Goal line technology

The moralist or the moral being: seeking the real person

"We know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man"

Chesterton wrote this about Tolstoi in The Common Man; much of it could apply equally to Daddy. There was a side to Daddy all too familiar for being too emphatic, so much so that it tended to mask his tenderness and vulnerability. He was often angry because he cared so much; he was impatient with himself and others, with fierce desire for the good he perceived as wanting.

I am tempted to start speculating about a slavic character, sensitive, intelligent and melancholic, which also tends to the crusading, the grand romantic gesture, the tragic cavalry charge against the enemy with non-existent odds of success, but it would be too easy to fall into caricature. Chesterton makes the point better.

Daddy's moralising and "shoulding", for all their evidence, were only a part of a life whose deepest moral was not in its proclamations but in its very fabric.

I also love Chesterton's point about moralising art, but I'll leave it for another post.

    "...the truth of the matter is that an artist teaches far more by his mere background and properties, his landscape, his costume, his idiom and technique--all the part of his work, in short, of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by the elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly imagines to be his opinions.

    The real distinction between the ethics of high art and the ethics of manufactured and didactic art lies in the simple fact that the bad fable has a moral, while the good fable is a moral. And the real moral of Tolstoi comes out constantly in his stories, the great moral which lies at the heart of all his work, of which he is probably unconscious, and of which it is quite likely that he would vehemently disapprove. The curious cold white light of morning that shines over all the tales, the folklore simplicity with which "a man or a woman" are spoken of without further identification, the love--one might almost say the lust-- for the qualities of brute materials, the hardness of wood, and the softness of mud, the ingrained belief in a certain ancient kindliness sitting beside the very cradle of the race of man-- these influences are truly moral.

    When we put beside them the trumpeting and tearing nonsense of the didactic Tolstoi, screaming for an obscene purity, shouting for an inhuman peace, hacking up human life into small sins with a chopper, sneering at men, women, and children out of respect to humanity, combining in one chaos of contradictions an unmanly Puritan and an uncivilised prig, then, indeed, we scarcely know whither Tolstoi has vanished. We know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man.

    It is difficult in every case to reconcile Tolstoi the great artist with Tolstoi the almost venomous reformer. It is difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age.

    It is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures from courtship to tobacco.

    It is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being with the landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a virtue as that which attaches a man to his own ancestors and his own land.

    It is difficult to believe that the man who feels so poignantly the detestable insolence of oppression would not actually, if he had the chance, lay the oppressor flat with his fist.

    All, however, arises from the search after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if I may so express it, more natural than it is natural to be. It would not only be more human, it would be more humble of us to be content to be complex. The truest kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land of our birth."

From G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man.
I have taken the liberty of adding paragraph breaks and emphasis.

Education, the next best thing to a record deal!

Naive aspirationism or postmodern irony? You decide ... or ask the growing hordes of unemployed graduates.

Haiku

Autumn cyclamens

Up through dead leaves
faint ozonic scent
Ghosts of spring

Happy birthday, Daddy

Henry Kobus (sr) would have been 90 today. Here he is on Caldey Island with Bro James and Eustace. Na zdrowie! Na milele!

Back from Kenya

An unexpectedly early return from our experiment at working in a high-cost boarding school near Nairobi, sad, disillusioned and in disarray. On the positive side, we have a new daughter and a wealth of new experience.

This story gives the main reasons why we were forced to leave: "Corruption and access to finance are the two biggest challenges to doing business in East Africa, the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness report 2009-2010 indicates..." (Uganda New Vision 30 September 2009)

Just about recovered from the mess, and beginning to feel able to blog again. Let's see how it goes...

Understanding the financial crisis

Chirag's blog has a funny and sobering explanation of the crisis which does not need an MBA to understand:

"A lot of people have been asking me what this whole "economy in crisis" situation really is. How can banks in the world's most prosperous countries run out of money? Is it because the houses were overvalued? Is it because the people aren't saving? Or is it because of a variety of reasons like health-costs, unemployment, inflation, gas prices, or political instability? On the surface, it would seem prudent to say that it is a deadly combination of all of the above that's causing the financial crisis. We hear statistics being quoted on the news constantly that inflation rose, unemployment rose, new-home sales fell, auto-sales fell, and stock prices crashed. As I see it, these are the effects of the financial crisis not the causes. The causes are far too murky and boring in details for the average person to identify and enumerate. Luckily for you, I have all the time in the world and I love talking in metaphors instead of confusing finance terms when explaining something, so here it goes..."

For the whole article, go to Chirag's blog

Kenya's only gothique boutique

We dropped in on twin sisters Toni and Tonia Matundura, at their shop in Westlands, Nairobi. It turned out to be a gothic clothes shop - the only one in Kenya. The twins had been bridesmaids at our wedding in 2005 - just across the road in Consolata Shrine - but not in these outfits.

The red-eye in the picture rather complements the gothic image; I decided to leave it in. (Sorry, girls, I hope you don't mind!)

I promised them a commercial plug. The shop is on the second floor of The Mall in Westlands, and is, literally, the only place to go if you are in Kenya and you want gothic attire. The prices are very reasonable too, and you'll receive a far from chilling welcome!

Echoes of Dune

Do any of you Dune fans get a frisson of recognition as Somalis, warlike desert people, carry out a daring raid to capture high-tech weaponry, in the process threatening the balance of power? A little too much water around, I'll admit, but even so...!

We've arrived in Kenya

Arrived in Kenya mid-August but only now found some free time to start blogging again. This still life (found in kitchen area, not arranged) evokes something about it - to me, anyway.

Whose voice counts in the end?

"Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth."

Oystein Dahle, former vice president, Exxon Norway and North Sea.

To put the world in order...

