The Joy of Curmudgeonry

Against the Proud Paralytics

2011-04-29T22:35:00.003+01:00

“Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. . . . It may mean that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal; and that you are a paralytic.”

G.K. Chesterton, “On Dialect and Decency”, Avowals and Denials (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1935), pp.77-8.

Without Borders

2011-04-29T22:32:00.006+01:00

One sometimes hears the following enthymeme: most of nature does not have borders, therefore, mankind should not have borders. [1] The enthymematic form leaves unspoken a premise which the argument must have in the logical form, to which a man who makes the argument is rationally committed, and which in this case stands as follows: mankind should not have that which most of nature does not have, wherefrom it follows that mankind should not have reason, thought, or speech, nor of course the fruits thereof: no philosophy, religion, science, mathematics, good books, half-witted arguments, clothing, tea-kettles, bank-holidays, and so on, given that most of nature does not have these things. Maybe here is the unspoken urge of those who appeal to the “freedom” of non-human nature as the model for human nature: to be lifted of the burden of rational nature and to live without thought or underpants; yet maybe still further, for most of nature is also without life.

[1] As one libertarian clown says: “I am anti borders. Most of nature has no borders. Explain to a European (not African) swallow that it may need a visa to visit the UK and it would laugh.” (Old Holborn, “What Elephant?”, Old Holborn (weblog), 14^th April 2011.)

Fewtril no.285

2011-04-29T22:19:00.004+01:00

Why shouldn’t novels have in them badly-drawn caricatures of real persons? The world is full of them.

Fewtril no.284

2011-04-29T22:18:00.007+01:00

On the dusty and featureless plain of his soul, it is easy for the latter-day man to lose all sense of perspective and direction.

Fewtril no.283

2011-04-29T22:16:00.003+01:00

In terms of the fostering of culture and the forming of good taste and character, liberal-democratism has been so great a failure that it is believed by most to have been a great success.

Operative Words

2011-03-20T01:07:00.007Z

Operation Odyssey Dawn: beginning in the middle of things; or the start of a ten-year quest, with the god of seas and earthquakes against it from the outset, with lotus-eating, cannibalism, a bag of wind, the turning of men into swine, sirens, drownings, cunning speech and disguises to come.

Operation Harmattan: a hot and dusty wind, ends in the middle of March.

Operation Ellamy: anyone’s guess. Anagram: Meally? M[ilitarily] E[fficient] Ally? Short for: Ella . . . my Dear? New-born daughter of a MOD-official? Chosen by computer? The latter, methinks, the spoilsports.

Hie Thee to Hell

2011-03-19T21:03:00.002Z

It is a shame that the “international community” is too scattered and shadowy a thing to fall to quick and easy air-strikes.

BGC

2011-03-19T20:51:00.002Z

“We cannot make the world sufficient, we can only kill the perception that the world is insufficient.”

Bruce G. Charlton, “Suffering in the World”, Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany, 12th March 2011.

Fewtril no.282

2011-03-19T20:49:00.005Z

Religion is the rule-governed search for that which one lacks. Reason, therefore, stands as the religion of the moderns.

Fewtril no.281

2011-03-19T20:48:00.002Z

A feeling of moral superiority is much too great a pleasure for the morally wretched to forbear. What is this — a cynical word against moral superiority? No: a truthful word against pleasure-seeking wretchedness.

An Intolerable State of Affairs

2011-02-16T22:59:00.027Z

Her Majesty’s Government’s Chief Zombifier of Science, otherwise known as its Chief Scientific Adviser, speaks before a troop of “scientific” civil servants:

“We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of racism. We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of people who [are] anti-homosexuality . . . We are not—and I genuinely think we should think about how we do this—grossly intolerant of pseudo-science, the building up of what purports to be science by the cherry-picking of the facts and the failure to use scientific evidence and the failure to use scientific method.

. . . I’d urge you, and this is a kind of strange message to go out, but go out and be much more intolerant.” [1]

Often the liberal speaks of intolerance as if it were something bad in itself, which of course it is not; yet, when it suits, he speaks fairly reasonably: intolerance is something good when its object is something bad. [2] (Naturally, where the liberal, or anyone else, has wrong ideas of what is bad, so his intolerance is wrong for that reason at least, if not also because of a lack of proportion, but is not wrong by itself.) But with all this honest talk of intolerance, the advisers and administrators of our liberal-bureaucratic regimes need to be careful: as the confidence of these regimes grows in the service of great lies and political evils, and as they abandon the expedient device of tolerance for those areas where their power formerly could not determine the case, they risk becoming as unsubtle as the old Marxistic regimes, whereof they have been hitherto the more refined brethren.

An authoritarian (such as I) may take this as a hopeful sign, for it is in greater subtleness that the lasting evil of our regimes has lain: in ever renewing their own images to eschew older, negative ones, hence giving themselves the overall image of getting better, against the reality of becoming more untruthful by new or subtler techniques of beguilement; in striving to seem friendly and approachable, whilst being the most impersonal and anonymous regimes in history; in discouraging the idea of authority, i.e., visible and acknowledged power, whilst building regimes whose vast power is less acknowledged than the power of the old authoritarian regimes which they dwarf; and so on. But, still, although one may take this as a hopeful sign — less subtleness, more sight of reality — one must bear in mind that the latter-day Briton, being a jaded and wanton consumer of one image and sensation after another, a votary of slogans and sound-bites, is less and less able to grasp anything but crudenesses. [3] So, even if Her Majesty’s Government lost all its wits and employed an official to spit in his face and insult his entire heritage, the latter-day Briton might still call it the greatest regime in history in spite of it all. Her Majesty’s Government already does so metaphorically, and he hardly bats an eyelid.

[1] John Beddington, quoted by John Dwyer and Laura Hood, “Beddington goes to war against bad science”, Research Fortnight, 14th February 2011. (Via Delingpole via Mangan.) Prof. Beddington says he does not want to have to “deal with what is politically or morally or religiously motivated nonsense.” (Ibid.) But it seems to have escaped his notice that dealing in politically-motivated nonsense is his job. Indeed, if he did not find that “science” always fell mysteriously on the side of an insane but officially-promoted ideology going by the name of political correctness, he would soon be out of it.

[2] I say “fairly reasonably”, since it would be better to say: intolerance is something good when its object is something bad and when it does not itself lead to something worse than that object. Starkly said: intolerance of nose-picking is something good, but not if it goes so far as state-surveillance of all households for the sake of stamping it out altogether. The reader, I am sure, can think of less silly, and more pressing, examples of wrong intolerance.
From the psychological-engineering point of view, the liberal’s idea of tolerance is a remarkable one. It encourages him to feel magnanimity in upholding his own beliefs whilst damning all others, with little or no care for the truth or reasonableness thereof, which is to say, it encourages him to feel magnanimity in bigotry. Liberal bigotry is that wonderful state of mind in which one is compelled to call a bigot anyone who stands at odds with it, which is to say, it is bigotry made sublime. Or: the typical liberal is so great a bigot that he feels magnanimous as such.
There is, to be sure, much trouble with the use of the word “bigot” and its cognates: it has always been a word ripe for abuse, it is often used question-beggingly, and so the word has long been a favourite insult cast by bigots; and now, since it has been redefined in many minds to mean someone who does not hold liberal beliefs, the word has become even more fraught with communicative difficulties. Still, for a fine example in a nutshell of what I dare to call sublime liberal bigotry, the following is hard to beat: “Pictures of adults who’re engaging in consenting acts have no associated moral issues attached, and anyone who says otherwise is a puritan bigot.” (John B, commenting on Charlie Owen, “Pornblocking — Why it Would Have Killed Me”, Liberal Conspiracy, 21st December 2010.) As the example illustrates, the word “puritan” is another word that has also undergone redefinition: it is now often used to mean someone who fails to abet or kindly overlook debauchery and libertinism.)

[3] I suppose the more liberaldom belittles its peoples, biologically, culturally, spiritually, the less subtle it needs to be.

Fewtril no.280

2011-02-16T22:49:00.003Z

The more primitive, the more real — this is the principle of a reductionistic metaphysics which informs everything from art to science. Perhaps one day we shall become too real to express it.

Fewtril no.279

2011-02-16T22:48:00.002Z

Logical positivism was more scorn than logic. That might explain its lingering appeal in spite of its self-refutation.

Fewtril no.278

2011-02-16T22:46:00.004Z

Whenever men of the West gather to ask why it has fallen, one is sure to get another glimpse of the answer.

Fewtril no.277

2011-02-16T22:45:00.001Z

It is no easy task to become virtuous, which is why in our age it is regarded as a vicious burden.

Fewtril no.276

2011-02-16T22:43:00.003Z

It is a happy thing for the utilitarians that immeasurable harm cannot be reckoned by the felicific calculus.

The Other One

2011-01-29T15:39:00.010Z

Naturally it is not only into Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other far-off lands that the United States stretches its sinister arm. Here is an example from Europe:

“Our aim is to engage the French population at all levels in order to amplify France’s efforts to realize its own egalitarian ideals, thereby advancing U.S. national interests.” [1]

“[W]e will continue and intensify our work with French museums and educators to reform the history curriculum taught in French schools, so that it takes into account the role and perspectives of minorities in French history.” [2]

“[W]e will build on the expansive Public Diplomacy programs already in place at post, and develop creative, additional means to influence the youth of France, employing new media, corporate partnerships, nationwide competitions, targeted outreach events, especially invited U.S. Guests.” [3]

“We will also develop new tools to identify, learn from, and influence future French leaders.” [4]

“[W]e will support, train, and engage media and political activists who share our values.” [5]

“[W]e will continue our project of sharing best practices with young leaders in all fields, including young political leaders of all moderate parties so that they have the toolkits and mentoring to move ahead. We will create or support training and exchange programs that teach the enduring value of broad inclusion to schools, civil society groups, bloggers, political advisors, and local politicians. Through outreach programs, Embassy officers from all sections will interact and communicate to these same groups our best practices in creating equal opportunities for all Americans. We will also provide tools for teaching tolerance to the network of over 1,000 American university students who teach English in French schools every year.” [6]

“Finally, a Minority Working Group will integrate the discourse, actions, and analysis of relevant sections and agencies in the Embassy. This group, working in tandem with the Youth Outreach Initiative, will identify and target influential leaders and groups among our primary audiences. It will also evaluate our impact over the course of the year, by examining both tangible and intangible indicators of success. Tangible changes include a measurable increase in the number of minorities leading and participating in public and private organizations, including elite educational institutions; growth in the number of constructive efforts by minority leaders to organize political support both within and beyond their own minority communities; new, proactive policies to enhance social inclusion adopted by non-minority political leaders; expansion of inter-communal and inter-faith exchanges at the local level; decrease in popular support for xenophobic political parties and platforms. While we could never claim credit for these positive developments, we will focus our efforts in carrying out activities, described above, that prod, urge and stimulate movement in the right direction. In addition, we will track intangible measures of success — a growing sense of belonging, for example, among young French minorities, and a burgeoning hope that they, too, can represent their country at home, and abroad, even one day at the pinnacle of French public life, as president of the Republic.” [7]

In other words: ongoing, widespread, and subversive manipulation of the workings of another country for the sake of an egalitarian-revolutionary ideology. Here it seems that France, the land of the world’s second-born left-wing republic, is just not left-wing enough for the land of the world’s first.

Still, one evil empire down; another to go.

[1] Cable from Embassy Paris, “Minority Engagement Strategy”, 19th January 2010; Wikileaks: 10PARIS58; ¶1. (Apparently France is yet another European country having trouble with its natives: “The French media remains [sic] overwhelmingly white”. Ibid., ¶2.)

[2] Ibid., ¶5.

[3] Ibid., ¶7.

[4] Ibid., ¶7.

[5] Ibid., ¶8.

[6] Ibid., ¶9.

[7] Ibid., ¶11.

Yule

2010-12-21T21:28:00.001Z

A merry Christmas to you all.

Stuff

2010-12-21T19:07:00.004Z

A rallying cry against Western Civilisation, and some posts at the other blogs.

Fewtril No.275

2010-12-21T18:57:00.003Z

It has been said that disgust arises in man from the consciousness of those things which remind him of his beasthood. That must explain my visceral reaction to libertarians.

An Oddness

2010-12-21T15:11:00.004Z

“[G]o back far enough in history and no group outside Olduvai, in eastern Africa, can lay claim to being truly ‘native’.” [1]

How long will we have to put up with the sinister eccentricities of these beautiful-souled, would-be race-killers? Likely until either they or their target-groups have been destroyed. In the meantime, amongst other things, we may grapple with their oddities, though I must admit that I am stuggling to understand the sense of this one. Here we are faced with the mystery of how the truth of a land’s not existing three million years ago could mean that no group is native to it when it does exist. Normally one would hold that nativeness to an ethnic group falls within an ethnic category; and that nativeness to an ancestral land or polity falls within an ethnic-territorial or geopolitical category, but here the belief seems to be that no group is native even to its own homeland unless it lives in the same geographical space that was once occupied by a different group first-ancestrally related to it, despite that the group may be of another species, despite that first-ancestorhood depends on what group is being considered, and despite that it is groups in the first place which form the ethnic-territorial bounds wherein they are normally understood to be native. As I say, it is odd, weird even, but then our beautiful-souled fellows aren’t normal, and reasonableness, one may be sure, is not high amongst their priorities.

[1] James Mackay and David Stirrup, “There is no such thing as an ‘indigenous’ Briton”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 20th December 2010.

In the Interregnum

2010-11-13T21:25:00.002Z

“All manly peoples today have a bad name; the Prussians are the prototype. In the interregnum, however, it is not mothers but hermaphrodites who prevail.”

[“Alle männlichen Völker sind heut in Verruf; die Preußen sind der Prototyp. Im Interregnum sind aber nicht die Mütter, sondern die Zwitter maßgebend.”]

Ernst Jünger, Brief an Carl Schmitt, 23. August 1970, in Ernst Jünger – Carl Schmitt: Briefe 1930-1983, hrsg., H. Kiesel (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1999), p.376.

A Lingering Ground-Whiff

2010-11-08T21:28:00.004Z

“We have fought wars, indulged in regicide and had a glorious revolution in order to rid us of the religio-political tyranny of divine right.” [1]

Oh, didn’t it turn out spiffing! And war-mongering, king-slaying, and revolution-seeking for the greater glory of the total-plebeian state — what a glad tale! But I am tired of these “right-wing conservatives” (read: rear-guard left-wing radicals) befouling the name.

Before these men, and before the stench of French Jacobins, Russian Bolsheviks, and American Wilsonians was set aloft, there was the ground-whiff of English Whigs, who, in the now timeworn manner, threatened to make the world safe for their own feeble ideas, therewith the sheen of goodliness and the anticipation of thanks.

’Tis Britain’s care to watch o’er Europe’s fate,
And hold in balance each contending state,
To threaten bold, presumptuous kings with war,
And answer her afflicted neighbours’ prayer.
The Dane and Swede, roused up by fierce alarms,
Bless the wise conduct of her pious arms:
Soon as her fleets appear, their terrors cease,
And all the northern world lies hushed in peace. [2]

The cold ghastliness of it ought to make every man shiver, and yet, by its giving leave to an easy and unearned spree of warm feelings, it is likely to trigger a glow of holiness. But do not get me wrong: I am no peace-monger. The drive for everlasting peace on earth is something to be withstood, and its dream-fulfilling, something to be dreaded: an earth “hushed in peace” would be a dead one, and deathly if only half-fulfilled.

