My
father worked in a greengrocers' shop for 35 years; my
mother was a housewife before she committed suicide in
1987. They were both lifelong Labour voters. My mother
hanged herself in the house she lived in all her life, in
Southall, west London, a town that had changed beyond all
recognition. It is today the least white place in the
whole of Britain.
She
wrote in her suicide note: "I hate Southall, I feel
so alone." In case anyone dare accuse her of any
racism, she may have hated Southall, but my mother was
incapable of hating people. She worked in the last years
of her life as a dinner lady in an all-Asian school and
was much loved. But she was lost. Her world had
disappeared.
Her
dilemma is partly the dilemma of the white working
class...
By
what methods were the white working classes (WWC)
despatched? The first development that undermined WWC
hopes and morale was the great betrayal in education—
the abolition of grammar schools and the retention of
private schools.
Grammar
schools, in the guilt-ridden WLMC [white liberal middle
classes] view of things, favoured
middle-class children over working-class children. What
they actually favoured— or could have favoured, if the
tests were designed sufficiently well— was clever
children over less clever children. And if you look at the
dynamism of the post-war grammocracy (Pinter, Dyke,
Potter, Jacobson, Sillitoe, Bragg, Bennett and hundreds of
others), it provided a crucial injection of WWC
sensibility into the wider culture...
The
second great betrayal was multiculturalism. This was the
creed that said all cultures were as valid as each other
(in theory) but that minority cultures were somehow— no
one was quite sure how— actually superior to the host
white indigenous culture which was axiomatically racist.
So even if you happen to come from a culture that endorsed
female circumcision and was misogynist and homophobic, it
was a given that you were a "victim." And who
were the "victimisers"? The WWC who were faced
with the profound challenge and stresses of assimilation.
There
was a lot of WWC resistance to immigration. This was
partly about racism, which, of course, the WLMC are immune
to. Something in the organic bread, I think. But it was
also about losing housing opportunities, cheap labour
taking away jobs, and the simple, profound problem of
learning to exist in a new kind of culture, which in some
cases overwhelmed and bewildered the indigenous one. The
trick of learning to feel ashamed at the same time as
everything was being taken away from you was a really hard
one to pull off...
The
third great betrayal was the WLMC determination to stamp
out nationalism— at least if you were English. If you
were Scottish, Welsh or Irish, of course, you could
celebrate your flag and your culture as loudly and proudly
as you liked. But if you were native WWC, to celebrate St
George and the English flag was racist. This is because
the WWC, despite being stuck down mines and corralled in
factories, apparently managed to exploit their colonial
brothers and sisters throughout the previous centuries, so
they could no longer show pride in their own country, the
country that their parents and grandparents died for and
suffered for in two world wars— in the second one
fighting a racist tyrant. They continue to die in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And without complaint, because they have
learned to be quiet and to be ashamed of who they are and
accept that they aren't "good" like the WLMC,
who lived in all-white enclaves and to whom
multiculturalism meant a nice Continental deli at the end
of the road.
What
else? The utopian council estates of the 1960s and 1970s— the WLMC, pursuing their project of bracing
architectural piety, uprooted whole WWC communities and
put them in ugly, unliveable blocks, leaving them without
a sense of place or meaning, while the architects and town
planners themselves lived in little Edwardian terraces or
Cotswold villages. Since the great council house sell-off
of the 1980s— fiercely opposed, of course, by the
liberal left— many of the WWC have bettered themselves.
But now that the housing stock has run out and run down,
those left behind are beached and helpless.
Who
can wonder why the white working classes have got
themselves a bad name? Who can wonder why they are angry,
why they are despairing, why they carry knives, fight and
drink themselves into oblivion...
Do I
look down on the WWC now that I am middle class myself?
