CZM Book Club: Two More Stories by Leo Tolstoy

Margaret reads you two more stories about anticapitalism and religion. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club, book Club, book Club, Boo Club.
I'm a good singer. Hi. This is Margare Kiljoy and
you are listening to Cool Zone Media book Club, the
only book club that you don't have to do the

(00:21):
reading for because I do the reading for you. And
this week I'm going to keep reading you Tolstoy, because
I'm on a kick where I want to read you
the stories from old revolutionaries, and Tolstoy is one of
the ones who actually knows how to write. I've got
two stories for you that you might like, then, I

(00:45):
feel like, are kind of interesting ways to write radical fiction.
The first one is called The Two Brothers and the Gold,
and I feel like this story more than anything else,
is like, Yeah, tot is kind of seen as the
founder of Christian anarchism, and I cannot imagine a story
that more directly presents Christian anti capitalism than this particular story,

(01:13):
The Two Brothers and the Gold. Once upon a time,
in the days long since gone by, there dwelt at
Jerusalem two brothers. The name of the elder was Athensius,
the name of the younger John. They dwelt on a
hill not far from the town, and lived upon what

(01:33):
people gave to them. Every day the brothers went out
to work. They worked not for themselves, but for the poor.
Wherever the over worked the sick were to be found,
wherever there were widows and orphans, Thither went the brothers,
and there they worked and spent their time, taking no payment.

(01:54):
Thus the brothers went about separately the whole week, and
only met together in the evening of the Zabbath at
their own dwelling. Only on Sunday did they remain at home,
praying and conversing together, and the Angel of the Lord
came down to them and blessed them. On the Monday,
they separated again, each going his own way. Thus did

(02:15):
the brothers live for many years, and every week the
Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them.
One Monday, when the brothers had gone forth to work
and had parted their several ways, the elder brother, Ephensius
felt sorry at having had to part from his beloved brother,
and he stood still and glanced after him. John was

(02:36):
walking with his bent head, and he did not look back.
But suddenly John also stopped, as if he perceived something,
and continued to gaze fixedly at it. Presently he drew
near to that which he had been looking upon, and
then suddenly leapt aside, and, not stopping for another instant,
ran towards the mountain and up the mountain, right away
from the place, just as if some savage beast were

(03:00):
suing him. Athensius was astonished and turned back to the
place to find out what his brother had been so
afraid of. At last he approached the spot, and then
he saw something glistening in the sun. He drew nearer.
On the grass, as if poured out from a measure,
lay a heap of gold. And Athensius was still more astonished,

(03:22):
both at the sight of the gold and at the
leaping aside of his brother. What was he afraid of?
What did he run away from? Thought Athensius, there is
no sin in gold. Sin is in man. You may
do ill with gold, but you may also do good.
How many widows and orphans might not be fed therewith,

(03:44):
how many naked ones might not be clothed, How many
poor and sick might not be cared for and cured
by means of this gold. No, indeed, we minister to people,
but our ministration is but little, because our power is
so small, and with this gold we might minister to
people much more than we do now, thus thought Ethhensius,

(04:06):
and would have said so to his brother, But John
was by this time out of hearing, and looked no
bigger than a cockschafer on the farther mountain. And Ethhensius
took off his garment, shoveled as much gold into it
as he was able to carry, threw it over his shoulder,
and went into the town. He went to an inn,
gave the gold to the innkeeper, and then went off

(04:28):
to fetch the rest of it. And when he had
brought in all the gold, he went to the merchants,
bought land in that town, bought stones, wood, hired laborers,
and set about building three houses. And Ethensius abode in
the town three months and built the three houses in
that town. One of the houses was an asylum for

(04:49):
widows and orphans, the second house was a hospital for
the sick, and the third house was a hospice for
the poor and the pilgrims. And Ethhensius sought him out
three god fearing elders, and the first elder he placed
over the refuge, the second over the hospital, and the
third over the hospice for pilgrims, and Athensius had three

(05:13):
thousand gold pieces still left, and he gave a thousand
to each of the elders that they might have wherewith
to distribute among the poor. And all three houses began
to be filled with people, and the people began to
praise Ofthensius for all that he had done, and Ethensius
rejoiced thereat, so that he had no desire to depart
from the town. But Ethhensius loved his brother, and taking

(05:36):
leave of the people, and not keeping for himself a
single coin of all this money, he went back to
his dwelling in the self same old garment in which
he had come to town. Othensius was drawing nearer to
his mountain, and he thought to himself, my brother judged
wrongly when he leapt aside from the gold and ran
away from it. Haven't I done much better? And Ethensius

