To Hold On or Let Go (Reflections on a Garden Gnome)

Festhalten (SA/2022)

 

 

I. 

 

In a sense, much like the figure pictured above, we are all hanging on for dear life to the great flowerpot that is the world we know and love. 

 

And of course, being able to hold on, hold tight, and hold still is crucial at times. But then, equally crucial, is knowing when and how to let go ... 

 

II. 

 

This question is often addressed by poets and playwrights; most famously by Shakespeare in Hamlet (1603) [1]. 

 

Interestingly, D. H. Lawrence chooses to discuss whether to let go or to hold on not only in terms of the individual, but at the level of the species:

 

 

Must we hold on, hold on

and go ahead with what is human nature

and make a new job of the human world?

 

Or can we let it go?

O, can we let it go,

and leave it to some nature that is more than human

to use the sperm of what's worth while in us

and thus eliminate us?

 

Is the time come for humans

now to begin to disappear,

leaving it to the vast revolutions of creative chaos

to bring forth creatures that are an improvement on humans

as the horse was an improvement on the ichthyosaurus?

 

Must we hold on?

Or can we now let go?

 

Or is it even possible we must do both? [2] 

 

 

That's an amusing additional question to end on - one to which I'm not sure I know the answer: perhaps it is possible; perhaps it isn't. 

 

But maybe the best way to confront the blackmail of an either/or is simply to refuse it like Bartleby; i.e., to choose not to choose as a matter of preference; to understand that when faced by a situation that demands we select one option or the other we can always smile say neither/nor, thank you very much [3].     

 

 

III.

 

Philosophers and religious thinkers have also debated whether man's great goal is self-preservation (holding on) or self-abandonment (letting go). 

 

Nietzsche for example, spoke in an early essay of man as a being who clings on the back of a tiger which empowers but also threatens to devour him [4]. 

 

However, he also writes about the need for man to let go - of the past, of God, of friends, etc. - and discover how to forget (a crucial aspect of innocence as Nietzsche understands the latter); don't be a memory-monger, he says, learn, rather, to love fate (i.e., embrace a kind of non-willing and move towards a state of what Heidegger likes to term Gelassenheit - a mixture of serenity, joyful wisdom, and a sense of release) [5].   

 

That, I suppose, is the vital point; letting go is also a letting be, allowing things to sparkle in their own freedom and mystery.         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring, of course, to the the opening line of the soliloquy given by Prince Hamlet in Act 3, Scene 1: "To be, or not to be, that is the question." For earlier refelctions on the verb to be, see the post of 5 August 2022: click here.

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'To let go or to hold on -?', in The Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 372-73. Note that this is not the full poem reproduced here; there are five other stanzas before these closing verses.

[3] Having said that, I'm not a great fan of Herman Melville's figure of Bartleby the Scrivener; see what I write in the post published on 31 January 2013: click here. 

[4] See Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities Press International, 1993), p. 80. I discuss this idea in a post published on 23 September 2020: click here.

 

[5] Heidegger borrowed the term Gelassenheit from Meister Eckhart and the Christian mystical tradition. He first elaborated the idea in a 1959 work which included two texts: Gelassenheit and Zur Erörterung der Gelassenheit: Aus einem Feldweggespräch über das Denken. An English translation of the latter was first published in 1966 as "Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking". It can now be found as Country Path Conversations, trans. Bret W. Davis, (Indiana University Press, 2010). 

      For a post published on 24 February 2021 in which I discuss the idea of Gelassenheit in relation to the Money Calm Bull: click here.    

 

 

God Save the King ...? The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post (2022)

The ghost of D. H. Lawrence observes a relaxed-looking King Charles III  

 

 

I.

 

And all across the land, the great cry goes up: God Save the King! 

 

The king in this case being Charles III, who has now been formally proclaimed as monarch following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. 

 

But, as every year on this day - 11 September - I always like to stop and ask: What would Lawrence think? 

 

II.

 

As with many other subjects, it's not easy to pin Lawrence down when it comes to the question of monarchy. 

