The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Theories of Social Darwinism and Apartheid by Nafeez Ahmed (the gist) (Byline Times 14th October 2022) The fundamental intention behind so-called ‘Trussonomics’ was to make the rich richer, in the absurd belief that wealth will ‘trickle-down’ to inspire economic growth. What’s really going on however is that current ‘Conservatism’ is secretly […]
What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men – each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature – are shot down wholesale. If, however, we were not something more than unique human beings and each man jack of us […]
“We talk too much,” he said with unwonted seriousness. “Clever talk is of no value whatsoever. One merely gets further and further away from oneself and that is a crime. One should be able to crawl right into oneself like a tortoise.” Hermann Hesse: Demian On the 19th August 2022 I followed the local doctor’s […]
It’s well worth taking some time to… ponder the idea that we consist not just of one single ‘I’ but of a large number of ‘I’s that constantly compete for attention. For example, the reader may well now be in Reading-these-words-I but also feeling the urge to get into Wondering-what-the-first sentence-means-for-them-I while being dominated by […]
What a strange problem now that after so many thousand years I should still wander to & fro, spiritually unsatisfied… Notebooks May-June 1887 In the 1987 Symposium booklet entitled Richard Jefferies: a Spirit Illumined, John Pearson wrote an excellent essay called Bevis: A Natural Education in Time and Space in which he traces an […]
In The Psychology of Religious Mysticism (1925) James Leuba refers to twenty-six definitions of mysticism including ‘anything marvellous or weird… beyond human reason’ which may well be the standard definition when we’re faced with something which escapes understanding. For his purposes, Leuba settles on a neat uncluttered definition which appeals to me because it can […]
In his introduction to the OUP After London (1980) John Fowles wrote ‘…Some of his more starry-eyed later worshippers have forgotten that he enjoyed hunting and killing for much of his life…’ I once had a neighbour who owned a cat and a dog both of whom he obtained from a rescue centre; they were […]
When my father died in 1971, I read The Story of My Heart for solace; I found it abundantly in its pages: ‘It is useless to fill the heart with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone…’ And I have continued to think of him since then at least once a day, using his spirit […]
On 6th February 1989 I did a little chinwag in Swindon about the only four Jefferies novels I had access to then. I’ve just re-read what I said about The Dewy Morn and it still seems to make reasonable sense! There are little tweaks I’d make now. Here’s the original chinwag with a few 2022 […]
Pre-amble I’ve not long finished reading Restless Human Hearts for the first time. Having only recently re-joined the Richard Jefferies Society after many years of wandering around in other things (I remember Cyril Wright very well…) it was exciting to find that the books which had only been names to me for sixty years had […]
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