Almost by accident I started reading 'The kingdom of God is within you' by Tolstoy a couple of months ago.
I haven't read anything by Tolstoy before.
And boy, was I in for a surprise. It was a very powerful and inspiring book.
Being very fond of the counterculture, the hippy movement, free society, open source, tech anarchy, etc - I was very surprised to see him talking about these concepts with such clarity back then.
And it also changed my outlook towards 'Christianity', which I dismissed before as just a religion. Tolstoy carefully builds the idea of Christianity as a philosophy of non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience, claiming that that was the true teaching of Jesus Christ and the reason why Christians have been persecuted and killed everywhere - before the whole thing was transformed into a dogmatic religion.
Tolstoy argues that in order to truly renounce violence, one must not support it in any way, including through proxies - the State (which is backed by the military), the Government and Legal System (which has the police, the judges and the prisons), the corporations (which support the state and use violence to aquire resources), stay away from the Church and religion, Patriotism (which is a brain washing methodology) and so on.
From the perspective of the state, the church, etc, those ideas are very dangerous.
But from the standpoint of humanism, respect for life, the right way to live, these ideas are the truth.
Unfortunately, some people inspired by Tolstoy, like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Lennon have been murdered, but only after fundamentally changing our society for the better.
Tolstoy himself was excomunicated from the Orthodox Church and burried on a hill.
There is inherent danger in telling people to just love one another. This generates fear and hatred in some.
I hope we'll slowly come to accept the idea more and more.
Anyway, if you haven't read him, please do yourself a favor, the books are available for free.
I also read Tolstoy 'almost by accident' about 1 month ago and now see references to him everywhere. I'm in my late 20s, and the entirety of it has been a big disillusionment. There are so many wrongs on societal/ organizational levels that nag at me whenever I have idle time - as they probably do any adult with half a heart or brain - and I was having trouble comprehending them. All I could do was see and be bothered by the 'what,' but I couldn't wrap my head around the 'why?' And unlike some code or problem set, I couldn't fathom an answer, leaving me feeling hopeless.
Tolstoy reinterprets the New Testament and what he finds is as relevant to our times as they were to his. Just as one who studies physics might start to see patterns in nature, I now see societal problems as manifestations of patterns in human nature. He offers a very bold solution that makes sense logically, but doesn't seem possible. But it has been proven to a certain extent (Ghandi, MLK, etc.) This left me feeling less hopeless and I would also highly recommend.
Woah, I should read Tolstoy. I had no idea he was into this stuff.
I've recently been rediscovering Jesus from a new perspective, having grown up with a typical American Christianity and abandoned it as a teenager.
I've been finding that a lot of people from all kinds of backgrounds see the Jesus story and "Christianity" from this other perspective, where his teachings are universal and very subversive as you describe, and quite unlike the christian religion that we see. I've started to see the "kingdom of God" Jesus talks about in all kinds of people from all backgrounds -- including atheists and people who are still in the christian religion, and in all other religions or non-religions. Basically, I'm learning that people are people, and that all people have something good at their core that can be nurtured and brought out.
I've found Jesus' teachings and example extremely compelling to what I think of as the "real" me inside. And it's actually radically changed my life in 2015, in terms of how I spend my time and how I react to the things that happen to me.
What if I really could love my neighbor as I love myself? (And genuinely love myself, to start with.) Then nothing could really harm me.
It's really exciting to see these ideas popping up all over the place in various forms. I no longer see there being one group that is "in" while all the rest are "out", but rather that all of us have bits of this "kingdom of God" in us regardless of what we call it, and it's good and can grow, and it doesn't actually matter what we call it. The point is that it always brings love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, etc, which are universally good things that we all desire deep down.
Actually this topic is kind of signature for Tolstoy. There's even a special word for that: "толстовство"[1].
On the other hand, the word "толстовство" and especially "толстовец" (that is somebody, who is participating in Tolstoyan movement) has somewhat derogatory connotation in Russian today. Not without a reason, I guess. Many have been noticing that Tolstoy is kind of a "poser" and often his words contradict his actions, aren't honest — quite often nothing more than beautiful words, actually.
I, personally, agree with many of these criticisms, so I don't consider Tolstoy the best teacher and inspirer of that matter.
Thanks for the info. I still think it's interesting, given how popular / famous Tolstoy is, and I'll probably read some of his stuff just to be able to talk about it.
