Read this instead

A collection of links

I failed to get this week’s essay into a form that I would let anyone else read. I thought it would be fairly straightforward piece; but, as sometimes happens when the keys start clattering, it soon taught me the inadequacy of my own thoughts. For me, that’s a good thing; but it doesn’t leave me anything to share with you all.

I’m sure you’ll cope without my chatter just fine; but rather than pass over the week in silence, I thought I would share some things I have been reading.

For the moment

From the Forests of Arduinna – So What? – Rhyd Wildermuth on how what seems like indifference is sometimes the better form of acceptance.

David Ocks – The Modern Diet Is a Biosecurity Threat – On the deep disorders of modern agriculture and nutrition.

Freddie DeBoer – Seventeen Theses on Disability – Terse statements that should not need to be made, but which are necessary at the moment.

Eric Schliesser – On Structural Explanations in Political Rhetoric – ‘I suspect a lot of social phenomena that are called 'structural' or 'institutional' in character are done so in order to avoid pointing fingers at particular fellow citizens who can be held accountable or who are ultimately responsible for the state of affairs’.

NS Lyons - Liberalism and its Discontinuities – A dissection of Fukuyama’s Liberalism and its Discontents.

For all time

I have mentioned Simone Weil frequently in these newsletters, but I had not previously read On the Abolition of all Political Parties. She is as pure and uncompromising as ever:

‘To assess political parties according to the criteria of truth, justice and the public interest, let us first identify their essential characteristics.

There are three of these:

1.      A political party is a machine to generate collective passions.

2.      A political party is an organisation designed to exert collective pressure upon the minds of all its individual members.

3.      The first objective and also the ultimate goal of any political party is its own growth, without limit.

Because of these three characteristics, every party is totalitarian – potentially, and by aspiration. If one party is not actually totalitarian, it is simply because those parties that surround it are no less so. These three characteristics are factual truths – evident to anyone who has ever had anything to do with the every-day activities of political parties.’

I return to the Zhuangzi with the inevitability of rooks returning their winter roost. These days, we are blessed with many translations, Ziporyn’s Essential and Complete being particularly exemplary; but it is Watson’s somewhat outdated one that slipped from the shelves this time. The complete text can be found here. Chapter Two contains a handy warning for those of us foolish enough to share our opinions on the internet:

‘Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and limpid; little words are shrill and quarrelsome. In sleep, men's spirits go visiting; in waking hours, their bodies hustle. With everything they meet they become entangled. Day after day they use their minds in strife, sometimes grandiose, sometimes sly, sometimes petty. Their little fears are mean and trembly; their great fears are stunned and overwhelming. They bound off like an arrow or a crossbow pellet, certain that they are the arbiters of right and wrong. They cling to their position as though they had sworn before the gods, sure that they are holding on to victory. They fade like fall and winter - such is the way they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do - you cannot make them turn back. They grow dark, as though sealed with seals - such are the excesses of their old age. And when their minds draw near to death, nothing can restore them to the light.’

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Image: Dewsbury Library (Derelict), 2017 by degenerate.