Beautiful Thoughts - Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle passed away in 1881. At that time, and over the decades preceding, he was deemed to be one of the most important social commentators and essayists of his era. He was widely read and generally acclaimed even though, against Victorian norms, he had lapsed from the Christian faith and held many controversial opinions. In the shadow of both French and then American revolutions the intellectual tide was moving towards more egalitarian and democratic ideas; Mr Carlyle was a staunch critic of democracy and, in his most enduringly controversial work, Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question published in 1849, appeared out of step on such questions as the abolition of slavery. His polemic was knotty and quarrelsome, and his prose was hardly felicitious, but he had authored several of the most significant works of English in his time, notably his history of the French Revolution, published in 1837, and his philosophical novel Sartor Resartus the year prior. His essay on heroism and hero worship had made a lasting imprint upon Victorian ideas and remained influential into the XXth century until such misadventures as Hitlerism soured the notion that history is, and should be, moved by great men. Indeed, the two world wars, more than any other factors, account for the decline of Mr Carlyle's reputation; they produced a world in which his ideas are profoundly out of favor. He was a champion of Germanic aristocratic culture and an apologist for what we might now call 'old Europe'. He was the arch reactionary. He is now neglected and forgotten or else despised.

Several years after his death, though, he was still in vogue, and Philip W. Wilson collected and published an anthology of quotations from the Scottish essayist entitled Beautiful Thoughts. It had the somewhat novel format of offering a quote from Carlyle for every day of the year and thus three hundred and sixty five in all, a sort of desk calendar cum handbook. There appears to be no other organising principle and no particular strategy in what bon mots were to be included except what Mr Wilson thought deserved to be recorded and what he thought readers might appreciate. In a short introduction, the editor admits that Carlyle's style is somewhat gruff and often unappealing, but he assures the reader that it is the quality of the thoughts, rather than Carlylean prose, that renders them beautiful. It is a lovely little book that remains an excellent means by which to sample Carlyle and can be downloaded in PDF here. Some sample pages follow:

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Surely the most revealing photograph of Mr Carlyle! 

As unlikely as it may seem this late in the piece, Mr Carlyle is now enjoying something of a revival such that there are even 'Carlyle Clubs' appearing in certain intellectual circles. Not to be confused with Art Deco themed restaurants of that name, see here, these are associations of young neoreactionaries who find particular inspiration in Mr Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets (not to be confused with Mormon literature bearing similar titles)and meet on a regular basis to discuss Carlylean philosophy. See the poster below:

Here at Out of Phase we share this enthusiasm. While others might toil over old volumes of Edmund Burke looking for a stalwart against contemporary liberal decay, it is Thomas Carlyle who speaks to us. Readers can find a generous sampling of Mr Carlyle's wholesome wit and wisdom in the memes below:

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Harper McAlpine Black

Floating Utopias

Plato is widely regarded as the father of utopian schemes, but the reputation is undeserved. Any critical reading of the Republic reveals that Socrates' famous description of an ideal polity is not intended as a utopian programme and there is no expectation that such a state could or should ever be realised on earth. In fact, his purpose is to describe justice in the soul of man, and it is only by analogy that he gives an account of justice in a state. All the same, Plato remains the fountainhead of Western political imagination; no other philosopher offers as much to those who would dream of a better world. Not only has Socrates' tour de force in the Republic stimulated political thinkers throughout the ages, but so too have other Platonic dialogues, most notably the Critias, the work in which we find the celebrated description of the lost continent of Atlantis. The detailed description of the great maritime city of Atlantis is often touted as the well-springs of science fiction; the sustained imagination of a fictitious world. As well, it is often regarded as the first great adventure in civic design. Built according to a geometric schema in a series of concentric circles, the Atlantean city is the first and most extraordinary instance of an imagined polis in the Western tradition. 

It is without hesitation, therefore, that we can nominate Plato as the forebearer of recent schemes to construct designed city-states in pursuit of a better political future. The world today is sagging under the strain of broken institutions and it is abundantly clear that the current structures are incapable of offering new solutions. Specifically, a world of eleven billion or so human beings is being poorly served by some 150+ nation states mired in structures and patterns of governance largely created to address the impasse that followed in the aftermath of World War II. Such states are both unwilling and unable to forge new ways to address new realities. We are surely on the edge of a brave new world, but mid-XXth century solutions are hopelessly, even dangerously, inadequate for the task.  

