Essays in Idleness

It is some time since I tried to read Polybius (c.202–120 B..C.), the ancient historian. It was a memorably difficult, and fairly rewarding experience, which I kept mostly to myself. Part of the difficulty was from the man’s style. Though a Hellenistic Greek, he gives a good and admiring account of the Roman Empire that had emerged, and was still emerging, in the second century before Christ, and I was fortunately provided with the six little green volumes of Paton’s Loeb edition (with English translation en face), published just over a century ago. I say fortunate, for otherwise I would have been reading the Penguin, or some other mass-market paperback which is livelier and smoother and quicker-paced, as well as thoroughly unreliable. But if you haven’t mastered Greek or Latin, and do not intend ever to do so, you do not deserve anything better.

Only the first five of the forty books of Polybius survive in their entirety. Happily, the most enlightening passages are in the incomplete Book Six, which tells how Rome blended monarchical, aristocratic, and even democratic elements, and how this came to be.

Polybius is notorious for his asides, on matters from geography to constitutional law to biographies and seemingly irrelevant events (though quite relevant if you get into them). The paperback translations typically make these intentional digression into random footnotes in unreadably small type, or discard them entirely, lest they interfere with “the flow.” A modern may diligently read every page, and not realize at the end that he hasn’t read Polybius. Usually, he has just read the puff-piece on the back cover, and has anyway such limited intelligence and imagination that it hardly matters. However, the materials exist if he wants to study Polybius seriously, and have not been pulped yet, at least in the more respectable libraries.

There is some kerfuffle at the moment about Anthropic and other “artificial intelligence” companies, buying up second-hand books, literally by the million, and feeding them into machines which chop off their spines then mechanically flip the severed pages, taking pictures whenever they are in focus, then shredding what’s left and disposing of it. The pictures are then electronically used to some mysterious cybernetic purpose, and may be spat back at paying customers, in various packages at elevated prices. The machines do not benefit from the experience, because they lack intelligence or indeed consciousness. Indeed, you have to be an “AI” executive even to attempt the evil this implies.

Too, you may be avoiding copyright law, and other minute particulars, but can also buy “progressive” judges.

Balance this against the windfall profits of all the second-hand bookstores, who may now sell all the worthless junk that had been accumulating on their backroom shelves. At last, bookselling is profitable again!

For almost all modern printed matter is typographically rude, worthless, and ugly, like the texts they encode. You won’t find much published since 1970, if you visit the High Doganate: I lack the space to keep garbage. Readers apparently agree with me, because there is little evidence that even university students read anything with the slightest attention. (The machines do the reading for them.) But we were retaining all this printed matter in pursuit of carbon neutrality.

Despite my near-allergy to Hawaiian shirts, and to those children born in the West since the fall of the Soviet Union, and even though I am fanatically opposed to abortions, regardless of birthdates, I have formed something of a male crush on Palmer Luckey, and his Anduril company. I am also, incidentally, disgusted by mullet haircuts, and male crushes.

But I am entirely in favour of winning Cold Wars, and every other battle against the “furriners,” certainly including the Communist Chinese, and revolutionary Persia. And this despite the fact that I admire much Soviet and Chinese and even Iranian engineering, while wishing to blow it all up without delay.

Too, recently, I have been coming around to enthusiasm for (the misnamed) “Artificial Intelligence,” apparently a minority position. For I am intrigued by the idea of (human-directed) unmanned submarines, that could cruise the oceans to any depth without giving anyone the bends, or for that matter by aircraft that could do 10G turns without giving the pilot a monstrous headache. To say nothing of inexpensive lasers and masers.

Of course, the point of war is to “make the other guy die for his country,” and this design aspect would not change.

Mostly, I am glad to see the Yanquis recover their desire to be … not the world’s policeman, but the world’s leading gun store. It is time collective “we” resumed shooting up the bad guys, or assisting those who will shoot them for us. Or just making the world very peaceful, by increasing the supply of lethal weaponry, too frightening for anyone to use. Alas, “peace through strength” continues to seem contradictory to wimps.

