Gratitude:
I am thankful for the Internet.
I am thankful that I am aware of the goodness of silence. I am
thankful that I am not given to boasting.
Acknowledgement:
I haven't published a
Dispatches from Akicistan for a long while because of sloth on my
part. What else can I confess to? I don't reach out much to others.
I don't boast because I don't much to boast about.
Request(s):
To those of you who overuse
the hole 'neath your nose: shut up!
What
is Akicistan? It isn't a
place. It is a state of mind that places cutting-edge
state-of-the-art sticks in mud. The word Akicistan is formed from
the initials AKIC
and the root stan.
If
Akicistan was an empire, it would comprise China, Canada, the Red
States of the USA, Latvia, and the parts of the world that comprise
Modern Christendom as well as ancient Christendom.
Akicistan
news in brief: If someone,
that is someone I cared about, asked me how I was doing these days, I
would have to say I am coasting. [People never ask me how I am
doing these days, but then I don't go asking people how they are
doing. I don't want to know because I may not like what I hear and I
may think even less of these people than I already do.]
Important
Akicistan Links:
In
Akicistan:
Some
of us can speak Chinese!
每天在工作，我学中文。
We
sometimes pay attention to China.
But not that much. What's to say？
It
is more polluted than ever and the Commies are still in power.
We
are fond of Canada!
But
every time, I listen to a podcast from CJOB, I have less and less
desire to go back. Winters are horrible. Hockey, at a minor level,
can be barbaric, revealing the dark underside of the Canadian
character.
We
are fond of Latvia! Seeing
what has happened to the Ukraine, we fear for Latvia because it has a
sizable Russian population.
The
Politics are Conservative and Reactionary!
Obama bad. The EU bad. The UN bad. Bureaucracy bad.
Homosexualism bad. Atheism bad. Libertine atheism bad. Scientism
bad. Science good. Republicans mediocre. Middle of the Roaders
dummies. Catholicism good. Liberal Catholics bad.
English
is taught! How often do I have
correct this mistake: I have ever done that. It is understandable
how the error can come about. Ever is the opposite of never and so
it would make sense that I
have ever is the
opposite of I have never.
But ever means all the time. You haven't done something all the
time of your life like been to Beijing.
Citizens
aren't freaks! But then again,
Akicistanians might be. To hold things that should be sacred sacred
is a freakish thing, perhaps a miracle in this day and age.
Reading
is the #1 Pastime! Here
is what I had been working my way through the past month or so:
Don
Colacho's (Nicolas Gomez Davilla) Aphorisms. There are
2,988 of them in this book that I compiled for myself. I try to
read at least one aphorism a day. I cut and paste the better
ones -- they are all profound actually -- and I put them in the AKIC
Weekly. (See below)
The
Niomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
Finished! Now it is time to read some Aquinas! The Niomachean
Ethics is a very good book. I hope to read it once more before I
die.
The
Summa by Thomas Aquinas. This
is a hard book to read. I have had to re-read every section in the
book so far.
Ulysses
by James Joyce. I am following along with Frank
Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through
Joyce's hard-to-read novel. Delaney figures he will have the
whole novel covered in about 22 years. Delaney completed
episode #195 recently and is working his way through the chapter that
introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far as
reading the book. I will be finished my reading of it, I
figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies.
It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it,
and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with
it
The
Holy Bible (RSV-C2E version, aka the Ignatius Bible, and
Douay-Rheims version). I will read the two versions in
conjunction. Last week, I finished reading the Book of Genesis. I
am not in the Book of Exodus. In the New Testament, I am reading the
Gospel According to Matthew.
The
Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester (Audio Book).
Finished. Joseph Needham was certainly a clever scholar, but he was
a unabashed Communist. He lived his life like he was a member of the
politburo. The author of this book about sympathizes with him. I
can't. The book was interesting for some of its detail about China,
but that is about it.
All's
Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare. Finished.
Antony
and Cleopatra. On the birth certificate, Tony is actually Anthony.
I have an “h” in the name.
Other
Limits of Reason: Nolson S. Yanofsky. Very good book. Some
chapters required re-reading on my part before I understood them.
Yanofsky explores the limits of reason via
mathematics and physics. I wish I could have read this book when I
was studying math in university. I would have appreciated the
subject more. As it was, I thought it was a chore.
The
Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. [Finished]
A novel set in North Korea. I read the
book on John Derbyshire's recommendation.
