Thursday, August 06, 2015

Across a meadow

Charles Cotton's Fishing House


Yesterday we enjoyed a short walk through Biggin Dale, Wolfscote Dale and Beresford Dale where ravens soar and croak and grey wagtails flit around the waterfalls, where Beresford Hall used to be and Charles Cotton’s Fishing House still stands on the banks of the River Dove. 

The picture was taken near to the Hartington path, across a low-lying meadow full of mead wort or meadowsweet as the fishing house is on private land. For over three hundred years Cotton’s little place has watched the river amble past its door.

Charles Cotton (28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687) was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work of Michel de Montaigne from the French, for his contributions to The Compleat Angler, and for the influential The Compleat Gamester[2] attributed to him.

Fishing hereabouts is still private as it presumably has been since Cotton’s day. So that’s a few centuries isn’t it? Yet the river and its beauties are probably all the better for a spot of privacy. Imagine how peaceful it must have been even in the seventeenth century far from all the strife and turmoil.

Yet for all his obvious love of peace and the attractions of nature, there are colourful aspects to Charles Cotton’s story. He wrote an epitaph for "M.H.", a prostitute he seems to have held in high regard, considering their relative positions so to speak. In a local antiques shop we saw a plain seventeenth century chest with the initials MH carved into the lid. Coincidence presumably, but I didn’t ask.

Epitaph upon M.H

In this cold Monument lies one,
That I know who has lain upon,
The happier He : her Sight would charm,
And Touch have kept King David warm.
Lovely, as is the dawning East ,
Was this Marble's frozen Guest ;
As soft, and Snowy, as that Down
Adorns the Blow-balls frizled Crown;
As straight and slender as the Crest,
Or Antlet of the one beam'd Beast;
Pleasant as th' odorous Month of May :
As glorious, and as light as Day .

Whom I admir'd, as soon as knew,
And now her Memory pursue
With such a superstitious Lust,
That I could fumble with her Dust.

She all Perfections had, and more,
Tempting, as if design'd a Whore ,
For so she was; and since there are
Such, I could wish them all as fair.

Pretty she was, and young, and wise,
And in her Calling so precise,
That Industry had made her prove
The sucking School-Mistress of Love :
And Death , ambitious to become
Her Pupil , left his Ghastly home,
And, seeing how we us'd her here,
The raw-bon'd Rascal ravisht her.

Who, pretty Soul, resign'd her Breath,
To seek new Letchery in Death.

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Monday, August 03, 2015

A thing

source

Sir Frederick Pollock was an interesting cove. From Wikipedia

Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet PC was an English jurist best known for his History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, written with F.W. Maitland, and his lifelong correspondence with US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was a Cambridge Apostle...

...Together with his younger brother Walter Herries Pollock, he participated in the first English revival of historical fencing, originated by Alfred Hutton and his colleagues Egerton Castle, Captain Carl Thimm, Colonel Cyril Matthey, Captain Percy Rolt, Captain Ernest George Stenson Cooke, Captain Frank Herbert Whittow.


A man from a vanished era. 

Sir Frederick also found time to write book on the seventeenth century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. As one would expect, the book is thorough, erudite and much of it based on Pollock's personal perusal of original Latin texts rather than translations which he tended to distrust. The result is a formidable yet quite readable book with a number of interesting observations such as:-

A thing is a group of phenomena which persists. Herein is its individuality, its title to be counted apart from the surrounding medium.
Sir Frederick Pollock – Spinoza, His Life and Philosophy (1880)

This is Pollock’s modern take on an idea of Spinoza’s. Strict materialism doesn’t work because as Pollock says, a thing must have persistence to be counted as a thing. It must be a group of phenomena which persists. Otherwise it is no thing – nothing. If we take the material universe and try to purify it of all that is not material, if we try to shake out all the abstractions, then we run into difficulties.

The most ephemeral fundamental particle must have persistence to count as real, even if it only exists for a zillionth of a second. Otherwise it is merely theoretical and not quite real. In this sense, persistence seems to be as fundamental as physical reality without itself being physically real.

One could see it as one aspect of the problem of being both an observer and part of what is observed. We have to use abstractions, but we are part of the universe so the abstractions are too. We are in the universe and the universe is in us and we cannot stand to one side because there is nowhere to stand.

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Friday, July 31, 2015

Passaford Lane


Here’s an environment. 

Passaford Lane leading from the Devon hamlet of Passaford to Mutters Moor named after Abraham Mutter, one of  smuggler Jack Rattenbury's accomplices. 

Passaford Lane is one of those sunken lanes or hollow ways often encountered in Devon. We have a few in Derbyshire too. It is a steady climb up to Mutters Moor. Rough and stony underfoot and quite gloomy in places with all the overhanging trees, but pleasant enough in summer. Jack and his band of smugglers may well have used it on their way to Otterton.

A rabbit hops into the path, spots us immediately and hops back. So I think of rabbits and Peter Rabbit one of Granddaughter’s favourite stories which I must know by heart.

The lane is strewn with flints of all shapes and sizes so now I'm reminded of Neolithic times. Flint tools and those ancient, mysterious folk who scratched a living in these hills, using those same flints to make their axes, arrowheads and scrapers. I wonder if I’ll find one?

It's sweaty work climbing, the sheltered ground still damp, the air humid. I think of water and if it is better to stop for a quick drink or wait until we reach the moor where a welcome breeze probably awaits. 

