Essays in Idleness

Ann Coulter said recently, on some live blog, that since Donald Trump got himself re-elected, “every day is like Christmas.” Now, the truth is there are important differences, between “every day” and Christmas, and as a fanatic Christianist I’m bound to prefer the traditional holy days; but I know what she means.

Trump is “the exception that proves the rule” against democracy. Every few decades someone comes along who is a successful politician, without being a disgusting waste of flesh. Reagan was the last one in the United States of America, Thatcher and Churchill across the sea. None were even perfect in elections, by the way, and all had to make pitiful compromise to get anywhere near power. Mr Churchill, for instance, was severely punished by the British electorate for winning the war against Hitler. But this is not a perfect world, and we have formed the custom of taking what we get. (Sir John A. Macdonald was our last, all-round Canadian success story.)

These, including Mrs Thatcher, were great men. The fact that they were also politicians, I admit, counts seriously against them, but we must expect paradox in the annals of political events. Indeed, the fact that a man is not a psychopath puts him immediately in the front rank of the political class, but that is to concede my low expectations.

God, I would note, does not play favourites. From what I can see, He simply endures our elections, and seems to prefer random acts of kindness. He is more tolerant of democracy than I would ever be.

“The world is vile and malicious. … As soon as misfortune overtakes you there is always a friend ready to come and announce it, and probe your heart with a dagger while bidding you admire the hilt.”

These words, of the Viscountess in Balzac’s Old Goriot, fairly express my own attitude this morning, from whatever cause, as I set about writing another idle lucubration. There will always be a high society, and it will always be black and false. Those who rise in it will generally fall back on criminal behaviour, if they did not use it for their ascent. And, like Madame de Beauséant, those who have their hearts broken in high society, would be wise to flee Paris.

But there is worse than mere, mediocre high society, as we were reminded by overhearing a moment in the conversation of three of the world’s most vile and malicious dictators. The Chinese, the Russian, and the North Korean one, were chatting among themselves about their prospects of living to the age of 150, and perhaps forever, by means of organ transplants.

As one might deduce from reading That Hideous Strength — to my mind a great improvement on George Orwell’s dystopian classic — the supplier of those fresh organs would be some comparative innocents.

Any reader who is such a naif as to doubt the existence of Satan, should pause here. We already know that the “PRC” murders political prisoners; and that they extract and sell the prisoners’ fresh organs in the international medical trade; and yet we continue trading with them; while making our unctuous “human rights” declarations.

Rather than add another to this long, boring collection of hypocrises, the reader should retire now, to read Balzac, or possibly The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

That political participation — in a “modern democracy,” since time out of mind — is a wasteful and unrewarding process, encouraging almost entirely the wrong sort of people — may well be understood by now. Just look at the candidates, in almost any huge election (dominion or provincial, federal or state), and one may see the argument against voting at all, and why one ought to be uneasy before one gets robbed; and yet, “hope springs eternal.” A clear majority of voters, everywhere, don’t know any better, and despite many obviously painful experiences, subscribe to the propaganda for “progress.”

My own contribution to the democratic discussion is: “Abandon hope!” God did not, or could not possibly, wish any of his beloved children to be enmired by a wicked, secular regime. But this is inevitable, because God has granted us the freedom to make our own beds — personally and collectively. And we voluntarily lie in these Procrustian beds. He leaves us to choose between Him, and the vile regimes; and with the time to learn, and choose a better system, in which only the competent advance. He teaches us to endure.

Paradoxically, He also left instructions that we should obey the tyrants, when they are governing, and even tolerate (when possible) if they are not being especially tyrannical and corrupt. The mediaeval scholars were sensitive to the need for revolution when they have gone too far, and did realize that revolution would require direct, physical means. Communists, Nazis, and perhaps Fascists require this. Rather than plead for a pause to their evils, we might wish for their annihilation, and when there is an opportunity, participate in annihilating them. But this should apply only to the extreme cases.

It would not do to be constantly debating when the shooting should begin. One may honestly wait until the bastards come at you. It is usually enough that the citizen be well-armed, for thus are incendiaries made respectful.

Islam may never have been a religion of peace (as we will quickly learn by reading with attention the Koran and the Hadiths), but Christianity has proven that a religion can actually be peaceful, nine times out of ten.