But yeah, I do find it most inspiring reading people whose lives actually _do_ reflect these truths in obvious ways.
Yes, anybody who sees Tolstoy as some saint ought to read Troyat's excellent biography of him. Tolstoy was a great novelist and a powerful personality, but a vain and hypocritical man.
On the other hand, we can still read the great novels and do with them what we wish, and the man is long dead. So maybe that hipocrisy isn't that relevant these days?
> And it also changed my outlook towards 'Christianity', which I dismissed before as just a religion. Tolstoy carefully builds the idea of Christianity as a philosophy of non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience, claiming that that was the true teaching of Jesus Christ and the reason why Christians have been persecuted and killed everywhere - before the whole thing was transformed into a dogmatic religion.
I'd argue that it's still a bit dismissive to state that the whole thing ended up a dogmatic religion, but perhaps that's splitting hairs at this point.
Having grown up on the Evangelical/pentecostal fringes, I saw much of Christianity as 'dogmatic religion' (not seeing that much of this was present in my denomination too), but now that I'm not a Christian any longer, I've come to realize pretty much all denominations of Christianity contain both significant figures and movements that tend toward the 'non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience' side of things, as well as a lot of dogma.
I've recently found a lot in Zen buddhism that reminds me of Jesus' teaching, except somehow more practical. I can strongly recommend doing some research in that.
Thich Nhat Hanh (the Vietnamese Zen monk whom MLK nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize) wrote "Living Buddha, Living Christ" drawing more extensive parallels.
For what it's worth, the apostle Paul thought that turning Christianity into a secular philosophy (as opposed to supernatural theology) would be a mistake.
1 Corinthians 15, ESV
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead,
how can some of you say that there is no resurrection
of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the
dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if
Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is
in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found
to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about
God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if
it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the
dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is
futile and you are still in your sins. Then those
also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are
of all people most to be pitied.
I think a lot of people are correct that there is a powerful philosophy in Christianity, but to ignore the existence of God and Jesus, specifically the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, is to ignore the main (constantly reiterated) point of the Bible. And the Bible says Christians are pitiful and Christianity pointless if Jesus isn't God.
Of course, apologies if you do believe in the resurrection and the Bible, but it wasn't apparent from your post. In that case, I'm positive others here have not heard this aspect of Christian philosophy.
He says the weak should just deal with it. And he isn't really coming up with this himself, but pretty much just saying what the New Testament actually reads. His point is that if everyone 'does not resist violence' then the world will be perfect. This seems like a recipe for disaster, but it worked for Gandhi and the other thing Tolstoy advocates is not supporting any entity that does violence. So yeah, thugs could kill good people (as they have and do), but if everyone bought in then that would eventually take away the power of the thugs.
There's a school of thought that argues that it didn't work for Gandhi, or MLK for that matter. That both of those "non-violent" leaders' words and actions were backed by the everpresent threat of violence. These include obvious threats like Malcom X and less obvious ones like the potential for a large group of people to simply devolve into violence when provoked.
Indeed, one could possibly argue that encouraging non-violence is beneficial to the state because it effectivly reduces the threat to the state and makes alternate views easier to ignore.
I personally think it's more complicated than either view, but it's worth considering that in a larger context, non-violence rarely means non-coercive.
'Worked for Gandhi' != 'worked for the weak'. The weak in India have a pretty poor experience.
I also wouldn't use the New Testament as a canonical reference for human psychology. Jesus wasn't above a bit of 'violent' police-work anyway - chasing away shopkeepers from a temple with a whip isn't purist non-violence.
No offense, but don't the 'weak' anywhere have poor experiences? (as in the stronger one would take advantage of the weak) I don't think it applies specifically to India?
Would you rather be an 'untouchable' in India or a 'chav' in the modern UK? They're both weak members of their respective societies, but the latter gets healthcare, shelter, and food supplied by the state if they can't provide for themselves.
Didn't Ghandi have the same plan to deal with the Nazis, should they make it to India? It's highly unlikely that the Nazis would have just backed down, so it was very lucky for him that they didn't get that far.
Non-violent movements needs an audience with influence to succeed. You need an influential gallery to play to. Gandhi had that. Not everyone does, for example Palestinians dont
+1 thanks, I just bought "The kingdom of God is Within You" for a dollar (kindle version). I am into spirituality, not religion. Reading your summary of Tolstoy's philosophy and the comments on amazon convinced me to move this to the top of my reading list.
