The Hubris of Liberal Philistinism

For the liberal philistine, there is some profit to be had in his indifference to art; for thereby he can seem open-minded and even magnanimous, of which he is then keen to boast. Consider the following, for instance:

I have always thought it to be a badge of liberal right-headedness to find it impossible to be offended by a work of art. [1]

Naturally one is never offended by those things to which one is indifferent, and if one cares nothing for art, but everything for the arrogation of magnanimity, then one can tolerate all depths of degeneracy—a badge therefore not of liberal right-headedness or generosity but of liberal indifference, fixed to a self-congratulatory and contented philistinism that is willing to sacrifice all things to the idol of tolerance.

.....There is no clearer sign of liberal philistinism than in its conception of art as little but a totem of tolerance—especially for those things by which it is hoped the sensibilities or convictions of its enemies are offended, as our rag-scribbler reveals:

[C]ontroversial art has a worth quite besides its quiddity. First, if it offends the bourgeois sensibility . . . Second, if it offends the bolder, more Nazi sensibility that any risqué subject matter will have a degenerate effect on its viewer. [2]

In the first, we glimpse a little of the infamy of liberal pretension and ingratitude; for liberalism was born of bourgeois sensibility, and is still maintained on its account. In the second, we glimpse a little of the liberal conceit by which a semblance of moral justification for its own indifference to decadence is sought in the defamation of its enemies. Alongside all this, however, is the sight of liberal hubris in the strange boast of being impervious to offence. For sure, the liberal-as-philistine may not care much for art, and can stand any degree of degeneration therein, but should you stand against his idol—in art or in life—you will learn that there is no-one on this earth who is quicker to take offence.

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[1] Zoe Williams, “Enraged by the apples”, The Guardian, 11th October 2006.

[2] Ibid.

Atomic Moonbattery

North Korea’s first test of an atomic bomb is declared by one commenter to be “one huge step toward peace!” [1], while another believes “[c]ongratulations are in order”, [2] while another wishes, “good luck to all those who also want them” [3], while another opines, “I don’t care who has them”, [4], while another thinks we should “give every country a nuclear weapon” [5], while another plaintively declares himself “far more frightened of the Americans and Israel than any of the other so-called rogue states” [6], while another, as if speaking for them all, finds that “it is difficult to argue that North Korea shouldn't have nuclear weapons.” [7]

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[1] “TimothyL”, commenting on Simon Tisdall, “'Happy bomb' kills ideas of regime change”, The Guardian, 10th October 2006.

[2] “Peter”, commenting on “North Korea nuclear test: Your reaction”, BBC Newsforum.

[3] “Weeper”, commenting on Dan Plesch, “North Korea's nuclear policy is not irrational at all” The Guardian, 10th October 2006.

[4] “Cactuscat”, ibid.

[5] “Brandon”, commenting on “North Korea nuclear test: Your reaction”, op. cit.

[6] “PHOXIND”, commenting on Dan Plesch, op. cit.

[7] “Colin”, commenting on “North Korea nuclear test: Your reaction”, op. cit.

Changing Money

There are some ideas so lowly that they deserve not even the slightest attention, and yet, when those ideas are taken seriously by persons in authority, it behoves us to pay them heed and due ridicule, lest without such they become emboldened and broadly embraced. I should not therefore like to sully these pages with mention of the embarrassing academic rash that is Gender Studies, but feel bound to do so, having strayed upon the following words:

What is the gender of money? Depending on the audience, such a question might elicit blank stares or furrowed brows. The tacit assumption of neoclassical economics, for example, is that money—just like the field of economics itself—is genderless. However, a growing number of feminist economists have challenged the field’s claims to scientific objectivity. Their work exposes the sexist and heterosexist assumptions of neoclassical economics and its foundational myths. [1]

I beg that you desist for a moment from staring blankly or furrowing your brows or rolling your eyes to the heavens in a silent plea for strength, and let instead your mind fall to the understanding that Professor Cady thinks that money is male; and insofar as an argument for this conclusion can be gleaned from amongst the blather, it runs as follows:

.....

Privileged things are male,
Money is privileged (as the measure of value or the medium of economic exchange),
Therefore,
Money is male.

