BY SEAN WALSH In an episode of the 1990s comedy series Seinfeld, Jerry’s dentist decides to convert to Judaism “for the jokes”. When Jerry is asked if this offends him “as a Jewish person” he replies “No! It offends me as a comedian”. Comedy is not something that should be taken lightly. The political class would do well to remember that. It is a good … Continue reading Count Binface: A Gimmick So Funny It Requires a Labour Donor
BY SEAN WALSH “Sound out 30 Manchester adjacent constituencies! There must be at least one with a humiliation fetish!” The “leadership contest” in the Labour Party is like the “war in Iran” in that neither is actually a real thing. Unless you can have a war without any warring or a competition for a job which doesn’t exist. It’s all very “postmodern”, as if things … Continue reading Postmodern Politics
BY SEAN WALSH This “leadership” talk is yet another devil’s illusion. We were expecting a Jason Statham or a John Wick blockbuster. Instead of that we’re being served up one of those interminable Scandinavian things. Not noir either, like The Killing, but worthier fare. With themes. Of interest only to the critics. Actually that’s unfair to the interminable Scandinavian things. Whatever is happening in the Labour party is … Continue reading Still There
BY SEAN WALSH “I am satisfied the relevant processes were followed. The men are ascending and descending at the same time.”— Keir Starmer The English language is pretty useful when it comes to describing things, but it can only do so much. Some things are beyond its scope: the malignant, ordinary-yet-strange quality of the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, Keir Starmer, for … Continue reading Starmer’s Process State Is an Escher Universe
BY SEAN WALSH The Devil’s science? The philosophers who believe there are no beliefs. Paul Feyerabend did not think consciousness is a thing. “Is our basic conception of human cognition and agency yet another myth, moderately useful in the past perhaps, yet false at edge or core?” – Paul M. Churchland Paul Feyerabend Eliminative materialists are the philosophers who claim that consciousness does not exist. This seems … Continue reading Eliminative Materialism
BY SEAN WALSH The scene. From time to time the dialectic gets feisty and on rare occasions almost physical. A meeting of the Cambridge 1946 Moral Science Club, according to some of those present, was one such occasion. Note that recollections differ, as they say1. What might have happened is this: the very intense Ludwig Wittgenstein threatened the visiting speaker, Karl Popper, with a fire poker, in the course … Continue reading Wittgenstein, Popper and the Poker
BY SEAN WALSH I couldn’t be what’s known as a political libertarian because the version of freedom assumed doesn’t seem to me to be worth getting excited about. To borrow the language of the Dominican Thomistic theologian Father Servais Pinckaers, I’ll take freedom for excellence over freedom of indifference. I understand that libertarianism isn’t particularly sensitive to that distinction, or many others now I think of it, which is why … Continue reading Holy Faces
BY SEAN WALSH Before doing the relevant analytical deeper dive let me make two remarks, by way of qualification. First, the condition known as “Tourette’s Syndrome” should not be trivialised, and it’s not my intention to do so here; second, what I suppose we must call “BAFTAgate” (or maybe “f@@@@@g BAFTAgate”, given the subject matter) is the funniest thing to happen at an awards ceremony … Continue reading Anscombe and that BAFTA Incident
BY SEAN WALSH There are decent utilitarian grounds for junking utilitarian thinking. Photo: Jeremy Bentham, founder of the utilitarian crime family, in a box, where he belongs. What the philosophers call utilitarianism is actually a family of moral theories with all the feuds, competitiveness and fickle alliances that families tend to have. There may be nuances involved, but there is an intellectual genealogy which takes you from … Continue reading The Utilitarian Deception
BY SEAN WALSH Starmer’s demise is like the final minute of the spin cycle: never ending. I suppose part of the fun in making political predictions is the post-hoc analysis of “why I was right when I said this would happen and it didn’t”. And knowing you can be serially wrong without any professional consequence. There’s quite a bit of this about at the moment, much of … Continue reading Sunk Cost Fallacy Territory
