Брексит

Kasparov told me again and again in his book, but it didn’t really hit me until I googled the performers in this song. 

The weakness of Putin’s regime is the indispensability of the party cities of the West as gangster chic accessories. 

Which got me thinking about Brexit. I think on the balance it would be a good thing. But... there is a hopeful vein of commentary on the ‘right’ in the Rebel Colonies that a United Kingdom no longer in the European Union would naturally orientate towards the ‘United States’ to a greater degree.  It occurred to me there is another possibility that is equally likely. Like Israel, that other independent nuclear power resolved not be absorbed into Eurabia, the United Kingdom could move closer to Russia. It is the only nearby alternative to the feckless and unreliable nation across the Atlantic: for whatever happens in November, the leader of the ‘United States’ will be more dangerously incompetent and uninterested in foreign policy than any previous President in the history of the Republic.

And I wonder – I am sure that the rank and file supporters of Brexit are sincere – but how many of the influential high-profile converts will turn out to be covered in Russian pocket lint, when the last trump sounds or the next big tranche of secret files is leaked by Anonymous?

Here’s the original version of that song.

Easter Monday Update

How Arguing About the Nature of Inquiry in the Historical Sciences has Brought me Back to the Faith

You will recall my strong and often repeated affirmation of the quote attributed to Max Planck: ‘Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagnination.’

For some time I have been having a discussion with Marco and Andy Cooper about what qualifies as science in the historical sciences-  in disciplines like biology, geology, astronomy, where you cannot do an experiment, how exactly do we obtain knowledge? Knowledge, that is, of the how, as opposed to the what; for it is very easy to catalogue stars or beetles. [‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting’ (Ernest Rutherford)]

We are agreed that basically what we do is rely on experiments that have been done for us. We postulate a model for how something occurs that suggests that we should never observe a particular phenomena in nature, and if we do observe that particular phenomena, that model is falsified, in the same way as a model that suggests we will not obtain a particular result in an experiment will be falsified if we do the experiment and obtain that result. We are agreed on the additional proviso that the model does not contradict any of the physical laws we have determined with the experiments we can do in the here and now; and where I differ from Marco is on an insistence that this lack of contradiction be made explicit in terms of a mechanism: a story that is not entirely implausible that explains exactly how this observation distant in space or time can be explained using the physics and chemistry we have nutted out here on Earth. 

A distinction that we have come up with is between primary and secondary utility. If our model predicts that we should observe something that we have not yet observed, and we look for it, and find it, then it is scientifically useful. It has primary utility. Everything else our model is good for is its secondary utility. If it provides us with a good job, or helps maintain the stability of the Overlord’s rule, or makes us feel comfortable and happy, or is a great plot element in action adventure films, it has some secondary utility. The realisation that Marco has had for a long time and has dawned on me more slowly is that a great deal of what we teach as science in the historical sciences is taught for its secondary utility rather than it primary utility.

The models of anthropogenic global warming make terrible predictions; but there is a lot of money in it, and it dovetails beautifully with the statist agendas of all kinds of powerful lobbies, so it trundles along unstoppably. The models of abiogenesis we have are laughable and have predicted nothing, but the alternative of special creation is anathema, so we defend to the death our ‘science of the gaps’ against the ‘God of the gaps’. In the tiny and specialised hothouse of cometary science where Marco and Andrew live and breathe and have their being, the ‘contact binary’ model for the formation of bilobed comets, incredibly implausible to begin with, becomes less plausible with every example that is observed; but it allows the valuable fiction that comets are unchanged relics of the cloud from which the Solar System formed to continue, so its flaws are excused or ignored.

This realisation of the narrow limits of primary utility threw me back on my resolution a few years ago to only believe what I could not disbelieve. Quoting myself: 

“What do I mean by ‘believe’ or ‘disbelieve’? I favour the definition provided by the 19th century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce: ‘A belief is a habit, i.e., a readiness or disposition to respond in certain kind of ways on certain kinds of occasions.’

With this definition, it should become evident that there are some things that cannot be disbelieved. We cannot disbelieve F = GMm/r², in that we cannot habitually behave as if it were not true: each time we behave as if it were not true, we are likely to injure ourselves, and if we attempt to make it a habit we are sure to break before the universe does.

