Essays in Idleness

“I am, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the old school; — the school of Walter Scott, and Homer.” I copied this motto into one of my adolescent notebooks.

My own education in fanaticism was conducted and directed by John Ruskin, about that age of fourteen. To him I owe my continuing depreciation of Renaissance and Modern Art, even of the greatest draughtsman, Rubens; though truth to tell, I despise the Pre-Raphaelites, too, and tend to dismiss them as sentimental vomit.

Ruskin was, however, my Western drawing master for rocks, rivers, trees, and ferns, in addition to the Eastern masters, and I read his instructive, fanatical works quite irresponsibly. He delivered me into J. M. W. Turner’s hands, so that I spent too much of my time in England in the Turner galleries.

I even discovered Marcel Proust there, when I found that he was another Ruskin fanatic.

Indeed, what I liked chiefly about Ruskin, was his fanaticism. It is why I was also mesmerized by Ezra Pound. I was under the growing apprehension that all the great artists were fanatics, of one sort or another, and the poets, too, and of course the “fifth gospel” of J. S. Bach, as it had been called by my saintly Aunt Mildred in Cape Breton, the organist. Perhaps fanaticism runs in my family.

As gentle reader may know, the Unicorn is distinguished by the horn in the middle of his brow. He was apparently first spotted in the Vth century, if one believes in art history. He can be caught and tamed only by virgins, and when his horn is dipped in water, can nullify any poison. The reason for this is perfectly obvious. Consult those pictures in which the Unicorn is resting his head in the lap of Mary.

The Council of Trent prohibited unicorn hunting in 1563.

The last time I presented a sheep’s head recipe for St Andrew’s Day was towards the end of a previous century (the XXth). I generally don’t like to eat anyone’s head, so gentle reader may consider me a cissy; but if, like me, you had once mistakenly ordered monkey brains, in Erzurum, through artlessness in Turkish (I wasn’t even trying), you would appreciate the need not to order food by pointing garrulously at a menu. Another dining tip would be to avoid Erzurum, where I was chased by a knife-wielding Infidel. Too, an English girl I met was raped there, in full daylight in the middle of the town. It was probably more agreeable there before the several Musulman massacres annihilated the previous Armenian population. (The survivors were sent on death marches into e.g. the Syrian desert.)

As patron saint of Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, fishmongers, and gouty old men (and also of Scotland — Latha fèill Anndrais sona dhuibh!) he stands today at our entrance into a new liturgical year. It is the Feast of Saint Andrew, don’t you know, and he is the apostle who counsels us to be good disciples, and in all behaviour, tame.

Christians, including Armenians, are allowed to defend themselves, however, and one might read a new book, The Two Swords of Christ, by that brilliant American Copt, Raymond Ibrahim. It is a remarkably lively, and scholarly account, of the warrior monks who shielded Christians from the warriors of the Islamic Jihad, over the many centuries before we became sucks; and specifically the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, to whom we owe the survival of Christendom through centuries of relentless, violent attacks. It concludes a marvellous historical trilogy.

Mr Ibrahim’s point is that of Christ, recorded in St Luke 22:38. He acknowledged two swords — a spiritual and a physical — and both must be unsheathed. For Christ did not tell us to become doormats.

As William Blake added, “Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand / Till we have built Jerusalem.” For Blake, too, was a muscular Christian.

Let me boast, that since the last time I asked for donations, several years ago, my donations have actually declined. Anyone doing a financial analysis of the success of Essays in Idleness must therefore conclude that there hasn’t been any, or that my progress has been in reverse — unlike the progress of secular institutional learning, as I argued in my Catholic Thing column this morning. For universities, and more generally for liberalism, it has been strength to strength, for at least eight hundred years. By now, they have become filthy, stinking rich. Perhaps I am jealous.

Rather than surrender the fight entirely, I have decided to ask for donations again. Would gentle reader be so kind, on this “Bleck Friday”? … (For variety, I have spelt it in a South Effrican accent.)

She, or he, may actually save a possibly substantial amount on the day. Just calculate how much money you might have wasted on trivialities, divide by two, then send only half to me. (See Donations, ribbon line, above.) This is a fine bargain, for my Idleposts offer at least twice the triviality.