Probably. But I don't hate them, not in the way I hate the
people who destroyed and abandoned them, the ideologues
and meddlers that have left them without a meaning and
without a home and without an escape. I'll keep voting
Left because I can't imagine voting Tory, and the Lib Dems
are a wasted vote. But I know that, in the end, I am
voting for a double-talking mealy-mouthed enemy of
everything they purport to be promoting— equality,
opportunity, fairness. They are the living embodiment of
Lao Tse's greatest truth and the source of the white
working classes tragedy— that "goody goodies are
the enemies of virtue." —Tim
Lott, "White,
Working Class And Threatened With Extinction: It's The
Do-Gooding Liberal Middle Classes That Have Betrayed Those
'Beneath' Them," Independent, 9 March 2008
The
fact that it is considered "daring" for the BBC
to make a
series of programmes about the problems and
fears of the white working class (i.e., the majority)
tells you all you need to know about the BBC and much of
what you need to know about Britain.
Richard
Klein, the series commissioner, must have
fought hard to get sanction for programmes about the mere
majority.
The
most daring programme so far (in media eyes) has been the
sympathetic picture of Enoch
Powell.
It
conveyed his rage that the populace was never consulted
about the drastic change being made in its composition and
culture without so much as a by your-leave.
Politicians
on both sides, furious about the "river
of blood" speech in 1968, claimed then—and
some still do—that
Powell's speech hindered reform.
It
was so extreme, you see, that it made it difficult for us
moderate men to do something about immigration, which we
obviously had intended to do when the occasion was
suitable, when the time was right, at the appropriate
juncture, etc.
I
promise you as God is my witness that what the two
frontbenches wanted to do was nothing, nil, zero, rien
and nicht. It was this conspiracy of
silence and inertia which enraged Powell and much of the
public.
It is
understandable why he became hated by Labour figures like
Roy Hattersley, interviewed on the programme. For it meant
that he and his fellow socialists had been found out.
For
all their supposed unique contact with the masses, and
their beliefs that the proles would naturally trust Labour
to be told what was right, here was an aroused and angry
public indicating the opposite.
It
undermined the very basis of many a Labour politician's
lifelong belief along with his faith in the universal
brotherhood of man.
Powell
was scarcely less hated by various Tory politicians
because an election was looming and here was this bloody
man turning everything upside down, enraging the
opinion-forming elite and insisting that the party had
jettisoned its responsibilities.
Interestingly
enough, a middle-of-the-road Tory from that elite assured
me the other day that immigration was not a problem,
though he admitted "there are still some difficulties
with the white working class."
It is
a remark worth treasuring. Framing, if not embalming.
Powell
was always an uncomfortable man politically, his impassioned
attack in 1959 on the official hushing-up
of atrocities in Kenya's Hola Camp for Mau Mau terrorists—Denis
Healey describes it as the finest Parliamentary speech he
ever heard—was
a nuisance for the Macmillan Government.
Powell
also deplored our nuclear deterrent: he wanted an end to
our bases East of Suez and an end to posturing as a world
policeman.
He
saw the Soviet threat as greatly exaggerated and the
Anglo-American alliance as a menace. Ted Heath's prices
and incomes policy was "madness."
Enoch
was my oldest friend in politics, and in later years he
would regularly invite me to scrutinise his speeches in
advance. I would sometimes comment that his remarks would
upset many people. His usual reply was that they needed to
be upset. —Andrew
Alexander
Powell: Mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium
sermo
According to Mrs
Besant th[e] universal Church is simply the
universal self. It is the doctrine that we are really all
one person; that there are no real walls of individuality
between man and man. If I may put it so, she does not tell
us to love our neighbours; she tells us to be our
neighbours. That is Mrs Besant's thoughtful and suggestive
description of the religion in which all men must find
themselves in agreement. And I never heard of any
suggestion in my life with which I more violently
disagree. I want to love my neighbour not because he is I,
but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the
world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is
one's self, but as one loves a woman, because she is
entirely different. If souls are separate love is
possible. If souls are united love is obviously
impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himself, but
he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does,
it must be a monotonous courtship. If the world is full of
real selves, they can be really unselfish selves. But upon
Mrs Besant's principle the whole cosmos is only one
enormously selfish person.
