THE GOOD AND THE BAD It is tempting in politics to see things in stark black and white terms: if a regime is obviously “bad” then those who oppose it are necessarily “good.” This tendency to reduce complex situations to simplistic terms has nowhere been more evident in recent times than in the Philippines: Marcos… read more »
Frances Cairncross comments on a series of reforms, extending over more than three decades and costing immense amounts, which have now come to be seen as rather harmful than beneficial: more public money is a cure for poverty to be applied with great caution. We tried it for thirty-five years: we built ghettos in which… read more »
Our Farnham, which art in Hendon, Harrow be Rye Lane; Thy Kingston come, Thy Wimbledon, In Erith as it is in Hendon; Give us this day our Leatherhead And give us bypasses As we forgive them who overpass us; And lead us not into Thames Ditton But deliver us from Ewell; For thine is the… read more »
IC15 contained an article entitled “The End of Work,” and since then each issue has included a follow-up piece. Most of these have reported technological advances reducing the amount of human labour needed to produce a given quantity of goods, and this is perhaps tending to give the impression that the point of the series… read more »
And the Lord said unto Noah: “Where is the ark which I hast commanded thee to build?” And Noah said unto the Lord: “Verily I have had three carpenters off ill. The wood supplier hath let me down – yea, even though the wood hath been on order for nigh upon 12 months. What can… read more »
We recently attended a meeting of a Buddhist sect whose practice is to chant NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO repeatedly, morning and evening; if this is done, the disposition will improve and the level of daily happiness be raised. This was presented as a practical suggestion which each member of the audience could readily test for… read more »
Adherents of the eidodynamic ideologies tend to maintain that society as a whole is coming to accept their own assumptions, growing increasingly peaceful and egalitarian. Support for the view can be found, but only by careful selection, by ignoring the mass of evidence pointing in the contrary direction. When a broader scope or a longer… read more »
In IC20, p.4, under the heading “Gernuetlichkeit” there is a brief reference to Austrian wines, diethylene glycol, mountains and anti-freeze. We have it on good (epistatic) authority – the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food – that Austrian wines have been adulterated with diethylene glycol, but what has this to do with antifreeze? Somewhere in… read more »
THE BIT THAT MATTERS: Some of the addresses on our mailing list go back to 1979 without our having heard from the readers. They may have moved, they may have passed on from this ideology-ridden sphere to that great realm of free and pure thought in the sky. It is time to check. If we… read more »
Ideological Commentary announces itself as “an independent journal ofz systematic ideology,” but we do not claim final knowledge of this theory; the formulation that looked like the ultimate last month needs alteration now, and the account given here will be subject to continuous revision. The theory was created and largely developed by the late Harold… read more »