Dicta, no. 2

Trees have colors in the fall, dying men have their last strength, decadents their last great works, and failing civilizations their last bloom.  In each case, creative energy increases because the operations required for survival have been abandoned.

Dicta, no. 1

I enjoy living in rural lands, near the wonder of God's works; I can stand living in a city, near wonder of man's works; but I prefer either to the suburbs, where man has destroyed one without bringing about the other.

Nassim Taleb . . . and Alasdair MacIntyre

The test of originality for an idea is not the absence of one single predecessor but the presence of multiple but incompatible ones.--Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Bed of Procrustes

Not Requiem for a Dream

So the poem is "Dover Beach," by Matthew Arnold. It is, however, a beautiful requiem for what Arnold regarded as a dream: faith, once so strong in Europe, has been abandoned. Nor can reason help: "Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain."

Arnold is therefore, of the moderns, the first to be postmodern--the first to see that reason could not fulfill the role of faith, and that, because he thought faith could not be regained, the world was sunk in darkness.

He is correct, of course, inasmuch as men cannot regain faith. But that is why faith is a supernatural gift, not a natural attainment.

Poem beneath the fold.

Democracy as Monarchy Inverted

"Democracy is Monarchy inverted, and the modes of addressing the multitude are the same as the modes of addressing crowds. The more powerful and jealous the sovereign, the more unbounded is the eulogy, the more extravagant is the tribute."
--Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government

Now, note that while a monarch might be on guard against such flattery, given the position that he is in, the people are nearly never on guard against such things, because they do not see themselves as sovereign.

In any event, if I were to praise a dissolute sovereign, I would praise his honorable and courageous ancestors (because my praise would be true) and I would praise his great and glowing potential (because my praise could not be shown to be false). And I would praise them with rhetorical flourishes that remembered all the emotionally-charged events of his dynasty's history, even while I anticipated similar events in his dynasty's future.

Apparently the current leader of the United States agrees with me in this policy.

Femina Contra Mundum

Chesterton had an excellent sense both of the beauty of the world and of its ephemerality, weakness, and dependence on the supernatural. He could affirm, with Juan Donoso Cortes, that all human efforts are likely to flounder and fail; but he could also affirm that each blade of grass was a miracle of divine goodness. The second element comes through more clearly in this somewhat romantic poem.

Metaphysics and Monarchy

Arguments against monarchy--and authoritarian, non-representative government in general--tend to focus on the possible evils of such a government. The argument generally goes something like this.

(1) In monarchy, if you get a bad monarch, then the whole country might easily go to hell for the next half-century.
(2) In democracy, if you get a bad president, the whole country (probably) won't go to hell for the next-half-century.
(3) So democracy is better than monarchy.

One might question the premises of this argument: presidents can also easily convert themselves into despots. But leaving that aside, the argument at least appears to work. Why?