Nostalgia Revisited

A man shaves with a straight razor, dresses, tucks his fountain pen and mechanical pocket watch into his waistcoat, dusts off his spats, leaves his home and walks across the street paved with cobblestones to his internal-combustion car, which he drives with its manual transmission to his club, where he dines on steak and oysters, and then relaxes before the fireplace with a cigar and a snifter of brandy, exchanging witticisms in Latin with other club members while someone extemporizes upon the grand piano.

 

16 things which either are, or are perceived to be, in decline: straight razors, fountain pens, mechanical pocket watches, waistcoats, spats, cobblestones, internal combustion engines, manual transmissions, private clubs, steak, oysters, fireplaces, cigars, brandy, the Latin language and grand pianos. But each of those things are staunchly defended by groups small or large. Internal combustion still predominates, but it will be outnumbered by electric vehicles much sooner than some people realize, while not soon enough to suit some of us, who are concerned about climate catastrophe. 

The number of people who eat steak is shrinking, and it seems it will continue to shrink. Vegans consider the human consumption of beef to be a catastrophe in several major ways, while others think that life without the possibility of steak would be a disaster, and I must say that I sympathize with both sides in this fight. The vegans make very convincing arguments. On the other hand, we still have teeth designed to tear flesh, and the smell of a well-prepared steak still makes our mouths water. It still makes my mouth water, at least. Are the vegans really immune to this lure? 

I think that if the vegans want to win, they will have to produce great quantities of delicious vegan food. And it seems that many vegans agree, because the amount of truly delicious vegan food is growing at an amazing rate. This will be much more effective than the stereotypical unbearable self-righteous disapproving vegan.

I've written often in this blog about my love for mechanical watches. But even I am wearing a G-Shock right now. They just work better. Yes, can get a mechanical watch which does 80% of what a $100 quartz watch does, almost as well as the quartz watch. You can get such a mechanical watch for as little as $50,000. 

Fountain pens are more of a mixed bag compared to ballpoints and gel. Fountain pens can, unquestionably, do much more than other pens. But the amount of work it takes to keep them working is -- well, it's much more than the amount of work it takes to wind a watch every day, if your mechanical watch is not an automatic wristwatch which winds itself as your wrist moves when you wear it.

If you're an American, you may or may not be amazed to learn how many cobblestones are still in use in Europe, and even on a few of New York city's streets, and for all I know, maybe in many other American cities too. What about cobblestones in Canada? Or Latin America? Hey, good questions! I don't know.

Anyway, maybe I've been a bit of a douchebag for the way that I've repeatedly attacked nostalgia, because I feel a protective urge for most of these old-timey things, and I can at least sympathize with most of the rest. And that doesn't make me, or anyone else who likes these things, reactionary.

But, Aha! you exclaim. The club! It excluded women, and most men, too!

But Aha! yourself, I shout back at you. Just because you were in the club in 1903 didn't mean you weren't progressive. You could go to the club and argue that club membership, and even the vote! should be given to all women and men. Just because you love a stick shift doesn't mean you're not going to get an EV -- or even a bus pass. Loving history does not mean that you hate every progressive evolution. Conversely, cheering on ever-better automatic transmissions and EV's, and doing away with writing on paper altogether, let alone fountain pens, and being vegan, and having been the first to abandoned straight razors and spats -- alas, none of that guarantees that you are not, politically, socially, a reactionary pig! You can't judge the citizen by her timepiece!

Before and After Freud: the Case of Nietzsche

Instead of succumbing to the anti-semitism of Schopenhauer, Wagner and his own sister and brother-in-law, Nietzsche regarded individual human beings who happened to be Jewish, and praised Spinoza as his great predecessor and brother-spirit, and Heine along with himself as the two greatest German poets. 

Instead of joining in in the great chorus of German nationalism with followed the unification of 1871, Nietzsche chose to live south of Germany, was an early advocate of a united Europe, and was much more meticulously critical of his native Germany than of any other land. 

When it came to sexism and militarism, however, Nietzsche did not free himself of the destructive prejudices of his time. 

 

Living just a little bit too early to benefit from the insights of Sigmund Freud, he projected his own life, where his father died when he was a young boy, leaving him dominated by his mother and older sister, into a senseless critique, in his philosophical writings, of the entire female gender, and in particular steadfastly denying that women had any place either in the ruling of a state, or in the creation of serious literature or philosophy. Making the mistake he had avoided when it came to ethnic groups, regarding people -- well, men, at least -- as individuals, he always writes of women as an homogeneous group, with no brilliant individuals worthy of his detailed attention. He does mention George Sand, but only long enough to insult her.

If you've read his books first, his letters come as a complete surprise: he's quite mild-mannered, and as polite to numerous female correspondents as can be. No hint of the sexist contempt in his books.