A little off topic: I agree with Tolstoy that love is the foundation for what society should be, and I beieve that there is much more love, cooperation, and people doing good things in the word than anyone would imagine after exposing themselves to corporate news media.
> a return to our most natural, basic state, which is the law of love
I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. All living things are the products of evolution, and hence competition and the drawing of boundaries between "us" and "them" (i.e. between the phenotype of the reproducing genome and the environment that is used to provide the resources to reproduce) is an inherent part of all life. To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species. Peaceful coexistence is hard precisely because it is NOT our most natural, basic state. This is not to say that peaceful coexistence is not desirable or achievable; it is both. But pretending that it is a "natural state" is the left-wing equivalent of climate-change denialism. We will not solve the problem of global warming by denying the laws of physics, and we won't solve the problem of inter-human conflict that way either.
Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive as pretending that cooperation/love is. You mention the phenotype and us/them, but don't explain how violence is an obviously beneficial trait. It is easy to contrive cases where violence is beneficial, but that is a far cry from saying that it is life's most natural and basic state.
Also, I know you didn't actually say this, but I wanted to make the point anyway, since it wouldn't be hard to come to that conclusion from your post.
> Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive
That depends on what you mean. It is certainly true that our natural state is not to be psychopaths, indiscriminately killing everything in sight. But the evidence (and the theoretical foundations) indicate that a certain amount of violence is an inherent part of our basic nature, and so achieving peace requires work.
I do want to emphasize, though, that it can certainly be done. The internet, airplanes, McDonalds -- none of these are part of our basic nature either, and yet we've managed to achieve them. Peace is not out of reach, and indeed, the historical trend is towards an ever more peaceful world [1].
>To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species.
Nothing in physics but there is a clear trend over time towards more inclusive "us" groups. Humans started off as tribal groups of 50 joined together by blood. Then groups of millions bound together by a common belief system. Which brings us to todays multi-cultural metropolitan areas and world federations of billions.
Yes, indeed, and this is a very hopeful trend. But cities are not a "natural state" from which humans have departed and to which we can "return". They are the very definition of artificial.
What do you think artificial means? Here, I'll help you:
"made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally"
Artificial may be considered a proper subset of "natural", but what humans do is different enough from what the rest of nature does that it's useful to distinguish between those things that exist because we humans put our effort into making them exist and those things that exist without our help. Cities are in the former category.
This sounds like splitting hairs over semantics because applying that definition of artificial in this context is circular: all things humans do are artificial because artificial is defined as things humans do.
Humans gather at residential centers with populations in the millions, yeah, so do ants. Are we going to call that antificial?
The underlying point is that human beings have natural proclivities toward certain positive/healthy/beneficial behaviors, regardless of whether or not those behaviors occur spontaneously. This principle probably pervades nature beyond humanity, but Tolstoy's point is that only humans recognize this, and some deliberately place themselves in opposition.
Not matter what we call the words, I believe Tolstoy (and Ganhi, and Jesus, and the people replying to this post) are correct: the only way to succeed as civilization, whether it means ending violence or even just eliminating wealth gaps, is to recognize and develop love for one another.
Seriously? You cannot discern the qualitative differences between human social interactions and ant social interactions?
Gathering in groups is natural. Doing it in residential centers full of buildings that have right angles in their construction and flush toilets and electrical outlets and internet connections is artificial.
> the only way to succeed as civilization, whether it means ending violence or even just eliminating wealth gaps, is to recognize and develop love for one another
Love? How about just respect?
But it doesn't matter what label you attach to it. I agree that the only way to achieve peace is to reach some state of mind, and I don't particularly care whether you call it "love" or "respect" or "nirvana" or the flying spaghetti monster. I don't want to quibble over terminology. What matters is that this state is not the natural order of things. Mankind has never been in this state, and so we cannot "return" to this state. What we have been doing is steadily making progress towards this state. But we have made this progress by mastering the laws of physics, not by denying them.
The "most natural, basic state" refers to the ultimate dissociative mental state that Spiritualists aspire to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)> ... and not to the evolutionary base (which is comprised of both loving and savage instincts). The key thing to understand here is that dissociating from something (eg: savage instincts) is not the same as eliminating them; the "most natural, basic state" is a manufactured one where the savage instincts are minimized and the tender ones (love) are maximized to the nth degree.
