Maverick Philosopher

Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat in its Own Children

Top o' the Stack.

Related: Our Little Barbarians. Excerpts:

Recently, an establishment called Nettie's House of Spaghetti in New Jersey announced they will no longer allow children under 10 to dine at their restaurant.

The move caused controversy, with some respondents applauding the policy and others accusing Nettie’s staff of being “child haters.” But the top commenter at MSN.com summed the issue up succinctly:

“We don't hate your kids,” she wrote. “We hate your parenting.”

[. . .]

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Benjamin Franklin observed. “As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Failing to recognize this truth is deadly. President Ronald Reagan once warned that “[f]reedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”; focusing on freedom, however, as so many today do exclusively, is to put the cart before the horse. For Reagan’s statement is only true insofar as virtue is never more than one generation away from extinction.

[. . .]

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato spoke about this when saying that a child should ideally be raised in an atmosphere of nobility and grace (i.e., our modern culture’s antithesis) so that he can develop an “erotic” — as in emotional, not sexual — attachment to virtue. Once accomplished, he’ll be more likely to accept the dictates of reason upon reaching the age of reason.

Would it kill the writer to insert a parenthetical reference to the passage in Plato where the philosopher makes the claim attributed to him?  More importantly, 'erotic' in a Platonic context, while it does not mean sexual, is not well glossed as 'emotional.' 'Aspirational' would be much better. Eros is the love of the lower for the higher, the love by one who lacks for that which he lacks. Socrates' love of wisdom is erotic or rather 'erothetic': God's love of Socrates is agape, the love of the higher for the lower, a love predicated on fullness.  The love of friends who are equals is philia.  Each of these three different forms of love is different from sexual love, if you want to call sex love.

[. . .]

So take heed, because the brats running around in restaurants today will be running, and ruining, the country tomorrow — and those who’ve not mastered themselves will be mastered by tyrants.

The truth of the first independent clause is exemplified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That this narcissistic tweeting twit, this know-nothing, this overgrown teenage girl can be elected (twice) to  the Congress of the greatest nation that has ever existed presages the soon-to-occur fall of said nation.  I predict that it will occur before the Earth is rendered uninhabitable by 'climate change' including the "boiling oceans" Al Gore warned us about recently at Davos, Switzerland, a country with enforced borders.

"But she was elected by the people!" True, assuming no electoral 'irregularities' (to put it euphemistically); but a democracy in which the people lack the virtue to vote wisely is no better than a monarchy  and in many cases far worse. 

Here you will find the latest moronic outburst by the tweeting twit.

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.

 

Impersonality in the minimalist style typically takes the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.

 

The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.

 

One size fits all. No attempt to address any one person as a person.

 

"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

Tucker Carlson on the Tulsi Gabbard Show

Long, but good.  

Tony Flood comments:

Their occasional descent into verbal coarseness was as disappointing as it was unexpected. It seems that even for some people I most admire, the effort to resist that cultural pull downward is no longer worth the bother.  

Our society-wide descent into verbal and other forms of coarseness and crudity outside of locker-room-type contexts can with justice be laid at the doorstep of the Boomer cohort (1946-1964). Tucker and Tulsi are Gen-Xers, and their generation followed ours in the downward direction.  I myself, on Facebook and also here a few times, have employed harsh invective against our political enemies using such words as 'shithead,' 'crapweasel' (which I picked up from Michelle Malkin), and 'chucklephuck.' I may also have used 'asshole.'  Much less offensive is 'p.c.-whipped,' which I got from Ed Feser. I don't need to explain the allusion.

There are two words, however, that I never use in any context. These are words I never even mention let alone use, except via oblique mention.  The one is the c-word when used as a synecdoche. So used, it is not merely crude but vile. The other is the mf-word, which is unspeakably vile for reasons only the morally obtuse will not understand.

One attempt at justification goes like this. "You attack me verbally or physically and I will reply in kind to give you a taste of your own medicine in the hope that this will dissuade you from future bad behavior." For when bad behavior goes unpunished, more bad behavior inevitably follows. As one of my aphorisms has it:

Be kind, but be prepared to reply in kind.

The problem, however, is that our enemies won't be dissuaded in this way, except in a few instances. They feel themselves to be fully justified in their attacks on us. And so the downward spiral continues. Cruder and cruder. I call it 'crudification,' to give an ugly word to an ugly thing.

Tony Flood is a Christian and he knows that charity is demanded of Christians. But is it prudent in this time of civilizational collapse to be a Christian and walk the walk? It all depends on whether the underlying metaphysics is true.

And so once again we see that all roads lead to metaphysical Rome.

Self-Deprecation

A little self-deprecation is good, but more is not better. Nobody likes the boaster. Take self-deprecation too far, however, and people will have contempt for you.