 

On the one hand, he was certainly thrilled to see all the king's soldiers stiffly marching past in their red tunics when enjoying a visit to Hyde Park in the summer of 1909. But that might just be a sign of a penchant for pomp and circumstance, or, indeed, of his homoerotic attraction to virile young men in uniform [1].

 

For when Lawrence actually did see a member of the Royal Family up close and personal - namely, Edward, the Prince of Wales, on a visit to Ceylon in March 1922 - he wasn't particularly impressed. In fact, he seemed far more in awe of the ceremonial elephants and naked devil-dancers, than the pale-faced representative of the British Crown [2].

 

As Lawrence's biographer David Ellis notes, Lawrence characterises the future king, in both his verse and correspondence, with terms and phrases such as sad, nervous, irritable, worn out, forlorn, etc. [3]

 

He is particuarly contemptuous of the Prince's motto, Ich dien, and reasserts an older model of kingship based upon the power of rule over - not service to - the people. And that's really the crucial point; Lawrence doesn't much care for modern forms of constitutional monarchy, he wants kings with dark faces and red beards, and who, like the Sons of Enoch, are hung like horses.

 

In a letter to Mabel Sterne, written in April of 1922, Lawrence states:

 

"I don't believe either in liberty or democracy. I believe in actual, sacred, inspired authority: divine right of natural kings: I believe in the divine right of natural aristocracy, the right, the sacred duty to wield undisputed authority." [4]    

 

He develops this line of thinking in several essays from this period [5], as well as the Epilogue (written in September 1924) to Movements in European History (1921). 

 

Whilst conceding that it is bad to have "greedy, cruel people called 'nobles'" and "rich people squandering money and taking airs" [6], Lawrence argues that, at the same time, we long for those who understand the mysterious responsibility of power, such as the ancient kings; men who were not mere bullies or tyrants and whose kingship was "not a matter of vanity and conceit" [7].      

 

 

III. 

 

So, what then would Lawrence make of King Charles III? 

 

Not much, I suspect. 

 

But, who knows, Charles may at least be able to "keep up a bluff of royalty and nobleness" [8] for a bit longer. And then, after him, le déluge ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Guards!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 34-35. And see also my post on this poem: click here. 

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Elephant', in The Poems Vol. I, pp. 338-343. This poem can also be found online: click here, for example.

[3] See David Ellis, D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930, (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 16.

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mabel Dodge Sterne, 10 April 1922, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 226. 

 

[5] See, for example, the essays 'Blessed Are the Powerful' and 'Aristocracy', both of which can be found in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 261.

 

[7] Ibid., p. 263.    

[8] Ibid., p. 264. 

 

 

For a post published in April of this year in which I discuss Lawrence's reaction to Ceylon, click here. 

 

For another response to presently unfolding royal events in the UK, click here. 

 

Sungazing (With Reference to the Case of Juliet, the Lawrentian Sun-Woman)

Sungazing (SA/2022)

 

"And as she lay, she looked up through her fingers at the central sun

whose outer edges streamed brilliance." 

 

I. 

 

Juliet, the protagonist at the centre of D. H. Lawrence's solar-erotic tale entitled 'Sun', is an embryonic Lady Chatterley; rich, bored, and sexually frustrated. However, instead of taking a conventional lover, she establishes a perverse relationship with the sun, that strangest of strange attractors. 

 

One morning, as Juliet lay masturbating in her bed and gazing intently as the sun "lifted himself molten and sparkling, naked over the sea's rim" [1], she realised that her body belonged to the star around which the earth and all the other planets revolve and that her relationship with the sun mattered far more to her than being a wife and mother [2].

 

Of course, such a relationship - as a form of edgeplay [3] - is dangerous as well as pleasurable. For whilst the sun may kiss us into life, it cares nothing for the personal, the egoic, or the human. In fact, as Juliet discovers, it incinerates these things and if the sun helps her overcome her depression, so also does it burn out her pale-faced American idealism and threaten her status as a modern independent woman.

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Juliet is not the first person to gaze lovingly at the sun and lie naked before him.

 

Indeed, some proponents of New Age philosophies - apparently drawing upon ancient esoteric teachings - explicitly advocate staring at the rising or setting sun for unusually prolonged periods, in order to gain physical and spiritual well-being. 