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Here I shouldn’t think it unseemly if you permitted yourself a tut, though I ask that you remain attentive; for Professor Cady goes on to tell us that money has not always been male, since, for much of the Middle Ages, “it was not the general equivalent of economic exchange”; and since it was not male, she assumes that it was female, an assumption that some of her more exotic colleagues might find deplorable, since it assumes the social orthodoxy of only two genders, very much a faux pas in the purview of Gender Studies, and excludes the possibility, for instance, that money was — and still is — a transvestite. At which point, I think it only right that you should go on your way, muttering darkly, and find something more worthy of your attention.

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[1] Diane Cady, “The Gender of Money”, Genders, 44, 2006.

Baka-Gaijin

The Reverend Michael Wishart, vicar of St Mary’s in Bishops Lydeard, has provoked the ire of Somerset Racial Equality Council after writing in the parish newsletter that:

The mornings have a decidedly autumnal feel to them, there’s a little nip in the air.

Which is what they said when they hanged the Japanese criminal! [1]

It comes to something when we have institutions that preside on the assumption that some races are so wretched that they need to be protected from the feeble jokes of country vicars. Yappari baka-gaijin.

[1] Quoted by Richard Savill, “Vicar says sorry for ‘nip in the air’ Japanese joke”, The Telegraph, 4th October 2006.

Fewtril #128

So often the simpleton sees the premises and draws the conclusion before the sophisticate has even begun to doubt his own senses.

Fewtril #127

One might well wonder how much of the disdain for parochialism stems from the drive for power without limits.

Off the Leash

“[A]rt has broken its elitist leash to inspire collective purpose”, reads the strap-line for Madeleine Bunting’s latest Jacobinical scribble [1], in the midst whereof she rejoices to tell us that,

[T]here has been a democratisation of culture. The appetite for the drama, shock, delight, intrigue and sheer bewilderment which the visual arts so abundantly provide is growing apace. Perhaps it reflects the increasingly well-educated country in which everyone is steeped in a sophisticated visual literacy — on television, on the internet and in advertising. [2]

It must be a funny kind of “sophisticated visual literacy” that leaves one shocked and bewildered, and the suggestion that Britain is becoming an “increasingly well-educated country” strikes me as nothing but the delusion of a purblind ideologue. Still, she is right to say that there has been a democratisation of culture, though I cannot find anything to celebrate in this fact; for the anti-elitist doctrines of accessibility and inclusiveness are the democratic acids by which culture is being corroded. As Richard Weaver pointed out:

The questioning of apartness, the suspicion of difference, the distrust of distinction, the jealousy about allowing privacy—these are all features of a modern mentality which, often without even knowing what it is doing, may put an end to what has always been the source of culture—a particular kind of development in response to particular values. Thus the plight of the individual is reenacted on a larger scale. Not only is the single human individual being pushed toward conformity, but the individual group or culture is met with the same demand to go along, to become more like the generality, and so give up character. [3]

This is the spirit of destruction to which Sylvain Maréchal gave expression during the French Revolution: “Let all the arts perish, if need be, as long as real equality remains!” [4]

.....

[1] Madeleine Bunting, “Culture, not politics, is now the heart of our public realm”, The Guardian, 3rd October 2003.

[2] Ibid.

[3] R.M. Weaver, “Reflections of Modernity”, Speeches of the Year, Pamphlet, (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1961), reprinted in In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963, ed. by T.J. Smith III (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), p.113.

[4] Sylvain Maréchal, Manifesto of the Equals (1796), tr. M. Abidor, from Buonarroti, La Conspiration pour l'Égalité, (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1957), published online at Marxists.org.

Idemeneo and the Poltroons

Kirsten Harms, the director of the Deutsche Oper, has decided to cancel performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo, lest Muslims be offended at a scene in which the King of Crete holds aloft the decapitated heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammad. Frau Harms proceeds on the fairly safe assumption that any offence that may be taken is unlikely to end in pagans running riot, Christians menacing directors, or Buddhists firing Kalashnikovs into the air in a ritual of practiced malevolence. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,

The decision is based on a general threat-analysis by the State Office of Criminal Investigation, not on threats against Charlottenburger Haus in general or the production in particular. [1]

In other words, before the Mohammedans have even had the time to whet their knives or sharpen their damnations, the poltroons of the West are grovelling for their pardon. No specific threat is required. The mere presence of the Mohammedans is felt to be enough. A similar thing happened last year, when Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great was expurgated of remarks and scenes derogatory of Mohammed. [2] Signs of things to come, perhaps. [3]

...