In the face of this, certain people - not prepared to wait for calamities to overtake us - are looking to new models, and it is no accident that Plato's maritime utopia, Atlantis, underpins them. This is the strategy of the so-called 'seasteading' movement. Despairing at the ossified inadequacy of existing nation states, certain brave souls have looked seaward into the neutral waters of open oceans as a space in which to construct exemplars for the dawning era. The essential idea is to use modern engineering methods to build small city-states at sea, beyond the reach of existing national boundaries. There, in international space, free of stultifying regulations, paralysing tax regimes and overbearing governments, communities of innovators and entrepreneurs can experiment with bold solutions to contemporary and emerging problems. 

At the forefront of this movement is the Seasteading Institute. See their website here. Of recent times they have negotiated a deal with French Polynesia to construct the first 'seastead' in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To that end, they have conducted an international contest for designs for the new city-state. The rationale for such a venture is both simple and old: it is a matter of demonstrable historical experience that city-states that extract themselves from corrupt and inefficient nations and stand alone are, by virtue of optimum size and flexibility, able to forge ahead and become remarkably prosperous. The outstanding example of it in modern times is Singapore. Once the Singaporeans removed themselves from the moribund inertia of Malaysia they didn't look back. Other cities could do the same except that the territorial jealousy of modern nations prevents it. The solution, then, is to step outside of the nation-state system and build cities beyond their territorial waters. Unburdened by inept governments, such free polities can become adventures in utopian living. 

The Republic of Rose Island - coat of arms.

The modern precursor to the current 'seasteading' movement was a short-lived experiment in Italy in the late 1960s. The engineer Giorgio Rosa fund the construction of a large platform in the Adriatic Sea outside of Italian national boundaries. He named it the Republic of Rose Island and declared esperanto as its national language. It was intended as a stand-alone micronation with restaurants, bars, a post office and accommodation with minimal government. The whole structure was in fact an adaptation of the same technology used to construct oil drilling platforms, and it looked like it. Thus:

The Italian government, however, viewed the entire venture as a tourist gimmick designed to avoid taxation. The republic had declared independence on 24 June 1968 but the Italian navy invaded on February 13 1969 and destroyed the facility outright. This brief and ill-fated episode in 'seasteading' is the subject of the film 'Island of the Rose: Freedom is Frightening', see here:

The new Seasteading Institute hopes for a happier outcome. It is sponsored by numerous wealthy individuals, such as Peter Thiel, and is supported by a growing community of highly educated people frustrated by the inability of existing governmental systems to deal effectively with mounting contemporary issues. The first principle of a seasteading city-state is minimalist government, but also - within that - a willingness to experiment with new systems and methods of government and organisation. 

All of this sounds very reminiscent of certain phases of Mencius Moldbug's musings on neoreaction. There was, at one point at least, his vision of a world of small Singaporeanesque city-states in open competition with one another, with citizens free to exit whenever they liked in their search for a commodious place to reside. Such city-states would be technological hubs run at a profit with appropriate corporate modes of governance. The seasteading movement is clearly a related phenomenon and as such provides an insight into the motivation behind much neoreaction, namely that NRx is instigated and populated by a high IQ and technologically savvy cohort who are at their wits end when confronted by the failure of existing governmental systems to embrace the possibilities available to us. NRx, that is, grows out of the yawning disparity between what might be done and what existing governments will permit. The neoreactionary, finally, says, "Damn it! We'd be better off under a benevolent dictator!" Similarly, the seasteader says, "Damn it! We'd be better off living on an oil platform in international waters!" 

National authorities are very likely, as we saw in the case of the Republic of the Rose, to view these ventures as exercises in tax evasion. And so they might be. But what, it might be asked, is wrong with that? If a city-state can prosper and advance with minimalist government and low taxation, why not avoid bloated high taxing bureaucratic red-tape hell-holes? The strategy of heading out to sea to avoid government regulation is well established. There are cases in the ancient world, all the way through to L. Ron Hubbard's Sea.org. But as the case of Mr Hubbard should remind us, this raises other issues, for it is not only incentive-destroying taxation and unwarranted and overbearing regulation that such people seek to avoid. The name 'seasteading' is adapted from the American term 'homesteading' and evokes a nostalgia for the wild west, but in that it also evokes the most American of delusions, the confusion between freedom and lawlessness. The 'wild west' was beyond the frontier, and, by definition, beyond the reach of the law. It is a persistent American myth - alive and well among so-called 'libertarians' - that this equates to freedom (which in turn equates to the highest human good.) No doubt there is a certain amount of such libertarian delusion driving 'seasteaders' and among them are those who seek 'free spaces' in order to indulge in dubious, if not criminal, violations. Among the high IQ and technologically savvy, for instance, you will find people looking for places outside of civilised scrutiny so they can indulge their dreams of transhuman monstrosities.