No more war; no more markedness of races, peoples, states, or religions; no lawbreakers or adventurers; no conflicts owing to overlordship and otherness; no more hatred or settling of scores, only unending convenience through all millennia. Even today, where we are witnessing the end-phase of this trivial optimism, such sillinesses make one bethink with dread the godawful boredom — the taedium vitae of the Roman Imperial age — which spreads over the soul merely by reading of such idylls, whereof even only a partial realisation would lead to murder and self-murder on a massive scale. [3]

I forechoose truthful warfarers, men who at least know themselves, men who know that they seek glory or overlordship, men who even know some bounds to their goals, not these liberal windbags puffed up with the barely-hidden and boundless lust to bring the whole world under the sway of their blightedness.

[1] Cranmer, “The Divine Right of Human Rights”, Cranmer (weblog), 8th November 2010. Also therein: “After that [‘glorious’] revolution, notions of absolutism were gradually replaced by parliamentary democracy, and the liberties and rights of the people were enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which is the inviolable property of a sovereign people.” How can anyone believe this nonsense? For one thing, should it not be clear as daylight to anyone who still bothers to peek into the world that the Bill of Rights is about as inviolable as bog-paper? Furthermore, notions of absolutism may have been replaced by lies about popular sovereignty, but how is that a good thing? Also: a sovereign is absolute in the domain of its operation, otherwise it is not a sovereign. What then can it mean to cry down the idea of absolute power and yet in the next breath uphold the idea of a sovereign people?

[2] Joseph Addison, A Letter from Italy, in The Works of Joseph Addison, Vol.I (London: George Bell and Son, 1903), p.37.

[3] [“Kein Krieg mehr, kein Unterschied mehr von Rassen, Völkern, Staaten, Religionen, keine Verbrecher und Abenteurer, keine Konflikte infolge von Überlegenheit und Anderssein, kein Haß, keine Rache mehr, nur unendliches Behagen durch alle Jahrtausende hin. Solche Albernheiten lassen heute noch, wo wir die Endphasen dieses trivialen Optimismus erleben, mit Grauen an die entsetzliche Langweile denken — das taedium vitae der römischen Kaiserzeit — die sich beim bloßen Lesen solcher Idyllen über die Seele breitet und in Wirklichkeit bei auch nur teilweiser Verwirklichung zu massenhaftem Mord und Selbstmord führen würde.”] Oswald Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1931), p.5. (Maybe Spengler underestimated the staying-power of this trivial optimism.)

An Unamazing Thing

2010-11-08T21:16:00.002Z

“The amazing thing, in a world where a single mis-tap on Google shows us how vast, complex and miscellaneous is the human sexual instinct, is that people, especially columnists, keep thinking there’s a ‘right’.” [1]

An unamazing thing is that liberal columnists, in being witnesses to widespread lewdness, mistake this as showing that there’s no wrong; for here once again arises that enthymemetic genius which has breathed life into liberal irrationality and relativism for hundreds of years: lots of folk do or believe sundry things at odds with one another, therefore, there is no right or wrong thing amongst them.

[1] Victoria Coren, “Pineapple sex is not for us all”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 7th November 2010.

Two Posts

2010-11-08T21:14:00.002Z

. . . at the other blog.

Blog on Hold

2010-08-30T13:49:00.001+01:00

Metapogonosis

2010-06-06T16:49:00.001+01:00

“Most hold it for a metamorphosis when they shed a false beard.”

[“Die meisten halten es für eine Metamorphose, wenn sie einen falschen Bart ablegen.”] Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947 – 1951, hrsg., E. Frhr. von Medem (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 1. März 1948, p.107.

Masterplan Spiffing Ease; or The Jolly-Well Final Solution to the Racial Problem in Europe

2010-04-15T21:46:00.007+01:00

“All we’ve got to do is wait a few generations. At which point there won’t be any ‘races’ to have any problems about.” [1]

It is no shock to find liberals recommending with the lightest of feelings the racial destruction of Europe as though it were of little more significance than the choosing of a tie. Neither the reality nor the meaning of it can easily appear to their shallow, image-addled, and connotation-wracked minds. [2] First of all they commit ideal genocide: races, peoples, and societies are eliminated from the mind, or conceptually reduced to the merest trivialities and irrelevancies to be brushed aside with the least fuss in a cool-hopeful air; thereafter they can regard the actual process with glee or without regret of loss, though it is in fact the loss not of trivialities but of long-developed and irretrievable forms of incalculable significance and worth, held to be so even by their near-forefathers whose sacrifices would be set close to naught by these most ignoble and rancid of men.

[1] Tim Worstall, “Solving all those Racial Problems”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 15th April 2010. One of his commenters notes with apparent regret that even the racial elimination of the Europeans in Europe will not solve the “problem” of differences therein: “the consequential elimination . . . in favour of a uniform coffee-coloured dark haired people won’t rid us of cultural differences”. What’s a poor genocidal philistine to do? Mere anti-racialism will not suffice if differences of every kind are to be extirpated, and the ultimate logical end, albeit impossible to realise, is — formless matter.

[2] See: “How to Commit Genocide”, herein.

Fewtril no.275

2010-04-15T21:40:00.002+01:00

The common man is never so clever as the politician says and never so stupid as the politician believes.

Liberalism Old and New

2010-03-29T19:46:00.000+01:00

“They spoke much of tolerance, because they needed the very same for themselves, but already at that time there was no-one more intolerant than they against all those who gainsaid their opinions.” [1]

“To the extent society becomes liberal it becomes inhuman, and as the process approaches completion the society becomes unable to function or survive.” [2]

[1] Carl Ludwig von Haller, Restauration der Staats-Wissenschaft (Winterthur: in der Steinerischen Buchhandlung, 1820), Bd.I, p.117. [“[S]ie redeten viel von Toleranz, weil sie derselbigen für sich bedurften, aber schon damals war niemand intoleranter als sie gegen alle diejenigen die ihren Meinungen widersprachen”.] Herr von Haller’s excellent book was burnt at the Wartburgfest.

[2] James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2008), p.141. Mr Kalb’s excellent book provides one of the best analyses of liberalism yet written, and his weblog gives one of the best summary definitions: “we’re free to be you and me, as long as the differences never matter.” ( “The One, the Many, and the Alternative Right”, Turnabout, 16th March 2010.)

A Response of Sorts

2010-03-29T19:40:00.000+01:00

“The suicide bombers’ targeting was deliberately provocative — and the Russian authorities’ response is equally predictable”. [1]

If predictability is a problem, then the Russian authorities could respond with a parade of jugglers and dwarf-acrobats, also helping to surprise and delight all those bourgeois liberals whose insanity makes every normal, sane, rational, or traditional response appear to them to be grossly unsophisticated.

[1] Editorial tagline to Irina Filatova’s “Moscow metro bombing: the backlash begins”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 29th March 2010.

Radio Listings

2010-02-10T16:46:00.005Z

Highlights. On BBC Radio Four this week: Did immigration transform Britain by accident? [1] Continuing a series of programmes raising important dust-questions, in this episode key-players discuss in a frank and open manner whether meetings convened themselves, policy-decisions made themselves, pens moved themselves, permissions issued themselves, borders opened themselves, and ideological support-statements propagandised themselves. Independent experts give their analyses. “Obviously, there is no such thing as personal or rational agency, only impersonal and material forces determining all the events that happen in the universe”, states Professor Maximillian Flapper, “so, yes, in a very real sense, everything happens by accident; and, naturally, as a corollary of that, it must be understood that I can bear no responsibility for making that statement, nor for demanding a fee for its inclusion in any publicity-material.” On BBC Radio Four next week: the return of the award-winning comedy-quiz Members of the Socialist Workers Party and Sundry Other Marxists Telling Jokes and Regaling Us with Their Hilarious and Colourful Perspectives on Current Events in the News. (A Gramscian Production for the BBC.) To be followed by the News.

[1] “Did immigration transform Britain by accident?”, BBC News Online, 8th February 2010. (H/T: Laban Tall, “Immigration, Immigration, Immigration”, UK Commentators (weblog), 9th February 2010.)

Over the Rainbow

2010-01-31T23:07:00.000Z

“Don’t believe the worst that you hear about South Africa,” reads a tagline to an article at Comment is Free. [1] Truly, so as not to let anything spoil your belief in a happier land, it is better to close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears, or, better still, to wrap yourself in the swaddling-opinions of the western media.

[1] John Carlin, “Respect has replaced hatred in the country Mandela built”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 31st January 2010.

Fewtril no.274

2010-01-31T22:55:00.000Z

There has been raised a horde of men, if so honorific a title may still be retained for them, who cry out “sky-fairy!” whenever they hear the word “God”, rather as Ivan Pavlov’s dogs salivated whenever they heard bells and whistles, albeit with a crucial difference: the dogs could not be inculcated to fancy that in their mindless reflexes they were on the side of reason.

Fewtril no.273

2010-01-31T22:53:00.000Z

Some liberals say that, in order to defend the West, we must defend “western values”, by which they mean “liberal values”, by which I understand those newly-invented values which have done more than any other to dissolve the West. It is like taking health-tips from disease-germs.

Vapour

2010-01-17T23:32:00.010Z

“[W]e are pitted against an enemy swathed in religious and political certitude and we have only the ghost of a notion to sustain us: the notion of freedom of speech and freedom of thought.” [1]

I find it almost incredible that anyone could believe not only that the idea of freedom of speech and thought sustains us, which is a weird belief all by itself, but that it is the only thing that does so. I accept that liberalism estranges a man from reason and reality, but could it really set him so far asunder? Surely it is possible, but I doubt it in this case: it is far more likely that here is just another instance of flippantly-hyperbolic and ill-considered status-posturing to magnanimity which is typical of liberals when they are taking the safe opportunity to demonstrate their adherence to a creed which consists of little else but flippantly-hyperbolic and ill-considered status-posturing to magnanimity. [2] Still, if they expect their airy nihilism to be of any force against “an enemy swathed in religious and political certitude”, then they may be disappointed. Then again, perhaps the vapour of liberalism really does have the power to corrupt and corrode everything that comes into contact with it. [3] That is a possibility which cannot be discounted, but it is one too awful to contemplate.

[1] Rod Liddle, “We must defend the right to be stupid, vile and obnoxious”, The Sunday Times, 17th January 2010. (There is no such right, no corresponding duty to defend it, and therefore no right for liberals to impose that duty. Thereon see also a post at one of the other places, or better still, see David S. Oderberg, “Is There a Right to be Wrong?”, Philosophy, 75 (2000), pp.517-537.) Mr Liddle does have his good side: he heartily offends those further to the left of him, for which we may be thankful.
[2] One may be curious to know whether a careless mind feels like a great soul, but one would have to become a liberal misquoting a philosophe to find out.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche once kindly noted: “The honourable term for mediocre is, of course, the word ‘liberal’.” (The Will to Power, tr. W. Kaufmann & R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p.462: §864.)

Hanswürste

2010-01-17T22:05:00.002Z

“The political buffoons who want to rule us cannot even revolt properly.”

[“Nicht einmal mehr richtig putschen können die politischen Hanswürste, die uns regieren wollen.”]

Mcp, “Im Westen nichts Neues”, Mit Elektrischer Feder (weblog), 12. Januar 2010.

Fewtril no.272

2010-01-17T22:00:00.002Z

It is funny when ministers and parliamentarians make a promise of treating the voting public like grown-ups and responsible adults; it is just the kind of language to use when one wishes to flatter children and adolescents.

Merry Christmas to One and All

2009-12-23T17:38:00.000Z

This counts as my post for the week.

Climate-Science and Conspiracy

2009-12-15T21:03:00.026Z

“I am very happy to affirm that I am not a giant expert on climate change: I know a bit, and I know that there’s not yet been a giant global conspiracy involving almost every scientist in the world (although I’d welcome examples).” — Ben Goldacre. [1]

One can hardly trust the integrity, or else the intelligence, of someone who would cast the matter in so flippant and so adversely-framed a fashion, but it seems instrumentally, though not morally, to be the best strategy left to those who still wish to defend an obvious example of bad science.

.....It is ironic that Ben Goldacre, who has made a journalistic career out of professing to be against bad science, would speak in favour of a magnificent and glaring example of it, though we should hardly be surprised. He is another small example of why posterity, if there might still be a sapient and merry remnant of it, will laugh its head off.

.....The dichotomy which Mr Goldacre sets up is clear: either one believes it likely that the science of global warming is valid, or else one believes it likely that there is a global conspiracy, involving almost every scientist in the world, to conceal its invalidity. I can suggest a dichotomy of my own: either Mr Goldacre lacks the intelligence to understand that relatively few scientists in the world are actually involved in generating the claims of climate-science; that a few of those few in that sub-field of science have influence over the direction of research; that all of those few find it conducive or even necessary to their careers to profess a belief in a certain theory; that some other scientists who stand outside that sub-field may be inclined to give credence to its claims; and that a sub-field of science, or even the whole field of science itself, can be warped or corrupted at various levels in many simple, subtle, and all-too-plausibly-human ways; — or he is employing a contemptible strategy designed to suggest that his opponents must believe in something highly implausible, if not absurd: something like a worldwide network and active conspiracy amongst hundreds of thousands of glint-eyed scientists all laughing madly in their secret conferences at the vast deception that they are knowingly perpetrating. But perhaps my dichotomy is a false one too. Perhaps it is a trichotomy: it could be that Mr Goldacre is none too bright, or that he is a scoundrel, or that he is both.

.....If we were to judge the success or validity of scientific theories by the number of occasions, and the degree of enthusiasm, by which they were proclaimed to be unquestionable truths as held by the vast majority of genuine and reputable scientists, then we might rightly say that the theory of anthropogenic global warming has been a very successful one, perhaps second only to Lysenkoism. But maybe Mr Goldacre finds incredible the claim that the science of biology in the Soviet Union was for many years subverted by a quack-theory. I mean, fancy believing that all the scientists of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the Soviet Union — every one of them reputable by its power to define them as such — were involved in a conspiracy against genuine scientific research! Or perhaps it was mostly that a vast public-bureaucratic government, much like our own, involving ideologies and ambitious men, much like our own, was able to kill a science and let a zombie-science arise in its place. Either way — preposterous!

.....Sarcasm aside, in suggesting the high implausibility of a global conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of witting members, I do not mean to imply that there have been no conspiracies in the case of climate-science. Clearly there have been. Some scientists have conspired in various ways to deceive a large number of scientists and non-scientists alike. Of that we know for sure. Thereto alone it is somewhat irrelevant the extent or proportion to which they were informed by benevolence, malice, hopes for large dinners, or anything else. The question of benevolence, malice, or anything else, is addressed largely to the motive-content of conspiracies, and is at a tangent to the mere fact of their existence. [2] Other conspiracies, each formed for whatever reasons and interests, some fleeting and trivial, some long-lasting and serious, we may well suspect to exist at higher and lower levels of significance and influence. Great power and wealth are to be had and social maneuvers to be made — with the usual agent involved: a clever and aggressive species of hairless ape.

.....There is nothing surprising in the mere fact of the existence of conspiracies, or rather, there is nothing more surprising therein than that groups of school-children, company-executives, or marketing-men conspire against particular rivals and against the general outgroup, the scope whereof may extend to the public at large. To adapt a phrase from Robert Michels: who says organisation, says conspiracy.