Half-Way Cultural Appropriation

You appropriate our science and technology, why not then appropriate the values, virtues, attitudes, and behaviors that led to the science and technology? Here are some of them: hard work, self-control, self-knowledge, deferral of gratification, focus, protracted study, objectivity, rational thinking, coherent speech, respect for legitimate authorities, respect for elders, and punctuality.

 

Why the half-way cultural appropriation? Go all the way, and you will benefit yourself enormously.

 

There is nothing 'white' about the above values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors. After all, Asians implement them as well as Caucasians, if not better. The values and virtues, attitudes and behaviors, are normatively universal and good for everyone. No race or ethnicity owns them. They are common goods. 

William Faulkner on Privacy

Harper's Magazine, 1955. 

"Not Hung Up on the Completion Thing"

In grad school  I knew people who fit the above description. I used to joke about them ending up graduate student emeriti.  Desultory and undisciplined, and allowed to take incompletes in their courses, they took them in spades. And so the above line from The Big Chill (1983) stuck with me.

William Hurt has died at age 71. Here he is in a memorable scene from that memorable movie.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some 1940's Proto-Rock

Freddie Slack and Will Bradley Trio (1940), Down the Road A Piece.

If you like to boogie woogie, I know the place.
It's just an old piano and a knocked out bass.
The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack.
And you remember Doc and old "Beat Me Daddy" Slack.

Man it's better than chicken fried in bacon grease
Come along with me, boys, it's just down the road a piece.

Ella Mae Morse (1945), The House of Blue Lights.  Shows that 'square' and 'daddy-o' and 'dig' were already in use in the '40s.  I had been laboring under the misapprehension that this patois first surfaced in Beat/Beatnik circles in the '50s.

The Introvert Advantage

Social distancing?  I've been doing it all my life. O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo!  Happy solitude, the sole beatitude. How sweet it is, and made sweeter still by a little socializing.

Full lockdown?  I could easily take it, and put it to good use.  It provides an excellent excuse to avoid meaningless holiday socializing with its empty and idle talk. 

Franz Kafka: The Diaries 1910-1923, ed. Max Brod, Schocken 1948, p. 199:

In the next room my mother is entertaining the L. couple. They are talking about vermin and corns. (Mrs. L. has six corns on each toe.) It is easy to see that there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort. It is information that will be forgotten again by both and that even now proceeds along in self-forgetfulness without any sense of responsibility.

I have read this passage many times, and what delights me each time is the droll understatement of it: "there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort." No indeed. There is no progress because the conversations are not seriously about anything worth talking about. There is no Verantwortlichkeit (responsibility): the talk does not answer (antworten) to anything real in the world or anything real in the interlocutors. It is jaw-flapping for its own sake, mere linguistic behavior which, if it conveys anything, conveys: ‘I like you, you like me, and everything’s fine.’

The interlocutors float along in the inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) of what Martin Heidegger calls das Man, the ‘they self.’ Compare Heidegger’s analysis of idle talk (Gerede) in Sein und Zeit (1927), sec. 35.

Am I suggesting that one should absolutely avoid idle talk?  That would be to take things to an unnecessary and perhaps imprudent extreme.  It is prudent to get yourself perceived as a regular guy -- especially if you are an 'irregular guy.'

I am not under full lockdown like the Canadians in Ontario province. But the weight room now allows only six at a time and for one hour only, and you have to book each session in advance. This Christmas Eve should be very nice. I booked a 3-4 pm slot. I expect no one else to be there; I can overstay into the 4-5 pm slot. I can sing,  talk to myself, grunt, groan, and use any machine. The TVs will be on; I can crank the fans way up. I shall commandeer the stationary bike upon which I will pedal while reading J. J. Valberg's superb The Puzzle of Experience. Ditto tomorrow.

Ganz man selbst sein, kann man nur wenn man allein ist. (Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena) "Only when one is alone can one be entirely oneself." (tr. BV)

I wouldn't  make a very good socialist.

Oh happy solitude, sole beatitude! The introvert comes most fully into his own and most deeply savors his psychological good fortune, in old age, as Einstein attests. 

Albert Einstein, "Self-Portrait" in Out of My Later Years (Citadel Press, 1956), p. 5:

. . . For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it. Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Franz Kafka: The Diaries 1910-1923, ed. Max Brod, Schocken 1948, p. 199:

In the next room my mother is entertaining the L. couple. They are talking about vermin and corns. (Mrs. L. has six corns on each toe.) It is easy to see that there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort. It is information that will be forgotten again by both and that even now proceeds along in self-forgetfulness without any sense of responsibility.

