Essays in Idleness

In golf, a competitive sport I have managed to avoid, I gather the trick is to get the lower score, or the lowest to win the match or set a record. I will not say that this is boring. I have known people who enjoyed golf, even played it, and one of them tells me it is a glorious excuse for idleness in the fresh country air; though to be a spectator at a golf tournament, well, one should get a life. I’m sure there is an argument for baseball, as opposed to cricket, if one is a participant, outdoors. Football, of course, does not need this argument, for it has cheerleaders, for instance those attached to the Dallas Cowboys. I’ve often wondered what they will shout after Texas goes Mussulman. (Suggestion: “I slam, / You slam, / We all slam, / For Islam!”)

But once, in that ancient time before even the Idler magazine began, I had the opportunity to speak with the formidable George Grant in Halifax, where he’d been teaching. I had already been writing for the newspapers, and so, given our respective métiers, we fell into a comparison of the two “professions.” We were soon discussing: which is the lower form of human life? I of course said it was journalism, from my experience; but from his, it appeared that university professors sank lower.

Grant, with his superior intellect, quickly won the contest, however. His winning stroke was that even politicians exist on a higher moral plane, when running for public office. It is because a “professional politician” will at least keep his nose clean, and otherwise try to exhibit some commonplace, family values. This is often necessary to his deceit. He might go to further lengths by concealing such practices as fraud or adultery, until he has acquired a little charisma.

Neither journalists nor professors are obliged to do this. But professors win by obtaining tenure.

One of my heroes, Sōetsu Yanagi (1889–1961), was the author of the conception embodied in the book, The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. It was adapted into English by my hero, the potter Bernard Leach, in 1972 — a year when I actually visited Japan and at last became fully aware of the little town of Mashiko. This in turn was the location of the kama, or family kiln, of Shoji Hamada, yet another of my heroes. Yanagi’s son, Sori Yanagi, became an industrial designer, for the same reason as my father, James Warren of Canada, whose love of Japanese objects and fine craftsmanship was communicated to me from early childhood.

Yanagi was the spiritual founder of the (Buddhist) Mingei movement in the 1920s, a term he invented for the art of everyday people. My papa acquired similar ideals from a Minnesota book, by Harriet and Vetta Goldstein, published about then, which I mentioned two years ago in this space. And through many other authors we may trace the mission of aesthetic simplicity back through the Middle Ages, both in the East and the West.

This movement is not the sort of thing to be managed by a bureaucracy, like those of government and big business, both of which instinctively ignore it, or worse. Too, it is not a philosophy, unless on Yanagi’s terms, for he avoided use of formulaic language. The craftsmen in both hemispheres cannot organize themselves, because they are instinctively anonymous. Their standard of beauty is unregulated, because drawn exclusively from nature and made from natural materials. It is not “flashy” except for the absence of commercial flash, which can be shocking sometimes.

It speaks to us through patterns, which we can see and know, in the heart; for the things that are made are not intended to make the craftsman famous, or even rich. They are designed only to be useful, and to last.

The Beauty of Everyday Things was the title given to the latest translation of this work, mass-produced by Penguins last year.

“Hands to work and mind to God,” was how it was expressed by my papa’s beloved Shakers, whose works were also unsigned.

On Valentine’s Day we, or perhaps only some of us, like to glance again over our old Ovid, which we had in school and was “previously loved” when we were teen-aged. Alas, these days it only reminds me how far my Latin has decayed — which is a much different feeling from that inspired by the crisp ingenious verse I first encountered as a schoolboy.

For in the time since, not only has Ovid faded from my lips, but from the laziness of an inconstant devotion I have come to accept his diminished reputation. We are taught, if taught at all in school any more, to assume that he must be writing a form of pornography, perhaps allied with sophisticated learning, but using that only as an excuse. I remembered that a scandal of two millennia ago had him banished from Rome, to some wretched cottage by the Black Sea; but any great poet is a candidate for political exile. Fortunately, I had a very fine Latin mistress, at the time, the kindly Mrs Hansen, who would not let me fall into crude misunderstandings, and who supported my proper enthusiasm for art, including the Artis Amatoriae.