 

The fact that looking directly at the sun, even for a short time, can cause solar retinopathy and lead to permanent damage or blindness, is not something that seems to cause adherents of sungazing any real concern. They don’t deny such risks, but they do play them down and many assert that, if done with due diligence, sun-gazing can actually improve eyesight [4]. 

 

Indeed, some sun-gazers claim that not only does the practice make you feel happier and healthier, but it can directly increase your energy levels and thus radically reduce the need for food: that one can, as it were, meet one's nutritional requirements directly from sunlight, just like a plant. 

 

Again, the fact that people don't possess chlorophyll and so cannot photosynthesise is discreetly overlooked and, as with other forms of inedia, there is no credible scientific evidence to support this amusingly bonkers claim [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 20. 

 

[2] Cf. Lawrence's poem 'Sun-women' where he writes of women who belong neither to men nor their children - nor even to themselves - but to the sun. The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 456. 

      Admittedly, Lawrence doesn't  explicitly say tha Juliet is masturbating in bed before the sun. However, the following lines undeniably suggest a state of heightened sexual arousal:

      

"It was as if she had never seen the sun rise before. She had never seen the naked sun stand up pure upon the sea-line, shaking the night off himself, like wetness. And he was full and naked. And she wanted to come to him. 

      So the desire sprang secretly in her, to be naked to the sun. She chesished her desire like a secret. She wanted to come together with the sun." 

 

[3] Edgeplay is a term derived from the kinky world of BDSM and refers to any form of sexual activity that involves the risk of physical harm to participants. Sun-fucking, at the very least, might result in a bad case of sunburn (which in turn could lead to skin cancer) and sungazing very obviously risks blindness, although, for Juliet, her (temporary) sun-blindness is like a richness to her.   

 

[4] I’m thinking here of the so-called Bates Method, a form of alternative eye-care developed by William Bates (1860-1931), who counted the visually-impaired Aldous Huxley amongst his famous followers.

[5] As the editors of the page devoted to sungazing on RationalWiki point out, the best that the sun can do when it comes to providing nourishment is stimulate production of vitamin D. However, as this happens in the skin - the sun's ultraviolet rays interacting with a protein known as 7-DHC - you still don't need to purposely stare at the sun.  

 

 

This post is a revised extract from an essay entitled 'Sun-Fucked: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence' (2012), which was published as 'Sun-Struck' on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage blog in January 2019: click here. 

Readers can find another extract from the above essay posted on Torpedo the Ark by clicking here. 

Liz Truss and Boris Johnson: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

 

Liz Truss promises to ride out the storm,

whilst Boris Johnson says he'll return to his plough. 

 

 

I. 

 

There was nothing new or interesting in Liz Truss's Downing Street speech as she began her tenure as British PM yesterday: it was the usual predictable bullshit from someone who doesn't seem to be aware that she has actually been a part of the UK government that has got us in the present mess [1].

 

It wasn't a virus that wrecked the economy - it was the profoundly stupid political response to such. Similarly, the energy crisis is not something that can simply be blamed on Russia [2]. And one might wonder why, if the British people are so full of courage and aspiring to national greatness, they repeatedly return to office such piss-poor and cowardly politicians?

 

Truss may want to ride out the storm, but some of us are rather hoping that it blows a gaping hole in the ideals, conventions, and fixed forms that we erect like a huge umbrella between ourselves and the forever surging chaos of existence.  

 

 

II. 

Of course, Truss wasn't the only one making a short speech yeserday in front of 10 Downing Street: the outgoing PM, Boris Johnson, also found time to offer us a few final thoughts. And, to be honest, I found what he had to say far more stimulating. 

 

Critics might say the speech only provided further proof of the fact that Johnson's an arrogant liar and narcissist, still in denial about his own spectacular fall from power, but at least he managed to squeeze in a reference to the Roman statesman and military leader Cincinnatus (c.519 - c. 430 BC), and I always appreciate signs of a Classical education. 