Travels
in West Africa by Mary H Kingsley. A travel book written in the
1890s. I believe I am reading it on the recommendation of Theodore
Dalrymple. This book is politically incorrect and
yet it is written by a woman. Feminists and Leftists would have to
be forced to say that she wasn't a woman.
Memorable
quotes are presented and discussed!
Nicholas
Gomez Davilla:
815
We frequently discover, after many years, that deliberate
solutions end up being more intolerable than problems
818
The leftist intellectual does not attack anything with
fearlessness and arrogance except ideas he believes to be dead.
819
Obviously, in many cases we come up with our ideas, but we are not
the first, nor the only ones, to come up with them.
820
Anybody has the right to be stupid, but not to demand that we
revere his stupidity. [On first thought, I thought that what
Davilla said in this aphorism was a truism or was trite. But on
quick reflection of some people, I have seen, who talk of how crazy
and idiotic they are, I can see they are doing what Davilla says,
asking us to revere their stupidity or their coolness brought about
as a result of their shortcomings.]
821
Modern drudgery does make it more difficult to believe in God, but it
does make it impossible to feel Him. [As
a drudge, I know exactly what he means. The rat race, I am involved
in, does leave me time to look after my soul. However, my attempts
to look after it are the attempts of an egoist trying to improve
himself. My attempts to feel him are those who try to be strong by
going to the gym for ten minutes a day.]
822
Intelligence is strengthened by the eternal commonplaces.
And it is weakened by those of its time and place. [Nothing
makes a person more stupid than following the fashions of the day and
accepting current commonplaces.]
823
It does not help the mediocre man at all to emigrate to
where great men reside. We all carry our mediocrity wherever we go.
[The stark truth. I am stuck
with myself.]
827
As the waters of this century rise, delicate and noble
sentiments, sensuous and fine tastes, discreet profound ideas take
refuge in a few solitary souls, like the survivors of the flood on
some silent mountains. [I love
to be one of those solitary souls, but I don't think there is much of
a chance of that happening.]
828
We spend a life trying to understand what a stranger
understands at a glance; that we are just as insignificant as the
rest. [True.]
831
Those whose gratitude for receiving a benefit is
transformed into devotion to the person who grants it, instead of
degenerating into the usual hatred aroused by all benefactors, are
aristocrats. Even if they walk around in rags. [I
am no aristocrat if this definition is correct.]
832
The fervor of the homage which the democrat renders to humanity is
comparable only to the coldness with which he disrespects the
individual. [True.] The
reactionary disdains man without meeting an individual he scorns.
[Damn!
I am not a true reactionary!]
835
To be civilized is to be able to
criticize what we believe in without ceasing to believe in it.[I
am sure that someone, possibly Chesterton, said something about the
true lover being a reformer of the object of its love. You love
something not for what it is, but for what you think it is capable
of. And I know that in my case, and even in my advanced age, I would
certainly want that to be so.]
836
Families are often purulent cells
of stupidity and unhappiness because an ironic necessity demands that
the government of such elemental structures require as much
intelligence, astuteness, and diplomacy as does the government of a
state. [If
you deem it foolish to live in a family, how can you be qualified to
express any opinions on the government of states?]
838
Whoever looks without admiration
or hatred has not seen. [Those
who try to look at world objectively are usually looking at the world
through the cloud of their perceived objectivity.]
842
There is no individual who, upon
evaluating himself without previous preparation, does not find that
he is inferior to many, superior to few, equal to none. [The
inferior- to-many
thought has been a frequent source of depression for me.]
845
With the object of preventing dangerous
concentrations of economic power in the hands of a few anonymous
associations, socialism proposes that the totality of economic power
be entrusted in a lone anonymous association called the state.
847
It would be easier to resolve modern
problems, if, for example, it were possible to sustain the Utopian
fancy that what causes the multiplication of plastic objects is only
the manufacturer's commercial greed, and not the idiotic admiration
of the presumed buyers.
854
The technical man believes he is a
superior being, because he knows what, by definition, anybody can
know. [I love this.]
856
Dialogue perverts its participants.
Either they are obstinate out of a desire to fight, or they give in
out of laziness. [Anyone who says he
wants a dialogue is just a monologist who wants a rapt listener.
Anyway, it is a good reason to not speak unless you are getting paid
to.]
859
Every straight path leads directly to a
Hell. [You have to a genius to think
these things. And yet this is an expression that once known, seems
to be so commonsensical that anyone could have thought of it.]
863
It is not easy to discern whether
contemporary journalism is a cynical way to get rich by corrupting
man or a “cultural” apostolate carried out by hopelessly
uncivilized minds. [I think it is the
latter. Journalists, for the most part, are a very ignorant bunch.]
