Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Fewtril no.254
Fewtril no.252
Fewtril no.251
Uses of the Word “Real”
Old Abilities
In speaking of the part played by anatomically modern humans in the demise of the Neanderthals, Adam Rutherford is careful not to place modern thinking in a causal role: “to invoke genocide suggests some sort of intentionality and strategic planning for which we simply have no evidence.” He is not so careful in this sentence: “It’s well established that [Neanderthals] ritually buried their dead, made tools and explored from the westernmost tip of Europe, well into Asia.” [1] The geographical spread of Neanderthals is no evidence for exploration, which is for the purpose of discovery. Nevertheless I should think they were capable of curiosity, and of many other attitudes besides, perhaps even of pedantry.
[1] Adam Rutherford, “Long-lost Cousins”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 12th August 2008.
Monday, 4 August 2008
Strange Mirage
“There’s . . . that strange phenomenon where every generation thinks that the next one’s standards are fatally declining.” [1]
He who talks of this strange phenomenon needn’t have given much thought to its existence; he requires only short-sightedness and pig-ignorance in the service of progressive whiggery to believe in it, helped by the democratic habit of reaffirming an opinion heard a thousand times. He cannot be accused of having surveyed the prevailing opinions of men in all generations throughout history; even if he could, he would not be bothered to extend his thoughts so far, and besides, he would be bothered thereby to find his claim falsified. Rather he observes in recent generations the opinion expressed that standards are declining, and he perhaps knows of a few examples of such an opinion uttered in the ancient world, wherefrom he comes to the conclusion that it has been the prevailing opinion in every generation of man, and that he should therefore pay it no heed.
.....It simply does not occur to him that standards of many kinds are declining; and that these standards have been declining for a long time, and that the process has been noticed. If he is himself an enthusiastic part of the decline, he will not see his own presence and that of his fellows as a decline, but rather as a progress; after all, it is his generation and its low standards with which he identifies that are triumphing. Effectively he banishes from thought any consideration of the possibility of decline, and vows not to sit in judgement upon the next generation, which he will allow to decline further.
.....Yet, in dreaming up his strange phenomenon, he was almost right: in periods of change there have been men of historical consciousness who have had the capacity to express regret for what has already passed, which is in part a recognition of the transitoriness of the world, and who have feared also the loss of whatever they themselves have inherited, urgently seeking to secure its preservation in the next generation. Modernism is the predominance of another kind of man, who is more like a machine-part in a process: a man who says good riddance to all past things, and who tolerates every kind of degradation for the future too. He is the most shallow and complacent creature ever to walk on two legs, and I include pigeons.
.....All those German pessimists were right: the dullness of progressive optimism would one day be such that so few people would be able to recognize their own degraded state, but rather would even congratulate themselves for it.
[1] “Labourpartysuicide”, commenting on Mark Lawson, “That golden age? It never happened, except in the minds of pessimists”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 1st August 2008.
Friday, 1 August 2008
Deep-Rooted Weeds
A Rotter
Fewtril no.250
Monday, 28 July 2008
On the Loose
If we are to tackle obesity properly, the whole of society must become involved in the solution. [1]
If I ever find out where it lives, I shall have it bound and gagged and transported to the remotest corner of the earth, perhaps even have it buried under twelve feet of concrete — a fittingly absurd end to so dangerous and misconceived a creature.
[1] Tagline of Neville Rigby’s “Weight of the Nation”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 27th July 2008.
Friday, 25 July 2008
For Parochialism
“Present folly seeks the unity of nations and not the creation of a single man from the entire species, so be it; but in acquiring general capabilities, will not a whole set of private sentiments perish? Farewell the tenderness of the fireside; farewell delight in family; among all the beings white, yellow or black, claimed as your compatriots, you will be unable to throw yourself on a brother’s breast. Was there nothing in that life of other days, nothing in that narrow space you gazed at from your ivy-framed window? Beyond your horizon you suspected unknown countries of which the bird of passage, the only voyager you saw in autumn, barely told you. It was happiness to think that the hills enclosing you would not vanish before your eyes; that they would surround your loves and friendships; that the sighing of night around your sanctuary would be the only sound to accompany your sleep; that the solitude of your soul would never be troubled, that you would always find your thoughts there, waiting for you, to take up again their familiar conversation. You knew where you were born; you knew where your grave would be; penetrating the forests you could say:
‘Fair trees that once saw my beginning,
Soon you will witness my end.’
Man has no need to travel to become greater; he bears immensity within. The accents escaping from your breast are immeasurable and find an echo in thousands of other souls: those who lack the melody within themselves will demand it of the universe in vain. Sit on the trunk of a fallen tree in the depths of the woods; if in profound forgetfulness of yourself, in immobility, in silence, you fail to find the infinite, it is useless to wander the shores of the Ganges seeking it.”
François de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre-tombe, tr. A.S. Kline, Bk.XLII:14:1, published online by A.S. Kline.
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Auflösung einer Gesellschaft
[“Ich erlebe bei unseren Eliten leider nur allzu oft, daß sie schlicht kein Interesse mehr an der Bewahrung Deutschlands zu haben scheinen. Dagegen gewinnt man den Eindruck, daß es ihnen gar nicht schnell genug gehen kann, unser Volk in einer multikulturellen und multiethnischen Gesellschaft und unseren Staat in überstaatlichen Strukturen aufzulösen.”]
Ferdinand Fürst von Bismarck, interview with Moritz Schwarz, “Deutschland driftet nach Links”, Junge Freiheit, 2nd July 2008.
A Plea
Fewtril no.249
Fewtril no.248