Grade: C-
The Darjeeling Limited:
The wheels in the brain go round and round
This is another spiritual
journey, featuring hitmen, two Irish and one English, who
are philosophers as all movie hitmen these days must be,
just as all movie policemen must be head cases. Colin
Farrell's hitman is a head case too, but any competent
moral theologian could have told him that the second
killing he agonizes over was no more evil than the first
which precipitated it. Suggested scriptural reading:
Proverbs
9:10.
And someone should tell
writer-director Martin McDonagh that a superabundance of
swears alone doesn't make you the next Coen Brothers or
David Mamet. Though hiring Carter Burwell to do the music
doesn't hurt. Bonus points: Bruges
itself, the great Brendan Gleeson and the lovely
Clémence
Poésy and Thekla
Reuten, Andreas
Schmidt singing Der
Leiermann and the little boy's
confessional crib sheet, which is the saddest thing I've
ever seen.
Jason Statham struggles
manfully against inept direction, inapt cinematography and
a witless, distended script, but he cannot save this steak
and kidney plod, despite valiant support from old pros
Peter Bowles, Jason Faulkner and the peerless David Suchet.
And he gets no help from Saffron Burrows, who's a cold
fish to match her trout
pout. Perhaps she simply doesn't like men.
Best bit: the opening
credits, set to T Rex's "Bang
a Gong," which is everything this
movie is not: sexy, swaggering and cocksure.
Grade: C
The Bank Job: Nothing
in their outward
appearance suggested a total lack of chemistry
When did I realize this movie
was risible? About one minute in, when we are introduced
to a top female cable news network correspondent who would
strain credulity as a contestant on America's Next Top
Model. How ridiculous is the plot? Dale Gribble would
scorn it as contrived. When did this movie make me laugh
out loud? About one hour in, when the chief conspirator
says, "We have to tie up all of the loose
ends." To what can sitting through this movie be
compared? Like being trapped in a Tilt-A-Whirl while being
subjected to brief random images and belaboured about the
head with saucepans of various sizes. If there were a
Dennis Quaid School of Acting, what would it teach? 1.
Grimace. 2. Shout. 3. Repeat. Where can I buy one of those
cool PDAs that lets you detonate bombs and perform
assassinations by remote control? Nowhere as yet, but
Steve Jobs promises delivery of the iTerrorist by 4Q 2008.
Grade: D
Vantage Point:
Sigourney Weaver asks,
'Will someone please tell me what I'm doing here?'
Jay
Currie and Edward
Michael George have challenged me to
"share six non-important things/habits/quirks about
yourself." Probs neg, as Nathan Barley would say, but
I will add the usual proviso that the tag dies with me.
Since
the death of Debussy, Sibelius and Schönberg are the most
significant figures in European music, and Sibelius is
undoubtedly the more complete artist of the two. However
much one may admire Schönberg's powerful imagination and
unique genius, it is difficult not to feel that the world
of sound and thought that he opens up—though
apparently iconoclastic—is
au fond as restricted as the academicism it has
supplanted. Sibelius's music suffers from no such
restriction, and it indicates not a particular avenue of
escape but a world of thought which is free from the
paralyzing alternatives of escape or submission. It offers
no material for the plagiarist and is to be considered
more as a spiritual example than as a technical influence.
We are not likely to find any imitations of Sibelius's
No. 7 because the spiritual calm of
this work is the climax of the spiritual experience of a
lifetime and cannot be achieved by any aping of external
mannerisms. —Constant
Lambert, Music
Ho!, 1931
Sometimes technique is
enough. And when it is harnessed to an uncompromising
vision followed through with total commitment, you get
art. Yes, that's right. If this seems ridiculous, consider
what Steven Spielberg would have added to this apocalyptic
scenario. Well, you'd get superfluous exposition, kute
kiddies, a happy ending and a wooden stake of
"meaning" driven through its heart.
Instead, Cloverfield is pure cinema, stripped bare
of accretion. Its flat emotional affect delivers a mise
en scène perfectly consonant with the personal
experience of disaster as it happens.