Perhaps I should warn you, given the supplementary decline of my physical condition, that I might die before the next Bleck Friday, in which case my patrons may be appalled. But in that case, at least my Essays would stop diminishing! My executor could then apply any leftovers to my estate, which, for a change, would grow!

Small children are just like puppies, I am told. But they are the opposite, perhaps, of kitty cats. If one does a child a nice turn, it will certainly be repaid with a lifetime of gratitude. (Whereas, cats are only grateful for liver.) In fact, humans can be perverse, and I would never bet on their acceptable behaviour, except in the case of saints.

However, one of my own saintly qualities was exposed, some sixty-six years ago, by some generous Americans. This was actually nearer to Christmas, which comes to Americans shortly after Thanksgiving, and follows them to countries like Pakistan. My family had also arrived in this Asiatic country, where my father had been given a job at the College of Art in Lahore. But he wasn’t going to work at that moment, because he was very ill with jaundice or whatever, and delirious on a charpoy my mama had set up for him, for she was a trained nurse. Papa looked, to a child, and also to his wife, as if he would die of his disease, unless he starved to death first. (Pakistan was not a welfare state; his pay was cut off because he was sick.)

Poor mama was almost hysterically displeased with these circumstances. But she obeyed me when I told her what papa would say: “Be bwave!” She had only come to this theatrically poor country (she didn’t say “shithole”!) a few months before, knew approximately no one in it, and could not speak Urdu or Punjabi. But she located a foreign doctor, who warned her that her husband might die. (His name was memorable: Doctor Seltzer.)

I later learnt how the Americans in that town found out about us. The news was actually carried abroad by our servant, Bill, a loyal Pakistani (Catholic) Christian who, of course, now wasn’t being paid either. He apparently took the news to the Christian servant of an American, met in the labyrinth of Anarkali Bazaar. The response was, my mama told me, shockingly prompt. Several Yanqui Imperialists were mobilized; they suddenly descended upon our little flat in Nedous Hotel.

They swooped in on us, with bundles of cash in rupees, and mountains of expensive Yanqui food. They paid our Bill. My little wee sister got the sort of stuff a three-year-old would appreciate, including a pretty doll wearing shalwar kameez, and I got a pile of Jack-&-Jill magazines. This was nice, but what was nicer, I got a bag of Smarties. It was the size of a pillow.

From that day to this, I have been viscerally pro-American.

I enjoy, or will at least tolerate, the woolly thinking of sheep, or at less, I haven’t objected or proposed to censor it, ever. They do not shout. By contrast, my toleration of human liberals is quite finite. I have limited experience with sheep, however, though more with other New Zealanders, and it is possible that if I belonged to a sheepfold, or even hung out with one, I might formulate a stronger objection. But so long as they are providing wool, meat for mutton curries, and milk for Feta cheese, or indeed Pecorino Romano, I can enjoy brief periods in their company. I am disturbed to read there are homosexualist sheep, and other perverted animals in nature, though I’m not sure I believe it.

“Rainbow Wool” is a human organization, of course, for no sheep can be that stupid, notwithstanding, or perhaps because of, their non-participation in radical wokist, left-wing politics. However, armed with a “study” that shows up to 8 percent of rams show no interest in ewes whatever, a non-profit collaboration between Californian and German environmentalcases has been launched. This will defend assumed poofter sheep from the abattoir, by bidding against them (the abattoirs) at auctions. The females, even if sapphic, will continue to be raped and butchered, though, despite their possible progress towards feminism.

I wish to protest, for while I realize that our environmentalcases have diets low in ketones, they do not appreciate the philosophy of the Artidactyls, as I think we call the sheepy order. I assume their silent Platonism was learnt from antique Greek pastoralists, who sang to them about their ideas.

The male bachelors might just be tired of the females’ company. As I say, actually, I might be, if I were compelled to maintain any consecutive discourse with an uneducated ewe. I much prefer flirtatious (but not bestial) asides with nanny goats, with one of whom I once had a delightful conversation near Abbottabad in Pakistan.

