Stephen Roney's Blog, page 178

Rittenhouse Breaks Down on the Stand

 

Watching Kyle Rittenhouse break into tears on the witness stand today impressed me once again with the reality of evil. It looks like pure evil that the prosecutors brought this case to trial. It was obvious from the beginning that it was self-defense, and Rittenhouse, although just a kid, behaved admirably. It is grossly unjust that he must nevertheless stand in peril of his life once again in court. The prosecutors knew this, and they went to trial for political reasons. 

Go Fund Me was even worse. They did what they could to prevent Rittenhouse from raising funds to defend himself.

The experience of the pandemic has also opened my eyes. I thought that, faced with this crisis, we would put aside personal ambitions and pull together. My assumption, although I should have known better, was that we were all, or at least those in power were, basically good people who sometimes give in to temptations. This is clearly not so. To the contrary, the average person in power is apparently depraved. It seems obvious that the politicians, several drug companies, the deep state, saw instead an opportunity to exploit.

Was this always the case? Or have we, in recent generations, failed to inculcate our ruling class with the basics of morality? I think the latter.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Many Ingenious Lovely Things Are Gone

 

Pop!

Remembrance Day is coming in two days. Remembrance Day, and the First World War, have always been special to me. The First World War is when the dream of inevitable progress died, when civilization lost its way. It has not recovered. 

W.B. Yeats, for me, captures it best, in his poem “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”:

We too had many pretty toys when young: 

A law indifferent to blame or praise, 

To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong 

Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays; 

Public opinion ripening for so long 

We thought it would outlive all future days. 

O what fine thought we had because we thought 

That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned, 

And a great army but a showy thing; 

What matter that no cannon had been turned 

Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king 

Thought that unless a little powder burned 

The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting 

And yet it lack all glory; and perchance 

The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.

Yet by 1919 this confidence was shattered:

[We] planned to bring the world under a rule, 

Who are but weasels fighting in a hole….

Learn that we were crack−pated when we dreamed.

We, who seven years ago 

Talked of honour and of truth, 

Shriek with pleasure if we show 

The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste-Land,” from the same time, covers the same ground. Hell had broken loose.

Although I never knew it personally, I yearn for the beauty and sense of honour and order of the old Austro-Hungarian culture, or the Ottoman, or the Imperial Russian, or the Britain of the huge pink maps. Of course they had their own deep flaws, but the foundation was sound. Since then we have lost our civilizational anchors and our pole star.

I gather I am not alone; this seems to be the attraction to “steampunk.” 

It might have meant something, the terrible sacrifice and the cataclysm of the First World War, if it had indeed been “the war to end all wars.” That last hope was seemingly shattered by World War II.

But perhaps, in the end, it was the war that ended wars. Since 1945, we have not had another big one. If we take the Second World War as the continuation of the first, left unfinished, after a truce of twenty years, the prolonged holocaust ended with the atom bomb. And since then, terrified as we all are of the atom bomb, it has kept us on our best behaviour. Because any war between nuclear powers would now be mutual assured destruction, nobody has since started a big, total, war, and nobody is going to start one with another nuclear power. Although there is a risk of miscalculation, if more countries had nuclear weapons, we might have fewer wars. We seem to be replacing war with technological and economic competition: first with the “space race.”

If only we could now bring back what we have lost….

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Beloved

 

The NYT has been trying to make censorship a left-wing issue by pointing out that Glenn Youngkin's campaign ran an approving ad in which a mother wanted Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, removed from her child's classroom because of some lurid scenes.

I think anyone who has actually read the novel would see her point. I certainly would not want my child reading it. Censorship over sexual content, in books intended for minors, is entirely proper and, indeed, necessary.

Terry MacAuliffe vetoed the attempt to remove the novel from the classroom.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

COP26

 

[image error] The biggest news from the conference is that Biden allegedly farted. Next biggest is that he fell asleep...

Comrade Xerxes complains that the recent COP26 climate conference got too little accomplished.

I agree that COP26 was just a circus and accomplishes nothing.

The problem is the tragedy of the commons. Because the atmosphere is a shared resource, there is incentive for each country to grab what they can before the other guy does. It takes great altruism—or naivite--to cripple one’s economy for the sake of the group, knowing as soon as you do the next country will just grab whatever is left on the table. 

No such summit is ever likely to accomplish anything, and it is no surprise that none has. Surely the leaders know it. Surely Greta Thunberg knows it. They’re all conning us.

