Essays in Idleness

It is foolish to declaim against “sentimentality” at Christmas, as I often do. Declaim, if you will, against false sentimentality, or even against the cheap, but not against sentiment itself, though it is sometimes noisy. When it is true, it is normally silent, and may be spookily and profoundly silent. But “gushing” or “corny” do not make it untrue. What is good commands sentiment in men with chests, has always done, and will always.

At the opening of The Abolition of Man (1943), C. S. Lewis made an attack on the progressive educationists of his day, that applies to academics in all times and places. This slim book is among those which persuade me that I should not be writing, lest I distract from more necessary authors. Read at a slight angle to the commonplace, it exposes the whole scheme of the “academic left,” that would suppress everything not materially “objective.”

As Lewis grasped, by Christian faith, there is, at the root, not a contest between two potentially valid world-views. It is explicitly an invasion of the good by the evil. Yet also it is an exposure of the good, as evil can uniquely do, when the good has been lost sight of.

The concluding book of his “space trilogy” — That Hideous Strength (1945) — is in fact the great dystopian novel for our scientistic age, and not anything by “George Orwell.” It is set with invincible aptness in the university-research world, in a “Nice” institution. Lewis does not present selfishness and hypocrisy within this environment, but the agency of Satan.

Edith Carson was the wonderful old lady with a fat fluffy grey cat, who lived next door when I was a child in Georgetown, Ontario. I do not use the term “wonderful” lightly. Mrs Carson baked a constant supply of cookies and tarts, to distribute among the neighbourhood’s children. I was a notorious suck-up to old ladies, in those days. (Still am.)

Among her many eccentricities, old Mrs Carson (whose young husband had been killed in France during the First World War; his photograph was still atop her piano) was a conservationist. She did not like to waste anything, but would collect it all neatly. She was memorably opposed to the communists, who were putting fluoride in our drinking water. And most spectacularly, upon each return from the market, her bananas and melons would be cast about her lawn and garden. This was because each must touch the earth, and she couldn’t be sure each had touched it yet, given industrial picking technology.

As for the vegetables, she grew most of them herself.

Make no mistake: she was expert in all dietary issues, and the better she was informed the more controversial her views — generally in opposition to anything “new.”

We must stop obeying the communists — I agree with Mrs Carson. Their laboratory hands tell us which of many ten-thousands of poisonous additives and preservatives will (almost certainly) not kill the average, healthy person (right away), and if they are listed in microscopic type in the least visible place on the label, may be inserted inside everything.

This, however, doesn’t interest me.

What I want to know is whether the bananas have touched the earth, yet.

Recently, when indulging in automotive travel near “Idlerton,” Ontario (a misspelt place), I spotted a dairy farm. This is not something a city boy often has an opportunity to do: most of us are of course confirmed in Environmentalism, which demands total ignorance from its votaries, unlike Christianity.

I was thinking of the Greenies as I looked at the cows.

“Oh my God!” …  (Or, “OMG!” in the liturgy of the Green religion.) … “There are cows! Cows! … I think they may be farting!”

We were proceeding towards a restaurant in inner Idlerton where we would be able to order, and eat, cows — or at least the parts of them listed on their menu. This seemed the perfect solution to me. They are quite edible. Each is an immense, rippling bundle of meat — each undulating ungulate — wrapped attractively in leather. Dairy farmers might object to the capture of their animals for eating; we will need a Green argument.

Thus we should eat only those animals designated by the government for Medical Assistance In Dying.

But a “Greenie” now tells me he has a better solution to the “methane crisis,” in which he has invested. It is to feed all the world’s beeves and milchcows the synthetic enzyme inhibitor he is selling. This “technological breakthrough” promises to reduce farting, towards, though not quite to, “net zero.”

Progressive governments are now making fart-reducing additives compulsory, so this Greenie stands to make a government-assisted fortune (until other environmentalists get his product banned). Meanwhile, at least one new department can be created (per government), to re-inspect and re-approve all cattle, after measuring the fart volume of each; all will employ professional bureaucrats (which is to say, already tested), in brand-new, managerial “chains of command,” with regulations designed to “reduce global warming.”

