Intelligent and modern, but nonsense all the same.

She sat at the head of the table, serene, with an amused, indulgent smile on her lips as she listened to their scatter–brained nonsense; it was not stupid nonsense, mind you, it was intelligent and modern, but it was nonsense all the same.

W. Somerset Maugham - A Woman of Fifty (1946)


Stories from the Golden Age of detective fiction often describe the Scotland Yard detective as having an intelligent face. Even an apparently bovine and unintelligent face was often betrayed by the keen glances he flashed into every nook and cranny of the murder scene.

The idea of intelligence is still used of course, in spite of being a somewhat slippery notion, but modern life seems to have made it less useful and even more slippery than it was in the comparatively recent past.

Intelligence was never more than a somewhat fallible idea anyway, because supposedly intelligent people have always been capable of stupidity. Yet it could be used as an ideal, as a contrast with stupidity, but like an old Polaroid photo the contrast has faded.

Intelligence is still a usable idea, but not particularly usable when it comes to abstractions and political entanglements. It fails to capture the prevalence of so much misinformation, distortion, exaggeration and simple falsehood.

To take a topical example, there seems to be little point in describing Net Zero as an unintelligent policy. It certainly is unintelligent, but to say so doesn’t capture the nature of the beast, the political nature of it, the creepy tentacles reaching into every corner of life. If anything, the idea of intelligent and unintelligent actions has a decided tendency to evade the problem, particularly the magnitude of it.

Reeds tottering in the wind

Scottish Greens MSP bursts into tears over Humza Yousaf ending Bute House agreement

A Scottish Green Party MSP has broken down in tears on BBC Radio Scotland following the First Minister’s decision to end the Bute House Agreement.

Gillian Mackay, MSP for Central Scotland, spoke on the 5.10pm BBC Scotland Drivetime Radio show on Friday with host John Beattie, where she said Humza Yousaf’s reason to end the two-and-a-half year agreement was “as clear as mud”.

She told the host the First Minister was “essentially saying you’re dumped but can we still be friends” and that she does not know “that this holds water, especially for someone who is supposed to be leading the country”.

She added: “Humza has done this to himself in removing us from government… There is a lot of hurt and upset around.”


Reserve, restraint, self-possession, were swept away ... And now we are frankly emotional; reeds tottering in the wind, our boast is that we are not even reeds that think; we cry out for idols. Who is there that will set up a golden ass that we may fall down and worship? We glory in our shame, in our swelling hearts, in our eyes heavy with tears. We want sympathy at all costs; we run about showing our bleeding vitals, asking one another whether they are not indeed a horrible sight.

W. Somerset Maugham – The Hero (1901)

Certain Afternoons

In England, in London, there are certain afternoons in winter when the clouds hang heavy and low and the light is so bleak that your heart sinks, but then you can look out of your window, and you see the coconut trees crowded upon the beach of a coral island. The strand is silvery and when you walk along in the sunshine it is so dazzling that you can hardly bear to look at it. Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to–do, and the surf beats ceaselessly against the reef. Those are the best journeys, the journeys that you take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your illusions.

W. Somerset Maugham - The Trembling of a Leaf (1921)


Not only London, these afternoons occur in Derbyshire too, although I don't recall any mynah birds in my winter afternoon illusions.

The gods themselves battle in vain

Can we imprison carbon dioxide?

Carbon dioxide is the big villain in the causes of global warming - the "most wanted" for crimes against the climate that we'd love to lock up.

In Merseyside and North Wales, they're putting a posse together.

It's called HyNet and it's a group of around 40 carbon-intensive industries brought together as a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) cluster.


‘Your Excellency does not read Schiller, I suppose. You are probably not acquainted with his celebrated line: mit der Dummheit kämpfen die Götter selbst vergebens.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Roughly: Against stupidity the gods themselves battle in vain.’ ‘Good morning.’

