Essays in Idleness

A growing number and proportion of the general population in the West are opposed to “artificial intelligence,” or ‘”superintelligence,” or “data centres,” even if they require wasting only their own tax money, and radically increasing their expenses and debts.

This is an unusual development, for usually the people will quickly agree to any new form of (incredibly expensive) useless endeavour. (The prevention of “climate change” is the perfect example.) The politicians automatically call each “an investment.” They will be in a panic to spend more — whenever it will produce dislocation and unnecessary pain.

For “progress” always involves pain, and is the more excruciating the more its purpose is to gratuitously increase our pleasure.

If this were generally understood, how much money and time could be saved? Almost all of our projects, and mega-projects, could be avoided. But perhaps the good Lord meant us to suffer, as part of our education in holiness. For the many simple solutions to the world’s problems are avoided instead, and our pain will be maximized, with double-plus imagination. This is the tyranny of the malicious idiot demographic, which just won another blowout election.

The impending, super “AI bubble” will be just like all the bubbles that went before. Those who are expert in the blowing of bubbles will lead the way down. But rather than letting them “do their own thing,” and ruin themselves entirely on their own dime, governments are already plotting to rescue them. This should make the catastrophe much worse.

Of course, none of these bubbles are inevitable. But the people will insist on them.

There is no political position so evil and stupid that it cannot recover from losing an election; and as we just saw, usually it wins the next election. “Enthusiasm” is among the many dangers of democracy, for democracy reduces eventually to a couple of essential parties, which flip back and forth in power. Popular individuals give it a satanic twist, and the well-meaning make it most incompetent. Lethal hatreds are engendered, and finally, one half of the population goes to war with the other half. This is why everyone from Plato and Aristotle, to the learned scholastics of the Middle Ages, to the Fathers of the American Constitution, were opposed to democracy. It is a system of government that never ends well.

Churchill memorably excused it as “the worst system, except for all the others.” If we can somehow create, and actually sustain, a culture in which political questions can be discussed, with knowledge and civility, or even non-violence, this can be so. (Id est, a truly Christian culture.) However, the broader the franchise — the more diverse, and the higher the proportion of the people who may vote — the less chance we have that lawful democracy will survive, and the more that we will crack up in barbarity.

Without real, practised humility, decency, and religion, everything is lost.

And by the time barbarity wins, everything in society is put under the control of secular government and its bureaucracies, by the most evil people. We are doomed.

But we should at least be cheerful, for everyone we know is also doomed. As ever, only God can save us. This is not pessimism, but the way things are: I have long thought pfui on enthusiastic optimism. Perhaps we should arrest all the optimists.

The filth and degeneration of the Western mind — both in America and Europe — will be clearly and publicly in view today. But it is only a “progression,” or progress towards Hell. One of only two big U.S. political parties, predicted by the meejah to prevail in the mid-term elections, is explicitly anti-American; the other is, except for a few unusual characters, congressionally ruled by cowardice and stupidity. Trump, of course, will be finished again. The Democrats (or “Democratic-Socialists”) are unambiguously evil; the Republicans … are not therefore good.

Across the Atlantic, Europe is currently in flames. Rather than being appalled, the “moderate Muslims” and “youff” of Europe have decided to join in the pointless destruction. This often happens as part of revolutions. In their excitement, large numbers manifest acute mental illness, and act like massed chimpanzees looking for a fight. Curiously, gorillas, who are larger and better armed, are afraid of them.

But of course the symbol of the Democrats is the jack-ass, rather than the ape.

I will get a little supply of fresh turds through my inbox today. But at the end I will just take a shower.

“SIC” we might put after much, or rather, nearly all that we read as commentary in the periodical press and electronic media. To be fair, much of it is just vulgar advertising for the products of the (government-regulated) “capitalist” economy — using that word as leftists do, as imaginary alternative to “socialism.” In a typical “liberal” economy, expenditures go overwhelmingly to waste, with hidden purposes. When used in commentary by either Left, or Right, it promotes leftishness abstractly. But it is only abstractly abstract, if you know what I mean, which few people do. What I indicate, whether reading most works of one political persuasion or the other, is that the copy is SIC. This stands for: “Stultifying Intellectual Conformity.”

We, the prophets of idleness, are sometimes criticized for being rude, even by those who sometimes encourage us. This is when we use words like “shithole” to describe the fashionable “developing countries,” or members of the “Third World” — a term invented by some postwar Froggy economist in anticipation of the need for Mao-Tse-Tungtwisters.

Or the reader may supply his own favourite examples, which may include all the nations of the world; and they finally come around — when, eventually, they get tired, or sick, of being stultified. For instance, Maoism has gone out of style, though it is still strictly enforced in China.

Truth happens when people get bored with the lies. (We might say, truth is a form of satirical humour.) However, new forms of stultification are invented to fill all the gaps with fresh turds.

