I

have been re-reading Baltasar Gracián. I was gifted a copy of The Art of Worldly Wisdom some years ago and picking it up again felt easy, as it is slim and digestible while still greatly stimulating. Few do so well in so slim a book, but the quality of words means more than the quantity. Composed by the author as an oracular handbook, the reader feels free to open the text to any page to discover what awaits. As Gracián would agree, I read to work my mind—not my biceps with a heavy tome.

Gracián has always been acceptable to me, and an inspiration for others I’d also concur with. He distills the necessary contradictions of Montaigne into accessible affirmations rather than hiding his guidance in larger essays. Gracián’s words are more difficult to take to heart, however, than philosophical or intellectual considerations I can easily store away and bring to hand when needed, as he often wonderfully expresses the best ways to behave, the best attitudes, ideas of graciousness and good judgement, the best ways to be prudent with our emotions and our impulses. He is the superego, suggesting how one should behave, although gratifying one’s passions is easier. As such I often forget what Gracián says when it is most important in the heat of human interaction, and the wisdom is only recalled in hindsight. Memory is often unruly, or stupid.

Picking a favourite aphorism is difficult, but this one is particularly pertinent: ”Substance is not enough, attention to circumstance is also required. A bad manner spoils everything—even reason and justice—a good one supplies everything, gilds, even sweetens truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself. The how plays a large part in affairs, a good manner steals people’s hearts. Fine behaviour is a joy in life, and a pleasant expression can help you out of a difficult situation in a remarkable way.”

This seems eminently acceptable to me, even if I am personally poor at behaving well. It is a great example of an almost timeless cliché. It is good to be polite. It is good to know how to navigate a situation tactfully. Nonetheless some contemporary audiences will label this suggestion, especially in a volatile context, tone-policing; or insist it is an outdated form of ‘respectability politics’. Sometimes malign groups will pick up and weaponise a good notion, which is often the excuse for abandoning good manners, given terrible people ask us to be polite, critique our methods, or demand we act with decorum. Yet we cannot allow them to rob us of good principles and good character. We may believe so much in the substance of a cause that any rude behaviour is tolerated. I object not to rudeness in itself so much as how ineffective it is and how self-righteous, and arrogant it is. One can be polite and arrogant too, but rude arrogance is the fad.

This results in moral activists (agreeable or not) who use such highly political language to become depoliticised. Real politics happens beyond and regardless of them while they performatively and expressively protest, rudely, or violently, or not—reduced to tedious slogans. They are not effective.

If impropriety works, then fine. But it often doesn’t and many apparently cannot be convinced of this, as for them substance and personal grievances, however correct, because they are correct, seem to be enough. Tactics and tact are alien to them.

That these actions are resented is unsurprising. Without giving myself too much credit, I echoed a similar sentiment: “It is not so much about being correct, I could reasonably say that my political opponents are terrible people or at least have terrible ideas, but this is complaining—not effective change. We can forgive ourselves for outbursts against the most horrible of people, especially when they have harmed us, or traumatised us, and we’re not expecting people to speak and act politely. If impropriety works on occasion, it’s welcomed. The real contention, here, is efficacy.”

The nature of resentment is always poorly considered. Terrifying people who resent the appearance of superiority are unfortunately a great political force today. Moral-political activists, however technically or academically correct they are, would do well to consider this. Resentment of their hubris and bad form is what they generate more than good change. It is not so simple to denounce that truth. No reasonable person doubts the weight of injustice. That injustice is very real means one needs to be effective rather than only expressive. I care little for expressive politics that shouts and screams a lot, and may shout and scream all while speaking the truth, but leads nowhere.

I have not mentioned the useless, actively counter-productive free marketing for one’s opponents in being so susceptible and easily distracted by trolling and bait. This is worse than involving oneself in petty scandals that debase anyone who speaks of them. So many resources are wasted in the theatre of superficially political content, while the physical, actionable designs of one’s opponents press along unhindered and actively encouraged by salacious attention.

