The Cloister and the Hearth

The Cloister and the Hearth is a nineteenth century novel written by Charles Reade. It was once considered a classic of literature but is nowadays not widely read.

The plot is a fictionalised account of the parents of Erasmus — Gerard and Margaret — and the many obstacles that stand in the way of their relationship.

The book made an impression on me when I read it as a child. The authority figures in it are presented as largely hostile and unreliable. The comprehensive cynicism about social authority, and about its supposed benevolence, distinguishes the book from other nineteenth century novels.

It is even more in contrast with current literature.

In modern fiction, even if some part of the establishment is behaving badly, there is almost always some part of it whose behaviour accords with the ideal, in which many people would no doubt like to believe.

St Anthony of Egypt

detail from:
Hieronymus Bosch (attrib),
Temptation of St Anthony

St Anthony of Egypt is considered to be the first of the ‘Desert Fathers’. These were early Christian hermits, ascetics and monks who lived in and around the Scetis desert beginning about the third century AD.

Anthony was born in Egypt in 251 to wealthy landowner parents. After his parents died when he was a young man, he gave away his wealth and went to a mountain by the Nile, where he lived by himself in an old abandoned Roman fort for about twenty years. While in the fort, his only interactions with the outside world were via a crevice through which food would be passed by local villagers. Those who came to consult him stood outside and listened to his advice.

According to Wikipedia, after passing many years in this state, Anthony one day

emerged from the fort with the help of villagers, who broke down the door. By this time most had expected him to have wasted away or to have gone insane in his solitary confinement. Instead, he emerged healthy, serene, and enlightened. Everyone was amazed that he had been through these trials and emerged spiritually rejuvenated. He was hailed as a hero and from this time forth the legend of Anthony began to spread and grow.

St Antony’s College, Oxford, is said to have been named after him.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position.
I need people to provide moral support both for fund-raising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

‘The over-60s are not worth treating’

A version of this post was first published in 2007. It has been republished in the light of the Gosport hospital case.

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The Daily Mail has reported that half of all GPs say that patients (victims) over the age of sixty are not worth diagnosing or treating. Of course, what GPs say has no necessary relationship to what they actually do. Telling the truth is not, even nominally, part of their remit. But it is likely that what goes on, and has been going on for a long time, is worse than they admit openly.

* * * * *

Some years ago there was a similar article revealing that, in the case of women, fifty-five was the age at which doctors thought them past bothering with.

Taking a short break at Boscombe in a seaside hotel, I was discussing this with a lady in her fifties, sitting opposite me at the breakfast table. She protested at so painful a topic being discussed, so I stopped talking about it. But this may illustrate both how demoralising the immoral power of the medical Mafia is, and why there is no sympathy with those who complain of it.

When this lady went to her doctor she liked, no doubt, to maintain an uneasy fiction that she could trust him, rely on him to exercise his powers in her best interests (as understood by herself), and believe what he said.

She would wish to do this in order to relieve her anxieties about any symptoms she might have. However, doing this in the face of evidence to the contrary is likely to take quite a lot of emotional energy. Taking up emotional energy in this way is essentially decentralising.* Recognising that one is alone in a hostile world is, or may be, eventually liberating (although, no doubt, there are plenty of ways of doing it wrong).

The psychological social contract is what happens when the individual gives up his own drives to self-fulfilment and becomes the willing slave of social oppression, in return for the possibility of oppressing others, or enjoying the spectacle of their being oppressed by the social forces with which he has thrown in his lot.

Once a society has instigated an oppressive regime, such as the modern Welfare (Oppressive) State, there is no real possibility of reversing it, as an increasing number of people wish to believe in the ‘benefits’ they are deriving from it — including in many cases the opportunity to oppress other people — rather than face up to the terrifying nature of the threats to which they are exposed.

* For an explanation of the concept of centralisation, see here.

Taxation and slavery

In the following extract* from a paper, philosopher Thomas Nagel expresses a libertarian attitude to taxation.

Some would describe taxation as a form of theft, and conscription as a form of slavery — in fact some would prefer to describe taxation as slavery too, or at least as forced labour.

It appears Nagel himself disagreed with this position. Nevertheless, the idea that taxation involves the involuntary removal of an individual’s property, and hence is comparable to theft, is a valid one.

Where tax paid amounts to half of a person’s income, that person effectively has to work, involuntarily, as much for the government as for himself.

* 'Ruthlessness in public life', reprinted in Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Patients starved to death

A version of this post was first published in 2007. It has been republished in the light of the Gosport hospital case.

