Six Ways

Author: DB

  • What We Love Will Ruin Us

    In an issue of the print magazine The Week, for which my wife Tamara has a subscription, I noticed this in the ‘Memorable Quotes’ section:

    “The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” Aldous Huxley, quoted in The Spectator

    Quite a quote.

    A statement about man that we mostly want to pretend isn’t true.

    But dig under the ideology of this man or that and we find that the ideology serves the man and not the other way around.

    We might hear a person in his innermost being say “Give me an ideology that fits my needs and desires — for me, not for the benefit of anyone else.”

    Yes, quite a quotation, and naturally it interested me to know exactly where Huxley said it, in what book or article or pamphlet or interview.

    So I googled for the origin of the quote.

    Most search results that came up — and there are a lot of them — do not give an origin for the quote but merely repeat it.

    Some reported where the quote was quoted, but still not where the quote originated.

    Some, however, say it is in Huxley’s book Crome Yellow.

    I bought the Kindle version of the book for pennies and searched.

    And the quote is not there.

    I found an online HTML version of Crome Yellow from Project Gutenberg and searched it as well, just in case. And the quote is not there.

    I searched for bits of the quote, picking out salient words such as ‘maltreatment’ and ‘righteous indignation’ and ‘moral treats’.

    Nothing.

    I thought maybe it was in Huxley’s novel ‘Island’ — so I bought a Kindle copy and searched.

    Still nothing.

    So I asked Bard — Google’s AI tool — and this is what it says:

    The quote “To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” is attributed to Aldous Huxley, but the exact source of this quote has been debated.

    Some sources suggest that it comes from Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World,” while others claim it is from his 1962 essay collection “The Doors of Perception.” However, neither of these works contains the exact phrase in question.

    The earliest known appearance of the quote is in a 1966 book called “God Running” by John S. Hall. Hall attributes the quote to Huxley, but he does not provide a specific source.

    It is possible that Huxley did utter the phrase at some point in his life, but there is no definitive evidence to prove it. The quote has certainly been widely circulated since the 1960s, and it is often used to criticize hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

    So did Huxley ever say it at all?

    Is it not indicative of the modern world and the casual brushes with the truth that The Week copied the quote from The Spectator and used it and neither publication checked whether the quote was in fact a quote.

    The Spectator describes itself in its ‘About’ as follows:

    The Spectator was established in 1828, and is the best-written and most influential weekly in the English language. Our writers have no party line; their only allegiance is to clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion. Our writers’ opinions range from left to right, their circumstances from high life to low life. None make any pretence at being impartial: our motto is “firm, but unfair”.

    We are a member of IPSO, the independent press regulator, and abide by the Editor’s Code. We also uphold strict standards of accuracy.

    But Wait, There’s More

    If this was all I have to say, then I would think I had made a poor effort.

    But here is something that Neil Postman wrote about Huxley and George Orwell, that is worth reflecting on in these times. And I leave you with this:

    On Orwell and Huxley’s vision of our future/present:
    Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
    As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
    “In 1984”, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.”
    In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. ~Neil Postman

    By the way — did Neil Postman actually write this? Yes he did — in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

  • Musk’s Game Plan

    I listened to Elon Musk’s byographer talking about the various aspects of Musk’s personality and I kept thinking that maybe as a biographer he really wasn’t up to the job because when you’re talking about the richest man in the world it’s a bit rich to describe him as lacking in foresight and liable to go off a something without proper forethought.

    He did mention that Musk is using Twitter conversations as data for his LLM that feeds his AI. So what Musk needs all the time is people on Twitter who are committed and vociferous.

    And now Musk has gone to Kibbutz – and it makes me wonder whether Musk made that tweet in response to Eric, on purpose.

    Maybe I shouldn’t underestimate his game plan.

  • China Good Australia Bad?

    In January 2022 I wrote that Indonesia had stopped exporting coal to China because of a fear of not having enough to fuel its own demands.