I dislike chastising fellow victims, yet the success of noble causes is dear, and too much action for good has somehow neglected better presentation, and believes it be hollow or needless, or a tool of our opponents. Many truly believe the substance of their injustice is enough. Again, no reasonable person doubts this substance, but it is never enough. Worse, the manner in which many activists present themselves is arrogant, hubristic, wasteful, contemptuous, cruel, dismissive, divisive, rude, vulgar, and sows deep resentment—all because substance is considered enough. When they face a deeply resentful backlash, when their divisiveness begets even worse illiberal behaviour, they cannot conceive of even a small part of this as being their own doing.

We are all, in various ways, responsible for how our peers behave—also when they behave badly. We can admit responsibility for this without being guilty. When my fellow citizens do something horrible, I am in some part responsible for it. Or rather, as citizens we are responsible for each other, but not guilty. The idea of being guilty for how others behave, as being one’s own terrible fault, is such a pernicious feeling that even the subtle responsibility anyone has for how their actions affect others is too close an association and too much to bear.

If one is a victim of great injustice, it is comforting to find agreement in a comprehensive idea or movement that has brilliant answers and an exacting path to follow. Many such movements do speak the truth, and surely do note very real terror, but not always and not absolutely. If more honestly diagnosing the wrongs of the world means being more uncomfortable, and not providing definite answers, it is then painful to begrudge our dishonesty.

This will be dismissed. Extreme and revolutionary politics, rejecting such a quaint artifice as good manners and good form, are much more aesthetically and emotionally appealing. And therefore more easily intellectually convincing, even if dishonest. Once one is seduced by such an encompassing epistemological and ideological map of how everything works, whether decently coherent or closer to an inarticulate set of vague but powerful commitments, the world and events are answered. They just have to fall in line with one’s agreeable ideas. If they don’t, it is not your fault. Others maliciously interfered.

It is better to resist all such parables and grand schemes, whether from the left, centre, right, western or eastern, but that requires prudence and discernment, and living with uncomfortable tensions; with a sense of the unknown and unpredictability, confusing and contradictory instead of cogent and familiar. I am not stuck here, though. I am content to abandon good graces and be vulgar when it works, and I am happy to consider the tactics of brute force and immodesty instead of moderation and diligence. Gracián, as ever, has the ability to contradict me: “Do not take payment in politeness; for it is a kind of fraud.” Or further, “ . . . avail yourself here of the nimbleness of good form, for the same truth that wheedles one, cudgels another.”

There is a danger in being excessively lucid, in not being impatient enough, though there is no shortage of impatient and vulgar sorts saying what needs to be said in different ways. Being reasonable is never so interesting.

*

Sometimes only brief words can produce superfluous thought. I’m sure Gracián was not considering the modern context of my intemperate peers, or my own folly.

I should not hold my views too firmly. “Every fool is fully convinced, and everyone fully persuaded is a fool.” And more: in my above opinion, I am not the best at being courteous—surely, to some, I appear rude for suggesting so bluntly that many are vulgar or insulting.

The above, with all its pontificating, is speaking ill of people. I critique others harshly despite my own sensitivity and fear. “He who speaks ill will always hear worse.” Something to worry about, but that worry will not always correct me. There is much to gain from Gracián, and a more concentrated effort in re-reading him may give me different insights each day.

Gracián’s superego will have a hard time overcoming Goldsmith’s id, which is sure to be forever ungracious. For all his talk of prudence and reserve I often do not follow, and I do not hold my tongue. Still, there is no one, however wise, who does not regret his youth or his embarrassments, or finds his memory disagreeable and wishes to demolish it for something far better. Yet I should not resent myself. One can only become wise, in the ponderous way we acquire wisdom, by recognising our risible or loathsome personalities that come before our better selves.

Wisdom appears easy but is often demanding to truly accept. Let us hope for some consolation.