January 23, 2004

The Friday catharsis

Posted by Curt at 09:43 PM in Bitching and Moaning | TrackBack

At the risk of doubling my crime of Yeats-quoting, here is one of his notes to “Responsibilities” which I think pretty well sums up my main point of detestation of both religion and politics because what it criticizes are, I think, not characteristic not only of their Irish (or American) manifestations, but of the concepts themselves:

“I am constantly reminded of…of the futilitiy of all discipline that is not of the whole being. Religious Ireland…thinks of divine things as a round of duties separated from life and not as an element that may be discovered in all circumstance and emotion, while political Ireland sees the good citizen but as a man who holds to certain opinions and not as a man of good will.”

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