Why did I purchase Reginald Ellery’s 'Psychiatric Aspects of Modern Warfare'? Well, I came across him in the context of the Ern Malley affair, in which he testified as an expert witness. But more than that, he has value as an example of an intellectual whose mind changes,  never the certainty of his opinions

Read More

Many people, when they know a subject really well, find newspaper accounts of it misleading or inaccurate, even as to the most elementary facts. And yet the strange thing is that it does not discourage them from continuing to read newspapers and even believe them

Read More

I have heard it said that snobbery is only a minor fault, but the truth is that it breeds a resentment that causes people to seek revenge even at great personal cost to themselves. Resentment soon turns to paranoia, with every act, every opinion or taste other than one’s own taken as a slight

Read More

Lovers of humanity in general don’t seem to be very happy in themselves. How can they be, from the strictly ethical point of view, with so much misery to commiserate? “Now that we talk of dying,” asked Eliot, “should I have the right to smile?”

Read More

With the idea of 'progress', all that became necessary was that what was produced should be the forerunner of something else. Everyone could claim he was John the Baptist, without having to specify who or what the Christ was

Read More

How can we waste our compassion on someone who is responsible for her own misfortune? Are there not enough people in the world who are victims of misfortune, injustice and cruelty for us not to bother with those whose misery is self-inflicted?

Read More

The Marxists of my youth wrestled with the problem of artistic genius, compelled to deny the very concept of genius because its outpourings were those of individuals rather than 'forces', 'classes' and, of course, 'historical inevitability'

Read More

The fashion for ugly, squarish dogs that look menacing and unappealing have joined the tattoos sported in certain areas of our towns and cities as symbols of ugliness and menace. They are to most dogs what cudgels are to walking sticks

Read More

The young would-be terrorist seeks to soothe, repair and avenge his personal grievances by identifying with a larger historical grievance, that of all Muslims. Thus petty personal grievance takes on a reflected glory and self-pity, the near-universal characteristic of adolescence, is ennobled

Read More

The willingness to take loud and public offence manifests that peculiar modern imperative to be aggrieved and disport oneself in the mantle of no-risk victimhood.  More than that, it affirms that one cares deeply about something in the absence of any other transcendent purpose in life

Read More