More promising, though, the 'seastead' offers the hope of a revival of the polis, the city-state, as the natural and most appropriate unit of human civilisation. Neoreaction's admiration for the city-state (Singapore, Hong Kong, and so on) is not unfounded. Leaving aside the recent resurgence of state-based nationalism, which might be applauded for other reasons (anti-globalism), the finer particularism of the city-state offers far greater scope for human diversity and protection from the evils of one-world universalism. The seasteaders are not mistaken about this. The creation of a myriad seabound city-states, each with different modes of government, different purposes for different peoples, unburdened by the primitive, restrictive concerns of existing nations, can only be deemed a positive step into the future. 

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For all of that, the present author remains especially underwhelmed by the entries to the Seastead Institute's architectural contest (see examples above and below). The concept of the utopia-at-sea New Atlantis is fine in itself, but the designs are unexciting. In most cases, what we have is Lego Land on water. There is rather too much Buckminster Fuller in these designs. Futuristic pretensions. Modular dreariness. An unrelenting artificiality that, in practice, makes people unhappy. Let us note that much of the success of city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong  comes not just from the small scale of the enterprise and the openess of governments to creative and productive citizens but also to the deep traditional rootedness of the Chinese. Their success lies precisely in their ability to combine modernity with tradition. It is not an easy formula to reproduce. With few exceptions, attempts by the Arabs to create viable modern city-states in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere have been far less succesful (as anyone who has ever spent longer than a weekend in Doha will tell you) and their architect-designed cities-on-water are, in the main, stagnant and horrid.

Why the future needs to look like a cross between a P & O Liner and an oil rig is a mystery. There was certainly nothing rosy about Giorgio Rosa's Republic of the Rose. Roses may have adorned the micronation's coat of arms, and the above-referenced documentary may wax about freedom and liberty, but the structure itself was pure ugliness. Who would want to live on that? Who would even want to avoid tax on that? There is no avoiding it: ugly buildings make ugly people. An artificial Lego Land in French Polynesia or anywhere else soon encounters very real complications of human reality. It is a pity that the guidelines for architectural designs for the Seastead Institute's contest do not make any concessions for the human need for beauty; the proposed floating cities are entirely concerned with utilitarian requirements (and getting their snout in the climate-change trough) which, no matter how clever in themselves, reveal an impoverished and shallow estimation of the human being. Plato, the distant father of these seabound utopias, made no such underestimation. 

Yours,

Harper

Holes in Oblivion: Sex and the Sacred in Eric Gill

"Man is composed of matter and spirit, both real and both good."

There is enough distance now from the watershed year of 1989 to revisit the life and work of the great English engraver and master craftsman Eric Gill. Up until that year Mr Gill had been a favourite of many, including the Traditionalists with whom the present author was at that time associated. Gill was touted as an outstanding modern representative of the traditional arts and crafts and no less an authority than A. K. Coomaraswamy wrote in his favour with great enthusiasm. But then a tell-all biography that drew upon his previously unreleased diaries was published and the rather deviant sexual life of the artist became public knowledge. It was revealed that throughout much of his adult life he had been happy to frolic not only with his wife and innumerable lovers but with his sister, his daughters and his dog as well! He recorded these exploits in detail in his journals and appears to have had no qualms or conscience about them at all. His reputation suffered.

He is, for this reason, a strange case. His extraordinary sexual life was in glaring contrast to his devout Catholicism and his undoubtedly sincere spiritual demeanour. Indeed, he seems to have been perfectly able to combine his erotic experimentalism with an otherwise monkish life and a deep dedication to the traditional arts. Those that knew him praised him as "the married monk." He founded the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a guild for Catholic craftsmen informed by a Dominican monastic spirituality (see below). He was dedicated to a revival of Catholic aesthetics and to pioneering a new spirit of Christian art against the ugliness of modern mechanisation. 

At the same time, though, as one of his daughters would later relate, he had an endless fascination for the erotic and in no way felt this to be at odds with his spiritual vocation. He is thus an enigmatic figure, or seems so to us, being a peculiar meeting of convention and deviance, high purpose and errant appetites. It is unfortunate, because he is far more interesting than the salacious sex life that has overshadowed him: he is an artist of great importance and entirely deserved the reputation he enjoyed prior to the 1989 revelations. He single-handedly led a revival of a traditional artistic sensibility and style appropriate to the modern era and the modern predicament. There are few things as decadent as sculpture in the modern era: Eric Gill led a one-man restoration of the art. Beyond question, he is one of the most significant religious artists of the modern era.