I have read this passage many times, and what delights me each time is the droll understatement of it: "there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort." No indeed. There is no progress because the conversations are not seriously about anything worth talking about. There is no Verantwortlichkeit (responsibility): the talk does not answer (antworten) to anything real in the world or anything real in the interlocutors. It is jaw-flapping for its own sake, mere linguistic behavior which, if it conveys anything, conveys: ‘I like you, you like me, and everything’s fine.’

The interlocutors float along in the inauthenticity (Uneigentlichkeit) of what Martin Heidegger calls das Man, the ‘they self.’ Compare Heidegger’s analysis of idle talk (Gerede) in Sein und Zeit (1927), sec. 35.

Am I suggesting that one should absolutely avoid idle talk?  That would be to take things to an unnecessary and perhaps imprudent extreme.  It is prudent to get yourself perceived as a regular guy -- especially if you are an 'irregular guy.'

I am not under full lockdown like the Canadians in Ontario province. But the weight room now allows only six at a time and for one hour only, and you have to book each session in advance. This Christmas Eve should be very nice. I booked a 3-4 pm slot. I expect no one else to be there; I can overstay into the 4-5 pm slot. I can sing,  talk to myself, grunt, groan, and use any machine. The TVs will be on; I can crank the fans way up. I shall commandeer the stationary bike upon which I will pedal while reading J. J. Valberg's superb The Puzzle of Experience. Ditto tomorrow.

Ganz man selbst sein, kann man nur wenn man allein ist. (Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena) "Only when one is alone can one be entirely oneself." (tr. BV)

I wouldn't  make a very good socialist.

Oh happy solitude, sole beatitude! The introvert comes most fully into his own and most deeply savors his psychological good fortune, in old age, as Einstein attests. 

Albert Einstein, "Self-Portrait" in Out of My Later Years (Citadel Press, 1956), p. 5:

. . . For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it. Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Christmas Cards and Virtue Signalling

The cards are coming in. While I lack the power to peer into souls to discern motivations, I suspect that many who send pictures of themselves in masks are signalling their politically correct virtue. Or maybe it's a fashion statement they are making.

 

In a restaurant a while back I espied a couple of classy gals, mask-less, engaged in a heavy-duty tête-à-tête, leaning in close while eating and talking. Lunch over, they donned their designer masks and strolled out into the open air.

 

It makes sense to a leftist!

Women Need to 'Man Up'

A member of the distaff contingent advises.  If men are too 'cocky,' then perhaps the female equivalent is the answer rather than the cultivation of grievances:

How did we create an entire class of highly privileged, mostly affluent young women who feel unsafe on campus, microaggressed at every turn, utterly unable to cope with the garden-variety misdemeanours of boys and men, who have been behaving badly since time began despite our many efforts (most quite successful) to civilize them?

Well, you know the answer. The universities are hothouses for a grievance culture that sees racism, sexism and misogyny under every rug. Many of the faculty derive their livelihoods from it. These institutions have constructed increasingly elaborate codes of conduct and large administrative apparatuses to detect and uproot these evils, however subtle and invisible they may be to ordinary people.

A member of the distaff contingent advises.  If men are too 'cocky,' then perhaps the female equivalent is the answer rather than the cultivation of grievances:

How did we create an entire class of highly privileged, mostly affluent young women who feel unsafe on campus, microaggressed at every turn, utterly unable to cope with the garden-variety misdemeanours of boys and men, who have been behaving badly since time began despite our many efforts (most quite successful) to civilize them?

Well, you know the answer. The universities are hothouses for a grievance culture that sees racism, sexism and misogyny under every rug. Many of the faculty derive their livelihoods from it. These institutions have constructed increasingly elaborate codes of conduct and large administrative apparatuses to detect and uproot these evils, however subtle and invisible they may be to ordinary people.

The Upside of the Shutdown: A Salutary Slowdown

A strange vibe supervened the other morning during a leisurely meander over the local hills. It was as if the world's volume had been dialed down. Things had become calmer and quieter. Or so it seemed. "An upside of the shutdown," I said to myself.

The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, and hyperkinetic. For any really good reason? What's the rush?  Quo vadis? Whither goest thou, thoughtless hustler? 

Meditation the same morning was long and unusually peaceful. The mind-works ground to a halt. I did not want to rise from the mat. After a 70-minute session I did. I reckon that fine long sitting had something to do with the dial-down vibe.

I will speculate further on the improvement of the social atmosphere and its causes.  There is an analog of contagion in the spread of attitude.

I do not hide from myself the fact that some will die of the Chinese disease and that many, many more will have their lives and livelihoods wrecked by the politically-motivated draconian measures of the overzealous.

But why not appreciate whatever good presents itself in any situation?

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.

Impersonality in the minimalist style may take the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better still is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.

The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.

One size fits all. No attempt to address any one person as a person.