.....Most conspiracies are largely insignificant or petty, simply occurring as natural and frequent aspects of any group-life. Some, of course, can be grander or more significant, as is clear in the case of climate-science. The most pertinent questions in this regard are about their nature and aims, their size and scope, and the relative degrees of their deliberate and systematic aspects, wherewith one ought not to make oneself prey to, nor indeed be put off by, the silliest and the unfairest connotations which tend nowadays to be associated with the word.

.....The fairly-recent and widespread refusal to believe in conspiracies, which, as I say, are in varying degrees of significance natural aspects of all groups and organizations, testifies to the increasing inability on the part of millions to think without having their thoughts subverted and overthrown by unnecessary connotations; for this refusal does come mostly by way of cravenness in the face of the justifiable fear that one will be called a nutcase in acknowledging any state of affairs to which the word “conspiracy” is rightly and significantly applicable. It seems that the word “conspiracy” cannot be taken in a prosaic sense by most people anymore; they must take it in a grand sense, by a few in reference to their own grand claims of conspiracy, and by most in mockery of any claim thereof.

.....One might have expected that the experience of the playground, in which some groups of children conspire against other groups of children, would have been enough to give most people a life-long understanding of the nature of social reality; but it seems that at some time or other in their lives the species of wit native to them, a species educable by experience, is overrun by an interloping foreign species of faux-sophisticated cretinism. A world of fools can be turned into a world of morons by selling them the idea that moronic disbelief is rational and enlightened detachment.

.....Anyway, in the absence of credible evidence, it is trivially true, of course, that the climate of the earth might be changing outside its natural pattern due to human interference, but then it is trivially true that the Zarboks of Planet Nasquib might at this very moment be pointing a giant laser-gun at the earth, ready to blast it to smithereens. But let us conspire to keep this latter possibility a secret amongst ourselves. We do not wish to give governments or corporations any more bright ideas. Inter-stellar battle-fleets are expensive to build, I hear, and no doubt Al Gore would need to be involved.

[1] Ben Goldacre, “Climate change? Well, we’ll be dead by then”, The Guardian, 12th December 2009.
[2] It is a fairly good adage that one should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, so long as it is not misapplied or made into a mind-emptying mantra. (The case is similar with Occam’s Razor, which is perhaps the most popularly-misunderstood and abused principle of all time.)

Tiresome Joke

2009-12-12T18:08:00.001Z

“Staggering across the fringes of the [Copenhagen] summit are the people who will see their countries live or die on the basis of its deliberations. . . . Dazed Chinese and Indian NGOs explain how the Himalayan ice is rapidly vanishing and will be gone by 2035 — so the great rivers of Asia that are born there will shrivel and cease.” [1]

Staggering? Dazed? Maybe it was the booze and the tedium of the keynote-presentations, or perhaps Johann Hari is just making things up again. Glad to say, however, that I very seldom read anything by Mr Hari: he is a bad joke endlessly repeating itself, faintly amusing on the first reading or two, but soon growing tiresome; but I do wonder if he has ever made a pretence at truthful reportage that hasn’t been immediately exposed as laughable fancy by his own ill-judged hyperbole:— laughable, I say, at first.

[1] Johann Hari, “Leaders of the rich world are enacting a giant fraud”, The Independent, 11th December 2009. (At least the title of his article alludes inadvertently to the state of affairs.)

The Argument from Haughtiness

2009-12-12T17:56:00.004Z

Edward Feser has touched on the matter of haughtiness in philosophy [1] and how it may overwhelm rational commitment and truthfulness, such that there is a refusal to admit simple or obvious mistakes; and he has reminded me of something that J.R. Lucas wrote:

“When I started philosophy, Logical Positivism was very much in vogue, and my tutor tried hard to get me to believe the Verification Principle. So I asked him whether it was a tautology, perhaps showing some new meaning being given to ‘proposition’, or ‘meaningful’, so that only some selected instances could be accorded the favour of being thus described. He said No. Was the Verification Principle, then, an empirical proposition, discovered by careful research in which lots and lots of propositions had been examined, and none found to be meaningful except those that were analytic or empirical. He admitted, albeit a trifle reluctantly, that no such research had been carried out. In that case, I concluded triumphantly, the Verification Principle, if it were true, was itself meaningless, hoist by its own petard. He did not think it a very good argument, and told me to try harder to believe.” [2]

Herewith a little sketch of an argument:

I. It goes without saying that I am a very clever and careful analytical philosopher.

II. Very clever and careful analytical philosophers, such as I, do not make or accept obvious mistakes.

Therefore,

III. It goes without saying that I do not make or accept obvious mistakes.

IV. Anyone who does not recognise the obvious truth of (III), which logically follows from the obvious truths of (I) and (II), is making an obvious mistake.

Therefore,

V. Anyone who claims that I have made or accepted an obvious mistake is (a) making an obvious mistake and is (b) not a very clever or careful analytical philosopher. [From II, III, and IV.]

VI. Very clever and careful analytical philosophers, such as I, ought to dismiss as unworthy of consideration the obviously-mistaken claims of not very clever or careful analytical philosophers.

Therefore,

VII. I ought to dismiss as unworthy of consideration any claim made by anyone that I have made or accepted an obvious mistake. [From V and VI.]

[1] Edward Feser, “Rosenberg Responds to his Critics”, Edward Feser (weblog), 10th December 2009; last paragraph. Therein also: “in contemporary academic philosophy, what is grounds for failing an undergraduate paper can be Festschrift material for a professional.”

[2] J.R. Lucas, “A Simple Exposition of Gödel’s Theorem”, A Talk at King’s College, London, October 1996, reproduced online at the website of J.R. Lucas.

Slavering

2009-12-08T00:14:00.004Z

“Copenhagen is poised to achieve a profound historical transformation: reversing the road we have travelled for 200 years.” [1]

I regret to note that the prime minister does not have in mind the overthrow of public-bureaucratic government and the restoration of the ancien régime. Unfortunately the one-eyed klepto-visionary is having another fit of “moral passion” at the prospect of “a great global project of mutual ambition”, [2] which of course is forward down the road which we have been urged to travel by the self-declared friends of humanity for the last two-hundred years. Well, he calls it “moral passion”, whatever that means, but to me it seems more like the slavering of a butcher’s dog when sensing that dinner-time is approaching at last.

[1] Gordon Brown, “Copenhagen must be a turning point. Our children won’t forgive us if we fail”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 6th December 2009.

[2] Ibid.

Other Places

2009-12-07T23:48:00.004Z

As some readers may be aware, I have been having a couple of blog-flings elsewhere, or, to put it more plainly, I have established two other weblogs*, and am even considering establishing yet another, so that I may neglect to post in several places at once.

* Warning: may contain traces of reactionary nuts.

Lifting the Benighting Mist

2009-12-06T17:21:00.001Z

“Queenie understands the drabness of Britain without immigration and grabs her chance of excitement, defiant of the heart-breaking consequences. The real point of diversity, on television and in life, is not that [it] is correct but that it is vibrant.” [1]

It seems that, for thousands of years, Europe was burdened with unremitting drabness, its hideous peoples condemned to unvibrant lives; but that now the dark ages are over, and the present age is yielding ever more to a bright future whereunder the benighting mist of the dullest and most hideous race on earth will finally lift to reveal a sunlit land of vibrant diversity. Praise the gods — or buy a Kalashnikov.

[1] Sarah Sands, “See why diversity works – switch on your set”, The Independent on Sunday, 6th December 2009. (“Vibrant and diverse” — the gibber of mass-insanity.)

Mangan

2009-12-03T22:56:00.002Z

Back online.

Oath

2009-12-01T23:52:00.005Z

Today the Lisbon Treaty came into force, and so, in a humble way, I should just like to mark this great occasion by swearing undying enmity to the European Union.

Dodgy Uncle

2009-11-30T21:28:00.008Z

“[Rajendra] Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered.” [1] Or that bias would be amplified and dissent from it smothered. It is odd, but I am quite sure that Mother Nature used to get a say on the validation of scientific hypotheses. Maybe she has been voted off the panel. Uncle Peer-Review, on the other hand, seems to be doing all right for himself, not that I’d trust him, mind you, especially when he’s feeling rigorous.

[1] James Randerson, “Leaked emails won't harm UN climate body, says chairman”, guardian.co.uk, 29th November 2009. (H/T: Dennis Mangan, “Global Warmers Won’t Give Up Easily”, Mangan’s (weblog), 30th November 2009.) On zombie-science and the baleful influence of peer-review, see Bruce G. Charlton, “Zombie Science — Dead but Won’t Lie Down”, Medical Hypotheses, 2008, Vol.71; reproduced online at Medical Hypotheses (weblog), 26th July 2008; id., “Peer Usage versus Peer Review”, British Medical Journal, September 2007, Vol.335:451; reproduced ibid., 1st September 2007; id., “Truthfulness in Science Should be an Iron Law”, Medical Hypotheses, 2009, Vol.73; reproduced ibid., 13th October 2009; and Alexander A. Berezin, “Hampering the progress of science by peer review and by the ‘selective’ funding system”, Science Tribune, December 1996. (Note: Mr Mangan’s fine blog has been deleted for some reason.)

Schwein’sche Weltansicht: Pig Propositions Nos.1-10

2009-11-25T21:59:00.005Z

As received and written down in the year 1850 by “Sauerteig”, aka Thomas Carlyle:—

1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an immeasurable Swine’s-trough, consisting of solid and liquid, and of other contrasts and kinds;—especially consisting of attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater quantities for most pigs.

2. Moral evil is unattainability of Pig’s-wash; moral good, attainability of ditto.

3. “What is Paradise, or the State of Innocence?” Paradise, called also State of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was (according to Pigs of weak judgment) unlimited attainability of Pig’s-wash; perfect fulfilment of one’s wishes, so that the Pig’s imagination could not outrun reality: a fable and an impossibility, as Pigs of sense now see.

4. “Define the Whole Duty of Pigs.” It is the mission of universal Pighood, and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, to diminish the quantity of unattainable and increase that of attainable. All knowledge and device and effort ought to be directed thither and thither only; Pig Science, Pig Enthusiasm and Devotion have this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of Pigs.

5. Pig Poetry ought to consist of universal recognition of the excellence of Pig’s-wash and ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough is in order, and who have had enough: Hrumph!

6. The Pig knows the weather; he ought to look out what kind of weather it will be.

7. “Who made the Pig?” Unknown ;—perhaps the Pork-butcher?

8. “Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom?” Pigs of observation have discerned that there is, or was once supposed to be, a thing called justice. Undeniably at least there is a sentiment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge, &c., which, if one Pig provoke another, comes out in a more or less destructive manner: hence laws are necessary, amazing quantities of laws. For quarrelling is attended with loss of blood, of life, at any rate with frightful effusion of the general stock of Hog’s-wash, and ruin (temporary ruin) to large sections of the universal Swine’s-trough: wherefore let justice be observed, that so quarrelling be avoided.

9. “What is justice?” Your own share of the general Swine’s-trough, not any portion of my share.
10. “But what is ‘my’ share?” Ah! there in fact lies the grand difficulty; upon which Pig science, meditating this long while, can settle absolutely nothing. My share—hrumph!—my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contrive to get without being hanged or sent to the hulks. For there are gibbets, treadmills, I need not tell you, and rules which Lawyers have prescribed.

— Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. VIII: August 1850: Jesuitism (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850), pp.269-70. (Sus exsaturatus grunnit: “We’ve clearly cracked all the important things and are now left with the minor trivia of life.” Tim Worstall, “What Joy It Is”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 25th November 2009.)

Sissyfuss in Vain

2009-11-25T14:39:00.018Z

Apparently there has been much screeching by feminists in opposition to the establishment of so-called men’s societies at English universities. The founder of one of these societies pleads for acceptance:

“The mens [Masculinity Exploring Networking and Support] society is no threat to women’s rights or their welfare, and we certainly aren’t a reaction to them. We are the only (as far as I am aware) society at Manchester to have a code of conduct for members. We are being trained by Nightline, the excellent listening and counselling service, with a view to establishing a drop-in centre. We hope to work closely with the lgbt and women’s rights collectives. Together, not as men or women or trans, but as human beings, we can make a better community, a better world.” [1]

I am not sure why feminists are so angry in this particular case, unless it is just another instance of the general and mechanical reaction arising from the potent and unpredictable mix of liberated hormones and political visions, whereof it is senseless to ask for reasons. This society will be “running workshops” regardless of “gender identity” and “gender categories”, and “holding lectures and screening documentaries exploring the historical perceptions of masculinity”. [2] It sounds like a society for the neutered who will labour in vain to please their foul harridan-mistresses. Feminists ought to be cackling with glee.

.....Although not much given to envisaging the establishment of societies, I can see the need for an Anti-Harridan Society, yearly awarding the Matthew Hopkins Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Hag-Offending. Yet it fails my powers to imagine the need for it to work closely with lgbt and women’s rights collectives. Maybe there are “workshops” that can help me with my disability.

[1] Ben Wild, “My men’s group isn’t anti-feminist”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 25th November 2009.

[2] Ibid.

In the Same Fume

2009-11-23T20:57:00.002Z

“We are no gods, but shortsighted men and must be content with finding out a little bit of truth in wading through a sea of errors,” wrote the chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein. [1] Sad to say that governmental policy-setters, political interest-groups, and image-impressed masses demand great and all-at-once truths to bolster their swift-rising needs and desires, or, failing such truths, great and unanimous falsehoods vouchsafed by the authority of self-reviewing idols, who are fancied to reside at a lofty remove, but who breathe the same poisonous fume of ideology amidst the thin air of expedience as do their all-too-corrupted demand-makers. Junk-philosophy, junk-literature, junk-art, junk-scholarship, junk-music, junk-religion, junk-statecraft, and junk-science: we can expect little else from the liberal disorder of modernism, except that it will continue to be vigorously defended as progress by junk-humanity.

[1] Letter to Michael Faraday, 17th September 1857, The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein, 1836-1862, ed. G.W.A. Kahlbaum & F.V. Darbishire (London: Williams & Norgate, 1899), p.289. (For an understanding of the present state of science, philosophers and sociologists of science will of course find more illumination, if less edification, in the emails of modern climate-scientists than in the old letters of long-dead gentlemen-scientists.)

Warm Diplomacy

2009-11-23T20:50:00.000Z

“Central American nations will demand $US105 billion . . . from industrialised countries for damages caused by global warming, the region’s representatives say.” [1]

The proper response, of course, is to send the equivalent value in warships and gunboats.

[1] “Nations to seek billions in ‘climate debt’”, Adelaide Now, 21st November 2009. (H/T: Dennis Mangan, “Global Warming Exposed as the Greatest Scandal in Modern Science”, Mangan’s (weblog), 22nd November 2009.)

A Question

2009-11-07T22:41:00.001Z

“Is Society become wholly a bag of wind, then, ballasted by guineas?”

Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. V: May 1850: Stump-Orator (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850), p.163.

By Three-Thirds

2009-11-07T22:39:00.000Z

“You cannot play fast and loose with England”, says Lord Hattersley, in a paean of new patriotism [1], whereat Mr Laban Tall wonders whether hanging is too good for him. [2] I am inclined to say that it is, although, if we added drawing and quartering, the matter could be settled rightly and in a manner fit for a latter-day lord of misrule.