 

However, it's highly debatable whether Johnson's self-comparison with Cincinnatus holds good; for whilst the latter was renown for his civic virtue, modesty, and outstanding leadership; the former will probably be remembered for Partygate, golden wall paper and an obsession with net zero. 

 

That said, like Cincinnatus, one suspects that Johnson has little time for those he regards as plebs [3] and that he (not so) secretly dreams of one day returning to power. 

 

Ultimately, the state of British politics is deeply depressing: one rather wishes that Larry the Cat could be Prime Minister; a reassuring feline presence and someone who seems to know what he's doing ... [4]

 

 

 

      

 

Notes

 

[1] Truss has been the Member of Parliament for South West Norfolk since 2010 and has held various Cabinet posts under David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, including Environment Secretary (2014-16), International Trade Secretary (2019-21), and Foreign Secretay (2021-22), so is absolutely complicit in the fact that we are now where we are as a country.

 

[2] The fact that the UK isn't more energy self-sufficient - and has inadequate energy reserves - is not Vladimir Putin's fault.

 

[3] Cincinnatus opposed the rights of the common citizens and when his son, Caseo Quinctius, was put on trial for violently preventing the tribune of the people from meeting in the Forum, he begged that his son be shown leniency. 

 

[4] Larry - who holds the title of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office - has been the most loved and most trusted member of the present government for the last decade; by far the best appointment made by David Cameron during his time as PM.  

 

 

Michel Houellebecq and Nellie Mackay on the Question of Cloning

 

Singer and songwriter Nellie Mackay 

Poet and novelist Michel Houellebecq 

 

"My oh my, walkin' by 

Who's the apple of my eye?

Why, it's my very own 

Clonie!"

 

I. 

 

Whatever else he might be, Michel Houellebecq is no narcissist: 

 

"I don't love myself. I have little liking for myself, and even less self-esteem; besides, I'm not very interested in myself." [a]

 

It's somewhat surprising, therefore, that he has never regretted being the father of a son whom he loves, and loves more each time he sees in him traits of his own character "manifesting themselves over time, with relentless determinism" [109]. 

 

This repetition  - even of flaws - is a source of profound joy. 

 

On the other hand, however, Houellebecq confesses to be saddened when his son displays the signs of an autonomous personality, in which he doesn't recognise anything of himself. 

 

Far from marvelling at this filial otherness, Houellebecq is forced to realise that a child is only a piss-poor copy or incomplete and weakened replica of himself; one that briefly reminds him of death, from which, he says, he has nothing to gain. 

 

The expression of such feelings is not encouraged in modern philosophy; "these feelings leave no room for progress, for freedom, for individuation, for becoming; they aim at nothing other than the eternal, at the stupid repetition of the same" [110] and are ultimately "nothing other than the ever-active memory of an overwhelming biological instinct" [110].    

 

Not wanting to die - and disappointed by the fact that a child is a far from perfect copy - Houellebecq dreams of the day when he can get himself cloned:

 

"I'll pay whatever price it takes (neither moral imperatives nor financial imperatives have ever weighed heavily against those of reproduction). I'll probably have two or three clones [...] Through my clones, I will have achieved some form of survival - not quite sufficient, but greater than what children would have given me." [110-111]

 

Houellebecq's only concern relates to the fact that the clones will be produced in a jar; it saddens him to think that they'll not be conceived in the old-fashioned manner (via sexual intercourse) and born of a womb: 

 

"Will my little ones, born so far away from the pussy, still have any taste for pussy? I hope so for them, I hope so with all my heart." [111] 

 

But he concedes this is simply nostalgia getting the better of him ...

 

 

II. 

 

Someone else who imagines a time to come in which we'll be able to admire and befriend our own clones, is the brilliant singer-songwriter Nellie Mackay ...

 

In a comic (semi-serious?) track entitled 'Clonie' [b], MacKay tells the tale of a wealthy but lonely and infertile woman who doesn't care what other people might think about shallow gene pools and the ethical issues raised by human cloning. 

 

Bored rich folk like her don't need to conceive a child naturally; they can have a fully-formed clone produced to order with whom they'll be able to share their lives and stroll the 'hood, side-by-side and hand-in-hand.  

 

III.