A wren flits through the bushes lining the lane. Was it a wren? Might have been a wren but gone now. May have been a robin after sandwich crumbs. Human = sandwich crumbs - is that how it goes in the robin’s brain?

The lane is an environment. It stimulates thoughts, sweat, muscles, digestion, memories, impressions, ideas, emotions and the imagination. Environments do that.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Walden Three


Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
B F Skinner - Walden Two (1948)

B F Skinner’s novel Walden Two provides a fictional setting for what he saw as a potentially achievable utopia although he was not so sanguine as to think it ever would be achieved. The book sold millions of copies and certain features of the modern world suggests many influential people are probably familiar with its ideas.

From Wikipedia
Walden Two embraces the proposition that the behavior of organisms, including humans, is determined by environmental variables and that systematically altering environmental variables can generate a sociocultural system that very closely approximates utopia.

Skinner’s basic message is not complex – a non-competitive self-governing and pragmatic society could condition its inhabitants to be contented, possibly even happy. Keeping things that way in Walden Two is the job of the Board of Planners, members of which serve for ten years and appoint their successors. These are the behavioural engineers who oversee managers who manage the various departments. Apart from these roles they are merely ordinary citizens with no special status

Although such a utopia is unlikely to be achievable globally or even long term on a smaller scale, it is possible that Walden Two has spawned a number of ideas in the minds and general outlook of elite global bureaucrats. Let us call these ideas Walden Three.

Popular assent is always interesting because it is a litmus test for power and how power expects us to behave. If a significant number of people passively assent to certain aspects of daily life then there are usually others who benefit, almost always those who planned and engineered matters in the first place. 

To take one possible example as an aspect of Walden Three. Our fake UK democracy based on passive assent makes sense if we accept that it came about by systematically altering environmental variables. An essentially two-party adversarial system is a vitally important environmental variable and there is no doubt that it is manipulated as in the 2011 AV referendum. In Skinner's terms it was manipulated by behavioural engineers. They may not think of themselves as such, but that's what they are.

In which case there is nothing to be gained from plugging radical alternatives because those who plug them cannot do it by systematically altering environmental variables. Our Walden Three democracy ticks the behavioural boxes it is supposed to tick and doesn’t tick those it is designed to leave alone such as meaningful reform. China has something similar if less subtle.

Those who weave assent into our lives are Skinner’s planners and managers, the behavioural engineers who do not necessarily subscribe to what they promote. They may or they may not, but elite Walden Three planners and managers are likely to know what they are.

What we have at the moment is far less formal and structured than Walden Two, and far more complex with a vast array of caveats and exceptions, but the basic controlling structure seems to be fairly consistently applied. It may be fallible, complex and layered but in real life that was inevitable.

What else do we see in Walden Three – what is visible now apart from the failure of UK democracy? We see an educated middle class being replaced by a more adaptable citizen class, a general lowering of expectations towards a more sustainable global citizens' lifestyle. We see the traditional role of parents replaced by official controls and responsibilities. Ultimately, as in Walden Two, parents may have few childcare responsibilities for their own children, it depends on how the Walden Three planners see it.

We see the official view of a safe and healthy lifestyles slowly becoming compulsory. We see even minor forms of dissent controlled by endless disapproval and ostracism. We see well-financed mass narratives obviously engineered to fit exiting narratives and obviously designed to further a prime social objective of global equality for all citizens. Which is why the middle class of the developed world has to go because their lifestyle is not thought to be globally sustainable.

Given the importance of our consumer society and the trillions it spends each year and given the global reach of the modern world, Walden Three seems inevitable. It may even be achievable and it isn’t easy to see how things could be otherwise if we are to have a complex but comparatively stable global society. We do not need a global society of course, but that’s not on the agenda.

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Cameron's Freudian slip?

"I'll always have to take my parliament with me..."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33584548


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Tuesday, July 21, 2015

In Place Of Strife

JD responds to the previous post on Labour's abandonment of principle:

Wrong question. You should be asking simply "Why vote?"

Changing from Tweedledum to Tweedledee is not going to solve anything. For the past 30 years (at least) all political viewpoints have merged into a perpetuation of and the 'management' of a culture which is moribund.

Something which is explained here with great clarity by Alan Watts-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMDu3JdQ8Ow

I have been reading again "A Guide for the Perplexed" by Fritz Schumacher and towards the end of the book he writes- "the modern experiment to live without religion has failed"

...here is the passage from the book

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yy_qPNMDIFYC&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=the+modern+experiment+to+live+without+religion+has+failed&source=bl&ots=xP5iLtU3Wy&sig=ualsz-G4JTa8yx_DJshTeWWoLZ8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAWoVChMI7dXQkOfpxgIVQhEsCh0EsAL7#v=onepage&q=the%20modern%20experiment%20to%20live%20without%20religion%20has%20failed&f=false

Here is a sample of Schumacher's thinking-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDtF9-owes4

...this is not part of the comment but is just a few random thoughts which may or may not lead to something or other :)

I wasn't going to comment because the answer to your question would lead into a very long and complicated discussion about the nature of our 'democratic society' and the reasons for how and why we arrive at this situation.

I could point you in the direction of the 'Perennial Philosophy' as Schumacher points in his book to several authors on that subject but I am not entirely convinced by the arguments put forward by the likes of Schuon or Lings; they have a clear understanding of history but offer no direction for the future. I am inclined to go along with John Michell's view that the coming collapse is inevitable after which the whole cycle will start all over again.

I am not gloomy, by the way. Far from it, life is wonderful!