[1] Roy Hattersley, “My search for God’s own country and why I wouldn’t swap England for anywhere else”, Mail Online, 6th November 2009.

[2] Laban Tall, “Sparkbrook”, UK Commentators (weblog), 7th November 2009.

How to Commit Genocide

2009-10-29T19:54:00.034Z

Now, my brethren in darkness, it is time to let a little of the light of reality into our dark existence, not so much as to put us to fright, timid and truth-shy beasts that we are, but just enough to give us a glimpse of our surroundings, so that, for a short while only, and as a swansong of the last traces of feeling and reason that we might possess, we shall catch a glimpse also of ourselves. Doubtless you will feel somewhat afeared by the title of my address; but you ought not to worry yourselves overmuch: I promise that, when you have eased yourselves back into your dark and dreamy world, you will have in your minds a vision of genocide which will appear to you to be quite lovely, certainly not something about which to be concerned, but rather a process in which you will find great hope and for the furtherance whereof you will see your moral duty. You will celebrate its occurrence, you will praise its agents, and you will damn and vilify its enemies. I know this is how you will see it because that is already how you see it, and this little spell in the light will not change you. You are part of something great and terrible. Your near-insignificance as individuals, and your decrepitude as persons, is made sacrosanct in the impersonal greatness of the collective deed.

.....I am not here to give you a step-by-step guide to genocide; I shall present to you simply an ethos on its method: how to commit it in a manner as befits us as sophisticated beasts. I cannot deny that, at the outset, “genocide” will likely seem to you — by connotation — an odd word to use for so hopeful and soothing a process of dissolution as we intend and wherein we are now taking so happy a part. It is a word which you find dreadful, or rather, it is the connotive meanings that it inflames in your minds which appall you. But genocide itself, and its denotation alone — that is to say, the deliberate and systematic destruction of a people or a race — is something which strikes both you and me as a happy thing. You ought not to recoil at this breath of honesty; for we are all of the same opinion, you and I, and in the end for us — for us modern and sophisticated men — morality, good and evil, value and disvalue, all come down to mere opinion, and mere opinion to mere motive, and mere motive to material force, and so on, until we end in primal, meaningless, and unintelligible matter.

.....If anyone were to say that the simple definition of genocide which I lay out here is mere straw, unwelcome fodder for lawyers, or that “genocide” simply does not denote the deliberate and systematic destruction of a people or a race through just any means, and especially not through our sublime method, but rather that an act or a process of genocide qualifies as such if and only if it is committed through some particular means as decided and specified by some legal or bureaucratic body, the United Nations perhaps, or by a body of scholars and lawyers, then that would be splendid, marvellous, a devil-sent gift of sophistication. For, naturally, by our ethos, the last thing we should want is for anyone to believe that we are actually “committing genocide” in any terms by which we might be condemned. We should hope, on the contrary, that people will believe our process to be a delightful spring-season of humanity and an opportunity for universal love; anything but genocide. The perfect, most sublime method of genocide would be one whereof the occurrence would be denied honestly by everyone. It is that to which everyone of us ought to dedicate himself, be he hopeless of absolute perfection in this imperfect world. It is only here and now, my dark comrades, that I am putting it to you as it is. Here also, if you insist on clinging to a cloak of darkness, you may call it whatever you like, but it matters not at all to the method and its realisation, except on what we might call the positive side. I am not here to tell you how you ought to feel about a particular disturbance of air, a particular material sign. I should not waste my time. We of all people, here and now, ought to appreciate just how far from reality all our words and connotations can set us, if we wish it, and how useful that proves to be. The discomfort of the light will not last long, and we may as well bear it for a little while; but if you insist, if you really cannot drag yourself, just for a moment, from the dark and dishonest place in which we all prefer to dwell, then you can call the process that we have in mind “enlightened melting” or “genogenesis” or “vibrant diversification”, or whatever pleases you. It matters not. Here, by the denotation I have set out and by honesty’s demand, I shall call it genocide. I am not here to argue with you. I am here to tell you about it; and the only aim whereof I can be confident in addressing you now is that you will surely admit at least, whether you shy from all else, that my — our — method of so-called genocide is a sublime one as befits the times.

.....It is an evolution of the method of genocide. We do not use bludgeons or machetes, we do not use rifles or grenades, we do not use poison-gas or disease — we use marketing and hope. It is an evolution from crudity to sophistication. Each method is more sophisticated than the last, and, at each stage, men are further removed from the consciousness of their deeds, a consciousness which tends to come by way of connotive meanings — whereby images and impressions match expectations of what it means to be engaged in something. Our stage is the most sublime; for it puts men at the furthest remove. And, for us moderns, the furthest remove is next to godliness.

.....We have touched on the matter of connotation, and we shall address it a little further, and shall continue to do so throughout, since it is by connotation that we marketers of unreality, we demonic sloganeers, bind you all. By our method, genocide can in principle occur without suffering, and indeed it can in principle be a pleasant experience for all; for every person of the people which is to cease to exist as a people may also desire it. If we sell it well, almost everyone will desire it. Yet this is quite against the connotive meanings that most people have for it. To most people, genocide connotes bad things, and therein it finds its overwhelming meaning for them, but if what is happening under our process appears to them to be something good, then it does not appear to them to be genocide. Now, if one sets about the deliberate and systematic destruction of a people or a race by whatever means, then it is genocide in the denotive meaning as we here understand it. If, however, one sets about the deliberate and systematic destruction of a people or a race by our means, by our sublime method, then it is not genocide in the connotive meanings by which most persons understand it. Thus, it is the case that, by our method, we can commit genocide in the denotive meaning, and yet we can expect to find that this process will not appear to most persons to be genocide, since they are committed to understanding it by the connotive meanings which are quite unnecessary or irrelevant to the process. In the end, it is all just a quibble over words — along with the little matter of the systematic destruction of peoples. So that, briefly and loosely stated, is an introduction to our method of genocide. Let the primitives use their machetes and their poison-gases; we have a more sophisticated and more humane method.

.....So how, in a nutshell, do we commit genocide according to our method? Well, here it is: We take a people and make it a non-people in the eyes of most of its members, and, since no genocide can be committed against a non-people, then, in the eyes of most of the members of that people, no genocide can be committed against it. We present to it all manner of happy visions of the future, and we can even brighten the image of the future by dimming the image of the past. To the cattle that we have created — yes, especially the ones who have been through our educational institutions! — connotations are everything and mother-wit nothing. That is why they seek so-called lifestyles, these men without culture, and that is why we can sell them anything, even the destruction of their own race; for remember: we are salesmen, marketers — committing genocide: we call it celebrating diversity! At all times, the process is to be made to appear a positive one, indeed one in which a man ought to feel proud and almost holy to take part, and, since we are dealing with modern demotic man — the pig who demands his swill and calls it liberty — the process must have its pleasures and comforts. The crucial step is the first one: if we can persuade the majority of a people that it is not in fact a people, then we have already committed ideal genocide against it; the rest — the physical-biological genocide — should follow in due course and without much fuss. And it is fuss and suffering and slaughter that we wish — as humanitarians — to keep to a minimum.

.....It ought to go without saying that destroying whole nations composed of tens of millions of persons would present certain logistical difficulties by the old and crude methods of mass-murder; and it could hardly go unnoticed. But who would be so crude to do such a thing nowadays, when there is at hand an ethos and a method as sublime as ours? Everyone of us ought to see that it is far better that genocide be conducted in a more peaceful way: by mixing peoples out of existence. Hatred naturally plays a fundamental and systematic part. The more men who can be taught to hate their own race and people, the more of us there will be to impel the process of their dissolution.

.....The few amongst the targeted people who object to the genocide being committed against it will be put through the indignity of having to demonstrate and justify the right of their own people to continue to exist as a distinct people, which of course will be in vain, for how could such a thing be taken to be demonstrated and justified in an atmosphere of virulent hostility — wherein no lie or denial or vilification is too grand — and against the very perpetrators who have the appetite and the power to determine the genocide in the first place? This indignity will itself demoralise and cower and depress any opposition, as well as providing us with a spectacle to savour. And the better their case, and the finer their arguments, the more we shall hate and condemn them. And to their entreaties, we must remain pitilessly dismissive, whilst we put ourselves on the side of good and them on the side of evil.

.....If we proceed in right manner, that is to say, with the sophistication that is our pride, then there really is no need for all that nasty business which appears as a necessary condition of genocide in the connotation-addled minds of most people. We sophisticates know that genocide does not necessitate murder or widespread suffering; on the contrary, we know that in principle it can be a pleasurable and enriching process for all. It can be simply the deliberate and systematic mixing and dissolving of a people out of existence. Certainly, in practice, there will be a few recalcitrant knuckle-draggers, as we like to call them, who will deplore the process; but for them, and for their sentimental whining and pathetic suffering, we can have nothing but hatred and pitiless contempt. We can never guarantee that the process might not go awry from its spotless way; but, on the whole, we can expect, we can hope, that genocide will be a jolly good affair with no unsightly incidents. But do you wish to know what is the most exquisite aspect of using other peoples as the tools by which to destroy a targeted people? Well, savour this, my sybarites: any resistance by any members of the targeted people against the tools of its genocide will likely and understandably be one of physical aggression; the resistance will be crude and thus visible to all eyes, and thereagainst we and our method will remain innocent and unseen. Here the “smashing of the crematoria”, as it were, will appear an act of evil, and the rebuilding of “them”, a return to goodness and progress. Are we not supremely-crafted beasts?

.....Ideal genocide is reversible, however, though is unlikely to be reversed; for once the spirit of a people has been dispelled and depressed into the earth, it is very hard to reanimate it again. Physical-biological genocide is not reversible, of course, at least not without the most advanced technological intervention and the will to use it, and it is highly unlikely that anyone would trouble themselves to that end once a people or race has gone. If that is so, as it seems, then we can say that, once the physical-biological heritage of a people or a race, having taken thousands of years to come to a unique form, has been destroyed, it is near-impossible to bring it back again. So, with all that in mind, and if we are to remain faithful to our genocidal aim and push it through to the end, we must be careful to make sure that between the first stage of our method and the last, that is to say, between ideal genocide and physical-biological genocide, no spirit of the people is allowed to reanimate. Any little sign that it might do so ought to be regarded as an instance of great and looming evil and must be met with the most outrageous contempt and hatred. But I have no need to tell you that: you already know it well.

.....It is unlikely that anything could stop so artfully-crafted a process as ours. I mean we even have self-declared patriots who love their country so much that they wish to see it turned into another one. How mind-bending is that? But we bend minds, dear brothers in malice, that is our method: we make it almost impossible for a man to think. And what of you so-called conservatives amongst us — what do you wish to preserve? Why, nothing, nothing at all, except your bank-accounts and your marble-topped kitchen-surfaces and the like, and we may even get you to give those up too. You also are men of the left-way, just like the rest of us, but slow on the uptake, heavy of foot, timid of spirit, lumbering in the baggage-train and protecting the flanks as the vanguard of left-progressivism forges on in its march of hatred and destruction. Now and then, a troop of this vanguard will turn back and ride down the column screaming at the stragglers and whipping the strayers back into line. And so you dim little skivvy-conservatives, timid little beasts, offer no effective resistance, just an occasional mutter to be heard, but otherwise frightened into conformity with evil. By awe, you even come to adopt the language and the mannerisms of these magnificent amoral beasts, these march-masters, though never quite with the same enthusiasm, never quite with the same demonic style. And the plebs — the men whom we should like to see rot away now that they have outlived their usefulness, now that we have found our redemption in more interesting and colourful people — what of them? A spent force and a revolting mess! I mean, truly, how could we love men who do not know how to cut an avocado properly, or who prefer malt vinegar to balsamic? These men serve only to dirty the picture in which we would like to frame ourselves.

.....We know that a reign of fear is a most effective one, especially when it is given a moral colouring; and through it we can make men in our own image who appear beautiful in our eyes. Burke didn’t know the half of it, no, not even the tenth of it. — “The glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.” — Ha! Glory is well outside its range; grubby, inglorious survival would be a triumph for it. But how could the great sage have known? In his day, and for a hundred years and more thereafter, Europe still had an inheritance. Now it is gone, frittered away on indulgences and insane pursuits, on so-called lifestyles for all. Europe, spiritless, listless, debased in its own eyes, sits in the gutter, contemplating sui-genocide. Yet that word cannot be quite right; the personal metaphor cannot quite stand. Strictly we must say that it is unlikely that it is an act of sui-genocide; for it is unlikely that there could have been one appetite for such. Personal metaphors for peoples are useful, but apt to mislead. In a people, the intent lies in some, but not all.

.....The question of intent is especially acute with you, my half-mechanical fellows, for what do you intend? Certainly, back in your striving lives, your intentions seem to you good not bad, or rather, they are directed towards the image of the good. Now this image of good may be projected by absolute evil, the total privation of good, to which you will strive nonetheless, all the while congratulating yourselves on your moral propriety. Your whole brute-like existence, my sophisticates, is impressed with images, or idols.

.....For those who engage in the process of genocide, there can be primary and secondary intentions, perhaps even more. A man, for instance, may have for his primary intention the creation of a new and happy people, or a stupid one, or any kind, created out of the elements of already-existing peoples. It is indeed a goodly part of our method of genocide to sell the idea of creation rather than that of destruction. Our marketing — pure, sinister, exquisite evil — could be expressed as: We need to destroy ourselves in order to survive and to become greater. Of course it is nonsense — the pronoun in the first clause cannot be the pronoun implied in the second — and we never even express it quite so, but it is in essence what we have been selling by various arguments, usually those invoking competition with other states. What it really means in other words is: Your people must be destroyed and replaced by one better suiting the needs or the desires of the moment. But we sell genogenesis not genocide. Thus, for most men, genocide is a secondary intention, not a primary one, though some may take a malicious delight in carrying out the present task of that intention. The case is similar for murder. A man may have as his primary intention the prevention of a secret becoming known, and so he may carry out the secondary intention of murder to secure that end. He intends murder nonetheless.

.....Our lives are complex webs of intentions, which may prove very hard to unweave for our understanding; and a primary intention can be so overwhelming that one can almost loose sight of the reality of the secondary intention by which one hopes to achieve it. Hardly anyone intends the process of genocide by the whole vision of it; few have the imagination to do so; but all of you, my fallen colleagues, intend your part in it by denotation and by the new positive connotations attached thereto which blind you to the reality of what you are doing. You do not know that you are committing genocide in the connotive meanings thereof simply because you are not in fact committing it as such; for you intend no such thing, that is to say, you intend nothing towards the stock-images by which your understanding of such a process is subverted. And, by concentrating on the positive connotations of creation, you can make the negative connotations of destruction fade from your minds. You are, as one of our slogans has it, always seeking “to think positively”. Certainly it is true that some of the most maniacal and hateful amongst you fill the newspapers and the airwaves with their genocidal desires, about which they are quite open, yet the rest of you — and perhaps these others too — do not have ears or eyes for such things; for your ears and eyes are for connotation-matching. Besides, you are either desirous of the same thing by the primary intention which they sell to you, by some happy image or moral imperative, or you are quite indifferent to its occurrence, willing to go along because that is just the way of things.