The price of meat will be immeasurably increased, and as in approximately 100 percent of previous Green initiatives, the environment will be actually despoiled — creating possibilities for further Green interventions.

Philip Walling calls this “part of the greatest grab of wealth in history from the mass of ordinary people to a few stupendously rich internationalist oligarchs,” &c. … But really, it is just a triumph of democracy.

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POSTSCRIPTUM. — People who have perhaps never been to the Prairies, and are less than three centuries old, may have difficulty understanding this article, along with most other things. For, before the arrival of the fascist White Man, the number of ruminants grazing these plains was very, very substantially greater. It was not just the bison. Many other ungulates were farting, and building up the soil. … It is a general problem with “climate change,” and other extreme forms of human stupidity: you must know something to escape the criminal operators who now control our environment. … But you don’t, and that’s why Justin and Jagmeet get elected.

Today is the 240th anniversary of the death of Samuel Johnson, may he rest in peace. This also makes it the 40th anniversary of the foundation of The Idler, here in Canada. It seemed, at the time, a notable coincidence, for we had not intentionally chosen this date; also, allowing for the five hour time difference from London, the presses rolled (in Brampton, Ontario), at precisely the moment Dr Johnson died, albeit 200 years later.

The point was never to get the date right, however; the times are so frequently out of joint. It was to supply Canada (and the world) with something it seemed to be missing: a publication “for those who read,” of “elevated general interest,” like the better ones we had seen from the United States and Europe. It did not seem that such a thing was available, up here in the frigid, icy north, where thought processes are slow and glacial. We did not seriously expect it to last, in this climate. Yet for almost a decade, it supplied a happy experience for the Canadian literati, and excited the horror of our Left.

My Chief Argentine Correspondent (who is not the pope, incidentally) has advised me — through his blog Quod scripsi, scripsi — against taking Artificial Intelligence to heart.

He begins by citing David Berlinsky:

“An algorithm is a finite procedure, written in a fixed symbolic vocabulary, governed by precise instructions, moving in discrete steps, 1, 2, 3 … whose execution requires no insight, cleverness, intuition, intelligence, or perspicuity, and that sooner or later comes to an end.”

This, for those who are alert, will dispose of the cult of “Artificial Intelligence.” AI hasn’t a will, or any originality; it cannot invent anything (except what is not true); it is as limiting as algorithms, programs, and applications. At best (or worst) it can only magnify many, many tedious acts of human stupidity, and make them go faster and faster. But behind everything is a little man hidden by a curtain. He is the wonderful Wizard of Oz!

My faithful Cosmolater (Carlos Caso-Rosendi) writes:

“Artificial Intelligence cannot be because intelligent thoughts are the products of a mind. Since there is no such thing as an artificial mind, there can be no such things as artificial intelligence or artificial thoughts.”

It was the same revelation about artificial life, in the ‘sixties. This could not be generated in a laboratory. Some tyros are still trying. They will always fail.

Oddly enough, a significant achievement of “intelligent design” research has been to show the impossibility of creating life. For God has put odds of ten to the ten thousandth in the way of every single step towards abiogenesis; enough to keep us busy until the end of time.

Biological life is also finite. It ends in death. And mind may not die, but cannot be touched; the life of spirit is further beyond comprehension. The spirit that animates our “artificial intelligence” project is mysteriously dark; but not therefore necessarily good. Indeed, were we not warned against it?

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A COMMENTER COMMENTS. — What AI seems to lack is desire. “All men want to know” (said Aristotle), at least before modernity encraps them. AI desires nothing, not even what it’s told to desire.

Commercialism is at its most obscene when it is allied with a spiritual festival. This is most noticeably so at Christmas, throughout what was once Christendom. I am not referring to Christmas carols or carollers, unless the tinkling is piped in recordings, and set to “repeat.” The coarse iniquity is brought home to us in the supermarkets and shopping malls, by the repertoire of pert, vacuous numbers with catchy tunes. Many of these songs, through recent decades, do not even trill “Merry Christmas,” but a frivolous, shallow, and meaningless mirth. This follows one around, while fetching groceries, like filth in one’s mouth and ears.