"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

Propinquity and Politeness

Treat your family members with the same respect as you would strangers. Unfortunately, propinquity militates against politeness. Conservatives understand that a certain formality in our relations with others, both within and without the family, helps maintain respect. Formality helps keep in check the contempt bred of familiarity.

More on Tipping: A Server Weighs in with Insights and Advice

Long-time reader R. B. sends us his thoughts:

I appreciated your post. I am on the other side of the coin: I am a server and I depend on tips to help get me through nursing school. So hopefully I can help bring some insight. I agree with your overall point that one ought to tip based on service. Bad service? Bad tip. Excellent service? Excellent tip. The restaurant I work at bases my tip out (my pay out to the bar, bussers, food runners for their help) on my overall sales (4%); suppose I sell $1000 worth of food and beverages on a particular night; this means I dish out $40 of my tips out to those who directly helped me. So when I don’t get tipped (whether justified or not), I am still paying the tip out. I had a table of Europeans last week and the bill was around $400. If I did my job well—and I think I did—then I ought to have earned an $80 tip. Well, they left me zero. It happens. But here I am paying out $16; so I essentially had to pay to wait on this table! It usually evens out because some people are generous and see me busting my ass and tip over 20%. And if mistakes happen—which they do—99% of the time a nice attitude and an apology fix everything and I still get the 20%.

 

Another important point is this: if you are nice to me (which is a low bar: just acknowledge I exist and have feelings), I will do everything within my power to get you free stuff. You asked me how my day was? I won’t charge you for that soda. You say please and thank you (embarrassingly enough you’d be surprised how many people don’t use these words at all)? I’ll get you that free dessert all on company moolah baby. I don’t expect a bigger tip when I do this, but you get my point. 

 

I also notice this a lot: how you treat waitstaff directly correlates to a deep part of your character. It’s a good litmus test for first dates. I went on a date with a girl and she was rude/snippy to the server because our food was late. Guess what? 99% chance it was not the server’s fault. The kitchen is busy and things come out late during a dinner rush. Needless to say we didn’t go out again. How can you be rude to someone who is bringing you food and beverages? It blows my mind. 

 

My personal rule is that I tip whenever and wherever I can. I rationalize it by thinking: how much will me giving this extra $1-2 actually affect me financially (*wink* famine and affluence)? The coffee shop? I tip like I would at a bar. The car wash? You bet. The dishwashers at my work? Certainly; they have the worst job in the entire restaurant and are not part of the tip out. And it’s nice because I know the money is going directly into their pocket and the government doesn’t see it (when it’s cash). Always tip in cash if you can.

 

While there might not be a moral obligation to tip, to me it does show something about your character if the service was excellent and you stiffed them. If you are opposed to tipping at sit down restaurants, then don’t go to them—simple as that. 

 

Some points:

 

It’s dehumanizing when someone doesn’t acknowledge you or even looks at you in the eye. Be a decent person and say please and thank you.

 

Don’t be rude because of mistakes (again: the vast majority of the time, the person you will tip had no control over it).

 

Control your kids (most kids nowadays are sadly glued to phones or tablets so it’s not usually a problem).

 

Don’t be a cheap bastard.

 

Have a Merry Christmas!

On Tipping

Here, in no particular order, are my maxims concerning the practice of tipping.

1. He who is too cheap to leave a tip in a restaurant should cook for himself. That being said, there is no legal obligation to tip, nor should there be. Is there a moral obligation? Perhaps. Rather than argue that there is I will just state that tipping is the morally decent thing to do, ceteris paribus. And it doesn't matter whether you will be returning to the restaurant. No doubt a good part of the motivation for tipping is prudential: if one plans on coming back then it is prudent to establish good relations with the people one is likely to encounter again. But given a social arrangement in which waiters and waitresses depend on tips to earn a decent wage, one ought always to tip for good service. 

2. Tip on the nominal amount of the bill, not the amount less a discount. You got the discount, you skin-flint coupon clipper, don't be so cheap as to demand a discount on the tip as well.

3. Tip no less than 15%. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In Turkey, 5% suffices and more might be perceived as ostentatious. And in some places, a tip is an insult.

4. Do not hesitate to leave no tip or a measly tip to punish poor service. The whole point of tipping is to reward good service and to encourage good service in the future. If I have to beg for a second cup of coffee at a breakfast joint, or am reduced to swiping silverware from adjoining tables, then I am not inclined to leave much of a tip.  Lousy service, lousy or nonexistent tip!

5. Tip on the entire bill, including alcoholic beverages, unlike a cheapskate I once knew who tipped only on prandials but never on potables.

6. At buffets, smorgasbords, and other self-service establishments, one should also leave a tip depending on the services rendered. In such places I sometimes tip less than 15%.   Why? Because I do more of the work.

