Month: April 2005

Fiction vs. reality, and fiction wins

If you want an illustration of the way things are today (TM), you can’t do better than to walk into Waterstones Piccadilly. I went in there at lunchtime looking for a book about Papal elections (this one), and I couldn’t find a copy on the shelves. This was not because they had sold out through demand.

What was on the shelves, by the hundreds and on a special half-price offer? The bloody Da Vinci Code, of course.

Cab driver logic

Great vox pop on Newsnight earlier today, from some random punter in Leicester:

I’m not a racist, but I just think there are too many coloureds.

Coming soon to a voter near you – “I’m not a Liverpool supporter, but I’ve dyed my hair red, named my child Milan Baros, and I want You’ll never walk alone played at my funeral.”

Communication difficulties

I received a pamphlet from the Communication Workers’ Union the other day, on the importance of keeping the post office nationalised. The pamphlet, called Delivering Quality had one small problem – the title on the spine was Delivering Quaity. A quaity service all round from the CWU.

Decadence

I’ve just finished listening to “Dawn to Decadence” – an audiobook of Jacques Barzun’s magnum opus. With reservations, I would recommend it.

The best parts of the book come at the start. Mr Barzun clearly has a comprehensive knowledge and deep understanding for a broad range of European culture, from Charlemagne to Goethe and beyond. The detail and anecdotes set out in that section are full of fascinating people and stories I’d never heard.

My reservations surround the last part of the book. Mr Barzun, in turning to what he sees as modern ‘decadence’, is much less convincing. I am very Whiggish in my beliefs, but Mr Barzun’s last few chapters have a strongly Blimpish or Burkeian air, detailing time after time the way in which some modern innovation (including the welfare state and human rights) is facile, futile, and wrong. The mostly unspoken subtext is that the old ways were the better, or an echo of Kingsley Amis’s comment on university expansion – “more will mean worse”.

Individually, Mr Barzun’s opinions are not necessarily wrong, and the use of ‘decadence’ in the title is perhaps warning enough. But the absence of any positive elements of the modern world, and the relentless tabulation of present evils, makes the final section of the book too much of a Jeremiad for my taste.

Terri Schiavo and the morality of politics

There are many worrying aspects of the Terri Schiavo case – not least the hostility to the separation of powers expressed by people who really should know better. Perhaps the most worrying aspect, however, is the way in which the individual wishes of Mrs Schiavo have become a secondary issue, or almost an irrelevance.

The courts that have looked at this case – extensively – determined as a matter of fact that Mrs Schiavo would not have wished to be kept alive artificially. No factual challenge was ever made to this evidence, for all the fulminations against activist judges and cultures of life. But even though the courts appeared to be ensuring the fulfilment of Mrs Schiavo’s wishes, as the law requires, for some people that just doesn’t seem to matter.

For the protesters outside the hospice, Terri wanted to live, no matter what the evidence. Her parents, even, implied that they would not have respected her wishes even had there been clear, incontrovertible evidence that she wanted to be allowed to die.

How can people know what she wanted? They can’t, for sure, but a determination can be reached through a fair, impartial process, such as the law provides. Beyond that, once a finding of fact has been made, that has to stand unless there is compelling new evidence – evidence which is beyond personal attacks on judges, Mr Schiavo, or anyone else.

Personal belief and morality are essential parts of human life, but this case has seen personal morality imposed on others – which becomes cruelty, and leads to tyranny. Too many of the ‘pro-life’ protesters in this case claimed Mrs Schiavo wanted to live because, well, that’s what she should have wanted – but no matter how strongly that view is held, it just won’t do, against the evidence and the finding that she wanted to die.

The spread of public personal morality – especially when used as a substitute for thought – is dangerous. Democracy has to allow the contention of ideas and views aside, as much as possible, from difficult moral issues. Morality in politics lies in diversity and equal law, not in uniformity and higher authority.

The religious right wouldn’t like the analogy, but this whole moral panic reminds me of the old story of the socialist who tells a friend “Comrade, come the revolution, everyone will have caviare.” “But I don’t like caviare,” replies his friend. “Comrade,” replies the socialist, “come the revolution, everyone will have caviare, and everyone will like caviare.”

What do you mean you don’t agree?

The Brighton Argus reports that road safety campaigners were surprised when people polled by West Sussex County Council rejected a proposed 20mph speed limit outside schools.

The stunned outrage of the campaigners is amusing to read. “I can only assume that they aren’t parents, or have never lost a child”, one democratically-minded campaigner says. Or perhaps they just, you know, disagree with you.