Crumby on Mutual Aid - A Special May Day Book Review

After I graduated with honors in record time from seminary school, I was a big hit in the preacher business. Yet, despite my fame as a preacher and acclaim as the foremost exorcist of those times, I could not forever sustain that lucrative occupation. No.

No, I lost focus. My noggin wandered off into the clouds. Anon though, my noggin, which by then had entirely taken flight and gone up yonder with the cliff swallows (Hirundo pyrrhonota)(Class Aves), was suddenly hit by an epiphany, much like those swallows get hit by cars. The epiphany was, Crumby, you have too narrow a focus. Why should you confine yourself to your miserable flocks of wicked sinners and the demon possessed, when there is a whole globe out there for you to save?

Absolutely right, I thought. I can use my preacher business plus the lucrative exorcisms to finance my real interest or hobby, saving life as we know it all over the planet. But doing all that, plus keeping the preacher business going proved to be too much for a mere mortal like me. I caught myself getting mixed up. I would forget what audience I was addressing. I became totally incapable of accurately messaging the audience before me.

One day I was supposed to be addressing the Potential Lady Virgins and Martyrs Sweet Tea Society, while the notes I had prepared for the event in my Big Chief Tablet were tailored to an Angora goat audience. Those two groups are similar, all righty then, but some of the potential lady virgins and martyrs felt insulted by references to their soft yet wooly fleece.

More and more, that kind of stuff happened. I felt confused. Lost. Hapless. So I had to trade in my preacher costume for a library card. Eventually, the library issued me a card. That’s because they got tired of shooing me out of the building at closing time.

My strategy at the library was to go through all the topics in alphabetical order starting with A. I figured eventually I would find a new profession by going through all those dusty tomes beginning with the A volumes. About the time I got my card, I was up to Anarchism. That’s it, I surmised, Anarchism is the profession for me. Who are some anarchists that have made good? I shall have to check that out.

They, whoever they are, say, that the winners write history. But losers write books. One such loser who wrote books was Petr Kropotkin. Petr, born a Russian prince, shook off his nobility to become a naturalist or student of nature. If he had not done that, eventually, he might have gotten himself shot by the Bolsheviks. Instead though, because of his early choice, the Bolsheviks put up with his antics. That’s right, even when Petr was old and sick, the Bolsheviks did not shoot him.

Petr, in terms of history, was a loser. The cause he espoused, one of the several varieties of anarchism, lost. Yes, the Russian peasants with their communal history, were eventually marched off to work on the collectivized farms, so the communal approach to life as we know it favored by Petr never got to be a hugely widespread or a long term success in modern times. What remains of all that are his books.

Full circle.

I am now actually reading one of those books. So far, I am actually now reading about the barbarians.

Mutual Aid
Petr Kropotkin

The Chapter Headings

Mutual Aid Among Animals
Mutual Aid Among Savages
Mutual Aid Among the Barbarians - Crumby is in this chapter.
Mutual Aid in the Midiaeval City
Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves

In the old days, when I was trying to find myself in the library, I did not actually read all the books. No, I skimmed them, employing my eidetic memory on parts of those books that seemed potentially useful. Mutual Aid was one of those books. I memorized just enough of that book to make myself seem like an expert on Mutual Aid. That was remarkably easy, to seem like an expert in those days, because the odds of encountering anyone who knew more than me about Mutual Aid were astronomical. Yes, I could talk up a storm on Mutual Aid without any fear of contradiction. That fact is probably, sadly, still correct.

Anyway, now I am actually reading Mutual Aid to atone for all that lying I did. All that lying was just to make me look smart. A lot of good that did me. Yet it turns out Mutual Aid is very interesting. For example, in the chapter about savages, I espy that the Pygmys are a kindly people, barely living off the fat of the land. Then, along come the Europeans who put out poisoned cow carcasses for the Pygmys. Mercy! The colonists from Europe treat the pygmys like varmints.

The actual thesis of Mutual Aid is that the miserable struggle for existence has historically been mitigated by mutual aid. Thus, Mutual Aid attempts to refute the Chamber of Commerce interpretation of Darwin. Not easy that in these parts where the Chamber of Commerce is a winner.

This concludes Part 1 of my book review of Mutual Aid. I may write up Part 2 after I actually finish reading the book. Happy May Day! All Power to the Workers! Plus, All Power to the Savages! Especially the Pygmys!