Fewtril #110

A great test of character is whether one can — for the sake of truth or beauty or virtue — forbear originality.

Dogged Aetiology

“The root causes of youth crime and antisocial behaviour need to be tackled first, before we focus on the symptoms and attribute blame,” [1] says Ms Pamela Pollock in a letter to The Guardian. One might wonder whether a lady of her kind would do nothing to remove a dog from her leg until she had first determined the reasons for its randiness.

[1] Pamela Pollock, Letter to The Guardian, 28th July 2006.

Fewtril #109

Nothing is as important as it seems at first — or: complacency wins in the end.

Fewtril #108

One will sometimes hear a feminist opine that she is just one more outraged woman struggling to be heard, but this strikes me as humbug; for, in my experience, an outraged woman need not struggle to this end; it comes naturally.

Von Aufklärung

“We speak much of Enlightenment, and wish for more light. But, my God, what help is light if people either have no eyes or wilfully shut those they have?”

.....

[“Man spricht viel von Aufklärung, und wünscht mehr Licht. Mein Gott was hilft aber alles Licht, wenn die Leute entweder keine Augen haben, oder die, die sie haben, vorsätzlich verschließen?”]

.....

G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), L.469 from Sudelbuch L (1796-1799), p. 505.

Fewtril #107

The scepticism of intellectuals means that they are wont to look suspiciously upon any idea that does not first flatter them into believing that they are central to its realisation.

A Little Fluff

It is surprisingly rare to find atheism taken in earnest, even amongst self-professed atheists. More common is to find an airy sub-species of atheism that is keen to stress its own consolations. Consider the words of Mary Warnock, for instance, who in response to the question, “What happens to us when we die?”, replies: “We disappear from existence. But that doesn’t mean that we disappear from other people’s minds and hearts” [1].

.....If we are mortal, then we shall indeed disappear from existence, and the memories of us in other people’s minds will not constitute our continued existence, for such is a feeble consolation based on an equivocation; moreover, even the memories of us will one day fade to nothing.

.....For whom does Baroness Warnock believe these conclusions are too stark that they require the soft edges of fluff? For herself or for her readers?

.....

[1] Mary Warnock, quoted in “Baroness Warnock: You Ask The Questions”, The Independent, 24th July 2006.

A Higher Order of Despotism

Many used to fear the seemingly ineluctable march of Prussianism, that “despotism of officials”, as Lord Salisbury called it, by which society is stifled under the weight of bureaucratic regulation in service to the state. As it turns out, the state of Prussia itself, along with the Second Reich, did not achieve nearly so great a degree of state-intrusion as some of its after-comers have managed, including our own democracy.

.....Few now fear such intrusion; for most are inured to it, or even demand it, as though it were an essential part of life, without which they would lose their orientation. With the rise of democracy, where “identification of the State with society has been redoubled” [1], the threshold has been raised, and we may now fear something of a higher order, namely, totalitarianism. “We should make it impossible to separate society from state” [2], says Neal Lawson of The Guardian, doing a passable impression of Benito Mussolini of Il Popolo d’Italia. “Through its radical democratisation,” says Mr Lawson, “and the involvement of citizens and public sector workers as co-creators of its services, we can have a popular state”— or, as Karl Kraus put it, “the permission to be everyone’s slave”. [3]

.....

[1] Murray N. Rothbard, “The Anatomy of the State”, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (Auburn: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000), p.55.

[2] Neal Lawson, “We need to popularise the role of the state for this age” The Guardian, 20th July 2006. (Tim Worstall also takes note of Mr Lawson's article.)

[3] Karl Kraus, Half Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths, ed & tr. H. Zohn (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990), p.112.

Uppity Queen

“[T]he anti-imperialist Boudica” [1] — only a cretin of the calibre of Johann Hari would dare make the Queen of the Iceni sound like a Leninist.

[1] Johann Hari, “London - a Vast Cemetery” The Evening Standard, 19th July 2006.

Fewtril #106

It seems no western intellectual comes to espouse cultural relativism except through an ulterior ideological motive, as is revealed in the exercise of his moral rationale: custom is reason enough, except when that custom is ours, in which case it is no reason at all.

Returned

I am back from my jollies, but am feeling quite lazy, and my mind is concentrated on the thought of cold gin-and-tonics. I shall write whenever I am enamoured or bothered to do so.

On Holiday

I’m off on holiday for a week or so. I shall return full of the joys and so forth.

Fewtril #105

It is good to spend an hour or two wondering how many of the faults and follies of the world have arisen and flourished because of the desperate attempt by fools to eschew what they believe fools believe.

Fewtril #104

When radicalism enters men’s heads, the fear of change is not so much lost as overcome by the fear of seeming insufficiently zealous for it.

With a Serious Face

“There are people who believe everything is sensible that is done with a serious face.”

[“Es gibt Leute, die glauben, alles wäre vernünftig, was man mit einem ernsthaften Gesicht tut.”]

G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), E.283 from Sudelbuch E (1775-1776), p. 218.

The Wrongness of Whiteness

According to race-theorists Robin DiAngelo and David Allen, “a discourse on whiteness attempts to show not just how whiteness oppresses people of color, but how whiteness elevates white people” [1]. Happily for our academic twosome, the intellectual burden of this discourse is made easy by their assuming in the term “whiteness” that which they have yet to demonstrate. For, in defining the term, they tell us that “[w]hiteness refers to dimensions of racism that serve to elevate white people over people of color” [2]. Putting this logical indelicacy aside, one may concentrate on the foregone conclusion to which they have come: that the very presence of whiteness oppresses those not in possession of it, and thus if such persons are to find justice, those in possession of whiteness must be divested of it.

.....Quite how this divestment will be achieved is not specified, but, since our two academicians are educationalists and social-constructivists, for whom reality is but the spell of society, one may suppose they envisage at the very least some kind of universal, deconstructionist “education”, a glimpse into the nature of which you may gain by reading the research article from which I have drawn the foregoing quotes.

.....Suffice it to say, that in such an “education”, there is no escape for the individual; for, as the authors tell us, “[p]ositioning oneself as an individual is a classic signal of whiteness” [3], and thus an evil to be eradicated.

.....One could well begin to suspect that for every kind of madness or corruption or stupidity, there is an academic course of study.

[1] Robin J. DiAngelo and David Allen, “‘My Feelings Are Not About You’: Personal Experience as a Move of Whiteness”, InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, Vol.2:2, June 2006, p.4.
[2] Ibid., p.3.
[3] Ibid., p.10.