W. Somerset Maugham – The Door of Opportunity (1951)

Concealed Ignorance

Bertha still could hardly believe genuine the admiration which her husband excited. Knowing his extreme incapacity, she was astounded that the rest of the world should think him an uncommonly clever fellow. To her his pretensions were merely ridiculous; she marvelled that he should venture to discuss, with dogmatic glibness, subjects of which he knew nothing; but she marvelled still more that people should be impressed thereby: he had an astonishing faculty of concealing his ignorance.

W. Somerset Maugham - Mrs Craddock (1902)


To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the Matt Hancock saga is that it is not particularly revealing. An air of concealed ignorance was there almost from the beginning of the pandemic. Quite unmistakable.

Recognising the dogmatic glibness of our MPs and media is not only frustrating but also interesting. It’s interesting that we are aware of their dishonesty and their scheming even if many details are obscure. Possibly we know nowhere near as much as we suppose, but it’s enough to take the measure of their ignorance and that is where the interest lies.

Take UK party politics as an example. If we know all parties are dishonest then either their integrity has declined, or in a digital age we know more about the way things are done and this has raised our expectations. I’d say the latter, but those people with raised expectations are not the majority.

Sooner than expected

It is only by a convention that the Pastoral Symphony is thought better art than Tarara-boom-deay. Perhaps, in two or three hundred years, when everything is done by electricity and every one is equal, when we are all happy socialists, with good educations and better morals, Beethoven’s complexity will be like a mass of wickedness, and only the plain, honest homeliness of the comic song will appeal to our simple feelings.

W. Somerset Maugham - Mrs. Craddock (1902)

It has all happened rather sooner than William expected, although we do seem to be bungling our way into a future where everything isn’t done by electricity. The moronic music in our local Co-op isn’t a series of comic songs either. It’s even worse than Tarara-boom-deay, but the idea is similar enough.

It may also be worth adding that everything done for the elites may be done by electricity if not for the rest of us, so 8/10 I’d say. 

Well done William.

William on Rotters

“Of course he was a rotter. He was bound to end in the gutter sooner or later,” said Lawson. Philip was hurt because Lawson would not see the pity of it. Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which one follows the other lay all tragedy of life.

William Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (1915)


As we know, rotters rarely end up in the gutter these days. Maybe that's a pity, but now we have other pressures which loom just as large as the spectre of the gutter. They govern our lives just as tightly as the proximity of the gutter ever did. Intrusive health advice, political correctness and our inability to tell it as it is in public life are just three aspects of the problem. We aren’t even rotters – well most of us aren’t.

One outcome of fanatical anti-rotter overreach is the recent attempt to select a Conservative party leader. One requirement is a name already well enough known as a non-rotter. Another is a clear break with the previous incumbent who did perhaps have a faint, rotter-like aura. Another is… but there a quite a few little restrictive caveats likely to give us a Prime Minister nobody would have elected given a better choice.

We don’t want a full-on rotter perhaps, but going too far the other way… at least the ability to be a rotter in the right circumstances… that could be useful.

The pointed cap with the golden bells

After all, folly is the great attribute of man. No judge is as grave as an owl; no soldier fighting for his country flies as rapidly as the hare. You may be strong, but you are not so strong as a horse; you may be gluttonous, but you cannot eat like a boa-constrictor. But there is no beast that can be as foolish as man. And since one should always do what one can do best—be foolish. Strive for folly above all things. Let the height of your ambition be the pointed cap with the golden bells.

W. Somerset Maugham - Orientations (1899)


Extreme weather is Earth's 'chorus of anguish', Pope says

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Francis on Thursday called on world leaders to heed the Earth's "chorus of cries of anguish" stemming from climate change, extreme weather and loss of biodiversity.

In a message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, he urged nations to confront climate change with the same attention as global challenges like wars and health crises, saying global warming hurts poor and indigenous populations the most.

Francis said rich countries have an "ecological debt" because it is they who have caused the most environmental pollution over the past two centuries, marring nature's song.

