We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I was pointed at this article about consensual incest in the Guardian and yet again the issues are the usual ones… on one hand social loathing of a relationship which translates into the force of law leading to destroyed lives… and on the other people freely doing what they want to do with each other.
Incest is such a taboo that it gets mixed up with all the other extreme taboos, like rape and pederasty, but which a moments thought shows are all quite separate things. If people want to have a relationship that is not coercive, how is that anyone else’s business? Violence within a relationship and rape are reasonably illegal but if those are absent, what is the problem? Does incest make you uncomfortable? Well it certainly does make me uncomfortable. So feel free to not associate with people who act in ways that make you uncomfortable. That is usually what I do.
Yet it is not so hard to understand how these things happen. I have repeatedly felt attracted to a cousin of mine and although it never came to anything, I can certainly understand how in other circumstances things might have happened differently. But is that something that justifies legislation? How can that be? Whose business is it which two adult people have relationships with each other and in what manner? As Dr. Sean Gabb says in the article, if it is because of the fear of birth defects, will we also forbid relationships to other unrelated people who exhibit a clear history of genetic defects with eugenic laws?
I cannot help thinking everyone would be a great deal happier if we all just minded our own damn business and left others to go where their hearts take them, no matter how strange other people might find it.
David Carr pointed out that Euro Leader and superstatist Romano Prodi insists that membership of the Eurozone is for ever and irreversible
The president of the European Commission Romano Prodi believes that membership in the Eurozone is a “definitive marriage” and thus he feels the need for a good economic policy across the Eurozone, to keep the marriage solid. “You cannot leave the Eurozone once you’re in”, Prodi said on Wednesday.
Which is, of course, exactly what Tito said about Yugoslavia.
When Jorg Heider’s Nationalist anti-EU party gained a small role in the Austrian government a while ago, the EU was so shocked that they actually imposed various diplomatic sanctions on Austria. Not surprisingly this caused an entirely understandable and entirely predictable upsurge in anti-EU sentiments in Austria from people resentful of crass interference in their own internal affairs.
But I have always though it ironic that this should have happened to Austria. In Bosnia- Herzegovina the EU has its own political gauleiter called the ‘High Representative’, namely Austrian Wolfgang Petritsch. Although his job is to implement the Dayton Peace Agreements, he has never really hidden his true objective. He has often said that Bosnia-Herzegovina must follow the same route as other countries in the region towards European Union membership. Similarly we are told how important the introduction of democratic institutions are for ‘stability’ in the region. Yet when the largest Croat political party in Bosnia, the HDZ-BiH, representing largest single bloc of Croat votes, dares to use its democratic mandate to oppose the will of both the EU and the socialists in Sarajevo, our Austrian ruler sends in NATO troops last April to seize Hercegovacka Banka, the bank used by the HDZ for its funds. Democratic politics is fine it seems, just so long as it does not actually do anything that displeases the EU. One does not have to be a supporter of the HDZ (and I am not) to be horrified.
So it is hardly surprising to me that various members of the EU elite across ‘unified’ Europe are expressing ‘concern’ and demands for ‘explanations’ why pro-superstatist Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero has been forced to resign from Silvio Berlusconi‘s government in Rome. The Spanish President of the EU Josep Picqué and Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel are going to deliver a report on this ‘situation’ in Italy. It seems they genuinely feel they must have some say in who is and is not in the Italian government, just as they felt towards Austria. I have no doubt that if Italy was not one of the larger EU nations that people in Brussels would not be at least making contingency plans for ‘special action’ if the grip of the EU started to seriously deteriorate in Italy (a remote possibility at best, to be frank). It is only a matter of time before even the smallest twitch of independent thinking from the elected representatives of an EU ‘nation’ (province) produces increasingly severe responses from the stasis superstatists. I wonder what bank Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia Political party keeps its money in?
However if you want to see a glimpse of the true future of ‘democratic’ Europe, don’t look at Italy or Austria, look at post-war ‘democratic’ Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I went into a small café in Zürich today and inadvertently tried to pay with Euro’s rather than Swiss Francs. The woman looked at me as though I had just handed her a dead mouse, then peered at the note, holding it in two fingers with her arm fully extended as if worried she might catch something. I snatched it back and handed her some Swiss Francs. She nodded and said “Much better… Euros are so ugly”.
Ooooo, I do love Switzerland. The place reeks with old money, refinement and smooth, rich chocolate: an oasis of sanity, an island of serene, efficient and discrete capitalism amidst the swirling adhesive gunk of Euro-scleroses.