865
Many people believe that a laconic
statement is dogmatic and judge the generosity of an intelligence by
the verbosity of its prose. [That is
how many are fooled into thinking Obama has something to say when he
hasn't said anything at all.]
867
The Modern World bitterly censures those
who “turn their back on life.” As if it were possible to know
with certainty that turning one's back on life is not turning one's
face toward the light. [I suppose that
those who “turn their back on life” can also be called retrograde
or some much worse epitaph.]
872
Our misery proceeds less from our
problems than from the solutions which are appropriate to them.[Oh!
Do I have to work hard?!?]
Theodore
Dalrymple
[Joseph]
Conrad was attracted to England precisely because he saw the English
national character as lacking in moral grandiosity and metaphysical
flamboyance. The English people did their duty without the apparent
need, or desire, to found it on any philosophical first principles.
[Joseph Needham wasn't like that.]
the
world is so infinite in its variety that our brief time on it cannot,
or at least should not be able, to exhaust our interest. I used to
tell my patients that it was vastly more important, from the point of
view of reaching contentment, that they should lose themselves than
that they should find themselves; and that, in losing they would find
themselves and most of their problems would disappear, at least for
the time they remained lost. If they made finding themselves the
precondition of losing themselves, they were, in effect,
lost. [link]
The
greatest cause of boredom in the modern world is entertainment.[link]
the
blogosphere gives the impression that the world is filled with
bitter, angry, resentful people who spit venom at the slightest
pretext and think that abuse is an argument—indeed,
the only argument.[link]
David
Warren
Call
it a mood: one which can be maintained by the true Stoic over
decades. I can easily understand it, especially at this moment,
having been in a mood like that this past week or two, with nothing
whatever to say to my own tiny shrinking public, or to the world at
large, beyond, “Go to hell.” But of course this won’t do. If
one is a writer one must never agree to shut up; not so long as there
is one more reader. Force the smug, “enlightened” bastards to
silence you. [Except in one
aspect, this passage doesn't apply to me, but I envy its pluck. I
have told the world, I could reside in, to go to Hell but not so much
by my writing. I don't have a readership that has been large enough
to dwindle.]
His
column in the Hindustan Times, entitled, “With Malice
Towards One and All,” will be missed up here in the High Doganate.
[What a name for a column or a blog. I
must steal it!]
“Do
you consider yourself to be in exile, imposed or self-imposed? I mean
in temporal affairs, not the exile from the divine that is this
life.” [In
my diary, I have been dealing with this question that was posed to
David Warren, as it applies to myself.]
The
glib answer, supported by a Russian proverb (“A man can do most
good where he was born”), is no, I cannot be an exile because I
live in the same city wherein I was born. (It is also where one can
do the most damage.) True, I was whisked away by my gypsy parents at
a tender age, and several times having returned later I went off
again, vowing never to come back, but here I am once again in the
Greater Parkdale Area, enduring the general decline.[Alas,
I couldn't do any good in Germany where I was born. The Russian
proverb doesn't apply to me.]
I
expect politicians to lie. That is their trade, after all, and many
have devoted decades to the mastery of this art of “circumlocution,”
which contains many little techniques of deceit, and is in turn part
of the larger art of mass suckering, or “democracy.” The master
of this art can tell a very big lie, that is aggregated from small,
factually checkable statements, or uncheckable statements that will
pass glibly.
We
must look on our fellows and do some Good. This might begin with
looking into their faces, and acknowledging when they look into ours.
It does not matter in the least if they are Christian, they are on
the same road. We have been solemnly instructed to avoid harming our
neighbour, whatever the temptation might be. We should take that
instruction at face value. But we have also been solemnly instructed
to love, and we must learn to love. Or we will arrive — knee,
waist, shoulder, head — covered with the sins of omission.
Robert
Easy (A commentator on David Warren's Blog):
All
that Christ asks of us is to be consistent. When we condemn sin in
others, then we must condemn it in ourselves. When we treat others
with contempt and indifference, then we are agreeing to be so treated
ourselves by both God and man. Everything comes back to us and rests
with us. [Those words contempt
and indifference ring out
directly, it would seem, at me. I am so guilty of doing these things
to other people.]
from
“Travels in West Africa” by Mary H. Kingsley
...I
often wonder what are the things other people are really most proud
of; it would be a quaint and repaying subject for investigation.
[What am I most proud of? I am
of course proud of my son. But what is the thing that I have done
that I am most proud of? I can't really say. I wonder if anything I
have done has meant a lick of good for anybody.]
