Category Archives: Cultural

A conversation starter

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A very clever article titled How to Be Polite. This was the one piece of direct advice offered which I thought was quite sound:

Here’s a polite person’s trick, one that has never failed me. I will share it with you because I like and respect you, and it is clear to me that you’ll know how to apply it wisely: When you are at a party and are thrust into conversation with someone, see how long you can hold off before talking about what they do for a living. And when that painful lull arrives, be the master of it. I have come to revel in that agonizing first pause, because I know that I can push a conversation through. Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: “Wow. That sounds hard.”

And I like it not because it is false, but because it will do what I want done in a conversation, which is to get someone else to talk about themselves in a way that will interest us both.

Pierre Ryckmans (1935-2014)

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Before I arrived on this continent these many years ago, the image of Australia to me as depicted in Private Eye was the comic strip Barry McKenzie written by the brilliant Barry Humphries. In fact, the first movie I saw in Australia was the second of the Barry McKenzie films. It more or less fixed the image that had commenced with Monty Python’s Australian Philosophy Department. What then radically changed my view of Australia was to discover that Simon Leys, the author of Chinese Shadows, lived in Canberra and taught at the ANU. He has now passed away, on August 11. I would not have known except for the notice in The Australian today written by Theordore Darlrymple, a writer I have almost as much affection for as Leys, whose real name was Pierre Ryckmans. This is from the notice. The first sentence below can only ever be stated once in this day of the internet. It is incredible, but not misguided, that Darlrymple says what he says here:

I admired Simon Leys more than any other contemporary writer. He was, in fact, my hero, in so far as I have ever had one. ­Although he had previously written discerningly about Chinese art, I first read his books about the Cultural Revolution. Leys, of Belgian origin, was a passionate lover and connoisseur of Chinese culture and viewed its barbarous destruction with horror during the Revolution; he abominated Maoism at least two decades before it became obligatory for all right-thinking persons to do so. From the very first page — no, from the very first sentence — of all his books and essays it is obvious that Simon Leys always knew what he was talking about.

Leys’ guiding star was cultivation (in a broad sense) and his betes noires barbarism, stupidity and humbug. There was no better sniffer out of humbug, the besetting sin of intellectuals, anywhere in the world.

The final line of the notice reads, “Australians should be proud that he chose Australia as his home for the last 44 years of his life.” I feel exactly the same.

The Nazis thought they were good people too

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The oldest hatred in our universities in Melbourne:

Matthew Lesh from the Australasian Union of Jewish Students told Tom Elliott they’ve had a “phenomenal” experience on campus in the past two weeks.

“What’s happening on the other side of the world is directly impacting Jewish students in the most disgusting and despicable manner,” he said.

“We’ve seen across campuses, across Melbourne, even across Australia, what would be classed as anti-semitism in any understanding being carried out against Jewish students simply because Jewish students are associated with Israel.

“Some of the things that we’re hearing on campus at the moment are beyond reprehensible.

“You’ve got fundamental bullying of people just because of their views, their religious beliefs.”

From Instapundit so it’s an international story as well.

Sickened by 18c

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We need to become a civil society in the precise meaning of the term. So we should stop specifically identifying people by their personal affiliations and use a code known to all but not personal. So, for example, the group that the following person is a member of, whatever it might be, would be called, let us say, 18c.

severed-head-18c

Then you could go around saying that you are disgusted by 18c and the kind of things they do and no one would be offended any more.

Facebook enemies

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From Coming Out as Pro-Israel on Facebook by Danusha V. Goska:

Anti-Israel voices are exploiting and in a perverse way celebrating human suffering in Gaza, because publicly bemoaning that suffering gives them the opportunity to play at being humanitarian while not actually doing anything, and to say nasty things about Jews while dodging censure.

A long article well worth the read.

Judaism and England

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Daniel Hannan has an exceptionally interesting article on the English and the Jews. I liked the whole article but this was nicely put as well.

