Nothing New

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

Fewtril #122

In the great scramble to be offended, it is essential that one might find any innocuous thing utterly vile and offensive, lest one be outdone by more inventive souls.

Fewtril #121

As many of us have come to understand, there are few creatures more easily dupable than a western intellectual desperate to demonstrate his tolerance for some foreign nonsense.

Fewtril #120

One can hardly expect people to feel shame for their sins and shortcomings when they are so readily proud to boast of them.

Fewtril #119

If a scholar changes his outlook in maturity, we may say he has shrugged off his youthful fantasies – or lost his marbles.

Humanity, Great and Otherwise

We often take vicarious pride in the greatness of humanity. I say “vicarious” because the greatness that we assume as belonging to our humanity is really the work of a few persons by whom we define that humanity. If we were to define humanity differently – that is, by the deeds of the typical member of the species Homo sapiens – we should think that humanity was a concept signifying little of this greatness. On the other hand, when we take for ourselves a view of humanity that is predicated on the greatness of a few, we are wont to express surprise at the ignobility of the many – and to wonder at the inhumanity of humanity! As Ralph Adams Cram said,

We do not behave like human beings because most of us do not fall within that classification as we have determined it for ourselves, since we do not measure up to standard. And thus:

With our invincible—and most honourable but perilous—optimism we gauge humanity by the best it has to show. From the bloody riot of cruelty, greed and lust we cull the bright figures of real men and women. [1]

If society is not to be brutish, then we require the preservation of individuals—whence humanity as a civilising and noble ideal might be drawn—over the preponderance of the mass. It is from such individuals that the many-headed might learn humanity, without which barbarism is their natural state. As Lin Yutang said,

Mankind as individuals may have reached austere heights, but mankind as social groups are still subject to primitive passions, occasional back-slidings and outcroppings of the savage instincts, and occasional waves of fanaticism and mass hysteria. [2]

Or, as Nietzsche put it,

Madness in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule. [3]

A defence of civilised values is quite difficult, however, against the intellectualised advance of mass-barbarism; for the latter also has in its favour a deep visceral appeal: something of the baseness of humanity as a whole, and thus something of which we all have in common.

‘The individual’ . . . this category cannot be taught; the use of it is an art, a moral task, and an art the exercise of which is always dangerous and at times might even require the life of the artist. For that which divinely understood is the highest of all things will be looked upon by a self-opinionated race and the confused crowd as lese majesté against the ‘race’, the ‘masses’, the ‘public’, etc. [4]

The danger is that in the process of mass-barbarisation, he will be made criminal who fulfils the duties necessary for the preservation of civilisation.

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(That said, I feel I need to get out more.)

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[1] R.A. Cram, “Why We Do Not Behave Like Human Beings”, in American Mercury, September 1932, reproduced online at Fulton’s Lair.

[2] Lin Yutang, “On Having a Mind”, The Importance of Living (London and Toronto: William Heinemann, 1938), p.65.

[3] F.W. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (München: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, n.d.), §156, p.71. [“Der Irrsinn ist bei einzelnen etwas Seltenes,—aber bei Gruppen, Parteien, Völkern, Zeiten die Regel.”]

[4] Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. A. Dru, (London: Fontana Books, 1958), p. 134.

Fewtril #118

Everything in our bureaucracy is stripped of jollity in order that it be efficient – and yet that is the last thing one could impute to it! Rarely has so great a discrepancy existed between a system and its ideal as that between bureaucracy and efficiency.

Another Holiday

I am on holiday again, hence light posting, if any.

Fewtril #117

The principle that controversial or objectionable views ought not to be suppressed, but rather shown to be wrong through reasoned debate, is usually defended only when a man is under the impression that those views have little reason in their favour. So much for magnanimity!

Fewtril #116

One may disclaim all sorts of things. One may even suggest that chromosomes are social constructs, no more biological than earrings or string-back gloves.

A Setback for Medical Science

To the ever-growing list of those labelled “fascist” — a list that runs the range from followers of Mussolini to postmen who whistle —, there is a new addition: those who demand that medical science be based on evidence:

[W]e assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena. [1]

One ought to note that our authors are even of the opinion that this “microfascism” is “more pernicious” than the “fascism of the masses, as was practiced by Hitler and Mussolini” [2]. Undaunted by the scale of this blight, and armed with the most fearsome quackery, courtesy of Messrs. Deleuze, Guattari and Derrida of Paris, our authors are therefore ready for a fight:

It is fair to assert that [we] critical intellectuals are at ‘war’ with those who have no regards other than for an evidence-based logic [in medical science]. The war metaphor speaks to the ‘critical and theoretical revolt’ that is needed to disrupt and resist the fascist order of scientific knowledge development. [3]

And to what end is this war enjoined?