In the same time as we cannot disbelieve F = GMm/r², we cannot disbelieve that life is better than death. Believing this, which means acting upon it, we cease to exist.

I think the idea that death is better than life is one of a small number of beliefs that, believed in a Peircean way, will destroy any functioning society, and so collectively cannot be believed. The antithesis of these beliefs is what C. S. Lewis called the “Tao”: the nugget of ethics common to every ethical system we know about.”

Outside the narrow limits of primary utility there is a vast sea of habits that are necessary for individuals and societies to stick to the ‘Tao’. These habits cannot be justified by experiment; they have predictive value only over a scale of millennia in terms of the fitness of the societies that practice them. I had argued before that Max Planck’s quote leaves us free to choose our own poetry: the facts of science do not force us to pick the pessimism of Housman over the joy of Manley Hopkins.  I have been feeling useless, adrift in idea space, for some time, and I looked up from the realisation of the narrow limits of primary utility brought about by this discussion to realise that my intellectual quarrels with the Catholic Faith had somehow evaporated while I was not trying to be Catholic anymore. I recalled the quote ‘truth cannot contradict truth’ and remembered again that the Church teaches nowhere anything in contradiction to the certain knowledge of the experimental sciences,  And I realised that I did not really have a free choice of poetry: I had a duty to chose the poetry that could best serve the overwhelming secondary utility of protecting and advancing the ‘Tao’. Against the abyss of relativism, against the apocalyptic rage convulsing Dar-al-Islam, I see only one thing standing firm in the world. So I am resolved, by the grace of God, to display consistently a readiness or disposition to respond in Catholic ways on as many occasions as possible.

Paralipomena Ispanika

Despite or as a belated consequence of having Spanish skills in the lowest quartile of mi nacimiento, I ended up spending most of my Christmas Holiday time immersing myself in Hispanic culture, working my way through poems of Borges and plays of Lope de Vega and listening to a lot of Andean pop music.

I also changed my 'Twitter trends' thingy to follow 'Hermosillo' because the Australian Twitter trends, like most Twitter things, were irritating me.

#ResumeTuAñoEnTresPalabras No es ley

No es ley la que no alcanza del plebeyo al principal.

That is a Polonius-style bit of good advice from a bad character in El laberinto de creta.

***

My mum has pointed out that '2016' looks like 'dIOS' spelled backwards. Our new car is an 'ix35', which of course looks like 'SEx!' when you look at the name printed on the inside of the doorframe upside down.

***

From time to time - though less since I wrote and asked them to stop sending me dead tree mail - theagressive proselytising efforts of the American Chemical Society have prompted me, in my contrary fashion as a native of occupied Sonora Norte, to look up what it takes to join the Mexican Chemical Society. They have exactly the opposite tack and demand proof that applicants practice, or intend to practice, a chemical profession in Mexico.

***

I've thought for a long time that the United States makes most sense as a Latin American country where most people happen to speak English, and this has never seemed truer to me than this Presidential Election cycle. The blancos have a mendacious Cristina Kirchner riding her husband's coat-tails, with a spittle-flecked Hugo Chavez in the wings; meanwhile the colorados have an El Presidente type from central casting, complete with cult of personality, who would fit perfectly well in a line up with Somoza, Stroessner, Trujillo, etc.; as for the viable candidates with some remaining commitment to the ideals of the republic, they have Spanish names and Cuban parents.

... .-

Sometimes I am pedantic for the sake of being pedantic, but I don't think this is one of those times. Probably. 

I have seen in the newspapers in the past little while more than once that the recent attacks in Paris were the ‘worst attacks on French soil since World War II’, ‘the deadliest violence to strike France since World War II’, etc. 

Unless these statements are very narrowly and pedantically qualified, they are not true.

