How Many People Does Each Of Us

The Idea That Man Is A Tabula Rasa, Or Mao's Sheet Of Blank Paper Upon Which The Most Beautiful Characters Can Be Written, Is An Old One With Disastrous Implications. I Do Not Think Though That The Cults You Mention Could Survive Honest Thought About Human Nature.

Turgenev Saw Human Beings As Individuals Always Endowed With Consciousness, Character, Feelings, And Moral Strengths And Weaknesses; Marx Saw Them Always As Snowflakes In An Avalanche, As Instances Of General Forces, As Not Yet Fully Human Because Utterly Conditioned By Their Circumstances. Where Turgenev Saw Men, Marx Saw Classes Of Men; Where Turgenev Saw People, Marx Saw The People. These Two Ways Of Looking At The World Persist Into Our Own Time And Profoundly Affect, For Better Or For Worse, The Solutions We Propose To Our Social Problems.

When Every Benefit Received Is A Right, There Is No Place For Good Manners, Let Alone For Gratitude.

Obesity Is The Result Of A Loss Of Self-control. Indeed, Loss Of Self-control Might Be Said To Be The Defining Social (or Anti-social) Characteristic Of Our Age: Public Drunkenness, Excessive Gambling, Promiscuity And Common-or-garden Rudeness Are All Examples Of Our Collective Loss Of Self-control.

Childhood In Large Parts Of Modern Britain, At Any Rate, Has Been Replaced By Premature Adulthood, Or Rather Adolescence. Children Grow Up Very Fast But Not Very Far. That Is Why It Is Possible For 14 Year Olds Now To Establish Friendships With 26 Year Olds - Because They Know By The Age Of 14 All They Are Ever Going To Know.