We believe that health sciences ought to promote pluralism – the acceptance of multiple points of view. [4]

So, next time you visit the doctor, if he blows smoke in your ear and mumbles something about the stars, you’ll doubtless be happy to know that the fascism of evidence-based medicine has suffered a setback.

[1] D. Holmes, S.J. Murray, A. Perron, and G. Rail, “Deconstructing the Evidence-based Discourse in Health Sciences: Truth, Power and Fascism”, in International Journal of Evidence Based Healthcare, Vol.4:3, September 2006, p.181; original emphasis. (H/T to and link via J. C. Wood, “Poseurs of the World Unite”, ButterfliesandWheels.com, 25th August 2006, in which the reader can find a more detailed discussion of the cited work.)

[2] Ibid., p.180.

[3] Ibid., p.185; original emphasis.

[4] Ibid., p.181.

Unsound Old Egg

F.W. Nietzsche — the greatest modern source of inspiration for pseudo-philosophical loquacity and loony doctrines, most notably those inspired by his two greatest canards: “[F]acts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations” [1]; and: “The world is will to power—and nothing besides!” [2]. The first encourages the belief that any belief is as true as any other, being that there are no facts to which a belief may correspond; the second, that every human action — whether it ostensibly be in pursuit of truth, virtue, kindness, and so forth — is ultimately and solely for the sake of power.

.....If one accepts both, then one denies the truth of both on the acceptance of the first, the silliness whereof has not hindered the acceptance of both as partner-principles of post-modernist moronism; for the first is welcomed by those loquacious blighters who wish to “keep the conversation going” [3] without the hindrance of facts; and the second works as a sop to conscience for those who do indeed act always for the sole sake of power, being that “wrongs committed will not weigh quite so heavily on one’s conscience if one can say to oneself that everyone else, at heart, is just as bad.” [4]

.....Though much can be said in favour of old Friedrich, principally concerning his insights into modern life, I am inclined to agree with Jeeves when he told Wooster: “He is fundamentally unsound.” [5]

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[1] FW Nietzsche, The Will to Power, tr. W. Kaufmann & R.J. Hollingdale, (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p.267, §481.

[2] Ibid., p.550, §1067.

[3] Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 377.

[4] Leszek Kolakowski, “On Power”, Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal: Essays on Everyday Life, tr. A. Kolakowska (Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), p.5.

[5] P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves Takes Charge (London: Vintage, 1992), p.26.

Fewtril #115

It is partly a question of political philosophy and partly of good conduct whether one ought to permit oneself a feeling of superiority at the sight of an egalitarian who permits himself the same at the sight of those who have remained vulgarly at odds with those of his opinions which he takes to be enlightened.

Fewtril #114

How much of antirealist philosophy is a rebellion against authority? For reality may be thought of as being that which sits in judgement of our beliefs about it; such that, when the bug of rebellion is rife, even its authority may be rejected as a gross imposition.

A Tall Suggestion

Laban Tall has a suggestion:

Perhaps we should replace [The Last Night of the Proms] with a ‘festival of guilt and atonement’ where weeping Promendaders rend their garments and burn Union Flags, harangued from the rostrum by a succession of Guardian writers, while Salif Keita plays up a storm in the background. [1]

Insofar as this suggestion captures in sarcasm the spirit of the Guardianistas, it speaks to them in earnest of a sight they would doubtless prefer to see.

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[1] Comment by Laban Tall, in reply to Philippa Ibbotson, “Jingoists, take your last bow” The Guardian, 17th August 2006.

Lin Yutang on Smoking

“The world today is divided into smokers and non-smokers. It is true that the smokers cause some nuisance to the non-smokers, but the nuisance is physical, while the nuisance that the non-smokers cause the smokers is spiritual.” [1]

.....

“[H]ow could imagination soar on the clipped wings of a drab, non-smoking soul?” [2]

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[1] Lin Yutang, “On Smoke and Incense” The Importance of Living (London and Toronto: William Heinemann, 1938), p.236-7.

[2] Ibid., p. 242.