(06:00):
had no sooner thought this than suddenly he beheld standing
in his path the angel, who had been sent to
bless him, but now looked threateningly upon him. And Athensius
was aghast and could only say, wherefore, my lord? And
the angel opened his mouth and said, thou art not
worthy to dwell with thy brother, that one leap aside

(06:22):
of thy brothers was worth more than all thou hast
done with thy gold. Athensius began to talk of how
many poor and how many pilgrims he had fed, of
how many orphans he had cared for, And the Angel
said to him that same devil who placed the gold
there in order to corrupt thee hath also put these
big words into thy mouth. And then the conscience of

(06:46):
Althensius upbraided him, and he understood what he had done
was not for God, and he wept and began to repent.
Then the angel stepped aside from the road and left
free for him in which John was already standing awaiting
his brother. And from thenceforth Offensius yielded no more to

(07:07):
the wiles of the devil which strewn the gold in
his path. And he understood that not by gold, but
by good works only could he render service to God.
And his fellow man and the brethren dwelt together as
before and like I read this, and I mean, I'm

(07:27):
not on the same page theologically as Tolstoy. I never
thought I was. It's just so interesting to me because
I'm like, well, I don't know, he might have done
better by like setting up all those you know, charities
or whatever, or maybe there's other things he could have
done with it instead. But this is internally consistent, and
it is interesting to think about how You're like, well,

(07:49):
you can create these institutions and try to have them
be good, and very often when we create institutions, they
do not do good. I would actually like to claim
that the Catholic Church is a prime example of this.
And you can argue with me or believe whatever you
want about this, but the idea of creating these institutions,
you know, power corrupts and Authentsius wasn't corrupted. He kept

(08:12):
nothing for himself. But if you look at the history
of the church, you see this, you know, thing that
theoretically was probably created for what felt like charitable purposes
and has done a lot of really destructive things by
means of institutional power. And so perhaps setting up these things,

(08:34):
I don't know, that's probably not what the story is
really about. It probably is just literally about gold and
that just trying to be good is more important. But
I'm like, I also think it's important to try and
do good at scale and just do it in a
way where like maybe the problem is those just him
deciding exactly what it's got to be done with the gold,
whether he takes some for himself or not. I don't know.

(08:55):
Maybe I have all these opinions because this podcast is
brought to you by ads and that feels out of
character to what we just read. But here they are

(09:15):
and we're back. Okay, I have a second story for you.
It's also by Tolstoi. I didn't introduce him last time.
Leo Tolstoi was a nineteenth century Russian author, one of
the most famous authors in literature history, and he wrote
War and Piece, I guess most famously, and he wrote
a lot of stories, and he's seen as the the

(09:36):
sort of father of Christian anarchism. And yeah, he has
like good quotes about like the anarchists are right and
everything except the idea that bombs are how you bring
about good things. I'm not only paraphrasing, I'm just repeating
from memory badly. This story is called the Coffeehouse of
Sarat and warning for outdated language. And you know whatever,

(10:01):
I'm reading a story from the nineteenth century is not
the way that I would recommend people write about certain
ideas now, But y'all can understand that in the town
of Sarat in India, there was a coffee house where
many travelers and foreigners from all parts of the world
met and conversed. One day, a learned Persian theologian visited

(10:25):
this coffee house. He was a man who had spent
his life studying the nature of deity and reading and
writing books on the subject. He had thought, read and
written so much about God that eventually he lost his wits,
became quite confused, and ceased even to believe in the
existence of a God. The Shah, hearing of this, had

(10:46):
banished him from Persia. After having argued all his life
about the first cause, this unfortunate theologian had ended by
quite perplexing himself, and instead of understanding that he had
lost his own reason, he began to think there was
no higher reason controlling the universe. This man had an
African slave who followed him everywhere. When the theologian entered

(11:09):
the coffee house, the slave remained outside near the door,
sitting on a stone in the glare of the sun
and driving away the flies that buzzed around him. The Persian,
having settled down on a divan in the coffee house,
ordered himself a cup of opium. When he had drunk it,
and the opium had begun to quicken the workings of
his brain, he addressed his slave through the open door,

(11:32):
Tell me, wretched, slave, said he. Do you think there
is a god or not? Of course there is, said
the slave, and immediately drew from under his girdle a
small idol of wood. There, said he. That is the
God who has guarded me from the day of my birth.
Everyone in our country worships the fetish tree, from the
wood of which this God was made. This conversation between