If I may be boastful for a moment, and I may, it was glorious to remember Roger Smith, although I could not be present at his coffee shop tribute in the dark interior of mountainous British Columbia recently. This dear companion of my childhood and youth left a musical and meteorological legacy among those lucky enough to know him, and not among those unlucky ones not touched, for instance, by his mirth. I think of the Kanlogian literary and hymnological tradition, launched from the abbreviation for “Kan I use logarithms?” in a high school math test. It came into being just a few years after Elvis, and I still sing it to myself:

You can hear everything through the air vents,
Especially if you’re eating from a gourd,
But if you don’t give praise to Batman
You’ll be eaten by the Armadillo Hordes …

Alas, few will grasp the metaphysical depth. It explains, for instance, Donald Trump, whom we both could appreciate as an explosively vulgar and transformative character, whether or not a divine gift to the world. In the manner of Batman, he has seized upon our political reality, and sought our praise, although it has not been forthcoming from the progressive constituency. And truly, they will be consumed by the armadillos.

Yet look closely, and one will see that Trump is of no religious significance whatever. Even the faithful, of several confessions, do not waste their time on him during liturgical acts, and largely ignore him in their preces privatae. This, because he is, more or less exclusively, just a political phenomenon or agency.

If one is Latin-Mass Catholic, or Greek Orthodox (the two forms of worship that are theologically sound), one will notice something that the world does not. The victory of Left or Right, the trends in politics, have little or no influence upon the religious environment. There is only an effect vice versa: as genuine religion expands, politics reciprocally contracts. The contemporary disappearance of Christianity from our habits and thoughts, will not be affected by who leads in the polls, or has won the latest election.

All politics could go to Hell, and it would not even make the papers in Heaven.

Not having “believed” in the crisis of overpopulation, when it was in style back in the ‘seventies, I have little trouble not believing in the crisis of underpopulation now. Neither will make our societies any better or worse. Making them better has always been an end in itself, quite distinct from statistics. Without such non-statistical, transcendental concepts as the good, the true, and the beautiful, things can only get worse, but I am confident the God who is their ultimate author will still exist. The more we separate ourselves from Him, the more we make ourselves into waste material, but the quantity of this waste is not really interesting. Our solar system is 100,000 astronomical units around, and even farther afield, there is plenty more space once we have filled that up with garbage.

And with no God, Christ, Spirit, there is no reason to stop expanding our immense cosmic junkyard. Indeed, there is no reason for us to bother remaining alive, as many of us have realized who became briefly enrolled in our various assisted suicide programmes. Perhaps they do us living favour by simply getting out of our way. Then, those with a sense of purpose will freely occupy the prime real estate, here on earth, and may compulsively try to improve it.

The women I seem to have least trouble getting along with are intellectually and biologically fecund. They tend to have large families, which takes a certain wilfulness. They will continue to generate “excess population” through time to come, while those not generating will peacefully die away. True, there may be some excitement, as the welfare plans collapse, and their pension accounts run out, but there is no rule preventing the rest of us from taking care of them in their aged feebleness, even if they are still cussing.

The proportion of “remainers” with a sense of purpose will thus continue to increase, and kindliness will thus persist, also, defeating modernity. These are and will be religious persons (and, by inclination, joyful), and whether they subscribe to one religion or another, who can project?

With little or less compulsion, regardless which murder and suicide cults endure, how marvellous it will be! For Christianity will always eventually prevail, in open competition. Deus vult!

As an indigenous Canadian — my father, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were all born here — I am naturally ashamed of how this country is grossly misgoverned. This goes beyond questions of political party, for all parties, though especially the Liberals, have contributed to our dive into a seemingly bottomless “shithole” (a technical term in economics). But this will only change by a fraction of a percent if, say, Mr Poilievre, or some other ratty politician, becomes prime minister. Canada, one might say, needs a Trump. That is, a transformative ruler, brave, quick, and intelligent too, who would be worth assassinating from the leftwing point-of-view; a profound hater of worthless garbage, income taxes, and every species of “progressive.” Well, maybe Trump is too moderate.

Politics, in a democracy like Canada’s, is the art by which our various factions are bought off, and the nation as a whole is prostituted. It is not more complicated than that.

At least nine in ten of our municipal, provincial, and Dominion government departments should be retired, “with extreme prejudice” whenever possible. Everything but the military, cops, courts, prisons, and the Geological Survey, must go (and then eliminate extravagance and corruption in each of the survivors). The fact that this would lead to incredibly rapid “capitalist” advance is not the purpose of this. An embarras de richesses might offer some obscure problems, but it is one of the risks of freedom. The destruction of every one of our state bureaucracies — with violence only if necessary, of course — should be an end in itself. It would also drive our Leftists up the tree, where they will discover that the apes do not understand their interest in sharing the bananas.

Governments should exist only to prevent demonstrated evils, and not to be their chief cause. The Church, too, should be voluntarily supported; then she, too, should be left alone.