.....It would be foolish to say that a process is genocide if and only if everyone who takes part therein must intend, or deliberate on, the whole of the process as genocide; for, if that were the case, then we must very much doubt there has ever been a case of it, except in the smallest tribal-groups. It is a partly systematic and partly deliberate process, with ideological, technological, and material conditions being functions of the systematic aspect; and the more it evolves, the less deliberate and the more systematic it becomes, until, in principle at least, and perhaps one day in fact, if our aftercomers ever attain full Enlightenment, there could be a process entirely systematic, and wholly pitiless, thereupon surpassing our definition of genocide. Still, as it stands, we may be proud of the stage we have reached.

.....Our worldview, if we can call it that, is a shattered image, and we look through different shards depending on our needs and whims. Unconcerned with rational consistency, free from the desire for wholeness of vision, driven only by utility and appetite, we can bring an argument to bear against one thing which we wish to see destroyed but not against another which we wish to see spared, albeit in the case that the argument applies equally to both. We hold that whatever cannot be defined absolutely by material-objective determination is fair game for destruction, if we have the appetite for it; and it just so happens that in our philosophy, from the purely mechanical and atomistic view, rather than from the formal and holistic view, no complex object of sense-experience can be absolutely defined to its fullest-objective degree by finite minds. The principle of matter is unintelligible and its division without form is arbitrary. Nihilistic scepticism, we must remember, can go all the way, and can be brought down upon reason itself; yet we, for now, can apply it all the way for some things and no way at all for others, depending on our appetite. Upon that which is marked for destruction, our nihilism is let loose without restraint, to its fullest degree, savaging without pity, and even bringing with it a mocking crowd. From that which is to be spared, our nihilism is held at bay, whilst appeals to reasonableness and commonsense are made. Anything whereof we might wish to deny the existence, we can, by a thoroughgoing scepticism, make the defence thereof extremely hard, certainly too hard for the average person, and that is enough for us. It is the mass that carries the day, under our guiding hand. And do not think that commonsense — even of the very commonest sort — must be a sufficient defence in the end, not now that the people have been brought into the political-ideological realm for refitting. And anyone who proves unsuitable for sophistication or recalcitrant in their primitive beliefs, any who “should find no place in our democracy, our modern society, our twenty-first century, etc”, will be discarded as unfit to be part of the demos, as you may witness even now, if you care to look. That is the reality of the world we are creating — no wonder that you care not to see it!

.....The Problem of the Many is for us the solution to all our problems, namely, to everything that stands in our way. Imagine that which we call a forest. Given that it is composed of that which we call trees, it is impossible to say determinately whether it is a forest, whether it is a vast number of forests, or whether it is no forest at all; for there is no absolute-determinate point at which we may say it is one or another as to the material-objective boundaries thereof. Better still: imagine that we admit for a moment the existence of a beech-wood. Imagine further that a beech-tree is removed and a spruce-tree is added. Is it still a beech-wood? Imagine the same happens another time and another time. Is it still a beech-wood? Well, we of all people can call it whatever we like! We could remove every beech-tree, and replace each with a spruce-tree, and still call it a beech-wood; for was there ever in fact a beech-wood or a beech-tree in the first place? It is all just names for us: there are no forms or essences by which our words and concepts can map reality.

.....In the final analysis, we constitute the principle for the destruction of everything in the world; but we must begin somewhere, and we begin at the top and work our way down. If we are to dismiss the belief in peoples and races simply because we cannot, as finite minds, draw an absolute-material boundary amongst them, or between them and other things which we do not call peoples and races, just as we cannot draw for any complex object, then we must, if we are to be rationally consistent, deny the existence of forests, tables, automobiles, toenails, humans — in short, every complex object of our world; for the same argumentative principle applies to them all. Now, it must be said, in the light of old philosophy and the principle of the intelligibility of reality, that it is quite unreasonable and quite against commonsense not to believe in such things as trees, tables, humans, etc, in some sense, but that is fine: ultimately we believe in nothing. But we are not going to deny the existence of such things — not yet anyway — because, firstly, we would be ridiculed, even though it is something to which many of the ridiculers themselves would be committed if they were consistent; and secondly, we have not yet found a compelling use for doing so. But let it be understood that these “useful fictions”, as we believe them to be, lead a precarious existence in our minds: when we can no longer find a use for one, or if it is thought that we could get along better without it, then be assured that we shall no longer have any regard for it. It has not yet become expedient to deny the existence of humans; but the same argument and nihilistic spirit, which is used to deny the existence of anything whereof no use or love can be found, will be readily at hand when the need arises; and who knows what the future holds in that regard? For genocide, we must say, is really not that important in the scheme of things, if we look at the grand picture of the total destruction to which we tend. The dissolution of persons as well as peoples can occur; for the idea of persons is no more defensible in our philosophy than that of peoples; and since we take our arguments to be effective against peoples, our having the appetite to their destruction, so, in the end, as the appetite to utility and power dictates, we shall take these arguments to be effective against persons, as well as against any of the other complex objects of our experience which displease us or which prove not to be useful in the calculus of power. We do not believe in the rational will, but we are quite prepared to call our irrational appetite rationality itself if it is useful to do so. It is all just words and words are just noises signifying nothing. Everything is deniable under the government of the irrational appetite of our bestial condition. And ultimately, by our appetite, nothing can be affirmed.

.....Presently such is the case with peoples: when is a people actually a people? Never, unless it is expedient for us to say so! We could replace all the Germans with Turks and still call them Germans. And the delightful thing is that the Germans, for the most part, would acquiesce to the process. And by all the argumentative means by which we are dissolving the Germans, the English, the Swedes, and indeed all the European nations, we can dissolve all races, nations, peoples, tribes, and ethnic groups. As for denying native or indigenous peoples their status as such, you may understand that, by our absurd measure and whim, it can be done to every people on this earth. There are no ontologically-objective lines in the sand, as it were. Perhaps it is this which will shock you. Had you not placed innocence in these others? Did you not hold that the Bantu peoples or the Tibetans had the right to exist, that they are actually peoples with homelands? Here for us the Tibetans are an interesting case. The Han-Chinese are in the process of destroying their homeland and culture, and eventually, we may suppose, their physical-biological existence as a distinct people; and even we find in that something to be regretted, when, in the case of our own race and peoples, we feel hardly a twinge, but rather even happiness. Yet times change, and perhaps one day, under the efficiency-imperative of a world-bureaucracy, our more Enlightened descendants will seek the disappearance of all races and peoples — by the same arguments and the same abnegation of reason which we have used and promoted against our own kind.

.....Some of these glimpses of reality may have pained you; for you had fancied, damned and beloved creatures of wickedness that you are, that the great sin of racial antagonism and aggression had somehow departed the world — except, we may curiously observe, in the case of your own European race, which you believe has remained deeply stained with it. But how are we to find our redemption, we sinful ones? Why, we seek our redemption through the destruction of our own race! Do we not believe that the racial aggression of blacks, for instance, or the seeking of the self-determination thereof, is but a struggle for justice, a healthy expression of their identity, whereas the same of whites is a fight for darkness and barbarity, even despite — no, because of! — the civilisation they have brought, and do we not meet the most pathetic, the most heartfelt, and even the most just cry of a white man — our own fellow — with contempt? But of course we do! Our race and our peoples are for us the repository of sin, whereas other races and peoples are the means of our redemption; for, through them we can destroy our own, and thereby rid the world of sin, and that is the only redemption that is available to us godless men. That is why “the other” is holy to us — it is not us, the sinful ones. Nevertheless it must be understood that it is not we as particular individuals who believe ourselves sinful as particular individuals; on the contrary, as such, we believe ourselves to be close to godliness, cleansed by our embrace of “the other”, enough to deem ourselves morally fit to bring outrage down upon the unclean; — it is our own peoples which are sinful, the very existence of them a dark stain on the world. That is why they must be destroyed and why we must be pitiless in our drive to that end. For us, in our sunken world, it is a war of sinlessness against sin, good against evil, justice against injustice, right against wrong, and it would be dreadful for us to give quarter or sympathy to sin, evil, injustice, and wrong. That is how it is for us in our sunken world, a world in which we do not see ourselves, nor ever think of sin as such, certainly not in consideration of ourselves as individuals, a world wherein our deep psychical motives are hidden from us; but here and now, as we are sniffing the air and feeling the sunshine, and recoiling in horror at the healthiness of it, we appreciate that it is we who are sick, and profoundly so.
.....Be it said, then, my dearest of all Europeans, that the long-term future of Europe is either European or non-European, or, if you prefer to put it another way, racially white as descended largely or exclusively from genetic Europeans, or racially non-white as descended either largely or exclusively from genetic non-Europeans or from genetic Europeans and genetic non-Europeans in a significant admixture. If you choose European, then why is that more wrong than if you choose non-European? Now, you may cry that I have set up a false dichotomy, that really the choice is European, non-European, or a “vibrant and colourful” co-habitation of the two categories of people living happily ever after as separate peoples in mutual harmony; but that is not so, and the dichotomy still stands, or at least it does outside our absurd fantasy; for we are talking about the long-term future of peoples living in the same territory or polity, wherein miscegenation, or slaughter, or both, will likely produce, given that our fantasy does not come true, one of the following outcomes: a European people descended largely or exclusively from ancestral Europeans; a non-European people descended largely or exclusively from ancestral non-Europeans; or a non-European people descended from a significant admixture of both ancestral Europeans and ancestral non-Europeans. The choice for the long-term future of Europe still stands: European or non-European.
.....If you say that one preference for the long-term future is better than the other, or even that one is evil and the other good, then you need to ask why your preference is better than that of someone who chooses otherwise. Why, for instance, is non-European better than European? But we already know your preference and why it is good: because, by our ideology, European is evil and non-European is good! You can rightly claim that the preferences are not equal, namely, that they are not both racial preferences; for you can hold that the choice is between race and not-race. But now you have to ask why racial preference — or “racism”, as we call it — is bad whilst anti-racial preference — or “anti-racism” — is good. It could come as an uncomfortable surprise for you, since you are always accusing your fellows of racism because you know that they will take it as bad; for predominant ideologies tend to go unquestioned and even unseen; but now you have to wonder why it is bad and not just assume it is. To put it starkly: why is it bad to wish to preserve a race or a people but good to be willing or careless to see it destroyed? It is after all quite something remarkable that we have embarked upon: to be willing or indifferent to the destruction of a unique form of life which took thousands of years to develop and which can never be recovered, and it is an especially odd will or indifference when it is the form of life to which we ourselves belong. But perhaps you have superior forms in mind: perhaps the dissolution of your own race by its admixture with others will produce a superior and enlightened people;— a super-race in comparison to the old and sinful race to which you belong. But hold on! A superior race? That cannot be what you are after — you hate the idea! You even deny the existence of races to make it impossible to think it! Or is it just the idea of different contemporaneous races that you hate? Is one super-race existing alone — thereby no longer actually a race, but one dominant species — and superior to all the races of the past an idea that sits well with you? Well, of course, the idea also sits well with any pan-exterminatory genocidalist who would like to see his own race triumph above all! But I am only playing with you. You and I do not want any such thing. It is not a superior race that we desire. Inferior is more our style. And that is the funny thing: we would dissolve our own race because we believe it to be embarrassingly superior. It is that belief which is for us the source of its sin and shame. In other times, we would have made splendid supremacists, as all peoples once were in their own eyes for their own ways. But we are now as fate has made us: our own ways are the wrong ways, the sinful ways, and they must be destroyed. Not, again I say, we ourselves as individuals: we hold ourselves to be the blessed and the enlightened ones. Times are different and we are of a different kind. We are Enlightened. We seek inferiority and dissolution.
.....So, my dear friends in darkness, I hope you have learnt that, on our terms, on the terms by which we are committing genocide even today, there is nothing necessarily frightful. For sure, you have had to learn a few uncomfortable truths about yourselves: that you are elements of absolute evil, that you are profoundly sick, that you would ultimately be the agents of the destruction of everything; but everything has its price. Even our so-called gift of speech is subject to a most humbling fee: the risk of choking on our own tongues. Besides, you will soon forget; for, except, as now, when it is pointed out to you, the process you see today appears to you quite normal, though it is the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. But why shouldn’t it be? We are extraordinarily sophisticated, and we are extraordinarily sundered from the reality of our extraordinary deeds — set apart like small, mean, self-absorbed gods.
.....It is true that the primitive instincts are not quite dead in us; for we still see in other peoples a goodness and a beauty which do truly exist in them, and we see in our own peoples an evil and an ugliness which likewise do truly exist; but the irony is that it is we above all amongst our own peoples who are the haters and the destroyers; we are the greatest blight upon them. We flit from one thing to another in a never-ending search for things to hate — which makes us feel moral. We do not just represent the principle of the destruction of our own peoples, but also the principle of the eventual destruction of all the other peoples for whom we still have some sympathy. From us, in the end, nothing is safe.
.....So what are we together, you and I, in our darkest elements? “We are the spirit that always denies.” We are Mephistopheles. You may laugh at the thought of it, but were you so crude as to put him into literal-material form and then dismiss his existence as nonsense? But of course you were! It is around such crudities that the pearls of our sophistication are formed.
.....In all primitive honesty, we can say: what is happening is monstrous, but, since almost everyone is co-opted into the process, made willing by seduction and corruption and the most pleasing images, which each interprets in his own hopeful way, each a fool nodding in confirmation of Barnum-statements, then to whom does it appear monstrous? Why, to almost no-one! And, my foul friends, those few together who remain outside our circle constitute a weakling whom we can crush with ridicule and spite — and law too! But let us not be parochial: that would strike against our pride, which is nothing without claim to universal sophistication. We cannot see any bounds that are not of our own making; and we would sooner become scattered across the whole world like dust than be bound up in some poky little corner of it; — let us not be parochial: the disappearance of the nations matters not at all in the universal scheme of things; forsooth nothing matters; for is that not what the whole of our philosophy teaches, when all is said and done, when we face it honestly, when we refuse to dress it in the flimsy contradictions of sentimentality? At any moment, we can strip that philosophy bare, and bring the most ruthless destruction down upon some object that has begun to displease us because we can no longer find a use for it. All that is left to us — and we demonstrate it daily — is to feed the needs and desires of a distinctly bestial kind. We even boast of it; for it is what we sometimes fancy to be our realistic attitude — we who turn from a glimpse of reality as a woodlouse scurries from sunlight! No, we have already been parochial enough in speaking today of the little matter of genocide, even if by some need of illustration. Let us not pity the loss of some particular race or people, which after all is to us just a fancy and ill-definable collocation of atoms. The universe is too vast a system for us to spare a thought for some little corner of it. It would be silly to do so. It would give privilege to what does not in fact possess it.
.....So now, my chthonic spirits, to ease ourselves back into comforting ground, let us all agree: what has been happening to your nations — to the Swedes, to the Germans, to the French, to the English, and so on — is not genocide; it would be absurd for you to call it such; for there have been no stock-images outside your heads which have matched the stock-images inside them; it has merely been the process of the systematic and deliberate dissolution of nations — how wonderful are words! — wherein you, my pale elements, have been playing an enthusiastic part. The process will continue, and so we shall continue to hate and condemn those who stand against us. But I am sorry to have troubled you. Go back to your managed opinions, your moral panics, your endless chasing after gadgets and cars and interesting foods — go back to your dark unreality. If you are lucky, you will hardly feel a thing, and the name of genocide, by the only sense in which your derelict souls can grasp it, will never be invoked, though the integrity of Europe be extinguished for ever.

