One is but an insect

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As today is Samuel Johnson's birthday, here are a few Johnson quotes still suited to our own times.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Lapidary inscriptions

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

Samuel Johnson - quoted in Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson

The mendacity of institutions

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Samuel Johnson quoted in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

Memories of my younger days suggest that institutions had more integrity than is the case today. The Post Office, the BBC, the AA, the police, the local council and even the government may have been stuffy and somewhat inefficient, but were not generally regarded as mendacious.

Today institutions have changed for the worse – they tell lies. Usually lies of omission, Johnson's carelessness perhaps, but still lies. I could be looking back through rose-tinted spectacles of course, but I’m not too sentimental, I don’t actually want to go back to driving an Austin A40. In any case, there is a reasonable explanation for the mendacity of modern institutions and that’s public relations.

A few decades ago, institutions may have had their press office to deal with newspaper reporters and even a rare visit by a chap from the BBC, but they were much less inclined to put out a message so dripping with positive spin that it may as well be a barefaced lie.

Modern institutions have their off-days, but are far more inclined to defend the indefensible, if necessary for years. They are far more inclined to put out press releases which don’t even tell half the story, manufacture stories from nothing and generally exaggerate, misinform and mislead.

That would be bad enough, but all this positive spin promotes institutional mendacity. That in turn promotes mendacity among employees. It attracts those who are more inclined towards shading the truth, influences career progression, seeps into the culture, infecting everyone without the integrity to resist.

Institutions were always an important part of our culture. The BBC, the police with their whistles, bicycles and truncheons, the local council and the local bank. Again it’s worth wiping those rose-tinted spectacles in case they are misted up with nostalgia for a more honest past, but I don’t think it is all nostalgia.

The mendacity of institutions is genuine and most of it seems to be down to PR. How are we supposed to build a culture on lying?

Johnson on broadband

Sir, a sound BT broadband connection is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

When a man tries BT broadband, he tires of life. 

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with his broadband connection. 

The usual fortune of a complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Venture To Be Wise

Abraham Cowley - from Wikipedia

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

He who defers this work from day to day,

Does on a river’s bank expecting stay,

Till the whole stream that stopped him shall be gone,

Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on.

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667)

Cowley took the first line from Horace which most of his readers at the time would have known. It's a bit of versification I  use as a kind of mantra for getting on with life, a reminder that there are always more possibilities to explore. It encourages me to write, to read more widely and in my quiet way to make the most of now.

Samuel Johnson saw Cowley as one of the metaphysical poets of whom he did not have a high opinion. He says as much in his inimitable style in Lives of the Poets:-

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole endeavour: but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.

Johnson on trades

No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar if grammarians discuss them.

Samuel Johnson

Or economists, scientists, engineers, accountants, statisticians, lawyers, politicians, bishops...

Wordplay - pedantry

Samuel Johnson's dictionary 3rd edition 1766 defines pedantry as:

PEDANTRY
Awkward ostentation of needless learning.

I like the neatness of Johnson's definition, but pedantry is also one of life’s many tactics, a way of attacking change, of closing down other possibilities beyond the status quo. It is a way of being right without really trying, a way of analysing without contributing, a way to harass without having to engage.

But perhaps it is also a way of avoiding errors, going back to what we know rather than wandering off into a desert of colourful but sterile possibilities. As with many of life’s tactics, pedantry has two edges – constructive and destructive. Which is the most common though?

Johnson on assent

Your assent to a man you have never known to falsify is a debt; but after you have known a man to falsify, your assent to him is a favour.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

The roll-call of people who Johnson's quote applies to is rather long isn't it? If we begin by listing politicians then it's hardly worth doing. May as well list them all and have done with it.

Johnson on self-importance

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

This is one of my favourite Johnson quotes. It encapsulates the problems of leadership, political systems and the inevitable human weakness of all hierarchies. 

Wordplay - conspiracy

Johnson’s dictionary 3^rd edition published 1766 defines conspiracy as:-

CONSPIRACY
1. A plot; a concerted treason. Dryden
2. An agreement of men to do anything; evil part.
3. Tendency of many causes to one event.

People still conspire as they always have. How we view it and describe it tends to depend on whether we are inside, outside or uninvolved. Governments describe their conspiracies as 'consensus' or 'seeking consensus', as if it might be some noble quest. The promotion of consensus over conspiracy has been so successful, that it is now seen as a little outré or unsophisticated to fall into the social trap of espousing conspiracy theories.

Yet governments conspire all the time, as do institutions. It's what they do, what they have always done, how they evolve new ways of protecting their tribe, new ways to promote their tribal interests. To deny or ridicule the idea of active conspiracies seems to me to be no more than another conspiracy, yet another way for the great to conspire against the small. Which is what they have always done anyway.

Wordplay - computer

Samuel Johnson's dictionary 3^rd edition published in 1766 defines 'computer' as:-

COMPUTER [from compute]. Reckoner; accountant.

Today of course, we use digital computers to compute - to do what was once done by hand and mind. Similarly, computer models do what we tell them to do - what we could still do by hand and mind if given an impossible amount of time.

Computers and computer models don’t do science - that's what we still do, the hand and mind stuff. We frequently do it very badly of course, but we can't blame computers for that, however powerful they may be. 

Johnson on laws

It is observed that a corrupt society has many laws.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Johnson on politics

The race of man may be divided in a political estimate between those who are practising fraud, and those who are repelling it.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Wordplay - rhetoric

Samuel Johnson's dictionary 3^rd edition 1766 defines rhetoric as:

RHETORICK

The act of speaking not merely with propriety, but with art and elegance.

The power of persuasion; oratory

The spelling has changed since Johnson’s time and the meaning has shifted somewhat too, acquiring a distinctly pejorative tone. For example – the argument is mere rhetoric, not worth switching my ears on.

Johnson understood perfectly well that argument is about winning and rhetoric is by far the most useful tool you have. He was determined to win any argument, once admitting he’d argue against his own beliefs simply for the intellectual pleasure of winning.

Now that science has a tenuous, but rapidly loosening grip on our notions of truth, we have come to regard rhetoric as a slick, question-begging device, only fit for politicians and other charlatans. Yet rhetoric is easy to slip into isn’t it? It’s easy to take sides in an argument with the hope of winning, or at least coming out on top. Easy to cite untrustworthy organisations, dodgy scientists, partial data and cherry-picked statistics, easy to use them as rhetorical devices. Merely to win, to be on the winning side, the side with the most powerful, the most fashionable, most rewarding rhetoric.

A good word to inform our susceptibilities I’d say.

Wordplay - silly

The word silly has changed its meaning over the centuries. It is derived from the old English word seely meaning blessed or happy. By the eighteenth century its meaning had changed significantly. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary 3^rd edition published 1766 defines silly as:-

SILLY

1. Harmless; innocent; inoffensive; plain; artless.
2. Weak; helpless.
3. Foolish; witless

Fifty years later, Jane Austen used the word in its modern sense in her novel Persuasion. She used this one word to convey a good deal of information about a character, Sir Walter Elliot. Through that one word we immediately know something of the man – well before Austen chooses to enlarge his character.

“Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father.”

Jane Austen – Persuasion’

Still a good word for modern times I'd say. 'Silly' is a quiet, not overly offensive word, perfectly equal to the task of conveying a decent load of gentle contempt for those many inanities we encounter in daily life. So well fitted to the absurdities of  too many social and political trends.