BY SEAN WALSH Why are “puberty blockers” morally obscene? Aquinas would have the answer. We need to remind ourselves that the potential is as real as the actual. I’m not going to waste much time defending the self-evident truth that it is obscene to perform medical experiments on children. I mean no disrespect to the eugenicists who think otherwise, but these people are in need … Continue reading On Aquinas and Puberty Blockers
BY SEAN WALSH The broadcaster Mike Graham has been sacked (according to some reports) by Talk TV for offences real or imagined (past caring). This was always on the cards given the 24/7 diligence of the grievance junkies now in charge of the public and social media spaces. It was only last week that Mr Graham was involved in an entertaining “dust up” with the … Continue reading Toxic ‘Niceness’ Shouldn’t Stop Us Calling Out The Lies
BY SEAN WALSH When I was a child and showing worrying signs of growing up to become me, my parents put me up for investigation by all manner of psychologists and other con-artists. The experts gave me these “psychometric” tests and also exercises in something called “numerical reasoning”. Some of the questions went a bit like this: What is the next number in the following … Continue reading Trump’s Dylanesque Genius
BY SEAN WALSH To steal and misapply a line from Woody Allen in Annie Hall it’s looking like Keir Starmer’s notion of compulsory digital ID won’t even make it to the concept stage, let alone become a workable idea. Colour us unsurprised. Starmer’s saving grace, his accidental virtue, is a preternatural incompetence attached to an unmatchable personal detestability. He delivers policy in the same way … Continue reading Resisting the Digital Prison of a National ID
BY SEAN WALSH First in a series of personal reflections on batshit philosophers. Of all the philosophers I’ve worked with, known or met Elizabeth Anscombe was by far the most insane. Her husband, Peter Geach, takes silver. They were, by most accounts, an unusual conjunction. I do not know if they fell out over where to go on holiday or whose turn it was to … Continue reading Elizabeth Anscombe
BY SEAN WALSH If you’ve seen it, you’ll know that A Prayer for the Dying is the worst film ever made. If you haven’t then you’re just going to have to trust me. Its awfulness is incommunicable even by critics far more articulate than this one. You might get a sense of it if I tell you that Mickey Rourke is an IRA gunman with … Continue reading Did Nobody Think to Tell Starmer that the Sequel’s Always Worse?
BY SEAN WALSH In Season 3 of Breaking Bad, two low-level, sci-fi-obsessed and endearingly hapless addicts and meth dealers, Badger and Skinny Pete (not their real names), infiltrate a 12-Step recovery group, intending to use the “share time” to promote their uniquely pure, trademark-blue “product”. The scheme is misconceived, not least because the healing space generated and curated by 12-Step groups is not controllable. Certainly not … Continue reading Breaking Bad and the Strange Culture of 12-Step Recovery
BY SEAN WALSH Jesus had a mischievous side. The hapless Simon Peter was almost always the foil, on one occasion even being “invited” to take a walk on a lake (see Matthew 14:28 if you don’t believe me). I don’t routinely compare myself to the first Pope. That said, I was recently presented with a comparable challenge. The results were mixed, and I was, wrongly … Continue reading My Accidental Confession
BY SEAN WALSH Let’s get smoking again, if only to help the easily offended “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” —Albert Einstein If we’re serious about arresting our spiritual, cultural, moral, and aesthetic decline—and if we wish to push back against the general entropy of good manners—then we need to get people smoking again. Not … Continue reading Light Up, Children
BY SEAN WALSH The amusingly Dickensian Lord Sumption, doubtless still writing that final ruling on the perduring Chancery matter of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, has temporarily removed his wig in favour of a clerical collar, to better sermonise on the state’s treatment of Lucy Connolly. “I shall not waste any sympathy on Mrs Connolly” he reassured us last week, as if “sympathy” were some auditable or … Continue reading The Tragic Cleverness of Lord Sumption