A violent response, such as Christ offered to the merchants and the money changers during the cleansing of the temple, will perhaps be rejected as inappropriate, but only because no temple service could be imagined in a specialized shopping domain.

The idea of shopping for gifts is, for the most part, also morally wrong. There is a traditional season of gift-giving through the twelve days of Christmas, but the replacement of the Sacrifice of the Mass on Christmas Day, by a commercial vomitation, should surely be permanently ended. Neither commerce, nor cheap sentimentality, should have been let near this rejoicing.

Depends what you mean by art. I am aware of some that might be the opposite of redemptive, including all prostituted art, such as commercial jingles and corporate design. Sometimes even that rises to clever, although never to art. On the other hand, some very simple tunes and decorations, that do not even aspire to art, are redemptive.

I was fortunate in childhood, because after Rudyard Kipling and Jules Verne, I did not graduate to The Communist Manifesto. I think I actually resisted demonic inhabitation, when young, although not consistently. Instead, my ideological consciousness was occupied by Education Through Art (1943), by the anarchist, Sir Herbert Read. My father’s had been occupied by Art in Everyday Life (Harriet Irene Goldstein, 1925), and of course, like his father, too, we were all bowled by John Ruskin. Yet not even he (Ruskin) proposed things that were inevitable, and some of his excitements now seem dreary. Outdoor and still life Sunday painting also ran along both sides of my family.

So you could say that I inherited the propensity for being “redeemed by art.” It seems to work on children, and on the mad, as well. At least, the experts have accorded it therapeutic benefits, and it has launched a few schools of immuno-engineering. Moreover, education through art was recommended, i.e. by Plato, in The Republic.

But as various of my contemporaries discovered, it is not a reliable source of income. And when it becomes a reliable source of income, it generally ceases to be art.

So much for nature. The supernatural source of redemption is Jesus Christ, who does not restrict his means of approach. He might even choose art. Ask and it shall be answered, so to speak. The redemption in art is like that in everything else, a religious phenomenon. The aesthetic dimension is, like every other aspect of beauty, sanctity, and truth, not to be sought in artistic fashions.

One of the claimed glories of our post-Christian world, is its cancellation of forgiveness. I was reading about this in an article by Laura Perrins, which I found in the (excellent) website, The Conservative Woman. She gives an account of the suicide of a young Oxford student, who had an awkward sexual encounter at the age of twenty, with a young woman who then announced that she had felt “discomfort.” His schoolmates called an inquisition, condemned him for “messing up,” and said they needed “space” from him. He appeared distraught, at this isolation. A couple of days later, he drowned himself in the Thames.

I thought of events that had happened, to me and to others, in a previous century: to men whose lives were, ever after, ruined; to several who were shamed into suicide, like rape victims, by things done to them. Already forty years ago, feminism had advanced to the point where reputations and livelihoods could be wrecked. Several persons known to me were slandered and destroyed by feckless accusations. (As Scott Symons said, back then, “There is no blood left to be shed in the battle of the sexes in Ontario.”)

Men have also done appalling things to women. (Did you know?)

But the revolutionary principle, now asphyxiating our neo-pagan society, gives the greater discomfort. It is the withdrawal of forgiveness, for all crimes — even those which were minor, or imaginary. For along with Christianity, mercy is nullified, and the world is consequently drowning in sleaze.

Once upon a time, when I was staying ever so briefly in Japan, I became confounded by everyday Japanese behaviour. Often it seemed neither rational, nor irrational; neither intelligible, nor mysterious, nor fuliginous. Reading their superb mediaeval literature in translation, especially novels from the Heian period (IXth through XIIIth centuries), I could speculate about their past and present attitudes and customs, and become lost among them. But while Japanese men were enigmatical to me, the women annulled my thoughts entirely.

Those were the days when “feminism” was at large in the West. This was supposed to be true in the East, too, thanks I suppose to neo-colonialism, or to another definition of feminism. For the Japanese woman, feminism apparently meant that women should be free of constraining tradition, and have what they want. But for the American or European woman, it meant they had declared themselves subservient to the totalitarian feminist agenda. This had made especially the young American women (“girls,” we used to call them) tedious and one-dimensional, although available for casual sex.

