at first glance he'd seem a deeply
improbable person to call a political
theorist john ruskin one of the most
ambitious and impassioned English social
reformers of the 19th century seemed to
care mostly about one thing beauty which
has a reputation for being eminently
apolitical and removed from real life
and yet the more Ruskin thought about
beauty the beauty of things humans make
the more he realized that the quest to
make a beautiful world is inseparable
from the need to remake it politically
economically and socially in a world
that's nowadays growing not only
evermore polluted and unequal but also
that we seldom remark upon it uglier
Ruskin's emphasis on beauty and his
understanding of its role in politics
make him an unusual yet timely and very
necessary figure John Ruskin was born in
London in 1819 the only child in a
wealthy and costed home every year
during his teens he went with his
parents on long tours of Europe the
place that most impressed him and
changed the course of his life was
Venice which he first saw when he was 16
and to which he returned almost every
year during long periods of his adult
life in Venice he spent his days
visiting churches floating in gondolas
looking at paintings and making highly
accurate drawings of his favorite
architectural details on his return to
England Ruskin was struck by the
contrast between the glories of Venice
and the often dingy realities of British
urban life it's a familiar phenomenon we
tua liable to come back from the Grand
Canal to Main Street in the corner store
and fill our spirits sink and yet
although we may mutter a few disparaging
remarks on the whole we leave it at that
we tend to feel that the ugliness that
surrounds us is some sort of inviolable
phenomenon which we would be best to
resign ourselves to but that wasn't
Ruskin's way he couldn't get over the
appalling realisation that in one place
human effort had led to such delightful
results and yet in most places the same
or even more thought money and labor had
produced a landscape that was dismal and
soul-destroying
why was the contemporary world so
dispiriting ly monstrously ugly
Ruskin began his career as an art critic
but by middle-age a more direct and
urgent goal came into view he realized
that the ugliness of most things in
Britain was the clearest indication of
the decadence cruel economic ideology
and rotten moral foundations of his
society he devoted the remainder of his
career to an urgent vocal fight against
the underlying principles of modern
capitalism
he was always off to harangue some group
of industrialists in Birmingham or
Sheffield about their crooked value
systems and the immense heart-rending
superiority of Venice to modern England
but he was also interested in practical
action when his father died he was left
an enormous fortune in 1871 he founded
the guild of st. George
he had long admired the medieval guild
system where workers were well organized
within trades that offered them both job
security and pride in their work so he
set up workshops in a network of farms
creating sustainable unadulterated
foodstuffs for a time he was a leading
maker of apple juice he even wanted to
set up a network of schools offering
evening classes for workers as an
alternative to the numbing mass-media
otherwise pushed their way some of his
ideas succeeded Ruskin's devotees
started a business making jumpers jams
even a museum his most devoted disciple
William Morris set up a highly
influential interior decoration company
and the guild itself has survived today
and still perform some of the work that
Ruskin had championed but of course
Ruskin didn't manage single-handedly to
reform capitalism it seems a general law
that people who can think well aren't
the most adept at organising change they
aren't good with the accounts they get
impatient with meetings and so the world
doesn't change as much as it should
however Ruskin remains an inspiration to
anyone who seeks not just to reflect on
the world but also to alter it towards
beauty and wisdom in the mid 1870s while
he was a professor at Oxford Ruskin got
increasingly bothered that his students
went to parties and wrote essays but
never did anything very productive with
their hands which he believed had a
detrimental effect on their characters
so he got together 60 students and
organized them to mend a nearby road
which had become ugly and unusable and
to tidy the neighbouring green so the
children could play on it it took them a
long time and they made very imperfect
progress there were complaints from the
local
landlord and a general conviction that
Ruskin was a touch unhinged but the
underlying point is crucial at a fear of
seeming ridiculous we often end up not
tackling the challenges around us the
road mending is a small instance of a
larger idea that animated Ruskin's life
that it's the duty of creative
privileged people to direct their
efforts towards making the world more
pleasing and tidy more convenient and
beautiful not just for themselves but
with the greatest good of the greatest
number most of us have at some points
felt the trees are lovely that somewhere
else is far more beautiful than where we
live today that there are too many
shoddy things in the world that work
really isn't enjoyable enough that often
we are miss employed but we tend to
dismiss these thoughts as to personal
minor not really of significance Ruskin
argues us into a more ambitious and more
serious attitude it is he says just such
thoughts and experiences which need to
be given proper weight which need to be
analyzed and understood they provide
crucial clues as to what is really wrong
with the world and can therefore leaders
towards moves that may make it genuinely
a little better
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