Monday 13 June 2016

"Holidayism".

       As capitalism lurches from one "crisis" to another, we get ever new theories, economic theories, social theories, some very complex, others not so, all pointing the way how to change the system, how to destroy the system, where we should be heading, and so on. Sometimes if we look back we find that somebody has said it all before, and in some cases in a very explicit fashion and very simply.

Walter Wilkinson, 1888-1970, author, puppeteer, put it quite simply in his book, The Peep Show:
       "If I were a philosopher expounding a new theory of living, inventing a new "ism," I should call myself a holidayist, for it seems to me that the one thing the world needs to put it right is a holiday. There is no doubt whatever about the sort of life nice people want to lead. Whenever they get the chance, what do they do but go away to the country or the seaside, take off their collars and ties and have a good time playing at childish games and contriving to eat some simple food very happily without all the encumbrances of chairs and tables. This world might be quite a nice place if only simple people would be content to be simple and be proud of it; if only they would turn their backs on these pompous politicians and ridiculous Captains of Industry who, when you come to examine them, turn out to be very stupid, ignorant people, who are simply suffering from an unhappy mania of greediness; who are possessed with perverse and horrible devils which make them stick up smoky factories in glorious Alpine valleys, or spoil some simple country by digging up and exploiting its decently buried mineral resources; or whose moral philosophy is so patiently upside down when they attempt to persuade us that quarrelling, and fighting, and wars, or that these ridiculous accumulations of wealth are the most important, instead of the most undesirable things in life. If only simple people would ignore them and behave always in the jolly way they do on a seashore what a nice world we might have to live in. Luckily nature has a way with her, and we may rest assured that this wretched machine age will all be over in a few years' time. It has grown up as a mushroom, and like a mushroom it has no stability. It will die."
       Of course Walter didn't see the strange new world that would spring from the madness of the old industrial world. The world of electronics, IT, artificial intelligence and mass surveillance, further alienating us from the simple world of "holidayism". However "holidayism" is still a road to be examined in detail.
       Walter Wilkinson was the brother of Arthur Wilkinson, English born anarchist, puppeteer, artist, and conscientious objector during the first world war. Arthur married Scottish born woman anarchist, writer, translator, and artist, Lilly Gair Aitken, (Lilly Gair Wilkinson).
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

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