Thursday 19 January 2023
The value of things we shall never find
We must make it our business to search for the things that we shall never find. After the full summing-up something always remains. It is only that that is of value.
Hugh Walpole - Wintersmoon (1928)
The search is where the value is to be found, the search for what remains to be found. The search never ends of course, but politically there is no longer any desire to search. To search in this probing, analytical, investigational sense is no longer fashionable. It is not even allowed into the political arena.
Disraeli’s Great Game has become too old to search for anything better. It is reduced to recalling the simple, failed nostrums of the past. The Great Game has become senile, an endless dribble of elaborations tottering round the old familiar nostrum of equality. Levelling Up is a senile political nostrum. Net Zero is senile political nostrum. We see little else in a senile political age.
Diversity, gender politics, race politics, all reflect this weirdly senile game which once meant so much. Even recycling reflects it. Garbage must go round in circles, as if junk must have an egalitarian destiny equal to anything not yet junk.
As for climate change – even the climate has to become strictly egalitarian. Nobody must ever feel disadvantaged by unexpected changes in climate. Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts, banish them all in the name of equal treatment.
Even opinions, lived experiences, emotional needs, the magical and the mystical have to be placed on an equal footing with established facts, scientific knowledge and the most obvious, most basic facts of life. More than equal in many cases.
Oddly enough, egalitarian nostrums are allowed to be superior to every other mode of thought. Which seems inconsistent - but senility is inconsistent.
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2 comments:
It seems equality is an excellent stage-act if you want to earn a living in politics. The poor and disadvantaged are kept in hope, and the rich are allowed to feel virtuous and keep what they have because it is portrayed as levelling up.
Meanwhile, nothing seems to change. I wonder whether the whole system is senescence, or just the stage act. Maybe with a new clown-troupe we might feel more interested.
Sam - although it is easy to argue otherwise, I suspect the whole system may be senescence. As if there is something impersonal going on which dictates the options, even to people we regard as intelligent.
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