Of course, one is reminded when reading Houellebecq or listening to Nellie Mackay, of Jean Baudrillard's work in this area ...

Baudrillard thought of cloning as the extermination of sex and death and the return of humanity to an amoeba-like state of non-individuated being prior to our becoming mortal and discontinuous; what he refers to as the final solution.  

 

In a crucial passage, Baudrillard writes: 

 

"Contrary to everything we ordinarily believe, nature first created immortal beings, and it was only by winning the battle for death that we became the living beings that we are. Blindly, we dream of defeating death and achieving immortality, whereas that is our most tragic destiny, a destiny inscribed in the previous life of our cells." [c] 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Michel Houellebecq, 'Technical Consolation', in Interventions 2020, trans. Andrew Brown, (Polity Press, 2022), p. 109. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[b] Nellie Mackay, 'Clonie', on the astonishing debut studio album Get Away From Me, (Columbia Records, 2004): click here. And for a live version recorded at a TED Talk in 2008, click here.

[c] Jean Baudrillard, 'The Final Solution, or The Revenge of the Immortals', in Impossible Exchange, trans. Chris Turner, (Verso, 2001), pp. 27-8. Long time readers (with good memories) may recall that I discuss this passage and Baudrillard's thoughts on cloning in a post published back in April 2013: click here. 

      It is interesting - and disappointing - to note that Houellebecq has little or no time for Baudrillard.

 

 

Notes on the False Black Widow (In Praise of Spiders)

A female false widow spider 

(SA/2022)

 

 

I'm not an arachnologist, but I think that the creature pictured above that I discovered hiding in the bottom of a garden waste sack, is commonly known as a cupboard spider or, more intriguingly, a false widow spider, due to a superficial resemblance to its more venomous and darker cousin. 

 

Like black widows, the female cupboard spider is usually around a centimetre in length and has a round, bulbous abdomen that is typically reddish-bown in colour (like a conker), with distinctive markings. 

 

Providing they have access to water, they can go several months without feeding and live up to six years, laying three or more egg sacs annually, each containing between 40-100 eggs from which tiny but fully independent spiderlings will usually emerge within a month. 

 

A cosmopolitan spider, i.e., one found in many parts of the world, the species known as Steatoda nobilis is thought to have  arrived in the UK relatively recently; as a stowaway on ships transporting bananas from tropical lands. 

 

Now, however, thanks to a warming climate, numbers are booming and reports of people being bitten by these spiders - painful, but not deadly and with no long-lasting effects - are often found in the newspapers, written in predictably sensational style: 

 

Traumatised mum warns other parents to be alert after her baby was bitten multiple times by an invasive arachnid 250 times more poisonous than native species... 

 

Such reports often fail to note that the spiders are not aggressive and generally don't bite people unless provoked to react in a defensive manner. 

 

So, my advice is, should you come across such a lovely spider, leave it alone and learn to live in wonder, like a philosopher, rather than in fear or contempt for these marvels of evolution which have been around for hundreds of millions of years before us and will probably still be spinning webs long after humanity has vanished from the face of the earth.       

   

Two legs good, eight legs better ... 

Not All Sex Kittens are Catty ...

 

Cover of the French magazine  

Noir et Blanc (12 June 1959)

 

 

Despite the best efforts of the press in the 1950s to create a rivalry between the Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and her younger French counterpart Brigitte Bardot, the two - very different [1] - women never came to blows or traded insults.

 

In fact, following their only meeting - in the ladies’ dressing room of the Odeon Leicester Square, for a royal film premier on 29 October, 1956, at which both Bardot and Monroe were formally introduced to the Queen [2] - the former, still only 22, was clearly a little star-struck by the latter, then in her prime. 

 

Many years later, writing in her 1996 autobiography, Bardot confessed that she simply stared at Marilyn, too nervous to speak, other than to shyly say hello: "I found her sublime. She was always for me what every woman, not only me, must dream to be. She was gorgeous, charming, fragile."     

 

She goes on to add: 

 

"I have a lot of things in common with Marilyn and she is very dear to my heart. Both of us had childish souls despite our starlet bodies, an intense sensitivity that can't be hidden, a great need to be protected, a naïveté!" [3]

 

Which really just goes to show that not all sex kittens are catty ...