(11:55):
the theologian and his slave was listened to with surprise
by the other guests in the coffee house. They were
astonished at the master's question, and yet more so at
the slave's reply. One of them, a Brahmin, on hearing
the words spoken by the slave, turned to him and said, miserable, fool,
is it possible that you believe God can be carried
under a man's girdle. There is only one God, Brahma,

(12:19):
and he is greater than the whole world, for he
created it. Brahma is the one, the mighty God, and
in his honor are built the temples on the Ganges
banks where his true priests, the Brahmans, worship him. They
know the True God, and none but they. A thousand
score of years have passed, and yet through revolution after revolution,

(12:40):
these priests have held their sway because Brahma, the One
True God, has protected them. So I spoke the Brahman,
thinking to convince everyone. But a Jewish broker who is present,
replied to him and said, no, the temple of the
True God is not in India. Neither does God protect
the Brahman cats. The True God is not the God

(13:01):
of the Brahmins, but of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. None
does he protect but his chosen people, the Israelites. From
the commencement of the world, our nation has been beloved
of Him and ours alone. If we are now scattered
over the whole earth, it is but to try us.
For God has promised that he will one day gather
his people together in Jerusalem. Then, with the Temple of

(13:25):
Jerusalem the wonder of the ancient world restored to its splendor,
shall Israel be established a ruler over all nations. So
spoke the jew and burst into tears. He wished to
say more. But an Italian missionary who was there interrupted him.
What you are saying is untrue, he said to the
jew you attribute injustice to God. He cannot love your

(13:47):
nation above the rest. Nay, Rather, even if it be
true that of old he favored the Israelites, it is
now nineteen hundred years since they angered him and caused
him to destroy their nation and scatter them over the earth,
so that the faith makes no converts and has died
out except here and there. God shows preference to no nation,
but calls all who wish to be saved to the

(14:08):
bosom of the Catholic Church of Rome, the one outside
whose borders no salvation can be found, so spoke the Italian.
But a Protestant minister, who happened to be present, growing pale,
turned to the Catholic missionary and exclaimed, how can you
say that salvation belongs to your religion? Those only will

(14:29):
be saved who serve God according to the Gospel, in
spirit and in truth, as bidden by the Word of Christ.
Then a turk An office holder in the custom house
at Surat, who was sitting in the coffee house smoking
a pipe, turned with an air of superiority to both
the Christians. Your belief in the Roman religion is vain,

(14:49):
said he. It was superseded twelve hundred years ago by
the true faith, that of Mohammed. You cannot but observe
how the true Mohammedan faith continues to spread, both in
Europe and Asia, and even the enlightened country of China.
You say yourselves that God has rejected the Jews, and
as proof you quote the fact that the Jews are
humiliated and their faith does not spread. Confess, then the

(15:13):
truth of Mohammedism, for it is triumphant and spreads far
and wide. None will be saved but the followers of Mohammed,
God's last prophet, and of them only the followers of Omar,
and not of Ali, for the latter are false to
the faith. To this, the Persian theologian, who was of
the sect of Ali, wished to reply, But by this

(15:35):
time a great dispute had arisen among all the strangers
of different faiths and creeds. Present. There were Abyssian Christians,
Lamas from tibet Ismailians and fire worshipers. They all argued
about the nature of God and how He should be worshiped.
Each of them asserted that in his country alone was
the true God known and rightly worshiped. Everyone argued and shouted,

(15:57):
except a chinaman, a student of Confucius, quietly in one
corner of the coffee house, not joining the dispute. He
sat there, drinking tea and listening to what the others said,
but did not speak himself. The Turk noticed him sitting
there and appealed to him, saying, you can confirm what
I say, my good chinaman, But if you spoke, I

(16:18):
know you would uphold my opinion. Traitors from your country
who come to me for assistance, tell me that though
many religions have been introduced into China, you Chinese consider
Mohammedism the best of all and adopt it. Willingly confirm then,
my words, and tell us your opinion of the One
True God and his prophet. Yes, yes, said the rest,

(16:39):
turning to the Chinaman. Let us hear what you think
of the subject. The Chinaman, the student of Confucius, closed
his eyes and thought, awhile. Then he opened them again, and,
drawing his hands out of the wide sleeves of his garment,
folding them on his breast, he spoke as follows, in
a calm and quiet voice. Maybe the One True God