Xerxes goes too far in lamenting that “no nation” has reduced emissions. The US, the UK, and the EU all have. The problem is, this is because manufacturing has been relocating to China and other developing countries. Great stat to cite to get re-elected, but the real net effect is a rise in global emissions, because the finished goods must now be transported long distances. And energy production is less efficient in these countries. The move is also suicidal should war ever come with China.

Any further restrictions on carbon emissions in developed countries will have the same effect: more industry moves to countries with cheaper energy, and emissions rise.

The only real way to fight greenhouse gases is with improved technology. If world leaders were serious about the problem, they would fund promising scientific research: nuclear fusion, producing fuel with algae, more efficient solar cells, and so forth. Not including subsidizing solar and wind installations or electric vehicles, so long as these are not economically viable on their own merits—because this raises energy prices, and again drives industry to more polluting regions. 

And, realistically, the problem probably can be solved this way: by developing a better energy source. We probably already have the technology to move to safe nuclear power. There is no value but graft in wasting money elsewhere.

The conference’s agreement to end deforestation is another bit of empty virtue-signalling. Deforestation is going to end regardless of government action. It ended decades ago in the developed world, as marginal farmland, no longer needed, went out of production. The movement of communication online has reduced the demand for pulp and paper, and this decline will probably continue.

Xerxes has a different solution to all: depopulation. I am surprised anyone any longer believes in it. 

To begin with, depopulation by government action is unethical. I think we established with the defeat of Nazism that governments cannot legitimately tinker in the reproductive rights of citizens. Forced abortion or sterilization is not okay.

Ethical government means seeking the greatest good for the greatest number. Denying life itself to future generations is denying them the most self-evident good, and their most fundamental right. To deny life to some so that others can have more material comforts is patently unjust. It is a violation of Kant’s categorical imperative, that people must always be an end, not a means.

Even if that equation made ethical sense, it is fairly clear from the evidence that people’s happiness does not improve with more material goods. So it’s all downside.

It is not even clear that a larger population means less for everyone. Every new person is both a producer and a consumer. He or she will, on average, add more to the common wealth than they take out. Some of the richest countries are also the most densely populated: the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Switzerland. As the population of the world has been growing rapidly, the rate of poverty and of hunger has been declining rapidly. 

But, you may argue, we could run out of resources.

We could; but this is pretty theoretical. The price of commodities in general has also been declining. Over history, the individual human footprint keeps shrinking. The point of technology is that it allows us to do more with less.

So long as the politicians don’t mess us up.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Near-Death Experience

 

As I rode down through old York town

I saw a maid with ravishing raven hair

All dressed in Spanish.

I felt the pistol at my hip,

Still warm from the other guy.

But then a vagrant putto dodged out from some blind alley

Between two graffitied buildings

And took dead aim.

I awoke days later at Toronto Western.

The doctors told me I’d been lucky

The arrow was deflected by the poem in my pocket

Next to my heart.

-- Stephen Kent Roney 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Beatitudes as Diagnosis

 

At the moment in the Catholic mass when the wine is consecrated, the priest used to say Christ’s blood was shed “for all.” Pope Benedict corrected this to say “for many,” in accordance with the Bible.

The difference is critical, Jesus did not come for all; all will not be saved. Nothing could be clearer in the gospels. “For all” was a bit of the “happy happy joy joy” Christianity I find so offensive.

Jesus announces in detail whom he has come for, and who will be saved, in the Beatitudes.

They read like a guide to what psychiatry commonly calls depression; almost like something from the DSM, the North American psychiatric standard text.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted. 

Blessed are the gentle,

for they shall inherit the earth.  

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,

for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (--Matthew 5:3-122, WEB)

Meditate on this checklist:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 

1. Are you poor in spirit? Does material poverty somewhat appeal to you, and ostentation make you uneasy? Do you fast?

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted. 

2. Are you often sad? Are you sad apart from circumstances? Are you sad for others? Do you feel the weight of the world’s troubles?

Blessed are the gentle,

for they shall inherit the earth.  

3. The word translated here as “gentle” is ambiguous: King James has it as “meek,” others as “powerless.” “Low self-esteem” is a reasonable approximation. Do you feel powerless? Do you avoid drawing attention to yourself? Do you prefer to step lightly in the world?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,

for they shall be filled.

4. Is seeing justice done important to you? If playing a game, do you always follow the rules? Does it upset you to see others treated unfairly?

Blessed are the merciful,

for they shall obtain mercy.

5. Are you magnanimous in victory? Do you dislike having to impose discipline on others?

Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they shall see God.

6. Do you tend to say what you think, unfiltered? Or do you tend to have motives for your words or actions? Do you calculate their effect on others?

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called children of God.