Rather than quoting John Michell to understand why I think life is wonderful, I would suggest buying this book instead-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Confessions-Radical-Traditionalist-John-Michell/dp/0971204446

Reform of the voting system? Again, Jimmy Goldsmith had an answer to that suggesting that MPs should be chosen at random from the Electoral Roll in the same way that juries are chosen. It cannot be any worse than the present set up and might even be better. In my experience the average voter is considerably more intelligent than the average MP (Cameron recently demonstrated that fact on the Letterman Show) and more so than the average Whitehall Mandarin and nowhere near as devious.

Addendum (22 July):

Three recent stories which illustrate the statement by Alan Watts that our modern society is dedicated, albeit inadvertently, to its own destruction.

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/1496885

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/21/uk-airlines-drones-lufthansa-idUKKCN0PV1EE20150721

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3169724/Hackers-control-Jeep-Cherokee-crash-ditch-gaining-access-entertainment-amid-concerns-cars-vulnerable.html

One should also take note of this; 'Naqoyqatsi' is the third of a trilogy of films by Godfrey Reggio (with music by Philip Glass)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1RcfvEsiA

Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word which translates as "life as war" In the film's closing credits, Naqoyqatsi is also translated as "civilized violence" and "a life of killing each other."

It cannot be denied that in its near 240 year history the USA has been more or less permanently at war with somebody or other (even with itself at one point).

A few years ago the Arabs and specifically the Iranians called the USA 'the great satan' Were they right?

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Sunday, July 19, 2015

Why vote Labour?

Was it Attlee who, when asked why on Earth middle class people should vote Labour, replied "Because it's the right thing to do"?

Clearly that's not Liz Kendall's take. The Mail on Sunday reports she "accused Ed Miliband of spending too much time focusing on the poor and not enough on the middle class" (bullet-pointed in the print edition as "Ed worried about the poor too much."

Perhaps the MoS is playing a subtle game, portraying Kendall as a sellout queen to drive Labour supporters into Jeremy Corbyn's camp, so that he becomes leader and stays in Opposition ad infinitum, like Michael Foot.

But once you have compromised your principles for the sake of power, you're sunk anyway.

I've never voted Labour (so far), at first because all I heard from their side was chippiness and vengeful destructive urges, later because I thought that Tony Blair was dangerously mad, and latterly because for reasons I can't understand Labour remained signed up to the other two major parties' commitment to the EU project.

But what is "the right thing to do" now?

When I watched Mhairi Black's maiden speech she seemed to have the right idea. Her story of a jobless man being hammered by bureaucratic bullies at the labour exchange was not merely touching but a touchstone for what both Lab and Con have done to the working class over the last 40 years.

For we're encouraged to look down on "the undeserving
poor" without considering what brought them to this degraded state. Billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith saw it clearly, and warned us about it back in 1994 at the time of the GATT talks. Since then, similar transnational initiatives have worked to smash down all obstacles to the lightning-fast movement of capital around the globe, so playing off the workers of the world against each other.

UK Labour's national organisation played its part. A touchstone example is what happened in Longbridge, Birmingham in 2000: a realistic plan was passed up in favour of a false dream, just to keep the optimistic party mood going into the General Election, all because Blair had to "make assurance double sure". Now I teach children who suffer from family breakdown, alcohol and weed, crime and domestic abuse. No, actually they suffer from Labour's then lack of principle.

Does the middle class think itself immune? The white-collar jobs are now just as vulnerable to information technology, the World Wide Web and cheap foreign competition. Lawyers and accountants are beginning to find this out, and so (see the daily telly ads) are estate agents.

And here we are, still blaming the snowflakes for winter, because the newspapers tell us to.

Perhaps, when Labour finally gains a systematic understanding of the causes of our difficulties and adopts key points of UKIP's manifesto, I'll break my duck and vote for them. Perhaps also, when they agree to back a reform of the voting system as they failed to do in 2011, my vote and yours will count.

Here's to the signposts, and down with the windmills.


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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The ghost of Billy Bunter



As a youngster I read all of the Billy Bunter books, yet decades later I wonder why. Why did they appeal to a lad brought up on a Derby council estate who knew nothing of private boarding schools or the etiquette of wealth?

Perhaps the social gulf was easily bridged by ignoring it, but Bunter was not even a character one could admire or with whom one could identify. According to those inky swots at Wikipedia -

Bunter's defining characteristic is his greediness and dramatically overweight appearance. His character is, in many respects, a highly obnoxious anti-hero. As well as his gluttony, he is also obtuse, lazy, racist, inquisitive, deceitful, slothful, self-important and conceited.

His compatriots at Grefriars School weren’t much better either as far as I recall. The beastly place was crawling with snobs and fearsome beaks such as Mr Quelch. So what was the attraction all those years ago?

Looking back I think the books were straightforward stories with a beginning, middle and end. They were available from the local library and easily spotted in the shelves because of their yellow dust jackets. Bunter was good enough rather than appealing, with the added benefit of being a series so a chap knew what to expect.

Perhaps Billy Bunter brings out the mechanical aspect of reading. Beneath the literary flim flam books are usually something to do, entertainments as Graham Greene called his own output. Something to pass the time on a rainy day or when there isn’t anything else. Holiday reading without being on holiday.

There is a mechanical aspect to all forms of entertainment. It doesn’t have to be uplifting or even entertaining - available and easily digested will do. Eventually we learn to discriminate, to select according to our mood and passing inclinations, to learn, to muse, to delve, laugh, think, agree or disagree, to be angry, indignant or resigned.

Or we don’t.