After consulting the charts, I have had to revise the divisor I had been using for the last several years. I had been dividing the number of dollars I could find — in my pockets, pillows, and elsewhere in my flat — by twenty. This, to remain constantly reminded of the stable world, before 1914: the last year in which sanity was available to the fiscal authorities in the Western world. I found that I would now need twenty-seven dollars to match the 1914 value of one dollar, at the beginning of the XXth-century Great Inflation.

Some quick-witted gliberals will argue that the price of computers, and some other technical marvels, has actually come down. Had general inflation not been so high, they would have come down farther.

Within the British Empire, before it collapsed, our money had held its value pretty much continuously since the death of Henry VIII — the great betrayer also of the Catholic Church, and an erotic murderer. Similarly, the Middle Ages had been an age of sound money, in the main, this far west of Constantinople. Thus it was never necessary for us to collapse the money value; we (British) merely twice lapsed into worthlessness.

The modern decline in value would have been much worse except for the deflationary episodes just after the Great War, and through the Great Depression in the early ‘thirties. Indeed, except for these corrections, during which the dark, intentional Keynesian slide was resisted, the inflation multiple might be much, much higher. It is a reminder that all but one or two of our central bank governors, through the last century or so, deserved firing, and probably execution. Their job was to defend our currency, but instead they turned it into waste paper and easily corroded base metals.

So, now I am dividing my worldly substance by twenty-seven, which is more awkward than dividing by twenty, or the convenient ten times when Trudeau père was first elected. This might also be taken as a measure of our Progress. We have progressed now twenty-seven times.

My suggestion that, instead of banning cars, we should ban roads — and especially asphalt paved roads with multiple lanes — would seem to have fallen into deaf ears; and in one case, to have been received with scorn. I find this very foolish, on the part of the world, for my proposal would not only bring many economic and environmental benefits, but also contribute to universal peace.

This was an evolution of my previous suggestion that we should reverse arrangements by which car manufacturing was privatized, and mass transportation put in the public sector. That would have eliminated much noisome traffic, by assuring that socialist incompetence prevails. Anyone who wanted a new car would have to order it from the authorities, and wait for many years. Then after it finally arrived, and was started, the wheels would fall off. By comparison, privately-owned buses, trains, ferries, and aeroplanes would become cheap and efficient.

Still, the world would be too busy.

Getting rid of our (government-financed) road and highway networks would accomplish much more; and because they are made from ticky-tacky (like our suburbs), should be easy to plow up. Old Roman roads, by contrast, surfaced with cobble and brick, over many robustly thoughtful layers, might have presented a problem. (They even mixed cement into their gravel.) But today it’s just like taking down a theatre set. Blink, and it’s gone!

An extraordinary expansion of agricultural land would then be possible, in rural areas. But in urban, where roads, driveways, and parking lots now cover two-thirds of the landscape, the gains would be astounding. It would become impossible to site workplaces more than walking distance from the homes of the workers, and without loss of population the towns would quickly shrink to very manageable size. We might want to reinvent architecture.

Other messy things will be cleaned up, into the bargain. Our lives will be much less afflicted by annoying signage and advertisements when their purpose has expired. The actual restoration of “community” will proceed, when “democracy” ends and the pothole-fillers (politicians) are disemployed. Make-work governments, and taxes, too, will not be necessary, and the “welfare state” will wither away, with all its aggregate corruption.

It will be a quiet and productive life, like that of the Catholics in the Middle Ages, or the Old Order Mennonites.

One of the men who went on to found Intel predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microchip would double every year or two, leading to the continuous, exponential growth in computer power, and a splendid future for the semiconductor industry.

This was not a law of physics, but a fond business projection. Yet, in defiance of physical limitations, the prediction has been sustained into this age of three-dimensional chip stacking, and other neat tricks. Moreover, according to George Gilder’s Law, the total bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months; and to Robert Metcalf’s Law, the value of a network increases as the square of the number of its users, every eighteen months. Indeed, by consulting the Internet, it may now be possible to make one’s head explode.

There is a similar growth in scientific papers. According to a study in the Proceedings of the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences, the number of fake scientific papers published in arguably real official publications has doubled every eighteen months since 2016. This is a conservative estimate, apparently: the actual number may be much higher. Also, the proportion of submitted papers that conceal dishonesty may be increasing at a rate that is faster.

The claim that one is “following the science” is thus quite compatible with the fact that one is lying, and engaged in gratuitous deceit and fraud.