Ovid was fastidious. He had nothing to do with harlots. His standards were cultivated, and quite specifically he was looking for a docta puella, for a girl with a mind and with whom an intelligent conversation could be had. He expected her not only to speak, but to speak mellifluously, and be familiar with Callimachus, Anacreon, Sappho. Beyond this, she should know how to walk, how to laugh; and how to be elegant in dress and person. He is not simply trying to avoid disease, but actively to resist everything that is low and ugly.

The poets of the T’ang Dynasty, or of Heian Japan, were as one in this with the poets of civilized Rome. Poetry raises everyone’s consciousness. On Valentine’s, I remember how a young Chinese lady, crossing a busy intersection in the gruelling heat of Hong Kong, seemed to levitate slightly above the filthy street. She would have received elaborate training in comportment, from childhood; and lo, I was being exposed to the grace of a superior culture.

The chief advantage of socialism, and of every other “popular” and “progressive” ideal (these are terms of art), is that they destroy wealth, both individually, among all working and investing individuals, and at large. This must be qualified, however, for the much-diminished aggregate of all remaining wealth is consolidated in an “elite” ruling class. Alas, in places like Venezuela and Cuba, these people may then also lose their wealth, come the genuine revolution, or an invasion.

It is good that the people do not become too rich. This spoils them. We should all know what happens when people become spoilt. Excess money, especially in a post-Christian culture where there are few examples or mechanisms for giving it away to the poor, or building beautiful temples and monuments, leads to liberalism and immorality. Reckless spending is the only option the rich person has left. We see this immediately in our media and Internet: thousands of brutally obscene suggestions for how to waste a bit more money, or to go on an explosive binge. Buy a yacht?

With impoverishment, on the other hand, the people must work harder and ever more pointlessly, without hope of getting a reward. They do not have the time to indulge in colosally stupid, unphilosophical thoughts, such as “equality.” Everyone has anyway become more equal; equally hungry, and equally slipping into despair. We should all be pleased to see the Canadian economy, for instance, slumping under the misrulership of the Liberal Party. It gives us so many reasons to indulge our hatred for Donald Trump. For we can now see that everything he does makes the American citizen richer; and that inevitably means, richer than us. He is disequalizing.

And he is just so crass.

But don’t panic. All is secretly well. Trump has been governing by Presidential Decree, without reliable support from Congress. His Republican Party is cowardly, about doing those controversial things that would secure change. So everything Trumpian will evaporate when he is gone, and everything else be back to “business as usual.”

We should be more selective when criticizing what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” As America’s young and impressive Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, tried to explain to “media” recently, most of the waste can be plainly attributed to political interference in the weapons-buying process; to “chopping and changing” on orders for tanks, jets, missiles, &c, thus adding substantially to delays and then to cost overruns. But as usual, under progressive socialism, the people and companies that make these useful things are blamed for inefficiencies in their production.

For, once politicians are involved, “democratically” representing the financial interests of the people who paid to get them elected, and making their own embarrassing, amateur guesses about what the technology might be good for, corruption and ignorance become the general rule.

Alas, without capital punishment, the courts cannot hope to control this aspect of criminal behaviour. Let the people who know what they are doing make all the craft decisions, unhindered by the corrupt. (And may the supply of politicians be whittled down.)

Good administrators will be poor but honest. The soldiering class should seek honour, not wealth; and conquest in preference to kickbacks. We need to maintain a force that is terrifying, but cannot be terrified too easily.

War, of course, can be a lot of fun, once one is committed to it (read some military memoirs!); but like any participant blood sport, its purpose should be victory. To which end, military expenditure must be as grand and wasteful as necessary. (“No price too high!” was the phrase that got Canada through the last World War.)

