Drop anchor off Balmoral

Endeavour

I have been complaining about the assumptions behind popular entertainment, but I should say something positive about the TV series "Endeavour" which is being shown on Channel 7 in Australia on Sunday nights. This is the second spin-off from the Inspector Morse books and TV shows from the 1980's. First there was Lewis, about the subsequent career of Morse's sergeant, now Endeavour tells the  story of young Detective Sergeant Morse.

I like crime novels and movies. Not the suspense and chases, but the novels about crime and investigations, like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, G.K. Chesterton's Fr Brown, Maigret etc etc.

First of all, they can be read as entertaining stories. They may not be high art, but by its nature, crime stories involve:
- engagement with everyday life which is close to reality
- issues of good and evil, retribution and salvation
- central characters who are developed over several stories
- the puzzle of the crime and its solution.

In my opinion, the Inspector Morse books by Colin Dexter have a few flaws, but they are still very, very good. The TV series have reflected this, and I find myself getting involved in the characters and the assumptions they are making. I can agree or disagree with them, but I find them stimulating and interesting.

I don't know whether it is art, but I know I like it.

Wit, Novelty and Convention

My apologies in advance if this post seems incoherent - I am trying to sort something out by writing it down.
Last week I saw a performance of a play which is apparently considered intelligent and challenging by the arts establishment. I am afraid I found it boring, clichéd and loathsome. One reason for my reaction was the monotonous pace and the fact that only a couple of the characters seemed to me to be more than plastic stereotypes. That is just an issue of style, but what I found more offensive was that the play attempted to challenge every assumption of society. To quote the programme notes: "the play's questioning of hetero-normative and patriarchal constructs still holds a powerful resonance today."

Of course it is healthy to keep an open and questioning mind, but what struck me about this play is that it found no good at all in the conventions on which our society is based. In its search for wit and invention, it showed only contempt for traditions. The characters were either troubled because they held on to traditions that were failing, or they were troubled because they did not fit into these conventions, so everyone was troubled and there was no hope.

These ideas have spread out from the backwater of theatre into popular culture. For example if there is a straight, conventional man appearing in a TV commercial, he is invariably shown to be an uncultured fool and the butt of jokes.

Perhaps I am overstating this issue, but I fear I am not. For some reason, it struck me that civilisation is being challenged here. One piece of evidence for this is that in the play I saw, there was only contempt for Christ and Christianity. The foundations of society were being attacked from within, and I wonder where this will lead.

As I said, these are very incomplete thoughts and no doubt I am by nature a traditionalist, but it only made me feel an obligation to stand up for what holds society together now and for centuries past. Attacking this for no reason is not wit and it is not funny. At its worst, it can be evil.

Farmer John follows the Way 2013

I have just added a link on the sidebar on the right of this page, to a blog called
"Farmer John follows the Way 2013".

I have never met John, but someone I met once ran into him while walking from Le Puy in France to Santiago in Spain. Both are now nearing the Pyrenees on their journey. I am planning to walk this way myself, starting around Le Puy.

From what I have read, Farmer John has interesting observations and good photos, well worth following.

Vale

Whoa!

Carl Honore is an author and speaker who is appearing in the Happiness conference in Melbourne.
As I understand from a short interview I heard, he is proposing that we should linger over some moments and not rush through life.

As soon as anyone hears this, they say "of course!"

But isn't this an example of society throwing away wisdom it already had? All the religions encourage regular prayer, from the Irish peasants stopping work in the field when they hear the Angelus bell, to the monks at regular prayer and Muslims stopping at regular times of the day for prayer.

Of course religions see this as a source of grace, not just of lifestyle, but maybe one leads to the other. It seems to happen too often that we take traditions and ask "does anyone know why we do this?" If there is no immediate answer, we throw it away, until we end up rediscovering it again later on. What a waste of time.

Are glasses the new black?

Is it just my imagination, or are more people wearing glasses these days, especially young women? Once upon a time, people felt they were ugly, remember the saying "girls who wear glasses never get passes"?

