What an amount of excellent material Mac and his kind are spoiling.
Tom Murray is a fine lad, full of energy and initiative, but he has to
sit passive at a desk doing work that does not interest him. His
creative faculties have no outlet at all during the day, and naturally
when free from authority at nights he expresses his creative interest
anti-socially. He nearly wrecked the five-twenty the other night; he
tied a huge iron bolt to the rails. Mac called it devilment, but it
was merely curiosity. He had had innumerable pins and farthings
flattened on the line, and he wanted to see what the engine really
could do.
There is devilment in some of Tom's activities, for example in his
deliberate destruction of Dauvit's apple tree. Mac and the law would
give him the birch for that, but fortunately Mac and the law don't know
who did it. Tom's destructiveness is only the direct result of Mac's
authority. Suppression always has the same result; it turns a young
god into a young devil. Had I Tom in a free school all his activities
would be social and good.
And yet nearly every teacher believes in Mac's way. They suppress all
the time, and what is worst of all they firmly believe they are doing
the best thing.
"Look at Glasgow!" cried Mac the other night when I was talking about
the crime of authority. "Look at Glasgow! What happened there during
the war? Juvenile crime increased. And why? Because the fathers were
in the army and the boys had no control over them; they broke loose.
That proves that your theories are potty."
I believe that juvenile crime did increase during the war, and I
believe that Mac's explanation of the phenomenon is correct. The
absence of the father gave the boy liberty to be a hooligan. But no
boy wants to be a hooligan unless he has a strong rebellion against
authority. No boy is destructive if he is free to be constructive. I
think that the difference between Mac and myself is this: he believes
in original sin, while I believe in original virtue.
I wonder why it is so difficult to convert the authority people to the
new way of thinking. There must be a deep reason why they want to
cling to their authority. Authority gives much power, and love of
power may be at the root of the desire to retain authority. Yet I
fancy that it is deeper than that. In Mac, for instance, I think that
his quickness in becoming angry at Tom's insubordination is due to the
insubordination within himself. Like most of us Mac has a father
complex, and he fears and hates any authority exercised over himself.
So in squashing Tom's rebellion he is unconsciously squashing the
rebellion in his own soul. Tom's rebellion could not affect me because
I have got rid of my father complex, and his rebellion would touch
nothing in me.
Authority will be long in dying, for too many people cling to it as a
prop. Most people like to have their minds made up for them; it is so
easy to obey orders, and so difficult to live your own life carrying
your own burden and finding your own path. To live your own life . . .
that is the ideal. To discover yourself bravely, to realise yourself
fully, to follow truth even if the crowd stone you. That is
living . . . but it is dangerous living, for that way lies crucifixion.
No one in authority has ever been crucified; every martyr dies because
he challenges authority. . . Christ, Thomas More, Jim Connolly.
* * * * *
Duncan and McTaggart the minister were in to-night, and we got on to
the subject of wit and humour. Having a psycho-analysis complex I
mentioned the theory that we laugh so as to give release to our
repressions. The others shook their heads, and I decided to test my
theory on them. I told them the story of the golfer who was driving
off about a foot in front of the teeing marks. The club secretary
happened to come along.
"Here, my man!" cried the indignant secretary, "you're disqualified!"
"What for?" demanded the player.
"You're driving off in front of the teeing mark."
The player looked at him pityingly.
"Away, you bletherin' idiot!" he said tensely, "I'm playing my third!"
"Now," I said to the others, "I'm going to tell you one by one what
your golf is like. You, McTaggart, are a scratch man or a plus man.
Is that so?"
"Plus one," he said in surprise. "How did you guess?"
"I didn't guess," I said with great superiority. "I found out by pure
science. You didn't laugh at my joke; you merely smiled. That shows
that bad golf doesn't touch any complex inside you. The man who takes
three strokes to make one foot of ground means nothing to you because,
as I say, there's nothing in yourself it touches."
"Wonderful!" cried the minister.
"It's quite simple," I crowed, "and now for Mac! You, Mac, are a
rotten player; you take sixteen to a hole."
"Only ten," protested Mac hastily. "How the devil did you know? I've
never played with you."
"Deduction, my boy. You roared at my joke, because it touched your bad
golf complex. In fact you were really laughing at yourself and your
own awful golf."
"What about me?" put in Duncan.
Now there was something in Duncan's eye that should have warned me of
danger, but I was so proud of my success that I plunged confidently.
"Oh, you don't play golf," I said airily.
"Wrong!" he cried, "I do! And I'm worse than Mac too!"