Should God be with us, as He must be if we have not parted from His company ourselves, we will be in that happy state promised to the prophet, Isaiah: “When thou shalt pass through the waters, I will be with thee, … and when thou shalt walk in the fire, thou shalt not be burnt.” God is speaking of His Church, even in Old Testament times, in the Christian interpretation (for Christians have always been very Jewish in this); but also we understand the promise literally, and mystically, and having political implications. And it is repeated, by Christ, when He comes down from Heaven:

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The simplicity of this has been confusing to many. We think that God must be doing something, with His creatures; that a performance is necessary when they are helped. And when He doesn’t do anything, or anything visible and audible to us, the atheists come forward, telling us to disbelieve. (Now, disbelief is doing something, by replacing faith.) This is the curious truth: that faith requires no action. It is only bad faith that leads to complications.

All of our foolish reforms require action, and continue to summon our squalid efforts, until we abandon them and they disappear. This is why monarchy is so much closer to godliness than democracy. A good king does not do anything at all — beyond following the law he has inherited, and the ceremonies that go with them — unless he is compelled to act by “events.” (For instance, defend his nation from invasion, or civil war.) There are bad kings, of course, but not anything like as many as there are bad “popular” governments, rife with corrupt and self-serving busybodies. These are ever trying on something new and revolutionary, rather than much-needed restorations.

The law in a good kingdom is the ancient law, founded in divine justice, then tried and tested through many generations. Only the world’s vicious idiots are campaigning to write new law.

Wiarton Willie, up in Bruce County, was unable to see his shadow this morning, thus portending an early spring for Ontario. He is consulted every year at Candlemas — or, Groundhog Day, as it is known to my (very secular) fellow provincials. Punxsutawney Phil has more famously performed the same function in the American state of Pennsylvania. That Wiarton Willie has been consistently more reliable than the scientific meteorologists, is reported in all our local media, which, in turn, are notoriously unreliable.

Shubenacadie Sam in Hants County, Nova Scotia, and Fred la Marmotte in the Gaspésie of Quebec, have agreed with Willie’s projection, as have other animals including Lucy the Lobster in Canada’s Far East. Thus, I begin to suspect that all are in the pay of our perpetual Liberal government. Woodchucks out west, such as Okanagan Okie, have meanwhile suspiciously confirmed this, by expressing their dissent. Prime Minister Carney will thus assign them six more weeks of winter.

This is significant, for it has been quite brutally cold, lately — indeed, below zero on the white man’s thermometer.

As I try to explain to my critics, at least one of whom insists on reminding me that I am a member of the political “far right,” I am actually right about everything, and opposed to everything wrong. He is the opposite, as I think he should agree: Left, and wrong, in all of his judgements. He is, however, opposed to all “labels” when they are applied to himself, except for those he happens to find flattering, and thinks those he refuses to use correctly cannot possibly apply to him. But to far right people, instead, his allegations will somehow always stick, and he wanders gratuitously from one insulting term to another, and tells me to “shut up” in response to each of my refutations. Except for nominal, accidentally truthful remarks, his every statement of fact is a bare-faced lie.

This is inevitable, I would conclude, when one is in the service of Satan, the Father of Lies — as everyone on the Left has been (or Whig, as they were called in Doctor Johnson’s day). But it is boring to repeat this observation constantly. I do not like to be dull, which is why I only say it sometimes; and try not to resort to the legion of synonyms.

It is said that one should look for stupidity, rather than for evil, in an opponent, even when writing new Dunciads. Plato is sometimes mentioned as author of this “fine point,” although in my experience neither Socrates, nor Plato, nor even Xenophon, was so naïve. They realized that absolute stupidity — corresponding to “absolute zero” on our temperature scale — is also the benchmark for evil. You can’t get the one without getting the other.

Thanks to high technology, we are finally able to achieve absolute zero.