Charlton on the Clever Silly

2009-10-09T20:53:00.007+01:00

Bruce G. Charlton, evolutionary psychiatrist, professor of theoretical medicine, and editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, lays on a feast of that oddest animal of all: the clever silly.

Here is a sniff of the starter:

“[M]y suggested explanation . . . is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and psychological problems for which humans have evolved ‘domain-specific’ adaptive behaviours. And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain, this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition ‘advertising’ their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost exclusively with others of similar intelligence generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong.” [1]

And here is a whiff of the dessert:

“Yet, whatever else, to be a clever silly is a somewhat tragic state; because it entails being cognitively trapped by compulsive abstraction; unable to engage directly and spontaneously with what most humans have traditionally regarded as psycho-social reality; disbarred from the common experience of humankind and instead cut-adrift on the surface of a glittering but shallow ocean of novelties: none of which can ever truly convince or satisfy. It is to be alienated from the world; and to find no stable meaning of life that is solidly underpinned by emotional conviction. Little wonder, perhaps, that clever sillies choose sub-replacement reproduction.” [2]

If some humility could be taught to the clever silly before he begins to form an idea about a matter of widespread social and political importance, perhaps then he could be persuaded to bear in mind a paraphrase of a line by Groucho Marx: Any idiot could understand this matter; fetch me an idiot!

[1] Bruce G. Charlton, “Clever Sillies: Why High IQ People Tend to be Deficient in Common Sense”, Medical Hypotheses, in press, 2009, p.1. (For more of Dr Charlton’s works, see here and here.)

[2] Ibid., pp.3-4. David Stove was also good on clever sillies. See, for instance, his “Righting Wrongs”, in On Enlightenment, ed. A. Irvine (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003), and “The Oracles and Their Cessation: a Tribute to Julian Jaynes”, in Cricket versus Republicanism, and Other Essays (Sydney: Quakers Hill Press, 1995).

Genebottery

2009-09-26T14:12:00.006+01:00

It is hoped under the impress of the mechanical philosophy that men will one day be able to look upon the world and explain all of its aspects in mechanical terms without the slightest reference to functionality or intentionality, including the very apparent and conscious intentionality of trying to explain all of the aspects of the world in mechanical terms. It seems, however, that this vain hope has not filtered down into the lower and less sophisticated reaches of reductionistic belief; for therein is taken for granted not only the existence of mere teleology in the microbiological world, but also the existence of strategic ability. An example follows:

“Of course, human environments consist mainly of other people, and the genes of those alive today contain many strategies for dealing with those other people . . . some of them are very good at manipulating other people.” [1]

The belief that bits of nucleic acid have strategies is so fantastic that I am baffled by how a man could hold it. No superstition of this age or any other is so deeply unreasonable. Nevertheless, if we were to entertain it for a moment, we should rightly wonder what dastardly strategy genes have in store for us in their tendency to reveal their dastardly-strategic natures to seemingly naïve and impressionable men.

[1] Anonymous, commenting on Dennis Mangan, “Social sciences as branches of biology”, Mangan’s (weblog), 24th September 2009. (Also: “as far as living things are concerned, genes are everything”. I once heard a man likewise claim that he was merely a genebot, and I must admit that, in view of his moronic character, I was very inclined to agree with him.)

Feser’s Unabsurdity Principle

2009-09-26T14:06:00.008+01:00

“If that claim [about the nature of final causation] sounds obvious and trivial, then terrific: You’re starting to understand Aristotle and Aquinas, because it’s supposed to be obvious and trivial.” [1]

Or: If the concept of final causation does not strike you as absurd, then you have probably understood it.

[1] Edward Feser, “Teleology Revisted”, Edward Feser (weblog), 24th September 2009; original emphasis.

Mere Science

2009-09-19T21:14:00.007+01:00

“The aim of life is to pass on one’s genes”, says Mr Worstall, adding that “we are told by the scientists” that it is so. [1] Well, randy scientists might tell him such things, but science — as knowledge only of the empirical-mechanical aspects of the world — does not. Aims, goals, purposes, etc, of any kind are outside its scope. To say that life itself has an aim of any kind is to impute to it a teleological nature, upon which science by itself is utterly silent. It ought to be obvious that the claim, to wit, that the aim of life is to pass on one’s genes, is not a scientific hypothesis, since it is not in any way verifiable or falsifiable. It is a metaphysical view in that it draws from the data of the physical world a conclusion which is not itself verifiable or falsifiable by the data thereof. [2] As a metaphysical view, it is open to rational disputation, wherein one may take into consideration whether it helps us, or is necessary for us, to make sense of the world, whether it accords with our experience, whether it is rationally coherent with our other claims, whether it leads to the denial of inconvenient facts, and so forth.
.....In speaking merely scientifically of so-called natural causes and laws, we are speaking only of the routines of sense-experience, as Karl Pearson phrased it, and not of some necessity or enforcement. All scientific laws and described regularities, taken merely scientifically without metaphysical insight, describe simply how things have behaved according to past sense-experience. Science, in the ideal-empirical state of having been stripped bare of all metaphysical insights, cannot claim any knowledge outside of the empirical-mechanical aspects of the world: “chaos is all that science can logically assert of the supersensuous”. [3] But if we are to think of order, causation, rationality, intentionality, teleology, and so forth, whereby we make sense of the world, then we must accept that our understanding of the world is something above a mere regular sequence of sense-impressions.
.....It is the spirit of positivism, however, which has the ideal-empirical state as its end for human thought as a whole. If a man ever achieved that state, he would become at that moment a brute. Perhaps then, having renounced his rational nature, his sole aim in life would be to pass on his genes, perhaps even as does the lowest life-form; and, having achieved his aim, he would spend his later years aimlessly writing popular-science books.

[1] Tim Worstall, “This is Absurd”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 19th September 2009.

[2] Even Richard Dawkins seems to be aware that his gene-centric view is not a scientific hypothesis: “I doubt that there is any experiment that could be done to prove my claim.” The Extended Phenotype: Gene as the Unit of Selection (London: W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd, 1982), p.1.

[3] Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900), p.108.

Restricted Entry

2009-09-10T23:04:00.002+01:00

“A young man is not a fit person to attend lectures on political science, because he is not versed in the practical business of life from which politics draws its premises and subject-matter. Besides, he tends to follow his feelings, with the result that he will make no headway and derive no benefit from his course, since the object of it is not knowledge but action. It makes no difference whether he is young in age or youthful in character; the defect is due not to lack of years but to living, and pursuing one’s various aims, under sway of the feelings; for to people like this knowledge becomes as unprofitable as it is for the incontinent.” [1]

We should greatly enlarge the entrances to all the departments of political science in the land, not so as to admit more students, but so as to fit those words in large letters on the lintels.

[1] Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, I.iii:1095a, tr, J.A.K. Thomson (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p.6; capitalisation added to first letter.

At School

2009-09-10T21:07:00.000+01:00

“If one looks upon nature as a tutor, and us poor humans as listeners, then one is inclined to give room to a quite strange idea of mankind. All of us sit in a school-lesson, have the principles necessary to understand and comprehend it, yet we are always listening more to the chatter of our classmates than to the lecture of the tutor. Or indeed when a classmate next to us notes something down, we crib from him, steal what perhaps he himself has dimly heard, and we add to it our own misspellings and mistaken views.”

[“Wenn man die Natur als Lehrerin, und die armen Menschen als Zuhörer betrachtet, so ist man geneigt, einer ganz sonderbaren Idee vom menschlichen Geschlechte Raum zu geben. Wir sitzen allsamt in einem Collegio, haben die Prinzipien, die nötig sind, es zu verstehen und zu fassen, horchen aber immer mehr auf die Plaudereien unserer Mitschüler, als auf den Vortrag der Lehrerin. Oder wenn ja einer neben uns etwas nachschreibt, so spicken wir von ihm, stehlen, was er selbst vielleicht undeutlich hörte, und vermehren es mit unsern eigenen orthographischen und Meinungsfehlern.”]

G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), I/90,2, wahrscheinlich aus Sudelbuch K (1793), p.465; original emphasis.

A Review

2009-09-07T22:56:00.000+01:00

“This website is made up of old, grumpy, impotent men who pretend to be profound thinkers. How sad they are with their limited views of life and how threatened they are with their deletions of other points of view. What is needed here are women’s perspectives, which tend to reflect more open and global perspectives. We doubt, however, that the ‘all-knowing’ men on this lowly blog would ever include intelligent responses to their shallow responses. Our criticisms of Curmudgeonry’s old men’s views have therefore been published in other international websites.”

Anonymous, in the combox to “Just a Beginning”, on this lowly blog.

O Deo Whiggismum Odeo

2009-09-03T22:34:00.001+01:00

“The best prediction that could have been made 20 years ago is that things can only get better. That’s also the best prediction that can be made now about the future and has been the best prediction that anyone can make about two decades in the future ever since we invented this liberal capitalism shtick back in 1750.”

Tim Worstall, “The best prediction of the past 20 years”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 3rd September 2009.

A Guiding Clue

2009-08-31T23:14:00.001+01:00

“We must grasp the essential contrast between the whole modern world-view and that of previous thought, and use that clearly conceived contrast as a guiding clue to pick out for criticism and evaluation, in the light of their historical development, every one of our significant modern presuppositions.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1925), p.16.

Without Embarrassment

2009-08-31T22:25:00.005+01:00

“The left always feel faintly embarrassed at attempting to promote their own political agenda”, says Steven Barnett, [1] professor of communications at Westminster University, without the faintest trace of embarrassment. Odd, I say, for I had thought that much of the success of leftism through the centuries down to the present day had been owed to the diabolical shamelessness of its promotion. I must have been reading the history and seeing the sights of another planet. Perhaps I ought to go back to university in order to learn how to communicate with this one, perhaps even without embarrassment.

[1] Quoted by Mehdi Hasan, “Bias and the Beeb”, The New Statesman, 27th August 2009.

A Sham and Puerile Kind of Heroism

2009-08-24T22:37:00.003+01:00

“Science being, it is said, a pure service of truth for truth’s sake, is not called upon to consider whether the selfish wishes of men’s souls are satisfied or not. Thus here, too, men pass from timidity to presumptuous boldness. Having once tasted the delight of impartial and wholly unfettered investigation, they rush into a sham and puerile kind of heroism that glories in having renounced that which no one has ever any right to renounce; and reposing boundless confidence in assumptions which are by no means incontestable, estimate the truth of their new philosophic views in direct proportion to the degree of offensive hostility which these exhibit towards everything—except science—that is held sacred by the living soul of man.”

Hermann Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol.I, tr. E. Hamilton and E.E. Constance Jones (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1885), p.viii.

Fewtril no.271

2009-08-24T22:34:00.001+01:00

In the course of decline, a nation can pass through a time of pessimism into a time of optimism whence the gloominess of the earlier time looks silly, thereby confirming the fears of the pessimists: that after them would arise a mass of pigs satisfied.

Lucky Albion

2009-08-24T22:31:00.001+01:00

“In Britain [between the world wars], many concluded that the wrong people . . . were giving birth at a rate that threatened to engulf society in a wave of mediocrity.” [1]

Phew! Thank goodness that didn’t happen!

[1] Matthew Price, “The end was nigh”, review of The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars, by Richard Overy, The National, 20th August 2009.

A Little Reminder

2009-08-24T22:28:00.002+01:00

“I certainly cannot explain how we got here, but I’d rather wait a thousand years to see if science can push back a few more layers of our ignorance before positing what seems to me a somewhat metaphorical explanation for our place in the universe.” [1]

My dear lady, I do not know how to break it to you, but there is a fairly good chance that you will be dead in a thousand years from now.

[1] Heather MacDonald, “The Evolution of God”, Secular Right (weblog), 9th August 2009.

The Carefree Minds of Ants

2009-08-24T22:19:00.003+01:00

“Ants behave in an extremely collective fashion. Each has no say in what happens, and it’s no problem for them, why should it be a problem for us?” [1]

It would not be a problem for “us” if we had the minds of ants. Forsooth we would have no problems at all. There are many other entities which have no problems: pebbles, leaves, stars, and so on. A utopian world free of problems is just a short step away.

[1] “Shlick”, commenting on Madeleine Bunting, “In control? Think again. Our ideas of brain and human nature are myths”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 23rd August 2009. (I do sometimes gape in wonder at what seems to be the profound stupidity of the commenters at Comment is Free, but then I remember that they are all geniuses, greater than which the world has never known.)

Fewtril no.270

2009-08-24T22:14:00.000+01:00

The bellwether-intelligentsia are always one step ahead of the herd in the run of ideas, but are usually outpaced and trampled down in the realisation of their consequences.

Novelty

2009-08-21T00:02:00.000+01:00

“Novelty pleases all because it is uncommon, taste is refreshed, and a brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence.”

Balthasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, tr. J. Jacobs (London: MacMillan and Co., 1892), §.cclxix, p.162.

On Failing to Observe the Rules of Decadence

2009-08-20T19:01:00.004+01:00

For the last hundred years or so, but particularly for the last forty, many of the bourgeoisie have spent much of their time in the weird attempt to shock or unsettle one another by unseemliness against old rules. Naturally, after so long, one cannot expect that the class as a whole would be anything but inured to the basest improprieties. Even so, most are still easy to shock. One cannot do so by producing ever more revolting or decadent works, or by striking against tradition, good manners or civility; for their instincts are for decline and destruction which they misapprehend by some perversion of the moral sense as progress and liberty. It is only that which strikes against those instincts which shocks them. Everything else is a thrill wherein to indulge. It is the highest things which fill them with loathing. They are pious observers of new rules.

“A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.” [1]

All one need do is say quite innocently something truly right-wing or reactionary. All one need do is say something sane, something which almost every man and woman in every age but our own would have held as sensible and good, something which promotes order, authority, hierarchy, stricture, or familial, racial or cultural preservation — anything, in short, which does not tolerate, or celebrate as a moral imperative, the destruction of these things. [2] Soon enough, one will find that one is no longer welcome at dinner-parties. Still, every struggle, no matter how bitter, has its sweet consolations.

[1] Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell, 10th June 1784, Life of Johnson, ed., R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.1289.
[2] Actually this seems to be the case only amongst most of the white bourgeoisie. Even the plight of the red squirrel may exercise their considerations, whilst the dwindling of their own people, and the destruction of their own ancestral homelands, concerns them not at all.

Dowsers and Terrorists

2009-08-19T23:23:00.006+01:00

If I were to claim that one man’s dowser is another man’s water-seeker, then I should do so in the expectation that many would call me a man of rare stupidity who has trouble distinguishing between means and ends, who fails to discriminate between mutually exclusive and inclusive terms, and who suggests, concerning the existence of dowsers and water-seekers, that there is no fact of the matter, but rather only opinion. Yet, analogously, if I were to claim that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter, I should do so in the fair expectation that many would take my claim as just one of those things that everyone knows.
.....Unless some very special and mutually-exclusive meanings are arbitrarily assigned to the words in question, it ought to be obvious that a man can be a freedom-fighter and not a terrorist, a terrorist and not a freedom-fighter, or that he can be both, just as it is obvious that a man can be a water-seeker and not a dowser, a dowser and not a water-seeker, or that he can be both. [1] One set of terms (“terrorist” and “dowser”) refers to someone by the aspect of a specified means, whilst the other set of terms (“freedom-fighter” and “water-seeker”) refers to someone primarily or solely by the aspect of a specified end. The two sets are not mutually exclusive. Nor is it simply a matter of opinion whether a man is a terrorist or not. If a man employs violent terror against both combatants and non-combatants alike as a tactic for the sake of his political ends, then he is a terrorist, whether or not he does so to liberate or enslave, and so on. Furthermore, that an apologist will refer to a terrorist and freedom-fighter simply as a freedom-fighter is of no import to the fact of the matter.