For as Saint Paul wrote to able-bodied Christians (in II Thessalonians iii), “those unwilling to work shall not eat.” Christianity was, from the beginning, radically opposed to welfare statecraft. This world must work. We should aspire to make our portion of America, even the glaciers, Godly again; and not quit until they are melted.

The year nineteen hundred and ninety-three was of some personal significance, for at least two persons. Ann Widdicombe became a Roman Catholic — which did not necessarily advance her political career in England. I almost became one, while my journalistic career, as publisher of the Idler magazine, was also characteristically failing. Indeed, in December of that year, my (notoriously conservative) magazine went “tits up.” By comparison, Miss Widdicombe later made it to the Privy Council, and was shadow Home Secretary. I admired her fearlessness, her Latin, and her humour, tremendously; though I was ashamed, for it took me longer to convert to Catholicism. And while I finally did that, when my Anglican wife kicked me out, I think the unmarried Miss Widdicombe has made it all the way to Martyrdom, for her Christian and conservative views.

Typically, in Britain, which has become another “shithole country” like Canada, the police tried to suppress the Martyrdom aspect of this news, immediately, though it was obvious from the moment Ann was beaten to death. As she had many secondhand books in her bungalow on Dartmoor, the Devon and Cornwall police naturally assumed she had been killed trying to resist a break-in, by for instance a secondhand book dealer. She was known to be very kind, rather intensely literate, but feisty.

It is this feistiness that is the mark of many, certainly the vast majority, of Catholic Martyrs. England began generating them in number as part of the triumphant history of the Anglican church, and “English eccentrics” have long been dominated by members of that country’s small Catholic minority. Indeed, the supply of Martyrs must dramatically improve, now that the majority of religious observers in Britain are practicing Muslims.

(Islam has been exceptional, creating Martyrs for every other faith in all countries they have tried to occupy.)

They may not be guilty of the murder of Miss Witticombe, however, if the police theory that it was “a white man” holds up. Perhaps it was just a Communist, or other progressive type.

There are arguments to be made against “AI” (artificial intelligence). They are not true economic arguments, however. According to one of several rare intelligent economists (Mario Loyola by name), the great chain of being runs in this way: 1. technology increases the productivity of labour; 2. which increases the amount of investment and wages; 3. which increases demand; 4. which increases employment. This has borne fruit repeatedly in actual statistics, where statisticians are allowed to collect them. But hardly anyone believes it, unless of course they are using their brains.

Most people believe, rather, in what is plausible; for instance, socialism.

What is plausible is normally wrong. Socialism, for instance, never works, and leads invariably to disaster; but it appeals to a large majority of the unintelligent and inexperienced (as well as to the vicious); for examples to the young, and to the residents of large cities. It is why big cities are “leftist,” politically, and why things like universities, and big cities, should be depopulated. It is why, paradoxically, we should try to avoid extreme wealth, and instead focus upon living beautiful lives.

In distant antiquity — way back in the 1970s — I was supporting myself as an “economic journalist.” As is habitual in my case, I had no qualifications whatever. This gave me an inestimable advantage as a predictor of trends. I did not follow the idiots, and indeed, I hardly knew, from day to day, what they were saying. Just not being an idiot would put me on top. Curiously, although I found “development economics” interesting, and useful because it could help the poor, I did not even slightly want to get rich. This was although I was quite well-acquainted with how it was done. I simply liked many rich people, whom I found more honest and candid than many poor people. So, for a while, I hung out with the rich, until I began to find them boring.

And I read Austrian School economics, chiefly von Hayek and von Mises. I soon realized that they were almost always right, even the minor ones, whereas the establishment mediocrities were generally wrong. The media, then as now, were routinely reporting the opposite of the truth, so that “the voting masses” were routinely on the side of the idiots.

I, personally, am opposed to “AI,” because it is ugly, and will not become prettier after countless trillions have been invested in it, by the idiots. Curiously, it is flourishing because it is, indisputably, monstrously ugly. But the investments of so many idiots will soon make it crash.

“What an idiot I have been!”

This is something one perhaps thinks, increasingly, as one grows past the age when any of one’s mistakes are retrievable. It certainly is the case with moi. At first, one became acquainted with the “face-grabber.” This was something spontaneous, and could not be concealed, though with practice one learnt to disguise the indications. Much worse than moral lapses, or the commission of actual sins, were the mistakes that we found humiliating, but not exceptionally evil. Of course, it was not possible to humiliate oneself without committing some sort of sin, but witnesses were not inclined to condemn, if they had the option of laughing. This is how one should greet slippage on a banana peel. The trick is to laugh oneself, first, though a concussion might make this difficult.