Yet we dwell now upon his erotic misdeeds and find him either fascinating or villainous, or both, and cannot refrain from viewing his work through a far more erotic focus than before. It rarely occurs to us in this that, whatever the facts about Mr Gill's private life, we of the XXIth century, though we bask in our own estimations of the degree to which we are "liberated" from the strictures of the past, are extraordinarily prudish and will send public figures to purgatory for the slightest sexual indiscretion. Gill was guilty of more than indiscretions, but we need to ask whether we are really in a position to fully understand such an artist. Our own erotic culture is, in fact, both narrow and shallow. In particular, popular morality has no accommodation for collaborations of sex and the sacred, whereas traditional cultures invariably do. 

For Gill, in himself and also in his work, as we see it now, was absorbed by two things, sex and the sacred, and in his own mind he sought to reconcile them and, moreover, he did this through Catholicism. This is reported by those who knew him well. They relate that his conversion to Catholicism was in order to reconcile the sexual and the spiritual dimensions of his life. True, this does not seem to have included observing Catholic moral codes, but all the same Eric Gill found a unified vision of the erotic and the sacred in the Catholic faith. How? Are we really in a position to understand it? We live in times when feminist critics just yell "Rapist!" when Mr Gill's name is mentioned. They want him stricken from history. We live in times of on-going moral outrage. In politically intense times such as these we are not in much mood to try to understand the contradictions of Mr Gill's inner quest for meaning. 

The kiss of Judas

Catholicism, all the same, is - when compared with Protestant forms of Christianity - a sensual, physical and visceral spiritual temperament. Protestantism is, by nature, much more cerebral and abstracted. It is a faith of ideas. Catholicism is a faith of physical encounter. And this is what Mr Gill wanted. He needed a spirituality that was deeply physical, even sensual. Protestants rarely appreciate this about Catholicism: that it offers a deeply sensual spiritual encounter. There is the deep sensuality of the Eucharist, the visceral literalism of the Real Presence. There is the deep empathy for the suffering on the Cross, for the wounds of Christ, the passion of Christ. There is the cult of relics - bones and other remnants pillaged from the corpse of saints. Works are physical acts. Devotion takes a physical form. This was entirely in accord with Gill's character. He was a sculptor by trade and temperament. He was a man of touch. Tangibility was a spiritual fact for him. He worshipped with his hands. He adopted the motto: "Man is composed of matter and spirit, both real and both good.” He found this doctrine realised in his Catholicism. 

Madonna and Child with Angel

Much of the time in Catholicism, though, this sensuality manifests in forms that are sadomasochistic rather than in forms of erotic celebration. There is no gainsaying this fact. Catholic eroticism, where it enters Catholic piety and zeal, tends to the sadomasochistic. Nothing is as tangible as pain. Other converts to Catholicism have turned to the hair shirt, flagellation and extreme penances; for Gill - against all the moral teachings of the Church, it is true - it was a case of giving himself to unrestricted sexual curiosity. 

A cynical view would be that this was entirely opportunistic, and convenient, the ruse of a lech, the narcissistic self-excusing rationale of a deviant sex criminal. But we have Mr Gill's art as a counter argument to this. There is nothing sordid or gratuitous in his work. Instead, it is - as we see very well now - a lifelong dialogue between the erotic and the sacred, congruent with and testifying to the sincerity of his life. His was a sincere attempt to live according to the motto: "Man is composed of matter and spirit, both real and both good" and his art, as much as his diaries, is a record of this motto realised. 

His autobiography,(see here), begins with a chapter entitled 'Holes in Oblivion', being scattered recollections from his childhood. This is the oblivion, we might say, into which his reputation was cast after his sexual misdeeds were made public. He went from being a widely celebrated and saintly artist to suddenly being reviled and having his works removed from galleries and public places all across England. The Traditionalists with whom the present author was associated suddenly dropped him as their model of the modern spiritual craftsman. All the same, his work still speaks for itself - through holes in oblivion, as it were - and is a beautiful, if now problematic, record of Mr Gill's spiritual quest. This writer, at least, is still prepared to hold his work in high esteem and to try - putting aside all moral squeamishness - to understand it as a deep and sincere encounter of sex and the sacred such as has rarely occured in Catholic piety. 