It is amusing, to students of human pain, that “AI” is costing so many jobs in firms like Amazon, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft. Of course they make more money the more people they fire. And in places like California, where “soft tech” is in charge of the economy alongside the soft heads, the economy is absolutely doomed. All the economic sages who told America to stop making things, for we could simply do “concepts” and export the dirty manufacturing jobs to low-paid peasants in the third world, were (as I first predicted one-half of a century ago) precisely wrong. For Donald Trump and I have been seeing through this moronic error for a long, long time.

We turn our collective half-attention back to the “Internet of Things.” Writing, joking, or even hallucinating in algorithms is work machines can do much better, often by factors of a million times, whereas the design and composition of physical goods, by workers merely using AI as engineers used to use their slide rules, would seem to have a future.

Best of all, the AI machines will usefully design AI machines, with detailed schemata, including perhaps some better routing, leaving us humans out of the loop. We get to use instead our distinctively superior interpersonal skills, here in the earth-world, where we do many uncomputerized things such as eat, and hang out with beers. The now increasingly jobless “expertise” people were last heard from predicting that the new schtick — machines that need more electrical power than you can shake a stick at — are about to take over. But nothing that can be gently unplugged is about to take over anything. About all this new technology will achieve, or rather compel, is the partial replacement of coal, hydro, petrol, and incidentally most solar photovoltaic panels and all wind turbines, with cheap and clean nuclear reactors.

Chou En-Lai of Chungking was reported to say, when asked his opinion of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to tell.” He was chatting with Henry Kissinger, and it is the sort of quote that is not lost but often found in translation: Chou was probably referring to more recent uprisings among the students in Paris. Still I, as a pop philodoxer, propose to take this opinion seriously for a moment.

For the French Revolution happened even more recently than the American, and historians are still out to lunch on the matter. Even those who are well-informed, disagree among themselves on whether the Revolution was a good thing. (I’m down on it myself, and routinely opposed to head-chopping, whether it is performed by Mohammedans or the French.)

Should we also be reticent with our opinions, instead of jumping to conclusions, the way Kissinger was perhaps inclined to do? But Kissinger was a German-born Jew, who realized in boyhood he would have to think quickly. Off the top of my head, I would advise to stay out of their way, when there are people trying to kill you, even wasters like Adolf, the son of Schicklgruber. (Hitler’s dad, an Austrian bureaucrat, understandably had it changed.)

I’ve tried to be on my toes about death threats myself. But what to do about people who sneak up? Even in high school I received them, though to be fair, my antagonists only promised to assassinate me if I ever came to power. Perhaps I was cowardly, to sneak away, and live a life so quiet and uncontroversial, though hardly blameless. Chou probably got death threats, too. But he was more confrontational.

He was of the school that would rather make history than read it. Yet he read a few books nonetheless, like some other murderous philodoxicists. Herr Hitler, for instance, wrote a whole book presenting his eccentric opinions.

History actually happened: this is among my religious beliefs. It is only popular ideas about what happened that change with the times.

Hofffnung is the Krautish word for “hope.” I seem to be reminded of that concept whenever I am listening to Schubert Lieder, and there are indeed at least two of them with that title, the texts respectively by Goethe and Schiller. Schiller, as is his wont, goes on a bit about what a wonderful thing hope is, and that it is not buried with the old man. But Goethe, characteristically, takes the practical tack. He asks Fortune to help him complete the task of his hands, and not to indulge vain dreams — in his garden:

“Though now but shoots, these trees / Will one day yield fruit and shade.”

Work, and genuine philosophical idleness, should be our answer to the bullshit of “idealism.” Make something real in the little time available to you; do not build fairy castles in the air … as the socialists, environmentalists, and other filth are doing. Let us not pave the countryside with vast, hideous “solar farms” — as Labour is doing in Britain, with arrogant grand national plans, on which the local people have never been consulted. They are deleting productive, arable land, that was privately-owned, in the name of “net zero.”

England, like Canada, is being crushed by “planning” in every act of a Left and “liberal” party, which won political power by lies and deceit, just as Canada’s did, and Australia’s, and the other “progressive” governments. They flaunt “principles,” every one of which they intend to betray; and spend extravagantly on useless schemes while accumulating insurmountable debt. This is the secret of their true Net Zero.

Not so much roads, per se, but paved roads, and especially, paved roads with passing lanes: this is what I’m against. For since, in childhood, I developed a fascination for Roman roads, and extended this to Persian and Greek and Egyptian, and even Mongolian “throughways,” and Chinese boulevards and canals, I have had, or used to have, almost a soft spot for the strata, in the broadest sense, or passages for innocent travel.