Post-9/11 metaphor? Think
harder, reviewers. Cloverfield is not horror
recollected in sentimental tranquility. It is a
presentiment of the
long emergency.
Grade: A
Cloverfield: 'Does this mean we don't get bonuses this year?'
Has atavism been entirely
bred out of the (North) American male? It is tempting to
describe Juno as a twee feminist fantasy, but the
almost universal rapture with which our elite has greeted
it suggests we are meant to regard it as The Way We Live
Now. So this is the way the (Western) world ends: not with
a bang, not with a whimper but instead suffocated under an
avalanche of
excruciatingly poptastic "witticisms." Imagine
Oscar Wilde as channelled by the Gilmore Girls, and you'll
get an understanding of just how sissified this movie is.
After Juno had ended,
I resolved to devote what remains of my life to making the
possession of acoustic guitars a crime punishable by
death. Then I considered converting to Islam. Later, after
I calmed down, I was possessed by a renewed admiration for
the truth and beauty to be found in John Hughes's high
school comedies.
If Juno is the Barack
Obama of Oscar-nominated films, then There Will Be
Blood is the John McCain
—nothing but atavism. In fact, much like John McCain's
public image, it is a celebration of insanity. As
Aristotle pointed out, the mad have nothing to teach us
and so neither does this movie, despite its high level of
technical achievement.
Now, I understand that the
past is a foreign country, and that it is too much to
expect Paul Thomas Anderson to betray the slightest
knowledge of orthodox Christian theology, let alone the
syntax and cadence of the Authorized Version. But am I
alone in finding Eli Sunday the feeblest fundamentalist
ever? Prediction: "I'm finished!" will be to the
2000s what "Here's Johnny!" was to the 1980s.
You have been warned.
Thank God for the Coen
brothers, who make movies for adults. No Country For
Old Men is just as technically accomplished as There
Will Be Blood, but its artistry is deployed in the
service of moral seriousness, not merely in striking the
nerve endings that induce bleats of
"masterpiece" from the critically jejeune.
Another difference between
the two is that while Daniel Plainview and Anton Chigur
may both be regarded as the Devil, No Country For Old
Men does not regard his triumph as inevitable. Two
caveats: 1. One suspects that Tommy Lee Jones cannot
distinguish profound from ponderous
—or mellifluous from mushmouthed. 2. One suspects
that the Coens believe cheating the audience of narrative
expectations to be per se a good thing. But this is
an exquisitely beautiful film and terrifically exciting in
every respect, while Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin are
just as good as Daniel Day Lewis. Better, actually, because
their performances are less self-regarding.
Grade: A-
No Country For Old Men: Dogs are the stormtroopers of
the animal kingdom
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY (SPECIAL WHERE
WERE YOU WHEN I NEEDED YOU? EDITION II)
Marvin
Kurz [lawyer
representing B'nai Brith]: I understand from your previous
evidence that you don't feel that there should be any kind
of human rights redress for people who feel that they are
discriminated against. That is how I understood your
evidence this morning. Right?
KMG:
No, I think that, as long as people can go to court under
tort law, they don't need human rights laws.
Kurz:
As long as people can sue in tort, you think that should
be sufficient, that there should not be any Human Rights
Commissions at all.
KMG:
No, I don't think they are a good idea.
Kurz:
And human rights tribunals.
KMG:
No.
Kurz:
Do you agree that harmful words against a group can hurt
them?
KMG:
That is a difficult question. They may feel hurt. Whether
they are hurt or not is a different thing. In any event,
individuals are hurt every day. It seems to me that is a
part of life.
Kurz:
Groups who feel hurt by language used by others should
just get on with it. That is basically your view?
KMG:
Pretty much. Let me make a distinction. It is against the
law, and I fully support laws—if
someone writes, "Let's kill all Jews." That goes
beyond free speech and I don't think it is defensible. The
sorts of statements counselling violence against people I
don't believe to be acceptable.
Kurz:
If somebody just defames the Jews, since you brought up
that example, you think the Jews should have no response.
