Essays in Idleness

All politics is essentially Socialist. It all works on the assumption that we can know what’s what, and can do something about it. Whereas, in a more candid analysis, we can’t.

The Law of Paradox is perhaps our most important scientific discovery yet to be made. It holds that what we get will be the opposite of what we were expecting, including all those exceptions that we were anticipating. It is the reason why, for instance, the present accelerating population decline came after a generation of tedious warnings about a population explosion; why nuclear war will never happen, even though increased radiation levels would have been a boon to human health; why a dearth of carbon dioxide threatens the world’s agricultural production; why microplastics and oil spills will come to our rescue; why global warming will end in a new ice age; thus why sea levels will fall, leaving huge seaside conurbations far inland; and why the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup.

It is why the record of our material expansion is the tale of our spiritual diminution. It is why the “Internet of Things” is more disappointing than the sprawling “Internet of Nothings,” and “Artificial Intelligence” is so provocatively stupid.

It is because of my preternatural (though not supernatural) appreciation of paradox that I am generally right about most trends, and the consequences of events; whereas the experts tend to be wrong, or rather, are always wrong. For them to be wrong so consistently suggests they are taking supernatural hints, i.e. from the Devil. Indeed, what the Devil predicts is always the glib.

(My Iron Law of Paradox is incidentally closely related to my Paradoxical Law of Irony.)

A friend, who makes colourful predictions from his readings in the Book of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, has also a success rate of zero-point-zero. He should give it up.

Saint Mark also recommends he desist, in Chapter 13:

“But of that day or hour no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father. … For ye know not when the time is.”