1 Nov 2007
Alex
Your citations of Richard Weaver remind me that somewhere I read the following fragment of discourse about the nature of prejudice, and made a note of it.
Sorry that I can't remember the exact source:

"Consider the word “progress.” Richard Weaver nominates it as “the god term of the present age” which can “validate almost anything.” Certain words, and by extension the causes to which they are attached, become “unassailable.” The word “democracy,” Weaver notes, enjoys a similar dispensation.

It works the same way on the negative side of the lexicon: certain terms seem irredeemable. One of the primary “devil terms” in modern times is “prejudice,” a term that once meant “prejudgment” but now, as Weaver says his important essay, Modern Age, is primarily “a flail to beat enemies.” Edmund Burke could praise “just prejudice” as that which “renders a man’s virtue his habit.”  But in our liberal age, the word is synonymous with bigotry. "

(Your penultimate paragraph is a fine summation in a very well written evaluation of Dalrymple's book).

Alex.

2 Nov 2007
Mary Jackson

Coincidentally, I have read this book recently. It is Dalrymple's most concise one to date - mainly on principles rather than descriptions of his findings and experiences. But of course those principles and ideas are a distillation of all such experiences and observations, not just abstract general comments.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. He should be widely read and heeded.

8 Nov 2007
Rebecca Bynum
Thank you Alex. It's good to meet another Weaver fan. I only wish he had lived longer so that I might have taken his courses. He left us much too early.

10 Nov 2007
Richard Byrne
I enjoy the man in his guise as Dalrymple.  Excellent choice of name. The ideas always require  thought, and I have agreed with him many times, on many issues. The style is very camp and very quotable when you feel like passing something on to a friend.  But the notion that he is not trying to be clever is absurd.  The man probably has a mirror over his monitor.  He preens.  "Stop playing with your hair, Theo!"  I reckon he is sitting there wearing a full-bottomed powdered job.  A fine Georgian frontage,  with star-shaped patches covering his pox scars.

How many times, over how many years, have we heard about his time behind bars?  This is not material for his observations about life as she is lived.  it is a device.  It says "I know about things.  You, on the other hand, are no more than a load of parlour pinks."  Pull the other one.  I worked for years in HMP Wandsworth, and we've all got war stories.  A quick conversational grabber at parties.  Mau-mauing the flak-catchers.  Or just hokier than thou.

Don't stop, Dr D.  You don't truly have any gravity, but it's always been a great deal of fun watching you defy it.

10 Nov 2007
Mary Jackson

Preens? Here is a picture of Dr Dalrymple. He doesn't look like a preener to me.

No, if you want a preener, try Bernard-Henri Levy.

10 Nov 2007
fred

It hits home for me that Dalrymple focuses on Mill.  In the sixties I frequented a "coffee house" in Tucson named the "Minus One" that had on it's wall the famous Mill quote that begins "If all mankind, minus one..." (you can google it).  It took me more years than I care to recall to learn how destructive and nihilistic this romantic statement could be.

Evolution, both social and biological, are not "finely honed" blades, but blunt instruments.  What persists in this world is not finely balanced but robust and sometimes brutal.  Who fights the world's god "eats his own flesh and perishes of hunger..." 

10 Nov 2007
Mrs. Lulu Pickle
Dear Mrs. Bynum

You write, "Ironically, these women often know exactly what kind of men they are dating before they are abused by them, but they do not want to be 'judgmental' about these fellows and so become victimized instead."

Exactly! That's why women, the overwhelming majority of them poor (but not all, as you and I know better than anyone else), stay  in abusive relationships: because they don't want to be "judgmental." I guess it takes a lady to prove just how stupid us womenfolk are. Thank you!

Your sister in Christ,
Lulu Pickle

10 Nov 2007
Kevin Schnaper
Well written summary. I always look forward to reading Dalrymple and this one sounds quite meaty.

Mr. Byrne, you should be forced to eat your post, that way it  may stick in your throat and prevent you from pronouncing your betters too preciously clever. Because it is you who elude cogent content in your "please praise me" prose. You didn't lay a glove on Mr. Dalrymple. But you knocked yourself senseless.

10 Nov 2007
Richard Byrne
Dear Kev

If ever you want to write for money, remember that old thing about saying the words, if only in your mind.

"Elude cogent content"?  Doesn't really pass the test, does it?

10 Nov 2007
Richard Byrne
Dear Kev

Sorry my reply was so short - I was interrupted.  First, it's Dr D, not Mr D.  In the UK, only surgeons call themselves Mr, and they can be very picky and insistent about that.

Secondly, if there is one thing I believe I know about Dr D, it is that he is tough enough, thoughtful enough, not to need a champion to enter the lists for him, or at least might choose one with fewer shortcomings.  Can you truthfully claim to imagine Dr D writing as you have just written?