7. What about tipping on a take-out order in a sit-down restaurant? My inclination is not to tip there any more than I would tip in a fast food joint.  

8. Tip the bartender, but if he complains about the size of the tip, tell him to go to hell.

9. I always travel light and carry my own luggage. This obviates the tipping of bellboys and other baggage schleppers. But a hard-working maid who has just done up my room may garner a few bucks.

10. Tip the barber whose floor is now littered with your long hair.  I exercise my frugality by having my hair cut only  four times per year. I've been known to go to barber colleges for cheap haircuts. There I can play the big shot and leave a 100% tip. If you are ever in Mesa, Arizona, check out Earl's Academy of Beauty. 

11. Discount Tire around here offers a great free and friendly service. They will check your tire pressure including spare and inflate if necessary. I always give the kid a $5 tip.  They also fix flats for free.  I tip the guy who does the work $5.  

12. I tip my massage therapist $15-20 for a 90 minute session. More at Christmas.

13. Having driven cab, on the mean streets of Boston no less, I always tip taxi drivers unless they are surly pricks in which case they get zilch. I once tipped a taciturn Jamaican two bucks on a twenty dollar fare and the guy had the chutzpah to complain. I told him to shove it.

The most I ever tipped a cabbie was 20 semolians on a short airport run to McCarran in Las Vegas. He was an interesting character and his conversation was scintillating. I asked him to name his tip. He said 'twenty' so I gave it to him. It is worth remembering that there are people out there who actually work for a living.  We can't all be men and women of leisure.

"Your Tip So Far"

Here, in no particular order, are my maxims concerning the practice of tipping.

1. He who is too cheap to leave a tip in a restaurant should cook for himself. That being said, there is no legal obligation to tip, nor should there be. Is there a moral obligation? Perhaps. Rather than argue that there is I will just state that tipping is the morally decent thing to do, ceteris paribus. And it doesn't matter whether you will be returning to the restaurant. No doubt a good part of the motivation for tipping is prudential: if one plans on coming back then it is prudent to establish good relations with the people one is likely to encounter again. But given a social arrangement in which waiters and waitresses depend on tips to earn a decent wage, one ought always to tip for good service. 

2. Tip on the nominal amount of the bill, not the amount less a discount. You got the discount, you skin-flint coupon clipper, don't be so cheap as to demand a discount on the tip as well.

3. Tip no less than 15%. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. In Turkey, 5% suffices and more might be perceived as ostentatious. And in some places, a tip is an insult.

4. Do not hesitate to leave no tip or a measly tip to punish poor service. The whole point of tipping is to reward good service and to encourage good service in the future. If I have to beg for a second cup of coffee at a breakfast joint, or am reduced to swiping silverware from adjoining tables, then I am not inclined to leave much of a tip.  Lousy service, lousy or nonexistent tip!

5. Tip on the entire bill, including alcoholic beverages, unlike a cheapskate I once knew who tipped only on prandials but never on potables.

6. At buffets, smorgasbords, and other self-service establishments, one should also leave a tip depending on the services rendered. In such places I sometimes tip less than 15%.   Why? Because I do more of the work.

7. What about tipping on a take-out order in a sit-down restaurant? My inclination is not to tip there any more than I would tip in a fast food joint.  

8. Tip the bartender, but if he complains about the size of the tip, tell him to go to hell.

9. I always travel light and carry my own luggage. This obviates the tipping of bellboys and other baggage schleppers. But a hard-working maid who has just done up my room may garner a few bucks.

10. Tip the barber whose floor is now littered with your long hair.  I exercise my frugality by having my hair cut only  four times per year. I've been known to go to barber colleges for cheap haircuts. There I can play the big shot and leave a 100% tip. If you are ever in Mesa, Arizona, check out Earl's Academy of Beauty. 

11. Discount Tire around here offers a great free and friendly service. They will check your tire pressure including spare and inflate if necessary. I always give the kid a $5 tip.  They also fix flats for free.  I tip the guy who does the work $5.  

12. I tip my massage therapist $15-20 for a 90 minute session. More at Christmas.

13. Having driven cab, on the mean streets of Boston no less, I always tip taxi drivers unless they are surly pricks in which case they get zilch. I once tipped a taciturn Jamaican two bucks on a twenty dollar fare and the guy had the chutzpah to complain. I told him to shove it.

The most I ever tipped a cabbie was 20 semolians on a short airport run to McCarran in Las Vegas. He was an interesting character and his conversation was scintillating. I asked him to name his tip. He said 'twenty' so I gave it to him. It is worth remembering that there are people out there who actually work for a living.  We can't all be men and women of leisure.

