The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
what hooked me

I really ought simply to accept it as a regular series here: exerpts from magazines or books that I randomly flipped open to at the newsstand or bookstore that told me that I had to walk away with the entire publication.

Here is the hook paragraph randomly found in Friends for 300 Years: The History and Beliefs of the Society of Friends since George Fox Started the Quaker Movement, by Howard H. Brinton (Pendle Hill Publications, 1965):

Simplicity not only meant absence of superfluity in speech. It also meant genuineness and sincerity. Quakers leaned over backwards and sometimes made themselves objects of ridicule in their efforts to tell the exact truth. Fearing overstatement they resorted to understatement. Phrases like 'As far as we know,' 'Nothing appears,' were used in answering the Queries. A Friend would not say, 'I object,' but more probably, 'I cannot see my way clear to unite.'

How different would our public and political discourse be today if Quaker principles predominiated? That is to say, "different" described after having put aside the difference already made in the American tradition of truth-telling in government by our foremost "Quaker" President, Richard Nixon, and any of those who follow in his footsteps.

Following directly on the heels of the above passage is one that I found intriguing from the angle of the social history of capitalism:

One by-product of truth-telling was the initiation of the one-price system in business. It was the custom in the seventeenth century for merchants to ask more than they expected to receive and for the customer to offer less than he expected to give. By a process of bargaining a price was agreed on. The Quaker stated at the outset the price which he was prepared to accept. As a result Quaker business flourished. A child could be sent to make a purchase from a Quaker merchant.

posted by TiR at 8:08 AM