Free Thought 1911/1

From Karl Polanyi
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[…]

Freedom of Thought and Order in our Society

Free thinking - this is the essence of a wide variety of definitions - is an endeavor to establish truths exclusively by the methods of scientific inquiry and logic. Is this not self-evident, is truth-finding different? Along with rational and logical reasoning, in everyday life as well as in science, alogical aspects play a huge role. We accept most of the truth not because we have examined it and found it right with the instruments of thought, but because we have it ready from others and believe in it. A very small proportion of opinion coins come from the workshop of reason, and most thought money comes from the mint of authority. The fight for free thinking is therefore primarily a struggle against the social forces that prevent the scientific, critical thinking.

One of the oldest and most powerful authorities is the Church. Perhaps it is the one that floods society with unverifiable and unreviewed items. The most impatient and most organized church is Roman Catholic. Therefore, the [17] movement of free-thinkers is strongest in Catholic states, and in the eyes of many free-thinking is in tune with anti-clericalism. Undoubtedly, breaking the authority of the church, which primarily means withdrawing state support and recognition and releasing the school from the influence of the church, would give a great impetus to free thought. And Hungarian free-thinkers should strive to weaken the power of the church, because in our country the compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism did not greatly mitigate the power of clericalism, but merely masked its effects.

Although apparently weaker than clericalism, it is in fact perhaps the stronger social enemy of free thinking in the absence of political democracy. Free, science-only science is critical. Criticism, the strong friction of opinions, can only spread where state power does not create significant barriers, and the freedom of assembly, association and the press promotes the development of science more effectively than state subsidies. And he favors the idea of ​​free thinking more than any grumbler who pursues it, who fights against the advance seizure of press products, newspaper confiscation, punishment of incitement, who fights for freedom of conviction and not for the religious acceptance of religions, to be distributed. In fact, he is also expressing free-thinking propaganda for the most democratic electorate. Not only because, without this, the existence of any papyrus freedoms in life is not assured, but because the practice of political criticism promotes critical thinking in the masses and contributes to the transformation of the masses and women into a progressive force. And no matter how subtle a few souls may be, their boredom, unanimously pronounced and stunted, is more than any aesthetic refinement of a truly aesthetic and scientific culture. Alfred Kerr, an excellent aesthetic of the Germans wrote in connection with the Jagow case that Prussian feudalism was an obstacle to any true artistic culture. This applies even more to science. Not for a really big scientific culture the only but essential condition is political democracy.

Democracy is only one of the preconditions for the spread of free thought. More importantly, increasing the free time of the masses and improving their wealth. One of the most important springs of the suggestive effect of authority, the rooting of any acquired perception, is the idleness of thought. And the masses who are overworked and overwhelmed by financial problems are reluctant to take the mental pain of revising their views. This truth is not denied by the rising from the depths a rare exception for excellent people. The truly and sincere freethinker must first and foremost fight to change the social order that enables the masses today, and to reform any social order that restricts child labor, reduces the working time of adults, and reduces the income distribution [18] classes. The right to strike is securing industrial and agricultural labor, combating dearness, solving our burning peasant and latifundium issue further the development of the scientific spirit than a lot of rural universities or any academic foundation. Not only because it increases the well-being of the masses, but because it reduces the emigration of the most widespread. Not only because it creates human life in the countryside, but also because it enhances industrial and urban development by increasing consumer capacity. And in our day, cities are the most powerful productive areas for free thinking.

The illusion of a part of free thinkers is shared by one who replies that the stupidity of the masses does not exclude the free soaring of the spirit of distinguished thinkers. The spiritual sluggishness of the masses feeds on the impatience of the Church and the state, and the resistance of the mass media hampers the spread of new ideas. In his study Freedom of Thought and Ancient Mass Domination, Gyula Schvarcz shows that the uncultured masses of ancient democracies as a hindrance to Greek thought in its development. And in our day, we think even Kant, Darwin, Spencer would not have thought differently about the issue and dared to express their thoughts differently if the steep church and state authority and the wilderness of the masses had not prevented the free flow of the air of thought in their society. . Art and scientific thinking are not one its reactionary twist is part of the phenomenon that a closer approach to the church appears to be more noble and subtle because of the unculturedness of the large masses, and souls with an aristocratic inclination unwittingly fall into seemingly subtle, in fact, primitive lines of thought. Freedom of thought is not possible with the bondage of work. The lush harvest of true science can only emanate from the baths of economic prosperity in the light of political freedom.
Zoltán Rónai

[…]

EDUCATION

Secular Morals

A real woman reformer sees such (educational) institutions as the foremost reorganization of nations, because everything has to be ordered in logic, and since man's earthly career begins without exception as a child, so to speak at the mouth.
Széchenyi: Self-knowledge.

Today, the "reorganization of our nation," the struggle of the productive classes with the unproductive classes, cannot be more effectively promoted today than by being freed from the education of the unproductive classes. Nothing better supports the power of unproductive classes than turning the ignorant of oppressive classes into a moral canon. From these ages, he teaches children of the productive and oppressive classes to these binding, isolating moral commands, thus inculcating in them the obsessions of superstition, slavery, and social injustice.

