MAN’S PERIL( Bertrand Russell ) , THE DRUNKARD

                                                         MAN’S PERIL

         Bertrand Russell is a philosopher, Mathematician and sociologist. He is a prolific writer on a variety of subjects. He received Nobel Prize for literature in 1950. “Man’s peril “ is an in-depth analysis of the dangers confronting the modern world and ghostly consequences of atomic warfare. He implores and warns the combating nations in the world to set aside the conflicting ideologies and save the world from total termination. He writes in a style that is witty, lucid and impressive.

The world is full of conflicts. The greatest is the struggle between communism and anti-communism. As a human being, he is greatly worried of humankind whose continued existence is in doubt.
The powerful destructive bombs pose a threat to the whole humankind. All are in peril. The issue is disastrous to all sides. One atom bomb obliterated Hiroshima; one hydrogen bomb can obliterate the largest cities like London, New York and Moscow. Now bombs 25000 times
More powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, are being made. If exploded, the hydrogen bomb affects the earth, water and air. The consequences are deadly and disastrous. A war with hydrogen bomb is quite likely to put an end to the completely human race. The fortunate minority dies; the unfortunate majority survives only to undergo torture, disease and disintegration.
“Men who know most are most gloomy”. “If man ends not war, war ends man”. The abolition of war demands disastrous limitations of National Sovereignty. It is unfortunate that people fail to realize that war is disastrous to them and their Progeny also. Though agreements are reached regarding the escalation of nuclear bombs, it will not be respected during the times of war. Both sides manufacture bombs. It is natural.
Both the sides of Iron Curtain give seemingly judicious reasons. At a certain time, both the sides long for accommodation. But neither could say so no account of fear of being called “cowardly”. At this juncture, their friends may intervene and settle the matters. The Neutrals all the rights, for, it may lead to the  out –break of a world war. It is perilous also to the countries which do not take part in war. All the issues between East and West must be settled peacefully, through bilateral talks. The Neutrals must play a crucial role. They have to convince both the sides of Iron Curtain of the disastrous results of war. This report must be presented to the governments of all Great powers. It exterminates friend and foe as well.
Man achieved something reasonable in the history of the cosmos during the last six thousand years. All the tremendous achievements of man sink into “irrecognisable combinations of dust”. In a very short span of time, if man continues to be foolish, all will perish including the innocent animals. If man is allowed to survive, the triumphs of future will exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past. It is ghostly to choose death in preference to happiness, knowledge and wisdom.
ABOUT :

Now that I am officially a philosopher (that is, my salary will be paid by a philosophy, not as a biology, department), I can enjoy the full time in reading philosophy without feeling guilty. I have not mastered the ability (not to feel guilty) yet, but I am working on it. This is also the reason why I am starting an occasional series of blogs dedicated to individual philosophers, gathered among those who have beaten my imagination for one reason or another. Obviously, a blog entry is not the appropriate place for even a superficial look at the entire body of the work of a great philosopher, so what I will do is take place briefly on a number of relevant important issues to comment on for each Individual case and I hope to encourage people to learn more about this philosopher. We began with the British logic of the twentieth century and the moral theorist Bertrand Russell.

Russell was the first philosopher I read starting when I was in high school, and maybe the guy who first went to philosophy. It was one of those long and boring Sunday afternoons in my father's house in Rome that we listened to a radio show of the football matches of the day spent. I have been digitizing a book of my father's collections with the same coverage, one of those things that people do not read for some reason (guilt?) Shame?), you may have on your shelves, so you may have a certain interest in culture, although these books lie, I saw AirG in the bookstore and his owner could not tell the difference between Homer and Shakespeare when he heard some Lines of the Odyssey unlike excerpts from Hamlet.

Anyway, I picked up Russell's autobiography after he vaguely heard the name. I couldn't get this damn thing down, and I always read as if it was a shining novel (the one in a nonfictional sense). After that I moved on to why I was not a Christian, another book hugely influential in my youth, and so on with several others of Russell. I hung, and thirty years later, I become a true philosopher in the same department where Bertrand Russell's company is produced quarterly. But enough about me, let's talk about Bertie.

Russell's life was filled with events that fill the lives of others, partly because he lived a very long existence (he died at 98 years), but mostly because man had an incredible amount of physical and mental energy. He married four times, wrote an astonishing number of books and influential articles on philosophy, had problems with the law several times for his feelings against the war, and was denied a nomination in the city of the University of New York (where I Want) is In the fall, because a judge believes that the opinions expressed by Russell in his union and his morale make him "morally unfit" to teach at American universities.

