The Status of Poetry

The status of poetry has changed much over the ages, from its high rank of old as divinely-inspired speech and a repository of wisdom, to its broadly-viewed standing of today as a diversion of little consequence, seen often rightly as the dreary output of effete pretenders and vapid yappers, such that:

An announcement that a poetry-reading is about to take place will empty a room quicker than a water-cannon. [1]

This decline of status is owed mostly, I believe, to the pragmatic and popular age in which we live, which rates utility above all and which deems poetry an undisciplined art to which anyone may turn a free hand.

Parents who notice that their boy intends to be a poet should thrash him until he gives up his versifying — or until he becomes a real poet. [2]

As with all things, if poetry is to be worthwhile, a little discipline and drilling — Zucht und Züchtung — wouldn’t go amiss.
.....
[1] David Stove, “The Oracles and their Cessation: A Tribute to Julian Jaynes”, Cricket versus Republicanism (Sydney: Quakers Hill Press, 1995), p.127.

[2] G.C. Lichtenberg, quoted by Carl Brinitzer, A Reasonable Rebel: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, tr., B. Smith (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960), p.107.

Scattered Seeds

“When once incomprehensibility of speech was introduced by Fichte and the semblance of profundity was put in place of thought, the seeds were scattered which were to result in one corruption after another and finally in the complete demoralization of philosophy and thus of the whole of literature, which has arisen in our day.”

.....

Arthur Schopenhauer, “Fragments for the History of Philosophy”, Parerga and Paralipomena, vol.1, tr. by E.F.J. Payne, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.96.

No Tyranny so Hateful

“There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon. Anyone would be a hero who should quell the monster.”

George Santayana, The Life of Reason (New York: Prometheus Books, 1998), p.145.

Trouble with Honours

Apparently the chaps who made Salman Rushdie a Sir had not taken into consideration the touchiness of the Islamic world, an oversight that has been a spark to primed and paraffin-soaked sensibilities. Therewith speak up the sons of these shores who believe our duty is to dampen our words and deeds so as not to set off so volatile a material.

Sir: Did the genius who recommended Salman Rushdie for a knighthood not realise the offence it would cause to the Muslim world after the Satanic Verses debacle? And exactly why did he get a knighthood, as he has done nothing for Britain other than cost the taxpayer a fortune in police protection for writing a book the majority never read? [1]

Should the British Establishment seek the approval of Pakistan or Iran for the honours it bestows? I think not; for it is the business of that Establishment to decide without consideration of foreign threat or favour who is worthy of its honours; and what a business it is! A man may be deemed worthy to be a Knight of the Realm for all manner of services: from selling vast quantities of tat (Sir Alan Sugar) to singing and playing the piano like a music-hall queen (Sir Elton John). Tsk.

[1] P. Cresswell, Letter to The Independent, 20th June 2007.

Poor Fatsoes

At times the world must seem to the ideologue to be full of the most oblique and inexpedient occurrences requiring the most oblique and expedient explanations. Imagine, for a humble instance, being ideologically committed to the idea that there are in modern Britain millions of people living in poverty, and yet discovering that a third of such people are as fat as country-squires. One’s commitment demands that one still see them as poverty-stricken, whilst reality appears to mock the idea. Therewith the ideologue needs to cope, and must employ his explanations to that end, as the following passage demonstrates:

Working-class mothers may not be able to afford to feed their children properly: last month, canvassing on a rundown council estate in South Yorkshire during the local elections, I watched young working-class women collect their children from school and noticed that about a third were morbidly obese, a pattern that was already being replicated in their children. A local councillor told me that the women were too focused on the struggle to survive to worry about weight. [1]

It appears to me to be some kind of queer satire to suggest that the poor cannot afford to be thin, and a still queerer travesty of genuine hardship to suggest that such persons have grown fat because of too great a focus on the struggle to survive. [2] If we are to have a genuine satire of poverty in this land, then let us speak of the struggle to survive a day without chips or chocolate or manifold comforts, or the struggle to get off the sofa to turn the television off; for here poverty is very far from being a great problem, unless we are talking about poverty of spirit or surroundings, in which case we can truly say that poverty is widespread.

.....

[1] Joan Smith, “Children of a lesser nation”, The Independent, 10th June 2007.

[2] One can eat quite healthily for little money if one chooses to do so, certainly for less money than it costs to stuff one’s fat face with fast-food and processed filth; and if one is fat and determined not to be, one could even make a start — and please forgive this radical suggestion — by eating less, and thereby spending less.