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order;
to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order;
to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life;
and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
Confucius

Bono's take on African issues: something fresh, deeper and more human

"Once you see not only the problem, but the solution, there's no escape. You see it, you can't look away from it. I want it to feel like an adventure, not a burden. I don't mean just for me, I mean for the movement. This is an extraordinary thing, an uplifting thing. This is not, 'Oh my God, all the poor starving Africans with flies around their faces.' They are very noble, royal people, full of easy laughter and very innovative. This is about us, too. It's about who are we? What are our values? Do we have any? Its exciting."

- Bono ­ Interview with Rolling Stone, November 2005

Meeting 'Kenya's Terri Schiavo'

By Muliro Telewa
BBC, Nairobi

The court case over the life and death of American Terri Schiavo which made headlines all over the world has led to parallels being drawn with a patient in Kenya.

Wanjiru Kihoro has been bed-ridden and barely conscious in a Nairobi hospital for more than two years.

But while Schiavo's husband, Michael, went to court to secure his wife's right to die, Dr Kihoro's husband and relatives are unanimous that she should live.

click here to view the whole article

The meaning of sex: fertility and the recovery of human sexuality

Few dare talk about it, but beneath the surface of elite opinion there's growing unease about the sexual revolution. Not only hasn’t it delivered happiness, it’s brought the opposite. Juli Loesch Wiley explains why misery is the natural result of severing the connection between sexual fulfillment and fertility, and what it will take to restore whole sexual love between men and women.

click here to view the whole article

'Speciesism': a specious argument

In his new book In Defense of Animals, Peter Singer reduces the value of human life to a tick-list of capabilities.

The value of human life - and complex questions about life and death - cannot be reduced to simple arithmetic. It is a sign of a civilised human society that, even if severely disabled, an individual can be included in our common humanity. The value of human life cannot be reduced to a tick-list of capabilities. As Oscar Wilde might have said, that would be the outlook of a cynic: someone who 'knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'.

click here to view the whole article

Africa: a stage for political poseurs

This summer's crusade is driven more by a crisis in Britain than 'over there'

Why Africa, why now? How has the continent suddenly come to dominate the political agenda in Britain, so that a boring old G8 summit inspires a concert, Live 8, that has somehow become the news story of the summer?

Of course Africa is still blighted by serious problems of poverty and conflict, malaria and AIDS, and remains the most oppressed continent on the planet. Yet there is no headline-grabbing crisis in Africa today, on the scale of the Ethiopian famine that gave rise to Live Aid in the 1980s. So what has prompted the sudden outpouring of interest in African affairs?

It seems that the crisis that has brought all of this about is not in Africa, but in Britain. There is a crisis of authority afflicting the political class, and a crisis of common values in our society. There is a poverty of leadership at every level, and a dearth of any sense of purpose that is bigger then oneself...

click here to view the whole article

Peter pandemonium: the retreat to childhood; it's cool to be juvenile

Here are some excellent surveys of a culture pandering to adults' refusal to grow up. Wise growth towards child-likeness abandoned in favour of childish regression.

"Our society is full of lost boys and girls hanging out at the edge of adulthood. Yet we find it difficult even to give them a name. The absence of a readily recognised word to describe these infantilised adults demonstrates the unease with which this phenomenon is greeted. Advertisers and toy manufacturers have invented the term 'kidult' to describe this segment of the market. Another word sometimes used to describe these 20- to 35-year-olds is 'adultescent', generally defined as someone who refuses to settle down and make commitments, and who would rather go on partying into middle age.

"It is important not to confuse adultescents with those referred to as 'middle youth'. Middle youths are a generation ahead of adultescents. They are 35- to 45-year-olds who regard themselves as being at the cutting edge of youth culture; they are going through a phase known as 'middlescence' - a state of mind that fiercely resists the usual trappings of encroaching middle age."

Michael Jackson trial: nobody's innocent
Outside the Californian court, we're witnessing a show trial of the most sordid aspects of contemporary culture.

The children who won't grow up
Peter Pan-demonium, kidults, boomerang kids.... A sociologist examines the phenomenon of lost boys and girls hanging out on the edge of adulthood.

Benedict's relevance to modern Europe

Angela Tilby's Thought for the Day for 25 april puts it succinctly: democracy, holistic living, wise management, champagne, social services to the poor... Europe owes all of them to Benedictine monasticism. Fascinating thought to one such as myself familiar with the benignity and peace of Caldey island.

Home, land and belonging

Anne Atkins' Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 this morning set off a line of inspiration going through David Schidler's Communio article on homelessness as the modern condition, Wendell Berry's Hidden Wound and Fr John Kaiser's If I Die

John Kaiser, who dedicated himself to rural Kenyans to the point of martyrdom, witnessed their distress when forced from their land by corrupt politicians:

"I think it is impossible to exaggerate the suffering caused to a peasant farmer when he loses his land, which he deeply loves and with which he identifies. Many of the farmers had sold everything they owned to purchase small pieces of land in Enoosupukia. They had no other place they could call home. To them, being uprooted from their homes was worse than death itself."

Schindler and Berry demonstrate that western man's angst is because he is homeless: he feels he does not belong - in the national society as a whole, in the local community, in his workplace, and tragically often in his own home; there is a permanent sense of exile. Though possessing a "home", it is not the chief focus of meaning for his life, and the house itself is alienated from land, work and even family in increasing numbers of instances; it is a commodity to be traded and a base to prepare the worker to work for another, away from home; the urban dweller has a minimal contact with local community, not sufficient to call it living in any proper sense. Even economic activity is no longer centred on the home or the land which is the seat of the home. Thus western man experiences the same anguish as the dispossessed Kenyan farmers, but as a chronic and normal condition.