Tolstoy vs. Tolstoy

"Whether we like it or not, the future belongs to ... the shuffling mob of men of good will."

If everything in the world is empty agitation and vanity ( Socrates) , if the sole good is the passage from being to nothingness (Schopenhauer), if we must free ourselves from life ( Buddha) , why then asks Tolstoy, do the majority of people not commit suicide?

Tolstoy was always sad when he rejected God and cheerful when he accepted him like a child.

The Christian religion ( according to Pascal and Tolstoy ) " being a mixture of internal and external, is proportionate to all. It elevates the lowly within and humbles the proud without."

Tolstoy admitted that (his) present activities ( charity to the victims of famine) were not in harmony with his principle that a " good deed does not consist in giving bread to feed the famished, but in loving the famished as much as the overfed. Loving is more important than giving food.."

"The result of his sermons on love is that he lost all feeling for his own family, " wrote his long-suffering wife Sonya in 1895. "Fame, (is) that unquenchable thirst for which he (Tolstoy) has sacrificed everything..."

Sonya ( who bore Tolstoy 13 children) also points out that "he (Tolstoy) never sat for five minutes by a bedside to let me have a rest or sleep the night through or go for a walk or simply pause for a moment to recover my strength."

As a socialist Tolstoy affirmed that the rich subsist on the sweat of the people, consuming everything they possess and produce. His lifetime, internal struggle culminated in a philosophy of chastity, vegetarianism, abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, pooling of all goods and property and non-resistance to evil ( although he did not uphold most of these tenets ).

In contrast to Tolstoy’s socialist belief that those at the top should bring themselves down to the level of the people, Chekhov, the playwright, believed that the "level of the people should be raised by education. Chekhov wisely said that "there is more love in electricity and steam than there is in chastity and the refusal to eat meat."

Tolstoy pointed out the absurdity of the "revelry among the common people which always accompanied the official installation of a tyrant on his throne." He was referencing Nicholas II of Russia in 1896.

Observations from the life of a jerk of a man to a genius of a writer (Tolstoy) aptly apply today. America just crowned a self-centered leader espousing socialistic principles with pomp, circumstance and revelry from the common people (and the elites). History repeats itself.