And finally  - to Mary.  Thank you.  I agree.  Having now seen Dr D's photograph, I regret ever having mentioned hair.  It was thoughtless, and I will never do it again.

Richard "Curly" Byrne

10 Nov 2007
Richard Buss
I read your article because of the Twain quote, but learned nothing about it, unfortunately. About prejudice, though, I have this observation: although I approve of everything that was created, I have to watch out for a lot of the Created which can harm me as I journey through my allotted life-span. Wasps, for example, were among the best of my friends, until I discovered their stings could kill me. I love them still, but am totally prejudiced against the ones closest to me.

10 Nov 2007
Richard Byrne
A couple of hours ago this site seemed amusing.  It seemed to be a trading station for the opinions of junior college teachers in Indiana and neighbouring states

But it is in fact loathsome.  It is sloppy.  The real writers, the pros, are fine - I can take a knock at Dalrymple. (Sorry, little Kev, I don't yet know if he is my better - for the moment, we seem to have a lot of experiences in common, many shared ideas.  He is absolutely right, for instance, on the shared fantasy about opiates - a very astute woman doctor at the clinic under Hungerford Bridge described heroin withdrawal to me as no worse than a bad bout of 'flu.  That was 37 years ago, and I still think she was right.  For the moment, I regard Dr D as a peer.)

But the quality of writing and discussion here is shabby.  You can't argue by authority, quoting Weaver, Mill, Burke - just to stick with jails for the benefit of Dr D, let's include Bentham, Bunyan, Wilde and Lovelace - and come up with such gut-sappingly awful strings of words as "Your penultimate paragraph is a fine summation in a very well written evaluation ..."*  This is not written in English.

 I had good teachers.  And every one of them would say "Any fool can write like that, but only a fool would do it."

*If that author had ever reviewed one of my books, and called it 'very well written', hemlock, straight up, no chaser.

So it's not just you, wee Kev, it's the company you keep.

11 Nov 2007
miek
How true! Would  that we had stayed with the prejudices of the time of John Stuart Mill where people just new that women were unfit for the professions or even to vote; where black people were just known to be inferior and our racial purity had to be protected with a lynching every now and then; where people of homosexual tendency were either jailed or hospitalised or taken care of by more informal guardians of the community.

11 Nov 2007
bekabot

The world without marriage which Dalrymple describes is one of unending sexual predation accompanied by excessive sexual jealousy and marked by abuse. Ironically, these women often know exactly what kind of men they are dating before they are abused by them, but they do not want to be �judgmental� about these fellows and so become victimized instead. And often as not, their children become victims as well.

Sure enough, folks, but you know...it's possible to prove that this kind of thing is bad without recourse to predjudice. It's not all that hard. So that if you find that you need to have recourse to predjudice in order to disapprove of this sort of thing or to combat it, IMO, it's the predjudice itself you're primarily interested in, not any potentially beneficial side effects thereof.

11 Nov 2007
Laurie
"The world without marriage which Dalrymple describes is one of unending sexual predation accompanied by excessive sexual jealousy and marked by abuse. Ironically, these women often know exactly what kind of men they are dating before they are abused by them, but they do not want to be “judgmental” about these fellows and so become victimized instead. And often as not, their children become victims as well."

Surprising really that in his field Dalrymple hasn't encountered the concept that sexual attraction can occur on a less than rational level.  The notion that these women were actually thinking "Oh no I musn't be judgemental " when they formed relationships  is surely an absurdity of the highest order!  Careful Dalrymple you're sliding down into Derbyshire territory and we all know what drivel he is responsible for!

11 Nov 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Dalrymple's point (which I should have made clear) in decrying the demise of�our former predjudice in favor of marriage, is not that people don't have affairs, but that those affairs do not easily deprive children of their fathers.

I believe children need their fathers as much as they need their mothers.

Perhaps that's a prejudice, but I would be ashamed of myself if I didn't have it.

12 Nov 2007
Laurie

Stop while you're not too far behind Rebecca!  The ground is sinking under your feet.  Of course children need their fathers but your fine feelings and Dalrymple's blatherings around the issue, at least as far as they have been reported by you, are nothing but shallow platitudes lacking insight into the kinds of lives and circumstances that create the situations you deplore. 

What does Dalrymple's book have to say about inter-generational unemployment, the cycle of abuse or any of the other real factors that cause marriage breakdown and ineffective parenting?  Does he acknowledge that the boot is often on the other foot, that men (like me) can be the single parent?  Or that some women, like a close friend, work bloody miracles to raise their children in decent circumstances?

I happen to agree that prejudices can be useful things but in this case they have acted, as they more often do, as blinkers.  The role of intelligent commentary is surely to examine our prejudices on their merits.......but then they are no longer prejudices, if you take my meaning.

12 Nov 2007
HU

Dear Rebecca:

I was reading Art and Letters Daily and came across your article, and I like your summary of the book (even though I did not read the book).  It seems that there are many ideas in the book sounds valid and good for our age.

Particularly regarding family value, I am getting confused these days about how to understand the notion of family (further how to understand human nature). Born and raised in China, family is the ultimate place for children to seek love, concern, kindness, as well as safety and security. Yes, there are many destructive families and many abusive parents, however, in definition, family should and would be the place for parents to teach their children how to love and how to relate to others, and to help children to grow in a healthy environment both physically, mentally and spiritually.

Someone might say that it is too old a fashion. Precisely as you mention that these days except legal forces, there is no such a middle ground for people to look at or act upon in their daily life. It is not because that it is simply good in itself that we act on and enjoy it, rather it is because that it is necessary, otherwise we have to pay the fine. The whole system is promotiing such principles as moral guidance.

 

 

 

15 Nov 2007
TD

What Dalrymple has put his finger on is that society used to have, and should have, a critical and unique role in supporting and promoting what we used to call moral virtues: responsibility, moderation, delayed gratification - generally a sense that other people deserve our consideration.  When society decides that the higher good lies in non-judgmentalism and moral relativism, immediate individual freedom is enhanced, but the subtle incentives toward becoming better individuals are lost.  As Dalrymple sees it, we humans seem to need that societal support, or we become focused on self and lose regard for even the most basic of human relationships. 

It seems that between complete individual freedom on one hand and complete governmental control on the other there is a valuable middle ground.  This middle ground is the province of society and culture - an area of life in which individuals' behavior is influenced - neither uninhibited nor coerced, but influenced - by customs, mores, and the opinions of others.  In a strong culture, those customs and opinions encourage us to develop qualities that are not immediately gratifying but eventually lead to personal fulfillment.  More subtly, they also lead to their own perpetuation - the culture thrives, as well as the individuals in it, and so the culture and its values are passed on to the next generation.  Again, Dalrymple's point over the last few years has been that in discounting those customs, mores and opinions, we are drastically changing our culture, and that the new culture that is replacing it is showing some early signs of providing a very unpleasant way of life.

Thanks to Rebecca Bynum for an excellent review.

15 Nov 2007
Laurie

A reasonable diagnosis TD but what does he propose we should do about it?  The kind of generalisations he makes often weaken his central arguments and he consistently fails, in what I have read, to propose a path forward. 

There is also the distinct possibility that he is simply wrong and that we are merely passing through a dfifficult cultural transition.  I saw enough of the "culture" that existed in the fifties to know that whatever its benefits, there were enormous downsides.  One of the things that has changed is that so much bad behaviour that was hidden then is now exposed.  I'm not suggesting that this acocunts for all the current bad behaviour on view, but it certainly accounts for a good percentage of it.

22 Dec 2007
Lester Hunt
I've blogged about this review here.

22 Dec 2007
Rebecca Bynum

The blogger above, Lester Hunt, ran down the Mark Twain quote which I took from Weaver. It is from "The Ascent of Vesuvius, Continued."

And here, also, they used to have a grand procession, of priests, citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high dignitaries of the City Government, once a year, to shave the head of a made-up Madonna--a stuffed and painted image, like a milliner's dummy -- whose hair miraculously grew and restored itself every twelve months. They still kept up this shaving procession as late as four or five years ago. It was a source of great profit to the church that possessed the remarkable effigy, and the ceremony of the public barbering of her was always carried out with the greatest possible eclat and display--the more the better, because the more excitement there was about it the larger the crowds it drew and the heavier the revenues it produced--but at last a day came when the Pope and his servants were unpopular in Naples, and the City Government stopped the Madonna's annual show.

There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans--two of the silliest possible frauds, which half the population religiously and faithfully believed, and the other half either believed also or else said nothing about, and thus lent themselves to the support of the imposture. I am very well satisfied to think the whole population believed in those poor, cheap miracles--a people who want two cents every time they bow to you,and who abuse a woman, are capable of it, I think.

These Neapolitans always ask four times as much money as they intend to take, but if you give them what they first demand, they feel ashamed of themselves for aiming so low, and immediately ask more. When money is to be paid and received, there is always some vehement jawing and gesticulating about it. One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth of clams without trouble and a quarrel. One "course," in a two-horse carriage, costs a franc--that is law--but the hackman always demands more, on some pretence or other, and if he gets it he makes a new demand. It is said that a stranger took a one-horse carriage for a course --tariff, half a franc. He gave the man five francs, by way of experiment. He demanded more, and received another franc. Again he demanded more, and got a franc--demanded more, and it was refused. He grew vehement --was again refused, and became noisy. The stranger said, "Well, give me the seven francs again, and I will see what I can do"--and when he got them, he handed the hackman half a franc, and he immediately asked for two cents to buy a drink with. It may be thought that I am prejudiced.

Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.

From which Mr. Hunt concludes, "So the prejudice involved was indeed racial prejudice."

Huh?