I’ve written this blog as a lengthy reply to those of my fellow-countrymen – by no means only Muslim Britons – who ask why Britain so often seems to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. If we’re honest, we do sometimes apply a double standard. It’s true, for example, as anti-Israel campaigners like to point out, that we are agitated about Iran acquiring nuclear technology while making no fuss about Israel doing so. But there is a pretty obvious reason for such inconsistency: we can’t imagine that Israel would ever aim its missiles at us.

When we look at Israel, we see a free-market, law-based, individualist democracy which has retained many Anglosphere characteristics – parliamentary rule, the common law and, at least when it comes to intellectual and commercial life, the English language. These things are bound to create, in the literal sense, sympathy: fellow-feeling rooted in common experience.

The evolving nature of the history of economic thought

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An email to a colleague in Europe who is going off to the Congress on J.-B. Say and the entrepreneur at the end of August.

I am very pleased to hear from you and to find you are heading off to this Congress. It seems exceptionally interesting and the focus on the entrepreneur has been for too long ignored within economic theory and policy. There was some interest expressed to me about my going there as well but it has unfortunately come to nothing. It would have been a quite long journey and as I also have a conference in Hong Kong just after may have been too much of an excursion. But whatever might have been the original interest in my attendance, nothing has come of it so I am off to Hong Kong which will be a bit easier than the 20,000 mile round trip going to France would have required. Still, I would have liked to have gone but that’s life.

The seriously interesting part for me, but probably of little interest to anyone looking at what Say was writing in 1803, is that I have written what amounts to Say’s Treatise for the 21st century. I will attach a blog post I did on the book, but it is about nothing less than the crucial role of the entrepreneur combined with an understanding of Say’s Law as expressed by Say, Ricardo, James Mill and John Stuart Mill. I am the living embodiment of those values but probably 150 years behind the times, but in my view, also about 15-20 years before my time. The fact of this conference is a sign of the subterranean changes going on. But it is hard for anyone who has grown up on aggregate demand and math ec to understand what’s required if you remove AD from within macro and start treating the future as genuinely uncertain. What happens then is you end up with the classical theory of the cycle which no one any longer understands. You should be able to read the back cover of the text in the blog post attached which explains all this in more detail.

I should also mention one other reason I was pleased to hear from you. Had you not written, I would not have known that my post to the SHOE website had actually been posted since it drew not a single response and google mail doesn’t post returned emails that one has sent out oneself. My campaign to save HET from the historians and philosophers of science seems to fall on deaf ears, but the more I engage in this debate, the most astonished I am at how misconceived their ideas are. Sure certain aspects of HET are HaPoS but that is not anywhere near HET’s core significance. I really do believe that HET has been overrun by philosophers and sociologists who have almost no interest in economic issues other than as a peripheral matter upon which they can contemplate everything else under the sun aside from the way an economy works. I think that because HET in Australia retains its original essence almost entirely, that the shifts that are going on elsewhere were almost invisible to us when they came to try to remove HET from economics which is why we all rose up as one. Now with conferences such as this in Boulogne-sur-Mer, where the central interest is mainly in understanding how economies function but using past economists as a vehicle, there may be a shift back coming into play. My intervention to preserve HET, however much it seems to have been resented by some of our American and European colleagues, was just in time. Had HET gone to HaPoS, it would have died within the decade within departments of economics. It would have become as relevant to economics as the history of physics is to physicists.

Finally, I am going to copy into this email my young colleague from Auchy so he can know what’s going on. I hope you enjoy the conference which I hope will be a great success and please do keep me informed.

Kind regards

Marking the start of World War I

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World War I was the most momentous historical event of the past century, having consequences that continue to haunt us still. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, to take only one example, continues to reverberate through the Middle East with no end in sight. I have tried to engage with what is being written but so much of it feels remote. It might just as well be about the Napoleonic Wars. Not that I have written anything that will change any of that, but I did post a piece at Quadrant Online only because I could not let the moment go by without at least saying something. And what I have written about is my favourite book on the war, which is Frank Furedi’s First World War: Still No End in Sight which at least sees the war as the momentous event it is. The article is about the succession of wars we have fought since 1924, each one to defend entirely different countries even though those countries did manage to keep their names.

