I enjoy Austen. I do. Pride and Prejudice is her most readable book, which makes it the most popular. There are fan clubs, fan chat rooms, fan reddits even.
I read Austen because I specifically try to understand how people genuinely thought and behaved and understood things in the past. We may share a common humanity, but otherwise we are very different people from our ancestors. That also explains my love for history.
But what I find intriguing in the ongoing modern obsession with Austen is how it contradicts all the correct woke values of our times. Austen is decidedly elitist. Her characters are gentry, the top 1% of British society. To be "impoverished" in her book still means a pleasant house and several servants, you just can't afford a carriage, oh my! There is no judgment against the class divides of her time, the vast majority of British people, the working classes and the servants, barely exist on her pages. What Austen does judge in her books are people who abuse the privileges of rank without living up to its idealized (heavily Christianized) expectations (Lady Catherine). Or who also abuse the privileges of family and friendship without thought (Lydia Bennet). But it is still a world where even heroines like Lizzie Bennet take fully granted their superior status and deference to them. Austen clearly believes in a very strong, even demanding, set of rules and behaviors and attitudes, aka standards. But it is not a society based on equality or equal respect.
Of a similar generation to Austen was Frances Trollope, mother of Anthony Trollope, who wrote a very popular bestseller on her travels in America for several years in the early 1820s. Among her observations of the nascent American democracy were slavery and equality. She abhorred slavery. And she also abhorred equality, the sentiment that all people were equal, and found American serving people insufficiently deferential. She ultimately concluded that of the two forces, belief in equality was the worse!
The real question is why hasn't Austen been canceled for "oppressive white privilege." After all, some of her books even include families with Caribbean plantations!
But it's occurred to me what Bridgerton reflects in modern society is that the angry anti-racist forces don't mind class or privilege, they just want to make class and privilege racially correct. Interesting. But not surprising when one considers most of DEI is a form of wealth redistribution to the black professional classes (seeking more black professors, more black leaders) rather than meaningful improvement of the larger racial group's economic standing.
"For example, I only recently learned that biographies of trans people on Wiki routinely do not mention their birth names. An obituary will always list an individual’s birth name, but the editors make sure this is removed."
Actually, this isn't always the case. Compare the Wikipedia entry for Jan Morris with her BBC obituary. It was the latter that refused to "deadname" her, to use modern parlance - despite the fact that one might stumble across a book by "James Morris" in any second-hand bookshop. The Wikipedia entry does state that she was "born James Humphrey Morris" and that she worked, wrote and published under that name until the 1970s.
There's a book called "The 'Too Difficult' Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can't Crack" (2014), which I've never read, but I've flipped through at my local library. The blurb makes it sound pretty interesting:
The very first chapter is titled "Britain and the EU". I guess we've made some progress on that particular "too difficult" issue since 2014.
Anyway, it does feel like the chickens are starting to come home to roost on some of these "too difficult" issues now, while even more "too difficult" issues are starting to appear on the horizon. I'm sure the next decade is going to be at least as interesting, politically, as the last decade. The '90s and '00s aren't coming back, however much some people would like them to.
I think this is the first proper comment I've left on your Substack. I'm trying to wean myself off spending too much of my attention on politics and culture-war stuff. Last year I cancelled my twitter account and my Spectator subscription and stopped checking Guido Fawkes. This year I became hooked on Substack . . . your Substack is just at the right sweet spot of medium-length frequent update upper-middlebrow historically informed culture-warry dissident right for me not to be able to quite tear myself away from it.
The article by Sam Ashworth-Hayes, "Britain's Sclerotic State is Killing Prosperity", should be read by all politicians. A similar problem in Britain today is that so much money, time and energy is devoted to what I call "froth" while quite basic and simple things are half-assed.
That article on the UK site is behind a paywall, but anyone who doesn't have a subscription can just read it on the Spectator's Australian website!
Anyway, a point I wanted to make is that I often see predictions that such-and-such will become a big problem in the future, if it is not addressed now. But I can't bring myself to care very much. That's because I'm becoming increasingly convinced that in the next couple of decades AI is going to turn the world upside down - and then destroy all living things, probably accidentally in some kind of Sorcerer's Apprentice or Dr. Strangelove type scenario where the people deploying world-destroying AI don't really know what they're doing. It's impossible to feel much concern about, say Poland's economy overtaking the UK's in 2034 if you believe that the world is going to end around about that same date.
This is the sort of REAL pessimism (I would call it realism) I'm talking about:
BTW "alignment" in that article refers to the idea of trying to create an AGI (artificial general intelligence) that is "aligned with human values" i.e. one that can think for itself, but that will do whatever we want it to, also known as "friendly AGI". The same author has posted a more recent article about why he thinks this is basically impossible:
Is it OK for subscriptions to take an August holiday too? I have to take my daughters and grandchildren on a cycle ride along Hadrian’s Wall for a week - so reception might be sub-optimal.
I enjoy Austen. I do. Pride and Prejudice is her most readable book, which makes it the most popular. There are fan clubs, fan chat rooms, fan reddits even.
