We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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From Babel to Dragomans
Bernard Lewis
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2004
Two passages from this collection of essays catch the eye for quotation. The first is from the author himself, written in 1999, in an essay entitled The Taxonomy of Group Hatred:
Let me begin with a proposition that may seem outrageous: to hate the other, the outsider, the one who is different, who looks different, sounds different, smells different; to hate, fear and mistrust the other is natural and normal – natural and normal, that is to say, among baboons and other gregarious animals, or in the more primitive forms of human existence, such as forest tribes, cave-dwellers and the like. Unfortunately it survives into later forms of human development. It survives in even the most advanced and sophisticated civilised societies. It is, and we should not disguise this from ourselves, a very basic human instinct, not just human, but going back beyond our most primitive ancestors to their animal predecessors. The instinct is there, and it comes out in all sorts of unexpected situations. To pretend it does not exist and that it is some sort of ideological aberration cannot lead anywhere useful.
The second is itself a quotation, from the Baghdad-born conservative British historian Elie Kedourie (1926-92), and is the epigraph of Lewis’s essay Islam and the West:
There was nothing unreasonable in believing that the Muslim world would attain the power and prosperity of Europe by the same methods Europe had used, and that this could be done without endangering any of the essential values of Islam.
Sad to say, I have encountered the work of Bernard Lewis late in the lives of both of us, but this collection of essays written during the last fifty years, between 1953 and 2003, provides some samples to encourage investigation of his more extended productions and here I can only discuss a sample of his samples. His territory is what used to be called the Near and Middle East, that area of Asia (like Europe, a strictly non-Islamic term) extending from Turkey to Pakistan. It is probably best to say at once, for those who do not know it, or others who might think that I was trying to conceal a relevant fact, that Bernard Lewis is Jewish, though how “observant” I do not know and cannot infer from these essays. The xenophobia, elucidated in his first quotation and amply displayed in his subject matter, past and present, does not lead him to lose hope in the fulfilment of the belief stated in the second. Yet his explanation of how Islam and the “West” (another non-Islamic term) fundamentally differ in their political philosophies makes it clear how difficult such a fulfilment will be. → Continue reading: East is East and West is West
This is the year that Denys Watkins-Pritchard was born, one hundred years ago, a minor children’s author who bought joy to many schoolboys lurking around public libraries. Although Tolkien was the pre-eminent fantasy author, there were others to delve into on rainy afternoons, and under the pseudonym of ‘BB’, Watkins-Pritchard produced his own elegies to the passing of a pre-industrial England.
The most famous books were The Little Grey Men and The Little Grey Men Go Down The Bright Stream. The adventures of the four last gnomes in England, with the fantastical names of Cloudberry, Dodder, Sneezewort and Baldmoney, and their escape to a rural Ireland remind me of the ‘rural retreat’ that pervaded English literature from the beginning of the industrial age. As with the Cottingley Fairies, that famous fraud perpetrated on the gullible, BB recounted seeing a gnome:
The seeds of the idea for The Little Grey Men were sown when, as a small child, BB saw ‘a diminutive being.3 It had a round, very red, bearded face about the size of a small crab apple. It wasn’t a dream I can still see the little red astonished face.’
When myths and fairie-tales wove a stronger spell on the populace, brought up on rural tales of an idyllic past, the ring of authenticity provided that extra magical effect for the young audience, an extension of Peter Pan into real life.
There is a strand of merging reality and fantasy in British children’s books and plays that can be traced to J.M. Barrie and probably precedes his Neverland. This proved a strong influence throughout the twentieth century and ‘BB’ tapped into the long retreat of magic that was to pervade the work of Alan Garner as well. Some may explain this as the workings of modernity or industrialism or empire but these authors wished to infuse their own pasts with a magical glow and pass it on to new audiences as part of their long summer childhood.
Sometimes, as I take the Bluebell Light Railway, I can imagine that it is passing through the Forest of Boland.
Relieved as I am temporarily am of my Cultural and Educational obligations, I have resumed contributing to Ubersportingpundit, which is bossed by Scott Wickstein. Yesterday I did a somewhat belated piece about the first weekend of the Six Nations rugby tournament, on the Saturday of which Wales beat England 11-9. Wales had not beaten England in Wales in this fixture since nineteen ninety something, and the Welsh were very eager for their side to win, and more to the point, they rightly sensed that this year, they had their best chance for years.
Just how eager they were for a victory I had not realised, until I followed up this link, from a commenter at UbSpPu:
A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles after his team beat England, police confirmed today.
Why did he do that?
It was reported that the man told his friends: “If Wales win I’ll cut my own balls off.”