"Your Tip So Far"

Word of the Day: Costive

Merriam-Webster:

1a: affected with constipation

b: causing constipation

2: slow in action or expression

3: not generous : STINGY

Where did I find it? In a fine analysis of the concept of charm by Joseph Epstein.  Here is a taste that features the word under definition:

Some people I talked with thought charm was synonymous with “cool.” In fact, the two, charm and cool, are all but opposed. Cool aims for detachment, distance; charm is social, bordering on the intimate. Cool is icy; charm warm. Cool is costive; charm often ebullient. Cool doesn’t require approval; charm hopes to win it. Cool began life in jazz under the great saxophonist Lester Young, who first used the term, but it soon descended to the argot of drugs. Cool gave way to hip and hep. In Dave Frishberg’s song “I’m Hip,” the singer proclaims that he watches “arty French flicks with [his] shades on” and is so hip “I call my girlfriend ‘Man.’ ” Miles Davis was cool, Louis Armstrong charming.

How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays.  The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

A Liberal's Notion of Self-Restraint

An Allegation is All it Takes

WashPo:

A Democratic candidate hoping to flip a hotly contested congressional seat in Kansas has dropped out of the race after allegations that she sexually harassed a male subordinate resurfaced during her campaign.

Not only does the Left eats its own, being a female lefty won't save you.

Hugh Hefner's Legacy

Here:

Divorce, broken homes, bankruptcy, generations of children raised by a single parent, sexually-transmitted diseases, addiction, AIDs, early death, loneliness, despair, guilt, spiritual ruin, and 58 million innocent children butchered in the one place they should be safest, in their own mother’s womb.

Read it all.  I am not clear, however, how the libertarian opening coheres with the sequel.

Camille Paglia on Hugh Hefner

Here: 

Hugh Hefner absolutely revolutionized the persona of the American male. In the post-World War II era, men's magazines were about hunting and fishing or the military, or they were like Esquire, erotic magazines with a kind of European flair.

Hefner reimagined the American male as a connoisseur in the continental manner, a man who enjoyed all the fine pleasures of life, including sex. Hefner brilliantly put sex into a continuum of appreciative response to jazz, to art, to ideas, to fine food. This was something brand new. Enjoying fine cuisine had always been considered unmanly in America. Hefner updated and revitalized the image of the British gentleman, a man of leisure who is deft at conversation — in which American men have never distinguished themselves — and the art of seduction, which was a sport refined by the French.

Camille Paglia does not merit the plenary MavPhil endorsement, but C. P. is a good partial antidote to P. C. , and she never fails to entertain.

You may enjoy this critical piece: Camille Paglia on Philosophy and Women in Philosophy.

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Inappropriate Automotive Niceness

Most of us prefer nice people to surly pricks. And no doubt we should all try to be nicer to our world-mates. But there is such a thing as inappropriate niceness. Here are two automotive examples for your consideration.

I am following at a safe distance the motorist in front of me. Then said motorist brakes for a jaywalker, not to avoid hitting him, but to allow him to cross. The jaywalker is violating the law; why aid and abet his lawbreaking? Why be nice to someone who shows no respect for the rules of the road? Why risk causing an accident? These are among the questions the inappropriately nice should ask themselves.

I am waiting to make a left turn. A man in an oncoming vehicle, wanting to be nice and neighborly, gestures for me to make the turn despite his having the right-of-way. I make the turn but shake my head in disgust  at the man's presumably unwitting and admittedly minor undermining of the rule of law.

The man was probably a liberal. Liberals are good at feeling, but not so good at thinking.

A good conservative maxim: Truth and right count for more than human feelings.

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The Message of Visible Tattoos

All visible tattoos deliver the same message:  I am not interested in being hired for any position that involves interacting with the public. Tattoos on the neck and face deliver the message in capital letters.

Time was when tattoos were found mainly only among the demimonde of  grifters, members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, rough trade, a certain segment of merchant seamen, and other denizens of the dark side.  

I tend to take a dim view of tattoos, seeing them as the graffiti of the human body, and as yet another, perhaps minor, ingredient in the Decline of the West.  Christians who believe that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit ought to consider whether tattoos deface the temple.  But I do not dogmatize on this topic.  You can reasonably attack my graffiti analogy, and if you insist that tattoos are beautiful, not ugly, I won't be able to refute you. Or at least I won't be able to persuade you.

If you argue that there is no, or needn't be, a connection between tattoos and cultural decline, you may have a case. You might even be able reasonably to maintain that the bodily temple is sometimes beautified by judicious inking.  Leviticus 19:28 forbids the practice, but that text does not settle the matter.  I tend to think that fascination with the ugly and grotesque does not ennoble us.  The connection between the aesthetic and the moral needs to be explored.  

But I celebrate the liberty of the individual and tolerate the tattooer and the tatttoed.