You should visit Africa and see humans living in villages in the "most natural, basic state" and I seriously doubt anyone would want to live like that. Doubly so for women, for of course it doesn't come with choice of partner (rape is "default", in the sense of not choosing who you have sex with, violence is not usually involved), nor does it come with hygene supplies. It also comes with violence, in fact, if you're male, you're either going to die from some (easily curable) disease or violently (usually both: you're going to die from disease, specifically gangreen, after a superficial bit of violence. Like a rat bite during a hunt, or simply by getting a cut from a tree). If you're female, you're going to die giving birth to your 7th kid. I think I'd actually prefer the latter. Of your life, you'll spend a third of it with food poisoning (usually due to the water, not so much the food).
As for the loving, it's mostly the physical kind of loving (on the plus side: the women -and men- are physically a lot more attractive than the average westerner, and obviously nobody except one village leader and his "wife" are fat, usually not even them). There is no love in parent-child relations. They're very, very different : kids aren't brought up by their parents, rather they're brought up by their seniors. The 12 year olds take care of the 8 year olds, the 8 year olds of the 6 year olds, and so on. On the plus side: this works pretty well. On the downside: your sleeping accomodations are likely to suck badly until you're at least 8 years old and capable of building a hut.
Somehow this form of living, which is the only true "most natural, basic state" of the human species. Judging from talking to a few of these people, it seems to me it's a total lack of mental state and thought that leads to this form of living.
That's not consistent with what Tolstoy said (or at least what the author says of what Tolstoy said -- I haven't actually read Tolstoy). The author says that Tolstoy "advocates for a return to our most natural, basic state, which is the law of love." [Emphasis added.] Mankind can't return to this state because mankind has never been in this state. We may some day in the future be in this state (I hope so) but we haven't quite gotten there yet. And, I submit, denying this won't help.
Well, I get that. To be as blunt as possible for comprehension - Tolstoy and the like, when they are busy living "the law of love," are actually dissociating themselves from the savage instincts (while identifying with the tender ones), which gives rise to the delusion that their newfound identification is somehow our "most natura, basic state" that other people need to return to.
This is the same old Spiritual nonsense being regurgitated by the so-called secularists. For example, Zen masters talk about (returning to) one's "Original Face" which is the same thing, ultimately. However just because some popular person says something doesn't make it so. As we know that human nature, deep down, is comprised of both the savage (fear, anger) and tender (nurture, desire) instincts - it is simply not possible at the same time for our "most natural, basic state" (that we supposedly had in the golden past and have lost since then) to be exclusively tender (love) in nature unless, of course, one is either smoking something or sitting cross-legged to some dissociative state.
> We may some day in the future be in this state (I hope so)
And I too hope we will figure out a way to live in complete peace and harmony. But denying human nature — as the likes of Gandhi, Tolstoy, Buddha are wont to do — ain't gonna get us there. We can already get a peek at what happens when people deny human nature by observing modern day social politics.
I like your comment because it is a good antidote for people who suffer from a naive and dull sort of adoration for saintly, detached love. But there is also a detachment which comes from embracing and surrendering to human nature. This is the difference between the saint and his admirers.
For the record, Zen Masters were often violent, and they do not seem to have believed in returning to a natural state of peace and love.
"Original face" is a mysterious phrase used by Huineng, an early patriarch, in a story where he's chased by an angry monk and when they stop and talk, the patriarch tells him to suspend all thoughts of right and wrong and then asks him about his "face before you were born." This provokes an insight for the monk.
These masters did talk about being ordinary, ordinary mind, mind that doesn't cling to delusions, mind that's relaxed and in some sense carefree. But they also denounced "mind pacification" and sitting cross-legged.
I don't think you understand evolution. Evolution has nothing to do with competition. If the environment is setup such that all beings get 'the prize', which is possible in environments of abundance, then there really is no competition.
We as humans have advanced such that we typically can survive every environment. And this is because of technology AND society. We have created for ourselves an environment of abundance. We are just not smart enough yet to realize it.
It is you who do not understand evolution, though you are hardly alone in this. I suggest you read "The Selfish Gene." The inherent competition in evolution is not among individuals, it is among alleles.
