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Friday, 1 February 2008
A Cost Benefit Analysis Of Cost Benefit Analysis
 by Theodore Dalrymple
It goes without saying, I hope, that I am utterly opposed to murder. If it were possible to eliminate this, the oldest and most terrible of crimes, from the face of the earth, I should most certainly rejoice at it. So why is it that, when asked to prepare a medico-legal report in a case of murder, whether for the defence or the prosecution, I am extremely pleased and look forward immensely to receiving and reading all the documentation? Why is this, when I know full well that a world without murder would be much better than the one in which we live? more... Posted on 02/01/2008 4:05 PM by NER
Comments
1 Feb 2008
 Hugh Fitzgerald
Theodore Dalrymple mentions Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans) admiringly in the essay above. The admiration is well-deserved. "Ombres Chinoises" (Chinese Shadows was a riveting study both of the hideous war on traditional Chinese culture that was the Cultural Revolution, and also a restrained and devastating critique of those Western apologists who, as sinologues, ought to have known better when they said all kinds of silly things about China, and about Chairman Mao. rBut such people as Orville Schell and Jonathan Mirsky were at the time marxisant admirers; the latter is no longer (he left Dartmouth, and academic life, to strike out for the territories, that is for the territories of Hong Kong, where he became a journalist specializing in Hong Kong, and I think I have seen his byline in the pink-cheeked Financial Times; ; the former has yet to offer a mea culpa about his previous writing on Communist China. Perhaps being the Dean of the School of Journalism at Berkeley means that all is self-forgiven. And there were many others, far worse. Would they care to step forward and identify themselves? No, of course not. But when a certain Yenching Restaurant opened up in Harvard Square, decades ago, and I visited the area, I remember some Sinologists who, recognizing the distinctive calligraphy of Chairman Mao in the Yenching’s sign, refused to enter the restaurant, and I remember other Sinologists who recognized the tell-tale calligraphy, and cheerfully did go into the restaurant, happy to frequent a place that had some connection – it was never clear what – with Chairman Mao and Communist China.
Before “Ombres Chinoises” Simon Leys had written “Les habits neufs du Chairman Mao” (Chairman Mao’s New Clothes), another excellent book on Communist China. In recent decades has written about all kinds of things. He won acclaim – and not merely some French literary prize – for his book on Napoleon at St. Helena. He has written books of essays, and I was so pleased to find a copy, in French, of one of them, and then idiotically lent it out to someone who swore she would return it. I never got the book back, and I never will.has gone beyond sinology to other things; he won acclaim a few years ago for a novel about Napoleon at St. Helena. And he has written on Chinese painters (and on Chinese painters writing about painting, like Alberti) and I suspect that the subjects treated, had those books been written by other hands, would likely be inaccessible to non-specialists, but since Pierre Ryckmans is the author, may well be accessible even to me, even to you.
Ryckmans moved to Australia in 1970. That is why, when I had to compose pell-mell a free-association list of memorable things about Australia, I made sure to include a certain Belgian sinologist and French writer, Simon Leys/Pierre Ryckmans, who likely does not speak Strine, may never have sheared a sheep in Alice Springs, and for all I know stays serenely above the Australian fray. I know only two things about the recently-elected Prime Minister of Australia. I know that he speaks excellent Mandarin. And I recently found out that he had written his doctoral thesis under Simon Leys. So I have hope that Prime Minister Rudd admires Simon Leys as much as Theodore Dalrymple, and I, and many others, do. The thought is comforting. 1 Feb 2008
Agent Smith A problem-free world would be extremely problematic. Heaven on earth would, in fact, be hell on earth. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. 2 Feb 2008
S. Camponovo
Mr. Dalrymple
When you got to Falstaff, I expected that you will make a more substantial point. You wrote that “we want the world to be large and broad enough for there to be a Falstaff in it, but we don’t want a huge number of Falstaffs.” I am not sure about it. There is an interesting article by Kay Hymowitz in City Journal about “Child-Man in the Promised Land”. The subject is the society where nearly every male is Falstaff. Unfortunately, Ms. Hymowitz notes only a lesser half of the problem. The other half, of course, are child-women who don´t see much into existence beyond shopping, dancing and fast sex. Commitment and children are no, no.
So we are getting into society where most of men and women are, or at least would like to be little Falstaffs. Can you comment on that?