(17:00):
his ads. That's not what he said. That's what I said.
That's not part of the story. It's just ads, and
we're back. He spoke as follows, in a calm and

(17:21):
quiet voice, Sirs. It seems to me that it is
chiefly pride that prevents men agreeing from one another on
matters of faith. If you care to listen to me,
I will tell you a story which we'll explain this
by an example. I came here from China on an
English steamer which had been round the world. We stopped
for fresh water and landed on the east coast of

(17:42):
the island of Sumetra. It was midday, and some of us,
having landed, sat in the shade of some coconut palms
by the seashore, not far from a native village. We
were a party of men of different nationalities. As we
sat there, a blind man approached us. We learned afterwards
that he had gone blind from gay too long and
too persistently at the sun, trying to find out what

(18:04):
it is in order to seize its light. He strove
a long time to accomplish this, constantly looking at the sun,
but the only result was that his eyes were injured
by its brightness, and he became blind. Then he said
to himself, the light of the sun is not a liquid,
for if it were a liquid, it would be possible
to pour it from one vessel into another, and it

(18:25):
would be moved like water by the wind. Neither is
it fire, for if it were fire, water would extinguish it.
Neither is light a spirit, for it is seen by
the eye. Nor is it matter, for it cannot be moved. Therefore,
as the light of the sun is neither liquid, nor fire,
nor spirit nor matter, it is nothing, so he argued,

(18:48):
And as a result of always looking at the sun
and always thinking about it, he lost both his sight
and his reason, and when he went quite blind, he
became fully convinced that the sun did not exist. With
this blind man came a slave who, after placing his
master in the shade of a cocoanut tree, picked up
a cocoanut from the ground and began making it into

(19:09):
a night light. He twisted a wick from the fiber
of the cocoanut, squeezed oil from the nut into the shell,
and soaked the wick in it. And as the slave
sat doing this, the blind man sighed and said to him, well, slave,
was I not right when I told you there is
no sun? Do you not see how dark it is? Yet?

(19:30):
People say there is a sun. But if so, what
is it. I do not know what the sun is,
said the slave. That is no business of mine. But
I know what light is here. I have made a
night light, by the help of which I can serve
you and find anything I want in the hut. And
the slave picked up the cocoanut shell, saying, this is
my son. A lame man with crutches, who was sitting

(19:53):
near by, heard these words and laughed. You have evidently
been blind all your life, he said, to the blind man,
not to know what the sun is, I will tell
you what it is. The sun is a ball of
fire which rises every morning out of the sea and
goes down among the mountains of our island each evening.
We have all seen this, and if you had your eyesight,
you too would have seen it. A fisherman who had

(20:16):
been listening to the conversation, said, it is plain enough
that you have never been beyond our own island. If
you were not lame, and if you had been out
as I have been in a fishing boat, you would
know that the sun does not set among the mountains
of our island, but as it rises from the ocean
every morning, so it sets again in the sea every night.
What I am telling you is true, for I have

(20:37):
seen it every day with my own eyes. Then an
Indian who is of our party, interrupted him by saying,
I am astonished that a reasonable man could talk such
a nonsense. How can a ball of fire possibly descend
into the water and not be extinguished. The sun is
not a ball of fire. It is the deity named Deva,
who rides forever in a chariot round the golden mount

(21:00):
mountained Marou. Sometimes the evil serpents Ragu and Ketu attack
Deva and swallow him, and then the earth is dark.
But our priests pray that the deity may be released,
and then he is set free. Only such ignorant men
as you, who have never been beyond their own island,
can imagine that the sun shines for their country alone.
Then the master of an Egyptian vessel, who was present,

(21:22):
spoke in his turn, No, said he, you are also wrong.
The sun is not a deity and does not move
only round India and its golden mountain. I have sailed
much on the Black Sea and along the coasts of Arabia,
and have been to Madagascar, into the Philippines. The sun
lights the whole earth, and not India alone. It does
not circle round one mountain, but rises far in the east,

(21:46):
beyond the isles of Japan, and sets far far in
the west, beyond the islands of England. That is why
the Japanese call their country Napon. That is the birth
of the Sun. I know this well, for I have
myself seen much and heard more from my grandfather, who
sailed to the very ends of the sea. He would
have gone on, but an English sailor from our ship

