Light at the end of the Brexit tunnel?

Photo taken during our walk today. The track goes under an old railway tunnel and appears to be completely covered in thick, wall-to-wall mud. Actually it is mostly cow shit and at the end of the tunnel there was lots more of it. 

I don't know why I thought of Brexit as we carefully navigated our way through. I'm sure a reason will come to me.

Hitler - a poor fish

In 1941 the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin published a piece by the popular writer Sir Hugh Walpole who had known Adolf Hitler before the war. It is a reminder about the elusive nature of  political evil and how it may build a following and force its way into power from the most unpromising beginnings.

SIR HUGH WALPOLE KNEW HITLER
SEEMED "POOR FISH" CERTAIN TO BE KILLED

Did I ever know Adolf Hitler? Oddly enough, I think that I did better than I know some of my real friends, writes Sir Hugh Walpole, in "John O'London's Weekly." It was in the early twenties during two successive summers at Bayreuth. I stayed there for more than two months, summer after summer with Lauritz Melchior, who was at that time singing the leading tenor roles in the Wagner operas.

I was also a friend of Winnie Wagner, wife of Siegfried Wagner's only son. Many strange stories there about that odd adventurer, but the only thing that matters here is that Adolf Hitler, fresh from his Munich prison, passed some time at Bayreuth.

He was, and is, a great friend of Frau Wagner, and he had, and he has, a passion for Wagner's music. I sat in a box with him on the occasion when Melchior made his debut in "Parsifal." I have never since heard him sing as he did that day. The tears poured down Hitler's cheeks.

During the second of these summers I was with Hitler on many occasions, talked, walked and ate with him. I think he rather liked me. I liked him and despised him, both emotions which time has proved I was wrong to indulge. I liked him because he seemed to me a poor fish quite certain to be shortly killed.

He was shabby, unkempt, very feminine, very excitable. He resembled, I though then, mediums I had seen at Conan Doyle's flat. There was something pathetic about him, I felt. I felt rather maternal to him! He spoke a great deal about his admiration of England and the need of her alliance with Germany.

I thought him fearfully ill-educated and quite tenth-rate. When Winnie Wagner said he would be the saviour of the world I just laughed. I was wrong about one thing-his evil. I didn't detect it then. I thought him silly, brave and shabby-rather like a necromantic stump orator. I didn't realise at all his one supreme gift-the gift that has brought him and his country where they are today-his gift for knowing instinctively the "spot" in any man's character to attack-the weak spot, the spot that is ungenerous, greedy, mean, traitorous, lecherous, and, above all, cowardly.

Oh, yes, he is a remarkable man all right! He is among the evil, slinking, betraying Bagmen of history. Why didn't I put poison into his coffee in Wahnfried?

I was wrong about one thing-his evil. I didn't detect it then says Walpole, but at that time was it there to be detected? The potential for enormous evil was clearly there, but presumably Winnie Wagner didn't see it either.

Getting Angry At The People Who Keep You Alive

We know Extinction Rebellion is undiluted hypocrisy but to my mind this is an excellent way of putting it - the modern world keeps them alive. 

When the censor says No!

In any other cause, I doubt not, you would have cautiously weighed the consequences of committing your name to the licentious discourses and malignant opinions of the world. But here, I presume you thought it would be a breach of friendship to lose one moment in consulting your understanding.

Junius – Letter III to Sir William Draper 1769

This delightfully satirical quote has lurked at the back of my mind for years. The analogy behind it is obvious enough – we consult our understanding in a manner analogous to consulting a friend, or an authority. Conversely we may fail to consult our understanding in a rush to judgement.

It is a powerful analogy which fits well with Daniel Kahneman’s analogy of fast and slow thinking. Understanding is the slow part while to lose one moment in consulting your understanding is analogous to a censor standing guard on our understanding. The censor is fast – much too fast for the slowly grinding wheels of understanding.

In the Junius quote, friendship is akin to censorship by allegiance. Friendship and allegiance are too visceral, their censorship too fast for certain modes of understanding to be consulted. Which leaves us with the key point – we may have the potential to understand something but we cannot consult our understanding if the censor flicks off the light.

It’s a spooky idea because it seems to work. Too often we see people defend the indefensible in a manner which seems to suggest a rigorously censored understanding. The root cause of the censorship may be obvious to others but that doesn’t help the afflicted – their censor just says No!

For example this one is too embarrassing to embed in the blog post -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3kJwQBZOkM

People who never let go

Years ago I worked with a chap who had a fixed idea that certain aspects of the entire organisation of over 10,000 people should be radically adjusted to suit his personal preferences. He would go on about this for years even though his idea was hopelessly absurd. Yet he just couldn’t let it go.

This is something the internet rams home - how some people cannot let go of an issue and move on. Sometimes it is a case of fighting a battle and refusing to give in, but sometimes it is merely the inability to let go, to adjust. Some years ago I was reading a technical blog post which had attracted hundreds of comments and over 140 of those comments were made by a single person banging on about a single issue. I counted them – must be the nerd in me.

Brexit has highlighted this strange issue to an extraordinary degree. There are educated people out there who cannot adjust to the referendum vote. They cannot make the best of the situation because that would require them to accept it. They just can’t do it and prefer to go on and on and on about it for years even if that makes the situation far worse than it need be. Weird people. Boring too.

Rain, rain, rain

What a day. Here in Derbyshire it feels as if it has been raining forever. Maybe it is Gaia's way of telling the crusties they should shower au naturel - a shower in the rain for the ultimate in sustainable cleanliness.

I hope not.

The World of the Wordsmith

This piece from 1998 is worth revisiting - an essay by Robert Nozick reminding us about the problem of self-regarding professional wordsmiths. A few quotes may give the overall flavour, but the whole thing is well worth reading.

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

It is surprising that intellectuals oppose capitalism so. Other groups of comparable socio-economic status do not show the same degree of opposition in the same proportions. Statistically, then, intellectuals are an anomaly...

By intellectuals, I do not mean all people of intelligence or of a certain level of education, but those who, in their vocation, deal with ideas as expressed in words, shaping the word flow others receive. These wordsmiths include poets, novelists, literary critics, newspaper and magazine journalists, and many professors. It does not include those who primarily produce and transmit quantitatively or mathematically formulated information (the numbersmiths) or those working in visual media, painters, sculptors, cameramen. Unlike the wordsmiths, people in these occupations do not disproportionately oppose capitalism. The wordsmiths are concentrated in certain occupational sites: academia, the media, government bureaucracy...

The opposition of wordsmith intellectuals to capitalism is a fact of social significance. They shape our ideas and images of society; they state the policy alternatives bureaucracies consider. From treatises to slogans, they give us the sentences to express ourselves. Their opposition matters, especially in a society that depends increasingly upon the explicit formulation and dissemination of information...

Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. But, by and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals. Ludwig von Mises explains the special resentment of intellectuals, in contrast to workers, by saying they mix socially with successful capitalists and so have them as a salient comparison group and are humiliated by their lesser status.

Nozick's essay is interesting not only for what it says, but twenty one years later we may discern a growing sense of outrage at the most blatant wordsmith bias within academia, the media and government bureaucracy. The entire EU project is a wordsmith project, as is the climate narrative. Even supposedly technical/economic projects such as HS2 are wordsmith projects. Our energy policies are degenerating into wordsmith fantasies.

Huge numbers of people who use the internet as a news and information resource will be fully aware of all this and in any event the curse of the wordsmith is hardly new. Yet it seems to be where much of the current political turmoil originates.