m not here to do your work for you nor entice or convince you to read what follows as absolute truth. That is your job. I leave you to it.
The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.’
– ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ by Lewis Carroll (1865)
Many times, every day each person decides an action to elicit an effect, and there are only one of two effects any action is designed to do: maintain the comfortable status quo, or elicit a necessary change to it, most times small and modest, but sometimes bold and immoderate change is needed, a profound and comprehensive renewal, a reordering and reformative restoration.
That change is what An Immodest Proposal seeks to address and outline.
“The problem with you is you think everyone is as nice as you are. They aren’t.”
This was said to me by a dear friend as a warning against being too gullible and unprotected when called upon to deal with the monsters in the world. I appreciated the concern of my friend toward my welfare, but the truth is I believe nearly everyone in the world is as nice as I am, if given access and opportunity to live freely and comfortably.
Feelings may be clouded by fear as a response to pain and hurt, but I believe at least 90% of human beings know and understand that doing one nice thing for one person each day is the only value there is in being human. And, of the remaining 10%, the effect of fear-reaction runs across a spectrum of willingness or resistance at performing that one act of kindness each day, reserving the 1% remaining as the realm of the truly damaged; the sociopathic, psychotic, those irreducibly damaged beyond reparation. These are the individuals, for the sake of themselves and the society as a whole, who need to be isolated from healthy society and humanely take care of.
My choice of title for this missive is adapted from ‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick’ by Dr. Jonathan Swift (1789), a darkly satirical essay that suggests poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children to the elite class as a food source. Using hyperbole, Swift anonymously mocked hostile attitudes towards the poor committed by the Protestant Ascendancy and the British rule of Ireland.
As Swift essayed a satiric “Modest Proposal” toward the darkly absurd, this “Immodest Proposal” is immodest in its attack on the conventions of Laissez-faire “leave them to do it” capitalism which advocates for minimal government intervention in the free market, open competition economies of business.