7. “Blessed are the peacemakers” does not mean being diplomatic, and certainly does not mean pacifism. “Peacemaker” was a common title for a Roman Emperor in the First Century—most of whom were professional soldiers. A policeman is a “peace officer.” Do you foment and encourage conflict among others, or do you try to treat everyone fairly and keep the peace?

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

8. Have you ever been criticized or punished for doing what you thought was the moral thing to do? Have you been forced by others into moral dilemmas? Have you persisted despite such criticism or punishment?

Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

9. Have you been falsely accused, accused of deeds or traits that are not your own? Has this happened often?

If you can answer yes to more than, say, three or four of these questions, you are a melancholic. 

It should be encouraging to hear that you will inherit heaven and earth. Keep that in mind when you are depressed.

Luke’s gospel goes on to give contra-indications. Being rich, well-fed, and happy are not signs of God’s favour. No happy-happy joy-joy here.

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,

    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

The surest sign of a good man is that he has adamant enemies.

Jesus goes on to advise actions. Consider this a prescription.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

“Good deeds” does not mean the obvious, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and such. For these deeds, Jesus says later, are to be done in secret. Moreover, the poor and persecuted described here are not in a position to do much in this regard.

Rather, he means works of art; also commonly referred to with words cognate to “deeds”: "art," “works,” “plays”, “essays,” “opera.” He identifies melancholics as true prophets. Their work is to do what prophets do: to speak out. Just as salt brings savour out in food, just as the light of a lamp makes things clear, they shed light on the world, and, specifically, make the world more beautiful.

And that is what you are commissioned to do if you are melancholic. Contrary to crude popular opinion, true art is not “self-expression.” It is inspiration, speaking in a voice you do not recognize as your own. If you are a melancholic artist, it is the voice of God.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Root and STEM

 

When I taught in China back in the early 90s, I was appalled to learn that the university had no Department of Humanities. Purely a mechanistic view of the cosmos and of human life, it seemed. When the Berlin Wall fell, the countries of Eastern Europe understood the problem: their scholars rushed to the West to get a grounding in the Humanities. Unfortunately, they were disappointed.

I am alarmed to see that Humanities is now also no longer taught in high schools in Tennessee. A list of subject areas ESL students must be prepared for gives Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Science. 

A disease is spreading, and it is deadly. It is deadly not just to democracy, but to civilization itself.

If our culture were sane, Humanities would be the entire high school curriculum.

After the basic skills of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, taught to mastery in elementary school, the Humanities is the one thing everyone needs to study. It is the reason and grounding for everything else. If you do not pass it on, individuals despair and civilization dies.

Today, we waste our students’ time for four to six years, years when they are full of energy and desperate to learn. Many turn off at just this point. 

Math? It is a common observation, a truism, that we never use our high school algebra, trigonometry, or calculus again. So what is the justification for teaching it? Geometry would be useful—to teach logic. But it is never presented in those terms; just as a set of axioms that obviously do not relate to the real world.

Science as taught in the schools is the antithesis of science. It is taught as a body of knowledge; stuff to memorize. This specific knowledge, taught as certain in high school, is probably false and will probably be shown by science to be false in time. Much of it is already known to be false while the textbook is still in circulation. The essence of science is to doubt you know anything, and to test everything; it is the scientific method. That is not taught. If experiments are done, the result is always predetermined. Anyone genuinely likely to excel in science is only likely to be turned off it in high school.

Language Arts? The grammar of English should have already been learned in elementary school. As to other languages, if it is a matter of learning to speak them—our current emphasis—the classroom is the worst place to do so. The place to learn a language is by speaking it regularly, something the classroom is designed to prevent. Language, when taught as a Humanity, is an exercise in logic: the old grammar-translation method. It is no longer taught in such terms.

Social Science? A mathematician back in the fifties made the observation that anything that has ever been discovered by the Social Sciences is either trivial, or it is wrong. This is still true, and will forever be true. Rather than adding to our knowledge, the social sciences have subtracted from it, by introducing serious errors to the popular mind. Human beings are not objects, and cannot be studied as objects. Even if this were possible, it would be morally offensive. And teaching Social Science is therefore teaching immorality.

The wealthy and the upper classes pay huge sums to educate their own children at private schools that do concentrate on the Humanities: on logic, philosophy, rhetoric, debate, history, classical literature. They know what they are doing. The British Empire was built on the quality of its private schools. The modern public school systems of North America were intentionally designed, in the early twentieth century, to produce cogs for the industrial machine. What they teach is submission and acceptance. The Humanities teach leadership; for they teach how to think. As Confucius said, “a superior man is not a tool.” Without the Humanities, the schools are turning out workers, meant as a means, not an end.