In all of Switzerland I have always liked Zürich the best. Across the river things are quite decadent and tinged with counter-culture, in that not very threatening Swiss sort of way. Lurking amidst the sex shows and ‘clubs’ there are several quite fun bars and student filled coffee houses when one is in the mood for that sort of place. Around where I am staying, on Kirchgasse, it is all great shops, nice hotels, comfortable cafés and fairly good restaurants. Storchengasse is my favourite part of all and that is where I arranged to meet my business acquaintance for dinner tonight after he offered to take me out. Other than the fact I nearly froze to death looking in the shop windows on the way to see him, everything here is wonderful.
We talk business mostly, speaking in English, discussing how business must be conducted in Italy and how this must be done with that lawyer because of EU law and that must be done with this lawyer because of Italian law and then there must be a permit to do that and then we must register this and set up an account there and then we must wait for that to be approved…so on and so on and so on… and then I ask what must we do when we meet in his office on Monday for this business here in Switzerland?
“Oh, that”, he says… “when you told me you were coming, I had everything drawn up, agreements, plans, everything. I will just drop them off at your hotel tomorrow. If everything is okay, sign the agreements and give them back over lunch on Monday.” Clean direct Swiss-German accented efficiency and simplicity.
Oh Switzerland. I do love Switzerland. Why can’t everywhere be Switzerland?
I was supposed to be in Milan on Friday. But instead, I ended up spending a night in a tiny Austrian village and having to cancel my meetings in Italy.
I was heading through the Austrian Tyrol on Thursday when after rounding a corner on a descending road, my car started skidding on ice and began spinning uncontrollably, somewhere vaguely near Bischofshofen. After several terrifying seconds I came to rest with a gentle bump against a flimsy metal barrier between me and about a 100 metre drop. And then a few minutes later, while I was still sitting there trying to calm down, a woman in an ancient Skoda with German plates did the same thing and I thought she was going to shunt me over the edge. I jumped out of my car as her slowly spinning vehicle came closer and closer… and I immediately slipped on the icy road and went sprawling. Just to add to the fun, I didn’t even have my shoes or big coat on, just a tee shirt and a little skirt. But like me she just bumped into the barrier, which was obviously stronger than it looked, missing my car by about 2 metres. I have to say I felt my lapsed Catholicism flickering back to life at that moment.
My German is rudimentary and she did not speak any of my languages, but I think we were both trying to calm each other down for a few minutes and I am pleased to say that she burst into tears and not me. Her name was Hanna and while my car had only a teeny little dent on the rear bumper (I hit the barrier backwards), her car was more damaged, with both front lights broken, as she hit the barrier straight on and a bit faster. Additionally, neither her wipers nor one of her rear lights was working and her engine was making alarming spluttering sounds. → Continue reading: Unexpected detours and Austrian chivalry
I am writing this more to understand what I feel than to tell anyone else anything. A few weeks ago I was in Belgrade and saw several good friends that I had not seen for a while. Yet most of them were people who, when the war came to what used to be Yugoslavia, had got out and moved in with friends in Hungary or Austria or Italy. Gradually during the war years we reestablished contact with telephone calls across those borders which were not sealed. We often met up to exchange gossip or seek information about missing friends over a coffee or a brandy in Budapest or Graz or Vienna or Ljubliana, neutral ground so to speak. Now most of them are back in Serbia as the Demon is gone and it is now possible to travel there with ease. And so our friendships continue, not quite as before, but they continue. But there are quite a few people who I lost contact with on those terrible days and weeks in 1991 as nightmare came upon us all, never to hear from them again or learn what happened to them, and for reasons I only half-understand myself, I have made no attempt to find them…and that is especially true of one person in particular.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to a New Years party in Vienna by an old friend of mine, a lovely Croatian woman married to a wonderful Austrian man. As we have many friends in common, I asked who else would be there and she told me. She mentioned many acquaintances and a few fine friends, but at the sound of one name, I almost dropped the phone. I had to wait a few moments before I could even speak. I wanted to ask her what she knew about him, where he had been, was he married? Where did he live now? What does he do for a living? Were his parents still alive? But I did not ask her any of those things. After just a moment I just told her I would come and that was that. I would meet Him again.
And so I went to that New Years party in Vienna, driving up from Croatia in my baby Mercedes and not telling my parents exactly who would be there. As I expected, the party was a charming extravagance, well attended, lively and disdainfully elegant in a manner in which the Austrians have no equal. Although I was quite unsettled at the idea of meeting Him, I was also determined to be cool and not over-think the situation. For a while I wondered if he would even recognised me: I was blonde then, my hair is black now. Silliness of course. I was looking around for him, trying not to look overly preoccupied and wondering if I should slap him or kiss him or laugh or cry. Maybe I would hug him and wish him well… or more likely curse him for disappearing that terrible morning when strange trucks appeared in my little town and the first crackle of Kalashnikovs from nearby told me that life as I had known it was ending, right here and right now. I rehearsed a few things in my mind, and then changed my mind, many many times.