(22:08):
interrupted him. There is no country he said where people
know so much about the sun's movements as in England.
The sun, as everyone in England knows, rises and sets nowhere.
It is always moving round the earth. We can be
sure of this, for we have just been round the
world ourselves, and nowhere knocked up against the sun. Wherever

(22:30):
we went, the sun showed itself in the morning and
hid itself at night, just as it does here. And
the Englishman took a stick and, drawing circles in the sand,
tried to explain how the sun moves in the heavens
and goes round the world. But he was unable to
explain it clearly, and, pointing to the ship's pilot, said,
this man knows more about it than I do. He

(22:51):
can explain it properly. The pilot, who was an intelligent man,
had listened in silence to the talk till he was
asked to speak. Now everyone turned to him, and he said,
you are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived.
The Sun does not go round the Earth, but the
Earth goes round the Sun, revolving as it goes and

(23:12):
turning towards the Sun in the course of each twenty
four hours. Not only Japan and the Philippines and Sumatra
where we are now, but Africa and Europe and America
and many lands besides. The sun does not shine for
some one mountain, or for some one island, or for
some one sea, or even for one Earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you

(23:34):
would only look up at the heavens instead of at
the ground beneath your own feet, you might understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you and for your country alone. Thus spoke the
wise pilot, who had voyaged much around the world and
had gazed much upon the heavens above. So on matters

(23:55):
of faith, continued the Chinaman, the student of Confucius. It
is pride that causes error and discord among men. As
with the sun, so it is with God. Each man
wants to have a special God of his own, or
at least a special God for his native land. Each
nation wishes to confine in its own temples hymn who

(24:16):
the world cannot contain? Can any temple compare with that
which God himself has built to unite all men in
one faith and one religion. All human temples are built
on the model of this temple, which is God's own world.
Every temple has its fonts, its vaulted roof, its lamps,
its pictures or sculptures, its inscriptions, its books of the law,

(24:39):
its offerings, its altars, and its priests. But in what
temple is there such a font as the ocean, such
a vault as that of the heavens, such lamps as
the sun, moon and stars, or any figures to be
compared with living, loving, mutually helpful men. Where are there
any records of God's goodness? So easy to understand as

(25:01):
the blessings which God has strown abroad for man's happiness.
Where is there any book of the law so clear
to each man that it is written in his heart.
What sacrifices equal the self denials which loving men and
women make for one another? And what altar can be
compared with the heart of a good man on which
God himself accepts the sacrifice. The higher a man's conception

(25:26):
of God, the better we will know him, And the
better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him,
imitating his goodness, his mercy, and his love of man. Therefore,
let him who sees the sun's whole light filling the
world refrain from blaming or despising the superstitious man, who,
in his own idol sees one ray of that same light.

(25:47):
Let him not despise even the unbeliever, who is blind
and cannot see the sun at all. So spoke the Chinaman,
the student of Confucius, and all who are present in
the coffee house were silent and disputed no more as
to whose faith was the best. The end. I'm not
reading these stories to be like and this is totally

(26:09):
what you should believe or how we should talk about
these things. I think you know me by now well enough,
unless it is the first episode you've listened to that Instead,
I just find it interesting the way that different people
with radical conceptions around freedom will talk about these things.
You know, what is this second story? But I'll like

(26:30):
claim against nationalism and saying like, but it's not wrong
that people like see what they can see based on
where they are, but that when we look at all
humanity together we get a very different picture, and you know,
we each see this image of the truth. I just
like it. It's complicated, but I like it. And next

(26:54):
week I'll read you more stuff that I probably like
and or probably feel complicated about, and if you want
to read some other stuff. I wrote a couple books.
One of the books just came out, and it's called
The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, and it's a reflection
on death but in no way where I talk about
trolls and murder elves and things like that, set in
the modern world. And it's out from Strangers in the

(27:16):
Tangled Wilderness, which is a collectively run anarchist publisher of fiction,
and you can check it out. It just came out,
thanks everyone who supported it on Kickstarter. That means an
awful lot to me. And there was also another book
that was also kickstarted that I had a lot to
do with, which is called Defenders of the Wild, and
it is both a board game and a companion Almanac.
And the Companion Almanac it's about animal people defending against

(27:39):
machines that are destroying everything. And it's a board game,
but it's also a tabletop role playing game. And I
didn't write the rules for either, but I got to
play around a lot with world building and writing a
lot of the sort of fiction and flavor text that
goes along with that. So you might like those things.
They don't really have anything to do with when I
just read you, but I don't know whatever, whatever you want, bye.

(28:04):
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