A search for the golden mediocrity

 

Besides, Dick Whittington had in him from his birth the makings of a Lord Mayor—he had the golden mediocrity which is the surest harbinger of success.

Somerset Maugham - The Choice of Amyntas (1899)

Bookshops

She found unexpected satisfaction in the half-forgotten masterpieces of the past, in poets not quite divine whom fashion had left on one side, in the playwrights, and novelists, and essayists, whose remembrance lives only with the bookworm. It is a relief sometimes to look away from the bright sun of perfect achievement; and the writers who appealed to their age and not to posterity, have by contrast a subtle charm.

Undazzled by their splendour, one may discern more easily their individualities and the spirit of their time; they have pleasant qualities not always found among their betters, and there is even a certain pathos in their incomplete success.

W. Somerset Maugham - Mrs Craddock (1902)


This was always one of the great attractions of a good bookshop, finding a well-written book by someone I’d only vaguely heard of or had not heard of at all. There is a particular fascination to be found in writers who appealed to their age and not to posterity. I certainly enjoy reading them without posterity looking over my shoulder.

The serendipity of bookshop browsing hasn’t been completely lost with the Kindle, but perhaps the sense of discovery has. The feel and aroma of old books has been lost too of course, but so has the problem of bookshelves groaning with hundredweights of books. I don't miss that.

Little Moral Barks

Deeply impressed with their sacred calling—for Mrs. Jackson would never have acknowledged that the Vicar’s wife held a position inferior to the Vicar’s—they argued that the whole world was God’s, and they God’s particular ministrants; so that it was their plain duty to concern themselves with the business of their fellows—and it must be confessed that they never shrank from this duty.

They were neither well-educated, nor experienced, nor tactful; but blissfully ignorant of these defects, they shepherded their flock with little moral barks, and gave them, rather self-consciously, a good example in the difficult way to eternal life.

They were eminently worthy people, who thought light-heartedness somewhat indecent. They did endless good in the most disagreeable manner possible; and in their fervour not only bore unnecessary crosses themselves, but saddled them on to everyone else, as the only certain passport to the Golden City.

W. Somerset Maugham - The Hero (1901)


There are many examples of how virtue has evolved over the decades. This fictional example highlights some stark similarities between meddlesome religious virtue and its modern version - meddlesome woke virtue. We only have to alter two words of the first paragraph to see the similarity to climate change virtue.

Deeply impressed with their sacred calling—for Mrs. Jackson would never have acknowledged that the Vicar’s wife held a position inferior to the Vicar’s—they argued that the whole world was Gaia’s, and they Gaia’s particular ministrants; so that it was their plain duty to concern themselves with the business of their fellows—and it must be confessed that they never shrank from this duty.

Sceptics often suggest that climate change campaigns are akin to a religious movement, but it may be just as useful to focus on the changing nature of conspicuous virtue.

It is no great stretch to see how little moral barks have evolved into the big moral barks with which we are more familiar. Our versions are backed by laws and regulations which cannot be avoided by simply not going to church. We see their unnecessary crosses on hillsides, generating unreliable and expensive electricity for all but the elites.

We’ll never break free from Mr and Mrs Jackson. They have evolved.

Not exactly sympathy

The diagnosis of dangerous illness would be accepted by one with a laugh and a joke, by another with dumb despair. Philip found that he was less shy with these people than he had ever been with others; he felt not exactly sympathy, for sympathy suggests condescension; but he felt at home with them.

W. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (1915)


Democratic governments and government agencies like to show oodles of sympathy whenever they have to opportunity. Our thoughts are with… It’s become a standard mantra, but it is how institutional condescension can be made to seem less condescending.

Another approach is to create a sense of paternal sympathy - we understand the problems this causes but it has to be this way. Alternatively make the narrative appear to be purely factual, promoted by experts who know best - it’s unfortunate, of course it is, but the experts know what they are talking about don’t they?

An enormous amount of effort seems to go into making sure government propaganda has a kind of official sympathy at its core. Which is where the condescension is too.