And then I saw him and he saw me. It was a strange and electric moment. So I just smiled and said hello. And I realised that ten years and the jumble of events had produced such a confusing static of thoughts and emotions, that all that was left was the breath quickening spark of attraction. And so we talked about everything and nothing. He touched my dark hair, making me shiver, and I touched his face, running my finger along an unfamiliar scar. We drank and we danced and we chatted to mutual friends and once the old year had died, we left together. As we walked down the cold Viennese streets to where I was staying, we stopped talking but held onto each other as if afraid the other might disappear like mist. We did not say much at all for the rest of the night, but as daylight came I must have finally fallen asleep with him, time somehow telescoping ten years into a few hours.
Then as morning, or rather early afternoon came, I woke as he got up to dress. We exchanged a few words, smiling and laughing. He grinned when he could not find his undershirt and I realised how little and how much we have both changed. And finally more words, sweet lovely words that neither of us really believed as I felt him touch me again.. and then he was gone, just so many echoing footsteps as he trotted down that stone stairway outside. And if it was not for his tee shirt that I still held under the sheets, smelling of him, I would have said it was a dream, an echo like those footsteps.
I have never forgiven him for choosing an accident of birth over me when I needed him most, and I know for sure now that I never will. But I also know it does not matter. The past is the past and He is just a ghost heading eastwards, an echo of another time and another life, as I am to Him. In a few days I will drive to Milan. I am glad I came here and I am glad I am leaving. Vienna is full of ghosts.
[Editor’s note: this started out as a private e-mail to me from Natalija that I convinced her to make into a blog article]
Kevin Holtsberry writes in Sex and Libertarians that he does not agree with the views that I expressed in Sex makes (some) people stupid back on December 25th, about a 15 year old boy in Australia who was dying of cancer being provided with a prostitute.
I really think this sums up the difference between us. She describes sex between a 15 year old and a prostitute as “casual physical intimacy.” I guess I am a prude because I see sex as an important and consequential physical and emotional act that should not be entered into lightly or flippantly.
No, that is not what sums up the difference between us at all. I have no desire to force my views on anyone else, but Kevin wants his views to have the force of law, that is what sums up the difference between us.
Although it does bother me a bit that Kevin does not feel more empathy for that poor boy wanting to do something so human, it certainly does not bother me at all if Kevin does not conduct his social life the way I do. It does not even bother me that he would almost certainly not approve of the twists and turns of my complex love life. Kevin disapproves of casual sex and presumably feels it should happen only within deep and emotionally engaged relationships. Well I am certainly all in favour of deep and emotionally engaged relationships! But life is just not that simple, at least not for me and I think for most people. If I choose to have a relationship with someone, does that mean I have to marry them? Why? Can we not just be friends? Maybe we are just indulging mutual infatuations for a while and we both want it to be non-consequential because we are adult enough to realise we are not well suited for a deeper relationship. And pretty much the ultimate in non-consequential low risk relationships without a future, would have to be a boy about to die of cancer experiencing sex with a prostitute. Sex does not get much safer than that.
I also believe that it is not something that 15 year olds should be engaged in. A terminal illness does not change the fact that he is a 15-year-old boy and that sex with a prostitute is illegal and wrong and not likely to help him any.
The problem I have with Kevin’s views are that they are based around the idea that it is perfectly okay to force moral ideas on others. This boy was 15 years old, not 5 years old, so he will have had more than enough time to contruct a valid even if incomplete world view of his own, along with moral ideas to go with it. Kevin too has moral ideas, as all people do, but which part of that morality allows him to support using force to impose his views on someone else?
I grew up in a world in which the Communist Party stood as the sole provider of morality and of truth itself. Like most people, I saw it for what it was and lived my life in spite of, rather than according to, the state. I understood intuitively long before I read the books that explained why the state was wrong to try to force me to see things its way. People make mistakes and states are made up of people, which means states make mistakes… and when states make mistakes, they tend to ruin lives and kill people on a far greater scale.
So when Kevin says that something is illegal and wrong in the same breath, I wonder if he thinks that everything that is illegal is also wrong? If he does think that, then I guess he thinks I am very wicked indeed for having not obeyed all sorts of laws that the Yugoslav Communist Party tried to force me to obey, like when I read certain books or forbidden magazines. But if you think I did the correct thing, then I guess you agree with me that morality, not law, is what matters and that law and morality are not the same thing at all.