Whereas, when I told a “liberated” Japanese woman that I was married and had two delightful little boys, she replied, “Good men are hard to find. Women have to share them.”

It was a lyrical observation; or perhaps a deep, impenetrable flirtation. She was philosophizing, in an inscrutable way. This was a woman who had brilliantly observed that, “Democracy is impossible without slavery.”

By her inspiration I wrote a suite of poems, with the title: “Neither Monogamy nor Polygamy, but Origami.”

The Apostle, elder brother of Simon Peter, and patron of singers, fishermen and fishmongers, farm workers, and pregnant women, stands also before the gate of the new liturgical year.  (Tomorrow will be Advent Sunday.) He was the first disciple, the “Protokletos” to be called by Jesus. Saint Andrew left his nets by the Sea of Galilee to become a “fisher of men.” His earthly mission concluded on the Saltire Cross, at Patras in Achaia.

My apologies for being “down” through the month of November. Perhaps I am getting “up” again. Atypically, our weather has been glorious and warm, through the chill Canadian monsoon. But finally, we have received notice of winter.

My thoughts on the American election were published in the Catholic Thing, yesterday. They were pointedly inconsequential. I am not a democrat (upper or lower case), nor even not-a-one, but was mildly relieved by the defeat of the Woke Marxists. Also, mildly surprised, because I expected the fix would be in, again; apparently the Republicans mounted an effective ballot watch, at great expense. The Democrats spent their billion-and-a-half on Hollywood celebrities and other filth who, we learn, may not even have been voting for them.

As we have observed, previously, the future of our society does not depend on voting, but on the people. The task of Christianizing them remains urgent.

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POSTSCRIPTUM — The first thing I learn this morning, when cranking up the Internet to search for Saint Andrew, is that Catholic Online has been de-platformed by “Shopify,” one of the sponsors of Internet vileness. This was because they are pro-life, and thus not inclusive of child murderers. It is good to think that in the wake of the “far right” victory in the recent election, some retributive justice may be on the way. … Yesterday was Black Friday, which hardly matters with the Canadian post office on strike: I am anyway getting too old and feeble to beg for donations.

Perhaps I will take a little break from my Idleness, as it were, for a few days, or forever if my current illness develops unexpectedly into death. Less pleasantly, I, and we, are inundated by politics, via the American election, to the mental equivalent of a North Carolina flood. We will need some time to dry out, and make a few repairs, for instance to the buildings that floated off their foundations.

There is no point in commenting on the election. Nothing we do, or that anyone does, on our modest scale, can have an effect on “events.” It is all between cosmic forces of good and evil, and will be expressed in fresh human suffering. That is what politics can accomplish, in the Satanic strategy. Nor can the “misinformation” (or, lying) be overcome. I think the best way to understand the human dimension of this is in the Republican slogan: “No matter how much you hate the media, it’s not enough.”

In memory of “Baggins the Pharmacist.”

*

All Souls is a day in which we commemorate the dead — our dead, our own death to come, and death generally. We celebrate these things joyfully. …

A most exhilarating spectacle came to me, on a card sent by a couple in Dunrobin, Ontario. I am privileged to receive not only generous donations, for my idleness, but often, to find the cheques and money orders enclosed in beautiful cards and letters. This one contained a watercolour reproduction, “Serene Bay,” by the California painter, Dennis A. Francesconi.

He became a mouth painter in response to a terrible water-skiing accident, which left him “C-5” quadriplegic at age seventeen. But dissatisfied with his “mobility issues,” and without use of his hands, he decided to master penmanship by mouth. Then he took up drawing. His artist-wife Kristi comes into this somehow, and his extraordinary sense of colour seems to have found itself. He also removed himself from public support.

Thanks to the Internet, I quickly learnt about him and about the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. It is an association that itself inspires, consisting of people making original works of beauty, rather than just whining for money. At their website one may review a catalogue of other such painters, in India, especially, and in almost every other country.

Dennis writes that by helping others in similar situations, “one begins to truly understand why all of this has happened in the first place.”