Threats of Pain and Ruin

161 Pages·2014·1.01 MB·English

by  Theodore Dalrymple

Table of Contents
Introduction
1 - Oh Calcutta!
2 - Dictatorship: The Wave of the Future?
3 - My Problem of Evil
4 - The Art of Destruction
5 - The Bruised Heel Healed
6 - A New Squirearchy
7 - Ancient and/or Modern
8 - A Word to the Wise
9 - The Profits of Blame
10 - The Sock Fairy
11 - As a Matter of Interest
12 - Time Past
13 - Portuguese Men-Of-Art
14 - Morality, Hawk-Eyed and Pigeon-Toed
15 - No Cant in Immanuel
16 - We Are All to Blame - or Is It the Others?
17 - Of Owls and Richard the Third: Part 1
18 - Of Owls and Richard the Third: Part II
19 - Grave Questions
20 - Non-Linear B
21 - Destiny of Crime
22 - Butterfly Minds
23 - Gossamer Wings
24 - Slugs Are For The Birds
25 - In Praise of a Dying Trade
26 - Boxing Clever
27 - Serpentine Mind
28 - Sense and Sentimentality
29 - Something Rotten in the Art of Denmark
30 - Give Death Its Due
31 - Life’s a Swindle
32 - Coming Up Tramps
33 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
34 - You Cannot Fathom Russia with Your Mind
35 - Of Horlicks and Heroism
36 - The Art of Automutilation
37 - Ford and Against
38 - Fifty Shades of Gray
Threats of Pain
and Ruin
Theodore Dalrymple
Designed by Richard Bentley (1753)
Copyright © Anthony M. Daniels, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in
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Published by New English Review Press
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ISBN: 978-0-9916521-2-9
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The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind...
— Thomas Gray
Introduction
W
hat is written without pain, said Doctor Johnson, is rarely read with pleasure. Rarely perhaps,
but not, I hope, never: for the little essays in this book were written, I must confess, without much angst.
In part this was because, in writing them, I had no thesis to prove, no axe to grind, except that the world
is both infinitely interesting and amusing, and provides us with an inexhaustible source of material for
philosophical reflection.
Here by philosophy I do not mean either a pre-formed lens though which everything has to be
examined, or a lens to be manufactured from the material examined and then used to look at everything
else in the world. Few of us are what in philosophy are called system-builders, and in practice we are
rarely worried that our attitude to the phenomena that come under our purview lead us to opinions that
are not strictly congruent with one another. Sometimes we use utilitarian arguments, and sometimes we
do not. But if no one were allowed to utter anything that was inconsistent with what he had uttered at
other times in his life, we should all be silent—or the most terrible bores. Monomania may be the
beginning of many things, but not of wisdom, and certainly not of amusing things to say.
This, however, should not prevent us from taking disparate things in the world and reflecting
upon them in a way that can only be called philosophical. Many of the subjects treated of in this book
were found by serendipity or came to me in flashes—it would be immodest to call them of inspiration—
of previously unsuspected connection and interest. I can only hope that they entertain the reader as they
have entertained me. At least they will do no harm, in compliance with the first principle of medical
ethics.
I am grateful to Rebecca Bynum, not only for her editorial help and skill, but for having allowed
me to write about whatever I pleased in the New English Review, irrespective of its topicality or lack
thereof. In a world in which the press of current business and current obsessions is a little like the peine
forte et dure applied to journalists such as I, it is an enormous privilege to be able to write elliptically, to
come at things from strange angles. For there is no other way to:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth’s superb surprise;
As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
1 - Oh Calcutta!
A
difficult lesson to learn and to accept, emotionally if not intellectually, is that there is rarely gain
in society entirely without loss. That is surely one of the reasons why nostalgia is so common a response
to the passage of time: it is not only lost youth that is regretted, but a lost world, at least in some or other
of its aspects.
Nostalgia is generally derided as at best a useless, and at worst a harmful emotion or mood. It is
useless when it leads to nothing except indulgence in itself; the nostalgic person is suspected of a kind
of auto-intoxication. But nostalgia is harmful when it is made a guide to policy. The person who tries to
recover the past in practice fails to understand one of the preconditions of the nostalgia which makes
him want to do so, namely the irrecoverability of that very past.
On the other hand, nostalgia helps to counteract the Icarus view of life, which is that life is
nothing but ascent nearer and nearer to the sun of perfection. The awareness that in some respect or
other life was once better than it is now is a recognition, implicit at least, that a precondition of the
possibility of improvement is the possibility of deterioration. There is no law written into the
constitution of the universe that guarantees overall improvement, steady or sudden as the case may be;
and that is why prudence is so great a political virtue.
Like any other virtue, prudence can be carried to excess, until it becomes the enemy of bravery,
determination and daring; and even the most nostalgic among us do not wish for a return to the old days
with regard, say, to medical treatment. What we really want is the pleasure of gain without the pain of
loss. It is surely the role of prudence to minimise the latter while not discouraging the former.
There can hardly be a city in the world where improvement is more evident than Calcutta. When
first I visited, forty years ago, it was still the city of dreadful night (Kipling’s story of that name referred
to Lahore, but with how much more justice might it have been Calcutta!). In those days, what Kipling
wrote seemed just as true a description of contemporary Calcutta:
The mat-weaver’s hut under the lee of the Hindu temple was full of men who lay like sheeted
corpses...
The difference between those who slept by the side of the roads and those who were dead seemed
not so very great. It was said that fifty thousand people made their home each night in Howrah station.
When your taxi stopped in traffic, beggars with leprosy would push their hideously disfigured limbs in
at the open windows to solicit alms. One of the most unpleasant sensations one could ever experience,