People have different ideas about how things work, what is moral, what things mean and so on. If someone disagrees with you, you argue and maybe one or both of you changes their mind. Or maybe not. But unless you never make mistakes, what gives you the right to use force to make the other person act the way you want unless they are trying to do the same to you? Yet Kevin do not seem to think this boy can choose what he believes to be correct at all, but rather must do what he is told by people whose views he obviously does not share. He becomes not a boy but just a human shaped animal that has no choices to make at all.
How about some counseling on his mortality and how to deal with it appropriately? Was this out of the question or was he so stuck on sex that he couldn’t think about anything else? Is that the key to dying in peace – have sex? To me this seems shallow.
I have always been chilled when I hear some Americans call for ‘counseling’ when someone else does something they do not approve of. It suggests that only experts can actually understand the truth of a matter and us mere lumpen should listen and learn from them. Kevin should be entitled to die as he pleases, but why does he feel it is important to force his views on how to die appropriately on other people? Morality, as my editor is always saying, is objectively derived, and if not then what passes for morality is just quaint custom to be followed or ignored as one deems prudent [That does rather sound like me, Ed.].
I believe society has the right to define boundaries for the community as a whole – and keep 15 year olds from having sex with prostitutes seems like one we should keep. I for one am glad that prostitution is illegal in this country (USA) and I am also reassured to know that someone still considers it troubling to supply young people with prostitutes. (more on society, boundaries etc. later).
And there we have it: Kevin uses ‘society’ and ‘state’, for only states make laws, interchangeably*1 like all socialists of both left and right. That is why the word ‘socialist’ is such a sick joke: it is the negation of anything ‘social’ and it’s replacement by ‘state’. What Kevin specifically values may be different to that of a bunch of European communists but the underlying philosophy is based on that oh so familiar subjective collectivist matrix, just painted a different colour.
By meeting with political activists the state did not approve of in a private room in somewhere, I might have been arrested and thrown in jail by the now vanished communists. And by meeting a woman in a room in Australia in order to have sex and then paying her, a boy and prostitute might be arrested and thrown in jail by conservatives even though both parties are willing and know what they are doing. Communists and conservatives agree that it is okay to arrest people for free association with other people of whom they do not approve. Same music, just played in a different key.
[*1 Editors note: see Common Sense by Tom Paine]
Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit has written a piece on the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal
Senators have “hideaway offices,” and so do I. Theirs are scattered in various nooks and crannies around the Capitol. Mine is at the local Borders. Theirs are more prestigious, but mine has better coffee.
I have an office with a nice computer, and I have a study at home with a nicer computer. But I often pack up my laptop, or a book that I’m reading, or student papers to grade, and relocate to this third place: somewhere more congenial than the office, less isolated than home
I understand that very well but from a different perspective. There is no Barnes & Noble in Zagreb or Belgrade or Sarajevo. But like Glenn I too drink a lot of coffee, which is perhaps why I am awake now at 3:15 in the morning? Most of the things I have posted to Samizdata before Christmas were written on my lovely titanium PowerBook whilst sipping turkish coffee or espresso or macchiato in a little café. Many times I go to a place I know with my cool leather computer case (I am big on that sort of thing) and if I do not see anyone I know, I pull out the computer and start writing. Sometimes I go to cyber cafés so I can plug in or at least use their machines to check my e-mail (I am compulsive about e-mail). When I was recently in Belgrade I was in a great cyber café, typing away and listening to the excellent Rambo Amadeus with a girlfriend who calls herself Serbogeek when on-line.
But usually, it is just plain old cafés I am in, which are extremely common in the former Yugoslavia and the bit that still calls itself that. Occasionally I can even sweet talk my way into plugging into a phone line to check my e-mail and maybe send a few: in my leather bag I have every type of phone jack adaptor known to mankind (all of which I bought in New York) and even a screwdriver if needed. I am very persistent. Once I surfed for hours in a place in Zagreb and in return I taught the café’s owner how to use the Internet. However it took me a while to get him to understand that he could access things in Australia and America and Russia without paying the phone bill for a call to those places, just a local one.
Of course setting up on a table with this exotic thing also leads me into many chats with people in the café I have never met before who are curious about my strange machine. So when I open up my computer and start to type, I frequently end up writing maybe only ten lines before someone has overcome their shyness and started asking me what I am doing and do I mind if they look.
