Sunday 30 January 2022

'Inwardness: An Outsider's Guide' by Jonardon Ganeri (2021)

Well yes but hasn’t this been done ?  Indeed, for the scholar or the student but not very much for the individual seeker for whom the topic has become a live option and who wants a conspectus not a close analysis.  The assessment ‘accessible’ is the faint praise that allows rejection which is unfair to a book which lays out a program of styles of inwardness that acutely observes their differences.   That can bring illumination to doctrines which are accepted as central to the various traditions.  On that point his mentioning of Nagarjuna’s rejection of the concept of self-luminous cognition which I took to be a tenet of Buddhist epistemological theory was interesting.  He does not develop a revised view which might skew towards Vedanta; controversion and alternative theorising is not a goal.

The manifestations of  Self as multiply realised that are part of the Western tradition brings him into the domain of Kierkegaard and Passoa.  Is this simple role playing or neurotic withdrawal from commitment with faulty epistemology as a foundation?  Is it enriching elaboration?  Ganeri allows the individual palate to decide and rightly so.  No special doctrine is urged and the short chapters allow the timid to edge along the springboard.  You have for example:

Libraries Lined with memories (Augustine’s theory)

Rashomon’s Effect (perspectives and illusion)

Self-illuminating Being (Buddhist theory and Nagarjuna)

Hidden Layers Within (Passoa and his personas)

Troubles with Doubles (Kierkegaard and the aspectual self)

This is a short book running to 122 pages.  Less is more.

Wednesday 26 January 2022

G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (2012)

 I have just recently finished reading Ian Ker’s biography of G.K. Chesterton (pub.2012).  It is a very literary biography with a great many quotations from the enormous oeuvre.  I would consider it essential reading for the Chestertonian of course but also the general reader might be surprised at the high regard for his books on Dickens, Browning, Aquinas and Francis of Assisi.  The problem with Chesterton is the stylistic quirk of his continuous  reaching after paradox.  William James found it wearing and I can understand that because to the scientific mind with its straightforward logical catenary of conclusions, the doubling back and lateral thinking breaks the forward momentum of inquiry.  It is also difficult to remember and frustrates the illative sense which I think is a good thing.  The regular cognitive pathways that have become habitual are deleted and what you might have thought was easy going terrain switchbacks furiously.   Are we marching nonstop and getting nowhere?   There is no converging by a gradual series of argued for conclusions rather the sudden illumination.  

In his 'Eugenics and Other Evils' (1922) he mocks the assumed superiority of progressive thinking. The spoiling of the eugenics movement by Teutonic enthusiasm has made support for it disreputable but the nibbling at the tempting edges of it by present day progressives makes Chesterton a little scabrous to their eyes.  An interesting indication of this tendency is found here:

Cain on Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a well-known essayist in Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a critic of eugenics, as well as a critic of many other issues. Chesterton’s essay, “What is Eugenics?,” is a much cited essay on the subject and merits reading.

Chesterton was criticised for anti-semitism, and his language in “What is Eugenics” will strike the modern reader as offensive. His essay is made available here as a primary historical source meriting critical study. Other editions are available. The text is online, too. Chesterton’s essay likely was the spark for Leonard Darwin to use the same title for his pro-eugenics popular book, What is Eugenics?, in 1928.

This particular copy shows the signed of close reading. Marginalia comments are by an unknown contemporary hand who had a clear antipathy for Chesterton’s views.

Looking at the copy of the pdf which Prof. Cain reproduces at the bottom of his blog post the notes which are written on it are written in Irish the old fashioned Gaelic script,( the present is Roman with h for aspiration).  In fact there is no antipathy shown in that annotator’s underlining which select the most egregiously nasty examples of the eugenicist’s program.  The discerning student of the prof. will be aware of the correct answer on that topic.

Peadar O’Morain the inditer of those notes, teipeadh ort/theip tu/theip ort (you failed).

Monday 24 January 2022

Thank You Boris Johnson: No Better Man

 We’re very happy in Ireland that Boris Johnson declared an end to Covidology.  How do I know that?  Because we are not talking about it.  In our own quiet humble way we have been waiting for direction from a higher power to whom we give the name of England.   The man has spoken and we are released from the magic chalk circle which trapped us.  Here I think the words of Hilaire Belloc are a comfort and a counsel:


His Father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James’ miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.

 

 (Cautionary tale about Jim, the boy who slipped his nurse, and was eaten by a lion)

Jim's Fate

Thursday 20 January 2022

Bye Bye Covid: It'll be nice not knowing you.