Perhaps his idea was that when England duly won, again, he would be able to console himself by saying: “Well, if Wales had won I would have had to cut off my balls, so thank goodness they did not win.” If so, the plan went badly wrong.
After the 11-9 victory in the Six Nations clash, the man is reported to have gone outside and severed his testicles before bringing them back into the club to show fellow drinkers.
So much for the Welsh desire to win rugby matches. The story ends with the voice of typical killjoy Welsh puritanism:
A local was reported as saying that the man was on medication and should not have been drinking.
As Dave Barry would say, under a headline about creeping fascism: “What, suddenly you’re not allowed to chop you own balls off?” Amazingly, Samizdata now has a link to this severed testicles report, and, as yet, Dave Barry seems not to.
If England beat France next Sunday, I intend to celebrate by cutting my toe nails.
British citizens living abroad in Spain, as many now do, may be barred from voting in the forthcoming European Referendum, according to this article in the Daily Telegraph filed a few days ago. I hope the article turns out to be wrong, if only because the margins deciding this vital poll may be quite thin, as I fear during my gloomier moments. There are hundreds of thousands of Brits, many retirees, who have forsaken these shores for sunnier climes to the south. It would be unconscionable but entirely in keeping with how the EU operates, if they were to be denied the chance to have their say.
I have a sick feeling in my stomach that in the year we mark the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar, in which Admiral Nelson vanquished an early form of European transnationalism, the fate of British independence could be sealed due in part to a shoddily run referendum. I fervently hope I am dead wrong and there is high turnout for this poll when held.
“This is why all goods must have a price set on them; for then there will always be exchange and, if so, association of man with man.”
Aristotle, quoted in Nicomanchean Ethics.
As an ugly woman, I totally agree with everything that Brian is saying. However, Pynksparx, you are a bitchass and me and my posse are coming to kick your ass. I may be ugly as sin, hairy and around 200lbs, but at least I own my own corporation, have a cushy 6 figure job at another corporation, am rich, and YOU’RE NOT.
– Brian’s Culture Blog (and Brian’s Education Blog come to that) is still non-functioning for new postings, but old postings can still be reached via the archives and can still receive comments. That, from “Tali”, concerning an August 23rd 2003 posting tactfully entitled Why expensive clothes rescue ugly men but not ugly women is the Culture Blog’s most recent comment.
A few years ago I spent a week on a small sailing yacht off England’s South Coast, training for a sailing examination which, I am proud to say, I passed. I subsequently enjoyed plenty of good times afloat, even including a gruelling but fun trip across to France and back, sailing across some of the busiest shipping lanes at night. Assuming I am not flat broke after completing my current house move (gulp), this is a hobby I intend to seriously pursue.
What anyone who has taken part in this great activity will tell you is how tough sailing can be on the human body if you have been sailing in rough weather for any length of time. After one particularly tough week, I felt more physically drained than at any time I can recall. Which makes me awestruck at the achievement today of 28-year-old Ellen MacArthur, who has just set the world record for fastest single-handed non-stop trip around the world.
Her vessel is a huge trimaran, fitted with rope winches the size of small barrels, the latest satellite navigation technology, a mast more than 100 feet tall and made of super-light material. These modern vessels are incredibly fast although they lack some of the rapier-sharp elegance of an America’s Cup 12-metre.
Will it be possible to squeeze even further speed gains from modern yachts? Is there a limit to how fast these modern boats can go? I don’t know, but I guess this amazing Derbyshire lass is going to have a lot of fun trying to find out. (Maybe she should team up with Bert Rutan).
And this being a libertarian blog, I ought to mention that of course, Miss MacArthur seems blissfully unaware that her behaviour demonstrates the sort of risk-embracing attitude increasingly frowned upon in today’s nanny state Britain, as this article makes clear.
But now is not the time to draw great cultural insights from what has happened. Instead, I am going to raise a glass to someone who has shown enormous courage, tenacity and flair.
Update: A commenter asked what my sailing qualifications are and where I got them. I am a Day Skipper, trained by this excellent sea school in Portsmouth and I recommend them. I intend to follow this course with what is called a “Coastal Skipper” course and eventually, a “Yachtmaster”, giving me the ability to sail across the ocean. Modern insurance and growing state regulations require you to have at least one person skippering a boat with proper qualifications. Alas the pastime is getting more closely regulated with time.
Oh, and for those that wonder what is the “point” of Ellen MacArthur’s trip, my reply is simple: it is the thrill of demonstrating human efficacy and daring against heavy odds. I celebrate it as much as I celebrate Messner’s climb of Everest without artificial oxygen or Rutan’s space flight feats last year.
