"Got A Race Car Grin & A Calculation" Edition
Hello,
How are you?
Obligatory shilling. I wrote for Spectator USA about how having the right opinions - whatever one determines them to be - is not the same as having a good character.
Speaking of character, I wrote about two people I admire this week. For American Conservative, I wrote about Edith Bone, who was arrested and imprisoned by the Hungarian communists and resolved not to surrender her integrity and sanity.
For the up-and-coming magazine Countere, I wrote a tribute to the legendary American wrestler Terry Funk and a reflection on Americana. It is perhaps the only article to contain discussion of both Albert Camus and a man being kicked by a horse.
For my paying Substack subscribers, I wrote about how conservative critique of concepts of utopianism and human perfectibility can be redundant when left-wing ideas often portray mankind as being terribly limited.
Strong suburbs. One huge structural problem in the UK is housing. Benjamin Southwood and Dr Samuel Hughes think they have an answer and have written a report for Policy Exchange that advocates increased housing density via the means of “giving local residents control over the development they see, including its architecture and design, and by giving them a share in the wealth created.”
Ed West optimistically thinks this could be a chance to “make home ownership affordable for young people again, create lots of jobs, increase GDP by a couple of percentage points, make our cities more beautiful, liveable and greener — and do all this without building on a single square foot of green belt land.”
Of course, there are potential problems. For example, I think people’s dislike of housing density comes down not just to housing prices or aesthetics but to other people. The more people around us, the higher chance of one or more of them being obnoxious. Have you ever been excited to get new neighbours? Be honest.
Still, there are still a lot of interesting advantages to this plan and I hope it makes an impact.
Killer robots redux. Andy Owen writes an excellent piece about the frightening prospect of AI warfare, which I touched on last week:
Systems which subsequently learn for themselves from their environments will likely act in ways designers have no way of foreseeing when faced with unanticipated situations. While it is, of course, impossible to predict with absolute certainty how any one individual will react to the rigours of war, at the unit level, soldiers adapt and behave in line with expectations. They may make mistakes and their conventional weapons may malfunction, but there will be a level of awareness of the error. And any errors made simply do not have the same potential to escalate at the unparalleled speed and scale of AWS.
On the Lasch. Nick Burns critically responds to modish right-wing enthusiasm for the ideas of Christopher Lasch. I have interested in Lasch's work for years but I have to grudgingly admit that Burns makes a reasonable case that while his diagnosis of societal ailments could be penetrating, his alternative “agrarian vision of autonomy” was naïve. Still, that does not mean more craft and more autonomy cannot be reached. Ideology, if it has any value, is not all or nothing.
Tumblrland. Writing for UnHerd, Gareth Roberts skewers the miserable excesses of “fandoms”:
Over the 20th century we lost a community-based folk culture; the folk songs and myths blasted away by mass technology, religious observance in sharp decline — but at least we had a kind of substitute. We were more often on the same page. Now, we consume in silos — and silos have therefore become fashionable.
The one thing I will add is that while artists should not pander to their most hardcore enthusiasts they should also avoid the temptation to attribute all criticism to the nerd contingent. A few voices saying “I am outraged by this small continuity error” can be ignored. Hundreds of voices saying “this is shit” cannot.
WHY DID I EVEN BOTHER?!? Philip Roth reviews a new biography of Philip Roth (or, at least, Joshua Cohen channels him):
In Bailey’s telling, or non-telling, it’s as if I rarely wrote, and never rewrote, and the lacuna is so conspicuous that I can only conclude that my writing doesn’t interest him at all. Allow me to repeat this, in the now-Trumpian CAPS and exclamations that were such stylistic fixtures of my earlier novels and later faxes and emails: MY BIOGRAPHER HAS NO INTEREST IN MY WRITING!!!!
Cuomophobia. Despite working regularly for The Spectator USA and The American Conservative I generally avoid holding forth on object-level US politics. Last year, though, I got a major bee in my breeches about the sliminess of Andrew Cuomo. I laid into him, his book and his sycophantic reception. Claims that his administration sought to cover up the scale of the COVID-19 crisis in nursing homes have tarnished his credibility. But if this faraway idiot knew not to trust him I'm not sure what the excuse of seasoned hacks could be.
Big Charity. This very interesting exposé examines how the image of grassroots enthusiasm that is conjured up by the term “charity” (deservedly, in some cases) can be exploited by the professionalised hard left.
Have a lovely week,
Ben