 The prophets formerly known as tinfoil topee wearing right wing conspiracy theorists are enjoying a major ‘I told you so and you wouldn’t listen’ moment in the history of chagrin.

Vaccine Passports - check

Wuhan Lab Leak - check

Greatly Exaggerated Deaths. - check.

In fact over the two years of pandemic only 17,000 people died of Covid who had no other co-morbidity.  Now that Britain is putting covid behind them this emerges.  Why?  A nudge towards optimism?  In 2011 644 deaths are recorded from falls down stairs.  Dangerous things stairs.  Ought to be regulated.  (British Statistics from Office of National Stats)

Average Age of Mortality from Covid - 82.5 years which is greater than average age of mortality generally (Britain).  Death should be abolished.

Pfizer CEO admits that first two jabs were of little utility.  The third was the charm.  Can we have our money back please?  Twice as good as Ivermectin then.

Lovers of Control who won’t let go Award goes to Dr. Sam McConkey member of Ind. Scientific Advisory Group (ISAG)  advising the government on Covid (Ireland).   He was an enthusiast for Zero Covid and lockdown who predicted 100,000 deaths in Ireland.  In a radio show discussing the murder of a young woman in Ireland by an attacker he proposed the idea that men might need a licence to socialise.  New hashtag: #not all scientists are idiots.

Report of Conflict of Interests between ISAG and Gates Foundation etc.

conflicts

There’s more but remember what I said...

Oh yes, watch the journaliars begin to re-position themselves as Covid recedes.  ‘I was always agin it’.

Friday 7 January 2022

Le Bon and the Russian Flu


(Professor Luke O'Neill in  a protective bubble.  Unfortunately he escaped crying 'I am not a number, I am a free man' )

 

 “Whatever strikes the imagination of crowds presents itself under the shape of a startling and very clear image, freed from all accessory explanation, or merely having as accompaniment a few marvellous or mysterious facts: examples in point are a great victory, a great miracle, a great crime, or a great hope. Things must be laid before the crowd as a whole, and their genesis must never be indicated. A hundred petty crimes or petty accidents will not strike the imagination of crowds in the least, whereas a single great crime or a single great accident will profoundly impress them, even though the results be infinitely less disastrous than those of the hundred small accidents put together. The epidemic of influenza, which caused the death but a few years ago of five thousand persons in Paris alone, made very little impression on the popular imagination. The reason was that this veritable hecatomb was not embodied in any visible image, but was only learnt from statistical information furnished weekly. An accident which should have caused the death of only five hundred instead of five thousand persons, but on the same day and in public, as the outcome of an accident appealing strongly to the eye, by the fall, for instance, of the Eiffel Tower, would have produced, on the contrary, an immense impression on the imagination of the crowd. The probable loss of a transatlantic steamer that was supposed, in the absence of news, to have gone down in mid-ocean profoundly impressed the imagination of the crowd for a whole week. Yet official statistics show that 850 sailing vessels and 203 steamers were lost in the year 1894 alone. The crowd, however, was never for a moment concerned by these successive losses, much more important though they were as far as regards the destruction of life and property, than the loss of the Atlantic liner in question could possibly have been.”

(from ‘The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind’ by Gustave Le Bon pub. 1895)

Le Bon was of course writing about the Russian Flu of 1889/90 which killed one million out of a world population of 1.5 billion.

russian flu

As Le Bon wrote if you want to create a crowd you need proper staging .  It helps if you have highly infectious images of the corona virus looking like a mini sea mine.  Think of that going off inside of you!  Masks and plague mavens and the absurd plastic bubble of Prof. O’Neill that could allow you to attend music gigs assist the general dread.   Boosters with the suggestion of rocketry that will get you above contagion and the constant repetition of phrases such as ‘flatten the curve’, ‘save the health service’ , ‘the real plague’ (of the un-vaxxed).  Yeah, Keep it going Shanie, don’t stall the digger.

Monday 3 January 2022

MSM and The Free Press

 Recently if that means for the last 200 or more years there has been talk of corrupt, venal, idle mouthpieces of the powers that be usually called  journaliars. (John Waters coinage)

Certainly reading Hilaire Belloc’s book ‘The Free Press’ (pub. 1917) he was less than sanguine about the ‘fair and balanced’ media of the day.  He writes:

"Take the Marconi case. The big official papers first boycotted it for months, and then told a pack of silly lies in support of the politicians. The Free Press gave one the truth but its various organs gave the truth for very different reasons and with very different impressions. To some of the Irish papers Marconi was a comic episode, "just what one expects of Westminster"; others dreaded it for fear it should lower the value of the Irish-owned Marconi shares. "The New Age" looked at it from quite another point of view than that of the "New Witness," and the specifically Socialist Free Press pointed it out as no more than an example of what happens under Capitalist Government.