Right?
KMG:
They have all the responses that are open to anyone else
in society. They can complain that this is unjust. They
can say, "You shouldn't print this," or they can
start boycotts, whatever people want to do.
Kurz:
But there should be no legal redress. That is your
position.
KMG:
That is my position.
—Kevin Michael Grace, testimony before the Canadian
Human Rights Tribunal, in Citron
v Zündel, 5 December 2000 (8024-8026)
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
(SPECIAL WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I NEEDED YOU? EDITION)
Marvin
Kurz [lawyer
representing B'nai Brith]: To put it perhaps mildly, you
disagree with the decision that the [British Columbia
Human Rights] Tribunal reached in the Collins
v Abrams case. Correct?
KMG:
Yes, I disagree. Further, I think they should have no
authority to consider such matters.
Kurz:
What do you mean by that, sir? I don’t understand.
KMG:
I don’t believe that a Human Rights Commission such as
the BC Human Rights Commission should have the ability to
empanel tribunals to imperil freedom of the press.
Claude
Pensa [Chairperson, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal]: I
am sorry, I didn’t hear the last words.
KMG:
To imperil freedom of the press.
Kurz:
You don’t think that human rights legislation should
deal in any way with any form of restriction of freedom of
speech. Is that what you are saying?
KMG:
I don’t believe in human rights legislation.
Kurz:
You don’t believe in human rights legislation?
Grace:
No, I do not.
Kurz:
Why is that?
KMG:
Because I believe that certain things are criminal and
certain things are not criminal. I think that human rights
tribunals fall between two stools. I think, if someone has
committed a crime against the Criminal Code, you find the
evidence and try them. Other than that, I don’t believe
in it.
Kurz:
What if somebody discriminates against another person? You
don’t think there should be redress to that in a human
rights tribunal?
KMG:
No, I do not.
Kurz:
You think they should just be able to discriminate for
reasons of race or religion?
KMG:
Let me put it this way. Short of establishing a police
state, it is impossible to end discrimination. If people
have cases, there is tort law. If people have suffered
damages, they can go to the courts and get redress.
Kurz:
I take it you have no great respect for human rights
tribunals. Would that be a fair statement?
KMG:
Yes, I think it would be a fair statement.
Kurz:
You think they are kangaroo courts?
KMG:
Yes, indeed I do.
Kurz:
Do you think they jump to the will of the political elite?
KMG:
Yes. —Kevin
Michael Grace, testimony before the Canadian Human Rights
Tribunal, in Citron
v Zündel, 5 December 2000 (7931-7933)
Last
week, this
story appeared buried inside the business
pages of the Washington Post. Why wasn't the story
on Page 1? The Post reports that the blue-blooded
five, Wall Street's five top investment banking houses,
awarded their management $39 billion in bonuses for 2007—a
period when those firms combined to earn investors about
$11 billion in profits. Merrill Lynch lost $8 billion in
2007, Morgan Stanley $3 billion and Bear Stearns $230
million, yet the executives of these companies were
showered with billions of dollars in bonuses. Otherwise,
they would refuse to do any work! Which, apparently, would
be in shareholders's interest. Merrill Lynch and Morgan
Stanley could have done better by their shareholders in
2007 by simply purchasing Treasury bills; a software
program designed to make simple conservative investment
decisions about market-following mutual funds would have
performed better in 2007 than the top management of most
investment banking houses. And the software program would
not have paid itself billions of dollars in bonuses for
screwing up!...
It's
one thing when profitable firms shower money on their CEOs
and other top brass; often the amounts are indecent, but
as long as shareholders come out ahead, the executives
have at least some justification for their windfalls. But
in the modern milieu of corporate kleptocracy, even when
the company does terribly and the CEO makes decisions that
blow up in the firm's face, the CEO awards himself
hundreds of millions of dollars, anyway. Why is this not
seen as white-collar crime?
Last
week's buried Post story included this priceless
quote: "'To many people, [the bonuses] will be
shocking and questionable,' said Jeanne Branthover,
managing director of Boyden Global Executive Search.
