Essays in Idleness

“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 “capitalist” economy — to use that word in the standard leftist form, as the alternative, or variation, on the “communist” (or other leftist) economy. It is necessary because virtually all “socialist,” or “liberal” expenditures waste money, with a vicious, necessarily hidden purpose. 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 in reading the 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 a fashionable “developing country,” that has never developed except into the “Third World” — a term invented by some postwar French economist in anticipation of the need for Mao-Tse-Tungtwisters. Or the reader may supply his own favourite examples. The world is indeed coming round, because it gets tired, or sick, of being stultified. For instance, Maoism has gone out of style. Truth happens when people get bored with the lies. (We might say, truth is a satirical form of humour.) However, new forms of stultification are invented to fill all the gaps with fresh turds.

It is a matter of honour, whenever any term can be identified as “politically incorrect,” to use it in preference to what was the common, candid term until the day before, lest a mild euphemism degenerate into a toxic, stinking habit.

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.

Michaelmas is one of the chief anniversaries in “my secret life,” or my fantasy life as you might call it; except that my fantasy lives are plural. By simply presenting a curriculum vitae of one or several of these imaginary existences, I could have become a prominent Liberal or Democrat politician; but self-disgust always got in my way.

My private harvest fantasy for St Michael (patron of the archdiocese of Toronto) could be fulfilled by shooting down one of the Canada geese that are just now flying by the High Doganate, and then preparing him in my kitchen (with apple and onion stuffing). I say “him,” because I would rather aim at one of the thick-necked ganders, for they are so aggressive and annoying. A bird at Michaelmas, a bird at American Thanksgiving, and a bird at Christmas, should be my culinary custom, and by rendering their gorgeous fat I could have fine roast potatoes. Perhaps I could be raising them to purpose; though I doubt there is room in a modern apartment for a pond of adequate size, and one’s superintendent might complain about the open-door arrangements.

So I am resigned to reality. It constantly encroaches upon my secret life.

As it did in childhood, when I decided to round-out my education at Merton College in Oxford. I would have arrived for Michaelmas term, a little more than half a century ago, taking a garret under the eaves of their 13th-century Mob Quad, from which I would have had a good shot at the geese flying low and slow over the Thames River floodplain. That is how you cook them, incidentally — low and slow, after some initial violent pricking and crisping.

But even by the 1970s, Oxford had deteriorated through feminization and Marxism, to the point where I had to remove it even from my secret life. For I have standards.

“More Canadians shop at Dominion than at any other store, … and it’s mainly because of the meat!”

I encountered this ancient slogan and jingle for the first time since, I think, the 1960s, while irresponsibly “scrolling” through the Internet this morning. It was so effectively written and composed, that the tune immediately came back to me, clearing some fog out of my brain.

How distant that time, when the word “Dominion” still conveyed pride in a country, that is now post-national. The term has been systematically suppressed, by our controlling political Orcs, and the company that used it as a name for its grocery chain has been unnamed, broken up, or bankrupted (it is hard to say which). Except, apparently, in Newfoundland and Labrador, it says here.

But their slogan should have survived, for after decades of bleak veganism, meat has somehow been revived, even by the health nazis. Meat is good for you, even they now declare. It contains protein, which is all the rage. According to leading heart surgeons and nutritionists, if you eat ketotonically, you may actually outlive me. But you might not if you only eat Tim Horton’s donuts.

It is important to be, much more than to do. Indeed, doing should generally be discouraged, in most circumstances. It is important to make art, and to avoid expressing yourself, for art is not a form of knowledge, as all the idiots say. For it consists instead of making. Nor is knowledge power, when we come to that. Truth is not power, either, especially in this country.

Still, it is more honourable than lies. It has always been so, and it will always be. And it is mainly because of the meat.

