08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Samurai are Prohibited from Professional Sports
Gentlemen of honour, according to the old standards, rode horses, raced chariots, fought, and played competitive games of skill, and the dull, cowardly and base came in thousands to admire, and howl, and bet. The gentlemen of honour degenerated fast enough into a sort of athletic prostitute, with all the defects, all the vanity, trickery, and self-assertion of the common actor, and with even less intelligence. Our Founders made no peace with this organisation of public sports. They did not sp...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
2 A professional athlete is an "athletic prostitute," and the Samurai do not participate.
08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Samurai Must Be Alone With Nature One Week Each Year
But the fount of motives lies in the individual life, it lies in silent and deliberate reflections, and at this, the most striking of all the rules of the samurai aims. For seven consecutive days in the year, at least, each man or woman under the Rule must go right out of all the life of man into some wild and solitary place, must speak to no man or woman, and have no sort of intercourse with mankind. They must go bookless and weaponless, without pen or paper, or money. Provisions must be tak...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
The practice is intended to promote self-reflection and clarity of thought.
08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Regimen of the Voluntary Nobility
of the things that the samurai are obliged to do.
There would be many precise directions regarding his health, and rules that would aim at once at health and that constant exercise of will that makes life good. Save in specified exceptional circumstances, the samurai must bathe in cold water, and the men must shave every day; they have the precisest directions in such matters; the body must be in health, the skin and muscles and nerves in perfect tone, or the samurai must go to the doctors o...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
The samurai must speak with other Samurai to fend off "unsocial preoccupations" and "intellectual sluggishness" among other duties.
08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Samurai Reject Elaborately Ornate Religious Displays
The leading principle of the Utopian religion is the repudiation of the doctrine of original sin; the Utopians hold that man, on the whole, is good. That is their cardinal belief. Man has pride and conscience, they hold, that you may refine by training as you refine his eye and ear; he has remorse and sorrow in his being, coming on the heels of all inconsequent enjoyments. How can one think of him as bad? He is religious; religion is as natural to him as lust and anger, less intense, indeed, ...Folksonomies: centrism voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: centrism voluntary nobility
Like over-eating or alcoholism, the Samurai view ornate religion as a form of gluttony, as they also see religion accepted with an uncritical eye.
08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Samurai, or "Voluntary Nobility"
I reflected. "What else may not the samurai do?"
"Acting, singing, or reciting are forbidden them, though they may lecture authoritatively or debate. But professional mimicry is not only held to be undignified in a man or woman, but to weaken and corrupt the soul; the mind becomes foolishly dependent on applause, over-skilful in producing tawdry and momentary illusions of excellence; it is our experience that actors and actresses as a class are loud, ignoble, and insincere. If they have not ...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
1 The voluntary nobility of H.G.Wells Utopia may not sing or act, as professional mimicry is undignified.
08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Samurai Hold a Personal Relationship with God
Just as they will have escaped that delusive unification of every species under its specific definition that has dominated earthly reasoning, so they will have escaped the delusive simplification of God that vitiates all terrestrial theology. They will hold God to be complex and of an endless variety of aspects, to be expressed by no universal formula nor approved in any uniform manner. Just as the language of Utopia will be a synthesis, even so will its God be. The aspect of God is differen...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
1 
notes
notesThey do not interact with god through a priest.
