Fewtril #90

Sometimes I think it would be more beneficial to society if our modern-day self-loathers publicly scourged themselves in the medieval fashion with spiked whips and chains. We could make a day of it. Instead, however, we have the daily and more pitiable sight of such persons committing their neuroses to print, in novels, poetry, sociological theses and newspaper-columns. At least the medieval fashion is less wasteful—and easier on the eye.

Fewtril #89

Throughout the ages, the common man has been satisfied with his ignorance, but in our age he is angered when it is not recognised as knowledge.

Fewtril #88

An untruthful relationship based on reciprocal faintheartedness may exist between the people and their political representatives; for when the people dare not hear the truth, their political representatives dare not tell it.

Far from the Fray

“[T]he ghoulish stereotypes that spread fear through Daily Mail-land: benefit scroungers, feral youths, problem families.”

(John Harris, “Bottom of the class”, The Guardian, 11th April 2006.)

One must suspect that this man — like so many of his fellow Guardianistas — has never walked through Stockport on a Wednesday afternoon.

Fewtril #87

It is often a great mistake to assume that a shallow and callous man is not fully committed to the moral principles he espouses. On the contrary, because he does not adhere to these principles through a genuine sympathy for his fellow man, but rather wears them with pride as so many badges and testimonies to his principled character, he may extend them without let or flexibility to their furthest limits, such that he may extend a moral principle against the oppression of a minority so far as to decry the incarceration of murderers.

The Fairest Method of Extermination

There has been a curious development in ethics recently, namely, that of making non-discrimination the sine non qua of one’s moral faculties. Consider the following remark, for instance:

I thought he was arrogant and racist but then I learned that he’s just upset at us Homo sapiens and he’s equally predjudiced [sic] to all classes of people. [1]

Or, in other words, while a prejudice or an injustice against some people is a sin, it is not a sin when applied equally to all—as if a sin against a part could be absolved by a sin against the whole! The author bases his moral judgement solely on the pious ideal of non-discrimination, and thus places his moral judgement in this regard below that of a vegetable, whose inability to discriminate would make it positively saintly. Such an ideal bespeaks a pious madness that benumbs the moral faculties, or indicates a lack thereof.

The remark was made by a student in his evaluation of Professor Eric R. Pianka, professor of Zoology at the University of Texas, who has allegedly expressed the hope that ninety percent of the human population of the world will be killed by airborne Ebola. [2] As one of his admirers puts it,

We need to decline in population. A virus is probably the fairest method of extermination (though still not completely fair, I admit) because it’s nondiscriminatory as to whom it targets. [3]

Ah, well, as long as it’s nondiscriminatory . . .

When this ideal of non-discrimination has become the sole or determining basis for a “moral” outlook, piously maintained as a sop to conscience, could it not be that the scope for callousness might be expanded rather than bounded? After all, by this way of thinking, if misfortune exists at all, it is only “fair” that it include all.

It does seem that there is something in the air — a whiff of misanthropic glee, by which our intellectuals might excite their doom-lust. Just yesterday The Independent published a letter, in which the author concerned himself about humanity and its impact on global warming, wishing for “a major pandemic” and wondering whether “bird flu could be the salvation of the human race”. [4]

As Monsieur Pascal noted, “Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness”, [5] and we see a stark illustration of that here.

[1] Excerpts from Student Evaluations, 1998-2004, Biology 357: Evolutionary Ecology, University of Texas at Austin. (H/T: Krauze, “The blogger’s guide to Dr. Pianka” Telic Thoughts (Weblog), 4th April 2006.)

[2] See, Forrest M. Mims III, “Meeting Doctor Doom”, The Citizen Scientist, 31st March 2006. (H/T: Dan Collins, in the comments at The Daily Ablution, 4th April 2006.) This report of Professor Pianka’s views is corroborated by two student evaluations. (1) “I don’t root for ebola, but maybe a ban on having more than one child. I agree . . . too many people ruining this planet.” (2) “Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness.” Excerpts from Student Evaluations, 1998-2004, Biology 357: Evolutionary Ecology, University of Texas at Austin. (H/T: Krauze, “The blogger’s guide to Dr. Pianka” Telic Thoughts (Weblog), 4th April 2006.) Update: Partial transcript of Dr Pianka’s speech (HT: MikeGene “A Promise”, Telic Thoughts, 8th April 2006, which does not fully support Mims' account. Thanks to Krauze for pointing this out.)

[3] Brenna, Serenity (Weblog), 9th March 2006. (Original emphasis.)

[4] Bob Harris, Letter to The Independent, 5th April 2006.

[5] Blaise Pascal, Pensées (New York: Dover Publications, 2003), p.136

Fewtril #86

It may well describe an advantage over our forebears that we moderns can include under the name of culture a canvas daubed with the excrement of an attention-seeking cretin, though what that advantage might be, other than a greater flexiblity with names, I cannot rightly say.

