{"id":8765,"date":"2024-09-14T18:13:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T22:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/peter-kropotkin-on-the-crucial-difference-between-love-sympathy-and-solidarity-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-09-14T18:13:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-14T22:13:54","slug":"peter-kropotkin-on-the-crucial-difference-between-love-sympathy-and-solidarity-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/peter-kropotkin-on-the-crucial-difference-between-love-sympathy-and-solidarity-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love, Sympathy, and Solidarity \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"Kinship<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,\u201d Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity \u2014 this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love.<\/p>\n

Half a century after Whitman\u2019s atomic theory of belonging and half a century before Dr. King\u2019s \u201cinescapable network of mutuality,\u201d<\/a> the scientist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin<\/strong> (December 9, 1842\u2013 February 8, 1921) examined the meaning of solidarity in his visionary 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the culmination of his pioneering studies of the cooperation networks of social insects and his outrage at the destructive power structures and power struggles of human society, for which he was eventually imprisoned. After a dramatic escape, Kropotkin spent four decades in exile across Western Europe and went on to influence generations of thinkers with this radical insistence on cooperation and solidarity, not the struggle for power, as the true engine of survival and flourishing.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Peter Kropotkin by F\u00e9lix Nadar<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Having fallen under Darwin\u2019s spell as a teenager, Kropotkin came to see in evolutionary science an optimistic model for the elevation of human conscience \u2014 in the history of life on Earth, across which organisms have continually improved their biological adaptation for survival, he found assurance for a better future forged by our continual moral improvement. <\/p>\n

Unable to obtain the scientific education he yearned for, the young Kropotkin took a post as an officer in Siberia (where Dostoyevsky was serving in a labor camp<\/a>), then used his military credentials to join geological expeditions studying glaciation, all the while witnessing staggering corruption and abuses of power in local government while the peasants governed themselves through deep bonds of mutual trust that seemed purer, more primal, and closer to nature than any political power structure. <\/p>\n

Challenging the anthropocentric view of other animals, Kropotkin considers the deepest driving force beneath the harmony and coherence of nature:<\/p>\n

\n

To reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour \u2014 whom I often do not know at all \u2014 which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy \u2014 an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and humans in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and humans alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Art<\/a>
Century-old art by the adolescent Virginia Frances Sterrett<\/a>. (Available as a print<\/a> and stationery cards<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An epoch before Lewis Thomas speculated in his poetic case for why we are wired for friendship<\/a> that \u201cmaybe altruism is our most primitive attribute,\u201d Kropotkin adds:<\/p>\n

\n

Love, sympathy and self-sacrifice certainly play an immense part in the progressive development of our moral feelings. But it is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the conscience \u2014 be it only at the stage of an instinct \u2014 of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each person from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one\u2019s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Albert Camus on what solidarity means<\/a> and Lewis Thomas\u2019s forgotten masterpiece of perspective on how to live with our human nature<\/a>, then revisit Kropotkin on how to reboot a complacent society<\/a> and the art of putting your gift in the service of the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvery atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,\u201d Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity \u2014 this tender […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}