Among my objections to “capitalism” — a specialized form of socialism, practised in the West — are the many kinds of tyranny that the “capitalists” adopt to annoy me. One might suppose they had another motive, perhaps the desire to get rich. But here is another proof of socialism, for most investors soon surrender their money. Indeed, enough “capitalists” lose their shirts, that I suspect this is the government’s real priority. It assists them in compelling obedience from some of the natural troublemakers.

A good example is the supply of door-slammers, installed probably by law throughout apartment buildings. The slamming of doors is a constant distraction to all forms of intelligent life. What was designed as a way to help bankrupt the landlords, doubles as a method to keep tenants on their toes with anxiety.

Or, the back-up warnings on every commercial vehicle, which offer a continuous irritation on waste-collection days. In a free society, anyone genuinely without the wit to get out of the way of a monstrous truck should be sacrificed on Darwinian principles. Ditto, delete the rest of health and safety regulations, which were created by the capitalist communists to, for instance, mix poisons into supermarket bread. The idea was to eliminate the many millions of little family bakeries that used to be, and, I understand, still exist in Europe. This meant enabling central distribution of bread from industrial soviets, and thus the use of poisons to preserve the loaves. Indeed, all other groceries are now warehoused in this way. No government can abide free trade, and detailed regulations are imposed to prevent it.

Which is not to say that regulations, per se, are unnecessary. It is simply wrong to allow huge governments to make the rules. They should be written for the municipal markets, by distinguished, appointive characters in the trade. But thanks to national and international permission structures, the whole world has become pre-diabetic.  A corrupt bureaucratic inspectorate, having no familiarity with anything at all, is “democratically” put in charge of everything.

I’m sure leaf-blowers can be traced to some government directive, for the idea of them is too outrageously stupid to be credited to sober people. They blow leaves around pointlessly in the autumn as they fall, replacing old-fashioned hand rakes; which are anyway still required to remove the leaf piles if they collect. This job could have been done by children, entirely without high technology, before the State began to phase children out, or washed the survivors’ little brains with communism in the public schools. The purpose of the leaf-blowers is to necessitate the importation of iIllicit immigrants — working in teams, to operate the head-splittingly loud machines which the liberals mount on their backs, that generate the powerful winds that remove the pretty seasonal leaves from the yards to nowhere in particular. Everyone should see this was a demonic plot. Although I haven’t yet been able to discern how this was legislatively imposed, some reader will surely tip me off.

A beautiful German girl — a very beautiful German girl to whom it was quite impossible to give only half-attention — once patiently explained to me the word and concept of Sitzfleisch. It might be translated into English as “sit-flesh,” but as the reader may guess this conveys an incomplete understanding. It implies sitting still, and peacefully, while using one’s soul to some purpose. A person who has this quality is blessed with a certain productive capacity; with “productivity” in reality, rather than as a pose. He is reliable, perhaps in the extreme. He does not require excitement, and can even endure boredom. He has command of himself. He is not frivolous, except by intention. I think perhaps this German maiden was recommending this quality, specifically to me.

But I, as a consequence of my adolescent Weltschmerz,  the disagreeable product of Halbbildung, could not master Sitzfleish. That is to say, the half-educated are afflicted not only with superficiality, but with a painful “awareness” of the insufficiency of the world, that masks an insufficiency in us. We are not only ignorant, but sad. Of course, we consider ourselves to be over-educated, and by current standards we probably are. Inevitably, we lack Sitzfleisch.

At the age of fifteen, “Diotima” (as I called her) already knew what I might someday learn; or should have learnt already, were my mind not constantly wandering away.

I would be more enthusiastic about making bread from sorghum flour if I “had more facilities” — to quote a delightful young man, once encountered in Bangladesh, or East Pakistan as they were then calling it, but not for long. The fellow, a converted Roman Catholic, was gleefully emigrating to Canada — “a country with very good facilities” — though, given the fact he was trying to escape Mahometanism, he was probably making a mistake.

But he wasn’t mistaken about sorghum. In Bangladesh, and all over the “undeveloping world,” including Africa but omitting the Antarctic, it is, or was, highly apparent. And with justice, for it grows well in highly saline seaside soils, prone to destructive flooding, and yet also where droughts are characteristic and endemic, such as in deserts.