More commonly, however, one tried to hide what one had done, because it was more significant, morally, than mere clumsiness. One prefers to display one’s idiocy over something that doesn’t matter. There need be no risible scandal as when, perhaps, more information is disclosed.

But humiliation can generally be avoided if a person is instinctively honest. Honesty requires humility, along with other painful virtues, which become less painful the more they are practiced. Too, when experience is obtained, or perhaps has been acquired by reading the instructions, one may actually reduce the number of one’s silly mistakes, or failures of charity. A child would be lucky to have a parent or other guardian who teaches him how to do this: to “fess up” easily, and voluntarily.

The larger category of stupid, dishonest, and habitual mistakes, though very costly to ourselves and to others, are not such as we are apt to confess. They are things that “everyone was doing,” and only now has been exposed as a wicked thing to do. For instance, one has voted for a Communist, a Nazi, or a central bank governor.

It does not seem an appropriate day to dwell on one, or on any, of my old “U.E.L.” themes. I might have made the subject the omnipresent, and not very well-meaning, “bullshit” that filled the Declaration of Independence. We might have examined it phrase by phrase, while asking of each: “Is, or was this, entirely true?” Or was it rather recklessly exaggerated?

Is the modern, i.e. revolutionary, “democratic” government of the United States not more oppressive than that of George Third? Are the taxes now more onerous, and the regulations more comprehensive? Is inflation now substantially higher, and has government lying become more and more the rule?

But this approach would be unfair. Essentially all political expostulations are bullshit, and in honesty, ought to be withdrawn.

That, indeed, was the message of the Loyalists, who at the time were also making the same rude points, against the British Crown. But “liberty” and “independence” are rhetorical instruments, after all, and often morally worthless. A few more words would be necessary to make them mean anything.

What I found most impressive about the American Revolution was the relative humility of the Founders. Washington and John Adams were especially fine examples. In addition to pledging their lives for the cause — and now we are approaching sincerity — most of these leaders were not blowhards. Madison, for instance, or Ben Franklin, hoped, but did not really expect the Revolution to last, even if it was at first successful. They were thus not proper “Enlightenment” characters (such as soon came to France with their guillotines and other “humane and egalitarian” equipment). They had read something in history and political philosophy, and were, in the main, reasonably sane.

Too, they were fortunately up against the most sane and reasonable Empire that, perhaps, the world had ever seen; unless the comparison is to the Mauryan Dynasty of Chandragupta and Ashoka. But that charming history is mostly bullshit, too.

If you were to consult my “Late Loyalist” ancestor, Stetson Holmes (1753–1824), driven out of Massachusetts first, and then out of the Republic of Vermont, the Revolutionists could be pretty rough and nasty — even though he had fought in the Continental Army. He had to cross Maine on foot with his family (lots of trees and untamed animals), then find a fishing boat that would take them to Nova Scotia. …

Why?

He just wouldn’t be “politically correct” when he was arguing with his neighbours. He was just too American.

I learn from the Internet that it will be the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, on July 4th, which is tomorrow. It was incamminated by Thomas Jefferson — not a man I would trust, then or now, although my own mother was a fan of his. The Continental Congress adopted this resolution, which I think was an error, for it split the British Empire. I would have been holding out for an “inner union” of, say, England, Wales, Scotland, and Eire, with the American and Canadian  provinces, plus Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and a grand affiliation of protectorates, including a united India. The French and Spanish could have been seen off, ever thereafter.

Of course this Empire wouldn’t be a democracy, for it is a very wicked idea. I don’t think even Mr Jefferson was silly enough to buy into democracy. I am with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Saint Thomas, and the many other “enemies of the people” who are radically opposed. Even the revolutionary United States kept its distance from this horrible idea, and was rather intended as a nation under God. Founded by practising Christians, firmly within the traditions of Judaeo-Christianity, she would be a Republic rather than the Monarchy she was leaving. But a Republic consisting of many “diverse” states, individually represented in its Senate.

The Holy Roman Empire had seven Electors, most of the time, which was perhaps too many. Now the United States has a few hundred million, which is, proportionally, an even greater mistake. I agree with Glenn Reynolds and others that they should give serious thought to abrogating their Seventeenth Amendment, by which they surrendered their Senate to the mob. It was meant by the Founding Fathers to represent the States, not the people, who get to individually vote in the House of Representatives, and then can be ignored. (The Electoral College was meant to prevent popular voting for a President.)

