"What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos"
About this Quote
Read’s line has the tart snap of a rebuttal: not “I believe,” but “What I do deny” - a phrasing that suggests he’s answering an argument already in the room, likely the brisk modern confidence that you can engineer social cohesion out of rational plans, material incentives, or administrative technique. The key move is his deployment of “mystical ethos,” a phrase that sounds contradictory on purpose. “Ethos” belongs to ethics and civic life; “mystical” belongs to the nonrational, the felt, the sacred. Read is insisting that the glue holding a society together is not only legal or economic but symbolic: shared myths, rituals, aesthetic values, a sense of meaning that can’t be reduced to policy.
As a poet and art critic with anarchist sympathies, Read is wary of the state’s coercive machinery while also skeptical of pure utilitarianism. The subtext is a warning to technocrats and hard-nosed materialists: you can win compliance without belief, but you can’t win endurance. “Enduring” does heavy lifting here, shifting the debate from how to found a society to how to keep it from dissolving into boredom, cynicism, or brute force.
There’s a second edge: calling the ethos “mystical” quietly admits its danger. Myths can nourish solidarity; they can also be weaponized into nationalism, cults of personality, and aestheticized violence. Read’s intent isn’t to romanticize irrationality but to argue that any serious politics must account for the human appetite for transcendence - and decide who gets to author the story a society lives inside.
As a poet and art critic with anarchist sympathies, Read is wary of the state’s coercive machinery while also skeptical of pure utilitarianism. The subtext is a warning to technocrats and hard-nosed materialists: you can win compliance without belief, but you can’t win endurance. “Enduring” does heavy lifting here, shifting the debate from how to found a society to how to keep it from dissolving into boredom, cynicism, or brute force.
There’s a second edge: calling the ethos “mystical” quietly admits its danger. Myths can nourish solidarity; they can also be weaponized into nationalism, cults of personality, and aestheticized violence. Read’s intent isn’t to romanticize irrationality but to argue that any serious politics must account for the human appetite for transcendence - and decide who gets to author the story a society lives inside.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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