[1] “Schäuble wünscht sich ‘deutsche Muslime’”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27th September 2006. [“Der Entschluß basiert auf einer allgemeinen Gefährdungsanalyse des Landeskriminalamts, nicht auf Drohungen gegen das Charlottenburger Haus im allgemeinen oder die Inszenierung im besonderen.”]

[2] See Dalya Alberge, “Marlowe’s Koran-burning hero is censored to avoid Muslim anger”, The Times, 24th November 2005.

[3] Update: In the end, the unexpurgated production went ahead, along with “airport-style security checks”, while “plainclothes police mingled with the audience”, and “[d]og teams checked out the aisles and foil sheets were stuck to windows in order to make them shatterproof.” Roger Boyes, “A fright at the opera: champions of Mozart brave cultural divide”, The Times, 19th December 2006.

Durch die Brust Verbunden

“Nature has joined men at the heart, but the professors would like them joined at the head.”

.....

[“Die Natur hat die Menschen durch die Brust verbunden, und die Professores hätten sie gerne mit dem Kopf zusammen.”]

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G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), E236 from Sudelbuch E (1775-1776), p. 210.

Nock’s Golden Rule

Albert J. Nock’s Golden Rule of Sound Citizenship states:

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you. [1]

Whilst Mr Nock’s rule in its first part may be too simple as a gauge for the criminality of a State, it is nevertheless a rule to which one is well advised to pay heed, especially in its second part. It is presumably for its admonitory intent that Mr Nock called it the Golden Rule of Sound Citizenship, rather than the Law of State Power. The rule ought to be brought to mind whenever one hears public servants and ministers of the State utter anything like the following: “[W]e have to do more to make public servants feel like social entrepreneurs with the power to reshape lives.” [2]

.....

[1] Albert J. Nock, “The Criminal State”, in American Mercury, March 1939, reproduced online at The Memory Hole.
[2] Douglas Alexander and David Miliband, “Beware the 80s moment”, The Guardian, 25th September 2006.

Unconventional Silliness

“Mathematics and logic are collections of norms”, says David Bloor. “The ontological status of logic and mathematics is the same as that of an institution. They are social in nature.” [1] Now, if that is meant to convey the idea that the symbols and conventions of logic and mathematics, and the uses to which we put them, are ontologically subjective, being that they depend upon us for their existence, then it is a banal point. If, on the other hand, it is meant to convey something more radical, namely, that the ontological status of logic and mathematics is as subjective as the ontological status of a dress code or a bill of rights, then it is absurd; for then the claim is that propositions such as “twice two is four” or “A and not-A are contradictory” express nothing more independent of social convention than propositions such as “wrong hat, Gerald” or “citizens are permitted to bear arms on the first Tuesday of every month”. If such is true, and if furthermore there are many and diverse conventions by which we might fruitfully live our lives, then we might fruitfully think that twice two is five or nineteen or sixty thousand, without adverse consequences, being that there is no ontologically objective world by which we would be constrained in thinking one way or another. Everything is social, apparently. That, I presume, is Professor Bloor’s point. He is only a sociologist, after all.

[1] David Bloor, “Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics”, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol.4:2, p.189.

Fewtril #126

It is hardly to be hoped that one can speak with knowledge and insight without being accused of ignorance and bigotry.

Fewtril #125

Nowadays it often happens that, having exhorted someone to live up to some ideal, one is accused of doing him down or of trying to delude him.

Fewtril #124

One can do little against organised stupidity but hope that it will inadvertently organise its own demise.

Fewtril #123

One can be so successful at stopping a dangerous thing at its outset that thereafter people will say that one had exaggerated its threat.

Nothing New

The sun rises in the east. The Mohammedans seethe. Such is the way of things.