“Here, if a man wants a coat, he takes it, and the owner reimburses himself from the great reservoir of the world’s goods, which is open to all men as integral parts of a unit.”
“What check have you upon the unreasoning rapacity of a thief, who will take ten times as much as he requires?”
“The system operates directly against the development of that trait. Here, men are only too anxious to have their goods admired and taken; for, being certain of their own maintenance, they feel a pride in contributing to that of others, and there is no temptation to take that which can not be kept, since his neighbor has equal right to take from him an idle surplus.
“Here the laws are the reverse of ours, for here a man is encouraged in the taking, but never in the holding. Wealth is measured by what a man disburses; hence all are anxious to part with their individual property for the advancement of the commonwealth, knowing that the one can only thrive when the many are prosperous.”
Charles Willing Beale: The Ghost of Guir House
You cannot have your cake and eat it. Not because eating and having are mutually exclusive. But because having in order not to eat is contrary to the law of nature. It is perverse to have and not eat, and it is all the more perverse to eat when others starve; it is perverse not to eat what one has, and, by extension, it is perverse to covet that which one does not need for eating, in order simply to have it. You cannot have your cake and eat it is cited as an admonition to those faced with hard choices. We should cite it as an admonition to ourselves, every last one of us.
We are exhorted to rise above nature, to defy Hobbes’s finding that life in wartime is nasty, brutal and short and to aspire to glory that is worthy of a struggle: Mein Kampf, wrote Hitler during his sojourn in a Bavarian prison. Oh! Clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire, I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, writes Hubert Parry, of building Jerusalem. We will fight them on the beaches, writes Winston Churchill, of defending England’s green and pleasant land. Onward! Christian soldiers, writes Sabine Baring-Gould, like a mighty army. Honour, glory and righteousness can only be achieved by engaging in the struggle. So, what does Willing Beale mean with giving everything away?
The nature that we wish to rise above, we only defeat by destroying. We rape the earth of its bounty, appropriate its plenty for the few and forcibly extract the labour of the many in the doing of it. We do not thereby rise above nature, but, through our avarice and covetousness, descend far beneath nature, for nowhere in nature’s realm, but only in our own, is endeavour put to such exploitative means.
In Levachan, which you will find on no cartographer’s chart of our world, and where—so Willing Beale writes—the writ of the laws are the reverse of ours, the yearning of every man and woman is to give of themselves, never fearing want or hunger in so doing. In Levachan, all strain to give to their utmost; all take to their heart’s desire. Thievery is not banished but rendered pointless and facile. For he who steals has no purpose in the stealing; for he who has plenty cannot profit from its sale; for selling and buying do not exist. By removing the profit motive from every human activity, you achieve perfect peace and perfect happiness, perfect equanimity, perfect harmony. In a world in which there is no profit motive to possession of the means of production, then there is no class system, there is no acquisitiveness, there is no stealing, there is no market to corner, there is no market and therefore there is no nation state, for there is no economy to defend, and no reason to want to acquire it in the first place, and no reason to divide the world with black lines.
There is no technological innovation, because there is no desire to economise, because there is no one to profit from economies—of scale, of production, of manpower, of exploitation. To this you would certainly object. And in doing so, fail, as predicted, to appreciate the folly of your own objection.
There is indolence to be countered, although indolence eventually conquers itself, for the psyche of mankind drives him to occupy his hands in useful activity. Useful, not profitable, but activity that engenders the kind recognition of one’s fellow man. Useful to the extent that the milker of cows is as valued as the cutter of diamonds. And, because exploitative activity is frowned upon by our fellows, it falls to be eschewed as of nature.
The laws of which the laws of Levachan are the reverse are not recognised by us as portending any perversion, because it is not perverse for him or her who is raised and indoctrinated within the bounds of perversion to view it as would he or she view it from without. To consider a world in which only giving can be even conceived of as the valid means of existence would be rejected out of hand by our world today, in which we are educated to scramble to the top of our heap, lest we end up as the exploited one. Our world’s laws and philosophies drive us to acquire for ourselves, to deny others, to deny the mere existence of others, to corner and monopolise, to achieve power over all the world, just as, we erroneously suppose, God possesses power over all the world, without stopping for a second to consider this one simple conundrum: that God’s power over all the world has never manifested itself through monopoly or exploitation, but only through love. And love is a commodity that cannot be bought, cannot be cornered or marketed, cannot be rendered exclusive, over which there can be no monopoly. But which can only be given. Never hoarded.
Until mankind devises a means to hoard and market and exploit love, he will remain the subject of God’s realm, and will never stand aloof of God. The very highest we can aspire to is to be one with God, and being that is impossible until all the world resemble Levachan. Which it does. But not in the part we administer.