> which is possible in environments of abundance
Sure, but environments of abundance do not occur naturally. The natural state is for exponential growth to continue until resource pressure limits it, which is to say, until abundance ends. (This is because, in nature, alleles that reproduce exponentially always out-compete those that don't.)
Yes, we can produce abundance, which in turn can produce peace. But that's an artificial process, not a natural one.
By "our" I mean "humans", though it is actually true of all living things.
> Ever heard people saying "God is Love", "we are all one" or "nirvana"? That's it.
Of course I've heard people say it. I've also heard people say that humans are not the cause of climate change. Just because people say something doesn't mean it's true.
Nirvana is not a natural state that humans have abandoned (and thus can "return" to.) It is an artificial state that humans have invented. We don't "return" to Nirvana, we have to make Nirvana. We have to design it and build it and maintain it. And that requires work. Simply reciting empty platitudes won't do it.
I agree. The truth is that every so called leader always treats the current state of life as wrong. One may say there are too much violence, whilst the other one thinks there are not enough of love. A tiger eats a moose. Is it a "violence" or just a fact? A human kills a human. Is it a violence or just a fact? People tend to love/hate different minds. But the question is, why do those minds exist? Well, it's all about the timing I believe. Let's say there are two groups of people - group A and group B, 100 people each. While Group B lives in the perfect world where everyone loves each other and the sunrise is treated as a holiday, Group A experiencing hard times - internal conflicts, wars, hate and violence. But suddenly, there is a guy named A1 from group A who truly wants to live like people from group B. A1 could actually become a great sales person, because people tend to listen to him, however his goals are different. After a while, A1 becomes a reformer, a "legend". Word of mouth does the job and now even group B knows everything about him. In a few years, group B starts to experience problems, similar to what group A has had before. Now they need their own "leader". They truly do and they find one. More or less, the cycle repeats. The thing is that group B has never lived in the perfect world. They also had their own problems they had to deal with every day. At that time, those problems were just less stressful in comparison to the group A's "hell". It's all about timing and relativeness.
AFAIK, Gandhi was born in quite a rich family. He got a law degree in London. How many people from India have a chance to get a degree in London? Or, at the very least, maybe visit a London? I personally could only dream of that, even so, I wasn't born in India. The reason why I mentioned this fact is because of a psychological perception of higher-class people. In most cases, a poor man will always carefully listen to a person from a higher-class society. The fact that he used his power in, probably, the right way, deserves respect. At the same time, there are doubts as for the source of money while he was in Africa, which results to another set of questions.
I once read quite an interesting blog post (can't really find it now) from a guy who suddenly jumped from an engineering position to a CTO. The author was shocked by the fact how people became nice and careful to him. They stared to smile him, always listening to every single word he was pronouncing. Know what? At the very small level, he became "different".
I never treated Gandhi as someone special, but this is just because of my perception. As for the love and violence - there is no such thing as more love or less violence.
There is life. There is love. There is violence.
Tangential, I'm reading "War and Peace" right now for my book club, very difficult to slog through; just curious for peeps who've read either "War and Peace" or "Anna Karenina," what is so special about Tolstoy's novels, that makes it different than say their Western counterparts like say "Les Miserables" or "Pride and Prejudice"?
Well, you stated the obvious difference: one set of novels is Western and Tolstoy is not. His sensibility and his viewpoint are Russian. Embedded in his works, especially Anna Kerenina in my opinion, is a prescient understanding of history and if you are the type to infer this sort of thing, human nature.
It's rather interesting that you include Pride and Prejuidice in your examples because that's a novel that a non-westerner would not understand fully. It relies too much on our embedded understanding of a very specific social structure, culture, class dynamic, etc. to the point where even an American who hasn't watched a fair amount of PBS might not fully appreciate it.
It's probably worth picking up a lecture series on the novels and another on Russian history.
And I'm not going into all the deeper, more philosophical content many see in the works.
What sets Tolstoy apart is the unmatched description of the human psyche. The characters in Tolstoy's novels are excruciatingly complex. The only author IMHO who has described the human psyche at the same level of depth, adding more drama though, is Dostojevski.
I haven't read Pinker's book, but I've read Tolstoy recently.
Tolstoy doesn't present any data or historical evidence, just shares his deep intuitive wisdom.
He predicted the rise of communism and the world wars, but also inspired Ghandi and Martin Luther King and many others...