That WWI broke up ancient empires and created new ones is not in doubt. That we would be as different as different could be had WWI been somehow prevented I also have no doubt. But such is the way of the world. Major events happen, as they will continue to do. What Furedi does is remind you that things change and nothing stays as it is. There is no permanence, and that everything you think really matters, down to the core values by which you set your moral compass, is but windblown ephemera whose existence a century from now cannot be even remotely guaranteed.

We live in our own time in a particular place and can be lucky or unlucky in how it turns out. A hundred years from now is as unimaginable to us as we would have been to the lads who joined up at the start of the war a century ago.

Free speech and racist abuse

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I think of myself as a free speech absolutist. There is no point of view that is not open for debate and all perspectives are invited to join. Jews are descended from apes and pigs. Well, that’s one way of looking at things. Jews are murderers of Gazan children and use their blood to make matzohs. Speak the truth as you see it. There was no holocaust but if there were one we would do it right this time round. Interesting, please tell me more.

In its way, I am outraged by each of these but the principle is more important than the abuse that some make of the principle. Public discourse is very dangerous, but hidden beliefs are perhaps more dangerous than those made in public. Bring them out into the light. Go on, discredit yourself, because if there comes a time when saying such things in public does not make you a social leper, then things have already gone too far. It is genuinely useful information. It’s good to know what can and cannot be said in public without consequence, but there should be nothing to stop you from saying what you want.

But racist rants in public amongst total strangers, people abused on the streets by others they do not know, are out of bounds in a civilised community. It is just not on, rightly illegal.

Ordinary people are not political philosophers. They are not social theorists who have read, absorbed and contemplated the arguments of John Start Mill. They are not people who are immune to abuse for their religion, skin colour, gender or anything else. Most people are prepared to debate all issues but they are not prepared to have to deal with some idiot shouting abuse at them on the street.

If the government cannot distinguish between free speech in a civilised community and a racist rant individually one-on-one in a public place, then it should not have gotten into this debate in the first place. And had they made this distinction, they could have presented their aim in terms of stopping racists and not protecting the rights of bigots. What a loser argument that was! Why didn’t the government show they were providing something that will aid comity in the community, not taking something useful away. They have damaged the cause of free speech in this country.

Contrasting migration policies

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This is the United States, as noted at Drudge:

PAPER: Hundreds of dead border-crossers in single Texas county…
Rancher shares grotesque photos…
House passes bill…
Gutierrez in Spanish Remarks: GOP ‘Want to Punish Our Community’…
DEM: ‘Immigration Reform Not About Enforcement’…
Detention Center Has Hair Salon, Child Care, Basketball Courts, Gym, Soccer Field…
SUITES WITH FLAT-SCREEN TVS…
Immigrants’ ‘unfamiliarity with bathroom facilities’ causes problems…
REPORT: Transgender Raped…
Illegal charged in beating death of Chinese college student in LA…
UPDATE: TB, Scabies Spreading…
Feds Fly Illegals to Alaska…
TX Law Enforcement Volunteer To Form ‘Border Brotherhood’…
Ready to rumble: Activists to raid congressional town hall meetings…
Obama: ‘I’m Going To Have To Act Alone’…

Meanwhile in Australia:

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison takes hard line: 157 sent to Nauru

From which we read:

ALL the 157 people, including 50 children, who left India almost six weeks ago on a people-smuggler’s boat will arrive at the Nauru ­asylum-seeker camp today from the Curtin detention centre in Western Australia after refusing to see Indian consular officials.

The Abbott government decided to send all those from the boat late yesterday to the Pacific nation’s detention centre because they decided not to meet Indian government officials after re­ceiving advice from refugee ­advocates.

The boatload of people, mainly Tamils who had fled Sri Lanka to India, now face months on Nauru while their asylum claims are processed and the prospect of being sent back to Sri Lanka if they fail to qualify as refugees.

A self-selected program of migration is not the way this can ever work. The contrast between the US and Australia is astonishing, but you would be hard pressed to say the US has it right and Australia has it wrong.