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Thursday, July 09, 2015

A big noise in tennis



One of many unattractive trends in professional sport is the rise of grunting in tennis, although it isn't new and with some of the women players it is more of a loud shriek than a grunt. From the BBC we have.

Is grunting louder than a lawn mower a natural part of tennis or is it unsporting behaviour?

Should it be accepted as being part of the game or should rules be introduced to outlaw players from exhaling so loudly when they hit the ball that noise levels exceed 100 decibels?

Grunting became topical again at Wimbledon when Belarusian Victoria Azarenka was forced to defend her on-court noises following a quarter-final loss to Serena Williams - and another 'shrieker', Maria Sharapova, is in semi-final action against Williams on Thursday.

I watched part of the Azarenka / Williams match and from my perspective Azarenka's incessant shrieking made the game unwatchable, but I'm not a fan and fans are wired up differently.

Although grunts and shrieks are supposed to help players hit the ball harder, gamesmanship seems at least as likely. These people are professionals and sporting ideals are not high on the to-do list.

When each player has a retinue of agents, fitness specialists, coaches, diet advisers, psychologists and managers, top tennis has become a business, not a game for individuals. Winning is the name of the game and any legitimate advantage is bound to be used if it actually works.

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Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Blast from the past



Yes it's Hippolyte Taine again, but he blasts the political classes with such gentlemanly venom that I can't resist another quote.

Most of them are mere politicians, charlatans, and intriguers, third-class lawyers and doctors, literary failures, semi-educated stump-speakers, bar-room, club, or clique orators, and vulgar climbers. 

Left behind in private careers, in which one is closely watched and accepted for what he is worth, they launch out on a public career because, in this business, popular suffrage at once ignorant, indifferent, is a badly informed, prejudiced and passionate judge and prefers a moralist of easy conscience, instead of demanding unsullied integrity and proven competency. 

Nothing more is demanded from candidates but witty speech-making, assertiveness and showing off in public, gross flattery, a display of enthusiasm and promises to place the power about to be conferred on them by the people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and prejudices.

Hippolyte Taine - The Modern Regime (1893)

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Sunday, July 05, 2015

Hard choices

You are a teenage girl. Do you:

(a) Stay at home, do your schoolwork, take orders from your mother and plan for a life full of work like hers, looking out from your kitchen window to see more brick-built houses just like yours, or...

(b) Run away from home and have sex with a hero?

Children have so many more options these days, no wonder they're confused.

Mind you, in the Sixties it was rock and pop stars; but they're keeping their heads down now with all the ongoing police investigations. They don't have AK-47s.

And then while all the child-grooming panic is going on, you've got school inspectors quizzing kids about sex in a way that would have got them banged up fifty years ago, a clueless Education Minister who thinks the reason ISIL are bad is that they're against homosexuality (which would also have got you banged up fifty years ago), and Ofsted promoting "British values" including "tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs" while simutaneously targeting Muslim schools in Operation Trojan Horse.

To top it off we have a government that wants to bomb some kind of Syrians - a couple of years ago it was Assad and co., now it's the other side, so with all this chopping and changing you may as well carpet-bomb the lot, they'll have been the enemy at some point. What price Cameron for Middle East Peace Envoy?

Junowat, never mind the children, I'm confused.


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Saturday, July 04, 2015

Should David Cameron be reported to Theresa May?

Teachers are now supposed to be looking out for evidence of "extremism". Extremism is being defined as opposition to "British Values". The list of British Values includes "democracy".

David Cameron wishes to reduce the number of Members of Parliament from 650 to 600. This undermines democracy - your individual vote would drop from 1 in 71,300 electors to 1 in 77,250.

What number do we call to report this extremist?


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Thursday, July 02, 2015

Yes Man


After a sweltering day yesterday an evening slump seemed to be in order. We decided to watch Yes Man, a 2008 film starring Jim Carrey as Carl and Zooey Deschanel as Allison. As usual it was a slapstick romance built around Carrey’s particular talents.

Bank loan officer Carl Allen (Jim Carrey) has become withdrawn since his divorce from ex-wife Stephanie. Routinely ignoring his friends Pete (Bradley Cooper) and Rooney (Danny Masterson), he has an increasingly negative outlook on his life...

...an old colleague suggests that he goes to a motivational "Yes!" seminar with him, which encourages its attendants to seize the opportunity to say "Yes!". Carl decides to attend the seminar and meets inspirational guru Terrence Bundley (Terence Stamp), who publicly browbeats him into making a covenant with himself. Carl reluctantly promises to stop being a "No Man" and vows to answer "Yes!" to every opportunity, request, or invitation that presents itself thereafter.


The film leaves one, or at least it left me with a reminder of how narrow film characters can be, especially modern female characters such as Allison, Carrey’s love interest. In our politically correct culture there is little latitude for female leads apart from a kind of feisty priggishness, predictable, uninteresting and uninspiring. Allison wasn't even priggish - just feisty and pretty as if that was enough.

After the seminar, saying yes to a homeless man's request only leaves Carl stranded in Elysian Park. Disillusioned, he hikes to a gas station where he meets Allison (Zooey Deschanel), an unorthodox young woman. She gives him a ride back to his car on her scooter and kisses him before leaving. After this positive experience, Carl feels more optimistic about saying yes

We watch few films so I've no notion of Ms Deschanel's acting talents partly because I'd never heard of her before and partly because acting talent wasn't required. As far as I could see the part could have been played quite satisfactorily by any one of thousands of actresses able to handle feisty and pretty at the same time and without sniggering. 