 

Interestingly, however, a third screen goddess was also present at the royal film performance in 1956; namely, the Swedish actress Anita Ekberg. 

 

As with Bardot, this was the only time that Ekberg's path crossed with that of Marilyn, about whom she once commented in a 1999 Arena documentary on the BBC: "I think she's a good actress: you can't play stupid unless you're very intelligent", which I suppose is a compliment. 

 

But in the same televised interview, Ekberg denies that Bardot was beautiful, insisting she was simply "very pretty [...] like a Barbie doll." [4] 

 

Which shows that some sex kittens are catty after all ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Monroe, born in LA in 1926, spent much of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages, before becoming a factory worker; Bardot, on the other hand, was from a solidly middle class Parisian background and trained to become a ballerina. At fifteen, Bardot was invited to pose for the cover of Elle, whilst Marilyn was appearing as a nude pin-up model in rather less respectable magazines. 

      However, both women went on to achieve global fame as movie stars and both, interestingly enough, caught the attention of intellectuals; Monroe married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956 and Bardot was described by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1959 essay The Lolita Syndrome as the most liberated woman in post-War France.  

 

[2] The film being premiered was The Battle of the River Plate (1956), a British war film by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, and Peter Finch.     

 

[3] Brigitte Bardot, Initiales B. B.: mémoires, (Grasset, 1996). 

      Note that I'm relying on an anonymous English translation of these lines, so can't vouch for its accuracy. However, I have no reason to doubt such and Bardot makes clear her admiration and affection for Marilyn in an interview posted on YouTube: click here. 

 

[4] To watch the clip from this Arena documentary, directed by Nicola Roberts, in which Ekberg comments on Marilyn Monroe, click here. To watch the clip in which she comments on Brigitte Bardot, click here. 

  

Lord Moulton: Law and [the Reformation of] Manners

Caricature of Lord Moulton 

Vanity Fair (4 Oct. 1900)

 

"The great principle of Obedience to the Unenforceable is no mere ideal, 

but in some form or other it is strong in the hearts of all except the most depraved."

 

 

I. 

 

Another key figure associated with the reformation of manners is the one time Cambridge Apostle, John Fletcher Moulton - or Lord Moulton, as he was known by most people. 

 

A brilliant mathematician, Moulton was also a top London barrister, a Fellow of the Royal Society, first chairman of the Medical Research Council, and a Liberal MP. He was even awarded (amongst many other things) the French Legion of Honour for helping to establish an international unit for measuring electricity and regarded (alongside his correspondent Charles Darwin) to be one of the most intelligent men in England.  

 

During the Great War, Moulton served as chairman of a committee to advise on the supply of explosives, eventually becoming Director General of the Explosives Department. He did have qualms about the use of poison gases, however, believing them to be weapons that lay outside the bounds of civilised warfare.

 

After the War, Moulton returned to what was always his passion: the law. He died in 1921, aged 76. But he was destined to live posthumously due to publication in the July 1924 issue of The Atlantic of an impromptu speech entitled 'Law and Manners', which he had made to the Authors' Club a few years prior to his death ...

 

II.

 

In the speech, Moulton divided human action into three domains. First is the domain of Positive Law, "where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us which must be obeyed". Second is the domain of Free Choice, "which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom" [1]. 

 

Between these two extremes, however, lies a third, much wider domain in which our actions are not determined by law, but in which we are not absolutely free to behave in any way we choose either. It's this domain - which Moulton calls the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable - wherein the question of manners is most crucial. 

 

In this domain of manners, man voluntarily obeys those rules of conduct which cannot be enforced by any external power. In other words, the individual is left to make his or her own ethical decisions and is not subject to any categorical imperative. It's the land that those who would impose a universal system of morality hate the most. 

 

Moulton says: 

"This country which lies between Law and Free Choice I always think of as the domain of Manners. To me, Manners in this broad sense signifies the doing that which you should do although you are not obliged to do it. I do not wish to call it Duty, for that is too narrow to describe it, nor would I call it Morals for the same reason. It might include both, but it extends beyond them. It covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself." 

