Posted in War and Peace.
(From War and the Liberal Conscience [1978] , by Michael Howard, Chapter I, “The Growth of the Liberal Conscience”, 1500-1792.) War and its horrors It is likely that ever since the origins of human society, men — or at least some men, and most women — have intermittently lamented the existence of war… Erasmus’s diatribes […]
Posted in War and Peace.
(From The Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, Book III, Chapter 10, The Corcyrean Revolution. This translation was made by Richard Crawley in 1874.) The Reign of Terror in Corcyra, 427 BC During seven days that Eurymedon stayed with his sixty ships, the Corcyreans were engaged in butchering those of their fellow-citizens whom they regarded as their […]
Posted in Tribalism, War and Peace.
(Edited and abridged from Chapter 6 of War in Human Civilization, 2006, by Azar Gat.) Human vulnerability Where human vulnerability most revealed itself was when the attack came by surprise. This was very different from the conditions prevailing among animals. Not only is it more difficult among most animal species to get close to a […]
Posted in War and Peace.
(From The Imperial Animal, 1971, by Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, Chapter 8, The Noble Savage.) Peace and progress It is a relatively modern conceit to assert that man is peaceful until he proves otherwise. In our enthusiasm for progress and our success in achieving forms of wealth and welfare, we have become committed to […]
Posted in Africana.
During his visit to Africa, on July 11, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed Ghana’s parliament. His speech cannot have been easy to write or to give. Courtesy alone suggested that in the presence of politicians likely to be stung by his remarks, diplomatic discretion was required. Nevertheless, after decades in which the continent’s problems have […]
Posted in Africana, Tribalism, Notes.
The humor in Robert Flaherty’s famous 1922 film Nanook of the North is pretty simple stuff — conjuring an extraordinary number of well-stowed children out of one tiny kayak; sliding clownishly about on the ice harpooning a seal. But however simple, Nanook usefully taught millions of us that we all laugh at much the same […]
Posted in Civilization, Arts and Letters, People, Theatre.
It had been a pretty ordinary day at the office, metaphysically speaking, but it looked like ending with a bang. Plato was showing Aristotle something he’d found on the web…
Posted in Civilization, Open Societies & the Culture Cult.
Pergamon versus the Great Babylon Show [A shorter version of this article appeared on the website of The American in March 2009.] Two museum exhibits The two exhibits stood side by side in adjacent halls. One room, lofty and spacious, displayed Pergamon’s Great Altar and various associated sculptures — the other was mainly given over […]
Posted in Science.
Enough already. More than enough. It’s not that I’ve got anything against Charles Darwin, but there are others who deserve mention too, and the curse of organised memorialising — especially when cued by anniversaries — is that with commemorative books, conferences, anthologies, discussion panels, seminars, TV shows and interviews the hagiographical tendency begins to run […]
Posted in Theatre.
Too short. Or anyway not too long. That’s the first thing to be said about Robert Lepage’s nine-hour show Lipsynch at this year’s Sydney Festival. But how’s it done and how can that possibly be? In The Independent last September Paul Taylor wrote that Lepage has long been regarded as a wunderkind, “but as he […]
Posted in For the Record.
Down on the beach I was looking for one of those “stimulus packages” they’ve been talking about. Thought I might find one washed up on the sand — you never can tell. But there were only plastic bags. So I sat down on a rock with another beachcomber to pass the time of day. I […]
Posted in Open Societies & the Culture Cult.
Popper, Tribalism, Democracy, and the Defense of Civilization Robin Fox In slightly different form this essay appeared as a contribution to a symposium on The Culture Cult in the journal Social Science and Modern Society (May/June 2008). It is also expected to become a chapter in a forthcoming book. Sandall’s contribution to the symposium is […]
An Australian writer living in Sydney, Roger Sandall is the author of The Culture Cult (2001), a study of romantic primitivism and its effects. His work has appeared in a number of places including Commentary, The American Interest, Encounter, The New Criterion, The American, Sight and Sound, Quadrant, Art International, The New Lugano Review, The Salisbury Review, Merkur, Mankind, Visual Anthropology, and Social Science and Modern Society.