When I was young, and until now, I suffered from a terrible misapprehension about beauty. This was quite apparent in my “love life,” which was peopled by one pretty girl after another. Fortunately, she was usually unobtainable, and I frequently made a fool of myself by letting my mesmerization become apparent. But beauty, in the form of pretty girls, can only be insubstantial. It passes away, rather quickly in most cases.

There is a deeper problem, however. It is that beauty itself is, in a manner of speaking, insubstantial. Plato told us about this, in the Phaedrus most clearly, and Goethe confirmed, that, “Beauty is not so much performance as promise.” Or, as Josef Pieper explains, it does not quench our thirst. In earthly terms, it is an evocation, and perhaps it might be said that even women (at their best) evoke. You cannot consume them, as spiritual nutrition, as you might consume goodness or truth.

The extraordinary thing about beauty is thus that it cannot hold still. In every moment it is passing out of our understanding, like the peace of God. Rather it leads us, through prayer and thanksgiving — to what is virtuous and true.

It is too glorious to lead to gratification. It can use us, but cannot be used.

My enthusiasm for “AI” (or “SI” as Trump initials it) continues to grow as I realize how many government bureaucrats will be disemployed — not only across America and Europe, but even in the Muslim and “shithole” countries. We read that, in the Netherlands for instance, 25,000 “full-time” desk jockeys will be relieved of their jobs, and of course Elon Musk’s “DOGE” already swept several hundred thousand into the dust bin of history. With trillions of debt left to cut, we can look forward to millions more on the bread lines. Who says there isn’t cause for rejoicing at the frontiers of the new technology?

It would be simpler of course to sack or terminate all of our elected politicians, and every one they have in turn employed, while cancelling all their regulations. I was thinking this while reviewing the municipal election results in Toronto this morning, where I found that the only (arguably) worthy candidate had finished a distant third, with a tiny proportion of the vote in his council district. This did not surprise me, however, for I am aware of only a dozen intelligent voters in the whole metropolitan area. The rest are among the “smug progressives.”

We can rebuild the Cathedrals!

I say this in light of all the physical destruction that has happened and will happen in France and throughout Europe, through the Middle East, and in backwaters such as Canada where many more than a hundred churches have been torched and physically wrecked by leftist scum, on top of their ugly lies about our Indian residential schools. The victims have been overwhelmingly Canada’s native people, Catholic and Anglican, who were still worshipping in those churches.

But in the background are the larger destructions of the modern, totalitarian world, and the retreat into despair and indifference by Christians of little Faith. I think for instance of the whole sordid counter-tradition associated with Vatican II. It is time for the Church to forget this appalling stretch of her history — this “progressive” experiment, and most of the events in the last century of “reforms.”

Instead, we should gather to celebrate Christ the King — today, not wherever it was moved to by the “reformers.”

We are going to take a beating, as Our Lord has taken so many beatings over the last twenty centuries. But He tells us to stand, and take the beating yet again.

There is something called Christianity, and there is something called Civilization. The two go naturally together, but as the deeper sort of thinkers realize — especially those who know some history — they are not the same thing. Christianity was “invented” — if one can describe something founded by Christ in the old sense of the word “invention.” It came to save all the people. Civilization is only meant to save the world. One might say that it “evolves.”

Of course, we should try to save glorious things, and to dress properly for the symphony, but in the deep view, we had better allow ourselves to be saved.

I have been following events in France, and Milan, in my debilitated way, with the help of weblogs. It appears that Civilization is going down for the count, yet again. It frequently gives this appearance, especially in France, even without North African immigration. For the French, at times, do Civilization well, but also do the opposite. (They have even done Christian Civilization, a few times in the distant past.)

The Italians, like the Romans before them, are slightly more practical, and seem to have the better idea on these matters, and to understand that preserving a Civilization requires a certain amount of rough trade. The frontiers do not require any action by the naïve; but instead some action by the violent — well organized, ideally. The fact that uncivilized peoples are destroying one’s nation from within, does call for a response. That they need to be physically removed, by one method or another, is at least partially understood by the Italian prime ministrix, Mrs Meloni. Good luck to her. (Mr Macron of France represents the opposite tendency: that of morbid stupidity.)

From the High Doganate, however, we can only observe, though with interest. I observe that peace, including real civil peace in which people get into the habit of trusting one another, may, once it is thoroughly disturbed, only be re-established by physical means, and with time. (That’s why we have laws, and enforcement, deportations and prisons; traditionally, even a few hangings.)

The spiritual peace, however — the peace of souls — can only be achieved through sanctity and prayer. There is no earthly formula for it.

Socialism has always made its deep appeal to the shallow — to malice and envy, and to the pigeon-brained, assembling to leave their malodorous droppings on the city streets. That Socialism has not practically succeeded, ever — even once — out of many thousand attempts, might be seen as “a failure of Democracy.” For election results depend upon the voting of the general public, and these masses are, as one should probably have guessed by now, quite incredibly stupid. They exhibit retardation in both its moral and intellectual forms. That is why they swing Left-socialist, or perhaps less fortunately Right-socialist sometimes, and we are warned that they will do so at the congressional midterms, next month in the United States.