And when it comes to war, Nietzsche, who was too frail to be accepted as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and saw it only as an orderly in the military hospitals, is as jingoistic as only those can be who have never fought. As with his sexist projection, the overcompensation of his glorification of war is as clear as can be to us, who have had the benefit of Freudian insights. I think Nietzsche may make a good Exhibit A if one ever debates against those who minimize the effect Freud has had on the world's collective consciousness. 

Who is Jordan Peterson and Why Have 7 of My Previous 8 Posts Been About Him?

(8 out of 9 if you count this one.) I'm so glad you asked!

Jordan Peterson

is a Canadian professor of psychology who is one year younger than I am and specializes in myths and their Jungian interpretation. For example, he points out that in some myths males represent order and females represent chaos. So far so good, that is an accurate description of those myths.

But then, instead of pointing out that such myths (developed and propounded mostly by males, of course, with very little consultation of female viewpoints) are descriptive of the psychology of the myth-tellers, he actually claims that they are literally accurate. He insists that males are ordered and that females are chaotic. All 4 billion or so human males, Peterson says, are ordered, and all 4 billion or so human females are chaotic.

And furthermore, he insists that male and female are the only 2 human genders which exist. (Any real experts in myth who never heard of Peterson before this blog post are already beginning to sense how much myth Peterson has to ignore in order to keep his worldview intact.) And this leads to the way in which Peterson became famous: by objecting, in 2016, to the the 2nd clause of Bill C-16, which reads:

This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.

The enactment also amends the Criminal Code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that Act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender identity or expression and to clearly set out that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.

Peterson objects to this because, he claims, it will infringe upon his freedom of speech by forcing him to use pronouns other than "he" and "she" when referring to persons.

As far as I know, Peterson has not yet faced any criminal or civil prosecution because of his use of pronouns. Still, in tried-and-true right-wing fashion, he is claiming to have been victimized when no-one has done anything to him.

That's what made him famous. That, and some very popular YouTube videos in which he spews his right-wing viewpoints which, in tried-and-true right-wing fashion, he claims are not right-wing, but Classical-Liberal (or, as we would say in the United States, libertarian.) And also his book which followed very quickly upon his sudden fame as a martyr against pronoun abuse, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. (Remember: as mentioned above, Peterson says that males are orderly, females are chaotic, and that no further human genders exist.)

Peterson is a far-right-wing nut. He checks all the boxes: He claims that women need (and secretly want) to be dominated and controlled by men. He says that postmodern neo-Marxists have (again, secretly, as the postmodernists deny that they are Marxists and the Marxists deny that they are postmodern) swarmed into the faculties of our universities, where they are trying their best to enslave the minds of our young people in preparation for marching all of us off to the gulag. He is a climate-change skeptic. He says that white privilege doesn't exist. He's against women's right to choose with no if's and's or but's. He's against casual sex and gay marriage.

And he's passing himself off in many -- by no means all -- mainstream media outlets as not being right-wing at all. And he has a huge following among incels and other groups of misogynistic young men. And, annoying to me personally as a real intellectual, very many people, even including some generally-sensible Leftists, keep referring to this doofus as an intellectual. Does this help answer your question about why I've been posting about him?

Ethnic Diversity and Racism in Ancient Rome

A brouhaha has erupted in Britain about ethnic diversity and racism in ancient Rome: Alt-right commentator gets 'schooled' by historian over diversity in Roman Britain, and now people are arguing about who got schooled by whom and who is or isn't alt-right.

I don't know who is or isn't alt-right or who got schooled by whom, and I also don't know how racist or ethnically-diverse ancient Rome was.

I do know that here, as seemingly always and everywhere, a lot of people are making up a version of history which suits them, rather than actually studying history.

It seems that people are so anxious to be sure that racism was unknown in ancient Rome that they've even taken to translating "white" and "black" out of Catullus' notorious 93rd poem: "Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere/ nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo." ("I don't care much about pleasing you, Caesar, or knowing whether you are white or black." This short poem was Catullus' response to an invitation to dinner by Caesar.) As Caesar said, "Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." ("Men gladly believe what they wish to be true.") And Caesar's bonmot applies equally to those who underestimate the prevalence of racism in ancient Rome and those who overestimate it, rather than examining the evidence with an open mind. And it applies as well to those who are convinced that Jesus was "black" and also to those who are convinced he was "white" (I contend that his historical existence is uncertain and his appearance completely unknown), and to everyone else who claims to be studying history when what they are actually doing is making uninformed pronouncements on historical subjects with closed minds and little information.

If I had translated Caesar as "People gladly believe[...]" instead of "Men gladly believe[...]," I would've been editing out his sexism, which he shared with almost all ancient Roman men of whom we know, a sexism which is much more obvious and plain than the degree to which ancient Romans were or were not racist.

Have people already begun to present a non-sexist version of ancient Rome?

I feel very lonely at times when I consider how very few people care at all about getting an accurate view of historical subjects.