Admittedly Allison had some bolt-on eccentricities such as riding a scooter very fast, but for me they felt artificial. Instead she could have ridden around in a horse-drawn chaise or an antique steam car, although I suppose that could have made her more genuinely eccentric and undermined the Star.

Without any coherent moral dimension to a character, apart from the endless negatives of political correctness, fictional characters can be strangely uninteresting however many eccentricities they are given. There is nothing substantial enough to hold a persona together, nothing to suggest why one feature is more in tune with the character than another. Feisty isn’t enough.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Freezing warmth on the way

The Met Office is predicting again:

A return to low solar activity not seen for centuries could increase the chances of cold winters in Europe and eastern parts of the United States but wouldn't halt global warming, according to new research.

The Met Office-led study, published in Nature Communications, is among the first to look at the regional climate impacts of a possible 'grand solar minimum'...

...On a regional level, the study found a bigger cooling effect for northern Europe, the UK and eastern parts of North America - particularly during winter. For example, for northern Europe the cooling is in the range -0.4 to -0.8 °C.

Winters will be warmer overall, but this suggests a relative increase in the risk of colder winters for these areas during a possible grand solar minimum.


So global warming isn't necessarily global and isn't necessarily warming. If this ludicrous and shameful mess of guesswork and bet-hedging is science then I'm a banana.

Here's the Met Office's Dr Vicky Pope in 2007  - "by 2014 we're predicting that we'll be point three degrees warmer than 2004".





It's no great surprise but here's how the "prediction" turned out.




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Saturday, June 20, 2015

Things change

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Timepieces
I presume I shall be better understood if I day that the month was October and the day October thirteenth; the exact hour I cannot tell you — it’s easier to get philosophers to agree than timepieces — but it was between noon and one o’clock.
Seneca - Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii (around 55AD)

Tanning
A terrific day when the doctor, with face tanned like a chauffeur’s, returned to Clerkenwell and resumed his work, calm, prim, impassible as ever!
Arnold Bennett - Elsie and the Child (1924)

Childhood nutrition
He listens; ay, his lips moving perhaps, and a smile on his old face like a child asking for a slice of bread and sugar.
Walter de la Mare - Music (1955)

As a child I remember bread and butter with sugar sprinkled on it. Slightly crunchy and not particularly pleasant

Distance
“How long does it take to go to Westcombe across this way?” she asked of him while they were bringing up the carriage.
“About two hours,” he said.
“Two hours — so long as that, does it? How far is it away?”
“Eight miles.”
“Two hours to drive eight miles — who ever heard of such a thing!” “I thought you meant walking”
“Ah, yes; but one hardly means walking without expressly stating it.”
“Well, it seems just the other way to me — that walking is meant unless you say driving.”
Thomas Hardy - An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (1935)

Monday mornings
Monday morning is a strenuous but somehow a glad morning in respectable households of regular habits. The clean linen is brought out in lovely white piles from the linen cupboard and distributed over the house, and the dirty linen is collected and shamefully hurried away and catalogued in a place without honour and thrown pell-mell in baskets and despatched, and then everybody has a sweet sense of relief.
Arnold Bennett - Elsie and the Child (1924)

Transport
I have just returned from a ride in my litter; and I am as weary as if I had walked the distance, instead of being seated. Even to be carried for any length of time is hard work, perhaps all the more so because it is an unnatural exercise; for Nature gave us legs with which to do our own walking, and eyes with which to do our own seeing. Our luxuries have condemned us to weakness; we have ceased to be able to do that which we have long declined to do.
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

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Thursday, June 18, 2015

Lying – it’s what we do

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What Spinoza, for example, calls ‘blessedness’ is simply the state of non-attachment; his ‘human bondage,’ the condition of one who identifies himself with his desires, emotions and thought-processes, or with their objects in the external world.
Aldous Huxley – Ends and Means

We all know that lying in all its many forms is a common aspect of human life. From exaggeration to evasion, from the sins of omission to barefaced lying we all assent to at least a few dubious narratives because we must and because this is how societies work.

To survive daily life we cannot be wholly non-attached in Huxley’s sense, so we must endure human bondage in Spinoza’s. We must identify ourselves with our desires, emotions and thought-processes, or with their objects in the external world. Hence the lies, hence the bondage.

Not so long ago, visitors to Grandson’s school told the children that God made the harvest. Was that a lie? In my book it was at best misleading. However those visitors saw their words as advocating a genuine truth, and would no doubt be mightily offended at my implication.

Worthy advocacy of noble causes is a particular problem when so few causes are really noble and so much advocacy is unworthy. It all goes to create an unhealthy culture of false virtue, armour-plated against any criticism, securely located on a mountain of furtive dishonesty.

Yet how does anyone advocate anything without so much as a hint of bias in all its many tangled forms? It is possible perhaps, but neither easy nor common. Advocacy is inherently biased because it is incompatible with non-attachment.

A few decades ago, Secretary of State for War John Profumo resigned from the government and from Parliament when he had to admit he had lied to Parliament over the Christine Keeler affair. Only a few years later, Prime Minister Edward Heath lied to voters about the nature of the Common Market as the EU then was.

“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.”

Prime Minister Edward Heath, television broadcast on Britain’s entry into the Common Market, January 1973. 

Perhaps Heath saw this lie as worthy advocacy but he must have known he was lying and unlike Profumo he never resigned. Far from it – he appears to have seen his lying as an act of statesmanship.

