Saturday
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will.
- Rush.
It is my birthday, so a little personal reminiscence is in order. The man who introduced me to Rush, 29 years ago, subsequently turned down physics fellowships at both Oxford and Cambridge to become a Baptist missionary. I guess he took his instructions from the first part of the verse.
I posted some thoughts from my September trip to Rush's hometown at Rantburg(Link). The concert I linked was held a few weeks before my visit...
Posted by Seafarious at December 22, 2007 08:16 AM
Happy birthday Guy.
I've always liked Rush. Another one that comes to mind is Cinderella Man -
"He held up his riches to challenge the hungry,
Purposeful motion for one so insane."
So. Not welfare then :-)
Posted by the other rob at December 22, 2007 08:53 AM
I've never been able to get to like Rush's music; I took my cohabitant to a Rush concert here in San Diego a few years ago, and found it hard to stay awake. I know she's got a better ear than I have, so I suppose this is likely the fault of my own deficiency in musical perception. But I've always like that one line "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." It strikes as a useful piece of practical ethics that goes right to the heart of the matter.
Posted by William H. Stoddard at December 22, 2007 10:12 AM
You did not just mention Rush.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwpGXfHmY-A
Uh, can we embed here?
And of course...
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31604
Congress Debates Coolness Of Rush
August 9, 2000 | Issue 36•27
WASHINGTON, DC–Continuing its long-running debate on the subject Monday, members of Congress argued the merits of Canadian power trio Rush. "'The philosopher and the plowman, each must play his part'?" asked House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX). "C'mon. Neil Peart must be the most pretentious lyricist in arena-rock history. Gentlemen, forget these bloated, overrated '70s dinosaurs." Countered longtime Rush loyalist Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR): "Keep talking, man, the tunes say it all: 'Passage To Bangkok'? 'By-Tor And The Snow Dog'? That part in 'Red Barchetta' where [Rush bassist/vocalist] Geddy [Lee] sings about the gleaming alloy aircar shooting toward him two lanes wide? Look me in the eye and tell me that doesn't rock, motherfucker!" The deliberations are expected to continue throughout the week.
Posted by Robert at December 22, 2007 10:25 AM
Happy Birthday, Mr. Herbert!
Got a little ahead of myself with the Rush-centric post.
Go buy yourself the new album, Snakes & Arrows, to celebrate. Don't have it myself but I hear it's their best in years.
Posted by Robert at December 22, 2007 10:28 AM
Happy Birthday! Shame it wasn't yesterday, as a Rush fan. ;)
Posted by Novus at December 22, 2007 01:22 PM
Happy birthday Guy.
It must have been a bit of a bugger when you were a kid, only getting the one lot of prezzies rather than two if you birthday had been in the middle of the year.
Posted by RAB at December 22, 2007 02:25 PM
I've never bought one of their albums. I'm amusical. I just liked the lyric.
Posted by Guy Herbert at December 22, 2007 03:19 PM
Not particularly inclined to celebrate. My birthday is more generally evocative of a rather better piece of verse:
Tis the year's midnight Lucy's, and it is the day's,
who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.
But that wouldn't make a very good Samizdata quote of the day.
Posted by Guy Herbert at December 22, 2007 03:35 PM
The delusion that there is a life of heroic individualism available to all, once freedom from religion, community, custom (or whatever) is established is of all the modern delusions the worst.
The result of it's now near ubiquitous acceptance is a Britain where people en masse have decided to "choose free will" and spend their time, umm, smoking pot, reading FHM (or "the G-d Delusion" when they're feeling particularly cerebral) and, y'know, hanging out and that. Infinite bordeom for all springs from the delusions of a few crap poets and a few even crapper philosophers (and, I now learn, a few outstandingly crap bands).
This sort of individualism quite apart from creating a cultural wasteland has hardly - as if the point needs to be laboured to anyone except inveterate rationalists who can't stop looking at their wonderful derivations from perfect axioms long enough to look out the window once in a while - resulted in country more possessed of the blessing of liberty (or the blessings of liberty for that matter).
Posted by Gabriel at December 22, 2007 08:36 PM
...people en masse have decided to "choose free will" and spend their time, umm, smoking pot, reading FHM (or "the G-d Delusion" when they're feeling particularly cerebral) and, y'know, hanging out and that.