On August 20^th, 1955, the non-Saharan bits of Algeria were départements of France. This means they were not colonies or protectorates, like Vietnam or Djibouti, but were formally just as much ‘French soil’ or ‘France’ as Martinique, La Réunion, or Corsica are today. On that day occurred a number of separate murderous attacks on civilians for political reasons - that is, terrorist attacks - in the neighbourhood of the city of Constantine. If you have a mind to, go and google ‘Philippeville Massacre’.  I won’t blame you if you don’t; what you will find will be really ghastly and make you turn to the modern news with a sigh of relief. English Wikipedia only has the death toll in Philippeville itself, where 123 Europeans and loyalist Arabs were killed, but states that 37 Europeans were killed in the nearby town of El-Halla. French Wikipedia suggests a total death toll of about 170. Thus in aggregate these attacks caused more deaths than the aggregate death toll of the recent co-ordinated attacks in Paris.

But those attacks aren’t what I’m talking about. The worst acts of terrorism since World War II on French soil were not those massacres, but the reprisals afterwards, extra-judicial executions carried out over the next few days of August 1955 by French military, paramilitary, and civilian vigilantes, in which something between 1200 and 20,000 Arabs were killed. Feel free to google them as well if you aren’t sickened enough. The tiresome warnings about an ‘islamophobic backlash’ are a bit less tiresome in the context of these things that happened within living memory on French soil.

As for political violence in mainland France, it is true that there are no single incidents as bad since World War II. But the ‘cafe wars’ – the struggle between rival Algerian rebel groups among Algerian expatriates in France – killed at least 3975 people during the years of Algerian War. That might not sound so bad to readers from Juarez or Baghdad, but that is a pretty serious level of violence for Western Europe. But it was beur on beur, so who remembers?

I remember being struck, back when I was an undergraduate, on how the modern history section of my university had shelves and shelves about the Vietnam War, but only one book on the Algerian War. ‘What anglocentrism!’ I thought. ‘What a parochial country we are! I bet it would be very different in France.’ A few years ago I brought this up with a French colleague – how nobody in the English-speaking world seemed to remember or care about the Algerian War – and he said it was actually much the same in France. De Gaulle wanted to forget about it; the establishment wanted to forget about it; and for many years afterward journalists were actively discouraged from mentioning it.

So we forget. Not that long ago Algiers, Oran, and Constantine were cities with Arab minorities. A million people fled in 1962, to France and Spain and Israel. The vibrant cosmopolitan cultural mix of Marseilles, say, has been tried before, on the other side of the Mediterranean.

So maybe this isn’t one of those times I am being pedantic for the sake of being pedantic. I dunno.

***

From the 1911 Encylopaedia Brittanica, BTW:

CONSTANTINE, a city of Algeria, capital of the department of the same name, 54 m. by railway S. by W. of the port of Philippeville, in 36°22′ N., 6° 36′ E. Constantine is the residence of a general commanding a division, of a prefect and other high officials, is the seat of a bishop, and had a population in 1906 of 46,806, of whom 25,312 were Europeans.

...In 1906 the population of the commune of Algiers was 154,049; the population municipale, which excludes the garrison, prisoners, &c., was 145,280. Of this total 138,240 were living in the city proper or in Mustapha. Of the inhabitants 105,908 were Europeans. French residents numbered 50,996, naturalized Frenchmen 23,305, Spaniards 12,354, Italians 7368, Maltese 865, and other Europeans (chiefly British and Germans) 1652, besides 12,490 Jews. The remainder of the population—all Mahommedans—are Moors, Arabs, Berbers, Negroes, with a few Turks.

...In 1832 a census of the town showed that it had but 3800 inhabitants, of whom more than two-thirds were Jews. Under French rule Oran has regained its ancient commercial activity and has become the second city in Algeria. The population of the city in 1906 was 100,499, of whom 21,906 were French, and 23,071 Spanish. There were also 27,570 naturalized Frenchmen, mostly of Spanish origin. There is a negro colony in the city, numbering about 3000, included in the census in the native population of 16,296. Including the garrison and naval forces the total population of the commune was 106,517.