The world may need more STEM. But the problem with STEM is that whatever is taught today is obsolete tomorrow. To teach it at the high school level is a waste of time. Even to teach it later, at university, when specialization is possible, is probably too soon. It needs to be taught continually, over one’s professional career. Something now entirely possible, with distance education.

But what is needed even more than STEM, and all the more so in times of rapid change,  is minds that are adaptable, have initiative, and know the ultimate goal.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Little Trouble in Big China?

 

Peng Shuai

Xi Jingping did not attend the recent environmental summit in Edinburgh. This is responsible of him: airplane fuel generates a lot of greenhouse gases, and no agreement reached at such meetings is ever acted upon.

But Xi has not left China for any reason for over a year and nine months. This suggests something else: that he is at risk of losing his position. 

When Mao Zedong died, he left Hua Guofeng as his designated successor. Reportedly, Hua lost his primacy to Deng Xiaoping while he was on a foreign trip. When the cat’s away … Xi may feel himself vulnerable to something similar.

My Chinese students long ago said there was a sort of social contract in China: so long as everyone kept getting more prosperous, nobody was going to shake things up. But there is no residual good will. The Chinese economy looks shaky; it looks as though a real estate bubble is bursting. On top of COVID and a string of natural disasters.

I have long thought China’s sabre-rattling also suggested some power struggle at the top. A retired Australian general notes that, if China wants to take Taiwan, they are pretty much obliged for strategic reasons first to take out the US bases in Okinawa, South Korea, and Guam. But if they do this, surely, as with Pearl Harbor, they are going to have a Big War, probably sucking in not just the US, but Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NATO. It seems to me improbable that they would risk it. Or risk trying to take Taiwan without it. The threats are for local consumption.

In possibly related news, former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli has been accused online by tennis star Peng Shuai of having forced her into a sexual relationship.

It seems unlikely that Peng would have dared to post this unless she thought she had some high-level protection. Accusations of corruption are a standard tool in Chinese power struggles; Xi Jingping has done this systematically. But the gravity of the sexual charge, against someone at such a high level, is unprecedented. 

Since he is retired, it seems unlikely Zhang himself is the real target; more likely someone who is his current sponsor or mentor. I do not know who that would be, but either way, it seems to speak again of a serious power struggle at the top.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Turtle Island

 

Turtle Island (the cosmos) as traditionally depicted in India. The Chinese use a similar turtle image.

Contrary to popular belief, Canada’s “First Nations” did not themselves traditionally claim to be aboriginal to the lands where they currently live. No doubt many do now, but probably only for political reasons.

Origins, a Canadian history textbook, justifies the claim with a Blackfoot creation myth, that has mankind created by the god Napi on Turtle Island.

The problem here is the common modern misinterpretation of “Turtle Island” to mean North America.

If the myth is ancient, those who composed it would not have such knowledge of geography. They would not understand “Turtle Island” to mean one of seven existing continents. To them, it meant “the cosmos,” the ordered universe. The story means only that man appeared in the physical world.  The waters surrounding it are, just as for the Chinese or the ancient Greeks, the waters of chaos.

Vine Deloria, the celebrated Sioux historian, mocks the idea that Indians had no recollection of coming from elsewhere: of some tribes, he claims, “they remember that we came across the Atlantic as refugees from some struggle, then came down the St. Lawrence River, and so forth.” Father LeClercq discovered such a legend among the Micmac. Alexander Mackenzie discovered a legend among the Chipewyan (Dene) that they had come from afar across a “vast lake.” And of course the Inuit/Eskimo retain ties across the Arctic.

In any case, virtually no aboriginal group, excluding those in the Pacific Northwest, has remained in the same general area even since the beginning of European settlement. They were, after all, nomadic cultures. The Blackfeet, who have the Napi creation legend cited above, are known to have arrived on the prairies in the 18th century, coming from an earlier home in the northeastern United States. They are less aboriginal to Canada than the French or English.

Almost certainly, all Indians are, like all European Canadians, originally immigrants from somewhere else. And in recent times.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Global Warming Is Global

 

Nigel Farage argues that the impressive reduction in carbon emissions that the US, UK, and Canada boast about is actually due to moving manufacturing to other countries, notably China. The probable result is a net rise in global carbon emissions, as we must now also burn fuel to transport the goods to more distant markets.

What we have is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Nobody is ultimately responsible for the atmosphere, and so we will never get coordinated action.

The only real solution to the problem of global warming is improved technology. I expect it will come: nuclear fusion, generating fuel with algae, carbon capture technologies.

The most useful thing the Canadian government could do, perhaps, is to offer funding for such research.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.