In the great argument between the "bores" and the "bored" (the parochial and the cosmopolitan), let us come out on the side of the bores. For it is they who discover life and substance in the everyday-- they are continually aroused to poetry by what they see around them. They are as gods, who require to be fascinated by the familiar, for a god is surrounded only by the familiar.
As an example, look at the poetry that can be found in the ordinary: "Smith" (a noble profession battling with the hardest elements, and necessary for all great wars and conquests), "signal-box" (the last line of defense between life and death for the sea-farer), "letter-box" (the ultimate symbol of security and irrevocability). To regard such things as unpoetical is to be languishing in what you have learned from too much prose.
Give him this, at least Rudyard Kipling has a flare for just this sort of embellishment. He manages to see the honor in the ordinary. He is often criticized for his admiration of things military; this is only incorrect insofar as his perception is just as awry as that of his critics. A strong military is indicative of a weakened culture (else how could the military have gained strength over the populace?) The organization that Kipling admires in the military could just as easily be admired in any other industry-- as all are necessary for the smoothness we find in our own lives.
Kipling's real problem is his cosmopolitanism. By being a "citizen of the world", he fails to be a citizen of his country. And while he thinks this gives him a grander view of the whole, in reality it gives him a feeble view of all. Only the lover of a country can truly perceive that country, as he has given himself over to the country. Only a lover can know his beloved; only a devoted religious can understand his religion; and in all these cases that knowledge grows the subject and thus shrinks (and withers? and darkens? and makes and brings suspicion upon?) the outside world.
Those who belong nowhere can gain facts about many places, but those who belong somewhere occupy and grasp an entire universe. The moss-covered stone is weighted with life. The microscope enlarges the world while the telescope shrinks it. In reality, true devotion infuses meaning into those things we encounter, however few.
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I was struck in this chapter at the similarities between Chesterton and Mark Steyn-- and if I gave it any longer thought the similarities would probably multiply. In this case, though, I'm thinking of Steyn's argument against multiculturalism: the big fraud of the multiculturalist state is that it actually absolves people from knowing anything about any other culture. Facts are fleeting, and often we don't even bother with the facts, relying instead on portraying the proper sentiment. What is needed, instead, is a strong cultural identity that citizens are eager to buy into. Only this can produce true vitality in a populace.
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