 

A Sense of Proportion, 2015 Edition

It has been a while since I have written anything substantial here. There have been any number of embryonic blog posts kicking around in my head for months. I read Graham Richardson’s “Whatever it Takes”, for example. I wanted to write about how weird it was that he could come from a background in the Catholic Left and write about the years when all the important forward defences in the culture wars that were to come were abandoned, without mentioning them at all; but mostly I wanted to write about the renewed sense of gratitude and appreciation I had for the role of the Centre Left in winning the Cold War. Richardson’s memoir is devoid of moral content, beyond a sort of crude sentimental tribalism, but in terms of outcomes – which are what counts – it was incredibly important that this country had people like him occupying that Centre Left idea space and tenaciously defending it. This made a home for people who might otherwise have ended up further left, if that place was empty. Richo’s Labor Right faction, and even more so his arch-enemies of the non-Communist Labor Left, seems to me to have filled an absolutely essential role as the real frontline enemies of the Evil Empire in Australia. That is the critical theatre in the war for hearts and minds: that place in idea space where those who could go either way are. 

Then I have been meaning to write about a feeling that has been preying on me worse and worse this year, the feeling that I have trapped myself in the middle of nowhere, by setting up the perfect I have imagined as the enemy of the good that actually exists. Like Blake said: “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s”; but having done so I am in Lord Acton’s position: “absolutely alone in my essential moral position, and therefore useless.” Day by day Western Secular Culture – which I was quite comfortable in, c. 1990 - becomes more ridiculous and repulsive to me, driving me away. It has no sense of proportion at all, and it is in the thrall of a groupthink, a Grundyism as narrow and obsessive as the worst of the Victorian Age, the intellectual foundations of which make Scientology look like a respectable ideology. Then day by day Dar-al-Islam – which I was quite enamoured of, c. 2000 –brings forth some new horror. These things push me away, and make me long for the culture and ideology of my youth, the culture and ideology that created Western Civilisation: but then there is Laudato Si, and I am kicked away...

I want to belong; I do not want to be entirely alone and useless. But I cannot bow to be the slave of another man’s system. I cannot assert anything I do not truly hold to be true. Here I am, stuck.

So I give myself this command: seek a sense of proportion yourself, first. Take the beam out of your own eye. What does it mattter what happens to Western Civilisation? It has been fatally injured since 1914. It has done what it came into the world to do, it has spread its seeds, it has brought the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the shores of the Ubangi and the Summa Theologica to Vietnam, and there is no corner of the world where the ‘good bits’ of Western Civilisation are not ceaselessly alive, a vision in the minds of men. So it is dying, now, but it has been dying a long time, and every day it is a smaller proportion of the world’s population, the world’s wealth, the world’s knowledge. Remember, never have more people lived healthy and productive lives then right now, today. Never have we known more; never have we had more. Look at the world, and exult at it. What is happening in the parts of the world where most of us live? The Renegade Mainland Provinces have abandoned their profoundly anti-human One Child Policy; is this not the best piece of news of this century? Of course it is. Look at India: when you were young, remember how it was mired in unproductive economic policies, a hairsbreadth away from dictatorship? Remember a little more than a decade ago, the trains burning in Gujarat? See how Modi, the leader of the free world, is pursuing policies that lead to economic growth, is avoiding communalism. Look at Indonesia: a peaceful democratic change of government is not news anymore; remember what happened there, in the last years of the 20^th century. Remember what East Timor was, and what it is now. Look at Nigeria: there has been an election, and a leader has stepped down, and a new one has stepped up; no tanks in the streets, no massacres. Look at Chile: how much better is it there now, then when you were young. Look at Myanmar! Look at Turkmenistan, even: is it not better there than it was, a decade ago, when the fruit loop was running the show? All across the world, there are places that were charnel houses when I was young – Cambodia, Mozambique, El Salvador, Uganda – where people like me go on holiday now, where the inhabitants are gainfully employed making things to sell me, where there is no-one with serious traction advocating policies leading to poverty and genocide. 

How crazily, unbelievably better of this world is then what we imagined when I was in grade school? The nightmare futures of overpopulation and nuclear war they scared us with? This is an awesome world.

I don’t need a system.  I don’t need to be enlaved to another man’s. I am useless, but I am one of seven and half billion. What cosmic arrogance and gall is it, for me to aspire to be anything other than useless! I will stay today in my lonely empty spot in idea space, and exult, for I have regained my sense of proportion.