(I am reluctant to reveal my inner obsessions, but I confess to finding women wearing glasses very attractive. I am open to an explanation for this, but I can't help it.)

There are, of course practical complications with having to carry glasses all the time. I was mostly grateful that I inherited my Father's genes and never needed glasses until normal deterioration made reading glasses necessary. The only time this was a problem was during electronics lab sessions at university, when I had to solder electronic components. I always felt the students who wore glasses had useful protection against hot solder spitting into their eyes. In those wild days, it never occurred to anyone that we should wear protection anyway.

As I have, perhaps unwisely, revealed, I am very content with the number of people especially young women who wear glasses these days. But now we seem to be about to wear glasses even if our eyesight is perfect. That is: Google glasses:

These I find alarming. The logic behind them is that you need to be "connected" all the time. Not a single waking moment will remain where you are alone with your thoughts, which is madness.

Then there is the creepiness of being able to take a photo of anything you are looking at, without the object of the photo knowing it. I have heard a parent of a young child who is testing these glasses saying it allows him to take very intimate photos when he is looking at his child, but I still find the whole thing disturbing. I like gadgets, but I have enough now, stop!!!!

The Unlikely Pilgrims

I just heard about a new Australian film about the Camino de Santiago. There is a website with a trailer of the film here.

This film is about a group of recovering drug addicts who walked to Santiago.

Must see it.

Peace, Brother!

People sometimes mock the decades of the Sixties and Seventies, but I have to admit they were sometimes less cynical than today. For example, Franco Zeffirelli's movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" about St Francis of Assisi, along with the music of Donovan:

Why?

Children sometimes irritate adults by asking "why?" to something which seems obvious.

One such "obvious" assertion is the basis of the policies of most political parties, which is fairness and  equality, but why? One answer is in Mary's Magnificat in yesterday's Gospel:

"He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty."

But such sentiments are not always so obvious. For example, the Australian Peter Singer, a professor at Stanford University, maintains that rights of all species come from self awareness, so a disabled human could have less rights than a healthy animal. He proposes a cooling off period after birth, so if a homo sapiens is not sapiens enough, it can be disposed of.

Recently I have been reading a book called "Europe since 1815, vol 2 Imperialism and Militarism", with the intention of learning about the origins of World War I. However, it turned out that this volume discusses many things, such as science, medicine and the philosophical debates of the time.

It struck me that this last item about philosophy echoes down to political ideas of our time, even if most people have forgotten where they came from. Somewhere, some people must still study these debates, but I think they mostly lie under the dust of unread books.

I am still trying to work out how they apply to today's politics, but for the moment I just wanted to list some of the ideas:

(1) Romanticism:
Immanuel Kant: knowledge only comes through the senses. However, moral law exists, so there must be a god who is the origin of this law.

Hegel: history is a progress towards freedom, but freedom for the state, not the individual. The process is described by Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

(2) Utilitarianism:
Jeremy Bentham: "the greatest happiness for the greatest number". Good laws are those that add to the sum total of human happiness.
Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill

(3) Positivism:
Auguste Comte: the methods of science are the only path to knowledge. Invented the "science of society", sociology.

(4) Humanitarianism:
Herbert Spencer: "evolutionary materialism" Society is an organism. He coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" and applied this to the evolution of societies. Existing social institutions must not slow down the evolution to the perfect man e.g., they should not alleviate the suffering of inferior men.
God is not knowable as a positive fact.

(5) Scientific Socialism:
Karl Marx: borrowed and adapted Hegels method to "dialectical materialism". Materialistic study of history based on the methods of production and the way property is held. Change is brought about by class warfare, the bottom against the top.

(6) Philosophical Pessimism:
Arthur Schopenhauer: will dominates motivation. But it results in unquenchable thirst and unfulfilled wishes.
Friedrich Nietzsche: did not accept Schopenhauer's resignation. Will to power is expressed by the heroic man (superman), who shows courage, pride and fierceness. Victory of the fit over the unfit. Condemned the meekness of Christian virtues.