A Broad Competition of Bads

“According to the elitist values of the monarchical system, the most stupid, immoral royal is more fit to be head of state than the wisest, most ethical commoner.” [1]

.....
The hereditary-monarchical system allows in theory that the most stupid, immoral royal can become head of state, whilst the wisest, most ethical commoner cannot. It says nothing of necessity about the hereditary head of state’s fitness for the office apart from the vital matter of his not having attained it in an open competition. Therewith it is instructive to note the very slim chance of a wise, ethical commoner — let alone the wisest, most ethical commoner — ever coming to power through the political competition which obtains under a democracy, since such competition by its very nature is stacked overwhelmingly against such men.

[E]ven if the accident of birth and his upbringing could not preclude that a prince might be bad and dangerous, at the same time the accident of a noble birth and a princely education also did not preclude that he might be a harmless dilettante or even a good and moral person. In contrast, the selection of government rulers by means of popular elections makes it practically impossible that any good or harmless person could ever rise to the top. Prime ministers and presidents are selected for their proven efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Thus, democracy virtually assures that only bad and dangerous men will ever rise to the top of government; indeed, as the result of free political competition and selection, those who rise will become increasingly bad and dangerous individuals, yet as temporary and interchangeable caretakers they will only rarely be assassinated. [2]

The belief that democracy will choose good governors, or be to the public good, may be bolstered by an egoistic and flattering delusion of one’s own role in that choice and by a further and vicariously flattering belief that one’s fellows with whom one identifies will likewise choose wise and ethical governors who would typically forgo immediate political advantage for long-term responsibility. For even if one really is discerning enough to know what a good governor looks like before he assumes the power he seeks, and given that such a man could be found more than once in a million, one’s share in the choice is tiny; and even if one appreciates the insignificance of one’s role, then, to maintain one’s belief in the public good of democracy, one has to believe that one’s fellows are en masse similarly perspicacious to discern a good governor from the charming connivers, manipulators, ne’er-do-wells, narcissists, psychopaths, and ruthless egoists who are typically drawn to power, and who competitively make irresponsible grants and promises to gain it.

[B]y opening the prospect of Power to all the ambitious talents, this arrangement makes the extension of Power much easier. Under the ancien régime, society’s moving spirits, who had, as they knew, no chance of a share of Power, were quick to denounce its smallest encroachment. Now, on the other hand, when everyone is potentially a minister, no one is concerned to cut down an office to which he aspires one day himself, or to put sand in a machine which he means to use himself when his turn comes. Hence it is that there is in the political circles of a modern society a wide complicity in the extension of Power. [3]

Under the nouveau régime, we have a political situation in which there is not only a competition of bads, but a broad competition of bads, wherewith corruption is extended, and wherein resistance to the extension of governmental power is lessened.
.....
[1] Peter Tatchell, “Goodbye to Royalty”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s Weblog), 1st June 2007. (H/T: J.K. Baltzersen, “Peter Tatchell and the Monarchy”, Wilson Revolution Unplugged (Weblog), 2nd June 2007.)

[2] Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “On Monarchy, Democracy, Public Opinion, and Deligitimation”, Democracy: The God that Failed (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001), pp.88-9; original emphasis. Cf., “From the point of view of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above shortsightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline.” Ibid., p.69.

[3] Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of its Growth, tr., J.F. Huntington (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1993), p.13. Cf., “From the twelfth to the eighteenth century governmental authority grew continuously. The process was understood by all who saw it happening; it stirred them to incessant protest and to violent reaction.

.....“In later times its growth has continued at an accelerated pace, and its extension has brought a corresponding extension of war. And now we no longer understand the process, we no longer protest, we no longer react. This quiescence of ours is a new thing, for which Power has to thank the smoke-screen in which it has wrapped itself. Formerly it could be seen, manifest in the person of the king, who did not disclaim being the master he was, and in whom human passions were discernable. Now, masked in anonymity, it claims to have no existence of its own, and to be but the impersonal and passionless instrument of the general will.” Ibid., pp.12-3.