So when people says that computers are cutting people off from real life and genuine social interaction, just tell them to walk into a café with a nice laptop and open it up. Someone will probably come say hello and offer to buy you a coffee.
I was warned that writing about sex would result in strange e-mails. I did not realise quite how strange however. Jay Driver wrote in a looooong e-mail:
I gather from your post about that Australian kid that you have been a prostitute yourself. I can understand who you might be pissed that people would say [you were] demeaned
As judging from the whole e-mail the remarks were obviously meant in all innocence, I am not insulted, but no Jay… I also have views on Formula One racing, why Christy Turlington is the best supermodel ever and the problem with Spanish politics. I have never driven a race car, I am not a model and I have never actually been to Spain.
Kevin Holtsberry wrote:
I was surprised that Natalija would lash out ay anyone troubled by supply 15 yr. olds with access to a prostitute. Is it really prudish to worry about this?
Fifteen year old dying boy, Kevin. To deny him a basic human experience because someone else has a problem with casual physical intimacy, yes I would have to say that is prudish. Also heartless.
Sandra P. wrote [with an attached picture]:
You trying to be the slavic Camile Paglia, honey? I think you’re looking for some adventures and if you think if you piss us off enough we will spank you. You might be right. Send me a pic and rock my world, Lipstick.
Hmmmm. For once words fail me.
Gavin Grant wrote [naughty bits excluded]:
I always find your writing exciting and interesting and stimulating and when you write about sex it is obvious you have tried things […] You really will not regret meeting me as I am also well educated and can provide you with intellectual stimulation as well. As you will be just up the road from me, you should call me on [phone number] and we can chat
Sorry Gavin, but you really really really need to go back and re-read that article I wrote about Christmas again… in it I told you I was going to be driving to Vienna in Austria not Vienna in Virginia. The fact I mentioned I was spending Christmas with my family in rural Croatia should have given you a hint I was not ‘just up the road’ from you.
Blogging is… interesting.
Put those guns down before someone gets hurt! Let poor Brian limp back to his People’s Republic with its People’s Government… we love you really Brian.
Although I don’t disagree with the points Perry and Walter have been making (at excessive length), lets not forget that we all find much about the United States that we admire when we compare it to most of Europe. Switzerland also has much to commend on these issues, but then of course as well as having a civilian population armed to the teeth and a very high standard of living, they are having none of this European Union silliness… and their chocolate is better than Belgium too.
I had a wonderful Christmas with my family. It was everything Christmas is supposed to be: all the family together, exchanging gossip with my brother’s wife until we were both weeping with laughter; excellent food cooked by my mother (and too much of it) eaten with everyone talking at once; warm cosy house while the wild wind whipped the trees outside; happy overfed dogs lying in a pile in front of the open fire and sleepy cats curled up in the lap; I am ridiculously overdressed wearing a whole Valentino ensemble that a certain Englishman who edits the Samizdata sent to me for Christmas…and there is cat hair all over it now. Bliss.
A couple days of feeling good, I go upstairs to my old room and plug my PowerBook into the phone and decide to post to Samizdata… oh. I cannot get into blogger.com. Oh well, must be these miserable Croatian phone lines. I try again later…still no luck. Go back downstairs, drink some loza. Try again…and again…
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk!!!!!!!!!
Feelings of panic! Suddenly I am no longer in my comfortable home…now I am just an isolated nervous woman in the middle of nowhere in rural Croatia, cut off from the invigorating, cosmopolitan rush of the Internet. Gasp! Instapundit looks… dead… Mind over what matters? Silence. I check out Dawson to see if he has finally writen this “sort of ‘love post’ to Natalija at Samizdata” he said he was going to write…but all I see is eerie stillness. I look out of the window and the trees look back, gaunt and threatening. Beyond the gloom, is the rest of the world still there? The wind shakes the house. I close my PowerBook and stumble downstairs, stepping over the dogs. Even they are looking uneasy now. The fireplace is making the air seems oppressive, close, almost imprisoning. I drink more strong loza until I pass out.
And then I log on today, nervous, fearful, hung-over…
Ah! Phew! A tingle runs up my spine. I am back in contact with the world! The dogs are chasing each other around the house, the cats are hissing at them; mother is walking around with steaming pots of wonderful smelling…something; father is happily discussing the merits of his new Christmas rifle with my brother (who is pretending to be interested); my sister-in-law has remembered a prime piece of gossip she forgot to mention before and I see my lovely Valentino dress on a hanger… someone has removed all traces of cat hair from it.
Tomorrow I drive to Vienna to stay with friends.
The world is back running in well oiled grooves.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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