But “less is more” — i.e. the flip side of voting is more peace and freedom. The violent chaos that accompanies most political developments should be omitted. It is only Christ who needs to be consulted, and not Crucified; or poisoned, as the democrats did with Socrates.

In an Idlepost entitled “Proudly unCanadian,” published on the 4th of July last year, I expressed my shame in our national existence. This year, as well as repeating it, let me add my very low opinion of Charles III, our reigning monarch. He has proclaimed himself the defender of our multiple faiths. This includes those “faiths” which violently oppose Christianity. I think Gavin Ashenden, Chaplain to our beloved Late Majesty the Queen, has adequately expressed the truth about this little man. The breach of his Coronation Oath leaves us with no alternative but to despise him. I think even the Muslims, and other multi-culturals he thinks that he is serving, understand this.

Hence, my slight revision of last year’s commination:

Not only can I now recite the whole Roman alphabet — and in the correct order, from ay to zed, the way I did as a clever wee schoolboy in a Pakistani kindergarten (where “British class” biscuits were supplied) — but I have been avoiding the Internet, and attempting to read beuks. These turn out to be so much better, even in translation from Slavic languages.

Mikhail Bulgakov (the inventor of the “bandy legs sign” as a young venereologist) is my necessary author for this purpose. His interactions with one Joseph Stalin in later life (though not much later, for he perished well before old age) interfered with his career as one of that century’s most talented writers, and also as a droll humourist, almost equal to Gogol. His great posthumous novel, The Master and Margarita, remains in paperback print, and a wonderful array of surreal tales and plays awaits those who speak Russian. I am quite envious of them. Too, he could sing baritone in the opera.

But he was born in Kiev, of a Russian family, and so has been “unpersoned” by the counter-revolutionary Ukrainians. They seem to have removed his statue, and possibly the Bulgakov Museum behind it, entirely without the help of Russian drones. His satirical works usefully made not only Communism, but general liberal nihilism, into farce, but did not win him prizes. Mr Stalin, one of the more militant opponents of whiteness, disliked his celebration of the White Guards, against the Red Guards; and Mr Bulgakov had a preternatural tendency to political incorrectitude.

Nevertheless, Stalin was afflicted with a tiny particle of literary taste. He did not have Bulgakov summarily shot, as he did with most other reactionary literary figures. Bulgakov had to make his own lethal arrangements

The Master novel accomplishes something not attempted since the inept Immanuel Kant. Rather than wasting time, lingering over proofs of the existence of God, Bulgakov proves the existence of the Devil. What a perfect concession to modern sensibilities! Philosophical readers should examine these, urgently.

One, — and I, especially — have always thought of himself as a party man. Indeed, while reclining on the floor the other day, trying to recite the Roman alphabet, the question of what party I belonged to came briefly to the fore. I realized that I had never found a party that would accept me, in any of my conditions, even though they will accept anyone who has sent them money, and does not make public statements that are too embarrassing.

But I do not send money for any political cause, and I trust that my latest stroke-like experience will be a transient phenomenon.

The important thing is not to get medical attention. Interventions of that sort seldom turn out well; and are even less likely to work than a political intervention. Fortunately, I live in Canada, where the only medical service one can get promptly is “assistance in dying,” or an abortion.

But back to my political party. It is true I am an exponent of “Extreme Rightness,” and a practitioner, for I tend to be right on every policy subject; the opposite of a socialist, who pretty invariably exhibits “Extreme Wrongness.”

Mr  Javier Milei, who is currently pulling Argentina out of the ditch, explained this perfectly:

“At one point I thought being on the left was a mental problem. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming. It never worked anywhere, but they refuse to accept it. Therefore I thought it was a kind of block that prevents them from seeing the numbers. The lefties hate numbers, the way they hate bathing. …

“However, what I discovered is that being on the left is a disease of the soul. The left is built on envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law. Lefties are very violent, and since they have no way to answer to arguments, they go for physical violence. They immediately resort to all kinds of physical violence because they are unable to refute arguments.”

This is also what I have found, consistently, over many decades of political controversy. But “Conservative” parties tend to be almost as deluded as self-styled “Liberal” parties. Anarchism might be attractive, except it always swings left. I think Distributism is preferable, but typically disappears because it does not reward power corruptly.

Still: call me a Distributist.