men are evil but man is good…
this is one of Rousseau’s favorite sayings…
man is born free but everywhere in chains…
another of Rousseau’s saying…
these two point are connected… recall when Rousseau wrote…
Christainty was still the strongest influence in Europe…
and what was the Christian idea? that man is born with
original sin, man was born guilty of a crime committed…
and man cannot be saved unless god saved him, there was no
other possiblility to be saved… this idea of original sin has been hanging
over people since the end of the Roman Empire…for over a thousand years,
people have been taught that they were born guilty of crimes committed…
this myth, habit, prejudice, superstition was the basis of how people thought
of themselves and how they thought of people…
and here is Rousseau saying man is born free… free? free from the guilt of
original sin? the basis of both catholicism and protestantism is this idea of
guilt, the guilt of original sin…man cannot go to heaven until the father
saves the son, god saves man…and that can only happen when the son
asks for forgiveness… for sins committed, for the other idea is all men
are corrupt…and guilty of sin… for no man is without sin except jesus…
this is vital to understand, to make sense of Rousseau…but what are the chains
he refers to? they are the chains of myths and habits and prejudice and superstition
that are taught to us as children… that there is a god, and we are born of sin and guilt,
America is the greatest country on earth. America is the freest country on earth…
these myths, these habits form a picture of the universe in a child’s mind that
take the place of real thought of who we are and what is our purpose in life…
but why are men evil and man is good?
because we have taught that… man is born guilty of a crime, a crime
of original sin, since the middle ages the church and the teachers have taught
that men are evil, that men are guilty, that we cannot be saved by our own
devices…we must have the help of another to find our way into heaven…
men are evil because we have been taught we were evil… we are of original sin,
and that is evil… but man, MAN is good because we are born free of this
knowledge but we are then taught, man and we are man, we are guilty
of sin, we are born of sin, we begin our thinking lives with this understanding
that we are born of guilt and guilty of sin, that we are evil until we are
forgiven by god… if a child is taught they are evil, then they grow
up believing they are evil and if there is no forgiveness, then why
bother being good, it doesn’t matter if you are good or not,
you are going to die evil, unable to get to heaven… this notion
of sin and guilt…
for over a thousand years, man was taught he was evil, until people like
Rousseau taught people differently…
men are evil, but man is good…
man is born free but everywhere in chains…
when we give children ribbons for participating in sports,
we are saying, you have value… we are reacting to a thousand years
of teaching that man is evil and worthless…and we are rejecting
the message of those thousand year’s…and what message should we
be rejecting today?
Kropotkin