'People in New York in the world of investment banking
will understand it. It's critical that pay is still there
or you're going to lose really good people.'" Beyond
that executive headhunter firms such as Boyden
have a self-interest in running up CEO pay —this can
increase the search firms' headhunting commissions—consider
the reasoning: OMG, we can't lose the really good people
who cost our shareholders billions of dollars with
dim-witted decisions! The notion that top corporate
managers must be paid fantastic amounts because they
possess incredible, astonishing expertise often is used to
justify CEO pay, even when the managers who claim the
incredible, astonishing expertise make foolish decisions.
"We'll put billions of dollars of money entrusted to
our care into subprime gimmick mortgages backed by no
documentation of income; my incredible, astonishing
expertise tells me this is totally safe!"
If
corporate managers who screwed up received $5.85 an hour,
the federal minimum wage, for the year in which they
screwed up—that is, if their wallets were at risk when
they perform poorly—then they might fairly argue for
huge bonuses when they perform well. But there is no
evidence that the people who made the big investment calls
on Wall Street last year (except
at Goldman Sachs, which avoided the
subprime mess) are any better at what they do than people
chosen at random off a Brooklyn street. You bet
"people in New York in the world of investment
banking" will understand huge executive bonuses paid
in the same year as huge losses. What's happening is
basically a hustle, intended to enrich the executives
while separating the investors from their cash.
"People in New York in the world of investment
banking" understand that, all right!
—Gregg
Easterbrook
Adam Smith: The invisible
hand
is the pickpocket's best friend
AND HERE'S TO
YOU, MRS WILKINSON, HEAVEN HOLDS A PLACE FOR THOSE WHO
BRAY, HEY, HEY, HEY
Stop
being a scold. Get over your pinched and neurotically
ideological notion of freedom, and start paying attention
to the further freedoms that matter much to people
actually trying to live their own singular lives.
No,
Dennis Rodman is not a worthy role model. Nor is a man,
such as Thomas Jefferson, who was so irresponsibly
prodigal that he allowed his self-imposed financial ruin
to override his acknowledged moral duty to release his
slaves from bondage. Yet despite a flaw far deeper and
more grievous than any Dennis Rodman could conceive in his
fevered dreams, we can see fit to give him his due.
Lord
knows it feels so good to be so right about so much. But
instead of rote, ham-handed, moralizing ideology why not
try a bit of actual moral discernment, instead? I think
you'll find it quite suitable for adults.
—Will
'As Mises And I Understand It' Wilkinson
One
of the embarrassments of the American libertarian movement
is its failure to sufficiently acknowledge how collective
bias against blacks, women, gays, immigrants etc. deprives
blacks, women, gays, immigrants, etc. of their freedom. To
my mind, serious forms of structural discrimination are
much worse for liberty than certain kinds of coercion.
Libertarians make themselves look ridiculous when they
claim that everyone is fully and equally free as long as
no one is coercing anyone. Now, this isn’t obvious. At
least it wasn’t to me. It took me a good while to come
around to this view—to see just how much structural bias
does deprive people of their freedom or of the value of
their freedom. But I am embarrassed that it took me as
long as it did.
—Will
'As Mises And I Understand It' Wilkinson
When
I came back to Fleet Street,
Through a sunset-nook at night,
And saw the old Green Dragon
With the windows all alight,
And hailed the old Green Dragon
And the Cock I used to know,
Where all the good fellows were my friends
A little while ago.
I
had been long in meadows,
And the trees took hold of me,
And the still towns in the beech-woods,
Where men were meant to be;
But old things held; the laughter,
The long unnatural night,
And all the truth the talk in hell,
And all the lies they write.
For
I came back to Fleet Street,
And not in peace I came;
A cloven pride was in my heart,
And half my love was shame.
I came to fight in fairy tale,
Whose end shall no man know—
To fight the old Green Dragon
Until the Cock shall crow!