I only advise caution: permanent or semi-permanent modifications of the mortal coil are to be made only after due deliberation.  You might want to consider such things as: the signal you're sending, your future employability, and, for the distaff contingent, how ugly that tattoo will look on your calf when you are 45 as opposed to 20 and the ink is cheek-by-jowl with varicose veins and cellulite.  Cute baristas in hip huggers with  tattoos on their lower backs bending over the espresso machine invite impertinent questions as to how far down the pattern extends. "Does it come up the other side?" 

If you are thinking of a career in public relations, a bone through the nose is definitely out, as are facial hardware and a Charley Manson-style swastika tattooed onto the forehead.  And if  you sport a 'tramp stamp,' keep it covered.

See here for a harsher view.

Addendum.  Astute Opponent e-mails:

Something you allude to, but don’t completely address, is the allure of fashion, and its strange nature. Fashion has a lifetime of at most ten years, usually in a way that what once conferred stature and gravitas turns into the ludicrous. Fortunately we can discard clothes, and change our hairstyle. This is more difficult with tattoos.

I.e. it’s not just that the tattoo will look ugly when the ink is ‘cheek-by-jowl with varicose veins and cellulite’. It’s that it will look ugly and ridiculous in itself.

I haven’t seen any theory that neatly explains the transformative power of time over fashion. Those of us who are older and have been through a few cycles of such changes are aware of it, and are somewhat, though not completely, impervious to it.  It is philosophically challenging. How can the very same thing turn almost into its exact opposite? Moreover, when you look at what is now most ridiculous about the fashion, it was the very thing which in a bygone era was the most fascinating and important.

Some things do not date, and perhaps that is the essence of great art. I also think writing dates much slower. I mean, you can read Strawson or Moore and you don’t have a strong sense that it was written 50 or 100 years ago. Then you look at pictures of the writers, and they look quite silly in tweeds or glasses or smoking a pipe.

Fascinating questions.  Why are people swayed in their sartorial choices by what is clearly ridiculous and non-functional?  Ghetto blacks strutting around in baggy cargo shorts hanging half-way off their butts; women prancing in high heels; stout lesbians stomping around in work boots at a poetry reading; Beltway boys in their bow ties.  The absurd corsets and bustles of yesteryear.  Statement-making and sexual signaling are part of what's going on.

The Opponent seems to be suggesting that tattoos will go out of fashion and come to look  ridiculous.  I don't know.

Theme music:  ZZ Top, Sharp-Dressed Man

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Mirabile Dictu: Irish Reader Finds New Yorkers Civil and Friendly

London Karl, an Irish resident of London, checks in with this update:

I'm just back from my first ever trip to America. Only New York, which I am reliably informed is representative of nothing other than itself, but I was touched and impressed by the civility and friendliness I encountered. People there are way friendlier than the Brits. You may despair over your country, but you have that at least!

This is funny.  New Yorkers are generally regarded as rude and obnoxious.  Donald Trump, for example, is a New Yorker, as is Brian Leiter.  No, I am not hastily generalizing from two examples, I am illustrating with two  examples an antecedently established  general proposition.  

It is too bad that London Karl did not have the time or the wherewithal to travel deep into Real America where he would have found much better examples of civility and friendliness.

Some years back I read a paper at Tulane University in New Orleans.  Wandering around one afternoon on my own, not in the French Quarter, but in some rather nondescript part of town, I walked into a restaurant for lunch.  There I was greeted by a woman who displayed a level of hospitality and friendliness and warmth I had never encountered before.  This, I thought to myself, is what must be meant by Southern hospitality. There was, of course, a commercial motivation behind the display; but it was also deeply genuine. That was back in '87 and I have never forgotten the experience.

During that same trip, however,  I ran into chess master Jude Acers in the French Quarter.  Stationed on the street in his red beret, he plays (or played) all comers at $5 a game.  Nothing particularly civil or friendly about him, rather the opposite.   But then he is a chess player, one, and not from the South, two. After five games, I paid him his $25 and he made sure that I understood that he had played me for a chump and 'taken me' for 25 semolians.  Me, I was happy to part with the money for chess lessons on Bourbon Street in the romantic city of the great Paul Morphy.

He said one thing that has stuck with me.  Near the end of a game, he pointed to one of his pawns which had an unobstructed path to the queening square.  I couldn't stop it, but it still had a long way to go.  He announced, "This pawn has already queened."

A deeply Platonic comment. A timeless use of 'already.'  Sub specie aeternitatis, the pawn had queened, or rather IS (timelessly) queened.

"Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58) 

UPDATE.  London Karl responds:

Trust me, I had the desire and the wherewithal to go into the real America; I just didn't have the time. I preferred the edgy friendliness of the New Yorkers to the passive aggression that passes for English 'politeness'.