Blaming politicians is like blaming crime on the criminals. It is idle. What can one expect from them?

I, however, will not bother with this, any more than I am vexed by the question of intelligent life on Mars. For I am as confident that no intelligent life is to be found in an electorate.

Though perhaps I should allow that a small minority of voters — perhaps one in fifty — know enough about public affairs and political principles to be trusted with the franchise.

Where are our memories stored? There are mechanical means for keeping records artificially, each of which, once destroyed, will not come back, but how do living beings store their memories?

Where do these memories go, and how can we retrieve them? Particularly, how can we access them, after the beings become, for instance, dead? No amount of physiological research can locate organic memory in physical space, or ever be found once we have lost it. Yet it will return to the living of its own accord. This incidental fact may be acknowledged, but to no good end.

How can living things be, or if they are, how can they be recorded? “Materialism” must insist upon its own incompatibility with existence. Some “a-materialism” must also be. Reality must include both matter and spirit.

Even flies nibble pieces of it. Therefore even flies become a feature of the a-material world, as well as of the material, while extending out of reach of, say, my swatter.

Every attempt to locate the processing centres for memories are also doomed to failure. — Mehr licht! — Brains are too dark, much though parts like the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brainstem may be shown in a diagram, or pointed to by an adequately trained neurological surgeon. Yet even they have given up on phrenology.

So where are the actual memories located? How can we even try to fetch them? For we can only look in the world’s physical, material places.

They are not in the skull, nor are they elsewhere. The spirit, or soul of a person, cannot be found outside, any more than it can be found inside. The mind, however, though bounded in a nutshell, occupies infinite space, and all the time before and after. So Shakespeare proposes, but no one gives a plausible account of travels in these realms, where evil as well as good must be found.

What exists in the spirit thus exists beyond our reach. It is also beyond the reach of machine, or “artificial,” intelligence, which can’t imagine without lying, or originate anything at all. It only vomits machine answers.

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POSTSCRIPTUM, the earlier version of this Idlepost was vexed with unnecessary information.

Canada has travelled considerably downhill during the last century or two. Did you know, for instance, that in 1893 we were already making electric cars? I first learnt this as a stamp collector, for the electric van of the Still Motor Co is depicted on a pretty lithographic postage stamp — one of a set with dozens of other early national voitures, though not all of them électrique. Made here in Toronto at the Dixon Carriage Works (“a nice little two-seater open runabout”), and first commissioned by the prominent lawyer, Frederick Bernard Fetherstonhaugh (pron. “FAN-shaw”).

“Still,” too, is a delightful name to stick upon a car manufacturer. William Still was the Musk-ic engineer who got it rolling.

As an old-fashioned person, often accused of Ludditism, I especially favour electric autocars, and the patient recharging of batteries off the railway system. They last and last; Fetherstonhaugh kept his model well into the last century. With pneumatic tires, mud flaps, and a civilized maximum speed of fifteen miles per hour, it was exceedingly comfortable and polite.

Electric engines are quiet and smooth, not noisy and smelly like one of these combustion things.

St Francis of Assisi had the good fortune of birth, a few centuries before he was discovered to be a communist. His patronage of “the environment,” of “ecology,” and of cute animals, was part of his “progress” away from being a Catholic saint; only posthumously did he become a fraud. The world is uncomfortably arranged, so to make the recovery of his mediaeval reputation difficult. But if one is determined, it can still be done.

In the Fifth Crusade he notoriously “crossed the line” at Damietta, Egypt, in order to preach the Gospel to Sultan Malik, as well to anyone else who happened to be listening in the Islamic camp (as we should do today). They were utterly impressed and thus finally let him through, without extravagant beatings. This happens sometimes in response to acts of humility and courage.

St Francis — and Brother Illuminatus of Arce, who should also be mentioned — had walked right in. The friars survived the initial physical beatings of the traditional Islamic “hello!” — because they were saying something unpredictable. They did not come with the message that bloodshed is wrong, or even with the bureaucratic terms of a peace treaty. Their dislike of violence could be taken for granted: no one (sane) enjoys being thrashed, and arguing the contrary is just gibberish against physical pain and death. Even dogs can make that position known by yelp and howling; and Muslims can be quite eloquent.

Instead, the Christians proposed to discuss Faith; and did this for several days before being dismissed: sent home with provisions and nice things.

I suppose one could call this “a dialogue.” But when truth is discussed in war, it is something more than a dialogue. For then truth is given a real background. We read a conversation of that sort in the Bhagavad Gita, between Arjuna and Krishna, which one might also consult. For generally there is presence of God, wherever angelic men and manly angels rise above complaint. Truth is higher, even than diplomacy.