Under
the broad bright windows
Of men I serve no more,
The groaning of the old great wheels
Thickened to a throttled roar;
All buried things broke upwards;
And peered from its retreat,
Ugly and silent, like an elf,
The secret of the street.
They
did not break the padlocks,
Or clear the wall away.
The men in debt that drank of old
Still drink in debt today;
Chained to the rich by ruin,
Cheerful in chains, as then
When old unbroken Pickwick walked
Among the broken men.
Still
he that dreams and rambles
Through his own elfin air,
Knows that the street's a prison,
Knows that the gates are there:
Still he that scorns or struggles,
Sees frightful and afar
All that they leave of rebels
Rot high on Temple Bar.
All
that I loved and hated,
All that I shunned and knew,
Clears in broad battle lightening;
Where they, and I, and you,
Run high the barricade that breaks
The barriers of the Street,
And shout to them that shrink within,
The Prisoners of the Fleet!
Frankly,
I'm kind of tired of the continuing one-upmanship in
violence and perversity among the recent generation of
directors. I think it's become the other side of the coin
of sentimentality. The classic definition of
sentimentality is "unearned emotion"—a
privileged, unreal, self-indulgence in the sugary sadness
of things. There are a lot of recent movies and books I'd
call excremental for their unearned disgust—their
privileged, self-satisfied wallowing in the gruesome
shittiness of it all. David
Fincher is a prime example of an
excremental director. —Richard
Hell
Spacey in Se7en (sic): Dr Evil sez, 'Ooh scary,
kids!'
Most
species within nature aim not at unlimited growth but
rather at optimum growth; that is, a condition of
stability, fulfilling but not destroying the species’
appropriate niche within the larger life-system. Likewise,
the individual organism, if it is healthy, seeks not
endless growth—which is monstrous and suicidal—but
rather maturation and reproduction, which also coincides
with the “ideal” of the species. Both tend to serve
and sustain the ends—whatever those may be—of
evolutionary change as a whole.
Cancer
is distinctive and pathological precisely because it does
not conform to this pattern, or recognize any limitations;
the disease with—as well as of—hubris. Delighting in
nothing but multiplication, cancer ends by destroying both
its host and itself. The analogy to our modern planetary
growth-devoted techno-industrial society (whether
capitalist or socialist makes no difference) is complete
and exact. Like cancer, expansionist industrialism
believes in nothing but more expansionism. Growth equals
power: power equals growth. Again like cancer, the process
will self-destruct. Not, however, without human suffering,
which will be great until a different kind of society
based on a more stable adaptation to the earth’s thin
skin is somewhat achieved. —Edward
Abbey, Letter
to the Editor of the New York Review Of
Books, 30 March 1973
POETRY
CORNER (THE AMBLER 5TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
On
The Spirit of Getting-On-Ed-Ness
["The
Sailor: 'She whom we rail at in this song is that Spirit
of getting-on-ed-ness and making out our life at the
expense of our fellow men and of our own souls.'"]
Thou
ugly, lowering, treacherous Quean
I think thou art the Devil!
To pull them down the rich and mean,
And bring them to one level.
Of all my friends
That found their ends
By only following thee,
How many I tell
Already in Hell,
So shall it not be with me!
I
knew three fellows were in your thrall,
Got more than they could carry,
The first might drink no wine at all,
And the second he would not marry;
The third in seeking golden earth
Was drownded in the sea,
Which taught him what your wage is worth,
So it shall not be with me!
There
was Peter Bell of North Chappel,
Was over hard and sparing,
He spent no penny of all his many,
And died of over caring;
He saved above two underd pound
But his widow spent it free,
And turned the town nigh upside down,
So it shall not be with me!
Then
mannikins bang the table round,
For the younger son o' the Squire,
Who never was blest of penny or pound,
But got his heart's desire.
Oh, the creditor's curse
Might follow his hearse,
For all it mattered to he!
From worshipping Mammon,
So it shall not be with me!
And
Absalom,
That was a King's son,
Was hangéd on a tree,
When he the Kingdom would have won,
So it shall not be with me!
