[lbo-talk] A Few Words From GB Shaw

[Brian Charles Dauth]

Childish people, we saw, want to have all their lives regulated for them, 
with occasional holiday outbursts of naughtiness to relieve the monotony; 
and we admitted that the ablebodied ones make good soldiers and steady 
conventional employees. When they are left to themselves they make laws of 
fashions, customs, points of etiquette, and 'what other people will say', 
hardly daring to call their souls their own, though they may be rich enough 
to do as they please. Money as a means of freedom is thrown away on these 
people. It is funny to hear them declaring, as they often do, that Socialism 
would be unendurable because it would dictate to them what they should eat 
and drink and wear, leaving them no choice in the matter, when they are 
cowering under a social tyranny which regulates their meals, their clothes, 
their hours, their religion and politics, so ruthlessly that they dare no 
more walk down a fashionable street in an unfashionable hat, which there is 
no law to prevent them doing, than to walk down it naked, which would be 
stopped by the police. They regard with dread and abhorrence the emancipated 
spirits who, within the limits of legality and cleanliness and convenience, 
do not care what they wear, and boldly spend their free time as their fancy 
dictates.

But do not undervalue the sheepish wisdom of the conventional. Nobody can 
live in society without conventions. The reason why sensible people are as 
conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much 
time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that 
it leaves them much more leisure for freedom than unconventionality does. 
Believe me, unless you intend to devote your life to preaching 
unconventionality, and thus make it your profession, the more conventional 
you are, short of being silly or slavish or miserable, the easier life will 
be for you. Even as a professional reformer you had better be content to 
preach one form of unconventionality at a time. For instance, if you rebel 
against high-heeled shoes, take care to do it in a very smart hat.