Something Called Education

There is no clearer sign of a widespread blight in culture than that language, a vital organ of intellectual and cultural life, is degraded. That it should be purposely degraded, furthermore, by those whom one might expect to be its guardians, is a sign of a yet greater disease. An illustration:

English Leadership Quarterly ran an article urging teachers to encourage intentional writing errors as “the only way to end [the English language’s] oppression of linguistic minorities and learning writers.” The pro-error article, written by two professors at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, actually won an award from the quarterly, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. So you can now win awards for telling the young to write badly. [1]

It is too much to hope that the principal vectors of this disease (or the professors of progressive education, as they prefer to be called) are capable of shame. On the contrary, as one blighter unashamedly tells us, all criticism that does not come from his part of the swamp, as it were, is misplaced:

The professional literature and the media are blitzed with publications that are critical of educational ideology, research, and practice. Many authors of these publications are concerned about basic skills in literacy which they perceive to be inadequately taught in schools. . . .
. . . Their expertise, however, is not fined-tuned [sic] in the literacy field. Specifically, they have not been trained in advanced graduate work concerning the research, theory, and practice of helping children become literate. [2]

Thus: only the author and his fellow ideologues, “fine-tuned” by years of graduate research and practice in “educational ideology”, can tell whether they have failed to teach children to read and write properly; and if it appears to you that they have failed spectacularly, then you must be mistaken.

.....

[1] John Leo, “The Office of Assertion: Some Thoughts on Writing Well”, City Journal, 21st May 2007.

[2] Joseph Sanacore, “Needed: Critics of Literacy Education with a More Inclusive Perspective”, International Journal of Progressive Education, Vol.3:1, February 2007.

Fewtril #202

The sight of people competing to be victims seems to be odd and against the order of things until one considers that they are in fact competing to be victors.

Fewtril #201

The defenders of a dying creed often hasten its death by the manner in which they choose to defend it—by a solicitous desire not to offend its enemies, which stirs in those enemies neither pity nor respect, but contempt and a gleeful and ruthless resolve to see it off. More desperate still is when the defenders broaden the scope of their creed until it is hardly distinguishable from those that surround it. Thus, it dies not from murder but from abject suicide in obeisance to its enemies.

A Prescription

“Be more stupid and you will feel better” — such was Professor Immermann’s prescription for the ailments of his most brilliant patient, Friedrich Nietzsche.
.....
Quoted by Curtis Cate, Friedrich Nietzsche (Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2005), p.184 (from Briefwechsel, II/4., p.358, (ed. W. de Gruyter), Erwin Rohde to Friedrich Nietzsche, 23rd December 1873.).

Fewtril #200

One becomes so accustomed to the evasiveness and dishonesty of politicians that one immediately thinks something is amiss when one of them gives a straight answer, or admits without hedge or prevarication that he simply does not know something. It might even strike one as gauche and crass that he could step into the public arena without all the skills and tricks of his craft. Since much of his purpose lies in deception, he looks incompetent when he is not being typically deceitful.

Fewtril #199

No explanation can be found for why a fundament of the world exists; for by definition it is something which has no worldly reason for its being: it just is. If there is such a fundament, then everything based thereupon has a point beyond which there is no more reason — and thus, no more explanation — for its being. If there is no such fundament, then everything is infinite in its reason for being, and thus there will never be found a fundamental reason or explanation for its being. How would we know when we had found a fundament—say, a basic phenomenon, a basic physical law, or somesuch? A non-fundament may surpass our understanding and so defy all further explanation, whereupon it may appear falsely to us as a fundament. On the other hand, we may hit upon a fundament, but not recognise it as such, and thus all further “explanation” of its reason for being will be false; for if an enquiring mind always asks why, and is never satisfied with the non-explanation of “it just is”, then a fundament of the world is the point at which an enquiring mind would be unsatisfied with the truth.

Bhutan

“They are quite anxious. They have enjoyed the prosperity, the happiness, under the kings. This is an irreversible process our king has initiated, we just can’t go back.”

Electoral candidate Lekey Dorji on the Bhutanese people’s reluctance to be governed by a democracy, quoted by Steve Herman, “Bhutan Continues Dry Run Towards Democracy”, 22nd May 2007, VOAnews.com, via Theodore Harvey, Royalty and Monarchy.

Fewtril #198

We can hardly imagine what fools we look to posterity, and in what present and prepossessing absurdities we engage, until we catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror of history.

Fewtril #197

The stupid never make clever mistakes; such are the preserve of clever men, who complicate matters by also making stupid ones.

Fewtril #196

When one speaks of social decline or decadence, one is referring to the prevalence of people who are corrupt or decadent; and thus, it is not unlikely that the further a society declines, the fewer people there are who can speak of its decline, since those who are corrupt or decadent do not see it that way.