Ridoinculous taboos
Yes, this article was published in Romanian five years ago. It was called Tabuuri ridicole back then. Deal with it.
This thousand words above seems to me very enlightening in the matter we will be discussing today (and yes, the two are Romanian).
So, doesn't it seem to you rather suspect, dear gents, madams, misses, whores and whatever else you might be (whores, principally) that we've arrived as a society as well as a shitteryi (by "we" I mean white people here, because the gyposii are doing fine in this field) in the odd situation of believing that "it's best the young un' discover by itself everything to do with sex" ?
It's the dumbest, harmful and in the end most ridiculous romanticism!
First off, sexuality is the most important human preoccupation, by far and since forever. And so it should be, at that, for the simplest and most fundamental biological reasonsiii. It isn't (as the romanticist imbeciles "think" without even being capable to verbalize, let alone defend the enormity) some kind of a... meteor, fallen from the skies, an intuition come from the great beyond, some kind of knowledge downloaded into your brain at the exactly opportune moment through the good offices of the great scriptwriter in the skies. It is a technique. It is a technique. Ignorance of this banality puts millions of women in the sad position of this imbecile, isn't it sad ? Isn't it regrettable, such a waste ?
What if we all took dumbness pills and we'd thereby end up with the firm (but unverbalized, and unverbalizable) conviction that the multiplication table is some sort of a something magical, that occurs by itself, and instead of teaching children aged 10 (by force and with beatings until they either know it perfectly or fucking die) we just... let them be. Perhaps flunk the whole lot when exam time comes, because ... well, why don't you chitlins know the multiplication table, dears ?!?!? Can you imagine what houses would look like and how much they'd cost ?iv What a wonder a flat table would be, what amazement a bearing ball, what luxury a small box with a sliding side...
Sexuality is technique, and being technique it must refine through practice, future generations must be able to benefit from the experience of previous generations, culture must transmit! I recommend the pairing of adolescents of either kind with adults rather on the far end of maturity exaclty for this reason : it's the simplest, cheapest and most comfortable manner of avoiding the idiotic taboos around sexuality. Let the young man take a forty or fifty year old lover, let Missy Highschool suck off some dood one year away from his burial, and with this great opportunity let them learn. Let the science and the practice of fucking fucking transmit, there's no need for every dumbass out there to rediscover the banal by rubbing sticks together.
Second off, who, how and why the fuck even dares pretending to forbid the most important form of the comunion between children and their parents ? Why shouldn't 16yo Jeniffer learn from her very own mother how exactly do girls in their clan suck the dick for seven generations, looky first you do like this and then like so not like those whores of X who do it that way and such ? Why shouldn't there be a tradition in the field, why should the individual not belong to a filiation ? Why shouldn't I be able to recognize a 16 yo kiddyv even naked, even in the dark, why shouldn't I say to myself "aaah, you're Katherine's" ? The natural inclination is there, little girls wanna exactly like mommy, have you ever seen a woman dressed in some t-shirt with a little girl in tow dressed in an identical one, how fucking gleeful she is ?
Let them have fucking tradition, here kitten, this is the dragon we in this fambly put on the ankle since 1607. What's the big issue under discussion, that some cucks don't fuck and are afraid of fucking ? Hue, totallies such an absolutely serious reason, how could I have overlooked it before!
Men do this somewhat, vaguely and with great coyness, at least at some point in time daddy took teh heir to a strip club, something, but with averted eyes, like. What the shit ?!
It doth not seem healthy. And in closing :
Problem ?
———In the original language "cultura" is how you say "culture", "ca" is how you say "as" and "caca" is how you say "shit", off the Latin root. Consequently "as X" where X starts with "ca" constructs what's known as a "cacophony" in Romanian, and junior high kids everywhere are drilled to avoid it. [↩]The similarities between the USian nigger and the Romanian gypo when it comes to majority perception are striking, did I mention ? [↩]Did you know, by the way, that the most important brain function -- of all! -- going by the count of neurons involved is facial recognition and reaction ? You didn't know, because you didn't have how to know, the studies aren't written yet, but lo that I'm telling you, from the future. This is the Russia of the brain, compared to which triteness such as speech are a poor US (which brings us to your also not knowing that RU = 17mn km2 as compared to the US' ~10). [↩]Amusingly, if you're from the US you don't even have to imagine! [↩]In the sense of, young goat. [↩]
« Lay the Favorite
The Moth »
Category: Cocietate si Sultura
Thursday, 11 January, Year 10 d.Tr.
Que he hecho YO para merecer esto ?
Que he hecho YOi para merecer esto ?ii is an excellent superlative of both Requiem for a Dream and Pink Flamingos. It is not a small accomplishment, this, to manage to be the better Requiem for a Dream of the set {"Requiem for a Dream", "Que he hecho YO para merecer esto ?"} and also be the better Pink Flamingosiii of the set {"Pink Flamingos" "Que he hecho YO para merecer esto ?"}. Don't you think ?
Let's unravel a little : some people, identical to all the other people "produced" (rather, resulting, like neoplastic growth, algae bloom or fungal explosion) by the failure of the Spanish state to control the pollutioniv spewed forth by the introduction of sewage systems are somewhat quaranteened in four concrete cubes of indescribable ugliness beyond a suspended road somewhere (nowhere). Almodovar forces the indistinguishable and undistinguished rats inhabiting the purpose-made "heaven (on Earth)" to drop all the conceits, all the falsehoods they use to clothe their offensive existence and present themselves nude.
The mother that offers the hungry child amphetamine in lieu of food ("will make appetite go away") and then sells the child to a lecherous dentist ; the twelve year old that is "dueno de su cuerpo", the stinkfoot "worker", the "forgetful" granny crowding her offspring, the angry neighbour, the pretty neighbour, these aren't exceptions, aren't different, and first and foremost aren't "made this way by the imagined-scapegoat du jour", be that "sociopath" or "capitalism" or whatever. It's not that they're people that were made nothing by something outside. It's that they were nothing to begin with, indistinct scum born without souls.
Posing the problem in terms of evolution and circumstance, in terms of "what have I done to deserve" is, in itself and perhaps not unintentionally, a dodge. It's a scam. It's the abused wife confessing to imaginary betrayals to score the beating that is nevertheless some quanta of human contact. The proper question is instead the one from La Grande Bellezza : "Chi sei tu ?"
And the answer is, necessarily and resoundingly, universally and unyieldingly the answer Francesca provides : No. Tu non sei nessuno.
That's it.
Howsoever dodged, howsoever repackaged, "cut up" by Burroughs' "technique", reinterpreted, commented upon, "satirized", spun, threaded, wiped or worn, the indelible fact of the matter remains : the byproducts of irresponsible industrial process are not anyone ; nor will ever be ; nor ever were ; nor could be nor could have been.
That's it.
———Yes, the narcissist particle is quite as underscored in the film print, even if most of the reviewers, total fucktards without a clue, missed out on this obvious tidbit as they miss out on anything and everything else. It's hard, you know, getting a printed name of a thing and trying to make out with the lips and hands as if you know what you're talking about. Copywriters, what can you do. [↩]1984, by Pedro Almodovar, with Carmen Maura, Angel de Andres-Lopez, Veronica Forque, Chus Lampreave etc. [↩]Not unqualifiedly better, though, just overall better. For instance, the golden rule ("all female actresses will appear naked at least once") sorta-obeyed by the original Pink Flamingos is not obeyed by the nevertheless overall better Pink Flamingos that is Que he hecho YO para merecer esto ?
I hope the spurious titular punctuation isn't giving you trouble, by the way ? [↩]You understand this, yes, the spurious class is exactly land pollution resulting from the irresponsible deployment of an industrial process. Do you ?
The things, the things that crowd the walmarts with their unwelcome presence and purport to communicate their unwelcome "opinions" are not "people like you and me". They're things, exactly like this. [↩]
« Fireflies and other things.
The V questionarium & answerarium, 2018 edition »
Category: Trilematograf
Thursday, 24 May, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) September 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 5`270 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 658`962 (+0.80%).
The lulz continue!
« Have you ever paid for sex ?!
No Such lAbs (S.NSA), September 2018 Statement »
Category: S.QNTR
Thursday, 04 October, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) September 2017 - February 2018 Statement
Motto : It will endure in my mind.
Apparently this report isn't including final disposition after all! Instead, feast your eyes upon the herein contained joint report covering the months of September and February!
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 13`706 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 618`388 (+2.26%).
Turns out you can't keep a bad seed under the ground, huh!
« Titless.
Le salaire de l'idiotie »
Category: S.QNTR
Saturday, 03 March, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) October 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 7`676 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 666`638 (+1.16%). Ain't that one hell of a figure! Literally, not figuratively.
« No Such lAbs (S.NSA), October 2018 Statement
MiniGame (S.MG), October 2018 Statement »
Category: S.QNTR
Saturday, 03 November, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) November 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 6`234 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 672`872 (+0.93%).
Sorry for the delay, and see you next month!
« This GNS thing...
No Such lAbs (S.NSA), November 2018 Statement »
Category: S.QNTR
Thursday, 06 December, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) May 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 6`216 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 636`790 (+1.01%).
« No country for old men
No Such lAbs (S.NSA), May 2018 Statement »
Category: S.QNTR
Monday, 04 June, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) March - April 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 12`186 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 630574 (+1.97%).
Having survived some pretty gnarly hopelessness as well as unrelated chaos, Qntra endures! And may it one day print all our eulogies -- but not just yet.
« No Such lAbs (S.NSA), April 2018 Statement
MiniGame (S.MG), April 2018 Statement »
Category: S.QNTR
Friday, 04 May, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) June 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 4`558 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 641`348 (+7.15%).
« The catfishing story
In which a bizarre character wanks it. »
Category: S.QNTR
Wednesday, 04 July, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) July 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 4`944 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 646`292 (+0.77%).i
———Last month's % calculation was evidently wrong, not that anyone said anything.
Why not ? [↩]
« Jap Deva!
Ye autre damozel. »
Category: S.QNTR
Wednesday, 01 August, Year 10 d.Tr.
Qntra (S.QNTR) August 2018 Statement
Qntra has realised no income and made no expenditure this period. Qntra is expected to realise no income and make no expenditure the following period.
As directed by its charter and on the basis of the report of the editor in chief, 7`400 S.QNTR shares issued this period. This brings the total shares issued to 653`692 (+1.14%). In more actionable and thereby interesting measures of success, it is altogether probable that a recent qntra article produced significant reaction within the republic. Better than the pantsuit press, in any case.
The Republic prevails.
« The Miracle Of The Bells
The Perfect Day »
Category: S.QNTR
Sunday, 02 September, Year 10 d.Tr.
Pushing the soft flesh and so on against the so and so blades of the immutable machine etcetera, second installment.
I said "you know I'm just the guy to do it" last time, and I guess that part hasn't changed. For how would it ? The blades sharpened meanwhile, and the thing spins faster, because how could it not ?
Without further ado, let us proceed to substance. Dear alf, here's a fresh peek behind the scenes :
mircea_popescu : Yeah, I was just sitting down to read about your site. But drama drew me in first, what can I say.
diana_coman : Ahaha.
mircea_popescu : The truth is the truth.
diana_coman : Aha, and I see he came back with exactly what I told him to nevermind. Obviously. That's why I didn't hit it "harder", because the fugue was obvious, how great that there's an excuse available and see ya, home free.
mircea_popescu : Far as I'm concerned... It's not like I bought him at the marti. Whoa what a header I've got today. Kickass.ii
diana_coman : It's not that, but still, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
mircea_popescu : Everyone has his own loyalty investments. Especially in the recent generations, odds are it'll be some kind of bellybutton lint or other. They flatter themselves with "having a personality", but this happens to be the only possible meaning of personality : what are you loyal to ?
diana_coman : It's not clear to me there's that many people loyal to whatever it may be.
mircea_popescu : What's not clear ? Or why, or what are you saying ?
diana_coman : It's not clear to me a capacity for loyalty even exists anymore, in the general.
mircea_popescu : Of course it does. It is not possible to have such a thing, human that's not loyal to something, except for severe dementia. Otherwise there's always something. The problem is that left to own devices / raised by themselves or the wolves as it's common these days, they pick something you can't upon examination fucking believe.iii
diana_coman : Hm, that may be...
mircea_popescu : That is. He's with you 100% until you tell him he's got a small cock, or whatever, various variations.
diana_coman : I can see it, I was thinking if you extend the notion of loyalty object to any nonsense however defined, however narrow or otherwise, then yes, I can see it.
mircea_popescu : Did you see the thing with Angelina Jolie back when she still had tits and Banderas ? How they love each other on some plantation or something ?
diana_coman : Zorro something or what ?
mircea_popescu : What was it called... Original Sin.
diana_coman : I don't know it, no.
mircea_popescu : Eh, the story's like this : extremely hot kitteniv was raped in her youth by some dubious psychopath. And as the psychological theoretical tradition as well as to a large degree reality goes, the deed restructured her personality fundamentally, in the sense that there can no longer be a man that would impress her as an adult woman as much as that dood impressed her when she was a little girl. Whether she liked it or disliked it or it hurt or it tore her snatch apart or whatever else. Because those things don't really matter to the little brain, especially in women. But then she meets a guy that's actually pretty cool (Banderas) and who treats her, you know, like a human being. For the first time in her life. Thus the problem of the film, will the heroine manage to heal just like that, for the sake of love, because lo it's imperatively necessary ?
diana_coman : Aha.
mircea_popescu : And obviously, the movie being US-made, the answer's yes, of course she manages, Jesusv downloads mind in her brain spontaneously just when she needs it and without words or other spurious bullshit like that.
diana_coman : I was about to say, Jolie, Banderas... certainly, absolutely and completely.
mircea_popescu : Fine, but the problem remains : she was loyal to something. That the something happened to be the dude that raped her prepubescent self dun matter any. And this is exactly how it goes, it's not some kind of invention, it's a strict rendition of plain reality. Which is why raping underaged girlies isn't even encouraged.
diana_coman : On the grounds it's an obvious avenue to ruin a person, though in no sense the only one anyway.
mircea_popescu : Absolutely not at all the only one. Overtolerant parents can also ruin heads, as a ready example. But that one happens to be very immediately and utterly obvious, you know ? Or whatever, to the eye with a certain experience, it's directly visible.
diana_coman : Hey, on the other hand if it broke then it was always broken, right ? :p
mircea_popescu : What can I tell you, just like the hammered microscope, it was badly designed in that it permitted hammering in the first place.
diana_coman : The design of human beings is definitionally broken to begin with, but whatever.
mircea_popescu : Myeah.
diana_coman : Gah! Watch him spin about, just like the 5yo kiddo that doesn't really like things not going his way, just like the 16yo not wanting to clean up his room, just like... pshaw.
mircea_popescu : That's it, I'm publishing.
diana_coman : What.
mircea_popescu : The discussion with... god damn it. On one hand I'd publish, Original Sin, stuff. On the other hand... hm. It's kinda raw. Boys are delicate. Fucking hell.
diana_coman : Lol. But yes, they are. And not just this crop, but generally. 'Tis the truth :p
mircea_popescu : All of them and everyone, confound it.
diana_coman : I'm not against it, the sooner we clarify what the fuck we're doing the better, what's the loss.
mircea_popescu : Are you talking about keccak ?
diana_coman : Yeah.
mircea_popescu : I was talking further up.
diana_coman : Ah. Oi poor guy.
mircea_popescu : Myeah. Too much is not healthy whichever way...
diana_coman : I'll tell you he seems to me bothered to death over the whole thing, but in a most unhealthy manner, which is to say as improductive as it could be. And... I've... let's say I've seen this before.
mircea_popescu : Myeah.
The question is : knowing as you now know that the adults aren't actually impressed with the infantile tantrum to any kind of degree, what can you do with this painfully got and expensively purchased knowledge ?
———No, seriously, think of me as I were a knife. You can definitely use me to sharpen yourself, just as you can use me to fuck yourself up. Do you really expect the knife to care ? It'd be a shitty knife if it did! It'd be a sort of Microsoft paperclip, and who the fuck wants that ? [↩]The comment was made yesterday, about that nicely set table with cakes and stuff. Meanwhile, the header changed : to the superb shot of me holding up a baby turtle, which had been placed in the list three months ago but never before came to fore. It's a sign, I tell you. [↩]Do you recall the cartoons with the eclosing duckling that picks Tom to imprint on as "mommy" ? [↩]This doesn't even begin to do the Romanian original (pisi) justice, but what can you do. [↩]The original read "Gizas", because the original was, obviously, in Romanian -- but not just any Romanian, the Romanian spoken by a certain generation. The most expressive Romanian ever spoken, the Romanian that includes "ghetali" as well as the retroverted spelling of "Isus" (aka Jesus) as a mark of distanced disinterest. [↩]
« Best of Fetlife (such as it is)
Moonstruck »
Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Thursday, 08 February, Year 10 d.Tr.
Printul.
Suna ceasul. Buna dimineata! Se merge la scoala. Mircea se imbraca. Afara ninge. In clasa este cald. Mircea se aseaza in banca. Fetele se paruie. De ce va paruiti, fetelor ? Ele vor sa seada cu Mircea.
Elenai cistiga. Invatatoarea dicteaza. Copiii scriu. Si Mircea scrie. Si Elena scrie. Mircea termina de scris. Elena inca mai scrie. Mircea o pipaie sub fustita. Ea isi departeaza genunchii. Elena nu are chilotei. De ce nu ai chilotei, Eleno ? Elena nu raspunde.
Suna clopotelul. Mircea iese in curte. Curtea are mere. Mircea arunca mingea. Fetele chiauna de cap. Suna soneria. Vine politia. Tovarasul Molotov face ordine. Ordinea are mere. Ana plinge. De ce plingi, Ano ? Ana plinge pentru ca nu i-au crescut sinii. Alte fete au sini cit merele. Sau chiar perele. Ele nu poarta nimic sub fustita. Nici chiar chilotei. Uneori nici fustita.
Alteori vine seara. Cel mai adesea. Si chiar mai ararea. Ne-am pierdut cararea. Afara este incomprehensibil. Vine Chtulhu.
Noapte buna.
———It was overfrequently fucking Helen, possibly because that was the name of the preteen prostitute Ceausescu fixated on. [↩]
« Eulora's Communication Protocol, restated.
Fireflies and other things. »
Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
Monday, 21 May, Year 10 d.Tr.
People of Walmart
We had to go, to buy some table games, such as Monopolyi and stuff. So since there...
———Have you any idea what harem Monopoly's like ?
No, I don't think you have. [↩]
« Tell me, what if the Republic were antique ?
Cabinas Genesis y otras ostras. »
Category: Zsilnic
Monday, 22 October, Year 10 d.Tr.
Pal Joey
Notwithstandingi the excellent cast, Pal Joeyii is not really worth watching.
The only notable bit about it, and by very far the only, occurs within the first two minutes : in the establishing shot, where we're supposed to find out just how cool this Sinatra Gooey fellow actually is, we get to see him being pushed up on a train with insistent entreatments to "not return". By a couple of cops. When he complains he's broke, they stuff a ticket in his hatband. These cops bought him a ticket, presumably out of their own savings ? So impressed are they, the cops, with this guy, the Gooey, that they passed on wifey's redecorationiii to buy him a ticket. Broke Gooey, but it dun matter he's broke, he's such a badass he gets to go places on local police dept's dime. How about that! Ain't he a pal ?!
But what might be the reason impelling all this propulsion ? What could've a broke hobo done to get the cops to pay his fare ? Hips or lips, amirite ? Guess what, since it's my god damned review I get to be rite as many times as I want. So yes, I'm rite : he doesn't even have to say it, because the cops will. Why should Pal Gooey be bothered with introduction when he's got the public force at his disposal ? So the cop tells us : they found a minor in his hotel room. "All you entertainers are all alike, you think every woman belongs to you". That's the cool, right ? Because supposedly, the 1950s meme goes, they do. Right ?
Gooey protests that he didn't know she was underage. She looked enough like a woman for his taste, and besides, "what was he to do -- ask for her id ?!?!" This stands without further ado -- of fucking course one can't be bothered from his cooing and necking to insert the state's nonsense. What fucking id ? One can't be asked for id, and the obligation to ask for id can't be foisted upon another about to fuck the one. Plain and simple as that. This'd then be the notable part : you've come a long way towards "papers please" since 1957, haven't you ? Back in 1957, that's 61 years ago, which is to say less years than your granma's, it was unthinkable, plain and simple, to expect some guy to ask some girl for her id. How about that ?
Leave aside how Frank Sinatra apparently thought fucking minors indistinctly en-cool-ens him. Not giving a shit, right ? Especially not giving a shit about the Old Woman's Howl (usually called "the state" in-universeiv). That's what cool was all about, right ? That's what the 60s, which this film fore-runs and prepares, were all about. Right ?
You've come a long way, what can I say.
———I have no idea what they've been smoking, but consider some points :
Rita Hayworth, who is first billed, nevertheless gets the mistreatment of a lifetime in this sad pile of inept footage. Woman has legs, right ? That's what you think of, when you see "Rita Hayworth" -- Legs McGee (and possibly when you see "legs", reciprocally, also). Well... her legs are never bare. Not ever. Nonce. And then... hair, right ? Rit' a hay worth's o' hair ? Well... nope. They gave her this mental patient haircut they usually reserve for hotties doing penance. She's hemmed in, utterly destroyed, I tell you I kept waiting for Rita Hayworth to show up, halfway through the film I was still waiting.
Kim Novak has no other assets than her incredible fucking ass. This is absolutely never shown. They even put her in an incredible corset cutting her waist to perhaps as little as 18 inches, evidently made to favourably contrast her 60+ inch rump, and then never film the contrast. I kid you not, she's carefully cut through the middle throughout, and for good measure hidden behind a pile of floating garbage. It boggled the mind anyone'd include Kim Novak and not get her ass in the shot at least 70% of the time. GET HER FUCKING NAKED, IDIOTS!
I don't think I've ever seen such waste of talent ; perhaps with the exception of the pantsuit tards. [↩]1957, by George Sydney, with Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak [↩]Don't tell me you've not noticed there's an entire class of these, idle useless women who imagine their contribution consists of "making decisions" as to the color of the walls and the color of the bits ? [↩]What, you never realised before all the "solidarity" junk, "organize the workers" bla bla bla is merely cucks trying to copy the survival mechanisms of whores ? REALLY ?!
You're slow. Think about it, the reason unsexy, ugly, obnoxious etcetera still exists in the female gender is... that it hasn't been rooted out. Evolution, right ? What protected it from being rooted out ? Not the fact that all the ugly bags, dogs and hags held hands and shrieked in unison whenever one was about to get her comeuppance ? Usure ?
"Sindicalism" was invented in the harem, long before writing or "the traditional family". [↩]
« Vote Hilary 2020!
Epiphitos »
Category: Trilematograf
Monday, 27 August, Year 10 d.Tr.
On namespaces
Motto : i suppose the question of lisp standardization, soon to be visited upon our fair republic, will be one helluva burning flame.
Here's some preparatory work, then, by means of adnotation upon an old Naggum email.
Subject: Re: Which one, Lisp or Scheme?
From: Erik Naggum
Date: 1997/02/03
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme
* Steve Austin
| I'm very much a newcomer to Common Lisp, and I naively assumed that the
| originators of Scheme used a common namespace to simplify the syntax of
| higher order functions. What advantages do separate namespaces provide?
as others have observed, there are (at least) two schools of thought here.
however, I'd like to approach this issue from a natural language point of view, instead of a formal language point of view. clearly, if you define a formal language to have only one namespace, you can argue all sorts of things from there, but the question is not ex post facto arguments, but rather the genesis of the idea.
I suspect this is the earliest statement of "causes ; not purposes" in Naggum's work. Certainly the earliest I so far found.
in natural languages, we are used to context. indeed, contextual meaning is what makes natural languages natural. we have `list' as a verb, and we have `list' as a noun. we have `listless' as an adjective describing something (like a programming language) that does not have lists, and an adjective describing someone who is sort of permanently tired. when we need to disambiguate, we do so with more words.
This actually misses the all-important mechanism. "When we need to disambiguate, we add more words such as to contradict one of the two possible solutions the string could eval to". Natural language is nothing beyhond "add aixi terms until P has only one real root." and in this vein we could introduce for instance the only viable model to evaluate poetry : how deep is the space explored, and how precise the sliver of interest chiseled out ?i
in Common Lisp, I can call some temporary variable `list' without having removed my ability to create new lists with the `list' function. like the natural language equivalent, `list' is both a verb and a noun, both a function and a variable. I find that this rhymes very well with me, and I also find that I would have severe problems if I could not use a word in a natural language just because it was "used up" by another part of speech. English is more prone to this than many other languages, but I happen to like English, too.
Except the argument for "multiple namespaces" has not been made. In point of fact what is being described is that in the sole namespace ever possible CL regards function.list as different from variable.list, even though some CL IDE some guy was at some point using opted to elide all the "variable." headers of all the variables as not contextually relevant. The fact that my penis isn't relevant to the discussion right now doesn't mean I don't have one ; and the fact that you don't need to see variable. in front of all your variables similarly doesn't imply it's not fucking there.
why is just one namespace bad for you? first, name space management is difficult. it is made more difficult by the lack of packages or other means of creating new namespaces. it is made more difficult by any means that artificially increase the collision rate of names. most languages that try to scale have had namespace manipulators added to them. e.g., in K&R C, struct members shared a single namespace, which nevertheless was different from that of variables and functions. ANSI C made each struct a separate namespace. C++ introduced the pervasive typedef, which not only made class names a new type, but also a reserved word, which leads me to the second reason. by having one namespace only, you effectively create a new reserved word every time you name something globally. in Common Lisp, you can't redefine the functional meaning of symbols imported from standard packages, but you can use them in (almost) any other way, and you can (must) declare that you intend to shadow symbols. in Scheme, you need to be careful that you don't redefine symbols you will later need in their global sense.
The collection of inherited kludges is not necessarily all that interesting in the direct. Obviously incorrect exposure of the path, not just to the eyes but also to the mind, is dangerous to the mind in question, as it's liable to start taking the local for general and "filenames" for identifiers.ii
various counter-measures are necessary if you have only one namespace. e.g., in C, the standard prescribes certain prefixes as belonging to the compiler and the rest are up for grabs among modules that you might want to link with. of course, using lexical scope, you reduce the impact of this problem. still, you can't use reserved words where they have no other use than to make the compiler barf. `default' is a perfectly reasonable variable name. then, some compilers will introduce new reserved words just for fun, like `try' and `catch'. Scheme, lacking both a package system and a useful number of namespaces, open up for namespace management problems that we know so well from large C programs (C being slightly better than Scheme in the namespace division). a single namespace in the linker also forced C++ to include a gross counter-measure appropriately called "name mangling". lacking packages, lacking symbol types, lacking everything, a C++ name as seen by the linker is some _implementation-specific_ junk that makes life "interesting" for everything that wishes to talk with the C++ modules. as a counter-counter-measure against the collision-avoidance that you need in one namespace, C++ has C linkage (extern "C") as an option to make names visible in a predictable namespace.
The fact that C grew "from the ground up" and they tried to retrofit it with a namespace rather than design one from the beginning is very poor an argument. Yes the linker need-driven namespace recreation looks exactly like Norma Bates (yes, arguably scheme's version looks more like Norman Bates' mom -- so ?).
now, C and C++ are language we love to hate, and the more we know the more we hate them, partly because of these problems, but my point is that Scheme is even _less_ scalable because of its severe restriction on names, and doubly so because Schemers, like most Lispers, like descriptive names, not cryptic naming conventions in somewhat less than 8 characters, which means that artificial naming in Scheme looks a lot worse than artificial naming in C.
it is often said that small is beautiful. now, anything can be beautiful when it is small. the ugliest person you can think of was probably a quite pretty baby.
This is patent nonsense. Most babies are ferociously ugly, and very often exactly the ones that'll in time grow into the prettiest girls. In any case about half of the real knockouts were not good looking during puberty. There's really no good relation here -- and I'd know, I looked.
it doesn't take much effort to find a beautiful 16-year-old girl, either. in fact, our modern notions of beauty and elegance are _defined_ in terms of size and maturity, so the chance of anything small and immature being beautiful is vastly higher than anything big or mature. now, despite all the marketing that seems to be aimed at telling me that I should dump a girlfriend when she becomes 25 and get a new 16-year-old (or even younger), I plan to stay with mine partly because of her ability to grow older in a way I like.
I can't begin to imagine who is the membership of that "our" ; but I expect an approximation of "nobody". Yes this sexuate species is sexually oriented towards geting the cap off the young girls ; but that anyone likes them is a whole 'nother matter, one that needs a little more thought given than a superficial scratch.
In any case -- nothing new has yet been beautiful, nor could it ever have been. Just like idiots can't have ideas, beauty is a function of familiarity not immaturity.
consequently, I take exceptions to the pedophilic attitudes to beauty and elegance that our societies have adopted over the years. this is why I don't like the "small is beautiful" model of aesthetics.
The model is misstated : simple is beautiful.
That simplicity in the description of ideal objects is readily conflated with shortness ; and that shortness of a thoroughly different type is readily conflated with immaturity in a completely disjunct namespace (which is just another word for "context", in context, isn't it) leads the misfortunate intellect down a path steeped in nonsense -- and you know exactly what I mean by the cracks and tears the simpler representation of namespaces I proposed above left in your previous "understanding" of the subject.
The relation between simplicity and shortness is slight ; the relation between simplicity and novelty entirely absent.
this is why I think that almost anybody could make something small and beautiful, but only a few can create something that grows from small to huge and still remains beautiful.
Like, for instance, a cell. Yes ? Is it beautiful ? Could you make it ?
but then again, look at interior architecture -- with huge spaces come a need for size-reducing ornamentation. the scaling process _itself_ adds "junk" to what was "clean surfaces" in a small model. Schemers refer to Common Lisp's "warts", and prefer to think of Scheme as "clean". now, I wonder, would Schemers prefer to live in small houses with nothing on their walls? would they still prefer this if the walls were a 100 feet high and 200 feet long, or would they, too, desire some ornamentation that would have looked _very_ bad if it had been on a 10 by 20 feet wall?
Yes.
I don't personally live in any space with ceilings at 30 meters. This is by choice, if I wanted to live in a railroad depot I very well couldiii. I don't. I do however own and operate spaces that fit his description. They are industial properties applied towards industrial uses, and no, a chunk of solid concrete suddenly protruding from a wall is not acceptable -- even recently serious expenditure was approved to cut the damn thing out, lest who knows when in the future someone's caught with their pants down in between unexpected circumstance and the "wall decoration".
The walls of large spaces are smooth for very good reasons, specifically that accidents on their surface would break the faculties for summation of the human brain in exactly their most vulnerable spot, and conceivably with dire consequences ; but even without this the "interior decoration" line falls apart, something that was to be expected from the onset -- I don't think there's many fields in worse a shape than this misfortunate catchall where all the women dumb enough to marry the sons dumb enough to pursue a career in politics end up vomited.
Scheme's single namespace is a function of its size. Scheme with more than one namespace _would_ have had bags on its side -- it would be very inelegant. however, as applications grow and as Scheme environments grow, the single namespace becomes disproportionately _small_. therefore, people resist a growth path that would have been natural, because their notion of beauty forbid it. Common Lisp with a single namespace would be confined and forbidding, for the same reason. an analogy may be in order. in very small towns, houses may have unique names. as the town grows in size, this becomes too hard to even imagine working, and houses are instead numbered, and the number space is managed by a street name. as the town grows more, streets in neighboring towns it merges with may have the same name. but towns have names, too, and states may have many towns. the United States has lots of towns with the same name. there are even towns that bear the name of countries in the global namespace. some people may still wish to name their house, but it would be foolish to hope that that name would be globally unique.
Yet if I mention in the opening lines of a new novel the Tribune tower you know the action's taking place in Chicago, right ?
Look how fucking beautiful it is :
geoloc.usa.texas.paris != geoloc.france.ile-de-france.paris
geoloc.usa.illinois.chicago.tribune-tower =
geoloc.usa.illinois.chicago.n-michigan-ave & geoloc.usa.illinois.chicago.e-illinois-st
Problem ?
all over the place, we invent namespaces to manage the huge number of things we deal with.
"Inventing" namespaces is a little like inventing gods : only inenarrable imbeciles engage in the activity.
"Inventing" namespaces is a lot like inventing "feelings" or "academic disciplines" or "genders" : the sure mark of the antisocial failure busy at work trying to destroy the world.
in Scheme, there are few things to deal with, so few names are necessary. in Common Lisp, there are many things to deal with, so means to keep names apart is _necessary_. in consequence, Common Lisp has packages and symbol slots and namespaces.
Yes, means to keep them apart are necessary in the general ; but this doesn't imply the proposed means are meaningful, or useful.
why is a single name space bad for you? in addition to the reasons given above, I'd like to add
If he were honest, he'd confess it's because the pantsuit in him takes issue with the implications of authority and control that flow from there, even if that flow is purely in the manner and of the substance of dreams. He just dun like monotheism, what! Africa 4 eva!
a problem as a conclusion: nothing restricts your growth path more than a restricted ability to name your inventions or creations. the psychological factor known as "cognitive load" imposes a very heavy burden on our design, namely by having to avoid excesses in that load. a single namespace is good if you have few names, and more than one namespace would be bad. at some size of the set of names, however, a single namespace becomes bad because what you once knew (namely, what a symbol meant), _ceases_ to be rememberable. namespaces introduce context to a language. I think communication without context is a contradiction in terms, so naturally I applaud such introduction.
#\Erik -- 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine -- a basic ingredient in quality software.
No body of work is larger than Trilema ; and Trilema uses a single name space to name all my creations (all the way down to the character level : http://trilema.com/2018/on-namespaces/#selection-335.144-335.145) without impediment. Does it seem my growth is all that restricted ?
———In this view machines fail at natural language because it is a combinatorically intractable problem, strictly speaking -- much like drones fail at being dragonflies. Quick, which kind of drones did I mean ? And how did you know that ? And how would have perl known that ? And how many watts ? [↩]Have you noticed, incidentally, how insistently repeated the errors central and typical of UStardianism are, in UStardian practice ? "Here is everywhere" doesn't just ridicule the fucktarded middle class girlie of "upper class ideals" or the equally fucktarded working class girlie of "I myself sing". A lisp hacker from Oslo (who "mysteriously" prefers English) has the exact same fucking problem, he sees "list" and thinks that's all that's there! Just like they do it in Paris!
Yes, yes, you like Naggum. So do I -- probably more than you. But I don't like the bits of nonsense embedded in the nougum, and if you "don't care" you may be well served by doing some thinking as to where they led him. [↩]Understand, the world is full of obsolete ones to be had for cheap. For this reason it wouldn't even be expensive, to me, technically speaking, so it's not an idle "I could", it's a very factual "I grind ten tons of potatoes a week for pulp, if I wanted to eat some I very well fucking could". [↩]
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No Such lAbs (S.NSA), March 2018 Statement »
Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Tuesday, 03 April, Year 10 d.Tr.
Occasional Discourse On The Negro Question, 1849
My Philanthropic Friends,
-- It is my painful duty to address some words to you, this evening, on the Rights of Negroes. Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfullest embroilment, and as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present; and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge upbreak, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the Universal Abolition-of-Pain Associationi, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary of modern Philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal 'Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society,'ii -- we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be very proper to commune earnestly with one another, and discourse together on the leading elements of our great Problem, which surely is one of the greatest. With this view the Council has decided, both that the Negro Question, as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and if possible the first settled; and then also, what was of much more questionable wisdom, that -- that, in short, I was to be Speaker on the occasion. An honourable duty; yet, as I said, a painful one! -- Well, you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and you will not in the least like it.
West-Indian affairs, as we all know, and some of us know to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this good while.iii In regard to West Indian affairs, however, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so many are dubious, That the Negroes are all very happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable indeed. West Indian Whites, it is admitted, are far enough from happy; West Indian Colonies not unlike sinking wholly into ruin;iv at home too, the British Whites are rather badly off;v several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual famine; and in single towns, many thousands of them very sore put to it, at this time, not to live 'well,' or as a man should, in any sense temporal or spiritual, but to live at all: -- these, again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are extremely extensive and important ones. But, thank Heaven, our interesting Black population, -- equalling almost in number of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshirevi, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valour and value) perhaps one of the streets of Seven Dialsvii, -- are all doing remarkably well. 'Sweet blighted lilies,' -- as the American epitaph on the Nigger child has it, -- sweet blighted lilies, they are holding up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dim dreary stagnancy at home, as if for England too there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait with arms crossed till black Anarchy and Social Death devoured us also, as it has done the othersviii; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall back upon: Our beautiful Black darlings are at last happy; with little labour except to the teeth, which surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!ix
Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in this matter. The Twenty Millions, a mere trifle despatched with a single dash of the penx, are paid; and far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered extremely 'free' indeed. Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; the grinder and incisor teeth ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates: while the sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot be hiredxi, so cheap are the pumpkins; -- and at home we are but required to rasp from the breakfast loaves of our own English labourers some slight 'differential sugar-duties,' and lend a poor half-million or a few poor millions now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on.xii A state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind; which has earned us not only the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud long-eared hallelujahs of laudatory psalmody from the Friends of Freedom everywhere, but lasting favour (it is hoped) from the Heavenly Powers themselves; -- which may at least justly appeal to the Heavenly Powers, and ask them, If ever in terrestrial procedure they saw the match of it?xiii Certainly in the past history of the human species it has no parallel; nor, one hopes, will it have in the future.xiv
Sunk in deep froth-oceans of 'Benevolence,' 'Fraternity,' 'Emancipation-principle,' 'Christian Philanthropy,' and other most amiable-looking, but most baseless, and in the end baleful and all-bewildering jargon, -- sad product of a sceptical Eighteenth Century, and of poor human hearts left destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that there ever was any, Christian or Heathen, and reduced to believe in rosepink Sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the same under its Christian, Antichristian, Broad-brimmed, Brutus-headed and other forms, -- has not the human species gone strange roads, during that period? and poor Exeter Hallxv, cultivating the Broadbrimmed form of Christian Sentimentalism, and long talking and bleating and braying in that strain, has it not worked out results? Our West Indian Legislatings, with their spoutings, anti-spoutings and interminable jangle and babble; our Twenty millions down on the nail for Blacks of our own; Thirty gradual millions more, and many brave British lives to boot, in watching Blacks of other people's; and now at last our ruined sugar-estates, differential sugar-duties, 'immigration loan,' and beautiful Blacks sitting there up to the ears in pumpkins, and doleful Whites sitting here without potatoes to eat: never till now, I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses; -- of which, with the two hot nights of the Missing-Despatch Debate, God grant that the measure might now at last be full! But no, it is not yet full; we have a long way to travel back, and terrible flounderings to make, and in fact an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes, before we get into the road again, and can begin to act as serious men that have work to do in this Universe, and no longer as windy sentimentalists that merely have speeches to deliver and despatches to write. Oh Heaven, in West-Indian matters, and in all manner of matters, it is so with us: the more is the sorrow! --
The West Indies, it appears, are short of labour; as indeed is very conceivable in those circumstances: where a Black man by working about half an hour a-day (such is the calculation) can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to raise into hard work! Supply and demand, which, science says, should be brought to bear on him, have an uphill task of it with such a man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis, rich soil in those unpeopled or half-peopled regions almost gratis; these are his 'supply;' and half an hour a-day, directed upon these, will produce pumpkin which is his 'demand.'xvi The fortunate Black man, very swiftly does he settle his account with supply and demand; -- not so swiftly the less fortunate White man of these tropical localities. He himself cannot work; and his black neighbour, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him. Sunk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and much at his ease in the Creation, he can listen to the less fortunate white man's 'demand,' and take his own time in supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane-crop cannot wait; still higher, -- till no conceivable opulence of cane-crop will cover such wages! In Demerara, as I read in the blue book of last year, the cane-crop, far and wide, stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen, strong in their pumpkins, having all struck till the 'demand' rise a little. Sweet blighted liliesxvii, now getting up their heads again!
Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate (equal in fact to nothing in some places, as appears), increase the supply; bring more Blacks into the labour-market, then will the rate fall, says science. Not the least surprising part of our West Indian policy is this recipe of 'immigration;' of keeping down the labour-market in those islands by importing new Africans to labour and live there. If the Africans that are already there could be made to lay down their pumpkins and labour for their living, there are already Africans enough. If the new Africans, after labouring a little, take to pumpkins like the others, what remedy is there? To bring in new and ever new Africans, say you, till pumpkins themselves grow dear; till the country is crowded with Africans; and black men there, like white men here, are forced by hunger to labour for their living?xviii That will be a consummation. To have 'emancipated' the West Indies into a Black Ireland; 'free' indeed, but an Ireland, and black! The world may yet see prodigies; and reality be stranger than a nightmare dream.
Our own white or sallow Ireland, sluttishly starving from age to age on its act-of-parliament 'freedom,' was hitherto the flower of mismanagement among the nations; but what will this be to a Negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselves fallen scarce like potatoes! Imagination cannot fathom such an object; the belly of Chaos never held the like. The human mind, in its wide wanderings, has not dreamt yet of such a 'freedom' as that will be. Towards that, if Exeter Hall and science of supply and demand are to continue our guides in the matter, we are daily travelling, and even struggling, with loans of half-a-million and such-like, to accelerate ourselves.
Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall Philanthropy is wonderful; and the Social Science -- not a 'gay science,' but a rueful -- which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply-and-demand,' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a 'gay science,' I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.xix These two, Exeter Hall Philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it, -- will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!
In fact, it will behove us of this English nation to overhaul our West Indian procedure from top to bottom; and ascertain a little better what it is that Fact and Nature demand of us, and what only Exeter Hall wedded to the Dismal Science demands. To the former set of demands we will endeavour, at our peril, -- and worse peril than our purse's, at our soul's peril, -- to give all obedience. To the latter we will very frequently demur; and try if we cannot stop short where they contradict the former, -- and especially before arriving at the black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be leading us. Alas, in many other provinces besides the West Indian, that unhappy wedlock of Philanthropic Liberalism and the Dismal Science has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of the moon-calf sort; and wrought huge woe for us, and for the poor civilized world, in these days! And sore will be the battle with said mooncalves; and terrible the struggle to return out of our delusions, floating rapidly on which, not the West Indies alone, but Europe generally is nearing the Niagara Falls.
My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed headlands in this wide-weltering deluge of benevolent twaddle and revolutionary grape-shot that has burst forth on us; no sure bearings at all? Fact and Nature, it seems to me, say a few words to us, if happily we have still an ear for Fact and Nature. Let us listen a little, and try.
And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, That no Black man who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do competent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world.xx To do competent work, to labour honestly according to the ability given them; for that and for no other purpose was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who, by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this the end of his being. That is the 'unhappy' lot; lot equally unhappy cannot otherwise be provided for man.xxi Whatsoever prohibits or prevents a man from this his sacred appointment to labour while he lives on earth, -- that, I say, is the man's deadliest enemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their power or opportunity towards delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered from: and the first 'right' he has, -- poor indolent blockhead, black or white, is, That every unprohibited man, whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavour to 'emancipate' him from his indolence, and by some wise means, as I said, compel him to do the work he is fit for. This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my beneficent Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and if need be compelled to do what work the Maker of him has intended by the making of him for this world! Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the West India Islands is, or can be, the blessedness of our black friend; but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that. And his own happiness, and that of others round him, will alone be possible by his and their getting into such a relation that this can be permitted him, and in case of need that this can be compelled him.xxii I beg you to understand this; for you seem to have a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand inferences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at present. The idle black man in the West Indies had not long since the right, and will again under better form, if it please Heaven, have the right (actually the first 'right of man' for an indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the Maker's will who had constructed him with such and such prefigurements of capability. And I incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike and the blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine right of being compelled (if 'permitted' will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle another minute, in a life so short! Alas, we had then a perfect world; and the Millennium, and true 'Organization of Labour,' and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers and men, had then arrived, -- which in these our own poor districts of the Planet, as we all lament to know, it is very far from having yet done.
Let me suggest another consideration withal. West India Islands, still full of waste fertility, produce abundant pumpkins; pumpkins, however, you will please to observe, are not the sole requisite for human wellbeing. No: for a pig they are the one thing needful; but for a man they are only the first of several things needful. And now, as to the right of chief management in cultivating those West India lands; as to the 'right of property' so-called, and of doing what you like with your own? The question is abstruse enough. Who it may be that has a right to raise pumpkins and other produce on those Islands, perhaps none can, except temporarily, decide. The Islands are good withal for pepper, for sugar, for sago, arrowroot, for coffee, perhaps for cinnamon and precious spices; things far nobler than pumpkins; and leading towards commerces, arts, politics, and social developements, which alone are the noble product, where men (and not pigs with pumpkins) are the parties concerned! Well, all this fruit too, fruit spicy and commercial, fruit spiritual and celestial, so far beyond the merely pumpkinish and grossly terrene, lies in the West India lands; and the ultimate 'proprietorship' of them, -- why, I suppose, it will vest in him who can the best educe from them whatever of noble produce they were created fit for yielding. He, I compute, is the real 'Vicegerent of the Maker' there; in him, better and better chosen, and not in another, is the 'property' vested by decree of Heaven's chancery itself!
Up to this time it is the Saxon British mainly; they hitherto have cultivated with some manfulness: and when a manfuller class of cultivators, stronger, worthier to have such land, abler to bring fruit from it, shall make their appearance, -- they, doubt it not, by fortune of war and other confused negociation and vicissitude, will be declared by Nature and Fact to be the worthier, and will become proprietors, -- perhaps also only for a time. That is the law, I take it; ultimate, supreme, for all lands in all countries under this sky. The one perfect eternal proprietor is the Maker who created them: the temporary better or worse proprietor is he whom the Maker has sent on that mission; he who the best hitherto can educe from said lands the beneficent gifts the Maker endowed them with; or, which is but another definition of the same person, he who leads hitherto the manfullest life on that bit of soil, doing, better than another yet found can do, the Eternal Purpose and Supreme Will there.
And now observe, my friends, it was not Black Quashee or those he represents that made those West India Islands what they are, or can by any hypothesis be considered to have the right of growing pumpkins there. For countless ages, since they first mounted oozy, on the back of earthquakes, from their dark bed in the Ocean deeps, and reeking saluted the tropical Sun, and ever onwards till the European white man first saw them some three short centuries ago, those Islands had produced mere jungle, savagery, poison-reptiles and swamp-malaria: till the white European first saw them, they were as if not yet created, -- their noble elements of cinnamon, sugar, coffee, pepper black and grey, lying all asleep, waiting the white Enchanter who should say to them, Awake! Till the end of human history and the sounding of the Trump of Doomxxiii, they might have lain so, had Quashee and the like of him been the only artists in the game. Swamps, fever-jungles, man-eating Caribs, rattle-snakes, and reeking waste and putrefaction, this had been the produce of them under the incompetent Caribal (what we call Cannibal) possessors till that timexxiv; and Quashee knows, himself, whether ever he could have introduced an improvement. Him, had he by a miraculous chance been wafted thither, the Caribals would have eaten, rolling him as a fat morsel under their tongue; for him, till the sounding of the Trump of Doom, the rattle-snakes and savageries would have held on their way. It was not he, then; it was another than he! Never by art of his could one pumpkin have grown there to solace any human throat; nothing but savagery and reeking putrefaction could have grown there. These plentiful pumpkins, I say therefore, are not his: no, they are another's; they are his only under conditions; conditions which Exeter Hall, for the present, has forgotten; but which Nature and the Eternal Powers have by no manner of means forgotten, but do at all moments keep in mind; and, at the right moment, will, with the due impressiveness, perhaps in a rather terrible manner, bring again to our mind also!
If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars, cinnamons, and nobler products of the West Indian Islands, for the benefit of all mankind, then I say neither will the Powers permit Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit; but will sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich ground; him and all that partake with him, -- perhaps in a very terrible manner. For, under favour of Exeter Hall, the 'terrible manner' is not yet quite extinct with the Destinies in this Universe; nor will it quite cease, I apprehend, for soft sawder or philanthropic stump-oratory now or henceforth. No; the gods wish besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products be grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies: -- infinitely more they wish, that manful industrious men occupy their West Indies, not indolent two-legged cattle, however 'happy' over their abundant pumpkins! Both these things, we may be assured, the immortal gods have decided upon, passed their eternal act of parliament for: and both of them, though all terrestrial Parliaments and entities oppose it to the death, shall be done. Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since other methods avail not, will be compelled to work. Or, alas, let him look across to Haiti, and trace a far sterner prophecy! Let him, by his ugliness, idleness, rebellion, banish all White men from the West Indies, and make it all one Haitixxv, -- with little or no sugar growing, black Peter exterminating black Paul, and where a garden of the Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dog-kennel and pestiferous jungle, -- does he think that will for ever continue pleasant to gods and men? I see men, the rose-pink cant all peeled away from them, land one day on those black coasts; men sent by the Laws of this Universe, and the inexorable Course of Things; men hungry for gold, remorseless, fierce as old Buccaneers were; -- and a doom for Quashee which I had rather not contemplate! The gods are long-suffering; but the law from the beginning was, He that will not work shall perish from the earth, and the patience of the gods has limits!
Before the West Indies could grow a pumpkin for any Negro, how much European heroism had to spend itself in obscure battle; to sink, in mortal agony, before the jungles, the putrescences and waste savageries could become arable, and the Devils be in some measure chained there! The West Indies grow pine-apples, and sweet fruits, and spices; we hope they will one day grow beautiful Heroic human Lives too, which is surely the ultimate object they were made for: beautiful souls and brave; sages, poets, what not; making the Earth nobler round them, as their kindred from of old have been doing; true 'splinters of the old Harz Rock;' heroic white men, worthy to be called old Saxons, browned with a mahogany tint in those new climates and conditions. But under the soil of Jamaica, before it could even produce spices or any pumpkin, the bones of many thousand British men had to be laid. Brave Colonel Fortescue, brave Colonel Sedgwick, brave Colonel Brayne, -- the dust of many thousand strong old English hearts lies there; worn down swiftly in frightful travail, chaining the Devils, which were manifold. Heroic Blake contributed a bit of his life to that Jamaica. A bit of the great Protector's own life lies there; beneath those pumpkins lies a bit of the life that was Oliver Cromwell's. How the great Protector would have rejoiced to think, that all this was to issue in growing pumpkins to keep Quashee in a comfortably idle condition! No; that is not the ultimate issue; not that.
The West Indian Whites, so soon as this bewilderment of philanthropic and other jargon abates from them, and their poor eyes get to discern a little what the Facts are and what the Laws are, will strike into another course, I apprehend! I apprehend they will, as a preliminary, resolutely refuse to permit the Black man any privilege whatever of pumpkins till he agree for work in return. Not a square inch of soil in those fruitful Isles, purchased by British blood, shall any Black man hold to grow pumpkins for him, except on terms that are fair towards Britain. Fair; see that they be not unfair, not towards ourselves, and still more, not towards him. For injustice is for ever accursed: and precisely our unfairness towards the enslaved black man has, -- by inevitable revulsion and fated turn of the wheel, -- brought about these present confusions. Fair towards Britain it will be, that Quashee give work for privilege to grow pumpkins. Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to do the State so many days of service.xxvi Annually that soil will grow you pumpkins; but annually also without fail shall you, for the owner thereof, do your appointed days of labour. The State has plenty of waste soil; but the State will religiously give you none of it on other terms. The State wants sugar from these Islands, and means to have it; wants virtuous industry in these Islands, and must have it. The State demands of you such service as will bring these results, this latter result which includes all. Not a Black Ireland, by immigration, and boundless black supply for the demand; not that, -- may the gods forbid! -- but a regulated West Indies, with black working population in adequate numbers; all 'happy,' if they find it possible; and not entirely unbeautiful to gods and men, which latter result they must find possible! All 'happy' enough; that is to say, all working according to the faculty they have got, making a little more divine this earth which the gods have given them. Is there any other 'happiness,' -- if it be not that of pigs fattening daily to the slaughter? So will the State speak by and by.
Any poor idle Black man, any idle White man, rich or poor, is a mere eye-sorrow to the State; a perpetual blister on the skin of the State. The State is taking measures, some of them rather extensive in Europe at this very time, and already as in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, rather tremendous measures, to get its rich white men set to work; for alas, they also have long sat Negro-like up to the ears in pumpkin, regardless of 'work,' and of a world all going to waste for their idleness! Extensive measures, I say; and already (as, in all European lands, this scandalous Year of street-barricades and fugitive sham-kings exhibits) tremendous measures; for the thing is instant to be done.xxvii
The thing must be done everywhere; must is the word. Only it is so terribly difficult to do; and will take generations yet, this of getting our rich European white men 'set to work!' But yours in the West Indies, my obscure Black friends, your work, and the getting of you set to it, is a simple affair; and by diligence, the West Indian legislatures, and Royal governors, setting their faces fairly to the problem, will get it done. You are not 'slaves' now; nor do I wish, if it can be avoided, to see you slaves again: but decidedly you will have to be servants to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you, -- servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you. That, you may depend on it, my obscure Black friends, is and was always the Law of the World, for you and for all men: To be servants, the more foolish of us to the more wise; and only sorrow, futility and disappointment will betide both, till both in some approximate degree get to conform to the same. Heaven's laws are not repealable by Earth, however Earth may try, -- and it has been trying hard, in some directions, of late! I say, no well-being, and in the end no being at all, will be possible for you or us, if the law of Heaven is not complied with. And if 'slave' mean essentially 'servant hired for life,' -- for life, or by a contract of long continuance and not easily dissoluble, -- I ask, Whether, in in all human things, the 'contract of long continuance' is not precisely the contract to be desired, were the right terms once found for it? Servant hired for life, were the right terms once found, which I do not pretend they are, seems to me much preferable to servant hired for the month, or by contract dissoluble in a day. An ill-situated servant, that; -- servant grown to be nomadic; between whom and his master a good relation cannot easily spring up!
To state articulately, and put into practical Lawbooks, what on all sides is fair from the West India White to the West India Black; what relations the Eternal Maker has established between these two creatures of His; what He has written down, with intricate but ineffaceable record, legible to candid human insight, in the respective qualities, strengths, necessities and capabilities of each of the two: this will be a long problem; only to be solved by continuous human endeavour, and earnest effort gradually perfecting itself as experience successively yields new light to it. This will be to 'find the right terms' of a contract that will endure, and be sanctioned by Heaven, and obtain prosperity on Earth, between the two. A long problem, terribly neglected hitherto; -- whence these West-Indian sorrows, and Exeter-Hall monstrosities, just now! But a problem which must be entered upon, and by degrees be completed. A problem which, I think, the English People, if they mean to retain human Colonies, and not Black Irelands in addition to the white, cannot begin too soon!xxviii What are the true relations between Negro and White, their mutual duties under the sight of the Maker of them both; what human laws will assist both to comply more and more with these? The solution, only to be gained by earnest endeavour and sincere experience, such as have never yet been bestowed on it, is not yet here; the solution is perhaps still distant: but some approximation to it, various real approximations, could be made, and must be made; -- this of declaring that Negro and White are unrelated, loose from one another, on a footing of perfect equality, and subject to no law but that of Supply and Demand according to the Dismal Science; this, which contradicts the palpablest facts, is clearly no solution, but a cutting of the knot asunder; and every hour we persist in this is leading us towards dissolution instead of solution!
What then is practically to be done? Much, very much, my friends, to which it hardly falls to me to allude at present: but all this of perfect equality, of cutting quite loose from one another; all this, with 'immigration loan,' 'happiness of black peasantry,' and the other melancholy stuff that has followed from it, will first of all require to be undone, and have the ground cleared of it, by way of preliminary to 'doing!' --
Already one hears of Black Adscripti glebae; which seems a promising arrangement, one of the first to suggest itself in such a complicacy. It appears the Dutch Blacks, in Java, are already a kind of Adscripts, after the manner of the old European serfs; bound, by royal authority, to give so many days of work a-year. Is not this something like a real approximation; the first step towards all manner of such? Wherever, in British territory, there exists a Black man, and needful work to the just extent is not to be got out of him, such a law, in defect of better, should be brought to bear upon said Black man! How many laws of like purport, conceivable some of them, might be brought to bear upon the Black man and the White, with all despatch, by way of solution instead of dissolution to their complicated case just now! On the whole it ought to be rendered possible, ought it not, for White men to live beside Black men, and in some just manner to command Black men, and produce West-Indian fruitfulness by means of them? West-Indian fruitfulness will need to be produced. If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (Brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies; bidding us ignominiously, Depart ye quack-ridden, incompetent! --
One other remark, as to the present Trade in Slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the Sugar-Islands for sale again be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the Laws of this Universe, let us heartily pray Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given. If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this Earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it; why, then indeed -- -- But is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold, unbought, unmarketable Irish 'free' citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my Lord of Rackrent and the constitutional sheriff's have evicted them; or at those 'divine missionaries,' of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what 'freedom' really is; -- and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God's name, fling aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means; this thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it, -- provided your premiss be not doubtful.
But now furthermore give me leave to ask, Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the Continent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along that extremely extensive and unwholesome coast?xxix The enterprize is very gigantic; and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprize has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it! -- Watch the Coast of Africa, good part of the Coast of the terraqueous Globe? And the living centres of this slave mischief, the live-coals that produce all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, which are perfectly accessible and manageable.
If the Laws of Heaven do authorize you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question; if you really can appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it, -- why, in Heaven's name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of 74-gun ships; and signify to those nefarious countries: That their procedure on the Negro Question is too bad; that, of all the solecisms now submitted to on Earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact, is such that a just man cannot follow his affairs any longer in the same Planet with it; that they clearly will not, the nefarious populations will not, for love or fear, watching or entreaty, respect the rights of the Negro enough; -- wherefore you here, with your Seventy-fours, are come to be King over them, and will on the spot henceforth see for yourselves that they do it! Why not, if Heaven do send you?xxx The thing can be done; easily, if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done: it is the way to 'suppress the Slave-trade;' and so far as yet appears, the one way.
Most thinking people! -- If hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent, will you station police-officers at every henroost; and keep them watching and cruizing incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense, with almost no effect: or will you not try rather to discover where the fox's den is, and kill the fox? Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den; there he is, -- kill him, and discharge your cruisers and police-watchers!xxxi
Oh, my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of Human Stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, 'of all peoples the wisest in action;' but he added, 'the stupidest in speech:' -- and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal Parliamentary and other Eloquence, that the 'speakers' have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business!
———Avoidance of human suffering can never be the goal of policy. [↩]Regressive taxation is the only moral, and the only ethically permissible standard. The inept must pay more than average, in direct proportion to how less than average they themselves are, while the favoured squeak by unburdened (no, not even "by their fair share" -- what fucking fair, what fucking "share"). How "capable to pay" they find themselves doesn't enter into this to any degree -- pork bellies and chained uteri are perfectly acceptable ; psedo-charity is absolutely not. The alternative view ruins civilisation in general as well as private happiness in all particulars. [↩]Isn't it amusing, how this always was (and on the basis of which experience, likely ever will be) the case ? [↩]Right ? [↩]Then they were badly off. Then! [↩]This is a solid point -- there's really not enough negroes around for ~anyone to give much of a shit about the "matter". [↩]This, unpleasant, unpalatable, undesired as may be -- nevertheless also very solid point. Negros worth the mention... where are they ? [↩]black or of any other color, Anomie ("Anarchy" is a misnomer, the lack of direction rather than the lack of authority being the problem -- though granted these two are inseparably united) and "Social Death" did in fact consume. [↩]And how they haven't! [↩]The fact that they weren't a trifle then should be proven to you by the fact that you think twenty milion another way of saying "nothing much". How did they become thus ? [↩]I'm sorry, what, did you imagine freed from fetters the barn animals will step up to produce UGC ? Reheheheally ?! [↩]The eternal temptation of the acquarium miniworld. Its insulated perfection's an icon of sorts, that derives benefit into the outside world beyond the cost of maintenance, neh ? [↩]The closer of all socialist externalities, yes. [↩]And how. [↩]The headquarters of the "Anti-Slavery Society" at the time, lord Exter's house. [↩]Meanwhile they "fixed" this problem -- in the only way a fix wouldn't well take. Now since fake gold chains don't grow in the fields, the same black man's hard at work "tryna make it in dis biznis", and we're all so very impressed with the net results. [↩]This is some kind of period expression, along the lines of how the black man was trampled, and but for the trampling'd have been a lilly. [↩]Hey, it's working wonderfully for Texas with the Mexicans, isn't it ? [↩]Yep, this is where that expression was coined. What now ?
Ask your "social sciences" fucktard why he never mentioned the source, maybe ? Right ? [↩]Suddenly the dispute veers towards a quabble between opposed socialisms ?! Could you have predicted this ?
From each according to capacity, 1849 variant. Where's your latecoming Marx and Engles now, I got my Carlyle right here!
Meanwhile, as far as Fact&Nature are concerned : the weak, and the stupid, and the poor and the miserable must labour lots and lots and lots and LOTS, and die with it. Whereas the strong, and the smart and the rich and the happy must not be disturbed. That is the only fact, and the only nature. [↩]This much is quite true. [↩]I don't know about compelling, seems to be conflicting with the "worst fate there isn't" line before ; but in any case yes, slavery as I practice it is based on exactly this principle, of "being put to work and protected from own indolence & other flaws" by awesome Master. By choice, all this, but nevertheless slavery. [↩]The... I kid you not, the text reads as it stands, the Trump of Doom. [↩]Carribean, right. [↩]Somehow the Rhodesia of the 1800s is well forgotten now, and you wish to "donate for Haiti". Why the fuck would anyone! What, they apologized meanwhile ? [↩]What a bizarre turn of events! [↩]The state, eh ? [↩]Ahahaha. Meanwhile, of course, Rotterham United, your average 12yo girl would rather be raped, beaten and set on fire by pakis than talk to the retarded white boys she went to school with. [↩]The rowing of the boat contained of the drowning may well be work for the hands of the very drowning in question ; but the supplying of an ocean in which the boat is to drown fairwise is work for the "divine providence", whatever it may be, and none else.
If indeed slave trade is so divinely-providentially-intolerable, it'd have made the sea work better towards its stated or intended goals ; but for such while as the sea floats slave ship as any other ship, don't bother me with "divine providence dictates". It has the manner to dictate, let it. [↩]Reminds me of ye olde "they lost the war when they didn't make Iraq the 51st state". [↩]Yes, "most thinking people". But some more or less thinking people like fucking chickens, and don't so much think of dealing with any fox. Fact is they'd cruize back and forth in the unwholesome dark from chicken coop to chicken coop anyway, which'd be why they want to do it under the guise of "providential dictates". What chicken fucker's ever been satisfied with a plain statement of the extent of his interest in the matter ? [↩]
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Category: Cocietate si Sultura
Thursday, 27 September, Year 10 d.Tr.
Occasional Discourse On The Negro Question, 1849
My Philanthropic Friends,
-- It is my painful duty to address some words to you, this evening, on the Rights of Negroes. Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, which we find all in a state of the frightfullest embroilment, and as it were, of inextricable final bankruptcy, just at present; and being desirous to adjust ourselves in that huge upbreak, and unutterable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well that our grand proposed Association of Associations, the Universal Abolition-of-Pain Associationi, which is meant to be the consummate golden flower and summary of modern Philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal 'Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society,'ii -- we have judged that, before constituting ourselves, it would be very proper to commune earnestly with one another, and discourse together on the leading elements of our great Problem, which surely is one of the greatest. With this view the Council has decided, both that the Negro Question, as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and if possible the first settled; and then also, what was of much more questionable wisdom, that -- that, in short, I was to be Speaker on the occasion. An honourable duty; yet, as I said, a painful one! -- Well, you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and you will not in the least like it.
West-Indian affairs, as we all know, and some of us know to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this good while.iii In regard to West Indian affairs, however, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so many are dubious, That the Negroes are all very happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable indeed. West Indian Whites, it is admitted, are far enough from happy; West Indian Colonies not unlike sinking wholly into ruin;iv at home too, the British Whites are rather badly off;v several millions of them hanging on the verge of continual famine; and in single towns, many thousands of them very sore put to it, at this time, not to live 'well,' or as a man should, in any sense temporal or spiritual, but to live at all: -- these, again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are extremely extensive and important ones. But, thank Heaven, our interesting Black population, -- equalling almost in number of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshirevi, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valour and value) perhaps one of the streets of Seven Dialsvii, -- are all doing remarkably well. 'Sweet blighted lilies,' -- as the American epitaph on the Nigger child has it, -- sweet blighted lilies, they are holding up their heads again! How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad, and dim dreary stagnancy at home, as if for England too there remained nothing but to suppress Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote the supplies, and wait with arms crossed till black Anarchy and Social Death devoured us also, as it has done the othersviii; how pleasant to have always this fact to fall back upon: Our beautiful Black darlings are at last happy; with little labour except to the teeth, which surely, in those excellent horse-jaws of theirs, will not fail!ix
Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in this matter. The Twenty Millions, a mere trifle despatched with a single dash of the penx, are paid; and far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered extremely 'free' indeed. Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; the grinder and incisor teeth ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates: while the sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot be hiredxi, so cheap are the pumpkins; -- and at home we are but required to rasp from the breakfast loaves of our own English labourers some slight 'differential sugar-duties,' and lend a poor half-million or a few poor millions now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on.xii A state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind; which has earned us not only the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud long-eared hallelujahs of laudatory psalmody from the Friends of Freedom everywhere, but lasting favour (it is hoped) from the Heavenly Powers themselves; -- which may at least justly appeal to the Heavenly Powers, and ask them, If ever in terrestrial procedure they saw the match of it?xiii Certainly in the past history of the human species it has no parallel; nor, one hopes, will it have in the future.xiv
Sunk in deep froth-oceans of 'Benevolence,' 'Fraternity,' 'Emancipation-principle,' 'Christian Philanthropy,' and other most amiable-looking, but most baseless, and in the end baleful and all-bewildering jargon, -- sad product of a sceptical Eighteenth Century, and of poor human hearts left destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that there ever was any, Christian or Heathen, and reduced to believe in rosepink Sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the same under its Christian, Antichristian, Broad-brimmed, Brutus-headed and other forms, -- has not the human species gone strange roads, during that period? and poor Exeter Hallxv, cultivating the Broadbrimmed form of Christian Sentimentalism, and long talking and bleating and braying in that strain, has it not worked out results? Our West Indian Legislatings, with their spoutings, anti-spoutings and interminable jangle and babble; our Twenty millions down on the nail for Blacks of our own; Thirty gradual millions more, and many brave British lives to boot, in watching Blacks of other people's; and now at last our ruined sugar-estates, differential sugar-duties, 'immigration loan,' and beautiful Blacks sitting there up to the ears in pumpkins, and doleful Whites sitting here without potatoes to eat: never till now, I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses; -- of which, with the two hot nights of the Missing-Despatch Debate, God grant that the measure might now at last be full! But no, it is not yet full; we have a long way to travel back, and terrible flounderings to make, and in fact an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes, before we get into the road again, and can begin to act as serious men that have work to do in this Universe, and no longer as windy sentimentalists that merely have speeches to deliver and despatches to write. Oh Heaven, in West-Indian matters, and in all manner of matters, it is so with us: the more is the sorrow! --
The West Indies, it appears, are short of labour; as indeed is very conceivable in those circumstances: where a Black man by working about half an hour a-day (such is the calculation) can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to raise into hard work! Supply and demand, which, science says, should be brought to bear on him, have an uphill task of it with such a man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis, rich soil in those unpeopled or half-peopled regions almost gratis; these are his 'supply;' and half an hour a-day, directed upon these, will produce pumpkin which is his 'demand.'xvi The fortunate Black man, very swiftly does he settle his account with supply and demand; -- not so swiftly the less fortunate White man of these tropical localities. He himself cannot work; and his black neighbour, rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him. Sunk to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, and much at his ease in the Creation, he can listen to the less fortunate white man's 'demand,' and take his own time in supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane-crop cannot wait; still higher, -- till no conceivable opulence of cane-crop will cover such wages! In Demerara, as I read in the blue book of last year, the cane-crop, far and wide, stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen, strong in their pumpkins, having all struck till the 'demand' rise a little. Sweet blighted liliesxvii, now getting up their heads again!
Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate (equal in fact to nothing in some places, as appears), increase the supply; bring more Blacks into the labour-market, then will the rate fall, says science. Not the least surprising part of our West Indian policy is this recipe of 'immigration;' of keeping down the labour-market in those islands by importing new Africans to labour and live there. If the Africans that are already there could be made to lay down their pumpkins and labour for their living, there are already Africans enough. If the new Africans, after labouring a little, take to pumpkins like the others, what remedy is there? To bring in new and ever new Africans, say you, till pumpkins themselves grow dear; till the country is crowded with Africans; and black men there, like white men here, are forced by hunger to labour for their living?xviii That will be a consummation. To have 'emancipated' the West Indies into a Black Ireland; 'free' indeed, but an Ireland, and black! The world may yet see prodigies; and reality be stranger than a nightmare dream.
Our own white or sallow Ireland, sluttishly starving from age to age on its act-of-parliament 'freedom,' was hitherto the flower of mismanagement among the nations; but what will this be to a Negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselves fallen scarce like potatoes! Imagination cannot fathom such an object; the belly of Chaos never held the like. The human mind, in its wide wanderings, has not dreamt yet of such a 'freedom' as that will be. Towards that, if Exeter Hall and science of supply and demand are to continue our guides in the matter, we are daily travelling, and even struggling, with loans of half-a-million and such-like, to accelerate ourselves.
Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall Philanthropy is wonderful; and the Social Science -- not a 'gay science,' but a rueful -- which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply-and-demand,' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a 'gay science,' I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.xix These two, Exeter Hall Philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it, -- will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!
In fact, it will behove us of this English nation to overhaul our West Indian procedure from top to bottom; and ascertain a little better what it is that Fact and Nature demand of us, and what only Exeter Hall wedded to the Dismal Science demands. To the former set of demands we will endeavour, at our peril, -- and worse peril than our purse's, at our soul's peril, -- to give all obedience. To the latter we will very frequently demur; and try if we cannot stop short where they contradict the former, -- and especially before arriving at the black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be leading us. Alas, in many other provinces besides the West Indian, that unhappy wedlock of Philanthropic Liberalism and the Dismal Science has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of the moon-calf sort; and wrought huge woe for us, and for the poor civilized world, in these days! And sore will be the battle with said mooncalves; and terrible the struggle to return out of our delusions, floating rapidly on which, not the West Indies alone, but Europe generally is nearing the Niagara Falls.
My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed headlands in this wide-weltering deluge of benevolent twaddle and revolutionary grape-shot that has burst forth on us; no sure bearings at all? Fact and Nature, it seems to me, say a few words to us, if happily we have still an ear for Fact and Nature. Let us listen a little, and try.
And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, That no Black man who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said land, to do competent work for his living. This is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, who are born into this world.xx To do competent work, to labour honestly according to the ability given them; for that and for no other purpose was each one of us sent into this world; and woe is to every man who, by friend or by foe, is prevented from fulfilling this the end of his being. That is the 'unhappy' lot; lot equally unhappy cannot otherwise be provided for man.xxi Whatsoever prohibits or prevents a man from this his sacred appointment to labour while he lives on earth, -- that, I say, is the man's deadliest enemy; and all men are called upon to do what is in their power or opportunity towards delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the enemy he must be delivered from: and the first 'right' he has, -- poor indolent blockhead, black or white, is, That every unprohibited man, whatsoever wiser, more industrious person may be passing that way, shall endeavour to 'emancipate' him from his indolence, and by some wise means, as I said, compel him to do the work he is fit for. This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my beneficent Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall be permitted, encouraged, and if need be compelled to do what work the Maker of him has intended by the making of him for this world! Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such felicity in the West India Islands is, or can be, the blessedness of our black friend; but that he should do useful work there, according as the gifts have been bestowed on him for that. And his own happiness, and that of others round him, will alone be possible by his and their getting into such a relation that this can be permitted him, and in case of need that this can be compelled him.xxii I beg you to understand this; for you seem to have a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand inferences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at present. The idle black man in the West Indies had not long since the right, and will again under better form, if it please Heaven, have the right (actually the first 'right of man' for an indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the Maker's will who had constructed him with such and such prefigurements of capability. And I incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike and the blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine right of being compelled (if 'permitted' will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle another minute, in a life so short! Alas, we had then a perfect world; and the Millennium, and true 'Organization of Labour,' and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers and men, had then arrived, -- which in these our own poor districts of the Planet, as we all lament to know, it is very far from having yet done.
Let me suggest another consideration withal. West India Islands, still full of waste fertility, produce abundant pumpkins; pumpkins, however, you will please to observe, are not the sole requisite for human wellbeing. No: for a pig they are the one thing needful; but for a man they are only the first of several things needful. And now, as to the right of chief management in cultivating those West India lands; as to the 'right of property' so-called, and of doing what you like with your own? The question is abstruse enough. Who it may be that has a right to raise pumpkins and other produce on those Islands, perhaps none can, except temporarily, decide. The Islands are good withal for pepper, for sugar, for sago, arrowroot, for coffee, perhaps for cinnamon and precious spices; things far nobler than pumpkins; and leading towards commerces, arts, politics, and social developements, which alone are the noble product, where men (and not pigs with pumpkins) are the parties concerned! Well, all this fruit too, fruit spicy and commercial, fruit spiritual and celestial, so far beyond the merely pumpkinish and grossly terrene, lies in the West India lands; and the ultimate 'proprietorship' of them, -- why, I suppose, it will vest in him who can the best educe from them whatever of noble produce they were created fit for yielding. He, I compute, is the real 'Vicegerent of the Maker' there; in him, better and better chosen, and not in another, is the 'property' vested by decree of Heaven's chancery itself!
Up to this time it is the Saxon British mainly; they hitherto have cultivated with some manfulness: and when a manfuller class of cultivators, stronger, worthier to have such land, abler to bring fruit from it, shall make their appearance, -- they, doubt it not, by fortune of war and other confused negociation and vicissitude, will be declared by Nature and Fact to be the worthier, and will become proprietors, -- perhaps also only for a time. That is the law, I take it; ultimate, supreme, for all lands in all countries under this sky. The one perfect eternal proprietor is the Maker who created them: the temporary better or worse proprietor is he whom the Maker has sent on that mission; he who the best hitherto can educe from said lands the beneficent gifts the Maker endowed them with; or, which is but another definition of the same person, he who leads hitherto the manfullest life on that bit of soil, doing, better than another yet found can do, the Eternal Purpose and Supreme Will there.
And now observe, my friends, it was not Black Quashee or those he represents that made those West India Islands what they are, or can by any hypothesis be considered to have the right of growing pumpkins there. For countless ages, since they first mounted oozy, on the back of earthquakes, from their dark bed in the Ocean deeps, and reeking saluted the tropical Sun, and ever onwards till the European white man first saw them some three short centuries ago, those Islands had produced mere jungle, savagery, poison-reptiles and swamp-malaria: till the white European first saw them, they were as if not yet created, -- their noble elements of cinnamon, sugar, coffee, pepper black and grey, lying all asleep, waiting the white Enchanter who should say to them, Awake! Till the end of human history and the sounding of the Trump of Doomxxiii, they might have lain so, had Quashee and the like of him been the only artists in the game. Swamps, fever-jungles, man-eating Caribs, rattle-snakes, and reeking waste and putrefaction, this had been the produce of them under the incompetent Caribal (what we call Cannibal) possessors till that timexxiv; and Quashee knows, himself, whether ever he could have introduced an improvement. Him, had he by a miraculous chance been wafted thither, the Caribals would have eaten, rolling him as a fat morsel under their tongue; for him, till the sounding of the Trump of Doom, the rattle-snakes and savageries would have held on their way. It was not he, then; it was another than he! Never by art of his could one pumpkin have grown there to solace any human throat; nothing but savagery and reeking putrefaction could have grown there. These plentiful pumpkins, I say therefore, are not his: no, they are another's; they are his only under conditions; conditions which Exeter Hall, for the present, has forgotten; but which Nature and the Eternal Powers have by no manner of means forgotten, but do at all moments keep in mind; and, at the right moment, will, with the due impressiveness, perhaps in a rather terrible manner, bring again to our mind also!
If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars, cinnamons, and nobler products of the West Indian Islands, for the benefit of all mankind, then I say neither will the Powers permit Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit; but will sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich ground; him and all that partake with him, -- perhaps in a very terrible manner. For, under favour of Exeter Hall, the 'terrible manner' is not yet quite extinct with the Destinies in this Universe; nor will it quite cease, I apprehend, for soft sawder or philanthropic stump-oratory now or henceforth. No; the gods wish besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products be grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies: -- infinitely more they wish, that manful industrious men occupy their West Indies, not indolent two-legged cattle, however 'happy' over their abundant pumpkins! Both these things, we may be assured, the immortal gods have decided upon, passed their eternal act of parliament for: and both of them, though all terrestrial Parliaments and entities oppose it to the death, shall be done. Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since other methods avail not, will be compelled to work. Or, alas, let him look across to Haiti, and trace a far sterner prophecy! Let him, by his ugliness, idleness, rebellion, banish all White men from the West Indies, and make it all one Haitixxv, -- with little or no sugar growing, black Peter exterminating black Paul, and where a garden of the Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dog-kennel and pestiferous jungle, -- does he think that will for ever continue pleasant to gods and men? I see men, the rose-pink cant all peeled away from them, land one day on those black coasts; men sent by the Laws of this Universe, and the inexorable Course of Things; men hungry for gold, remorseless, fierce as old Buccaneers were; -- and a doom for Quashee which I had rather not contemplate! The gods are long-suffering; but the law from the beginning was, He that will not work shall perish from the earth, and the patience of the gods has limits!
Before the West Indies could grow a pumpkin for any Negro, how much European heroism had to spend itself in obscure battle; to sink, in mortal agony, before the jungles, the putrescences and waste savageries could become arable, and the Devils be in some measure chained there! The West Indies grow pine-apples, and sweet fruits, and spices; we hope they will one day grow beautiful Heroic human Lives too, which is surely the ultimate object they were made for: beautiful souls and brave; sages, poets, what not; making the Earth nobler round them, as their kindred from of old have been doing; true 'splinters of the old Harz Rock;' heroic white men, worthy to be called old Saxons, browned with a mahogany tint in those new climates and conditions. But under the soil of Jamaica, before it could even produce spices or any pumpkin, the bones of many thousand British men had to be laid. Brave Colonel Fortescue, brave Colonel Sedgwick, brave Colonel Brayne, -- the dust of many thousand strong old English hearts lies there; worn down swiftly in frightful travail, chaining the Devils, which were manifold. Heroic Blake contributed a bit of his life to that Jamaica. A bit of the great Protector's own life lies there; beneath those pumpkins lies a bit of the life that was Oliver Cromwell's. How the great Protector would have rejoiced to think, that all this was to issue in growing pumpkins to keep Quashee in a comfortably idle condition! No; that is not the ultimate issue; not that.
The West Indian Whites, so soon as this bewilderment of philanthropic and other jargon abates from them, and their poor eyes get to discern a little what the Facts are and what the Laws are, will strike into another course, I apprehend! I apprehend they will, as a preliminary, resolutely refuse to permit the Black man any privilege whatever of pumpkins till he agree for work in return. Not a square inch of soil in those fruitful Isles, purchased by British blood, shall any Black man hold to grow pumpkins for him, except on terms that are fair towards Britain. Fair; see that they be not unfair, not towards ourselves, and still more, not towards him. For injustice is for ever accursed: and precisely our unfairness towards the enslaved black man has, -- by inevitable revulsion and fated turn of the wheel, -- brought about these present confusions. Fair towards Britain it will be, that Quashee give work for privilege to grow pumpkins. Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to do the State so many days of service.xxvi Annually that soil will grow you pumpkins; but annually also without fail shall you, for the owner thereof, do your appointed days of labour. The State has plenty of waste soil; but the State will religiously give you none of it on other terms. The State wants sugar from these Islands, and means to have it; wants virtuous industry in these Islands, and must have it. The State demands of you such service as will bring these results, this latter result which includes all. Not a Black Ireland, by immigration, and boundless black supply for the demand; not that, -- may the gods forbid! -- but a regulated West Indies, with black working population in adequate numbers; all 'happy,' if they find it possible; and not entirely unbeautiful to gods and men, which latter result they must find possible! All 'happy' enough; that is to say, all working according to the faculty they have got, making a little more divine this earth which the gods have given them. Is there any other 'happiness,' -- if it be not that of pigs fattening daily to the slaughter? So will the State speak by and by.
Any poor idle Black man, any idle White man, rich or poor, is a mere eye-sorrow to the State; a perpetual blister on the skin of the State. The State is taking measures, some of them rather extensive in Europe at this very time, and already as in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, rather tremendous measures, to get its rich white men set to work; for alas, they also have long sat Negro-like up to the ears in pumpkin, regardless of 'work,' and of a world all going to waste for their idleness! Extensive measures, I say; and already (as, in all European lands, this scandalous Year of street-barricades and fugitive sham-kings exhibits) tremendous measures; for the thing is instant to be done.xxvii
The thing must be done everywhere; must is the word. Only it is so terribly difficult to do; and will take generations yet, this of getting our rich European white men 'set to work!' But yours in the West Indies, my obscure Black friends, your work, and the getting of you set to it, is a simple affair; and by diligence, the West Indian legislatures, and Royal governors, setting their faces fairly to the problem, will get it done. You are not 'slaves' now; nor do I wish, if it can be avoided, to see you slaves again: but decidedly you will have to be servants to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you, -- servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you. That, you may depend on it, my obscure Black friends, is and was always the Law of the World, for you and for all men: To be servants, the more foolish of us to the more wise; and only sorrow, futility and disappointment will betide both, till both in some approximate degree get to conform to the same. Heaven's laws are not repealable by Earth, however Earth may try, -- and it has been trying hard, in some directions, of late! I say, no well-being, and in the end no being at all, will be possible for you or us, if the law of Heaven is not complied with. And if 'slave' mean essentially 'servant hired for life,' -- for life, or by a contract of long continuance and not easily dissoluble, -- I ask, Whether, in in all human things, the 'contract of long continuance' is not precisely the contract to be desired, were the right terms once found for it? Servant hired for life, were the right terms once found, which I do not pretend they are, seems to me much preferable to servant hired for the month, or by contract dissoluble in a day. An ill-situated servant, that; -- servant grown to be nomadic; between whom and his master a good relation cannot easily spring up!
To state articulately, and put into practical Lawbooks, what on all sides is fair from the West India White to the West India Black; what relations the Eternal Maker has established between these two creatures of His; what He has written down, with intricate but ineffaceable record, legible to candid human insight, in the respective qualities, strengths, necessities and capabilities of each of the two: this will be a long problem; only to be solved by continuous human endeavour, and earnest effort gradually perfecting itself as experience successively yields new light to it. This will be to 'find the right terms' of a contract that will endure, and be sanctioned by Heaven, and obtain prosperity on Earth, between the two. A long problem, terribly neglected hitherto; -- whence these West-Indian sorrows, and Exeter-Hall monstrosities, just now! But a problem which must be entered upon, and by degrees be completed. A problem which, I think, the English People, if they mean to retain human Colonies, and not Black Irelands in addition to the white, cannot begin too soon!xxviii What are the true relations between Negro and White, their mutual duties under the sight of the Maker of them both; what human laws will assist both to comply more and more with these? The solution, only to be gained by earnest endeavour and sincere experience, such as have never yet been bestowed on it, is not yet here; the solution is perhaps still distant: but some approximation to it, various real approximations, could be made, and must be made; -- this of declaring that Negro and White are unrelated, loose from one another, on a footing of perfect equality, and subject to no law but that of Supply and Demand according to the Dismal Science; this, which contradicts the palpablest facts, is clearly no solution, but a cutting of the knot asunder; and every hour we persist in this is leading us towards dissolution instead of solution!
What then is practically to be done? Much, very much, my friends, to which it hardly falls to me to allude at present: but all this of perfect equality, of cutting quite loose from one another; all this, with 'immigration loan,' 'happiness of black peasantry,' and the other melancholy stuff that has followed from it, will first of all require to be undone, and have the ground cleared of it, by way of preliminary to 'doing!' --
Already one hears of Black Adscripti glebae; which seems a promising arrangement, one of the first to suggest itself in such a complicacy. It appears the Dutch Blacks, in Java, are already a kind of Adscripts, after the manner of the old European serfs; bound, by royal authority, to give so many days of work a-year. Is not this something like a real approximation; the first step towards all manner of such? Wherever, in British territory, there exists a Black man, and needful work to the just extent is not to be got out of him, such a law, in defect of better, should be brought to bear upon said Black man! How many laws of like purport, conceivable some of them, might be brought to bear upon the Black man and the White, with all despatch, by way of solution instead of dissolution to their complicated case just now! On the whole it ought to be rendered possible, ought it not, for White men to live beside Black men, and in some just manner to command Black men, and produce West-Indian fruitfulness by means of them? West-Indian fruitfulness will need to be produced. If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (Brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies; bidding us ignominiously, Depart ye quack-ridden, incompetent! --
One other remark, as to the present Trade in Slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the Sugar-Islands for sale again be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the Laws of this Universe, let us heartily pray Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given. If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this Earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it; why, then indeed -- -- But is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold, unbought, unmarketable Irish 'free' citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my Lord of Rackrent and the constitutional sheriff's have evicted them; or at those 'divine missionaries,' of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what 'freedom' really is; -- and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God's name, fling aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means; this thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it, -- provided your premiss be not doubtful.
But now furthermore give me leave to ask, Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the Continent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along that extremely extensive and unwholesome coast?xxix The enterprize is very gigantic; and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprize has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it! -- Watch the Coast of Africa, good part of the Coast of the terraqueous Globe? And the living centres of this slave mischief, the live-coals that produce all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, which are perfectly accessible and manageable.
If the Laws of Heaven do authorize you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question; if you really can appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it, -- why, in Heaven's name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of 74-gun ships; and signify to those nefarious countries: That their procedure on the Negro Question is too bad; that, of all the solecisms now submitted to on Earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact, is such that a just man cannot follow his affairs any longer in the same Planet with it; that they clearly will not, the nefarious populations will not, for love or fear, watching or entreaty, respect the rights of the Negro enough; -- wherefore you here, with your Seventy-fours, are come to be King over them, and will on the spot henceforth see for yourselves that they do it! Why not, if Heaven do send you?xxx The thing can be done; easily, if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done: it is the way to 'suppress the Slave-trade;' and so far as yet appears, the one way.
Most thinking people! -- If hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent, will you station police-officers at every henroost; and keep them watching and cruizing incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense, with almost no effect: or will you not try rather to discover where the fox's den is, and kill the fox? Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den; there he is, -- kill him, and discharge your cruisers and police-watchers!xxxi
Oh, my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of Human Stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, 'of all peoples the wisest in action;' but he added, 'the stupidest in speech:' -- and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal Parliamentary and other Eloquence, that the 'speakers' have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business!
———Avoidance of human suffering can never be the goal of policy. [↩]Regressive taxation is the only moral, and the only ethically permissible standard. The inept must pay more than average, in direct proportion to how less than average they themselves are, while the favoured squeak by unburdened (no, not even "by their fair share" -- what fucking fair, what fucking "share"). How "capable to pay" they find themselves doesn't enter into this to any degree -- pork bellies and chained uteri are perfectly acceptable ; psedo-charity is absolutely not. The alternative view ruins civilisation in general as well as private happiness in all particulars. [↩]Isn't it amusing, how this always was (and on the basis of which experience, likely ever will be) the case ? [↩]Right ? [↩]Then they were badly off. Then! [↩]This is a solid point -- there's really not enough negroes around for ~anyone to give much of a shit about the "matter". [↩]This, unpleasant, unpalatable, undesired as may be -- nevertheless also very solid point. Negros worth the mention... where are they ? [↩]black or of any other color, Anomie ("Anarchy" is a misnomer, the lack of direction rather than the lack of authority being the problem -- though granted these two are inseparably united) and "Social Death" did in fact consume. [↩]And how they haven't! [↩]The fact that they weren't a trifle then should be proven to you by the fact that you think twenty milion another way of saying "nothing much". How did they become thus ? [↩]I'm sorry, what, did you imagine freed from fetters the barn animals will step up to produce UGC ? Reheheheally ?! [↩]The eternal temptation of the acquarium miniworld. Its insulated perfection's an icon of sorts, that derives benefit into the outside world beyond the cost of maintenance, neh ? [↩]The closer of all socialist externalities, yes. [↩]And how. [↩]The headquarters of the "Anti-Slavery Society" at the time, lord Exter's house. [↩]Meanwhile they "fixed" this problem -- in the only way a fix wouldn't well take. Now since fake gold chains don't grow in the fields, the same black man's hard at work "tryna make it in dis biznis", and we're all so very impressed with the net results. [↩]This is some kind of period expression, along the lines of how the black man was trampled, and but for the trampling'd have been a lilly. [↩]Hey, it's working wonderfully for Texas with the Mexicans, isn't it ? [↩]Yep, this is where that expression was coined. What now ?
Ask your "social sciences" fucktard why he never mentioned the source, maybe ? Right ? [↩]Suddenly the dispute veers towards a quabble between opposed socialisms ?! Could you have predicted this ?
From each according to capacity, 1849 variant. Where's your latecoming Marx and Engles now, I got my Carlyle right here!
Meanwhile, as far as Fact&Nature are concerned : the weak, and the stupid, and the poor and the miserable must labour lots and lots and lots and LOTS, and die with it. Whereas the strong, and the smart and the rich and the happy must not be disturbed. That is the only fact, and the only nature. [↩]This much is quite true. [↩]I don't know about compelling, seems to be conflicting with the "worst fate there isn't" line before ; but in any case yes, slavery as I practice it is based on exactly this principle, of "being put to work and protected from own indolence & other flaws" by awesome Master. By choice, all this, but nevertheless slavery. [↩]The... I kid you not, the text reads as it stands, the Trump of Doom. [↩]Carribean, right. [↩]Somehow the Rhodesia of the 1800s is well forgotten now, and you wish to "donate for Haiti". Why the fuck would anyone! What, they apologized meanwhile ? [↩]What a bizarre turn of events! [↩]The state, eh ? [↩]Ahahaha. Meanwhile, of course, Rotterham United, your average 12yo girl would rather be raped, beaten and set on fire by pakis than talk to the retarded white boys she went to school with. [↩]The rowing of the boat contained of the drowning may well be work for the hands of the very drowning in question ; but the supplying of an ocean in which the boat is to drown fairwise is work for the "divine providence", whatever it may be, and none else.
If indeed slave trade is so divinely-providentially-intolerable, it'd have made the sea work better towards its stated or intended goals ; but for such while as the sea floats slave ship as any other ship, don't bother me with "divine providence dictates". It has the manner to dictate, let it. [↩]Reminds me of ye olde "they lost the war when they didn't make Iraq the 51st state". [↩]Yes, "most thinking people". But some more or less thinking people like fucking chickens, and don't so much think of dealing with any fox. Fact is they'd cruize back and forth in the unwholesome dark from chicken coop to chicken coop anyway, which'd be why they want to do it under the guise of "providential dictates". What chicken fucker's ever been satisfied with a plain statement of the extent of his interest in the matter ? [↩]
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Category: Cocietate si Sultura
Thursday, 27 September, Year 10 d.Tr.
Obscure terms.
You know what altruism is, right ? Because it's such a common term, with a lengthy history and just as much a word as all the other words, having been known to humanity since forever on the basis of its centrality in your idiocy.
In fact, altruism is an obscure, recent Italian coinage. It's derived off the Italian word for "not minding one's own business" (altrui) with the universal suffix for "stupidity" (-ism).
You also know what charisma is, right ? Because it's such a common term, with a lengthy history and just as much a word as all the other words, having been known to humanity since forever on the basis of its centrality in your idiocy.
In fact, charisma is an obscure ancient term, used principally by Paul to discuss with the early xtians the specific characteristic that marked one as chosen by God for leadership. Max Weber picked it up last century to illustrate some bullshit reductionist theory he was cooking up at the time. It caught on, because you're lazy idiots and the only thing that ever catches on is reductionist bullshit. Exactly opposite to how it goes for actual minds, your only driver of interest is "thought savings" : you'll read that which promises to "save you" from "having to" read longer or more complex pieces and nothing else!
Fuck you ; and yes this article is a stub. Why don't you suck on it, maybe it grows.
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MiniGame (S.MG), March 2018 Statement »
Category: 3 ani experienta
Monday, 02 April, Year 10 d.Tr.
Nobody knows what lovage is...
When I was a kid, there were two landmarks of note in the immediate vicinty of my grandparents' apartment in the Andrei Muresanu neighbourhood : an old lilac bush in front, and a happy lovage bush behind. I have no idea why these rather than something else, there was other vegetation available not to mention poles, chunks of concrete, a complete assortment of not-really-artful artifice to go with the naturally-occurring machinery.
You may perhaps be familiar with stunted "sentimental" nonsense from the 80s, and from the previous 80s, and from the walmart or however they call that shop with the pre-printed sentiment-papers. Lilac figures quite heavily, doesn't it ? Si privighetoarea a-nflorit.
There's in any case no shortagei, anyone knows what lilac is, except for the phone kids that don't know anything (except they've seen everything, let's not go into details lest we depress ourselves -- not them, they're on antidepressants anyway). Suffice it to be said that lilac has been thoroughly exploited by Roosevelt's idiot machine.
Lovage, however... lovage nobody knows. And they look at me suspiciously, long gazes along lengthier noses, perhaps I am being clever ? Is it perhaps some pun on "love" ? Am I making some statement hidden in the broad, odorous leaves they've never truly experienced, as happy five year olds in the wet, breathing shade of old wall, among the melci and buburuze ?
Yet lovage is the fundament of a proper ciorba, which is a kind of soup exactly opposite to the common notion of a soup. Rich and flavourful and brothy, alongside homemade bread the other undergirth of making a hole a home. You know how they say, "why didn't they rebel at Auschwitz", and the ready answer comes "because they had the women along, and women always fuck things up for everyone they're with". This explanation seems to suffice, but that's mere superficiality. It doesn't explain how. I'll tell you how : women found the lovage bush growing at auschwitz, and made ciorba out of that and an old sock, and well... the hole kinda became a home. What can you do ?
And aren't you worried that if you do it, it might destroy your home ?
So there we are, not only a paragraph that starts with "so" after a one liner that starts with "and", but also (see what I did there) very much a lovage bush growing happily in the shade, down a corridor three or so meters away from the overpowering equatorial sun, in a green tub whose holes I perforated myself, among rich earth I bought at the fucking shop (after it was imported all the way from Germany, because I wouldn't trust this sad peat they have around here even as far as I can throw it, and besides, I suspect Germany still owes me some earth from the previous warii).
Now, lovage does indeed make good broth, but that tomorrow, for today I think I'm taking the dollies out for pizza, not to mention there's a whole cartwheeliii of a mango pie that was baked last night juust before everyone collapsed in a pile of their own exhaustment, too tired to even taste a byte.
And then maybe we go to the manga center, because
Do you cosplay ?
Nah..
But you've been dressing upiv as a bimbo for the past week ?!
Oh... yeah, I guess I do cosplay then.
Pai nu ?!
———See what I did there ? [↩]Don't look down on my having paid for my sample, god knows they paid for theirs, all that Krupp materiel doesn't come for free either, now does it. [↩]No kidding, girl's like "shit, I can barely lift this, what the hell have we done" before sliding it into the patriarchal oven. It looked like quite a happy pie, smiles dancing on its slopes because no, pie at MP's house (all halal) is not flat, but rather like a mound.
Geddit ? [↩]Took girl out to local bimbo dress shops, bought her colorful, tight dresses and six inch espadriles, which is all she's been wearing hence (on my orders). She deems going about in that geddup most humiliating, she who never went out without a bra before, respectable professional career woman who wept when Trump won as she is, up there, she says, with being made to push the shopping cart barefoot throughout the supermarket.
The temperature is bound to increase, however, as I recently bought her a local soccer shirt. It says BIMBO in huge font all across the chest. [↩]
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Yes, bitch, I would. Bring it. »
Category: Zsilnic
Friday, 10 August, Year 10 d.Tr.