COMMENSAL ISSUE 97

17^th May 1999 : Frank Walker

COMMENTS ON COMMENSAL 95

As C95 was in the post to me I was in an ambulance on my way to hospital with a broken hip, now mending nicely thank you. This is my specious excuse for being late in responding. Specious, because enforced immobility gives more time for reading, thinking and writing. The truth is that the immobility adds to my ingrained lethargy and procrastination. However, here goes :-

C95/29 : You ask us to define philosophy. Etymologically it means love of wisdom. In English it is a label for a branch of knowledge / learning / study and means the pursuit and study of wisdom. No more need be said.

For me it raises the old question, what does IQ measure ? I think it measures cognitive ability; that is to say the ability to recognise, classify and manipulate the objects and classes of all kinds and to draw deductions from doing so. I take the word of the experts that it is an ability that can be accurately and consistently measured in any one individual. It is useful in many every-day activities and can be used to acquire money and power. It is confusing to call it intelligence because it has no relationship to wisdom. Rather, it is the sort of thing that computers do very well and I will go to the stake if necessary in support of the proposition that computers are incapable of any grain of wisdom. In so far as computers have intelligence it is, no more and no less, the intelligence programmed into them by the individual programmer, who, being human, is prone to error (eg. the millennium bug).

Assuming Mensans all have an IQ above whatever the level is, let me quote three examples of what I mean :-

1. Some of the contributions to Mensa Magazine are clearly written by people who are, as the saying goes, as daft as a brush.
2. Something like a third of the SIGs are clearly concerned with branches of "knowledge" of no interest whatsoever, because they are false, or trivial, to anyone who is wise.
3. The Annual Meeting a few years back was proudly advertised as Power, Money and Sex. Presumably the name was approved by our governing body. In sufficient and moderate quantities power, money and sex are agreeable and enjoyable. But anyone with a grain of wisdom will avoid excess of each and every one of them like the plague.

Theo (C95/8-9) :

1. You are uncertain what my argument was supposed to be. My intention was to set out the subject of murder and homicide in clear terms to dispel some misconceptions in earlier articles and to indicate grey areas at the edges. Some homicides are illegal, notably manslaughter; some deeds that would otherwise be murder are justifiable and so not murder in law or morality.
2. The policeman by virtue of his office, has a plain duty (i) to stop any crime being committed in his presence, (ii) to arrest criminals, (iii) to protect the public by keeping the peace, ie. stopping violence. You are right that each member of the public has the same duty to a lesser extent. But in doing so the policeman and the member of the public may use only reasonable force, whatever that means in any particular case. Usually killing the criminal or disturber of the peace will be excessive force.
3. I was not trying to make out WW2 as a defensive effort on the part of the British. It was not, either in law or morality. It was a necessity to stop a brutal dictator (and his / their henchmen) from aggressive oppression. I must apologise for an unpardonable omission by me in my first "justifiable homicide". It should have read "killing, by a member of the armed forces, of a member of the enemy army in time of war". My examples of grey areas concerned the victim. My further examples under self defence, related to defence of the realm, concerned the attacker. Your confusion is entirely my fault.
4. I think the lynch mob (named after American Judge Lynch) is largely an American phenomenon, by definition illegal and, in my opinion, immoral. You are right that there are no more outlaws because the arm of the law is now considered sufficiently long. I understand it is still the practice in the House of Commons to defer consideration of the Queen’s Speech until after their own concern, namely the first reading of a Bill "For the more effectual Suppression of Clandestine Outlawries".
5. Can God commit murder ? This hare seems to be running so I will defer comment as yet.

Paul Cadman (C95/13) : It is true that "silly rules" were most noticeable in schools and universities, but they also appeared in other aspects of education, eg. children should be seen and not heard. If, however, the education system is to include the entire process by which children are taught how to behave properly in the community and age in which they grow up then I stand by my thesis.

I stoutly deny that silly rules are the spark that ignites real crime later in life. At school and university before WW2 I and most of my friends were enthusiastic breakers of silly rules. Those who survived the war came back and lived on as exemplary law-abiding citizens. We despised the notable exceptions, Philby et al.

Leslie Haddow (C95/20-21) :

1. The "big rise in crime" from the 1930s to the present is about a multiple of 5; that is big. I refer to serious crime (roughly, crime tried on indictment). The figure refers to criminal convictions. Over the same period the detection rate, ie. criminals brought to book for crimes known to the police, has decreased from 60-70% to 25-30%. Discrimination against women and minorities is not, so far, a crime. It is true that computers did not exist then but the effect of computer crime on the statistics, so far, is minute. It was in the 1930s that cars were first designed to need a key to get into them and to start the engine. As to drugs, alcohol has been around since mankind first invented containers to store it in and cups to drink from. Tobacco was introduced to Europe from the Americas by Sir Walter Raleigh some 50 years after Catherine of Aragon died of lung cancer. De Quincy took up opium eating about 1803. Laudanum was then widely used as a pain killer. Nineteenth century fiction is full of opium dens. The opium wars were in the 1890s at which time Sherlock Holmes used cocaine to pass his idle hours. Cannabis is another American importation (mostly in WW2) this century.

It is true the crime rate in Great Britain (Ulster is a special case) is lower than practically anywhere in Europe or North America. It is also true that Great Britain has the second highest proportion of prisoners in gaol of the same area. Maybe these two figures are related.

2. You are correct that Britain used to export a lot of its criminals. That is the first point I was making. Imperialism was certainly attended with a good deal of violence but not much of it illegal. On the other hand, Pax Britannica produced a lot of peace where there had been war.
3. I maintain my stance on the in-built nature of teenage rebelliousness and can enlarge if need be.
4. Moderate punishment for deliberate violation of rules laid down by lawful authority is never unjust however silly the rules may be.
5. I object to the sneer about Victorian values. Crime and immorality are wrong equally in the first years of this century as in the last, or in the reign of Queen Victoria, or Queen Boadicaea, or the Queen of the Amazons. I am not saying the Victorians were more or less moral than the present population; there is much to say on both sides. I do say the values to which they claimed to aspire were much better than ours today, and crime and criminal tendencies were much fewer. The front door, the side door, and the back door of my father’s house were never locked during daylight hours and there was a fair bit of money and silverware lying about.

Finally, I am grateful to Michael Nisbet (C96/11) and Albert Dean (C96/18) for trying to ease my conscience about the sinking of U577. It is a nice thought that the Government may have paid my moral debts for me. My questions were, however, rhetorical, intended to provoke thought.

Frank Walker