Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It's a shame that our affiliations sometimes force us underground to enjoy online activities. It is in one way liberating (we invent a new persona in order to clandestinely be ourselves), but at the same time it is a kind of bondage. We live in fear of misinterpretation and unanticipated consequences.


Two books that had enormous influence on my early political and social theory are Rousseau's Social Contract and Reveries of the Solitary Walker; even as a boy of 19 or 20, I anticipated days of retiring joy, fading energy but sharpening wit[1], long solitary walks and private reflection; to this day I am grateful that this man lived and thought and wrote and influenced as much as he did. We need more like him[2]. It is difficult to explain the connection you can feel to a historical personality, but had I lived at that time, I think I could have enjoyed many bottles of French wine and late evenings of conversation with him.

Read The Social Contract here
http://www.archive.org/details/therepublicofpla00rousuoft

Read Reveries of the Solitary Walker here
http://www.archive.org/details/confessionsjjro02rousgoog

I will read his Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality next, one of the few of his books I never got around to. (Right after I finish Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton - his last book, published posthumously, and very good so far IMHO).

[1] In the classical sense, ie, True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd/ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd (Alexander Pope)

[2] Despite the comments of Calvin College Prof. Vander Weele, whom I respected very much, who was a Neo-Classicist through and through and partly blamed Rousseau for an unfortunate transition in European thinking. I also to this day have a soft spot for the Enlightenment period. Part of me is a humanist, fond of the order and metric beauty of Dryden and Pope. I've promised myself many times I would read Irving Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism, which Prof. Vander Weele recommended, http://books.google.com/books/about/Rousseau_and_romanticism.html?id=5B8bAAAAYAAJ.