The Saunterer

What would Thomas Hardy think of Michael Vick?

    Blood sports are among the remediable ills of the world, as Thomas Hardy said in an interview:

What are my books but one plea against ‘man’s’ inhumanity to man’- to woman - and to the lower animals? (By the way, my opposition to [blood] ‘sport’ is the one point on which I am at all in conflict with my neighbours hereabouts.) Whatever may be the inherent good or evil of life, it is certain that men make it worse than it need be. When we have got rid of a thousand remediable ills, it will be time enough to determine whether the ill that is irremediable outweighs the good. (Quoted from William Archer’s “Real Conversations: Conversation II with Mr Thomas Hardy,” Pall Mall Magazine, April 1901.)    

    For brief biography of Thomas Hardy, click here.

Alan Weisman on “Earth without people”

We favor population reduction to about one billion people. That’s to allow all other species, which the current six billion people have decimated, to grow back toward paradise proportions. One way to grasp the paradise that Earth would be with fewer people is to think about how Earth would be if all people were removed. Alan Weisman discusses just this in an interview, “An Earth Without People,” Scientific American, July 2007, pages 76 - 81. Losers on Earth with no people include domesticated cattle (no one to raise them), rats (no garbage to eat), and head lice. All others win, including birds (no skyscrapers, power lines, and wind turbines to crash into and die), and trees and grasses (they’d repossess cities and developments). As for global warming, atmospheric carbon dioxide would return to preindustrial levels in 100,000 years.
    The truth everybody turns a blind eye to: most problems are caused by rampant unprotected sex. The population of India, for instance, passed the one billion mark in 2001. Every three years, India adds as many people as the whole population of the UK.   
    Some indicative facts caused by a world overrun with people: India has fewer than 1,500 tigers; Russia and Sumatra have about 400 each. A recent 3500-kilometer survey of China’s Yangtze River failed to tally even one baiji, the river dolphin. Another China survey recorded only 300 of the world’s only freshwater porpoise.
    For a bibliographical sketch of Alan Weisman, click here. For a description of his new book, The World without Us, click here.

Ayn Rand on competent people

    As Ayn Rand put it:

But the truth of the matter is that one finds worthwhile men and women among people who work. Follow me here very carefully, forgetting the cheap generalities which all our modern minds have been stuffed with. I do not mean LABOR. I do not mean people who have to earn their living. I do not mean proletarians. I do not mean tearooms. I mean what you and I understand by the term of “competent people.” People who love to work, who are good at it, serious about it and concerned primarily with it. Bright, creative, productive, ambitious people. People who get money for their work, but who do not work primarily for the money - whether it’s a weekly pay envelope or a thousand dollar bonus. People who are ambitious - not to climb socially, not to get wealth or titles - but ambitious to do more and more work of a better and better kind. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 208.)

    For brief biography of Ayn Rand, click here.

Lucien Price on the power of an idea

    Listen as Lucien Price distinguishes between great thoughts and great actions:

   There seems to be a notion prevalent among us that a thinker is a queer bird who rarely if ever hatches any eggs. We are all for the doer. Give us the man of action.
    Does it ever occur to us that a thought of some sort, even a murderous one, must precede every act? Does it ever occur to us that the doer is little more than the errand-boy of the thinker, and that there is no power on earth to match the power of an idea? (Quoted from Prophets Unawares, by Lucien Price, New York: The New Century Co., 1925; p. 21.)

May Sarton on what her life was all about

    Most artists would, we suspect, agree with poet May Sarton’s observation about the purpose of their lives:

I am at my desk from three to four hours every day. . . . It has to be the morning, before one’s mind is all cluttered up, when the door to the subconscious is still open, when you first wake up. That’s the creative time for me. Because you want, you see, that primary intensity. This is what my life is all about - creating a frame in which I can have that primary intensity for three hours a day. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 259.)

    For brief biography of May Sarton, click here.

B. F. Skinner on how to enjoy old age

    B. F. Skinner’s advice for enjoying old age:

If you cannot find the kind of work you have done in the past, try something new. It need not be something that appeals to you at first sight. . . . Look for something you can do; the chances are, you will begin to enjoy it as soon as you do it well. If frustration or failure bothers you, start slowly. . . . You may be surprised at how easily you move on to longer hours and harder work. (Quoted from Enjoy Old Age: A Program of Self-Management, by B. F. Skinner and  M. E. Vaughan, W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1983)

    For a brief biography of B. F. Skinner, click here.

Jacob Bronowski on science and art

    Science and art are different aspects of one purpose. Hear Jacob Bronowski:

When men misunderstand their own work, they cannot understand the work of others; so that it is natural that these scientists have been indifferent to the arts. They have been content, with the humanists, to think science mechanical and neutral; they could therefore justify themselves only by the claim that it is practical. By this lame criterion they have of course found poetry and music and painting at least unreal and often meaningless. I challenge all these judgments. (Quoted from Science and Human Values, by Jacob Bronowski, New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library, 1972; p. 6.)

    For brief biography of Jacob Bronowski, click here.

George Melly on impotence

    George Melly died last week. He once offered quite an insightful simile, saying that becoming impotent was like “being unchained from a lunatic.”
    People live chained to all kinds of lunatics. The workaholic is chained to a lunatic. The drug user is chained to a lunatic. The day-in, day-out shopper is chained to a lunatic. The person who reaches into the refrigerator fifty times a day is chained to a lunatic. The chronic gossip is chained to a lunatic. The 8-hour-a-day TV watcher is chained to a lunatic. The list goes on, including of course the lunatic that Melly was referring to.
    Impotence is worth working for. Imagine, for a moment, waking up every day, unchained from every variety of lunatic.

    For brief biography of George Melly, click here.

Laura Stevens on the glut of babies

    An article in The Herald Journal, Logan, Utah, June 28, 2007, told of Laura Stevens being booted from a Logan bus for reprimanding a woman rider for having six children. Quoting Ms. Stevens from the article:

I felt sorry for her. Maybe she doesn’t know that she could get a patch and not have a kid for five years.

    We don’t feel sorry for the woman, as Stevens did. We feel sorry for the world. How many children one decides to have is not a private matter when the consequences of having them is ruining nature. Every birth causes a fractional rise in global temperature, and a fractional decrease in the number of species. The fractions significantly add up.
    Put another way, over the centuries the billion or so people of breeding age that died of diseases, wars, and accidents did not die in vain. Had they lived, the progeny they would have spawned would have pushed global temperatures and species losses higher, sooner.
    We salute Laura Stevens and the Chinese government for acting openly against overpopulation. And we praise her for sensibly having only one child, a son, and no grandchildren. Had her kind predominated, the world would be better to live in today and tomorrow.

Rainer Maria Rilke on how to discover the work you are cut out for

    A young man, unsure if he should become a working poet, wrote Rainer Maria Rilke for advice. Rilke’s reply holds for any occupation:

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night; must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 180.)

    For a brief biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, click here.