Adapt and Die

Not all readaptation, however, is progress, for ideal identity must not be lost. The Latin language did not progress when it passed into Italian. It died. Its amiable heirs may console us for its departure, but do not remove the fact that their parent is extinct. So every individual, nation, and religion has its limit of adaptation; so long as the increment it receives is digestible, so long as the organisation already attained is extended and elaborated without being surrendered, growth goes on; but when the foundation itself shifts, when what is gained at the periphery is lost at the centre, the flux appears again and progress is not real.

George Santayana - The Life of Reason (1905 - 1906)


I often sit here with my laptop, gazing through the window while thinking about the obvious problem of adapting to change. The problem is not what we should do about obviously malign change but the simple observation that a huge number of people adapt to it as opposed to resisting it.

We see the problem with major UK political parties which have clearly slipped into a long process of incompetence and moral decline. Yet voters simply adapt to the decline. They do not switch their vote in favour of individuals or parties who do at least acknowledge the problem and also have something to prove.

We could call it voter apathy which it is, but apathy facilitated by the way we adapt so quickly to changed circumstances. Even drastically changed circumstances easily observed by anyone with some knowledge of recent decades or some desire to acquire that knowledge.

It seems to be a particularly intractable problem when circumstances change more slowly than our ability to adapt. How quickly do we adapt? Very quickly indeed. The coronavirus debacle hammered that one home.

Even after the introduction of a coronavirus police state, if a general election were to be held tomorrow, the vast majority of voters would still vote for one of the major political parties. After that it will be too late to change anything.

Message From Prague

 

Sent by Bill R

The liberating opportunity

Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal repression—hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation? Within these earthly limits, is earthly Circumstance ever the key; and can no human vigilance warn us beforehand of the forces imprisoned in ourselves which that key may unlock?

Wilkie Collins - No Name (1862)


The idea of liberating opportunity is perhaps worth a thought or two in these vexed times. 

For example, any wholly truthful government narrative would, in an important sense be a lost opportunity. In one way or another, lies, exaggerations and misinformation always offer the liberating opportunity to reinforce a narrative, weakening any ties it ever had to a far less manipulative reality. 

It is much the same with mainstream media. Anything wholly truthful would be a lost opportunity too - which is why we don’t see it.

Meal on the wing

 

This isn't a comment about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, but herring gulls eat anything they can swallow and shit all over the place. Doesn't mean they spread viruses to humans but it does make a chap wonder how porous modern societies must be when it comes to contact with viruses.  

Made in England

While using my decades old retracting tape measure today, Granddaughter noticed that it says Made in England on the tape. Not something I'd noticed, but to Granddaughter it was unfamiliar and she was interested to see it. Even at eight years old she is quite aware that this kind of thing is usually made in China.

It's time to dissolve the National Trust

The Critic has published a very nice hatchet job on the National Trust. Well worth reading in full as the quotes below are merely a taster.

Tim Parker, who’s just resigned as chairman, had the same role at the Post Office while they were wickedly persecuting subpostmasters over supposed fraud (in fact IT failure); Helen Ghosh left her position as director-general in 2018 to run Balliol College, Oxford; previously she was permanent secretary at the infamously institutionally incapable Home Office. This is the ignorant, complacent, uncultured, bureaucratic establishment that has primly taken the Trust to its present sorry place...

For over a decade the National Trust has consistently indulged gangster-capitalist attitudes towards their holdings and responsibilities as a landlord, regularly and demonstrably bullying tenants, visitors and employees alike, alongside mass redundancies and exploitative policies which run contrary to their fundamental purpose.

This abhorrent catalogue of immoral business practice is spearheaded by a tired, faded Who’s Who of bland establishment figures with no specially relevant qualifications or expertise in heritage, casually trampling working class livelihoods and pensioners’ qualities of life, whilst posing smugly for photos at fundraising events and enjoying bottomless expense accounts with no apparent accountability.

The following paragraph is likely to linger with me because of its relevance to wider aspects of political life and what it describes as "the copy-and-paste civil service aristocracy who now run all institutions identically".

Of course, they argue that permanently obscuring, modernising, or destroying some of the historic property they have been tasked to preserve is justifiable if they use the profits from said destruction to better preserve the rest. By this rationale, they’d be justified in selling, demolishing or redeveloping half of all their properties, so long as they then invested the profits into preserving the other half. It’s psychopathic business logic, of the sort we are too familiar with thanks to the copy-and-paste civil service aristocracy who now run all institutions identically, with no apparent qualifications beyond the lifelong accumulation of wealth and/or power.

Game-changing

An expensive but "game-changing" anti-cholesterol drug could soon be offered to hundreds of thousands of people in England and Wales on the NHS.

NHS England says inclisiran, given as a twice-a-year injection, could save about 30,000 lives within a decade.

It normally costs nearly £2,000 per dose but Novartis, which makes it, has agreed an undisclosed discount.

It can lower bad fat in the blood when other cheaper drugs, like statins, have not done enough, says draft advice.

Medical advances are generally welcome, but the political aspects of 24/7 media health obsessions are interesting too. As if here in the UK, the wider focus of government social policy is changing in ways which nobody ever voted for.

From - a house, a decent job and a decent education.

To - a place to live, universal healthcare and entertainment.