Volontary Servitude - Eden Saga

This time, I let talk bigger than me, and much! It is the best friend of Michel de Montaigne, Étienne de La Boétie. It was a suggestion from Milla who kept me company during the great Séguinian depression of 2010. Thank you Milla!

The discourse of voluntary servitude

(extract)

“How can it be that so many men, so many cities, so many nations sometimes bear everything from a tyrant alone, who has no power except the one given to him, who has no power to harm them, except as much as they will endure it, and who could do them no harm, if they did not like to suffer all things of him, rather than contradict him.

Something really surprising (and yet so common, that we should rather complain than be surprised), is to see millions of millions of men, Miserably enslaved and submissive, their heads bowed to a deplorable yoke, not that they are forced by any force of the earth, but because they are fascinated and So to speak, bewitched by the name of one whom they should not fear, for he is alone, nor cherish, since he is inhuman and cruel to them all.

Isn’it a disgrace To see the human race In such a rat race?
Bob Marley

This is the weakness of men! Forced to obey, forced to delay, divided among themselves, they cannot always be the strongest. If therefore a nation, chained by the force of arms, is subjected to the power of one (as the city of Athens was under the domination of the Thirty Tyrants) it is not surprising that it serves but rather deplores its servitude. Or rather, do not be surprised or complain; bear the misfortune with resignation and reserve for a better opportunity to come.

We are made so that the common duties of friendship absorb a good part of our life. Loving virtue, valuing beautiful deeds, being grateful for the benefits received, and often even reducing our own well-beingto be for the sake of increasing the honor and advantage of those we love and deserve to be loved; all this is very natural.

If, therefore, the inhabitants of a country find among them one of those rare men who has given them repeated proofs of great foresight to guarantee them, of great boldness to defend them, of great prudence to govern them; if they become accustomed to obey him imperceptibly;

If they trust him to a certain degree, I do not know whether it is wise to take him from where he was good, and place him where he can do evil, however it seems very natural and very reasonable to have goodness for him who has provided us with so much good and not fear that evil will come from him.

No one is more enslaved than the one who falsely thinks he is free.
Goethe

But what is this? How shall we call this vice, this horrible vice? Is it not shameful to see an infinite number of men, not only obeying but crawling, not being governed, but tyrannised, having no possessions, neither parents nor children, or their own lives?

To suffer the rapes, the robberies, the cruelties, not of an army, not of a horde of barbarians, against whom each one should defend his life at the price of all his blood, but of one; not of a Hercules or a Samson, but of a true Mirmidon often the most cowardly, vile and effeminate nation, who has never sniffed the powder of battles, but barely stepped on the sand of tournaments; which is inept, not only to command men, but also to satisfy the slightest pussy!

Shall we call it cowardice? shall we call the men under such a yoke vile and cowardly? If two, if three, if four yield to one; it is strange, but nevertheless possible; perhaps with reason, we could say: it is a lack of heart. But if a hundred, or even a thousand, let themselves be oppressed by one, shall they say that it is cowardice, that they dare not attack him, or rather, that in contempt and scorn, They don’t want to resist him?

And if one sees not a hundred, not a thousand, but a hundred countries, a thousand cities, a million men not to attack, not to crush him who, without any mercy, treats them all as serfs and slaves: how shall we describe this? Is that cowardice?

But for all vices, there are limits that they cannot cross. Two men and even ten may fear one, but that a thousand, a million, a thousand cities do not defend themselves against a single man!

Oh! It is not only cowardice, it does not go that far; nor does valour require a single man to climb a fortress, attack an army, conquer a kingdom!

What monstrous vice is there then that the word of cowardice cannot render, for which all expression is lacking, which nature disavows and language refuses to name?…

The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of democracy, a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not dream of escape. A system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, slaves would love their servitude.
Aldous Huxley

Fifty thousand men shall be put in arms on either side; they shall be put into battle, and shall come to the hands of those free, fighting for their freedom, who do you think will be the winner? Who will go more courageously to the fight, of those whose reward must be the maintenance of their freedom, or those who expect for pay the blows they give or receive only the servitude of others?

Some always have before their eyes the happiness of their past life and the expectation of such a comfort for the future. They think less of the sorrows, of the momentary sufferings of battle than of the torments which, defeated, they will have to endure forever, themselves, their children, and all their prosperity. The others have for every spur only a small hint of lust which suddenly blurs against danger and whose fake ardor almost immediately extinguishes in the blood of their first wound.

Don’t be afraid of the world, my friend. The world should be afraid of you.
Lao Surlam

At the famous battles of Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles¹, which date back to two thousand years and still live today, as fresh in the books and memory of men as if they had been delivered recently to Greece, for the good of Greece and for the example of the whole world.

What gave so few Greeks not the power, but the courage to push back these formidable fleets whose sea could hardly bear the weight, to fight and defeat so many nations that all the Greek soldiers together would not have raised in number the captains of enemy armies? But also, in those glorious days, it was not so much the battle of the Greeks against the Persians as the victory of freedom over domination, liberation over slavery.

1 Respectively battles of Marathon (490), Thermopylae (480) and Salamis (480). These are the famous battles against the Peoples of the Sea, armies of Celts and Vikings commanded by the great Ramos aka Rama.

Notice

This Discourse is a youth work, published in Latin by fragments in 1574 and then entirely in French in 1576. Probably written by La Boétie at the age of 16 or 18. The full text of the speech is available in French in the catalogue of the BNF free, for download, pdf, email, etc.

Étienne de La Boétie

French writer, poet and politician

Étienne de La Boétie is a humanist writer, poet and jurist born on November 1, 1530 in Sarlat, south-east of the Périgord, and died on August 18, 1563 in Germignan, in the commune of Taillan-Médoc, near Bordeaux. (read more)

My comment

This great writer said what I think a thousand times better than I would have known to do and every honest man, every lady, should know him infinitely grateful. It is the nobility of our country of France that to express the most extreme thoughts in a measured language, which sounds and holds back from the first reading.

I had studied this speech during my distant humanities at Stanislas College, under the guidance of my good master Jean Millet. I was the age of La Boétie when he wrote his speech. I laid out a tale at that time, Window on the wind. I made a little song about it:

Window opening on the wind
Window opening on the wind
All vibrant
Under the sun of the fields
Window of time
Open for a moment
On the wind

This is far from La Boétie and from Rimbaud, who was an early writer too. And what a poet! I do not claim to belong to the sumptuous galaxy of French writers, being just a philosopher crazy about the myths. My true talents, more useful to my contemporaries, are of another order.

My revolt against the veuliness of the peoples bowing their back to accept the worst, I did it from this young age on the barricades of May 68. The “events” as they were called at the time inspired me to a pop opera that we rehearsed and recorded with five musicians during a whole year, in the evening, after work.

He was called “One of the Scary Fools.” In early sixties, it sang about the revolt against the old world and the reconciliation of the sexes. I don’t know if the tapes still exist somewhere, anyway it’s too late. But how I would have liked to make a discourse like the one you have just read!

To come back to Milla, it is still to her that I owe the following photo, taken in her Swiss Jura. What a beautiful cover it would have been for my Window on the wind!

The discourse of voluntary servitude

Notice

Étienne de La Boétie

My comment

European Thinking