More from Marcuse.....

[[Where the mind has been made into a subject-object of politics and policies, intellectual autonomy, the realm of 'pure' thought has become a matter of political education (or rather: counter-education).

This means that previously neutral, value-free, formal aspects of learning and teaching now become, on their own grounds and in their own right, political: learning to know the facts, the whole truth, and to comprehend it is radical criticism throughout, intellectual subversion. In a world in which the human faculties and needs are arrested or perverted, autonomous thinking leads into a 'perverted world':]]

That last line bears repeating and emphasis:

"autonomous thinking" leads into.... a 'perverted world' !

Why of course we need BIG Brother to to our thinking FOR us...right?

Yeeee Gads.

Socialism delivers one thing.. repression, but calls it 'freedom'.....
as long as...you don't think for yourSELF.

Squeers

Wouldn't you know that AGIR's favourite essay is one which exposes the dark, dark, evil, evil marxist underbelly of anyone who so much as utters the dark, dark, evil, evil word 'cooperate'?

While I do read a lot - it is mostly escapist stuff; Science fiction, fantasy, crime and preferably a combination of all three.

However there are writers from whom I do take inspiration, and one in particular never fails to draw tears from my eyes when I read his short story: "The Happy Prince" - I enjoy Oscar Wilde so much that I recently discovered, in my collection, I have two complete sets of all his works, from different publishers. Can't have too much of a good thing I guess.

Thanks all for responses--a bit of a lame thread I'm inclined to think now as not always easy to find essays free online.

Poirot,
"The Last Neanderthal" sounds good; maybe AGIR could relate to it, even if he failed to understand it.
AGIR,
Herbert Marcus is also a favourite of mine, though you signally fail to grasp his meaning (I wouldn't dream of accusing you of misrepresentation). The gist of his position is that under capitalism none of us enjoy autonomous thought, but live within an ideological delusion. It's possible to see beyond ideology, but the really worrying thing for any prospect of human emancipation is there are many people, like you (..like "Cypher" in the "Matrix"), who prefer delusion to reality, even when they "know" they're deluded (which I'm sure you do not)! The central premise of all Leftist thought is that capitalism alienates us from our true humanity. Such thought is, ironically, benign compared to the vicious and reactionary "non-thinking" you stand for. Read Edmund Burke; an ultra conservative who warned "against" democracy!

OUG,
I've read a bit of Swedenborg and other mysticism; the trouble is, there's no way of validating it?

Severin,
I also love Oscar Wilde; a (dead) living, breathing contradiction: a decadent aesthete and socialist rolled into one! I also have more than one collection of his works, and lots of stuff on Wilde as I was once going to make him my thesis.

Thanks everyone; I recommend Emerson's "Self-Reliance": http://www.americanliterature.com/EM/EMINDX.HTML

Dear Squeers,

Thanks for this thread, and I apologise
for coming on board so late.

A favourite essay would have to be
Fyodor Dostoevsky's, "The Grand Inquisitor,"
which I feel is the most insightful ten pages
ever written on totalitarianism, as part of
"The Brothers Karamazov."

Closer to home, I enjoyed many of the writers
featured in, "The Monthly," and "Meanjin."

Writers that write on Australian politics,
Society and Culture, like Robert Manne,
David Marr, and of course Robert Dessaix.

Then of course there's "Lituanus,"
The Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences,
published in Chicago. It's a multi-disciplinary
academic journal presenting and examining various aspects
of Lithuanian culture and history.

Al Zolynas, is a
favourite contributor that I enjoy reading.

"I come from a tribe of nature worshippers, pantheists,
believers in faeires, forest sprites, and wood nymphs.
Who heard devils in their windmills, met them in the
woods, cloven-hoofed and dapper gentlemen of the night.
Who named the god of thunder, who praised and glorified
bread, dark rye waving waist-high out of the earth, and
held it sacred, wasting not a crumb.

Who spent afternoons mushrooming in forests of pine, fir,
and birch. Who transferred Jesus from his wooden cross,
transformed him into a wood-carved, worrying peasant,
raised him on a wooden pole above the crossroads where he
sat with infinite patience in rain and snow, wooden legs
apart, wooden elbows on wooden knees, wooden chin in
wooden hand, worrying and sorrowing for the world...

These people who named their sons and daughters after amber,
rue, fir tree, dawn, storm, are the only people I know who
have a diminutive form for God Himself, "Dievulis," -
"God-my-little-buddy."

Any wonder I catch myself speaking to trees, flowers, bushes
- these eucalyptus so far from Norther Europe. Or that I bend
down to the earth, gather pebbles, acorns, leaves, boles,
bring them home, enshrine them on mantelpieces or above
porcelain fixtures in corners, any wonder I grow nervous in
rooms and must step outside and touch a tree, or sink my
toes in the dirt, or watch the birds fly by."

Thanks, Foxy, for that evocative excerpt, which conjures rusticated Wordsworth and contrived Coleridge in one; and perhaps Thoreau and Whitman..
My favourite Dostoevsky was "The Idiot", followed by "Crime and Punishment", with "The Brothers Karamazov" a distant third (the most moving part of which, for me, was the little girl's unanswered prayers.
May I affirm resolutely that I too am against any form of totalitarianism.
Of course Dostoevsky was railing against nihilism, but can I ask you too elaborate on his anti-totalitarianism? I shall reread that passage myself this evening (it's been many years). I do think humanity can tackle nihilism without resort to divinity.
I would have thought too though that theism is a kind of totalitarianism? And so too is popular capitalist democracy at the level of spirit.
I also like the Aussie contemporaries you name, and would add Phillip Adams to the list (though he's a bit hackneyed these days); also his inverse namesake, Adam Phillips--a brilliant psychoanalytic essayist with a difficult but original style. I have a few of his books, including "Going Sane". This of course brings Lacan to mind, an abstruse Joycean, if not mandarin stylist who is better understood via secondary sources, for mine.
Thanks again, Foxy; lame as the thread may be, your contribution lends it kudos :-)

Urgent addendum:
I don't mean the thread is lame due to any contributors, merely that it's difficult to deal with prosaic literature in this forum; so was referring to "my" lame idea :-)