Having verbally horse-whipped me to within an inch of my wretched life, Scott Rubush has been magnanimous enough to pen not just an apology but a generous offer.
Whilst I remain stubbornly proud of my satirical side-swipes, I must confess that I often find myself sympathising with Scott’s lament. When one contemplates, even for a moment, the sheer ubiquitousness of the egregious sewage that passes for so much of what we call ‘modern culture’, it is very easy to form the view that, despite the wealth of technology at our disposal, we are nonetheless living in a cultural and intellectual stoney-desert.
But step back, and a wider panorama can be seen. As my fellow Samizdatista, Perry de Havilland has pointed out, the cultural and intellectual worth is out there, you just have to look for it. Is that any different to the way it has always been? I suspect not. I believe that gems have always been hard to find and the only reason they seem so much rarer now is because the staggering growth in material wealth and technological development has made the desert we live in so much bigger and more diffuse. The gems are still there, you just have to dig through more dirt in order to find them.
And I believe a lot of people feel the same despair that Scott feels at the conspicious absence of anything that even passes for serious thought in our mainstream media. But, believe it or not, I take this as a good sign not a bad one; it reflects the sclerotic nature of the established orders not the debasement of the human mind. That human mind is exercising itself here, in cyberspace. This is where the great debates are happening; this is where new ideas and radical thinking are being forged. If you want to know who will be the next Socrates or the next Aquinas then keep blogging, Scott, it may be you.
And whether you keep blogging or not, I will be both happy and honoured to share that ‘pint’ with you if you ever fetch up here in the ‘Big Smoke’ (provided the EU hasn’t forced us all into drinking litres by then).