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This is one of the most explicit images whereby Mr Gill brings together his two obsessions, the sexual and the sacred. Called 'The Nuptials of God' it depicts Christ having sex on the cross. This is a defining image - the quintessential Eric Gill. 

The harem. Much of Mr Gill's erotica is orientalist, depicting Near Eastern or Asian women.

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Entitled 'God Sending'. Phallic creativity continues the work of God the Father. 

Mr Gill's sexuality was inseparable, it seems, from his artistic identity. Much is explained by his theory of art. He held the view - and regarded it as traditional and therefore historically normal - that the artist co-operates with (participates with) God in His creation. Creating is a divine act. The artist is a creator by extension from the Creator Himself. Mr Gill, that is, worshipped a deity in its demiurgic aspect which, in the Christian account, is God the Father. The feminists are right about him. His religion is essentially patriarchal. It celebrates the creative male god. This is to say, it is essentially phallic. His position is exemplified by a drawing labelled 'God Sending' (see above) which shows God send (acting through) a young ithyphallic male: the phallic male as an agent of God, the phallus as the divine instrument of creation, erotic energy as the divine creative impulse in the universe and in man. That is central to the entire theological outlook of Eric Gill. 

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GILLS SANS

Mr Gill was intent on renovating the entire landscape of modern industrial life. One of his greatest creations was the font type now known as Gill Sans. It is arguably his most enduring legacy. It has been one of the most popular and widely used fonts of the modern era. Shortly after its creation it was taken up by British Railways for their signs and publications, and somewhat later it was adopted as a standard font by Penguin Books. 

As well as Gill Sans, Mr Gill crafted numerous other fonts especially for the purposes of religious works. His typesetting and illustrations for Bibles are rightly famous:

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The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic 1920-1989

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE GUILD

The Guild is a society of Catholic craftsmen who wish to make the Catholic Faith the rule, not only of their life but of their workmanship and to that end to live and work in association in order that mutual aid may strengthen individual effort.
Supporting themselves and their families by the practice of a craft, the members choose St. Joseph as their patron. Further, having found the Dominican Order their most explicit teachers, they also place the Guild under the patronage of St. Dominic.

The Guild holds;

That all work is ordained to God and should be Divine worship.
As human life is ordained to God so must human work be. We cannot serve God and Mammon but we can love God and our neighbour. The love of God means that work must be done according to an absolute standard of reasonableness; the love of our neighbour means that work must be done according to an absolute standard of serviceableness. Good quality is therefore twofold, work must be good in itself and good for use. (From ‘Actus Sequitur Esse’, The Game, Sept.,1921).


That the principle of individual human responsibility being a fundamental of Catholic doctrine and this principle involving the principle of ownership, workmen should own their own tools, their workshops and the product of their work.


The Guild therefore aims at:



Making the goodness of the thing to be made the immediate concern in work.


Undertaking and imposing only such work as involves responsibility for the thing to be made.

Making the good of the work and the freedom of the workman the test of its workshop methods, tools and appliances.

THE RULES.

Members shall be

Practising Catholics

Earning their living by creative manual work

Owners of their tools and of their work.

Admission to the Guild shall be by the unanimous consent of the members.

Applicants for membership who fulfil all conditions for admission shall be postulants for at least one year and shall be known as Qualified Postulants.

Applicants, such as apprentices, may be admitted to membership who do not yet fulfil the third condition for admission, but shall remain postulants until such time as they are able to fulfil it and shall be known as Unqualified Postulants.

The approval of the Guild must be obtained for the entrance of any apprentice or employee to a member's workshop and such apprentices or employees must be Catholics.

A Guildsman may not enter into workshop partnership with a non Guildsman.

The members shall elect annually a Prior who shall represent the Guild in all its affairs and superintend the work of such other officers as may be appointed. He shall generally take care that the Constitution be observed.

There shall be a meeting of the members at least once a month to decide whatever may be required. Postulants shall attend the Guild meetings but without a vote.

It shall be the Guild's duty to encourage understanding and practice of its principles among its members by arranging occasions for their discussion and exposition.

Guildsmen shall meet in the Chapel for prayer in common on such regular occasions as may be arranged.

There shall be a regular Guild subscription for the upkeep of the Chapel and other expenses.

The Guild owns its land and buildings under the name of the Spoil Bank Association Limited.

The property is intended for occupation by Guild members and for use for Guild purposes only.

The Guild shall administer its property through its officers and at its meetings, but the property accounts shall go through the books of the Spoil Bank Association only.

Membership of the Guild shall include membership of the Spoil Bank Association Limited.

Yours,

Harper