Wilde fragment

Wilde_fragment is a text document by Oscar Wilde stored in the RINTRAH terminal.

Contents

Joy and Beauty

Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of the first instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the higher animals, that is to say, share it with us. But it must be remembered that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain. It may make man better able to endure evil, but the evil remains. Sympathy with consumption does not cure consumption; that is what Science does.

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Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often an impoverished personality that he so realises.

206265696e672063616c6c656420616e206964656120617420616c6c2e20 Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about the world's worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty.

Comments

Athena: When you tell people that a society could be built on the ideals of joy and beauty, they think you're a utopian fantasist. If you tell them society will always be built on exploitation and greed, they think you're wise. And so they make the outcome inevitable.

Cornelius: Performative cynicism has always been the hallmark of adolescence.

Athena: But has there ever been a society of adults? Can there ever be one? Why is this childishness so extremely powerful, more powerful than joy and beauty?

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Notes

The translated hex strings form a quote from "The Critic as Artist" by Oscar Wilde.