.....So far as I know, no-one has ever claimed that one man’s dowser is another man’s water-seeker, whereas the claim that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter has, as I say, been repeated time and again as though it were commonsense. Also, the terms of the first claim have never been the subjects of political-ideological discussion in the public arena, or, if they have, they have been only rarely, whereas the terms of the latter have frequently been such. Every good propagandist knows that even the stupidest falsehoods can be inculcated by affirmative repetition; and every good blight-spotter knows that any word or phrase which becomes the frequent subject of political-ideological discussion in the public arena is soon degraded by whimsical or politically-inspired abuse, sometimes even beyond worthwhile use, at least thereafter in the public arena itself.

.....All of which brings us to an article in a national newspaper, wherein the author takes a rather more original approach than simply assuming the aforementioned canard. He says:

“The choice of terms here is not between freedom fighter and terrorist but between murderer and terrorist — the former simply killing nihilistically because they are killing in a cause we do not believe in, and the latter using violence as part of an achievable and just political project with which we agree.” [2]

One can never quite tell beforehand what foul tortures the nation’s language will undergo at the whim or political exigency of its paid abusers.

[1] An archaeological geophysicist once told me that dowsing was sometimes used in site-surveys as a rough but effective substitute for some of the more technically-advanced and expensive conductivity-meters, but that their use was never admitted in publication.

[2] Brian Brivati, “Yes, Terrorism can be Justified”, Comment is Free (The Guardian's weblog), 18th August 2009. (A commenter — “LordSummerisle”— provides us with the usual canard: “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”)

Just a Beginning

2009-08-19T00:18:00.006+01:00

“If anybody wishes to know what was the influence of Rousseau in diffusing the belief in a golden age, when men lived, like brothers, in freedom and equality, he should read, not so much the writings of the sage, as the countless essays printed in France by his disciples just before 1789. They furnish very disagreeable proof that the intellectual flower of a cultivated nation may be brought, by fanatical admiration of a social and political theory, into a condition of downright mental imbecility.”

Sir Henry Sumner Maine, “The Nature of Democracy”, Popular Government: Four Essays (London: John Murray, 1886), p.75.

A Greater Source

2009-08-18T22:08:00.000+01:00

“[S]ince lamentation about the state of the world is one of life’s unfailing pleasures, the world is a greater source of satisfaction than ever.”

Theodore Dalrymple, “Reasons to be Cheerful”, The Spectator, 13th December 2003.

Off to Frogland

2009-07-16T16:42:00.002+01:00

Hence prolificacy will be curtailed for a week or so.

China’s Pyrrho

2009-07-08T18:47:00.000+01:00

“Shen Tao discarded knowledge, abandoned self, followed the inevitable, and was indifferent to things. Such were his principles. He said: ‘Knowledge is not to know’. He was one who despised knowledge and would destroy it. Stupid and irresponsible, he ridiculed the world’s way of preferring the virtuous; careless and impractical, he condemned the world’s great Sages; shifting and slippery, he changed about with circumstances; disregarding right and wrong, he was only concerned with avoiding trouble; learning nothing from knowledge and thinking, paying no attention to past or future, he stood loftily indifferent to everything.”

Chuang-tzu, ch. 33., tr. H.A. Giles (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1926), quoted by Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 1: The Period of the Philosophers (from the Beginnings to circa 100bc), tr. D. Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p.153. (Further: “Men of ability laughed at him and said: ‘The way of Shen Tao is no practice for the living; it is a principle for the dead’.” Ibid.)

Hope to an End

2009-07-08T18:43:00.002+01:00

“Democracy is a daring concept — a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government.” [1]

It is another example of how connotations and motivating factors usurp the rule of a word’s denotations, such that a clear appreciation of what is meant or proposed or entailed is obscured. Naturally a hope that we shall be governed best if such-and-such happens is not a form of government, let alone a good one; it is merely a hope to that end. A hope, so far as I know, cannot be a form of government, except in the apolitical sense that it can govern a man’s deeds to good or ill effect. Hoping may well be a motivating factor in bringing the concept of democracy to realisation, so far as that is possible, but it has nothing to do with the concept itself. Furthermore the word “democracy” does not denote goodness, nor does the fact itself entail it; such is a connotation which a man fancies without reason. That said, I entertain a hope — though I dare say I am not governed by it — that the quiet and seemingly-innocuous emptying of words of their denotative meanings in the heads of many will not go so far as to bring about terrible consequences for all. It may well denote a vain hope.

[1] Brian Eno, “A New Politics”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 8th July 2009.

From a Wordbook

2009-07-07T19:23:00.006+01:00

bundling, n. A political party’s custom, hardly to be averted, of offering to an electorate a range of policies which must thereupon be accepted together as a bundle, or not at all; wherewith a discerning vote for one policy by taste and attraction can be to no avail since it is an undifferentiated vote for them all by effect, albeit in the highly unlikely event that it has any effect at all. Cf., wholesaling, nose-holding, and unlucky-bag; not to be confused with bungling. See P.R. Hornblower’s The Unavoidable Legitimation of Unappealing and Treacherous Policies when Held in Common by All Politickal Parties in Democratick Republicks (London: 1691), celebrated author of Politickal Tricks and Phancies and How to Foole Them All of the Time.

Darwin and God

2009-07-01T12:34:00.015+01:00

“[F]aced with the facts at his disposal, Darwin reached the same conclusion as the Swedish Humanist Association: There’s probably no God.” [1]

He reached no such conclusion. He tended to waver between deism and agnosticism:

“With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.
...“Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws,—a child (who may turn out an idiot) is born by action of even more complex laws,—and I can see no reason, why a man, or other animal, may not have been aboriginally produced by other laws; & that all these laws may have been expressly designed by an omniscient Creator, who foresaw every future event & consequence. But the more I think the more bewildered I become; as indeed I have probably shown by this letter.” [2]
.....
“I cannot believe that there is a bit more interference by the Creator in the construction of each species, than in the course of the planets.” [3]
.....
“The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is, without having been designed; yet, where one would most expect design, viz. in the structure of a sentient being, the more I think on the subject, the less I can see proof of design.” [4]
.....
“There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea. The question is of course wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has been answered in the affirmative by the highest intellects that have ever lived.” [5]
.....
“My views are far from clear . . . I can never make up my mind how far an inward conviction that there must be some Creator or First Cause is really trustworthy evidence.” [6]
.....
“I feel in some degree unwilling to express myself publicly on religious subjects, as I do not feel that I have thought deeply enough to justify any publicity.” [7]
.....
“It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist. . . . What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one except myself.— But as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates. . . . In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” [8]

I should add that Darwin was hardly a knowledgeable authority on the theological arguments, nor understood their subtlety or philosophical grounding, as he himself acknowledged. Still, the belief is in no way true that in the mid-nineteenth century Darwin became a Dawkinsian. I do not fear that I present a greatly controversial theory when I say that it is a belief which has evolved in no small part at the creative hand of a vociferous epigone and philosophical buffoon, though one yet falling short of omnipresence. Nonetheless, the former Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science has amply fulfilled the duty for which that chair might have been instituted. If any members of the public have not by now understood that science as a human industry is one in which misinformation, polemics, ignorance, bullying, psychological appeals, inherited prejudices, woeful arguments, philosophical ineptitude, and base motives also play a part, then the blame lies more with them than with the professor; for he has demonstrated almost everything that was humanly possible in that regard.

[1] Björn Ulvaeus, “Religion and schools don’t mix”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 30th June 2009. (I am aware that the quotation comes from some pop-entertainer, but I feel it is worth adding my tuppence-worth to the rebuttal, since the view seems to be quite widely assumed.)
[2] C.R. Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray, 22nd May 1860, published online at Darwin Correspondence Project.
[3] C.R. Darwin, Letter to Charles Lyell, 17th June 1860, ibid.
[4] C.R. Darwin, Letter to F.J. Wedgwood, 11th July 1861, ibid.
[5] C.R. Darwin, The Descent of Man; and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I. (London: John Murray, 1871), p.65.
[6] C.R. Darwin, Letter to F.E. Abbot, 6th September 1871, published online at Darwin Correspondence Project.
[7] Ibid.
[8] C.R, Darwin, Letter to John Fordyce, 7th May 1879, ibid.

Costly Tastes

2009-06-29T19:28:00.007+01:00

“Formerly I went frequently to Paris: I saw often many of those who were called ‘the philosophers’. It was particularly at Madame Geoffrin’s, Baron d’Holbaek’s, and d’Alembert’s, where they principally assembled. It was there that they silently planned the destruction of religion, of the clergy, the nobility, and the government. From the year 1766, I said to the Bishops who were connected with them, ‘They detest you’; to the great noblemen who protected them, ‘They cannot bear the splendour of your rank, which dazzles them’; to the Farmers-General who upheld them, ‘They envy your riches’. These continued, however, to admire, to flatter, and to support them.”

Louis Dutens, “Two Letters from Voltaire, Relative to Myself”, Dutensiana; Intended as a Sequel to the Memoirs of a Traveller, Now in Retirement, vol.V (London: R. Phillips and Dulau & Co., 1806), pp.93-4.

Tomorrow the Whole World

2009-06-28T15:26:00.007+01:00

“The German nationalists . . . fought against the German patchwork of small states and wanted a unified home-market. Today for the same reasons the ruling classes want to overcome the nation-state and create as unified a world-market as possible. Erstwhile revolutionaries became conservatives who today cling to inherited conditions with the same ardour as the German princes once did to their small-state sovereignty. The nation-state stands in the way of putative economic progress, commonly known as globalisation. Nationalism, ironically, becomes the victim of its own logic. Yesterday money wanted Germany, today Europe, and tomorrow the whole world.”

[“Die deutschen Nationalisten . . . bekämpften die deutsche Kleinstaaterei und wollten einen einheitlichen deutschen Binnenmarkt. Heute will das Großbürgertum den Nationalstaat aus den gleichen Gründen überwinden und einen möglichst einheitlichen Weltmarkt schaffen. Aus einstigen Revolutionären wurden Konservative, die sich heute mit der gleichen Inbrunst an überkommene Verhältnisse klammern, wie Anno die deutschen Fürsten an ihre Kleinstaatssouveränität. Der Nationalstaat steht dem vermeintlichen ökonomischen Fortschritt, vulgo der Globalisierung, im Wege. Der Nationalismus wird, ironischerweise, Opfer seiner eigenen Logik. Das Geld wollte gestern Deutschland, heute Europa und morgen die ganze Welt.”]

Mcp, “Das Kleinere Übel”, Mit Elektischer Feder (weblog), 26. Juni 2009.

Eh-Level History

2009-06-26T11:43:00.007+01:00

Some of our country’s “advanced”-level students of history have been complaining about a question which appeared in an examination: “How far do you agree that Hitler’s role 1933-45 was one of despotic tyranny?”. [1] The phrase “despotic tyranny” has caused some upset:

“[I]t is elitist . . . to assume every history student is going to have come across such a term.” [2]

“The use of the term ‘despotic tyranny’ excludes students of a lower ability.” [3]

At least it seems that some of our “advanced” students have learnt the egalitarian ideology well, if nothing else.

“I have been offered a place at Cambridge to study English literature and I was not familiar with the word ‘despotic’ at all despite intensive revision and reading around the topic.” [4]

“I understand that to be an A level history student you need to have a wide grasp of specialised vocabulary but can i realy be blamed for never hearing the word despotic before? I have never read it, let alone had it taught to me and i was under the impression that exams should be based on a student’s knowledge of a topic not on their knowedge of a word.” [5]

One unhappy mother summed up the complaint rather well:

“This was an exam on Hitler and history . . . not on swallowing a dictionary.” [6]

Doubtless it is sometimes difficult to determine the meaning of the various usages of words and phrases. I, for instance, have trouble understanding what “advanced” means.

[1] As reported by Alexis Thompson, “History students confused by Hitler ‘despotic tyranny’ exam question”, News Shopper Online, 19th June 2009. (H/T: Laban Tall, “The Best Educated Generation in History”, UK Commentators (weblog), 26th June 2009.)
[2]-[6] “HistoryStudent”, “JohnS”, “Bexleystudent09”, “cmarie”, “Mother Sidcup”, commenting on Alexis Thompson’s report. (I have spared the reader a rash of sic-ness.)

The Book of the World

2009-06-24T21:56:00.005+01:00

“Now and then I believe I sense that the book of the world is becoming a little more legible.” [1]

It happens to me sometimes: in deepest thought or in drunkenness.

[1] [“Zuweilen glaube ich zu spüren, daß das Buch der Welt ein wenig leserlicher wird.”] Ernst Jünger, 14. Juni 1940, Gärten und Strassen (Berlin: E.S. Mittler & Sohn, 1942), p.150.

Fewtril no.269

2009-06-21T15:40:00.001+01:00

Not mere apes: modernists. Mere apes might on occasion fling their own excrement, but they never claim it to be some form of new art.

Fewtril no.268

2009-06-21T15:39:00.001+01:00

To confidence is owed half the success of becoming an intellectual; and to intellect is owed less than half.

Degenerates

2009-06-21T15:25:00.002+01:00

To depict this age faithfully is an aesthetic sin, and I am therefore often reluctant to sully the page with any unsightly instances of it. Nevertheless, here is another:

My politics comes from Marxism and feminism; it’s republican, it’s gay and it’s green. It isn’t about ‘good works’, but its works are all towards the good of society. And that can’t be realised without the most radical transformations. [1]

As these blighters approach their goal of the radical transformation of society and state in line with their savage atavism, the pitch of their antipathy increases. Where signs still exist of former ways of thought, a great hysterical anger is raised, and the hysteria becomes the greater the fewer the signs that remain. Sometimes, the more that society and state are transformed towards their ways, the more inclined they are to believe that success is slipping away, as their eyes fix jealously and narrowly on what still remains outside their control. Therein is hidden something old and primitive, a savage instinct, a contempt wholly without noble aspect, which is roused to frenzy at the sight of weakness; but therein is also something quite new: this savage atavism is cultivated and treated to every defence which sophistication can muster.

Retrogression, relapse—this is in general the ideal of this band who dare to speak of liberty and progress. They wish to be the future. That is one of their chief pretensions. That is one of the means by which they catch the largest number of simpletons. We have, however, seen in all individual cases that it is not the future but the most forgotten, far-away past. Degenerates lisp and stammer, instead of speaking. They utter monosyllabic cries, instead of constructing grammatically and syntactically articulated sentences. They draw and paint like children, who dirty tables and walls with mischievous hands. They compose music like that of the yellow natives of East Asia. They confound all the arts, and lead them back to the primitive forms they had before evolution differentiated them. Every one of their qualities is atavistic, and we know, moreover, that atavism is one of the most constant marks of degeneracy. [2]

At the disposal of these degenerates are all the advantages of their inheritance, and, like profligate wastrels, they fritter it away.

[1] Beatrix Campbell, “Why I accepted my OBE”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 16th June 2009. (One of the commenters (“whatithink”) put it rather well: “Our honours system is now used entirely as a way of identifying people who are a complete menace to the rest of society.”)