    Now here is a current article from The Overspill (link at the end) on how China is investing in solar and wind – and the consequences for Australia’s coal exports.

    Article begins:

    China’s wind and solar surge threatens Australian coal exports • Australian Financial Review

    Ben Potter: 

    »

    Two new reports, from global energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie and Sydney-based Climate Energy Finance, show that China is building wind and solar at twice the rate of the US and Europe combined, and also leading the way with huge energy storage installations.

    The startling acceleration comes as world leaders and officials prepare to descend on Dubai for the United Nations climate change conference (COP28) and wrangle over phasing out fossil fuels and supporting developing countries’ clean energy projects.

    “China’s demand for Australian exports of thermal and coking coal is set to decline structurally over the longer term due to the greening of China’s power sector and economy,” said Climate Energy Finance director Tim Buckley. “The report recommends that to minimise economic risk, Australia urgently comprehends and responds at speed to align with China’s massive investment pivot.”

    China’s accelerating clean energy shift challenges Australia, which has planned for continued exports of coal and gas while cautiously backing US-led efforts to wean the West off China’s clean energy goods and commodities and build up alternative sources of supply.

    Wood Mackenzie expects China to continue to command 80% of the global supply chain for solar energy until at least 2026. It says in a new report, “How China became the global renewables leader”, that the giant economy is on track to build 230 gigawatts of wind and solar power this year at a cost of $US140bn ($210bn), compared with 75GW for Europe and 40GW for the US. A gigawatt is the size of a small coal-fired power station.

    «

    Comment from The Overspill

    So much implied judgement in this piece. “Startling acceleration” – not really; China loses out from runaway climate change too. And as for China getting ahead on making renewables: Australia could have grasped that opportunity decades ago (it has lots of empty space for wind and solar). It chose not to. Cry me a river.
    unique link to this extract

    My Comment

    So who besides Australia exports coal to China? According to S&P Global in an article from June this year:

    China is prioritizing short-term energy security to avoid a recurrence of the power shortages that occurred in 2021 and 2022. The country, which relies on coal to generate two-thirds of its power, lifted its unofficial ban on Australian coal and extended zero tariffs on coal imports until the end of 2023.

    Thermal coal imports have spiked as a result, with shipments from Indonesia up 65.9% year over year to 89.9 MMt, Russian shipments increasing 88.7% to 18.3 MMt, and Australian supplies rising from zero to 11.2 MMt, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea data.

    So according to this report, Indonesia is back selling coal to China, and Australia’s exports to China are a new thing.

  • Pleonasm

    I looked up the etymology of nary and found that it is a combination of ’never a’ and that this combination is known as a Pleonasm.

    But is it, because pleonism is described as

    a redundancy in linguistic expression, such as “black darkness” or “burning fire”. It is a manifestation of tautology by traditional rhetorical criteria and might be considered a fault of style.

    However, pleonasm may also be used for emphasis, or because the phrase has become established in a certain form. So by that definition nary is a pleonasm.

    Nary has a description been bettered expressed.

  • Google and the DOJ

    Google is the defendant in an anttrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice

    I have been following the case, and now it has been revealed that Apple gets 36% of the Revenue Google generates from the Safari browser.

    That’s estimated at $18 billion a year that Google pays Apple for putting Google as its default search option.

    If Google loses the antitrust case, then Apple could be pushed into allowing customers to choose a search engine option when setting up an Apple device rather than having Google set as the default.

    Or maybe not, because the case isn’t against Apple and Apple says it chooses Google as the default search engine because it is the best around.

    Meanwhile Apple is developing its own AI-powered search engine.

  • Freekeh

    Bulgur is wheat that has been cleaned, boiled, dried, roughly ground, then sorted by size.. When bulgur is made of young, green wheat that has been smoked, we call it freekeh. It has a rich, smoky flavor that suits soups, stews, and salads.