.
And at times it's really scary how much similarity there exists between the popular ideas back then (which he discusses) and the ideas of today.
The almost fanatic belief in human superiority over nature, the power of Reason, the scientific method, the powerful religious groups, the armies, the police, the banks..
One would think that after 2 world wars and countless experimentation with social order and extreme technological advancement, we would have evolved to a higher level of thinking.
But no, there are some principles which stay the same. We still eat, we still drink, we still hate, we still love.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince.
All woo-woo aside, ooshy gooshy feelings won't get us to the moon, cure cancer, decrease childhood diseases, or feed a billion people with the land usually used to only feed 10,000.
Sure I pretty much entirely agree with you but the caution I stated earlier is the notable one for that mindset. There's always a step where you have to decide what the data means.
I disagree. A long term plan can be extracted from data, the physical constraints of the world, and knowledge of the human condition. The hype of a great leader, messiah, or single white man at a podium, is totally overrated. If it weren't we would have already run into one that cured all our ills.
I assume you're referring to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, which has faced a number of criticisms, including his analysis of the data and what - in his mind - constitutes "violence".
I also think expanded notions of violence are appropriate, though excluded from Pinker's analysis. For example, if a rich country COULD provide equal, high-quality health care to all its citizens, but doesn't because the health care industry (hospitals, insurers, physician groups, pharma) lobbies against such outcomes, and excess morbidity and mortality result, that is a kind of violence, though one that Pinker is not interested in.
Or North Korea (or to a lesser extent China), which maintains relatively low levels of violence, but is simultaneously committing abuses against its population.
The idea that fewer people (or a smaller proportion of people) are smashing their neighbor's head in with a rock doesn't necessarily constitute absolute "progress" to me (though it would be a nice development... provided it was true... which it might not be).
I don't disagree with those very insightful criticisms. I also recognize that Pinker is making a very sweeping argument in his book, one that he likely can't fully back up.
But it feels like we're expecting a lot from Pinker. Basically a full analysis of all types of coercion that can possibly occur. That seems a basically impossible task to undertake. Drawing the line somewhere does not seem unfair.
Pinker takes a strong normative position on what constitutes violence and what does not. I think if he had said, 'this is how I'm defining violence, and here's why, but if you were to define it another way, you might reach different conclusions', I'd feel less critical of his claims. To me, his argument is too unambiguous and he ultimately overreaches. (And - further - what does and does not constitute coercion or violence in the 21st century is the truly interesting question.)
If his conclusion had been, maybe we're seeing a drop in a particular form of violence and we're not entirely sure why but here are my thoughts (ahem, development of the atom bomb perhaps?), I would have agreed with him, but he wouldn't have sold all those books...
There is def. some truth to this. The idea of, "End of Days" is one that continues to be recycled. There's always some sort of catastrophe around every corner. And this is true. But, I also need to wake up, and water the plants. (If you wanna be all Zen about it!)
And boy, was I in for a surprise. It was a very powerful and inspiring book.
Being very fond of the counterculture, the hippy movement, free society, open source, tech anarchy, etc - I was very surprised to see him talking about these concepts with such clarity back then.
And it also changed my outlook towards 'Christianity', which I dismissed before as just a religion. Tolstoy carefully builds the idea of Christianity as a philosophy of non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience, claiming that that was the true teaching of Jesus Christ and the reason why Christians have been persecuted and killed everywhere - before the whole thing was transformed into a dogmatic religion.
Tolstoy argues that in order to truly renounce violence, one must not support it in any way, including through proxies - the State (which is backed by the military), the Government and Legal System (which has the police, the judges and the prisons), the corporations (which support the state and use violence to aquire resources), stay away from the Church and religion, Patriotism (which is a brain washing methodology) and so on.
From the perspective of the state, the church, etc, those ideas are very dangerous.
But from the standpoint of humanism, respect for life, the right way to live, these ideas are the truth.
Unfortunately, some people inspired by Tolstoy, like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Lennon have been murdered, but only after fundamentally changing our society for the better.
Tolstoy himself was excomunicated from the Orthodox Church and burried on a hill.
There is inherent danger in telling people to just love one another. This generates fear and hatred in some.
I hope we'll slowly come to accept the idea more and more.
Anyway, if you haven't read him, please do yourself a favor, the books are available for free.