[2] Max Nordau, Degeneration (London: William Heinemann, 1898), p.555.

At Dr Cholodenko's Service

2009-06-21T14:10:00.005+01:00

For any taurocoprologist, the appearance of each issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies is an exciting event. For me, however, the latest issue carries an added thrill. Dr Alan Cholodenko, the world’s foremost analyst of quantum-mechanical effects in cartoons, has considered Paul Cossins [1] and me worthy of note in an interview therein:

If one Googles my name, one will find tagged to it a blog called ‘The Joy of Curmudgeonry: The International Journal of Boundless Idiocy’ (31 January 2006). Refusing to provide his given name, the blog’s author calls her/himself Deogolwulf; and s/he names her/his residence Lancashire, England! (. . . but of course, that could be a sham address on the part of ‘Deogolwulf’!)

If one examines the content of the blog, it seems ‘Deogolwulf’ is one among several analytic philosophers engaged in deriding me as an ‘idiot’, but not only me: the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, as the journal of idiots. Of course, that derision is marked in the very title of the blog, meant to refer to the IJBS. So s/he and his/her mates, like Paul Cossins, paint with a scatter gun, mocking not only me but the journal, those it publishes, and even Baudrillard himself and his work as ‘idiocy’. (Indeed, for explicit disparagement by ‘Deogolwulf’ of Baudrillard, see ‘his’ piece entitled ‘The Professor of Absurdity’, The Joy of Curmudgeonry, 9 December 2005: [citation link].)

The denigration of me appears to follow this ‘logic’: how can a person teaching in an art history and theory department in Australia presume they have the right and ability to talk about and comment on Stephen Hawking, as I do so in my article ‘The Nutty Universe of Animation, the “Discipline” of All “Disciplines”, and That’s Not All, Folks!’, published in IJBS 3/1, January 2006?

But here it is crucial for me to declare: while I am a bit miffed by the blog and its ridicule, to say nothing of its being tagged to my name, at the same time I find it and these derogatory pronouncements marvelous, wonderful gifts, for they help to establish my bona fides, as it were! One needs enemies, Alexandr, even jokers like these, whom I have clearly and powerfully provoked, as has Baudrillard, the IJBS and those who publish therein. For me, their mockery turns on itself, mocking only them. For me, the hilarious and derogatory term Cossins and ‘Deogolwulf’ deploy in ‘The Professor of Absurdity’ reverses on them, turning into a self-description: ‘taurocoprologists’. So, instead of replying to them in a direct manner with reasoned responses, instead of trying to engage them in scholarly debate, I choose to just have a good laugh, one at their expense. I know this is how Baudrillard did and would ‘reply’ to such close-minded, empty-headed abusive utterances. [2]

I am honoured to have helped a man of Dr Cholodenko’s stature establish his bona fides, as it were, and I shall be at his service again if ever he should need it.

[1] Fellow taurocoprologist and erstwhile commenter at this blog.
[2] Alan Cholodenko, interviewed by Alexandr Dyakov, “An Interview With Alan Cholodenko”, International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol.6:2, July 2009.

An Old Play

2009-06-10T16:32:00.004+01:00

“I guess you are a B.N.P supporter but you have conceded that we Muslims are allies in the fight against the ultra-left anti-family fanatics. In this case you should support us since we are the only morally serious section of the British population left. Look at the animalistic sexual incontinence of white Britons and the mass production of feral children by white English sluts — the ferals reach puberty, copulate with each other and produce yet more useless bastards who go on to lead the same useless and barbaric lives. How much longer can a society continue in this way? The Christian church is dead and buried, only Islam can guide the British people back to morality and decency.” [1]

The Mussulman has pegged his hosts quite well; and he has a good eye for an old and oft-performed play, which might this time be produced on a grander scale: liberals and social libertarians and other glib blighters destroy the fabric of a society, its authorities and moral strictures, its traditions and mores, its native bonds and communities, because such things repress the free expression of their bestial impulses, to which they are in thrall; whereupon, against a mass-collocation of barely personable and irresponsible individuals, and without effective defence from any social redoubts or moral depths, a stark power arises of necessity to set everything in order in the most direct fashion. The comedic aspect of this rather dreary play is that many of these liberal and libertarian blighters — the true believers rather than the cynical promoters — do not realise that they have any role in it at all, let alone a leading role. They are angered to hear otherwise; they believe that they are appearing in what is and what ought to continue to be a light musical farce or a drama of a base or mediocre kind, and are greatly surprised when the curtain comes down and the scenery is changed for the next act.

[1] Bilal H., addressing another commenter in the comments to Unity, “Cheers Tim, but we already know what Fascists are”, Liberal Conspiracy (weblog), 9th June 2009. (Some slight cosmetic changes have been made to the comment.)

Impressions and Ideas

2009-06-09T23:08:00.003+01:00

“It seemed very natural to think, that the Treatise of human nature required an author, and a very ingenious one too; but now we learn, that it is only a set of ideas which came together, and arranged themselves by certain associations and attractions.” [1]

Thomas Reid’s damnation of David Hume’s thesis of impressions and ideas strikes just as well against Richard Dawkins’s doctrine of memes, though I should not like to suggest thereby an equality between the latter two gentlemen: the Scotsman was ingenious; the Englishman sells books.

[1] Thomas Reid, An Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. D.R. Brookes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), Ch.II, Sct.VI, p.35.

Stupefied

2009-06-08T15:36:00.003+01:00

In reply to a commenter at Comment is Free, who wrote of the interests of the various races and peoples in Britain, and of the officially-disgraceful interests of those Englishmen who wish to preserve their homeland, another commenter had this to say:

“I guess you are ignorant of the fact that genetics tells us Homo sapiens originated in Africa?
.....
“Silly me, of course you are.” [1]

It has the usual smugness which surrounds politically-inspired stupidity. I am yet to hear a good reason why anyone believes that a genetic origin of Homo sapiens in Africa has any significant bearing on present racial-political matters. Yet it is used to imply that everyone in the world — or, more selectively, everyone European — is of “African” origin, an implication relying on a dumb equivocation between present-racial and original denotations of that word. Is it too hard to understand that one hundred thousand years ago, in what is now called Africa, members of Homo sapiens were not African or European or Chinese? Is it beyond the meanest comprehension to grasp that Europeans and Chinese are not descended from Africans in any present-racial sense? To believe otherwise would be little more rational than to believe that two of three brothers are descended from the third because they all share the same father and because that other brother still lives in the paternal home. Yet, by a grand political legerdemain, taking advantage of the mental dimness by which recent categories cannot be distinguished from ancient ones, it might be fancied to be seen that all the peoples of the world — the Chinese, the Europeans, the Middle-Easterners, and so on — ought not to preserve themselves, their lands, and their cultures against the claims of all and sundry, or rather against “common humanity” — except it seems that only the European race has been so stupefied as to fancy so.

[1] “rickb”, commenting of Sunny Hundal, “The Hope We’ve Gained from the BNP”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 8th June 2009. (Corrected quotation: removal of additional definite article and of the capitalisation of “sapiens”.)

On Parliaments

2009-05-30T01:03:00.005+01:00

“In Parliaments, Men wrangle in behalf of Liberty, that do as little care for it, as they deserve it.”

George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, “Of Parliaments”, A Character of King Charles the Second, and Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (London: J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, 1750), p.104.

“[B]ut as Swine are to Gardens and orderly Plantations, so are Tumults to Parliaments, and Plebeian concourses to publique Councels, turning all into disorders and sordid confusions.”

King Charles the First, Eikon Basilike (London: R. Royston, 1648), reproduced as Eikon Basilike, or The King’s Book, ed. E. Almack (London: The De La More Press, 1903), p.12. (Soon after this book was published, doubt was cast on the king’s authorship, mostly notably by John Milton in his Eikonoklastes, and by Bishop John Gauden, who claimed himself as the author, despite eyewitnesses who affirmed it to be the king's work. In the learned view of the editor of the fore-mentioned reproduction, King Charles most probably was the author. David Hume also thought so. See his History of England, Vol.V, (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1854), p.278, as did Christopher Wordsworth, who has written the most thorough account: see his Who Wrote Eikon Basilike? (London: John Murray, 1824).)

Cults

2009-05-29T16:38:00.002+01:00

It is true that the word “cult” can be applied maliciously against any small group so as to provoke antipathy towards it; for “cult” now carries sinister connotations, whereby, for instance, one is led to imagine a small group of people, mostly and barely able to think for themselves, dupes of sinister interests, passively led by powerful individuals to believe and act in some ways rather than in others. To most of those who belong to the wider societies of the West, steadfast under the dominion of mass and media, under governmental and business-economical propaganda, all such stand-apart groups with the label of “cults” do seem to be sinister and frightful, enough indeed for every right-thinking man to have no thought but to wish to see them stamped out.

Races

2009-05-29T16:32:00.001+01:00

“[T]he whole idea of discrete, concrete races is bunk.” [1] I do not know of anyone who believes that human races in the sense under consideration are discrete biological groups, i.e., species in the sense of exclusive groups of interbreeding organisms which are incapable of producing fertile offspring with organisms of other groups. Certainly, the political-fantasy paradigm of racists — the dreaded Nazis (accompanied as always by sinister and mental-background music, just so you know to hate them) — didn’t believe so. I cannot recall that anyone in the present era has taken human races to be discrete species. [2] I cannot therefore imagine of what use the debunking of the idea would serve, except to insinuate that there is no biological reality to races as intra-specific subgroups, the denial of which is a curious and recent phenomenon — some might say a politically-inspired and -useful delusion — strangely applicable to only one species.

[1] Sarah Ditum, in the commentary to her own “How Churnalists Become Friends to the BNP”, Liberal Conspiracy (weblog), 27th May 2009.

[2] Charles Darwin presents a treatment of the matter in Chapter VIII of The Descent of Man; and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. I. (London: John Murray, 1871).

Empty Bragging

2009-05-19T23:06:00.002+01:00

“Opening my newspaper the other day, I saw a short but emphatic leaderette entitled ‘A Relic of Medievalism’. It expressed a profound indignation upon the fact that somewhere or other, in some fairly remote corner of this country, there is a turnpike-gate, with a toll. It insisted that this antiquated tyranny is insupportable, because it is supremely important that our road traffic should go very fast; presumably a little faster than it does. So it described the momentary delay in this place as a relic of medievalism. I fear the future will look at that sentence, somewhat sadly and a little contemptuously, as a very typical relic of modernism. I mean it will be a melancholy relic of the only period in all human history when people were proud of being modern. For though to-day is always to-day and the moment is always modern, we are the only men in all history who fell back upon bragging about the mere fact that to-day is not yesterday. I fear that some in the future will explain it by saying that we had precious little else to brag about. For, whatever the medieval faults, they went with one merit. Medieval people never worried about being medieval; and modern people do worry horribly about being modern.”

G.K. Chesterton, “On Turnpikes and Medievalism”, in All I Survey (London: Methuen & Co., 1934), p.11.

Modern Ugliness

2009-05-19T23:05:00.002+01:00

“Not long ago the periphery of the city was untouched meadowland, stretches of bucolic peacefulness unlike anything else in Germany. This has been ruined by the depositing of hills of gravel, by the cutting down of the forests, by railroad spurs, and by monstrous industrial plants which the General Staff, with characteristic barbarian inability to understand that some things are irreplaceable, had finally brought here too.” [1]

So wrote Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen about Munich in the nineteen-thirties. Whenever I travel in Europe, I take my cherished pre-nineteen-fourteen Baedeker guide-books. They are works of an old publishing art, bound in red leather, with gold-lettering on the covers, wherein can be found delightful maps, fine descriptions of old streets and buildings, prices for hiring one-horse carriages, and so on. Upon entering a town or city, I am enabled, by book and street-name, by old stone and eccentric regret, to bring a little of the old world back to life, yet not quite enough to dispel the sight of the modern ugliness that has grown up in such a place, and which surrounds the old centre like a besieging army. And when I reflect on what has happened, and what has gone, I feel myself becoming very counter-revolutionary.

[1] Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, 9th September 1937, Diary of a Man in Despair, tr. P. Rubens (London: Duck Editions, 2000) p. 64.

A Fine Little Fellow

2009-05-19T22:40:00.006+01:00

Coldly or ruthlessly regarded, it would seem quite odd that a man could grow so fond of a mere rabbit that he would feel deeply saddened by its death, yet I find myself warmly affected in that way; for lately I witnessed the last moments of my wife’s rabbit [1]: how he could barely struggle to his feet, his head hung low in utter despondency; how, as my wife stroked him, he made two or three last, pathetic noises, albeit quite loud, stretching his whole body with each one; and then that he died. I admit that I have been feeling rather upset about it. Now, apart from telling me to pull myself together and act like a man, you may say, in light of all the misery and suffering to which my fellow humans are subject, of the deaths of fathers, mothers, siblings, and children, not to say of the vast and incalculable suffering of all animals, that I am indulging in “sentimentality”, or even guilty of indecency, by holding in mind just a particular rabbit. Well, I might try to tell myself that it is just a rabbit; but it would be to no avail. Compassion is not some finite resource to be parcelled out mechanically, or at least I cannot harden my heart to believe so. Besides, to the world at large, it may have been just another rabbit, but to me, he was rather a fine little fellow. Late of an evening, I would talk to him, and tickle him under the chin, whilst he sat next to the settee upon which I lay. [2] Naturally he never understood a word I said, but I am used to that; yet we had a warm bond, an ineffable understanding. It is not just that his death struck me as senseless — that life, any life, should ebb away in the most pathetic fashion always seems so — but also that, in his capacity as a rabbit, he could have no consoling thoughts for himself. It is that latter which affects me most strongly, especially in consideration of all dumb animals. All of this you may think silly, but I am not at all ashamed to think otherwise. I cannot see how the fact of the vast suffering of the world abnegates all care for one particularly known and seemingly insignificant instance of it. Certainly, to the creature that suffers, it is no little instance, irrespective of whether it is one amongst countless others. Anyway, I find that I shall now have to talk with my wife more, who, I fear, might suffer because of it, but if I can persuade her to sit on the floor next to the settee whilst I tickle her under the chin, then perhaps it won’t be so bad, though it won’t be the same. Vale, o care cunicule!

[1] Part of the reason I prefer not to write about personal matters is that, when I read them back to myself, they appear ridiculous even to me.
[2] Talking to a rabbit is cheaper than talking to a psycho-analyst, and probably more beneficial too.

A Blind Eye

2009-05-05T14:31:00.001+01:00

Illegal immigrants gathered openly in Trafalgar Square yesterday to protest against the “injustice” of not being British citizens, and yet for some reason they were not rounded up and put into camps ready for deportation. Still, I suppose the sight of the authorities taking seriously the integrity of the country and its laws might scare the voters away, millions of whom haven’t even arrived yet.

A Common Mistake

2009-05-01T00:15:00.005+01:00

“The indignant Monarch for a moment gave way to his natural hastiness of temper—‘Prisoner, Sir! I am not an ordinary Prisoner!’ But if Charles by an instantaneous emotion lost his temper, the Lord President lost his presence of mind or command of language, for when the King said, ‘Show me that jurisdiction where Reason is not to be heard?’ The Serjeant unwittingly replied, ‘Sir! we show it you here, the Commons of England’.”

Isaac Disraeli, Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First, Vol.V (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831), pp.437-8; original emphasis.