No one would dare utter such a sentiment today, even if he thought it true. Walls and phones have ears (and now video cameras), and we live in fear not of the secret police, as did, say, the East Germans, but of the vastly enlarged ranks of the intelligentsia that obtain their sense of purpose from feeling outrage and can spread it round the world in an instant. Unlike our forebears, we hesitate to express ourselves. This fear undoubtedly does prevent some unworthy or even disgusting opinions from being expressed, but our need to be thought good by our peers, or at least not bad, is now far greater than our desire to be free.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
What Seventy Years Have Wrought
Theodore Dalrymple examines three forgotten novels published in England in the year of his birth and reflects on the changes in his society.
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4 comments:
I haven't read any of them, but those themes continued popular even into my youth there years later. The Brit sense of irony and self deprecation, thru all levels of society--that was one of the things I missed when I returned here eventually. When I would return to England on visits my Brit friends from school would wince "you have become such a bragger and loudmouth since you went back to America"...
I love the paragraph you quoted. The other night when walking the dog with my spouse (as on several separate occasions when on vacation recently) I kept reminding him NOT to show reactions, and NOT to say things about certain responses or behaviours by others in public least someone record and post it (he's mild mannered but these were about the potential to say "the Emperor has no clothes on" type things that would annoy some secular idol nowadays...
don't recall EVER worrying what people would think or do to me because of my opinions in youth. My grandmother said I was burned to be hanged, and I had some nasty newspaper article about some bleeding heart work of mine, but basically we were NOT afraid of anything. Maybe we should have been?
Now? the Prufrock style angst over courses of action, and reviewing what one has heard and said and done and missed and rues...Just back from a church meeting uneasily wondering if my face betrayed me when earnest new priest prattled about a workshop we should all go to on certain PC issues. And mentally reviewing in the car the various exclamations I made during a series of pronouncements about particularly wrong headed changes to be made to our lay volunteer work there. But not wanting to annoy, or be quoted, so trying not to act too cranky....That old Puritan saying that I too seldom heed: does it need to be said, does it need to be said by me, does it need to be said now?
Typos..sorry. Meant "born to be hanged..."
Retriever:
I love the paragraph you quoted. The other night when walking the dog with my spouse (as on several separate occasions when on vacation recently) I kept reminding him NOT to show reactions, and NOT to say things about certain responses or behaviours by others in public least someone record and post it (he's mild mannered but these were about the potential to say "the Emperor has no clothes on" type things that would annoy some secular idol nowadays...
Instapundit:HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UConn students ARRESTED for ‘ridiculing’ speech in viral video. That’s ridiculous. In addition, they were recorded for saying this in the parking lot of an off-campus apartment. Yet the UConn police arrested them. (Well the state law against ridicule applied everywhere.)
Judging from the above incident, Retriever is not being paranoid, but prudent, when exhorting her husband to not be so candid. Because you never know when there will be a candid camera on you.
Which reminds me of a tale from days gone by. Having lived there when I first came to Houston to find a job, I often stayed at a rooming house in the Hispanic East End in between drilling jobs in Latin America. There were a lot of native Spanish speakers- including native Texans- living there. They once called me "mojado" (wetback) for my fluency in Spanish. It was said in good spirit.
I used to live next to a green space/park. One time on a Sunday afternoon, there was a group of Mexicans drinking beer. The next day, a mattress with empty beer containers remained from the party. I went home to get a magic marker. I used the magic marker to write on the mattress: "Este no es un basurero, sino un parque. Si Uds. no quieren limpiar su basura, regresen a Mexico- mojados de mierda."
(This is not a garbage dump,but a park.If you don't want to clean up your trash, go back to Mexico, you shitty wetbacks." ) Several days later, the mattress and the beer containers were gone. While I was rude, I suspect my rudeness had something to do with the place being cleaned up. Would the UConn police have arrested me for this?
Only if the UConn police spoke fluent Spanish, I think. I imagine the people reading assumed you were a second-generation Mexican who was accusing them in only a semi-public way, because even the gringo who spoke Spanish wouldn't speak that Spanish to them. We would all take such anger from our own better than from outsiders.
Which is fine. Let us note that one of the big changes happening is modern feminists, gays, blacks, and Hispanics turning on their pioneers from the previous generations. This is where it is becoming frightening across the board. They stand on the shoulders of giants...and pee on them.
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