 

Obviously, there are some who think the domain of law should be prioritised and they would seek to regulate and control every aspect of daily lives; we saw this during the covid pandemic when there were those who openly delighted in lockdowns and mandates. Others, perhaps of a more libertarian bent but often just as fanatic, think the domain of freedom should be radically extended and the state (including the criminal justice system) dissolved.

 

But I suspect that Moulton is right to insist that all three domains are "essential to the properly organized life of the individual, and one must be on one's guard against thinking that any of them can safely be encroached upon" (although, having conceded that, he and I would probably not agree as to what constitutes the properly organized life of the individual - not a phrase that I would in fact ever use). 

 

Personally, its the domain of manners that interests most - for it seems to me this is the land of culture wherein the individual is best able to give style to their existence. As Moulton says, the greatness of a people is probably best judged not by how many (or how harsh) its laws are - nor, on the other hand, by how far the ideal of freedom is extended - but by how they operate within the domain of manners:     

 

"Mere obedience to Law does not measure the greatness of a Nation. It can easily be obtained by a strong executive, and most easily of all from a timorous people. Nor is the licence of behavior which so often accompanies the absence of Law, and which is miscalled Liberty, a proof of greatness. The true test is the extent to which the individuals composing the nation can be trusted to obey self-imposed law."

 

In other words, how well such individuals understand the singular importance of developing techniques of the self and/or an art of existence if they wish to give style to their lives. Ultimately, those philosophers who do their thinking on the catwalk and those who call for a reformation of manners, are on the same side in the war against stupidity, ugliness, and all forms of tyranny (including those masquerading as political correctness and social justice).         

 

Anyway, let's give the last word to his lordship:

 

"Now I can tell you why I chose the title 'Law and Manners.' It must be evident to you that Manners must include all things which a man should impose upon himself, from duty to good taste. I have borne in mind the great motto of William of Wykeham - Manners makyth Man. It is in this sense - loyalty to the rule of Obedience to the Unenforceable, throughout the whole realm of personal action - that we should use the word 'Manners' if we would truly say that 'Manners makyth Man'."

 

 

Note: All lines quoted are from 'Law and Manners, by the Rt. Hon. Lord Moulton, in The Atlantic, (July, 1924), which can be found online as a pdf by those who are interested. 

 

Two other recent posts on the reformation of manners can be easily accessed by clicking here and here. The first adopts a Nietzschean perspective on this question; the second argues in agreement with Lord Chesterfield that it's no laughing matter.    

Why the Reformation of Manners is No Laughing Matter

Charles Penrose 

The Laughing Policeman (1922) [1]

 

 "A fool lifteth up his voice with laughter; but a wise man doth scarce smile a little."

(Ecclesiasticus, 21:20)   

 

 

I. 

 

As I made clear in a post published back in June 2014, if there's one thing I hate to see it's people clapping like trained seals hoping for a fish to be thrown their way: click here. 

 

Similarly, if there's one thing I hate to hear, it's the disagreeable sound of people laughing; loudly, publicly, and shamelessly. Unfortunately, this meant my career as a stand-up comedian was extremely short-lived.

 

 

II. 

 

A friend who trained as a psychotherapist, once tried to convince me I was suffering from gelotophobia. But I never quite accepted this explanation rooted in a pathological fear of appearing ridiculous to others. 

 

For it was more that I found the sight and sound of human beings laughing slightly obscene; not so much an audible expression of joy, but an indicator of our own fallen condition as a species. That's probably why the following remark by Nietzsche immediately struck a chord with me: 

 

"I fear that the animals consider man as a being of their own kind which has, in a fatal fashion, lost its sound animal reason - as the mad animal, the laughing animal ... [2]

 

And it's why the following passage from one of Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, also delights and is worth quoting at length:

 

"Having mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it: and I could heartily wish, that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh; they are above it: they please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accident, that always excite laughter, and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above. [...] Laughter is easily restrained by a very little reflection; but as it is generally connected with the idea of gaiety, people do not enough attend to absurdity. I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; but I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody has ever heard me laugh." [3]   

 

Interested as I am in a reformation of manners, it seems to me that emotional restraint is indeed a crucial characteristic of polite behaviour. In other words, etiquette, as a form of discipline and breeding, is no laughing matter and you can't be both gentleman and clown.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Charles Penrose (1873-1952) was an English music hall performer and, later, a radio comedian, best known for his comic song 'The Laughing Policeman' (1922), which sold over a million copies and was still popular even when I was child in the 1970s - much to my irritation. Readers unfamiliar with the song - or those who might wish to refamiliarise themselves - can click here.