Indeed, sorghum can be an unkillable weed, and I think, like einkorn and amaranth, it has innumerable other practical advantages. This includes its modestly honey-sweet yet very slightly sourish, and earthy, nutty flavour, which can be addictively attractive to those not incurably bourgeois. But tell them it is gluten-free. The only problem is that you may attract health nazis.

Alas, droughts become less frequent due to increases in the anthropic carbon supply, and the seas are not actually spreading or getting any deeper, so the coastlines of Bangladesh and most other countries are reasonably secure. (I find that I can stay ahead of most environmental issues, simply by saying the opposite of what the environmentalists are saying.) The hungry people of the world get more fulsomely and nutritiously fed, year by year.

In Canada, sorghum is more often concealed among food ingredients, than advertised. With cream, and a dollop of blueberry jam, it is even better than oatmeal porridge. Yet I find it impossible to locate sorghum in my neighbourhood “No Thrills” supermarket, where good-tasting things are quickly withdrawn. And I’m no longer mobile enough to go searching in the more expensive neighbourhoods.

So the sad truth is no sorghum sourdough for me.

“‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

So remarked Sir Winston Churchill, pausing the debate for a few years. Now Mr Tucker Carlson, and a few other irresponsible click-bators, have challenged his authority. The elegant defences of democracy that appeared post-War, thoughtfully promoted by the C.I.A., have terminated. Yes, I was brought up reading Encounter magazine, and the experience never washes out. Uncomplicated references to “the Free World,” which could be made in my childhood, are not made anymore; the Woke children have been rediscovering Communism and Perversion, together with allies Islam and anti-Semitism; and that disembodied word, “Democracy,” continues to be in vogue. Perhaps it will always be favoured among hypocrites and the morally ugly.

I am incidentally not in favour of overthrowing anyone’s constitution — any of them, even those most overflowing with glib “idealism.” The Soviet constitution was the perfect example. It had little or no influence on the conduct of Soviet law; but the ideology that it proclaimed was sufficient to condemn several tens of millions to death; or well over a hundred million if we add the other Communist regimes. The great leader who scored by far the highest number of killings — Mao Tse-Tung — still has his portrait printed on the banknotes of the People’s Republic of China.

My ambition, which I share with all decent human beings, is to have “Popular Democracies” exterminated, together with many other works of Satan. You might call me an “Enemy of Democracy,” and certainly of the ideologies and abominations that it has invariably advanced — in the twenty-five centuries since Cleisthenes began tinkering with the Athenian mind.

Parliaments are nice, and sometimes voting is unfortunately necessary while resisting revolution. But from the moment tootling for “Socialism,” “Progress,” and “Democracy” begins, we should reach for our Brownings.

For as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante reasoned, monarchy is best!

The problem with democracy is the people. Democracy hucksters will argue that their self-interests are best served if they are asked about them frequently, by politicians pledged to serve; and that as things like war and civil violence are never in their interest, peace and all the other goods of nature will prevail. However, as mediaeval Christendom was convinced, the people are evil. They are not just predominantly evil, but the thing itself since the fall of man. When consulted, the people’s psychotic qualities often come to the fore. This is true more generally, in what we like to think are venial or lesser evils; “me bads.” These are confused with things that aren’t actually evil. Conversely, often the people demand things that they don’t really want, such as genuine liberty, equality, and fraternity. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence or integrity knows that they actually want to have all the good things, the consumable luxuries, the consumer durables, and more of them than anyone else. They would prefer that the others — the strangers of all kinds but also their friends — were punished. Too, being brutish and moronic, they are instinctively divisive, as not only the “best” Christians, but also Thomas Hobbes, was eager to point out. And given a Saviour, sent demonstrably from God in Heaven, our “free choice” will be to crucify Him. This is the human, or humanist, way.

It is why all the wise and thoughtful political philosophers have rejected democracy, and why it is overruled in detail, in all reasonable courts of law. They aren’t glib, they pursue justice. Rhetorically, of course, democracy is fostered, but only among the “experts,” who are no philosophers. That is to say, not even fake philosophers and sophists, but paid servants of the devil, who make their business the accretion of power; they are invariably the loudest puffers of democracy. They usually know exactly what they are doing, although some of them are insane.

