Burke, Kenneth. Personal Correspondence to Hugh Dalziel
Duncan.
Butchie is in astro-physics
now. But after two years of govt. subsidy,
he is now on his own, hence will probably fill out by teaching (which, we
agree, is all to the good). It’ll probably
be another year before he gets his pee aitch dee. I’m hoping he’ll go into teaching, since that
seems to be the only physicist activity not filthy with the Kill business.
The stress upon communication really is the recovery, in our
terms, of the “man a rational animal” scheme…The behaviorist stress on
“verbalization” as a substitute for “rational” was a step in the right
direction, but everything went wrong because the wrong conclusions were drawn
from the formula. In sum, let’s drop
the study of verbalization. On the other
hand, extend verbalization to cover symbol-using in general, then show how
invention, division of labor, class-consciousness, etc. variously manifest this
genius – and their formula is seen to demand the exactly opposite
sequitur. (However, since the entire
formula also includes “animal,” which in term subsumes vegetable and chemical,
the “natural drives” element must also be systematically considered. Point is to show that the social or
communicative motives are not a mere projection of such “natural” motives, but
prevail in their own right, and affect “natural” appetites at every point. For “naturalism” reduplicated social motives
quite as “supernaturalism” does, except that the concealment is better, since
naturalism has been so enterprising in showing how the heavenly hierarchy
restates the social one, it has kept people from discovering how the natural
hierarchy does likewise. The terms ought
to be supernaturalism, naturalism, socialism, but the third brings up other
connotations.
Some kill themselves.
So far, I have been able to keep within the more moderate bounds of
psychogenic illness. I just gasp, gagg, and gulp (while I gradually increase the number of
news commentators whose voice I refuse to let enter our house, and now read
only a Sunday paper, hastily; though I am, I believe, on the way to
becoming a standby of the New Statesman, particularly if it continues in its
present path, incidentally illuminating the fantastically criminal stupidity of
U. S. “global” policies as now conducted by presss,
radio, and spokesmen for local business interests who would dump surpluses
abroad at govt. expense).
Paradigm for Weaver’s book on ideas and consequences:
Encountering a man who, starving and thirsting, snatches at a bit of sustenance
gluttonously, Weaver points out to him the superior table manners of a
well-bred gentleman who, having just finished four courses,
shows admirable restraint in waiting for the fifth.
421btm. on motives of war.
we fight “to get rid of hate so we can
communicate openly and freely once more.”
One thing to guard against here. You start by talking of “war,” you end by
talking of “fight.” This is one of the most drastic unconscious associations in
all modern life. And as the result of
it, “war” can look “natural” because “fight” is “natural.” Two people living together in marriage may
fight in order to make up, but that’s “war” only in a metaphorical sense. And “war” is best approached, not as “fight,”
but as a disease of cooperation. Any thinking that obscures the essentially
economic motives of war is dangerous.
422tp.
There is, to be sure, the motive of the Pax Romana (one aspect of imperial war, which is perfectly
willing to make peace with the enemy as soon as he settles down and pays
regular tribute – or, in paradoxical modern equivalents, lets us rehabilitate
him in ways whereby certain of our own powerful financial interests get a drag
of a buck or two out of every five bucks we advance out of the collective
treasury for the enemy’s recovery). But Hitlerite extermination (and its variant, “Why don’t we use
the bomb on them?”) does indicate another motive here. I think it comes
form the misplacement of “fight” into the conditions of “war.” But no, I’m trying to be too symmetrical
here. It starts in a real or imagined
motive of empire, and looks upon the enemy as so alien that it wants simply to
obliterate him and his system, to leave the world in peace for the rest of
“us.”