Note by JRW: The following is an extract from handwritten letter by Myatt, addressed to me. It was dated Early February.
I Hear The Silence Say
You ask if I have given up political striving "for good" - and as I listen this Spring-like February morning to the Andante of Schubert's String Quartet D810 what answer is there other than a resounding "Yes!"
For I am so reminded, hearing such sublime sounds, of all the many things I have experienced that have brought me to where I am: an advocate of the reason, tolerance, humanity, and honour of Folk Culture. There is nothing else, except Folk Culture, that, for me, presences the numinosity I have known and saught for so many decades: that captures in a civilized way, those yearnings I have had since an early age be part of, contribute to, create, a noble way of life, a noble society, where people know and understand and strive for the essence of life: to be reasonable, honourable, to contribute to evolution.
But Folk Culture can only ever be achieved by honourable and numinous means. This means a distancing from all forms of political activity and agitation, and all types of covert activity. There is and can only be the slow, genuine, change, in society, that results from an inner personal transformation; from an acceptance of a numinous way of life, a new morality. This may and probably will take decades, perchance a century or more.
But one of the many things that "history" can teach us is that conflict, bloody revolutions, wars, dishonourable violence, dishonourable killing, oppression and conquest, achieve little of permanent value. Governments, tyrants, political systems, Empires, revolutions, purges, come and go; but numinosity, morality, honour and reason persist if they are kept alive from person to person, from small community to small community, from honourable group to honourable group. Religious change - numinous change, moral change - is far more lasting; far more enduring than any other causal form.
The essence, then, is the new morality of Cosmic Ethics and the understanding of the Cosmic Being, the nexus, of honour and reason, that Folk Culture expresses. This essence is expressed in a rural way of life, in small communities, in individuals, in families, living according to Cosmic Ethics.
If I ever need to remind myself of what is important I go alone into the English countryside that I love - far away from the noise of modern life - and stand still and listen, balanced as I am then between sky and earth. I am connected then, to a past that spans thousands of years on this one planet, and to a future that can span tens of thousands of years on a myriad of planets spread across our Galaxy. I am one then, connected in a wordless, numinous way to the life around me - the trees, the soil, the singing birds, the grass, the shrubs, the clouds, the very sky itself. I am they, as they are me, just as I am the far distant stars and planets and beings who and which await us. I feel then our very future, out there, calling us, desiring to be made real, to live, as if it is a nascent awareness, a being, that needs our very presence to live, to evolve, as it can and should live and evolve. And it is a being: a manifestation, a part of, the possibilities of the very Cosmic Being of which life on this planet is but one small emanation. How many of us in this modern world stand still, in silence, and listen to the Cosmos calling us? How many are even aware of the cosmic perspective that such a thinking brings?
Thus, from this perspective, I refuse to - cannot - go back to the deeds, the thinking, of my political and covert past, even though there are still a few times when dishonourable, ignoble world and national events begin to anger me, as they many times in the past angered me and inspired action: a noble desire to change things for the better. But now, when such feelings for swift change arise, I wander out into what remains of the rural silence and connect myself to the Cosmos: or at the very least remember some of the many experiences of my past, creator as such experiences have been of such understanding and empathy as I now have.
In a very important sense, empathy and perspective are what we need: faculties which must be developed. Empathy for all life, human and otherwise, with which we share this planet which is our home. Empathy for the life that probably - assuredly - exists, out there, in the Cosmos. And the perspective of not only our past, as a species and a member of our own unique folkish culture, but also of our possible future, as civilized, honourable, human beings venturing forth to explore and live upon new worlds.
Now - the music having ended - I have taken myself and my notebook out into the fields that surround the place where I now dwell, and sit, on a fallen Oak branch by a small stream. There is no sun, today: only grey and greyer low clouds, but it is warm, for the time of year. There is the smell, the feeling, the delight, of Spring. Sitting here, with a slight breeze rustling the branches of the nearby Willow trees bursting with Catkins, I know again that gentle love of life which - like some sublime music or a beautiful emmpathic lover - can be the genesis of tears. It is all so very simple I hear the silence say. And so I am again left to wonder: why? How is it that we are still making the same mistakes? Still acting in a dishonourable way? Still being irrational? Still believing that war can solve problems? Still being manipulated by the "Media" and dishonourable propaganda? Still believing that it is "right" to invade another country? That "we" know best and have kind of "right" to impose our solution, our way, by force, by killing, by brutality, on others? That some kind of "international" organization, or some government, can decide the fate of millions of people? That Prison is a good thing? That some of us can have luxuries while millions starve? Where is tolerance? Where is reason? Where is empathy and honour?
It is as if we have learnt nothing from sublime music; from sublime works of Art; of literature. It as if we have learnt nothing from the tragedy of over five thousand years of human suffering. It is as if we have learnt nothing from the presence, from the numen, of Nature; from the perspective that an awareness of our insignificant place in the Cosmos brings. It is as if we somehow prefer the dark indifference of cruelty to the beauty of empathy. It as if we prefer the outward appearance of glory and the barbaric passion of a passing frenzied moment to the warm smile of compassion and the self-control of honour.
There is a stark inhumanity in governments, in nations, in international political organizations, in modern urban life, which, it seems, many people cannot see. And a wisdom in knowing that humanity, that honour, resides in what is small, what is rural, what is known to us, in person. It is so very simple: honour is and can only ever be personal; to do with things we, as individuals know, and experience, directly, which affect us or our own immediate family and small local community in a personal way. There can never be honour in nations; in governments; in international organizations and their "resolutions" just as there never has been and never can be any true justice in any law made by some government, nation or international organization. The only true law, the only true justice, is that of personal honour. For honour and empathy are the genesis of humanity, the creator of true liberty.
Thus, to live in a human, a rational, an honourable way, we must have small communities, a mostly rural way of life, a personal connection to the earth; a sense of belonging; and thus an empathy with those things which surround us. We must have a moral perspective. In brief: Folk Culture. And Folk Culture can only ever be introduced, and propagated, through civilized, cultured, reasonable, honourable means, without using any kind of force or coercion, just as its primary aim is to introduce individuals to a new way of living: the way of empathy, of honour, of small rural communities. As such, politics and covert action - just like nations and governments and the now all pervasive "Media" with their manipulation - are irrelevant, unnecessary, things that belong to our ignoble, inhuman, past.
I trust this - now rather long - missive has answered your question! Now I shall put away my pen and notebook, and wander around these muddy fields, trying not to dwell for too long upon the sadness of the unvoiced suffering that still besets this world.
DW Myatt