Proverbs of Hell 22

This is the twenty-second entry of my series on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” please see this post for context and a sense of direction.

If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Just a couple days ago I was griping about how repetitive the advice to “mind your own business” is in this book and now we are here. In every other instance of this type of advice so far, Blake has advised people to keep to their nature and not look to others for guidance. This one tells us that if a lion were to “lose as much time” as the eagle did then it would be a waste to learn about the fox’s ways. Yet, that doesn’t remove the fact that the lion has learned to be cunning. Blake seems to have previously been of the opinion that a lion would have no use for the ability, but the fact remains that it is a gain. Maybe it won’t make him a better lion, but if a problem that fox would be more useful for should arise, perhaps having been advised by one would not be so bad.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement. are roads of Genius.
Hoo boy, this reminds me of the arguments I used to get into as a music kid about whether music theory was “necessary.”

It’s important to remember that Blake treats the word “Genius” (see this entry for thoughts there) as an unsullied work of divine nature. He starts off the actual advice by saying that improvement will always make straight roads, which I think almost anyone would consider superior to “crooked roads without Improvement” for all the uses a road is intended. Blake is again cautioning us to not discard the unimproved adaptation of human genius to the conditions of nature from that comparison alone. A healthy respect for those works of genius will be nothing but a benefit even if you are attempting to make a landing strip. Those crooked roads were once the best decision someone could make, and making sure you are in possession of the same facts they were is an important step in any design process, but especially one where the genius might be concealing geological or ecological adaptations that are not immediately obvious from a drone scan confirming plans made on a topographic map.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Now this is some advice. This one takes Blake’s favorite formula (one:one::one:one) and makes it (one:one>one:one) like some of my other favorites.

So as before, we split it into two sets of subject-verb pairs. Murdering an infant.

*cough* alright moving on

Nursing unacted desires, I think after reading one of the most fundamental sins a human can commit this feels almost insultingly trivial. However, the choice of “nursing” as a verb here is important. It’s not “harboring” or “having” it’s a specific verb that implies feeding and caring for something that is growing as well. If I wanted to be a snowboarder, then I would have to start snowboarding as often as I could and probably researching and talking about the hobby. That would be acting on my desires. An “unacted” desire, would imply I had the desire to be a snowboarder and never took a single step in that direction. It’s not even an indictment of “fan culture” since even if I covered my social media in snowboarding, put stickers on my possessions, and called myself a snowboarder without even owning one, that would still be acting on my desire. Maybe not a positive act, but an act all the same.

Were I to, instead, just constantly think about snowboarding, maybe fantasize about it, maybe talk about it in a very superficial and uncommitted way, but mostly just allow it to live in my mind, that would qualify as unacting. A wise person might entertain the idea for a while, but then discard it after learning about hospital debts and how expensive lift tickets are, even if they still wanted to snowboard. They will stop encouraging or contemplating the idea. Far worse is the person who continues to let those obstacles “stop” them from acting on the desire. They will grow to resent whatever the thing they are blaming their own inaction on, and it will distort their thinking. Eventually they will be living a double life, one where they are constantly stopped from their amazing ambitions and dreams by an endless parade of saboteurs and idiots, all perfectly conforming their actions to thwart this person’s still growing desire. The milk that they nurse these unvoiced ideals will be the same energy that they would pour into something that would actually help them, through community or achievement or even just satisfaction, and they deny themselves all of those blessings for an internal cuckoo bird to consume their entire lives from the inside out.

With that in mind, and the evidence all around us in modern culture of the destructive power of repression and denial, it’s clear to me why someone as independent as Blake may equate it to the strangling of new life. Striking down another in moral outrage is the action of a person who is nursing unacted desires. The seeking out and eradication of others are the actions of unacted desires. The quiet social murder of another is the result of minds twisted by the secrecy and self loathing of such lives. The suspicion that pulls back the helping hand is rooted in the extender’s own mind when they are secretly resentful of the request. The concealing of your own desires, perhaps even from yourself, dooms you to constantly violating The Golden Rule. If you will never let others treat you how you secretly want to be treated, you will never treat others right because you will not believe their sincerity, how could you?

This is not a message a of doom or condemnation, but a powerful message to either act on those desires or let them fade away. You will be ruled by them forever if you don’t and they will twist you into unrecognizable shapes.

It’s a very subtle point, but very applicable, and definitely my contender for Blake’s ultimate thesis, but we still have another day to review. Be kind to each other, but especially yourself, because that’s what nurses the good will to treat others as you would like to be.

Music: