One category that's bound to get more attention under my new curiosity is 'Brain Spew'. And under that category will probably come my musings about other nations, other countries. If I could unblackify my diary, the travels might go there. But from the perspective of just thinking about places, Brain Spew is good.
A thoughtful reader sends the following:
..It’s coming down to the view of the importance of philosophy and how it inhabits almost everything. True, philosophy has political connotations, and I suppose that was where I got my start on this path, by realising how much politics affects my everyday life (like moving to a foreign country with no support network and no knowledge of the language, and being told to sink or swim there; you soon come to appreciate how much your own fortune is tied up in the local economic and political conditions and how much those conditions owe a lot to culture and society.)
I think a great deal more about my English speaking compatriots in the context of Western Civilization. Having spent a few weeks down in Sydney and partying with folks that way I picked up the accent very quickly. I'm rather mad at myself for not recording my best Sydneysider drawl. But the favor I find for Aussies doesn't quite compare with the way I feel about Brits. That's probably because I never have actually met a limey I didn't like or who didn't like me. I imagine it's just a matter of time.
But in the meantime I have found in Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Iain Banks, Will Self & Julian Barnes my very favorite writers in English (mostly found in Granta). Aside from Russell Banks, John McPhee and Umberto Eco, they are the best. Moreover, I find in British manhood, some measure of anti-BS without the redneck edge. Whereas American intellects tend to be rather priggish, metrosexual, or rich, there seems a more honest intellectuality in the Brits. As I get into Niall Ferguson, I expect more of the same. Whilst he's Scottish, I believe, there still is the Oxford bit. Brits are attuned better, I think, to some of the traditional oddment that intellectuality puts one into. I consider Wodehouse's Jeeves, for example. He recognizes exactly the social limits of intellect, and plays his role excellently without the burden of ambition, nor the catty resentment we Yanks can't seem to avoid.
Just yesterday, as I'm scrolling through the Long Now seminars, it appears so juvenile that so many of these lecturers seem to always find an obligatory swipe at Bush as unintelligent. I have the unique experience of having been educated by Jesuits, and it was in the 10th grade that I suddenly recognized the formality of understanding debate. A semester of Debate was required. Americans seem to require an existential bond with their ideas like no other people - we can't seem to let them exist on their own and instead tie our identity to our affiliations in politics and religion. It seems only Garrison Keillor is capable of self-deprecation in that regard, then again, his sentimentality is a whole other bucket of smelt itself.
But I think I could live in England, and have often thought of retiring there. I know a family of leftist persuasion whose daughter was fetching but alas lesbian, assessed the rightward swing of America and fled. I have often considered any number of conditions that would make me up and leave the US, including extraordinary good fortune and civil war. But there has never been much question that I would want to land in England, although Anglophone South Africa has some strange appeal.
I abstractedly think of Brits most often in the context of their imperial past and the settled nature of character such capacity inspired among their men and women. There is perhaps no substitute for the propriety of world power and the responsibility for the affairs of hundreds of millions. Sure one nation under God is a good pledge, but we don't quite understand what the proper kind of man should be to handle many possessions under the flag. We seem to adhere to a Steve Jobs kind of exit strategy - our greatest man makes the billion and retires in style, but never becomes a lord over any sort of conglomerate. We don't seem to produce many Jack Welches. Everybody is a specialist, and only for American markets. We only respect the globalists who are disruptive, 'Davos Man' is the term. But in the Brit is someone for whom 'For King and Country' still resonates. One cannot appreciate the life of Churchill without recognizing that nationalist social force in the British personality. I find it the finest sort of patriotism, along with piety, two of mankind's choicest virtues.
There's nothing essential about the Brits, it is rather I think by virtue of their understanding of their own history that requires them to be who they must. I intend to gain a clearer understanding of that history in due time.
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