The perennial problem is that we must advocate to live, to form stable societies and economies, to hold political debates, invest in the future, build civilisations and even cultures. So who doesn’t lie through advocacy, whether worthy or not?

As usual, the ethical folk are those who remain non-attached, people without causes, the non-campaigners who prefer not to campaign and the non-advocates who prefer to advocate as little as possible because advocacy is so intimately linked with lying.

The question of whether or not anything can be achieved without advocacy is yet another problem. Possibly not.

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Sunday, June 14, 2015

HSBC - the shakeup continues...


"Right, that's the building transferred under a PFI arrangement to a trust registered in the Dutch Antilles, the headteacher will in future be paid via a personal services company in Jersey with "salary" deemed as staged loans, and petty cash stored overnight in a Swiss call account..."


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Saturday, June 13, 2015

Their despotic instincts


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In his book The Modern Regime, Hippolyte Taine spends a considerable time analysing the regime imposed by Napoleon Bonaparte and how he engineered it, his deep understanding of human weakness and how it could be used. Even two centuries later the parallels with our own time are striking.

At his first nod the French prostrate themselves obediently, and there remain, as in a natural position; the lower class, the peasants and the soldiers, with animal fidelity, and the upper class, the dignitaries and the functionaries, with Byzantine servility.

The republicans, on their side, make no resistance; on the contrary, among these he has found his best governing instruments—senators, deputies, state councillors, judges, and administrators of every grade. He has at once detected behind their sermonizing on liberty and equality, their despotic instincts, their craving for command, for leadership, even as subordinates; and, in addition to this, with most of them, the appetite for money or for sensual pleasures.
Hippolyte Taine - The Modern Regime (1893)

In particular, the last sentence stands out. He has at once detected behind their sermonizing on liberty and equality, their despotic instincts... How accurate it all is, and how very modern. Nothing really changes does it?

When our low-information voters make their mark in the forthcoming EU referendum and opt for staying in, then maybe we should keep an eye on Corsica. Metaphorically speaking of course.

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Thursday, June 11, 2015

As the culture ages

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A problematic quote for anyone old enough to observe and also inclined to deplore cultural change.

As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.
Philip K. Dick - The Defenders (1953)

There must always be a suspicion that deplored cultural changes are merely changes to which younger generations have adapted and will continue to adapt because this is the way of the world. So any perceived decline is merely adjustment as the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives.

Certainly modern times are markedly different from the past, technology, prosperity, communications and general know-how have made it so. In which case there could be genuine problems we can’t see because we haven’t encountered them before. Not that we are much good at learning from the past, but maybe we can’t anyway because the past is too far removed from the present.

Almost two thousand years ago Seneca attributed perceived cultural decline to the vices of mankind and not of the times.

You are mistaken, my dear Lucilius, if you think that luxury, neglect of good manners, and other vices of which each man accuses the age in which he lives, are especially characteristic of our own epoch; no, they are the vices of mankind and not of the times. No era in history has ever been free from blame.
Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

It is as if our faults are always with us but from age to age they vary in their significance, in their contribution to the present. Things could be better but that is always the case and always will be until we evolve into something else, something better. Or possibly worse?

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Tuesday, June 09, 2015

The great sock issue



Every now and then it is worth rising above geopolitical tensions and turmoil to consider more fundamental issues such as socks. 

As many chaps and no doubt lady chaps do, I buy identical socks in bulk to avoid the odd sock debacle when they emerge from the wash. If all socks are the same then odd socks don't matter as I'm sure you have observed.

The only real downside to this winning strategy lies in the purchase, specifically the problem of multi-packs bonded together with what seems like dozens of those little plastic tags. Somehow the end of every single tag buries itself into the sock so deeply and firmly that great dexterity is required to snip tag rather than sock. 

Not only that, but when snipped they fly around like toenail clippings, which I suppose is ironic in a way. I'm sure the above photo is merely an incomplete sample from my latest purchase. I'll find one or two more when I wear the socks and the rest will end up in the vacuum cleaner.

Ah well - back to the geopolitical tensions.

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Sunday, June 07, 2015

Centennial irony competition



This century is still young, but the American legal-political-business establishment going after FIFA for corruption has to be in the top 10 ironies of the last 15 and next 85 years.

Any other contenders?


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Saturday, June 06, 2015

Like I said (Greece and Russia)

Greece refuses to pay up - then flirts with Putin: PM begs Russia for support after attacking 'absurd' austerity conditions on his crippled nation

- Daily Mail, today
_________________________________________

You can see more than you can stop...

Those who set a fire cannot be certain of controlling its spread. Burning round the eastern Mediterranean, the flames could tickle other countries too, as Russia becomes involved in the new Great Game. The same tactics that have destabilised the Arab Street could be used against nations on the northern coast of the Middle Sea, which have been suffering as a result of the overbearing rule of the EU and the predations of international banking. Greece for example, with its high youth unemployment, history of internecine strife and 8,500 miles of coastline, might be a tempting target for subversion and infiltration.

You can lose power through overreaching. I used to have a postwar edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and one of its articles traced the roots of the Reformation to the attempt by mediaeval Popes to maintain and strengthen their control while Western countries settled down and their kings grew stronger. Is the US risking upsetting the balance of power by trying to secure the Levant?