3 Feb 2008
Laurie Are you sure that the medical journals are trying to dictate how we should live? If that is their aim they don't appear to be having much succes given the current epidemics of obesity and depression. As a science teacher I try to keep up with research in health related areas but I see it as just additional information, part of the context in which I will make decisions about my behaviour. More surprisingly I find that my senior students take much the same point of view. Even they have been around long enough to now that anyone trying to follow the best scientific advice on longevity would have to change their diet monthly, if not weekly. As regards Falstaff, I've met a few and, like Dalrymple, worse. There is a certain pleasure in their company, and the world would be a duller place without them, yet there is always the vague guilt over "slumming" in associating with them and the older I get the less appeal it all has. One of the priveleges of youth is to be able to some extent at least, disregard consequence but I have reached an age when I find it difficult. When I see that kind of behaviour now, I cannot help but think where it leads........Simon Leys would know at least enough strine to recognise the early stages of wowserism. Human nature however, is not about to be repealed or seriously adjusted, the full spectrum will be there for the forseeable future. 4 Feb 2008
ZZMike Mr Dalrymple mentions Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "America's worst poet" (late 1800s). She was parodied by Ambrose Bierce in "Devil's Dictionary", as "Bella Peeler Silcox". "So the criminal also contributes something to society, as Falstaff and my drunken hospital porter did." Indeed, but only if he contributes it far away from me. "Science will establish precisely how much butter one is allowed per week." And the liberals will make a law of it. As they're trying, in Massachussetts: there's a law winding its way through the legislature that would make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese people. Kant had a good idea: ""Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law.." Liberals go the extra mile: they make it the law, so that everyone can enjoy such living.
6 Feb 2008
milkshake This last piece from T Dalrymple is disappointing: It consists of few losely-joined points and some of them are rather trite. I would have loved to learn more on his experiences of being expert psychiatrist witness - what technical details one has to take in account to determine the relative level of viciousnes of the murderer, what sort of attacs on professional credibility one must withstand when defending his opinion in court. Instead, the author goes of tangent here and ends up with platitudes that a man is not perfectable and the World is more interesting place for it, etc.
7 Feb 2008
Jim I wish I could remember who coined the phrase; 'poets and outlaws delimit the world in which the rest of us live.' Regrettably too many delimit themselves even further. 13 Feb 2008
FamouslyUnknown Content, context, value. Our brains are stimulated by the unusual -- humorous, tragic, or otherwise interesting. The Tokkies trip, if including their DUI murder of a child on a bicycle, would be, what, a memorable tragi-comedy worth experiencing as an aspect of the richness of life? Durkheim: Has he considered the vast unitings of the humanes across a great range of charities and benevolent associations, in both peace-time and war-time? Or, is Durkheim focused on a narrow slice of human behavior to promote an intellectual inanity? Does he not see that uniting against a common enemy is a life-survival instinct expression for one's self, friends, and progeny? Mozart: Who was it that said something like, 'Facing Death has a wonderful way of focusing one's mind, concentrating one's attention'?
18 Feb 2008
C. Smith
>it is not easy to answer a puritan without sounding as if you are positively in favour of sin, the more of it the better. Ecclesiastes 7: 16 Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself ? 22 Feb 2008
vivek iyer Dear Sir, I recall reading a piece- by you surely?- about a young girl in "Local Authority Care" at a cost to the tax payer a punishing multiple (I forget the exact figure) of what it would have taken to send the fair maiden to Roedean. Like one of Angela Brazil's own feisty heroines, mutatis mutandis, the girl's teeth were bashed in by her new chums because of her Thatcherite insistence on undercutting the going rate for a blow-job- 50 pence if I remember correctly. Clearly, very large public subventions are required in order to preserve the traditional amenities of, and services provided by, the under-class. I have long argued- albeit with an imaginary interlocutor- that the indiscriminate subsidisation of petty crime- the one Public Good the underclass ought no longer be called upon to provide gratis, given the triumphal yob-ization of all sections of Society since the Chancellorship of Nigel Lawson- is allocatively inefficent and imposes a dead weight loss on the Anti-State. This, rather than the contagion of Chamberlain's Imperialist views, explains the death of Liberalism circa 1907. your obedient servant Vivek Iyer (age 45 1/4) 23 Feb 2008
Jeroen van Kessel
"no baseball is played in As a former junior league player for the Middelburg Green Sox, I can assure the esteemed author that baseball is being played in the Netherlands, although presumably not by the Tokkies and their ilk. |