John Ruskin is constantly emphasising the importance of bearing pain and the benefits of hard toil, whether it be in defence of honest work without the assistance of technology, or his recollections of being forced to learn long chapters of the Bible by his aunt.
This might be mistaken for the contemporary Victorian virtue of stoicism, which also finds its root in the ancient classical world. Importantly, I believe Ruskin was not much interested in the value of bearing pain without feeling or complaint. The fact that suffering inevitably affects us is of vital importance to him.
I have briefly covered the theme of Fortitude in a prior article on Malcolm X’s 1964 Oxford Union speech. In it, Malcolm referenced a passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet;
“Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”
In his masterclass of a speech on the virtues of extremism in the pursuit of justice, Malcolm juxtaposed, like Shakespeare, the values of Fortitude and Force. Fors Clavigera represents a clear intent on Ruskin’s part to combine them, albeit non-violently; one of many points he and Malcolm would no doubt have disagreed on.
Although I am a big fan of Malcolm X’s Oxford Union speech, I too would take issue with him on making a binary of Force and Fortitude. I’d also question Malcolm’s framing of himself as an extremist in contrast to the nonviolent resistors of his day. Malcolm’s main tenets; being able to defend one’s property with force, protect your community and if necessary live apart from those who would do you harm seem wholly reasonable and moderate.
The prospect of continually bearing violence as part of a philosophy of passive resistance, offering forgiveness whilst refusing to back down is a path I’d be far more reluctant to choose.
We ended the essay on clava with Ruskin’s heralding of a Kingdom without end. The two most famous proponents of passive resistance in the 20th Century, Martin Luther King Jr and Mohandas Gandhi were both inspired by a book called The Kingdom of God is Within You, the seminal anarcho-christian manifesto authored by Leo Tolstoy.
They sought to reflect the extremism of Christ in suffering the full force of the evil of their times, satirising the violence of their enemies and achieving a kind of victory through apparent humiliation and defeat. Just how successful their legacies were, and how these have been hijacked is up for debate, but we don’t have the time here.
Over the last few years, the topic of social justice has become increasingly popularised, particularly in relation to the care and conservation of our common home. Since the original publication if this essay, the death of George Floyd catapulted the discussion of racial injustice and systematic oppression into the popular conscience in a way that previous extrajudicial killings of black folk had for whatever reason failed to achieve.
The outbreak of a global pandemic has forced more people to bear some level of pain, whether it be the mild inconvenience of remaining at home, the experience of bereavement or first-hand knowledge of what it means to travel through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
I believe Ruskin, Tolstoy, King, Malcolm and certainly Gandhi would encourage us to grasp Force (the desire to see justice) and Fortitude (the process of enduring suffering) and carry them together.
The experience of bearing pain is not something those of us, if you too are rich and live comfortably in the Global North, are used to doing. Part of the newfound popularity of social justice is that it can be increasingly pursued in a manner which requires us to bear no pain whatsoever.
At the most, it costs a small amount of our time on the internet, and more often than not it actually benefits us, as we receive internet points for our broadcasted opinions, snide takedowns of political leaders and increasingly sanctimonious ‘nominate-your-friends-to-undergo-an-entirely-arbitrary-activity-for-charity’ challenges.
In the most sacrilegious cases, the pursuit of justice becomes a consumerist act; the purchase of a good or service bundled up with the assurance that you have also provided for someone else a pair of shoes or a new hat. In many cases these transactions are provided by for-profit companies. It is why, in part, the campaign against the use of plastic has become far more popular than that for divesting in fossil fuels.
Bamboo toothbrushes and plastic-free toilet paper can be (and are) very successfully marketed for profit. The inconvenience of not being able to drive or fly or heat your entire house whenever you want cannot.
As we emerge from the other side of a collective experience unprecedented in our lifetime, there will be a tremendous compulsion to return to something comfortably familiar. This is natural. This feeling will be aggressively marketed to by businesses keen to garner financial profit from a shared emotional vulnerability. In light of this, it is vital to not waste so quickly the shared experience of enduring Covid-19, be it traumatising, thought-provoking or loss-inducing.
The pursuit of justice and equality shouldn’t be transactional and shouldn’t provide us with material reward. It should involve kenosis; a state of self-emptying. It’s something that should cost us (the rich, the privileged, the well-off) and something we should bear with a degree of pain.
Unto This Last, another work of Ruskin, makes great efforts to impress on the reader that wealth and poverty are not independent concepts. Great poverty exists because great wealth exists. It is not possible for all to live as the West do. We cannot consume our way out of inequality or environmental catastrophe.
Unlike Tolstoy, Ruskin is not an anarchist and it is in Letter 10 that he affirms himself as a “Tory of the old-school”, due to his love of kings. He is keen to point out that his admiration is for the classical kings of Homer and Walter Scott. Those given the privilege of leadership who work harder than anyone else, and were rewarded less, who were ready to govern for nothing and divide their profits among the people. Ruskin adds that “of late it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has become exactly the contrary of this”.
I’m not a monarchist in the Ruskin-mould, but I think there is wisdom here to be grasped along with the Key of Fortitude. The mountains must be brought low for the valleys to be raised up. The hungry are not only fed in the Magnificat. The rich are sent empty away.
Justice is not a consumer purchase or a transaction. Expect nothing in return, especially not the gratitude of those you serve. Let us live more simply, not in a superficial way actually intended to benefit ourselves, but in a way which will necessitate actual loss, inconvenience, even pain. Let us bear these with patience and thanksgiving.
When this current moment passes, let’s not cast off suffering and pain in a surge of indulgence and materialism, but bear it for the good of others and the building of a better world for all.