Conversely, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed Russia to get a better grip on its affairs and its developing energy resources are giving it something to bargain with rather than invade. (She also has a
very promising agricultural position: 117 people per km2 of arable land, versus 179 for the US and - dangerous, this - 1,077 for the UK.) The potential economic power is seen in control of gas supplies to Northern Europe, but also perhaps in the events that led to the fall of Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis in 2008 - he was negotiating with Russia for their South Stream gas pipeline, a rival to the EU/US Nabucco line. There are even allegations of an assassination plot against Karamanlis and foreign threats against the Greek government.

It doesn't take much to drop a country into chaos. It's said that a satphone and $20,000 can get you an African armed revolutionary movement. A organized minority can overthrow and seize a nation. For example, in the Soviet Union of 1986 only 10% were in the
Communist Party, of which more than half were industrial workers and farmers; in pre-Purge 1933, maybe 2.5%; in 1918 just after the Revolution, a mere 200,000 members or one-fifth of one per cent.In Greece, the average electoral turnout for the Communist KKE has been over 6% since 2000, and back in 1958 it was 24%. The average of c. 470,00 votes (not that voting means much to Communists, and some of the most dangerous will stay in cover) represents around 5% of the population aged over 15. The KKE vote halved between May and June last year (from 536,072 to 277,122) and one has to wonder whether there may be some foreign support for some of the alternative parties; but Greeks are quite capable of quarrelling without the help of outsiders. The point is that the politics there are volatile, and there are lots of hormonal youngsters to recruit for one cause or another.

Not that Greece is the only southern European country ripe for trouble. Think of Italy and Spain; and the Balkans. A direct confrontation between major global players seems unlikely, at this stage; but goodness knows what is going on in the world of
Spy vs. Spy. And it's not only the US Sixth Fleet aiming to "keep the peace" in the Eastern Med: Russia is reported to be sending a missile cruiser and an anti-submarine ship.

Russia still has only
one port that is ice-free all year round, and that is on the Baltic and separated from the Mother Country by the land of three other nations. But she controls land joining the Caspian and Black Sea, and has ethnic Slavic connections with Bulgaria, Macedonia and even currently Turkified Slavs in Anatolia. Oh, for free naval passage through the Hellespont and a base in Alexandroupoli, or even Thessaloniki.

- 3 September 2013: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-war-for-mediterranean.html
________________________________________________

Poor, dumb President Putin! He simply can't see how he has wasted all that money developing Russian assets on the Black Sea.

Nor, to be frank, can I.

Watch for (a) destabilising tendencies in Greece and (b) a gradual rise in the commercial fortunes of Thessaloniki. And - who knows? - a revival of nostalgic sentiment among the descendants of
Pontic Greeks (many of whom now speak Russian) in northern Turkey, Georgia and the Ukraine.

- 17 March 2014: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/from-sochi-to-sevastopol.html
______________________________________

Greece has also had a history of struggle with Communism and the EU's crippling economic interference has recently re-raised tensions between (and support for) Left and Right. In this context it's worth noting that last May there was a Greek Communist Party rally in Thessaloniki. This is Greece's second largest city and a major hub for the eastern Mediterranean. Colour northeast Greece the same as Yugoslavia in the above map and the West's only ally on the shores of the Black Sea would be Turkey - which also (currently) controls the Bosphorus, the Black Sea's door into the Med.

- 29 March 2014: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/battle-for-black-sea.html


- Out of geography comes history.


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Thursday, June 04, 2015

The net is already woven

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The most contagious feelings, the clearest thoughts, of others are clear or contagious only because I can readily make them my own.
George Santayana - Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923)

A typically spooky observation by old George. Clarity is not merely useful for comprehension but contagious too. Clear ideas are often clear because they are in some sense familiar. They slip so easily past our dozing right of veto. When it comes to language, clarity and familiarity are intimately linked, often to our ultimate disadvantage.

Quine likened our ideas to a network which cannot easily be modified without risk of unravelling the whole shebang. So we make sure it stays intact because we must. One idea links to the next in chains of what we think of as reasoning even if the first link in the chain was forgotten long ago or never even noticed as it stitched itself into the network of our predilections and allegiances.

Which links to the forthcoming UK EU referendum because the EU is familiar and life outside isn't. In one form or another we’ve been members for decades so the net is already woven.

Was that always the plan? I don’t know, but any passably competent bureaucrat could easily have foreseen the political advantages.

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Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Munchausen (1781) - part 11