Russell's greatest interest in philosophy was in the logic and philosophy of mathematics, and his most important achievement in this field is the monumental beginner Mathematica, co-written with Alfred North Whitehead. His project was the creation of mathematics in completely self-sufficient logic foundations, a project that eventually failed and was later demonstrated by people like Kurt Godel (the "theorem of incompleteness" of fame) to be basically impossible. Russell's work, however, was fundamental and very influential. Russell is also widely recognized as the father of what is now known as "analytic" philosophy (as opposed to the other important contemporary branch, the so-called "continental" philosophy). The idea is that philosophy with the clarification of the use of language, the elimination of confusion and the suppression of unrelated or pointless proposals (especially in some writings about the (metaphysical).

Honestly, but the aspects of Russell's thinking that I think to be even more relevant to today's people relate to their policies and their writings on morality. In contrast to many progressives during her life, Russell early recognized that the communist regime of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe for its citizens and for humanity as a whole and was accordingly very publicly criticized. In a typical way, here's how he managed to attack the Soviet revolution and the Catholic Church in a paragraph:

"Who believes that I, that free intellect is the most important motor of human progress, cannot, but fundamental object, to Bolshevism as much as the Church of Rome." "The hopes that communism is inspired are generally as wonderful as those who are silent by preaching on the mountain, but they remain fanatics, and so are likely to wreak havoc."

Russell also saw clearly the threat of Nazism before many others, and therefore thought that the Second World War (as opposed to the World Cup) was necessary and justified. For a while he had high hopes for the role of the United States as a positive force in international governance, but these hopes were frustrated by Kennedy's dealings with the Cuban Missile crisis in the first place and by the Vietnam War Later. He signed a document with Einstein in 1955, which led to the first Pugwash conference on Science and World a few years later. He soon became also the first President of the Nuclear Disarmament campaign (which he eventually resigned because the organization did not support the kind of civil disobedience that Russell was arrested in 1961).

The man had courage, and he had no qualms to fight, not only writing about his ideas about a just and peaceful society. As a result, Russell has energetically written on a variety of other ethical issues, promoting the right of women to choose access to birth control, and gay rights to name a few. In other words, it was (and still is) the last conservative nightmare of the fanatic. You must love this man.

Allow me to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Bertie on the subject of death and enthusiasm for life:

"I believe that if I die, I will rot, and none of my ego will survive." I'm not young, and I love life. But I hate to tremble with terror on the idea of annihilation. Happiness, however, is true happiness, because it must come to an end, neither thought nor love loses its value because they are not eternal.

                                                           THE DRUNKARD                                       
                                                                                                                                                               
William H. Smith (1807 – 1972) was born in Montagomeryshire, North Wales, “The Drunkard opened on February 25th, 1844 and by July 12th, 1874 had completed 450 shows. The play is considered to be the best example of a “Temperence” drama and was proclaimed as “a grand sacred concert with all the sacred music”. The excerpt from The Drunkard reveals the reason for it having been labeled as a Moral Drama”. It focuses on the conversation between a successful villainous Cribbs and Edward Middleton as irresponsible and wayward drunkard rejected by family as well as society.

“The Drunkard” or “The Fallen Saved” is an American temperance play first performed in 1844. The villainous Lawyer Cribbs has long held a grudge against the Middleton family, even though he has served as their attorney. When young Edward Middleton's father dies, Cribbs attempts to persuade Edward to dispossess a poor mother and daughter who are Middleton's tenants. Instead, Edward falls in love with the daughter, Mary, and marries her. But Edward has a weakness: drink. Cribbs insidiously encourages Edward's weakness, until Edward, ashamed and seemingly impoverished, flees to the degradation of New York's Five Points district. Cribbs follows him there and attempts to turn him into a forger, but Edward's better nature prevails. Edward's foster‐brother William and a rich philanthropist, Arden Rencelaw, seek him out, rehabilitate him, and reunite him with his wife and young daughter. Cribbs is forced to reveal that he has hidden Edward's grandfather's will and that Edward is really still a wealthy man. The melodrama was first presented, as part of a temperance crusade, in Boston in 1844, and within a year, it had been played there a hundred times, including performances at the Tremont Temple and at the Boston Museum. The play was offered by a temperance group in New York in 1844 but failed to cause a stir. However, in 1850 it was revived by several New York theaters, most notably at Barnum's American Museum, where its run of one hundred consecutive performances set a long‐run record for the time.

Even though, the play was written more than 150 years ago, the power and the flavor of the playwright’s pen comes through even today. Smith achieves a remarkable linguistic feat in compressing so much thought into so few words. The impact of each word is so striking that the reader is bound to react to the basic issues raised in the play. The language is, interesting and the similes used to describe feelings and ideas are of special significance in this selection.

This lesson is a best example to the present generation. It gives a chance to look into their life style, about the way they are living, their habits and culture. It says the need of self-control and importance of life purpose and moral values. In addition, it explains how the youth become an excellence in their career and personal life if they have moral values and its importance.