We are talking about obsessions because what they have been taught by millennial practice is its day-by-day demonstration of the awe-inspiring power of the Breuer-Freud School of Psychology and the fact that "there is no reason, no persuasion, no power, [1]

So we have to fight against this most dangerous weapon of the unproductive classes, the "moral-moral" education. We have to fight to prevent new people from thinking and acting, and to achieve the productive moral education of productive classes alone: ​​orientation in today's social life with the weapons of science today. It is this system of cognition, duty, and comfort: layman, worldly morality.

We can only create the free and social Hungary of the uneducated, conscious, intense economic and energy-hungry by throwing the seeds of this secular morality into the soul of the "reorganizers."

Secular morality does not go unpunished - where productive [44] has been compulsory since 1682 to teach non-religious morals from kindergarten to higher education institutions. Thirty years of history has already established the theory and practice of this scientific and powerful system.

The truths that underlie our human rights and human obligations are developmental science, experimental psychology and socio-economic insights. Without Darwin, Spencer and Marx, there would be no stone in secular morality.

From evolutionary science, we learn how far we come from below, what a bleak, bad thing our ancestors had, soaked, cold, dreaded, alone, unaccompanied by nature, their inferiority of peoples and their peers.

What a conscious, proud force in the struggle for a better future, is the fact that we have so far been able to free ourselves from nature, from the enthusiasm of animal man, from the entanglement of thought, from the enslavement of our fellow human beings.

Lightning rods, the use of electricity, medical inventions, etc., are all weapons against nature; the spiritual life of our best, and our own effective effort to keep us from being addicted to our gluttony, laziness, envy, anger, all the experiences that mark the path to our inner liberation.

All our efforts to defeat superstitions and prejudices take us one step further in refining our thinking. Today, we are no longer afraid of all leaf clutter, nor do we suspect unknowable dangers - God - in every disturbance of natural and human existence. Our knowledge liberates our thinking from the bondage and isolation of ignorance.

Slavery, serfdom, slavery, ghetto is a thing of the past - the great deeds of our political attachment - the result of the great work of today and the great duties of our work.

The Way of Development: The progress of the human race toward inner and outer liberation, and the lesson that we are happy heirs of struggling ancestors, and with every desire we need to increase our heritage for our happier offspring.

This is the path that we need to be well aware of in order to trust and continue to fulfill our place in evolution in humanity.

Experimental psychology and social science insights teach the forces that propelled and propels humanity forward. It is our energy and consciousness that gives us opportunities for development, and social science planners determine the direction.

We must therefore teach the child to become aware of the development and achievements of the moral forces so far, and to educate the child with the physically and spiritually healthy energy and consciousness of the duties that knowledge brings to him.

These are the grave and rigorous orders of secular morals, from which there is no skephcism, anguish, and anarchy, but the earnest effort of the [45] child to consciously educate his spiritual powers. by the path that it liberates.

Of course, Spencer's psychology and Ostwald's guidance are crucial to ways of developing vigor and awareness, but everything that overpowers the power of human will over all other powers is productive.

Secular morality does not bring up its children in the great sorrow of humanity expelled from paradise, but in warm joy, believing that everything is better today than it once was. We are not sinking - we are evolving.

Secular morality does not cause us to hate and disgust our ancestors, who in their joyful pursuit have played their prosperous life, but to warmly sympathize with our ancestors, who have sought out the thousands of blessings of culture in the midst of all the horrors and perils of life.

Secular morality does not teach renunciation and humiliation, but seeks to develop the virtues of vigor and consciousness.

In secular morality, when you find synthesis, the link between people, you do not find it in the common faith, but in the common work.

Collaboration, social work, and co-operation have allowed humanity to develop.

Happy little schoolboy to whom this word is as familiar as the names of the altar sacraments in our country! How much more fertile, life-consuming his vocabulary is. Cooperative social work, this is what they learn on every aspect of parenting created by productive classes. We worked together, we could only go. No religion of morality is lighter than the morality of religion.

This is a brief overview, but perhaps the way that secular morality in today's social economy is marked by the strong pulse of life, which is made possible by the scientific truth that illuminates it, is still out of the question.

Secular moral teaching does not bind forces like religious moral education but simply develops them into socio-economic forces and is therefore so important in the struggle of the productive classes over the unproductive classes.

We are fighting for the future of Hungary, but remember that the most current form of the future is the child. Let's follow the "indelible imprint" of the soft core 1 on faith in development, nurture it with healthy vigor, self-awareness, and the security of the blessings of social work - and he will create a worthy Hungary.
Strickerné dr. Laura Polanyi

Issue Informations

Src: http://mtdaportal.extra.hu/szabadgondolat/1911/1911_01.pdf
Original Publication: Szabadgondolat, 1.1, January 1911
Other Languages:

Lge Name
DE
FR Libre Pensée 1911/1
ES El Pensamiento Libre 1911/1
  1. Széchenyi: Credit on page 43.