Fewtril #168

Every movement must declare itself to be good if it is to become powerful, and every movement that becomes powerful attracts the bad who must declare themselves to be on the side of good. Towards the understanding of what men truly believe, one ought always to have in mind the maxim of the economists: Look at what they do, not at what they say; for one may fairly suppose that bad and ruthless men are not men of their words.

Fewtril #167

Many would find it easier to live a life of abstinence than of moderation; happily for such persons, there is an even easier extreme: a life of indulgence.

Fewtril #166

Many cynical observations of human behaviour may be true — but a widespread acknowledgment of their truth might render human behaviour so base that it would spur even a cynic into a desperate search for signs of nobility.

Fewtril #165

Those who feel the vulnerability of their pretended tastes and convictions are acutely sensitive not only to criticism but also to a lack of approval; wherewith they demand towards those pretences not only sensitivity and approval, but also respect, as though it were their right to secure an imposture by the complicity of those whom it is intended to deceive.

Fewtril #164

A wonderful thing is that the practical side of man always somehow emerges, even if it might mean a logical inconsistency with a set of beliefs to which he is supposedly bound. In this regard, one might consider the old Arabian saying: “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.”

Parachronistic Piffle

I’ve always fancied that if one is to draw conclusions from history, one ought at least to make the effort to get the very basics right. What a shame it is, then, that our bold journalists — who are ever eager to turn their pens to almost anything, even should they know almost nothing — are rarely bothered by such concerns! A specimen:

The Scots have always been fiercely independent. Ask the Romans. While they rolled their franchise out across Asia and middle Europe, they never quite managed to tame the Scots. Not even the Romans, with their military brilliance, smart, coordinated uniforms and innovative tortoise fighting strategy, could extend their sphere of influence much beyond Selkirk. And if you’ve been to Selkirk, you’d understand why. So fearful were they of the Scots that they had a chap called Hadrian build a wall to keep us out. I ask the Geordies and Mancs to review their historical ‘hardness’ in the light of such compelling evidence — the peoples of Newcastle and Manchester were conquered and to this day remain wall-free. [1]

It staggers me that someone could be paid to write such piffle. If the author had made the slightest effort to understand that neither Scotland, nor England, nor Manchester, nor Newcastle existed at the time of the Roman invasion of Britain, and that the Scots and the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain in significant numbers only after the Romans had left, then perhaps he would have been aided in his journalistic efforts. No doubt we all have our blind-spots of ignorance, and we all make mistakes, but is it too much to ask that a journalist make at least some effort to know something about which he writes, instead of boldly spreading his ignorance? And is it too much to ask that the editors of our “quality” newspapers be discriminating enough to exclude that which would not have found its way into a school-magazine a hundred years ago? I suspect it is.

[1] Hardeep Singh Kohli, “Forget the boost for Scotland – it’s the English who would really benefit from a disbanded Union”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 8th February 2007.

A Complex Question

The question of climate-change is a very complex one for the layman. For it is not merely the question of whether global or regional climates vary over time, irrespective of man’s activities, on various time-scales ranging from decades to millions of years. It is not even the complex question of whether there could also be any significant anthropogenic factors. Rather it is a question made still more complex by its political element — such that it might even include the question of whether one ought to become a member of the Church of Al Gore, Latter-Day Saviour. This complexity is to be regretted.

.....Back in the days when climate-change was more the object of scientific interest than the subject of politically-driven hysteria, I wrote my undergraduate-dissertation on human cognitive evolution, whereof I cited climate-change as an indirect cause. Nowadays, however, I cannot hear talk of climate-change without being reminded that the neocortex — despite its enlargement — is still at the mercy of more primitive structures.

Fewtril #163

For the same reason that it was once said that mankind could not hear the music of the spheres — because it was a constant to which he had grown accustomed —, so too we might say that mankind barely notices the monotonous hum of madness that accompanies his everyday affairs.

Fewtril #162

If it is a kind of progress to learn from experience, then it is a kind of regress to damn as outdated the social manifestations of that experience.

Fewtril #161

The only way that some people can feel useful is if they can persuade themselves that almost everyone else is useless.

To be Left Alone

I take it — as Schopenhauer took it — that one has to work out one’s own redemption in life. To free oneself from politics would be a start; but to do so is difficult in the age of the mass; for “from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason” [1]; and insofar as the wish to be left alone has itself become a political idea, it bears witness to the degree to which one cannot be left alone. “My experience of the world”, said T.H. Huxley, “is that things left to themselves don’t get right” [2]. Thereto I must add that to mess things up thoroughly, one must be unable to leave them alone — and furthermore, that to help people until they can no longer help themselves is not a kind of redemption, but a kind of enthrallment.
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[1] J.E.E Dalberg-Acton (Lord Acton), “The History of Freedom in Antiquity” (1877), reprinted in Selected Writings of Lord Acton, Vol.1: Essays in the History of Liberty, ed. J.R. Fears (Indianapolis: Liberty Classsics, 1985), p.5.
[2] T.H. Huxley, Aphorisms and Reflections From the Works of T. H. Huxley, selected by H.A. Huxley (London: MacMillan & Co, 1907), §.CXXV, published online at The Huxley File.

Fewtril #160

How sickly and typically modern it would be if, upon all of us having conformed to the same view, we were to congratulate ourselves on the remarkable degree of tolerance amongst us.

Fewtril #159

As a prescription against Emerson’s admirably idealistic notion that all human beings should be regarded as divine, I suggest you take a brisk stroll through an English city on a Friday night. If it doesn’t cure you, it will at least exercise your imagination.

Fewtril #158

It is in turns both amusing and distressing to observe members of an audience concede with an almost unanimous quiescence as some politician tells them for the umpteenth time that they – as blessed habitants in this particular time and of this particular soil – are the most diverse and dynamic creatures ever to have been ennobled under the title Homo sapiens.

Fewtril #157

Of the misfortunes that he feels must come, Man prefers a certain regularity to an uncertain frequency and magnitude. Nothing shows this more clearly than that since the earliest times he has preferred to be taxed rather than robbed.

Free Will and Ridicule

A man may believe that no one should be ridiculed for those things over which he has no control – the colour of his skin, the formation of his body, and so on – and also believe that there is no such thing as free will. If he is consistent, then he should believe that no one should be ridiculed for anything – not even for the colour of his opinions or the formation of his views, be they ever so abhorrent or stupid. If such consistency were widespread, I cannot say for certain what life would be like. Ridicule is “a sort of duel without bloodshed,” thought Chamfort, “and, like the real thing, it makes men more polite and more circumspect.” [1]

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[1] Nicolas-Sébastien Roch de Chamfort, Reflections on Life, Love and Society, tr. & ed. by Douglas Parmée (London: Short Books, 2003), §158, p.82. (“That some catatonics are people who have ceased to believe in their own free will is an interesting hypothesis,” says Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p.157.)