I read Austen because I specifically try to understand how people genuinely thought and behaved and understood things in the past. We may share a common humanity, but otherwise we are very different people from our ancestors. That also explains my love for history.
But what I find intriguing in the ongoing modern obsession with Austen is how it contradicts all the correct woke values of our times. Austen is decidedly elitist. Her characters are gentry, the top 1% of British society. To be "impoverished" in her book still means a pleasant house and several servants, you just can't afford a carriage, oh my! There is no judgment against the class divides of her time, the vast majority of British people, the working classes and the servants, barely exist on her pages. What Austen does judge in her books are people who abuse the privileges of rank without living up to its idealized (heavily Christianized) expectations (Lady Catherine). Or who also abuse the privileges of family and friendship without thought (Lydia Bennet). But it is still a world where even heroines like Lizzie Bennet take fully granted their superior status and deference to them. Austen clearly believes in a very strong, even demanding, set of rules and behaviors and attitudes, aka standards. But it is not a society based on equality or equal respect.
Of a similar generation to Austen was Frances Trollope, mother of Anthony Trollope, who wrote a very popular bestseller on her travels in America for several years in the early 1820s. Among her observations of the nascent American democracy were slavery and equality. She abhorred slavery. And she also abhorred equality, the sentiment that all people were equal, and found American serving people insufficiently deferential. She ultimately concluded that of the two forces, belief in equality was the worse!
The real question is why hasn't Austen been canceled for "oppressive white privilege." After all, some of her books even include families with Caribbean plantations!
But it's occurred to me what Bridgerton reflects in modern society is that the angry anti-racist forces don't mind class or privilege, they just want to make class and privilege racially correct. Interesting. But not surprising when one considers most of DEI is a form of wealth redistribution to the black professional classes (seeking more black professors, more black leaders) rather than meaningful improvement of the larger racial group's economic standing.
"For example, I only recently learned that biographies of trans people on Wiki routinely do not mention their birth names. An obituary will always list an individual’s birth name, but the editors make sure this is removed."
Actually, this isn't always the case. Compare the Wikipedia entry for Jan Morris with her BBC obituary. It was the latter that refused to "deadname" her, to use modern parlance - despite the fact that one might stumble across a book by "James Morris" in any second-hand bookshop. The Wikipedia entry does state that she was "born James Humphrey Morris" and that she worked, wrote and published under that name until the 1970s.
There's a book called "The 'Too Difficult' Box: The Big Issues Politicians Can't Crack" (2014), which I've never read, but I've flipped through at my local library. The blurb makes it sound pretty interesting:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Too-Difficult-Box-Issues-Politicians/dp/1849546975
The very first chapter is titled "Britain and the EU". I guess we've made some progress on that particular "too difficult" issue since 2014.
Anyway, it does feel like the chickens are starting to come home to roost on some of these "too difficult" issues now, while even more "too difficult" issues are starting to appear on the horizon. I'm sure the next decade is going to be at least as interesting, politically, as the last decade. The '90s and '00s aren't coming back, however much some people would like them to.
I think this is the first proper comment I've left on your Substack. I'm trying to wean myself off spending too much of my attention on politics and culture-war stuff. Last year I cancelled my twitter account and my Spectator subscription and stopped checking Guido Fawkes. This year I became hooked on Substack . . . your Substack is just at the right sweet spot of medium-length frequent update upper-middlebrow historically informed culture-warry dissident right for me not to be able to quite tear myself away from it.
The article by Sam Ashworth-Hayes, "Britain's Sclerotic State is Killing Prosperity", should be read by all politicians. A similar problem in Britain today is that so much money, time and energy is devoted to what I call "froth" while quite basic and simple things are half-assed.
That article on the UK site is behind a paywall, but anyone who doesn't have a subscription can just read it on the Spectator's Australian website!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/07/britains-sclerotic-state-is-killing-prosperity/
Anyway, a point I wanted to make is that I often see predictions that such-and-such will become a big problem in the future, if it is not addressed now. But I can't bring myself to care very much. That's because I'm becoming increasingly convinced that in the next couple of decades AI is going to turn the world upside down - and then destroy all living things, probably accidentally in some kind of Sorcerer's Apprentice or Dr. Strangelove type scenario where the people deploying world-destroying AI don't really know what they're doing. It's impossible to feel much concern about, say Poland's economy overtaking the UK's in 2034 if you believe that the world is going to end around about that same date.
This is the sort of REAL pessimism (I would call it realism) I'm talking about:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BEtzRE2M5m9YEAQpX/there-s-no-fire-alarm-for-artificial-general-intelligence
BTW "alignment" in that article refers to the idea of trying to create an AGI (artificial general intelligence) that is "aligned with human values" i.e. one that can think for itself, but that will do whatever we want it to, also known as "friendly AGI". The same author has posted a more recent article about why he thinks this is basically impossible:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a-list-of-lethalities
Have a nice day 😄
Thanks Ed, enjoy the old country.
Is it OK for subscriptions to take an August holiday too? I have to take my daughters and grandchildren on a cycle ride along Hadrian’s Wall for a week - so reception might be sub-optimal.