“Road by which all might come and go that would, / And bear our freights of worth to foreign lands,”  was how Wordsworth defined them, in one of his noble celebrations of the British Empire. It was the creation of roads, and the eclipse of piracy under force of arms, and the first bold attempt to eliminate slavery from the world — which was, even before the Pax Americana, the amazing British gift, and made them so obviously superior to all the lesser races. But time goes on, and now Britain comes to be occupied by desert savages again. Yet all civilized empires have contributed, in their time, to making the world more suitable for human habitation. This is why I am an enthusiastic imperialist.

Too, by disposition, a convinced “humanist.” I favour the human, over the machine; and when we make roads I want to walk on them, and not have to dive out of the way whenever a car comes by.

All the cars I have ever owned were die-cast; most of them were made by Messrs Dinky. This made me perhaps not the most expert automotive correspondent, even three-score years ago, when my information was more current. But in outline my prejudices are unchanged. Though I admire some cars as aesthetic objects (Morris Quads and Land Rovers for instance), and some can be useful, I am radically opposed to unnecessary speed. I prefer a vehicle that may be used as a tractor, and will go almost anywhere off-road; with parts that can not only be repaired by hand, but recreated in a workshop. Electric, “sparky cars” are too dangerous and flammable, but if we continue to use petrol my question is: can we substitute banana oil when it runs out? Or any of the seed oils that should never be used in cooking?

This is because we must do away with roads. They are the cause of many of our fiscal problems, both public and private, and are used by the state to justify aggressive and ruinous policies. Worse, the proliferation of paved roads and highways has made possible the suburbanization of our lives, and the wasteful and unpleasant use of land. I should think the traditional maximum speed — that of a horse, at a three-beat canter — should be restored, but should not have to be enforced, except perhaps on railways. Traffic lights should also be retired.

Thanks to the universal movement towards “artificial intelligence,” we have built, and are still building an environment that is suitable exclusively for sophisticated machines. Not only do these enslave their human assistants directly, but indirectly by outmoding their skills.

From finding in the Web his morning, some piece reposted after almost a decade (it was by Juliette Ochieng), I am reminded that, regardless of what I say, God is Pro-Choice! Indeed, He has told us He is pro-choice, and we could learn this by reading the Bible. (Not, however, by reading the Koran.)

“The irony of this whole matter is that God is pro-choice, not just on this matter, but on all things. That’s why He gave us free will. We can choose Him or not. We can choose life or death.”

For we preside in the court where Christ is prosecuted. The decision has been left entirely with us. This differs slightly from the demonic alternative, for whereas the true pro-choicenik may decide to let her baby live, rather than kill it, “The de facto pro-abortion stance is such that only one choice is good, right, and pro-woman: death to the baby.”

The article was entitled, “Construction and destruction: a contrast.” It begins by reviewing the five usages of the phrase “the matrix” in the KJV. The womb, the creation, and the Son of David are involved in this; “a matrix is a biological or an artificial place where beings or things are built.” Christ is building His matrix; and the Adversary is also building his matrix, his kingdom of abortion, with all its physical, economic, and political aspects.

It is the same in all our worldly choices. And what a tangled matrix we weave when we first resolve to work for the Devil; a kingdom built upon lies; of dead bodies and benighted souls.

Happy memories recur, from my spotty teaching career (I had and have no qualifications whatever) — as I hear from e.g. Polish seminarians and Maharastrian art students, upon resuming  my column in the Catholic Thing. I recommend this “back to school” piece on education through art, in the Thing today — which mentions several other unqualified philosophical types, including Plato and Friedrich Schiller.

One never knows what one may acquire in a school (from learning to social diseases), or by carefully avoiding contact with them, or even by teaching as I did, in a spotty way. My father and several ancestors before him also did this, including a marvellous lady from Ontario, out in the one-room Alberta sticks, and most, so far as I am able to discern, felt that art was superior to torture as a means of communicating truth (although both have their moments). Indeed, for starters, we must understand that “education through art” has nothing to do with its opposite, “art-based education,” which is what happens when the AI louts run it through their machines.

In England, once upon a time, there were fairly lively institutions called “free schools.” They tended to attract controversy with policies like, “don’t teach them how to read, write, or count until they beg you.” I noticed that they attracted the most interesting pupils, and least interesting parents. I imagined that, if the children of the children of these Summerhill-billies persisted, they would become wise, and then would be cancelled in every generation as they aged.