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Is There Any Place for Gentlemen in Post-Consensus Politics?

We are in the age of post-consensus politics.  We Americans don't agree on much of anything any more.  As our politics comes more and more to resemble warfare, the warrior comes more and more to replace the gentleman.  

Here is the best description of a gentleman I have encountered:

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.  -- John Walter Wayland

By this definition, Trump is no gentleman; he is rather the anti-gentleman. But a gentleman among thugs is a loser.  You cannot appeal to the higher nature of a thug; he has none.  So you need someone who can repay the leftist in his own Alinskyite coin.  You need  a man who will get into the gutter and fight the leftist with his own weapons.  You need a man who will not shrink from the politics of personal destruction preached by V. I. Lenin and used so effectively by his successors in the Democrat Party.

Herein an argument for Trump.  I am beginning to think that he alone can defeat the evil Hillary.  Ted Cruz is a brilliant man compared to whom Trump is a  know-nothing when it comes to the law, the Constitution, and the affairs of state, and Cruz is a better man than Trump; but the Texan  is a senator and thus part of the Republican establishment against which there is justified rebellion.  

Personality-wise, too, Cruz is not that attractive to the average disgruntled voter.  He is not enough of a regular guy. And being a better man than Trump he probably won't descend deep enough into the gutter to really annihilate Hillary as she so richly deserves. Trump can mobilize Joe Sixpack and Jane Lipstick.  These types don't watch C-SPAN or read The Weekly Standard.  They can't relate to the bow-tie brigade over at National Review.  They are heartily sick and tired of the empty talk of the crapweasels* of the Republican establishment. They want action.

_______________

*I borrow this delightful bit of invective from the fiery Michelle Malkin.

Sweat, Perspire, Glow

It was a hot and humid September day, twenty years ago.   I was sitting in a restaurant in Wuhan, China.  There had been a power outage, so the air conditioning was off.  The lady next to me was perspiring profusely.  I somewhat crudely drew attention to the fact probably using some such expression as 'sweating bullets.'

The lady gave me an arch look and said, "Horses sweat, men perspire, women glow."

The good lady was glowing something fierce.

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Be Gracious

Does someone want to do something for you? Buy you lunch?  Give you a gift?  Bring something to the dinner? 

Be gracious.  Don't say, "You don't have to buy me lunch,"  or "Let me buy you lunch," or "You didn't have to bring that."  Humbly accept and grant the donor the pleasure of being a donor.

Lack of graciousness often bespeaks an excess of ego.

We were re-hydrating at a bar in Tortilla Flat, Arizona, after an ankle-busting hike up a stream bed.  I offered to buy Alex a drink.  Instead of graciously accepting my hospitality, he had the chutzpah to ask me to lend him money so that he could buy me a drink!

Another type of ungraciousness is replying 'Thank you' to 'Thank you.'  If I thank you for something, say 'You're welcome,' not 'Thank You.'  Graciously acquiesce in the fact that I have done you a favor.  Don't try to get the upper hand by thanking me.

I grant that there are situations in which mutual thanking is appropriate.

Some people feel that they must 'reciprocate.'  Why exactly?  I gave you a little Christmas present because I felt like it.  And now you feel you must give me one in return?  Is this a tit for tat game? 

Suppose I compliment you sincerely.  Will you throw the compliment back in my face by denigrating that which I complimented you for, thereby impugning my judgment?

Related entry: On Applauding While Being Applauded

On Applauding While Being Applauded

At the beginning of last night's debate, both the president and the governor received the applause of the audience.  But Obama did something Romney did not do: he began applauding.  I've seen Hillary do this sort of thing too.  Maybe it's a liberal behavior.  Who was Obama applauding, and for what reason?  Was he applauding the audience for applauding him?  I hope not.  Was he applauding the audience for some other reason?  But what did they do to deserve applause?  Was he joining in the applause directed at himself?  Or at Romney?

It is a ridiculous innovation, but then liberals are big on ridiculous innovations.

Humble acknowledgement is the correct response to applause.  Take a bow, nod your head, say 'thank you,' but don't start applauding in the manner of 'monkey see, monkey do.'

And another thing.  The correct response to 'thank you' is 'you're welcome,' not 'thank you.'  Humbly accept the thanks of the one who wants to thank you.

Addendum 10/24.  A reader claims that Stalin, Mao, and Saddam Hussein used to applaud themselves.  So maybe this is another case where PC derives from the CP.  A little poking around turned up  this: "Zizek is also known to call himself a 'good Stalinist,' and there is reason to believe that he fancies himself a petty Stalin, going so far as he sometimes does to adopt Stalin's habit of clapping for himself with an audience."

I seem to recall having written a couple of posts about Slavoj Zizek.  I should bring them over from the old blog.