And what's the problem with any of that? Like the man said, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". My approval of liberty for other people is not on the condition they use it in ways I approve of or would myself enjoy. It is in the expectation of reciprocal liberty without having to seek their approval.
Sure most people are even more stupid, idle, coarse and venal than I am. That's one reason I'd like to be free of having their preferences and beliefs imposed on me. I'd also like to be free of rule by my betters according to what is good for me.
Gabriel seems to be working on the assumption that there is a ham-sandwich theorem that shows the existence of, and a method for finding, a division between good and bad ways of life. For myself, I doubt the lemma. And in any case I am too stupid, too foolishly kind-hearted, or too fearful about which side I might end up on, to draw a line between the elect rulers of the world and the rest.
Posted by guy herbert at December 23, 2007 08:25 AM
And what's the problem with any of that? Like the man said, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". My approval of liberty for other people is not on the condition they use it in ways I approve of or would myself enjoy.Except when their choice is to be religious, then you can get all snotty about it and imply (or rather sate outright in the form of bad lyrics) that they live under a mental slavery of some form.
For myself, I doubt the lemma. And in any case I am too stupid, too foolishly kind-hearted, or too fearful about which side I might end up on, to draw a line between the elect rulers of the world and the rest.For my own part I would agree, though I have no idea what it had to do with my post, which was on the impact of a particular form of atheist-individualist thought and its part in creating the modern world.
Posted by Gabriel at December 23, 2007 11:07 AM
Saw Rush this past summer ... Geddy has some problems hitting the high notes, but other than that minor quibble that are still awesome.
Agreed regarding "Snakes and Arrows", it's outstanding.
Posted by David Beatty at December 23, 2007 05:41 PM
Having been a fan of Rush since Permenant Waves, and finding much to agree with in the 2112-Moving Pictures era Rush, I found that learning too much of the mind of a "hero" can be alarming.
A few years back I read Ghost Rider by Neil Peart, which has some choice words against the US in general. While I can overlook his disgust with American waistlines, he didn't seem to have much use for American culture at all. I don't know if this has always been the case or he has changed somewhat over time. I could even abide his point of view if he attacked the US, its government and people, for the rather fascistic amalgam it has become and the flotsam and jetsam of the masses who let it become so. But his angle seems much more from the North Eastern blue blood view, the Kennedy-esque disdain for America, the championing of the Blue State Statist mindset against the Red State Statist mindset.
The book follows Peart's motorcycle journey West across Canada, down the US West Coast, and down into Mexico. He depicts the wonderful wilds of Canada, mourning the chopping down of trees in very Green sort of way (though conceded there was plenty of wood used in his own house, but somehow no mention of the trees needed to make the very book I was holding that made no mention of recycled materials). Then there was the apparent torture of riding in the US with nary a positive word to say, all about fast food and waistlines and general stupidity. Then there was Mexico - that exotic land of indigents, bed bugs, and heat. He had nothing but good things to say about the street music coming up to his room, the food, etc etc. Getting a cheeseburger in the US would give him the runs and it was an indictment against a whole culture while penniless vagabonds resort to strumming a guitar for food, bed bugs buffeting on his blood, and water that would clear you out in a hurry, is to be cherished as all things good.
I had no doubts in my mind that if Mr. Peart is a libertarian, he is now so of the left leaning type, somewhere orbiting the Bill Maher's of the world. Libertarian when it suits, but a Kennedy Blue Stater when pressed. The man who wrote Anthem (the song) with its lyrics
Live for yourself -- theres no one else More worth living for Begging hands and bleeding hearts will Only cry out for more
now seemed trapped squarely in the Tranzi mindset of looking at the world.
I can only hope that his mind was clouded by grief (the deaths of his daughter in a car accident and his wife just a few months later due to cancer (or grief as Peart believes)) or all of The Macallan he was drinking along the way. He even went so far as to say he was impressed by a clairvoyant he went to see who seemed to know more than they possibly should. The man who sang about rationality of man, of man's actions, etc etc falling for hucksterism and championing the "Mexican Model" over the US. Apparently the traffic of illegals heading in one direction is lost on him.
Again, if Peart attacked the US for being the Socialist monolith it has become, fine. But there was much more the crunchy Green and International Progressivist than Libertarian in his views. If it were not the case, he wrote exceptionally poorly.
Posted by Brad at December 24, 2007 04:05 PM
