Henry Dampier

On the outer right side of history

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Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation”

Someone on Ask.fm suggested that I take the time to watch the famous documentary series by Kenneth Clark on the development and artistic history of Western Civilization. I’d previously only seen segments of it. I’m not finished yet, but am halfway through.

Most of it’s easy to find on Youtube via this playlist, but the first episode can be rough to find thanks to a DMCA takedown from our friends at the BBC.

Thankfully, there’s a version of it buried in the search results (due to a shoddy text description) which I’ve linked to below for your convenience:

This reminds me of the good bits of taking an art history course, along with the pleasure of traveling around Europe (which I haven’t been able to do for a long time now). For those of you unfamiliar with this, it’s a series of films from 1968 in which the presenter goes about discussing the development of European civilization after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

The first episode in particular is worth watching for Clark’s articulated perspective (second-hand, I’m sure) that part of what makes civilization different is the motive force of feeling and belief in the essential goodness and excellence of that civilization. What also differentiates it from barbaric social forms is that the people actually believe in it enough to build rather permanent and beautiful structures. Barbarians roam, but civilized people settle. The artifacts that barbarians leave behind tend to be portable and durable — gem-encrusted talismans, jewelry, and statuettes. Civilized people leave behind fragile things, exquisite books, towering buildings, and heroic statuary.

Part of what makes modernity strange is that, although technology renders it super-capable in some ways, many of the things that we build lack permanence and beauty. The people are also enervated, with few honestly believing in the core spirit of that civilization. Sadness, depression, and madness emanate from a people sapped of meaning to their lives. When people can readily come to a satisfying answer about what their life is fundamentally for, they become far more animated, in a way that tends to leave indelible marks on history.

This series also leads inevitably to thoughts about the disposable nature of most contemporary artifacts and art. Our surroundings, buildings, and most of our possessions tend to lack both permanence and lasting purpose.

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Roger Scruton’s “Why Beauty Matters”

Well worth watching this entire documentary. It’s “Why Beauty Matters” featuring Roger Scruton. BBC2 broadcasted it in 2009.

Scruton details the loveless culture of postmodernism, in which art has turned into a sort of ‘standardized degradation.’

His perspective, passed down from Plato, is that beauty is a divine revaluation from the higher realm. This also contains a discussion of the horror of modern architecture, and how it compares with more traditional forms. Those things that are beautiful attract people, and ugly things repel them, and attract vandals. In the same way, ugly people attract degradation to themselves, and the beautiful draw respect and care to themselves.

Modern art is a ‘cult of ugliness,’ and it has in part encouraged bad manners, alienation, and self-absorption. As buildings and objects have been reduced to their utility-function, people come to see one another as items to be used.

The speaker makes a persuasive case that what you read and listen to matters; that aesthetics has profound impacts on everything else in society.

In Scruton’s view, beauty is a remedy for the chaos and suffering which is our fate to endure as mortals. Progressives prefer to pop a Paxil™ and to surround themselves in ugliness.

As an aside, venerating modern art is a crucial test for all high status progressives. One of the reasons why advertising has supplanted ‘high’ art is because, despite its degraded and fantasy-exciting nature, it still tends to hew to basic aesthetic standards and employs competent creative craftsmen. When a successful business person wants to solidify his status within the progressive system of politics, aesthetics, and belief, he buys modern art for either himself or for his company, often at great expense.

Sacrificing $86 million for a meaningless Rothko canvas is an un-fakeable way that you believe in the anti-sacred values of the progressive world view. It shows that you believe in raising ugliness up high, denigrating beauty.

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Film Review: Divorce Corp

divorce corp movie

Divorce Corp, narrated by television’s favorite therapist, Drew Pinsky, is a surprising documentary. I say that it is surprising because a parade of Harvard Law professors and television personalities go on the record explaining the asset-looting sham that is the institution of no-fault divorce.

It was difficult for me to sit through the movie without entertaining homicidal thoughts. Or rather, I had to take several breaks while viewing it to entertain my homicidal thoughts. And then to quell them by telling myself that all the people that I want to kill are going to suffer a worse fate in Hell than I could ever inflict. Not that I’m likely to go someplace different.

The film discusses many topics that should be familiar to most readers (or people who have lived through a divorce). The mechanism of divorce is the means by which marital property can be legally confiscated by lawyers, wives, and (in some rare cases) husbands who don’t make much money.

The one clever hack that I learned from the movie is that if you are hiring a lawyer, be sure to hire one who has made campaign donations to the judge. This is more important than most other factors in determining whether or not you will win the case. It can also be good to simply buy out the judge — the number quoted in the film is about $350,000.

Another curious angle that it explores is the pervasive corruption among psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and other ‘evaluatators’ called in to determine the fitness of each parent. The film brings up a colorful example of a flamboyantly homosexual evaluator who repeatedly would shake down parents in return for positive evaluations.

Towards the end of the film, Pinsky characterizes divorce as becoming a ‘public health problem,’ because children of divorced couples are so often responsible for crime, self-harm, and other forms of risky behavior.

The narrators hold up Scandanavia as an example of a region that handles divorce better — but it would be more accurate to say that those tiny, homogeneous countries handle it in a less destructive way.

Given the distinct Harvard flavor of many of the interviewees, it’s clear that some marginalized elements in the leadership class are beginning to comprehend just how badly the youngest generational cohort has been damaged by the legal experiment in no-fault divorce pioneered by Lenin in Russia and signed into law by Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California.

Pinsky, by bringing up Scandanavia, suggests reform that still maintains the creed of feminism. However, what he misses is that merely making a proposal and then attempting to ‘start a movement’ with a film is not sufficient to defeat what amounts to an organized criminal network that has a hold on every major propaganda outlet in the country.

Divorce is perhaps the most important interpersonal event in the lives of a large portion of Americans, but it is rarely discussed except in positive terms by women’s interest columnists. Conservatives will occasionally broach it, but almost no one dares to criticize the fundamental Leninist policy that no-fault divorce represents, and no one respectable is permitted to defend the patriarchal family structure that has made up the basic unit of Western Civilization for thousands of years.

The proposed solution (join a movement, make your voice heard) is moronic. What would be better would be for Harvard Law School to purge itself of feminist professors. The people quoted in the movie could have an enormous impact — even Drew Pinsky and the director could have a larger impact — by cleaning house in their own highly placed communities.

Attempting to outsource leadership responsibility to the wretched masses is the problem with post-1789 political culture. It is why this well-made film would have been better if it had been targeted to only Harvard Law students.

The New York Times buried its tiny review on the 16th page of the arts section. A critical issue that will impact the lives of half of its married readers (among its most affluent) gets lower billing than the latest missing plane or unhinged lone gunman. Other reviews are similarly mixed, but are curiously unwilling to discuss how this interacts with larger developments in Anglo-American culture.

The people who made this movie represent the remnants of the reasonable wing of liberal democratic governance in the United States. It is on page C16.

The front pages of the rest of the sections are an unending march of propaganda stories excusing the latest enormous criminal schemes enacted by high prestige American institutions. For whatever reason, these remnants have not received the memo that the society cannot be reformed by the same means (government by the masses) that corrupted it.

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