In 1989, there was another life crisis when Marjorie’s mother, then in her 70s, had a series of increasingly severe strokes.
‘The hospital withdrew food and water and I watched her starve to death. My sister felt it was the kindest thing to do but my mother spent a week in agony. I felt utter grief and still haven’t dealt with it.’
(Daily Mail, 17 April 2007)

It is legal for an incapacitated patient to be denied artificial hydration and nutrition ... if doctors consider death to be in their best interest.
(Daily Mail, 19 April 2007)

It is legal, but it is still immoral (it is a strong violation of the basic moral principle*), for members of the medical Mafia to kill people by starving them to death. The assertion that it is legal is only making explicit the immorality which is already inherent in the medical profession, operating on the terms it does.

If an individual, or a relative or other person appointed by him, loses the right to decide for himself what is in his interests as he perceives them, the harm that may be inflicted upon him by the decisions made by the doctor to whom he has lost his autonomy, whether by accident or design, may clearly extend to extreme suffering or death.

* * * * *

Mr Cameron highlighted figures showing assaults on NHS staff running at 60,000 a year [...]
(from ‘Rudeness is just as bad as racism, says Cameron’, Daily Mail, 24 April 2007)

We are unfortunate enough to live in an age of legalised crime. State education and state medicine should be regarded as criminal.

Agents of the collective, such as teachers and doctors, are at risk from the resentment of their victims, who do not realise how thoroughly justified their resentment is.

In fact the victims should be opposing the principles of social oppression, not indulging in violence, which is seen as an excuse for even more oppressive incursions on individual liberty.

But the victims have been trained to believe that they would be losing free goodies described as ‘education’ and ‘health care’ (which have been paid for with money taken away from other people), so that they are ‘better off’ hanging on to these ostensible handouts, even with the great penalties which are attached to them.

* Basic moral principle: It is immoral to impose your interpretations and evaluations on anyone else.

The statue of King Alfred and the aristocratic sculptor

Statue of King Alfred
by Count Gleichen (1833 – 1891)

The statue of Alfred The Great (shown above) located in Wantage, Oxfordshire was sculpted by an aristocrat, Count Gleichen.

Born in Langenburg, Germany, Count Gleichen joined the Royal Navy and became resident in Britain. He was related to Queen Victoria, being the son of her half-sister, Princess Feodora.

​In Germany he was known as Prinz Viktor zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

Photograph © Charles McCreery 2012

Frustration by society

One of the strongest taboos is that on the concept of being frustrated by society. It is absolutely impossible, according to the ideology, for anyone to be suffering because they are given no chance to use their abilities.

One may ask oneself: what exactly would people like one to feel? They do not seem to be exactly keen on one expressing one’s state of frustration. They talk as if they expect one to be identified with the tiny scale of operation which is possible to one.

I think it is clear that what they mostly wish one to feel is humiliation. You are supposed to feel that not being given a chance to do things corresponds to a judgment which has been passed upon you. And that the judgment is right; that you are the sort of person who deserves no better than to live in a straitjacket.

You are supposed to identify yourself with this judgment to such an extent that you are interested in receiving congratulations on your small activities. This, presumably, is to encourage you to do more of them, as it is well understood that you can achieve nothing effective by doing so.

(from the forthcoming book The Corpse and the Kingdom)

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position.
I need people to provide moral support both for fund-raising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

Somerset Maugham on risk

W. Somerset Maugham
(1874 - 1965)

W. Somerset Maugham was one of Britain’s most popular fiction writers during the 1930s. He is somewhat neglected now, although his novels are still occasionally turned into films. His short stories often express the precariousness of life.

Somerset Maugham’s attitude to risk may be gleaned from his story ‘The Portrait of a Gentleman’, which describes a (presumably fictitious) book about poker. The author of this book is said to have

no patience with the persons who condemn the most agreeable pastime that has been invented, namely gambling, because risk is attached to it. Every transaction in life is a risk, he truly observes, and involves the question of loss and gain. ‘To retire to rest at night is a practice that is fortified by countless precedents, and it is generally regarded as prudent and necessary. Yet it is surrounded by risks of every kind.’ [1]

This attitude to uncertainty, and taking chances, may be compared with Nietzsche’s approach to risk-taking, as expressed in The Gay Science:

the secret of realising the largest productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence is to live in danger! Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into unexplored seas! [2]

1. W. Somerset Maugham, 65 Short Stories, William Heinemann, 1976.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 283.