Essays in Idleness

One does well to examine the Song of Roland (the French, XIth century, chanson de geste) before jumping to conclusions about war. I particularly recommend Scott Moncrieff’s translation (1919), which had an introduction by G. K. Chesterton; it has been anthologized elsewhere. He neither glorifies nor condemns war, and actually, neither did Roland in the “splendidly inconclusive conclusion.” War contains both good and evil characters and events, and is never finished in this world. Any final victory must wait patiently on God. So long as there are insane barbarians (the present regime in Iran offers an unambiguous example) they will have to be fought. It is inappropriate to “make peace” with such a vicious and deceitful enemy. And when there is fighting, there are casualties. The Lord — and Christ is not a milquetoast — does not require us to omit this task, and did not condemn it in His Bible. Those who fight for the right, deserve honour; those who insist on “peace, peace” regardless of circumstances are cowards who deserve contempt.

It is sad that there are people, even Catholics, who don’t understand this.

While trying to recover the use of my brain, lately, I have been investing time and effort in reading authors whose surnames begin with “G” — Gobineau, Goethe, Guicciardini. I wish I could do this in French, German, and Italian, respectively, but even after whipping myself, I find that my linguistic abilities fall short. At the moment I am reading Francesco Guicciardini’s review of the Discourses of Machiavelli (his older contemporary, who was considering the historian, Livy), on the topic of the Guardianship of Freedom.

Would nobles or plebeians be the better choice for this task? And incidentally, which group is more likely to riot?

The power to arraign was balanced between both parties in ancient Rome; the consuls put down the conspiracies of the Gracchi and Catiline, and tribunes were appointed to protect the plebs, which they did with enthusiasm because they were plebs themselves.

Machiavelli would put the power of government into the hands of the plebs, given only a choice between the two, because he chiefly feared the ambitions of the nobles. Guicciardini, whom I have always preferred, would instinctively take the opposite view. He does not expect oppression from the upper-class “optimates” — who tend to favour conservatism, tradition, “culture,” and the arts — but instead, dislike pressure from the shrieking and evil populist mob.

“Well, rocks do not die, and yet they are part of nature.” My correspondent may not have seen the rocks, being crushed into gravel by a road crew with machines. Who will hear their cry, and who stand for their rights, the way the environmentalists stand for innocent vegetables and other defenceless creatures?

Granted, I am being facetious, but let us imagine instead a planet formed by processes of nature into an immense diamond in the sky, or better a Red Dwarf, such as our Sun’s nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri — as I was quite convinced until Monday evening. But this is because I failed to distinguish hardness from density, as I am prone to do. Plenty of metals out-dense a diamond; my personal preference is for gold. The luminosity of Proxima Centauri is so slight that there is risk we may bump into it, or into one of the several dozen other Red Dwarves in our vicinity, when Elon Musk develops the giant rocket that will launch us through the galaxy.

Indeed, this is one of the many worries for the near-light-speed voyages that surely he is planning. Celerity like that, and the baffling effects of velocitation, will surely expose us to a misfortunate prang along the way. It is among the reasons we may never get there; and meanwhile, that we may not even settle Mars (I add, parenthetically). For there is the question of what humans can endure, when removed from our customary bourgeois supports on interminable space missions.

Brown Dwarves are also a danger, to interstellar travellers, although they are just huge gas-bags (typically larger than Jupiter, according to another of my informants). Surprisingly, big as they are, I hadn’t noticed them until the day before yesterday.

An oversight.

Each of the items we find in nature is on an unavoidable course out of existence — which by convention we call extinction, or colloquially, death. All will, sooner or later, no longer be, although we might receive replacements. Nevertheless, material nature is tremendously insecure, and truly, “Maya,” as the Hindoo philosophers maintain in their Upanishads and Vedanta. What is our apparent reality, is merely an illusion, or as some translate, magic. The “fact” that the reader has a body, let alone a headache, is among his fantastic apparitions. Or perhaps we should be diplomatic, and call it a misunderstanding. Wait patiently, and it will pass away.