Monday, October 28, 2019

The old trains were bad; the new trains are even worse

To get to concert at the weekend I had to walk 3.5 miles to the nearest operating railway station. A tree had apparently fallen on my usual line. I could have got the bus to the other station, but the buses here are ridiculously expensive for short journeys, so I opted to walk. A few miles is not that far, and I rather enjoyed the adventure of walking through heavy rain and frenzied blusters. Much better than the dull, oppressive, predictable heat of last summer.

My usual line has rather old trains with sad, sagging seats and all the beauty of a Cineworld entrance. The line I used the other day has new, clean trains with all the charm of the Scottish Parliament. Whereas the old trains at least have leg room (even if the seats do often slide off as you sit on them), the designers of the new trains realised that one can fit many more 'customers' into the train if you make them sit with their knees pressed to their chins, on seats so narrow I'm surprised anyone larger than Rory Stewart manages to fit. The corridor is curiously spacious, no doubt to stuff as many overcharged commuters in as possible, who have paid several thousands pounds annually for the privilege of travelling to London on this nightmare train.

And as if this wasn't all bad enough, to further cram in more standing 'customers', the carriages are now continuous. One of the virtues of the old trains is the ability to move carriage when faced with phone-yappers or hen parties. Now there is no escape. The sound of groups of young men making their idiosyncratic cavemen noises, or girls' hysterical gossip, or the business bloviator who probably sleeps with his earpiece in -- all this horrid miscellany of noise travels down the entirety of the train. 

Reading becomes impossible. I can read only in quiet, or in places so noisy that I can't distinguish one voice from another. With the old trains I have a good 50% chance of the former; with the new trains there is almost no chance, and depressingly, all I can hope for is enough noise to drown the rest of the noise out. If someone from centuries ago were transported to our crumbling 21st century civilisation, I suspect the thing he would find most intolerable is the inescapable, unrestrained level of noise.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Inevitablism

The way we are conducting Brexit is like how I wrote essays in school: I would have a week to write them, but I would wait until the last minute, assuming that the panic of the last moment would force me to write something. This strategy was never terribly successful, though I usually managed to do just enough to avoid a detention.

Actually, Brexit is more like modern education at a second-rate university. Britain is rather like the student in said university who never writes an essay on time; the EU is like the administration which has no qualms granting endless extensions.

Remainers, I'm afraid, are the most inevitablist of the factions, and certainly the dangerous. They think delays will lead to a reversion of Brexit. Quite amazingly, they are so inevitablist they believe if they hold a second referendum, they will undoubtedly win. I'm not sure most of them have ever countenanced -- or will ever countenance -- another leave victory. It is sufficient, for them, merely to 'get the ball rolling'. They believe they have history on their side, and they cannot believe -- if presented with the 'facts' -- that the majority could possibly disagree with them.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

'Challenging' Art

Great works of art, we are told, are challenging. Yet they are only ever challenging in one way: in support of the liberal worldview. When we read Daniel Defoe's great novel Moll Flanders, it presents a largely alien social and moral order, especially regarding women, one that challenges modern beliefs. Yet this isn't why it is considered challenging. No, it is challenging, we are told, because it is proto-feminist, progressive for its time by depicting a strong and independent seventeenth-century woman.

'Forward-thinking', 'enlightened', 'subversive' -- propaganda terms abound in the attempt to rewrite history by re-depicting works of art in a radical light. A work is praised for being 'ahead of its time', at some early stage in an inevitable march forward. It is nonsense, of course, but this kind of progressivism has become the atheist's version of providence.

The Defoe novel that offers the most unambiguous 'challenge' to our age is Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe's discovery of the value of solitude, and the novel's very Christian introversion, presents a true alternative to the modern lifestyle. But Robinson Crusoe is so often relegated to the status of children's book, with all the best theological bits excised. It is neutered, sterilised, made inoffensive to modern readers. If they read the original novel they would discover an actual challenge to their beliefs, a world that no longer exists, a world they have prejudicially rejected as 'backwards'.

What I've read, listened to and watched while under house arrest

I am too lazy at the moment to write this post in paragraphs, so it will instead take the form of a list. This suits me well as I am a compu...