By Paul
Krugman, bolded below:
Just
to be clear, there’s no evidence that Mr. Ryan is personally a
racist, and his dog-whistle may not even have been deliberate. But
it doesn’t matter. He said what he said because that’s
the kind of thing conservatives say to each other all the time. And
why do they say such things? Because American conservatism is still,
after all these years, largely driven by claims that liberals are
taking away your hard-earned money and giving it to Those People.
[Krugman and all those who think like him are idiots, as this passage
shows. Their belief in the dog whistle is akin to the belief in
witches that Krugman and his ilk say all Conservatives believe in. As
long as Liberals
spout the
quoted nonsense, how
is it possible to have a debate with them?]
Carlos
Caso-Rosendi
Scripture read in quiet solitude (my preference is to read by the window accompanied by a rather long cup of tea) with grateful reverence is perhaps one of the greatest experiences a human soul can enjoy.
Scripture read in quiet solitude (my preference is to read by the window accompanied by a rather long cup of tea) with grateful reverence is perhaps one of the greatest experiences a human soul can enjoy.
Pope
Benedict XVI
Let
us ask, then: What does it mean to become a Christian?
How does this take place?... If individuals are to become
Christians they need the strength to overcome; they need the
power to stand fast against the natural tendency to let themselves be
carried along.
Life
in the most inclusive sense has been defined as "resistance to
the pull of gravity." Only where such effort is expended
is there life; where the effort ceases life too ceases.
If this is true in the biological sphere, it is all the more true in
the spiritual.
The
human person is the being which does not become itself
automatically. Nor does it do so simply by letting itself be
carried along and surrendering to the natural gravitational pull of a
kind of vegetative life. It becomes itself always and only by
struggling against the tendency simply to vegetate and by dint of a
discipline that is able to rise above the pressures of routine and to
liberate the self from the compulsions of utilitarian goals and
instincts.
Our
world is so full of what immediately impinges on our senses that we
are in danger of seeing only details and losing sight of the whole.
It takes effort to see beyond what is right in front of us and to
free ourselves from the tyranny of what directly presses upon us.
A
Scottish Proverb (from David Warren's Blog)
He
has a hole aneath his nose. [That
is brilliant on so many levels. I know a few people to whom I would
like to cite this proverb.]
Malcolm
de Chazal (posted by a reader on David Warren's Blog)
“We
speak with our lips to explain, with our throats to convince.”
“Women
make us poets, children make us philosophers.”
“The
Bible: a book that either reads us or is useless.”
“Laughter
is regional; a smile extends over the whole face.”
Rob Long (from
a review of a book about Johnny Carson)
Johnny
appeared on television every weeknight. He was playing himself—or,
rather, an idealized version of himself: jovial, chummy, witty, warm.
The strain of that kind of acting must have been monumental. It’s
no wonder that real movie stars—Jimmy Stewart, Michael Caine, a
whole bushel of A-listers—respected him so much. In one of the best
stories in a book filled with great stories, when Johnny arrives late
to a very exclusive industry event filled with movie stars, he lights
up the room. He wasn’t just the king of late night television. He
was the king of managing not to appear like the rat bastard he
clearly was. [I
have this sneaking suspicion that I am a rat bastard or a person who
likes to act like he is a rat bastard.]
A
Buddhist Psalm:
Difficult
is it for men to find a wise Teacher; so is it also for them to be
instructed and to hear the Holy Law. More difficult still is it to
receive the True Faith. [Lots of
wise guys, I see. I haven't yet met any wise man.]
Anthony Esolen
Anthony Esolen
It
is never easy to rouse a sensualist, not just to heroism, but to the
self-sacrifice of an ordinary life of virtue.
[Sensualists
do like to strike heroic poses, so they do like to be roused to a
heroism of a sort, but damned if they every want to do ordinary and
decent things – they find ways to rationalize themselves out of
having to do them.]
Lists
are made: Books and Authors that I want
the world to know that I have read.
- The Holy Bible
- The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek
- Lord of the Rings
- Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
- TS Eliot
- Charles Dickens
- Shakespeare
- Dostoevsky
- F.A. Hayek
- WH Mallock
- Don Colacho
[This
list could be a lot longer but I want to get this entry published.]
Thoughts
are thought
- It seems pointless for me to get emotional about the news I get fed by the media. The news has nothing to do with me. My opinions on the events of the day won't change anything.
- Silence is a wonderful weapon.
- I don't know who I am mad at.