Being a casual and undisciplined surfer of the net means that I often get guided towards stories right in front of me, and very late, by somewhat circuitous routes. For instance, I only got to this as a result of Harry Hutton linking to a James Lileks piece in the Washington Times. But never mind, I got there:
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.
Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.
The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.
She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her “profile” and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.
Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.
This is as classic a case of an ( I presume) unintended consequences as I have ever encountered, and it is an unintended consequence of two opinions both of which I hold myself. First, I do think that prostitution should indeed not be illegal, and second, in the absence of the abolition of state welfare, I do think that persistent welfare claimants should be obliged to lower their sights about what work they are willing to accept. Very unemployed information technology professionals should not lounge around watching day time television for year after year until such time as someone finally offers them a job in the information technology profession.
So, add to all of the above a tiny pepper shake of that Germanic manic logic of the sort that we all know about from our history books, and you get: be a prostitute, or lose your benefits. Amy Alkon, commenting on this post, explained why being a prostitute can be a fine and noble thing and can have very good consequences for society, but she surely did not mean this
That is the trouble with micro-managerially interventionist welfare (or attempted welfare) states. Arguments have a tendency to degenerate into whether any and every imaginable sort of human behaviour or employment or enjoyment should be either (a) illegal or (b) compulsory. (c) Take it or leave it/your choice/we do not care/enjoy it – shun it – it makes no difference to us/you decide . . . has a way of getting squeezed out.
This is an interesting titbit, in today’s Guardian:
Peter Mandelson has attacked the BBC’s coverage of Europe and accused Today presenter John Humphrys of “virulently anti-European views”.
In a letter to BBC chairman Michael Grade, Mr Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, says the corporation has a “specific problem with the anti-European bias of some presenters” and said it was failing in its charter obligation to promote understanding of European affairs.
I seldom listen to the Today show, but it is clear from further remarks of Mandelson’s that the Guardian goes on to quote that what Mandelson means by “anti-European views” is “anti-EU” views, which is a typically sneaky piece of EUrophilia. Has Humphrys been denouncing French cuisine, or Italian opera, or German engineering? Has he been saying that the French are all rude, the Italians rotten at driving, and the Germans all crypto-Nazis under a veneer of politeness. Has he been saying bad things about Estonians? No, of course not.
What Mandelson has accused Humphrys of is making EUroscepticism sound convincing, in the following rather interesting way:
The former trade secretary, who was appointed to the European commission last year, says the BBC gives too much coverage to moderate Eurosceptics and not enough airtime to extreme Eurosceptics such as UKIP.
So Mandelson has now become a UKIP supporter. How is that going to look? No doubt it is all part of some cunning plan designed to split the anti-EU camp and present it as all bonkers, xenophobic, etc., but it sounds to me like a somewhat high risk strategy. What if UKIP gets more airtime, in accordance with Mandelson’s demands, and uses it to be rather persuasive?
I wonder if Mandelson also thinks that this man should have more airtime?
People love to demonize greedy bosses who don’t care for their workers. However, after going through this bout of downsizing my company, I know that my surviving employees are not unhappy about the change, because it was accompanied by a renewed sense of discipline and focus. Employees – or, at least, my employees – have understood and responded positively to their boss’ determination to succeed financially. A boss who tolerates low financial returns will not deliver the wherewithal to provide raises and job security. In retrospect, my biggest sin was not in laying people off during my bout of downsizing – despite the pain involved – but in not demanding enough of them or myself previously. In short, I should have been more greedy … I would have been more socially useful.
– Friedrich Blowhard last Saturday, in the course of explaining why he has been obliged to stop blogging for a while
… is also sauce for the gander, so the old saying goes.
The preposterous EU proposal to extend the ban the symbols of the German Worker’s National Socialist Party that is already law in France, Germany and elsewhere, has prompted a move to also ban communist and socialist symbols.
So now let us also ban Imperial Roman symbols (they were a slave owning political system), Christian symbols (Inquisitions, religious wars and sundry other nastiness), Confederate Flags… oh hell, let’s just ban all symbols except the ‘peace symbol’ and the EU symbol.
Via Rex Curry.
The cover of print version of The Economist is titled ‘Taking Britain’s Liberties’ and the issue discusses many of the very serious abridgements of our civil rights that have recently taken place.
But rather than link to any specific article, what interests me is that the truly grave situation is finally ‘front page news’ in a fairly mainstream publication. It is nothing less than amazing that it has taken this long for the seriousness of the situation to reach the collective editorial consciousness of any significant element of the media outside the blogosphere and other elements of the activist fringe.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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