The idea of doing some action, or of correcting something that is wrong, or in a more subtle way of adjusting radically what is imperfect (wheels missing on a carriage, for instance), is not a universal American trait, or kind of behaviour. But it does seem to be unique to this continent, and to the few places that are economically viable, elsewhere. The Americans, or rather I should say, those Americans, are subject to the world’s envy, and the world’s (incompetently) organized resistance. But people like Donald Trump never learn. That is why I adore them.

Myself, I have always preferred to do nothing, and leave things to work themselves out, on the instruction of the Chinaman, Lao Tzu. I like to be comfortable with disaster: to exhibit my poise, when everything breaks down, as they do in what Mr Trump has called “the shit-hole countries.” All my life I have been mastering this admirably useless, idle discipline. It does not require skill, only time. But it helps to be diligent in opposition to the “optimists,” the “go-getters,” and “busy-bodies” who pretend to improve things. True reaction is the ideal political solution, after all. Truth to tell, it is also the superior strategy, for in the end all the optimists will die; as often as not, from exhaustion.

Modesty and anonymity in the service of Christ is the higher calling. Persistence without optimism or pessimism; and without knowing if we have succeeded, in the end. For in this world we cannot know.

Our most recent Canadian prime minister, Mark Carnage, has been leading us away from our fragmentary “Americanism,” towards that bottomless lake of “globalism,” past the usual bodyguard of lies. It is the destination of every secular plan. Our polished, besuited central bank-governor is advancing the corporate plan. He is making many powerful new allies — such as Red China, and the bureaucracy within “the black heart of Europe.” We will all stand together, against the “controversial” Trump, as he reciprocates for our own excessive tariffs, and tariff-like “procedures.” For the moment America refuses to lie still, frustrating the attempts to administer our punishments. The beatings would have been more violent and effective, had the Trumpists not cut the budgets of so many of the Democratic Socialist NGOs, designed as they are to defeat anything like Trumpism.

But as every corrupt, worthless politician must know, and all the common scum among the electorates that serve them, Trump will soon-enough be gone. And that means they will have the chance to re-install the principles of intentional waste and kakistocracy.

Getting our freedom back from the monster of statist tyranny — from socialism in its many poisonous configurations — will require, as would any counter-revolution, a certain amount of aggressive vulgarity. We will need courage, and incidentally, more courageous statesmen like Trump.

“O my God!” was my reaction, when the news finally reached me, that morning a quarter century ago. I had a column to write that morning, but first some telephone calls to make, one of them to New York City. It was a social call I was finally returning. I found out about the Islamic terror attacks in that way, for a telephonic recording told me that all connexions to Manhattan were down at the moment. Why on earth would that be?

My then more primitive Internet service was also mostly down, and when I turned on my radio I had an interminable CBC “arts” interview to get through. (I had not previously used the radio attachment to my CD machine.) Finally, in my frustration, I found the Times of India, where, at one glance, I took in the picture of the burning Twin Towers. (After more than another hour, CBC “breaking news” was reporting that a “far right Oklahoma bomber” might be responsible.)

I, of course, was not as thick as a CBC newsroom. As at the last World Trade Centre bombing, in 1993, I knew instantly whose terrorists had done it. I was too old to believe, for instance, Mr George W. Bush’s blather about Islam being “a religion of peace.” Having been a child in Pakistan, of all places, I knew from the age of six that Islam was a religion of war. That was when I had my first opportunity to witness an “incident” near my school in Lahore. Human slaughter makes an indelible impression on young minds, though in places like Palestine it turns them into enthusiasts, in that case for killing Jews.

I had a column to write, that morning in 2001; it would be my first on 9/11. I wrote it to discourage readers from freaking out. My first worry was that Christian America would retaliate mindlessly. When an old Hindu friend, a journalistic colleague, called me later that day from the Subcontinent, his first question was, “What is wrong with the Americans?” He was genuinely puzzled that reprisals against Muslims were not happening, coast to coast.

“If that attack had happened in Delhi,” was his view, “there would have been ten thousand Muslim bodies floating face down in the Yamuna by now!”

Well, yes, I had to agree: approximately.