Ruskin and The Ages of Man

Has religion always had an ethical side? Does worshipping God always mean caring for or acting justly toward others? I don’t know of a religious system that doesn’t have such an emphasis. I wonder if the embedded injustice (patriarchy) exists mostly because it/they are simply so old. Religion is deeply conservative, in the best and worst senses of the word—after the initial burst of prophetic, creative innovation. We (people, conservators, women, maintaining tradition, keeping families together, caring for children) make it conservative, turn the wild, mind-blowing innovations into traditions as soon as we can. But I think it’s OK—it’s good. I guess often any continuity—even that based on the wild-eyed revelations of a half-mad prophet—is better than chaos, disruption, disorder, war, starvation, dying children. A dying child is the worst evil. We can put up with lesser evils to prevent that—even our own oppression. Safety is a powerful motivator, one that I appreciate more the older and in some ways more fragile I get. Or more recognizing of the tenuousness, perilousness, fragility of human life.

I was thinking all this as I talked with Mike H. about Ruskin. Ruskin was a reformer, not a revolutionary. Revolution has glamour and cachet for the young, who feel invulnerable and see no hope in slow change. The revolutionary Wordsworth’s children die and he becomes conservative.

Somehow as I get older and more conservative in reality (I think a lot of my revolutionary ideas when very young were only abstract) I should still remember that impulse to overturn everything and make it new. Reform is boring—if safer and ultimately more likely to succeed. Ruskin died depressed, but many of his ideas are embodied now in Britain. Maybe all—revolutionaries, reformers, and conservative (and maybe they are natural phases/ progressions of the life span)—should be considered positive contributors to the benefit of humanity. (2005)