 

[2] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, III. 224. 

 

[3] Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, (1774), Letter XXXII, dated March 9 O. S. 1748. Click here to read online as a Project Gutenberg ebook. 

      For an interesting discussion of 'Chesterfield and the Anti-Laughter Tradition', see Virgil B. Heltzel's essay of this title in Modern Philology, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Aug., 1928), pp. 73-90. Click here to access on JSTOR.

      As Heltzel reminds us, many ancient Greek philosophers - including Plato - aligned themselves against excessive displays of emotion and raucous laughter. For the key thing when it comes to decorum is learning how to curb your enthusiasm.    

For a contrasting view to the one expressed here - in which I encourage readers to learn to laugh at everything - see the post dated 9 Feb 2019: click here. 

 

 

For an earlier post on the reformation of manners, click here.

For a (Nietzschean) Reformation of Manners

"We want to become those who we are - the new, the unique, the incomparable, 

those who impose on themselves their own law, those who create themselves! 

However, spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, 

only provoke loathing ..." 

 

 

I. 

 

Ultimately, the problem with Nietzsche's philosophical project of a revaluation of all values [Umwertung alle Werte] is that it's too demanding, too ambitious. We in the west are never going to become Dionysian and fantasies of a neopagan overturning of Christian morality are probably best left as provocative thought experiments, rather than forming the basis for political action [1].     

But what might be possible, however, is a reformation of manners [2] and the adoption once more of an elaborate and sophisticated code of conduct in order to acquire the civility, the charm, and the demeanour of a human being whom one might respect and even admire.

II.

Nietzsche listed politeness as among his four cardinal virtues [3] and stressed the importance of étiquette not merely as a set of rules and conventions governing behaviour imposed by society, but as a form of self-discipline and rank ordering; something which, he says, is as necessary for free spirits as for stars [4]. 

 

Whether his thinking owes more to the ceremonial observances of an 18th-century French court, the Laws of Manu, or, indeed, to ancient Egyptian ethics and the teachings of Ptahhotep, is debatable. The crucial point is that it shows a lack of manners, an absence of style, and a want of breeding to stab pensioners or shoot schoolchildren [5].

 

For if manners maketh man, then a lack of manners, absence of style, and want of breeding produces monsters in our midst ...       

 

 

Notes

[1] This is the lesson of D. H. Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent (1926), which I have discussed elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[2] This phrase (and concept) is not mine; the Reformation of Manners was originally an attempt to impose strict religious discipline on English parishes between the late 1600s and the early 1700s. It was revived as a project in the 1780s by William Wilberforce. Obviously, as a Nietzschean rather than an evangelical Christian, I understand something quite different by the idea to Wilberforce and, like Lord Chesterfield, I think we need to view good manners as something distinct from conventional morality. See Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, (1774): click here to read online as a Project Gutenberg ebook.        

 

[3] See Nietzsche,  Daybreak, §556. I discussed the four cardinal virtues in a post published in July 2021: click here

 

[4] See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IX 285.

 

[5] I'm referring here to the tragic cases of 87-year-old Thomas O'Halloran and 9-year old Olivia Pratt-Korbel; the former was stabbed to death in West London and the latter was killed in her own Merseyside home by an as yet unknown gunman. 

      Those who call for all the familiar things - introduce more police on the beat, bring back hanging, etc. - would do well to remember what the Roman philosopher Cicero said about the importance of instilling good manners within a people, rather than simply relying upon harsh laws and punishments. 

 

 

For a related post to this one - on why the reformation of manners is no laughing matter - click here.