A Mahommedan paper would no doubt have called it a result of the Nazarene religion, and a Thug paper an awful example of what happens when your politicians are not Thugs.

My point is, then, that the Free Press thus starting from so many different particular standpoints has not yet produced a general organ; by which I mean that it has not produced an organ such as would command the agreement of a very great body of men, should that very great body of men be instructed on the real way in which we are governed."

Cecil Chesterton, G.K.'s brother, as editor of ‘The New Witness’ was sued by Godfrey Isaacs for criminal libel re Marconi shares and insider trading.   He was found guilty and fined £100.

Everyone has an angle and Belloc thought that in order to get a comprehensive view of the state of the land you ought to read several papers and particularly those with a narrow sectional interest.

William Cobbett 100 years before that in his weekly ‘Political Register’ got in trouble with the Whigs for his article on the flogging of British soldiers by German merceneries for the refusal to pay for the issue knapsack.  Newgate was his residence for two years plus a £1000 fine.  His decision to defend himself was unwise.  He wrote:

"Flog them; flog them; flog them! They deserve it, and a great deal more. They deserve a flogging at every meal time. 'Lash them daily, lash them duly.' What, shall the rascals dare to mutiny, and that, too, when the German Legion is so near at hand! Lash them, lash them, lash them! They deserve it. O, yes; they merit a double-tailed cat. Base dogs! What, mutiny for the sake of the price of a knapsack! Lash them! Flog them! Base rascals! Mutiny for the price of a goat's skin; and, then, upon the appearance of the German soldiers, they take a flogging as quietly as so many trunks of trees!—I do not know what sort of a place Ely is; but I really would like to know how the inhabitants looked one another in the face, while this scene was exhibiting in their town. I should like to have been able to see their faces, and to hear their observations to each other at the time. This occurrence at home will, one would hope, teach the loyal a little caution in speaking of the means which Napoleon employs (or, rather, which they say he employs), in order to get together and to discipline his conscripts…" (Political Register, 1st., July 1809).

............

In a letter he describes the meeting of his enemies in the hall of the Mother of Parliaments:

Perceval met his brother-in-law Redesdale at the portal of Westminster Hall. They shook hands and gave each other joy! Chucklehead but crafty Curtis met Tierney in the Hall. 'Ah, a, ah! We have got him at last,' said Curtis. 'Poor Cobbett! Let him be bold now!' The old place-hunter answered: 'Damn him! I hope they'll squeeze him!' They did squeeze indeed; but their claws, hard as they were, did not squeeze hard enough.

‘Chucklehead’ should be revived.  I bestow it on Leo Chucklehead Varadker.

Main stream media at present is the vassal of corporate and government interests of a liberal progressive nature but to offset their univocity they will have a columnist who writes against this tone.  In Ireland each paper has a pet troglodyte  who by the general ethos is wrong about everything.  In the Irish Times that used to be John Waters but he was constructively defenestrated and now writes on substack under the style and title - johnwaters.substack.com

A lot of members of the awkward squad have ended up on substack.  They now represent the sectional Free Press that Belloc wrote about and are a balance to the journaliesism of MSM.

Saturday 1 January 2022

Gustave Le Bon's 'The Crowd' and Covidology

 In these times of Covid and Covidology the work of Gustave Le Bon is apposite.  We should all cultivate our garden, our inner Voltaire and become, if we are not already, a touch contrarian holding to the adage ‘what everybody knows is (frequently) wrong’.  I have ommitted  the ‘frequently’ - that leaves room for the crowd to be occasionally right.  By Le Bon they have dropped rationality to the level of ‘not even wrong’ so right/wrong does not apply.    Is it the case that the increased alienation, atomisation, and anomie of modern society has enhanced the natural tendency to aggregation?  It is curious that a favourite American ‘genteelism’ (Fowler) is the word ‘egregious’ without reference to what herd is being surpassed.  It’s just bad to do that.  Odi profanum vulgus et arceo said Horace.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world" crowds are to be understood.

.......... 


It is not necessary that a crowd should be numerous for the faculty of seeing what is taking place before its eyes to be destroyed and for the real facts to be replaced by hallucinations unrelated to them. As soon as a few individuals are gathered together they constitute a crowd, and, though they should be distinguished men of learning, they assume all the characteristics of crowds with regard to matters outside their speciality. The faculty of observation and the critical spirit possessed by each of them individually at once disappears.

(from ‘The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind’ by Gustave Le Bon pub. 1895)

in all formats available at

The Crowd