Fewtril #85

Our politicians are like thief-beguilers with the simple knack of misdirection. “Keep your eyes on the future”, they say, and whilst we await the rabbit out of the hat, they’re binding our hands and rifling through our pockets.

Fewtril #84

It is all very well to cite freedom of action as a crucial cause of crime, though one might very well cite the bath-water as a crucial cause of one’s decision to wee in it.

Conspiracy Piffle

It takes only the suspicion that someone somewhere is making a fool of him for the conspiracy theorist to make an utter fool of himself, and this is no different in the case of the suspicions surrounding the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11th September 2001.

One suspicion currently doing the rounds is that the buildings which collapsed at the World Trade Center were in fact demolished by agents of the US government. Adduced in favour of this view are the putative words of former MI5 agent David Shayler, quoted on many conspiracy-theory websites:

I’ve seen the results of terroristic explosions and so on and no terrorist explosion has ever brought down a building. When the IRA put something like a thousands [sic] tonnes of home-made explosives in front of the Baltic Exchange building in Bishopsgate and let off the bomb, all the glass came out, the building shook a bit but there was no question about the building falling down and it doesn’t obey the laws of physics for buildings to fall down in the way the World Trade Center came down. [1]

Now, I do not know whether Mr Shayler really did say these words, or whether they have been attributed to him by some imaginative crackpot, but whoever said them is not well versed in the black art of humbug. For if one is to make a good job at persuading others that one is an authority on a matter—and thus that one’s words adduced in favour of a certain view are to be taken seriously—it helps if one gets at least the basic facts right and that one makes claims that are not ludicrous. This has not happened in this case, however.

The Baltic Exchange building was severely damaged on the 10th April 1992 by a bomb in St Mary Axe, not in Bishopsgate. The Bishopsgate bombing took place over a year later on the 24th April 1993. If the confusing of these two bombings were not enough to cause doubt about the author’s authority on such matters, we have also to contend with the claim that the IRA made a bomb weighing about a thousand tonnes. Did this claim not strike the author as ludicrous? Who would be so credulous as to believe that the IRA possessed a super-lorry that could transport such a weight? (The bomb that exploded in Bishopsgate was in fact made from about a ton of fertiliser.) But then perhaps the author’s understanding of weights and measures is as shaky as his grasp of physics.

[1] E.g., see http://www.propagandamatrix.com/

Fewtril #83

So often the phrase let’s explore the issues surrounding this is a fair-sounding substitute for let’s miss the point.

Fewtril #82

Towards those things about which we couldn’t care one way or another, we may take the opportunity to display a most magnanimous tolerance, the ease and convenience of which marks it out as belonging to the highest order of modern virtues.

Fewtril #81

The writer of arcane and impenetrable prose may flatter the pretensions of his readers by letting it be known that he who discerns therein a trove of profound insights is an enlightened man amongst the few; and he does this in the knowledge that those so flattered to make the effort are loath to discern anything else.

Lichtenberg

“It is possible to stroke someone’s cheek in such a way that a third party feels as though he has had his face slapped.”

[“Es ist möglich jemanden die Backen so zu streicheln, daß es einem Dritten läßt, als hätte man ihm eine Ohrfeige gegeben.”]

G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), L.500 from Sudelbuch L (1796-1799), p. 506.

An Old Charge

The shrewder of our politicians know that they can get away with almost anything, because they know only too well what they make it a point to deny—indeed what it is their democratic obligation to deny: that on the whole the electorate has little conception of good governance.

Against the old charge that democracy – if not already a tyranny – would become a tyranny because the broad mass of people would be either unable to understand or unwilling to bother themselves with the hard choices and ideas necessary for the preservation of good governance, the democrats held out the prospect of an educated electorate by whose enlightenment this charge would be impugned; and so the dream of universal education was born—in part as a rebuttal.

We do not hear this charge much nowadays, for, as befits a triumphant ideology, democracy is simply assumed to be right; and yet the dream of universal education is still as unrealistic as ever; for the education that the broad electorate receives is largely a parody of such — an arrogation of rectitude and learnedness alongside an incuriosity and broad ignorance of such matters that might bring them some genuine cultivation; and thus the meaning of education — where everyone is “educated” — has fallen to a level below that of its former days, and is at such a level that it does not answer the old charge against democracy. To say such a thing in a democracy, however, where one ought to keep the faith despite all the signs, is a breach of etiquette bordering on the criminal.

Fewtril #80

On the question of external realities, whether a man will profess to find more persuasion in an argument for universal scepticism than in a falling rock depends to some extent upon the cogency of the argument, to some extent upon how much of his reputation he has already invested in support of that argument, but mostly upon where he stands in relation to the rock, whereto in proximity he will profess more strongly with the feet than the mouth.