Essays in Idleness

As today is Lady Day, there must be about 280 shopping days left until Christmas. Thanks most recently to the Internet, however, it shouldn’t be such a rush, for by almost any website you will be bombarded with shopping suggestions, and provided with the instantaneous electronic means to order the advertised products — for yourself, or perhaps for delivery to another. The current very high inflation rate need not discourage you, for consumer credit is available to practically anyone, and legally to most.

Clearly, any difficulties that could obstruct a thoroughgoing materialism have been confronted, by our political and economical masters, and eliminated. That is why governments — working through captive media on frightening environmental contentions that are almost entirely false — are able to justify their rôle in placing restrictions. (Nature used to do this without government help.)

The world is not, in fact, running out of any key commodities; nor is it threatened, at least in the West, with any significant pollution issues (unless we count general vulgarity as an issue). But through their pretence that only they can save us (a claim previously monopolized by God), comprehensive regulations are now placed on everything we used to buy and sell. The invention of the Wuhan Batflu provided the last link in the chain of our biomedical dictatorship.

Now, not everyone will agree with my characterization of recent modernity; indeed, some might argue that I am exaggerating. To make my argument in telling detail would require more time on the Internet than I am prepared to spare; and so I will be satisfied with the mere gist of an argument.

One material innovation more than any other has perhaps been responsible. I’m inclined to demonize sliced bread. Or perhaps it was computer digitalization — which I regret because I am an analogue kind of guy. Whichever the case, the advance of technology has made possible an incomparable decline in the quality of our lives, if the human soul is entered into the equation. An inverse correlation with material progress may be observed across the cultural spectrum; for instance the consistent decline of educational standards when spending on schools is increased.

While subsidiarity may be presented as the opposite of extravagant central planning, it can also be misunderstood as the parsimonious material alternative. The general diffusion of property, such that each may own three acres and a milch cow, does not quite represent it. The spiritual dimension must be considered. It assumes that humans let more into their brains than prospects for material acquisition.

It is this fashionable drive for money and power that makes us — both capitalists and socialists — inferior to the animals.

Mother Mary, pray for us.