Bear and Wolf

I have always had the strangest experiences while hunting. One time in Poland, when I had used up all my shot, a bear came at me with its jaws wide open. I quickly felt around in my pocket and found nothing but a couple of large flints. I hurled one of them with all my strength into the beast’s gaping mouth and it spun round in pain. The unusual shape of the second flint gave me an idea, and I flung it at the other opening that the bear now presented to me. My shot was successful: the tapered stone flew in, penetrated further, and - wonder of wonders! – collided with the first flint in the stomach, sparking off a fire so that the bear burned alive most miserably.
Another time – it’s as though the wildest beasts always knew when I had no firearm - a fearsome wolf leapt at me. When he was right up by me, I automatically shoved my hand into his gaping jaws, pushed it deeper down for safety’s sake, and so there I was with my arm in his body. In this position I was quite secure, but how was I going to get away? I had no desire to stand there like that forever, and if I pulled out my arm the enraged animal would go for me. I acted decisively: I took a firm hold of some part of his innards, pulled the wolf inside out like a glove, and let him drop.
_______________________________________
Original:
Auf der Jagd hab’ ich immer die mehrsten sonderbaren Geschichten gehabt. Einst in Polen kam, wie ich mich schon ganz verschossen hatt, ein Bär mit aufgesperrtem Rachen auf mich zu; ich greife [99] schnell in die Tasche, und finde nichts als ein paar große Feuersteine. Einen davon schleudere ich mit aller Kraft dem Thier in den offenen Schlund hinab; es empfindet Schmerz davon, wendet sich schnell um. Durch die sonderbare Gestalt des andern Feuersteines komm’ ich auf die Idee, diesen in die andre mir itzt zugewandte Oefnung des Bären zu schleudern; es gelingt mir; der keilförmige Stein geht herein und dringt weiter, und o Wunder! trift jenen ersten Stein im Magen, schlägt mit ihm Feuer, und macht den Bären jämmerlich bey lebendigem Leibe verbrennen.
Ein andermal – immer als wenn die wildesten Thiere wüßten, wenn ich kein Schießgewehr hätte – springt ein schrecklicher Wolf auf mich zu. Er ist mir schon ganz nahe, und maschinenmäßig stoß ich meine Hand in seinen aufgesperrten Rachen, drucke nun meiner Sicherheit wegen immer tiefer hinein, und behalte so meinen Arm in seinem Leibe. In dieser Stellung war ich freylich sicher; aber wie nun loszukommen? Immer so zu stehn hatt ich nicht Lust; und zog ich den Arm heraus, so fiel das wütend gemachte Thier mich an. Kurz und gut entschloß ich mich; ich grif inwendig fest an ein Stück des Leibes, zog den Wolf um, wie einen Handschuh, und ließ ihn so liegen.
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Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Munchausen (1781) - part 10

(Pic source)

One afternoon I was on my Lord ***’s estate, sitting with a company of ladies at the tea-table in the salon. The men were in the yard to watch a new horse being broken in. Suddenly I heard a commotion outside; I ran out and found the horse so out of control that everyone was mortally afraid to go near him, let alone mount him. While everyone else hesitated, I leapt onto the horse’s back with a single bound, and withstood its bucking for so long that I made it very tired and submissive. To demonstrate this fully and to save the ladies the trouble of rising from the table, I jumped the horse through the open window into the salon, and when the horse was sufficiently calm and I trusted its agility enough, I got it to climb onto the tea-table via my empty chair, and so rode around in front of all the ladies, the horse placing its hooves so daintily that not a cup was cracked.
_________________________________
Original:

Ich saß eines Nachmittags auf dem Gute des Herrn von ***, mit lauter Damen am Theetisch im Sale. Die Herren waren auf dem Hofe, um ein neues Pferd reiten zu sehen. Bald entstand draußen ein Lerm; ich lief hin, und fand das Pferd so unbändig, daß jeder den Hals zu brechen fürchtete, der sich ihm nur näherte, geschweige der drauf säße. Wie alle verzagten, war ich mit einem Satze dem Pferde auf den Rücken, und nun tummelte ichs so lange, bis ichs ganz müde und geschmeidig kriegte. Um dieß völlig zu zeigen und um die Damen nicht herunter zu bemühen, setzte ich damit durchs offne Fenster in den Saal hinein, und wie es zahm genug war, und ich ihm Geschicklichkeit genug zutraute, ließ ichs an meinem leergelassenen Stuhl auf den Theetisch steigen, und ritt so vor allen Damen herum, wobey das Pferd so zierlich die Füße setzte, daß es auch nicht eine Tasse zerbrach.


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Monday, June 01, 2015

Munchausen (1781) - part 9


Greyhound

The best greyhound I ever had lived to be very old. She was quite small but she was a wonderful runner, and because I used her so much, she gradually wore her legs away so that they ended up a good deal shorter. After that I used her as a dachshund for badger-hunting, and kept her for a long time further.
Hare
The same greyhound bitch once took off by herself and chased a hare that looked very big. My poor animal whimpered because she was carrying pups, but she didn’t drop her pace at all. I followed slowly on horseback. Suddenly I heard a pack of dogs yapping, but so faintly and weakly that I didn’t know what to make of it. When I caught up I discovered that the hare had been pregnant too, and the chase had triggered off the birthing process for her, and for my dog also. Instinct had taught both hunter and hunted, exactly equal numbers of leverets and puppies were born, and when I got there I found I had six hares and six dogs.
_______________________________________

Original:

Nie hatt ich einen besern Windhund, als einen, der sehr alt bey mir ward, und eben nicht groß war. Er lief ganz bewundernswürdig, und zuletzt, weil ich ihn so sehr viel brauchte, lief er sich ordentlich die Beine weg, daß sie um ein gut Theil kürzer wurden. Seit der Zeit gebraucht’ ich ihn, wie Teckel (Dachshund), und hatt’ ihn so noch eine ganze Zeit.

Derselbe als er noch Windhund war, – es war eine Hündinn – lief einst ganz allein hinter einen Hasen, der mir sehr groß vorkam. Mein armes Thier jammerte mich, weil es schwanger war; doch ließ sie nichts im Laufen nach. Ich folgte zu Pferde nur langsam. Plötzlich hör’ ich ein Geklaff, wie von mehrern Hunden, aber so fein und schwach, daß ich nicht weiß, was ich draus machen soll. [98] Beym Näherreiten entdeck ich, daß der Hase auch ein schwangeres Weibchen gewesen ist, und im Laufen gesetzet hat; dasselbe ist meiner Hündin begegnet; es waren gerade gleich viel junge Hasen und junge Hunde geworfen. Der Instinkt lehrte jene laufen, und diese verfolgen; und wie ich herankam, hatt ich sechs Hasen von sechs Hunden gehalten.


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