Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Ruskin on prices
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| John Ruskin - from Wikipedia |
There is hardly
anything in the world that some man can't make a little worse and sell a little
cheaper and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.
It is impossible to miss a wealthy man’s disdain for
competition here, his covert assumption that even if driving down prices raises the
poor out of poverty, there may be worse things than poverty.
It might encourage the poor to clamour for more in some
uncouth manner not at all commensurate with his absurd fantasy - the
picturesque dignity of inefficient labour.
Yet on the other hand it is difficult to be entirely cynical
about Ruskin’s distaste for the dehumanising aspect of industrial production and
mechanical efficiency.
There are no easy answers to this dilemma and to my mind the
people we have to fear most are those who claim otherwise. Especially if they
have a firm grip on power and the means to manipulate popular sentiment.
Monday, 30 December 2013
2014 - twenty predictions
2 Ed Davey says people should store their electricity for winter use.
3 Climate scientists officially adopt the phrase piss off when asked why global warming has stalled.
4 Other scientists claim there are significant health risks for men with beards.
5 The possibility that beards pose a problem for facial-recognition security systems is denied by a beardy from the security industry.
6 A Tory nobody has ever heard of claims beards are immoral anyway, triggering a storm of Twitter abuse and accusations of racism.
7 The new wonder food is said to be white bread fried in salted butter.
8 Scientists from Derby University produce a highly controversial report titled Alcohol Shrinks Yer Brane.
9 Bombs go off in the Middle East. Innocent people, including children are blown to pieces. Twitter remains comparatively silent.
10 Al Gore claims to have invented fruitcake.
11 A new particle is discovered at CERN. It is named the zappon because it goes round zapping other particles. This is thought to confirm a theory that the universe is merely a computer game.
12 Governments continue to print money so people can spend it on junk.
13 Junk becomes more expensive.
14 A rational idea causes a huge outcry.
15 Rational idea dropped.
16 Scientists produce a report claiming that dying from cold is a pleasant way to go, especially in winter. On the whole, dead people do not disagree.
17 Greenpeace researchers produce a report claiming that electricity produced from coal is dirty. They say it stains energy-saving light bulbs, causing them to go dim earlier than they should.
18 The Arctic fails to be ice-free again. The BBC fails to notice.
19 An untalented nobody becomes somebody via the miracle of television.
20 A few inhabitants of blogland notice the world has gone completely mad - consequently there is no mass panic.
Sunday, 29 December 2013
It is written
It is written of the very old that they shall pass, by
virtue of their long travel, out of the country of the understanding of the
young, till the natural affections are blurred by creeping mists such as steal
across the moors when the sun is going down.
John Galsworthy - Fraternity (1909)
Saturday, 28 December 2013
Not altogether faulty
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| Ambrose Bierce - from Wikipedia |
I do not hold that the political and social system that creates an aristocracy of leisure is the best possible kind of human organization; I perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do hold that a system under which most important public trusts, political and professional, civil and military ecclesiastical and secular, are held by educated men — that is, men of trained faculties and disciplined judgment — is not an altogether faulty system.
Ambrose Bierce
A telling phrase that - important public trusts. It's a pity we drift away from such phrases because so often we are the poorer for it.
It seems to be a common feature of mainstream media - casually dumping useful bits and pieces of language as the elite shy away from everything but ambiguity.
Friday, 27 December 2013
Society is like the air
This is an interesting quote expressed with Santayana’s
inimitable lucidity. He says there is more to social life than gregarious socialising
which he sees as an essentially passive activity akin to breathing.
Gregarious sentiment
is passive, watchful, expectant, at once powerful and indistinct, troubled and
fascinated by things merely possible. It renders solitude terrible without
making society particularly delightful.
A dull feeling of
familiarity and comfort is all we can reasonably attribute to uninterrupted
trooping together. Yet banishment from an accustomed society is often
unbearable.
A creature separated
from his group finds all his social instincts bereft of objects and of possible
exercise; the sexual, if by chance the sexual be at the time active; the
parental, with all its extensions; and the combative, with all its supports.
He is helpless and
idle, deprived of all resource and employment. Yet when restored to his tribe,
he merely resumes a normal existence. All particular feats and opportunities
are still to seek.
Company is not
occupation. Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live
on.
George Santayana - The Life of Reason
I’m sure we’ve all come across highly gregarious people who
only appear to want superficial social contact. They may be good company in the
right surroundings, but somehow don’t relish anything deeper than good
humoured chit-chat.
Perhaps this is where the emptiness of modern politics comes
from. The ghastly charade of social empathy which seems so shallow. If Santayana
is right, the shallowness may result from a doomed attempt
to substitute the forms of gregarious behaviour for the warmth of genuine engagement.
After all, striding to the political lectern in shirt sleeves doesn’t convince
anyone. Simply telling it as it is would probably work better. Not only because
the shirt sleeves are unconvincing, but as Santayana says - in itself
gregarious behaviour is insufficient to
live on.
A dull feeling of
familiarity and comfort is all we can reasonably attribute to uninterrupted
trooping together. Yet banishment from an accustomed society is often unbearable.
Sounds like a political party conference to me. It isn’t
surprising that the vast majority of us seek more genuine social engagement while
party membership inevitably declines to a squabbling, anti-social core.
Thursday, 26 December 2013
Christmas turkey
I wonder if our insane energy policies will eventually deliver
the most embarrassing power cut of all – self-inflicted cuts right in the middle of cooking the
Christmas turkey.
Just imagine the outcry caused by a few hundred thousand
under-cooked turkeys.
Could it happen as early as 2014 or 2015? Nobody in the energy policy blockhouse appears to have any idea, least of all Ed “turkey” Davey.
Happy New Year
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