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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Now I am not one of those people who thinks the term ‘modern art’ is an oxymoron. I have been to the superb Tate Modern several times and find much to commend it. I was a great admirer of Louise Bourgeois’ Spider and there is a wonderful piece of kinetic art (the artist’s name eludes me) that involves an upside down piano that, well, disembowels itself every few minutes, for want of a better description. A ‘hidden life of pianos’! Very surreal and quite enjoyable.
Yet when I see the nominees for the inexplicably prestigious Turner Prize, to be presented by Madonna in the Tate Britain gallery right about the same time as I am writing this article, I am at a loss to explain what the judges were thinking when they picked the finalists. The most astonishing entry is ‘Light going on and off in a room’. This as a piece of ‘installation art’ in which a light goes on and off in an unadorned room. And nothing else. Art?
My theory is that some people develop theories of essential meaninglessness, and as a result take meaningless positions in art (and politics, philosophy, epistemology, fly fishing etc). Sometimes, when another person encounters some manifestation of these meaningless theories, they are filled with a complete lack of comprehension. As the proponent of that manifestation seems to take it all quite seriously, the hapless person then adopts the view that the seeming lack of comprehensible meaning is merely a profundity beyond their current understanding, sort of the way many react to counterintuitive quantum theory.
In many cases, that which is true is also entirely counterintuitive. Much of physics and economics falls into this category: our intuition may (or may not) point us in the correct direction but it cannot lead us all the way to the truth. However, in many other cases, that which is counterintuitive is a complete load of bollocks. The hapless person’s first impression, that of an inability to divine any coherent meaning, was in fact quite correct: there is no meaning and there is nothing to understand beyond that fact. The Emperor has no clothes… and neither do the judges of the Turner Prize, intellectually speaking, of course.
I was going to wait a few minutes before writing this article to see who actually won the prize…but then I realised it really doesn’t matter. For some rational thoughts on art, check out Unexpected illustrations of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of aesthetics by Christian Michel on the superb Liberalia website.
British sporting ‘hero’ Sir Geoff Hurst is too afraid of terrorism to fly on a British Airways aircraft. He joins the list of cricketer ‘heroes’ Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick and movie action ‘heroes’ Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger in The Chickenshit Files.
My theory is that sports and media personalities such as these people are so astonishingly egocentric that they think any terrorist wishing to harm the USA or the UK must surely regard them as the very embodiment of that nation, hence they are a prime target. I hate to break this to you guys, but I do not think Osama bin Laden ever thought that US foreign policy was drafted by card carrying members of the Equity Actors Union, or he would have arranged for one of those hijacked aircraft to have been flown into Hollywood Boulevard.
In my first article on November 7 about these ‘heroes’ with feet of clay, I contrasted them quivering behind the walls of their mansions, with Ellen Degeneris, who stood up and taunted the Taliban live on television. Similarly, I would like to tip my kevlar battlebowler to Mariah Carey.
Now Mariah has been going through a rather bad patch in the last few months, with a nervous breakdown, erratic behaviour and visits to rehab gleefully reported in the press. Yet in spite of that and although she is a nervous flyer at the best of times, she flew to Kosovo yesterday and entertained US soldiers involved in the peacekeeping operation there.
So although Mariah Carey is not my usual taste in music, next time you see Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwartzenegger or sundry inconsequential sportsmen described as ‘heroes’, I invite you to blow a raspberry and go out and buy a Mariah Carey CD. She is got it where it counts… and I am not just referring to her more obvious charms. Good on you, girl.
It seems that Harry Potter is taking over like cocaine in the 1980’s. The Devil Girl confesses her addiction:
I am wrapped up in my Harry Potter […] I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets all night and day. I am going to finish it so I can read books 3 and 4. This is worse than crack, I swear. (Not that I’d know, but, uhm, well anyway..)
Everyone was so concerned about a few cases of anthrax, they missed something truly virulent spreading across the world.
For a libertarian angle on the Harry Potter phenomenon, check out Natalie’s blog and look for the article “Harry Potter and the Libertarian Subtext”. Most entertaining.
Bruce Willis, as you note, won’t get on a plane to Britain and is going to get a few rasberries come Die Hard Whatever It Is Up To Now. In this he follows the heroic tradition of Sly Stallone who wouldn’t fly for fear of catching Foot & Mouth from the loo seats, or something. Oh yes, I remember now, his problem was fear of what we used to call “terrorism”. Contrast our own magnificent Sting, up there on Concorde! Quite takes you back to the cutaways in Eagle Magazine, doesn’t it, “Another British World Beater!” Just don’t mention the cricketers.
On second thoughts, while I freely award boos and cheers to all the right people, let’s not get hung up on gesture politics. Or on giving unwarranted attention to the irrelevant political views of famous hunks.
BTW on my husband’s Eagle Book of Cutaways the de Havilland Comet is right next to the Short Solent flying boat. Isn’t that cute?
Actor Bruce Willis refuses to fly to Britain ‘because his children pleaded with him not to’, cricketers Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick refuse to fly to India due to ‘security concerns’. Fine, that is their prerogative. It is also the prerogative of others to judge these ‘public’ individuals by their actions. In spite of the fact these people are far more likely to die whilst crossing the road, they allow misplaced fears to determine their actions.
Terrorism works when people allow themselves to become terrorised and that seems to have occurred with the timid of heart. Apparently Willis wants his children to react to even the most indistinct nebulous ‘threat’ by cowering behind the gated walls of their mansion. I hope his next role as an ‘action hero’ is greeted with the same derisory smirks and pithy asides that greeted Ann Heche when she played the heterosexual love interest for Harrison Ford in ‘Six days, Seven Nights’.
In less dissembling times, I think Willis, Croft and Caddick would have been called ‘cowards’.
So when Ann Heche’s former partner Ellen Degeneris stands up at the Emmy’s last night with a red, white and blue ribbon and says “What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?”, it becomes clear that not only is she a very good comedienne, not everyone in Hollywood is cringing in terror and blaming it on ‘their children’.
So here’s to you, Ellen. As we always suspected, you are indeed the one wearing the trousers.
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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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