Politicians are, in other words, following their self-interest, remorselessly, and naturally in opposition to the interests of everyone else. That is why being a democratic politician is the quickest way to accumulate wealth, and why only the very richest politicians can be sincere.

I don’t see how this situation will change, however, in the foreseeable future.

There can be only two points-of-view on guarantees and promises: his who gives one, and his who takes one; though the views may be similar. For instance, both may be, and generally are, naïve. Acceptance may be personal, or may be “impersonal” or collective, but in either case, one is usually foolish to believe. And those believing only in themselves are the most foolish. In God we may trust, but in priestly or institutional accounts of the will of God we should “trust, but verify.” After a lifetime of broken promises, some of which were underwritten by legal or quasi-legal guarantees (marriage, for instance), perhaps I should know. Persons, even bankers and insurance agents, cannot be trusted, which is why the more respectable of them contrive to have something to lose.

As for commitments from the Vatican, … don’t get me started.

What will it actually cost us if we break our promises? By which I mean, will it ruin us? Can we, as it were, afford to lose a bet? And the other party, who takes the bet, does he take responsibility for it? He may deserve to lose. Did he calculate what he could afford, and was he prepared, like Kipling, to “never breathe a word about his loss.”

We have courts, and once had relatively fair ones. So long as this remained the case, it was possible to hope for a little justice, but even way back then, to hope for more than a little was an act of foolishness. The same was true in capital cases, and is true today. In Nigeria and dozens of other countries, the reader may slaughter whomever he pleases, without consequence, so long as he is practising a murderous religion.

A serious purpose of the law is to allow us to forgive murderers, and other felonious types. The notion that a serious crime is never committed, except incidentally against an individual victim, but always against civilization, represented by the state, has been with us whenever we were civilized. When we weren’t, we would have no alternative to — purely private — acts of revenge. Liberalism, as John Henry Newman and others have suggested, is destructive of civilization.

Among the pleasures of old age — a physical condition I had the honour of entering into, during February of 2021 — is that one is given the opportunity to give up several of one’s pleasures. This isn’t offered as a choice, however. One simply cannot do what one was, perhaps habitually, doing before; although in some cases an old pleasure is replaced by a new one. I used to love long walks, for instance. Now I do short walks, followed by a fall, and then, all the excitement of getting up again. Since my son got me a “walker” — or “stroller” as I call it — this pleasure, too, has almost departed. But one gets used to not falling over, as I have now discovered.

A truly cosmic pleasure, in my former life, was reading; and somewhat ancillary to that, shopping in “beukstores.” Indeed, when compelled to live in some over-populous city, I would quickly establish where the beukstores were located, and visit them often during my daily, long-distance walks. Two features of my life assisted this compulsion. The other was my freedom from even short-term employment. For some reason, and it began long ago, I had never thought of applying for a job. Leisure was preferable. Jobs were simply supplied to me, miraculously, whenever it seemed I might need one. Indeed, sometimes they were forced upon me, by the terminally well-intended, with moral arguments as discouraging as decisive.. For I was born into that class of men who simply won’t “sign on” to the dole. (This bespeaks white privilege.)

For nearly five years I have not been in a beukstore, except when some saintly person gives me a lift; for I live in Parkdale — Vallis Hortensis as I call it — a part of this vastly populous city in which there are no beukstores; and in which none is conceivable, because no one reads anything intentionally, except filthy trash. (There used to be some who could read a newspaper.)

Being without new beuks is certainly an advantage, which the Catholic Church once recognized, for she created the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, to help her members stay away from works deemed heretical or immoral. A quick glance at universal modern conditions will tell you it is gone, and the Wicked Pedia will tell you it was “cancelled” in 1966. By coincidence, even though not yet a Catholic, I decided not to obtain beuks published after the moon landing in 1969; for it seemed that the readable and interesting ones had already appeared.

I had already noticed that the selection of beuks, generally, had much contracted in the beukstores, to make room for gifts and beverages, so I suppose that my not being able to visit them is no great loss. For now that one is old, one realizes, … what?