Comments on: Silly Questions

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 20:52:23 +0000

By contrast, I consistently regret answering adults’ questions.

By: Alex J.

Alex J. — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 18:04:15 +0000

Perhaps it’s his retirement. Rural France has less reactionary inspiration than urban English hospitals and prisons.

By: Marc Pisco

Marc Pisco — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 03:25:03 +0000

Toddy Cat,

Yeah, he just sort of kept on typing, and damn the torpedoes.

By: Marc Pisco

Marc Pisco — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 03:23:14 +0000

Alrenous,

OK, you were just in a bad mood when you read it. Thanks.

By: Toddy Cat

Toddy Cat — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 20:30:35 +0000

It seems to me that Dalrymple isn’t as good as he used to be. His recent column in “Taki’s” on the death penalty was downright nonsensical. He still can write some good stuff, but its not a slam dunk anymore.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 19:34:09 +0000

I’m tired of adults not answering children’s questions for stupid reasons, especially when they’re clearly bad at telling a honest question from a less-honest one.

I’m also tired of adults claiming to be morally infalliable as compared to children. Here, Dalrymple was right as a kid and then grew up to be wrong, and now seeks to justify…well, I don’t know what, exactly. Passing on this anti-knowledge?

He puts these ideas in the place of honour, the first paragraph, but doesn’t honour it with, say, actually supporting it.

So that’s a double. Not only does he tell any children to stop asking questions, he fails to explain why they might want to do that.

I suppose it is very British of him. It’s the homeland of ‘children should be seen and not heard,’ isn’t it? I believe it was Toqueville who first noted that England was the worst European country to have to grow up in…

By: Marc Pisco

Marc Pisco — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 16:11:35 +0000

There’s a lot I didn’t mention, a world of things. What specifically did you have in mind? I’m curious (believe it or not).

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 09:31:36 +0000

I entirely agree with his account of poverty.

But it is linked, in a mutually supporting relationship, to a highly destructive idea about curiosity, one that many readers will gloss over without thinking about. E.g, you, based on the fact you did not mention it all in your response.

By: Marc Pisco

Marc Pisco — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 01:09:48 +0000

Alrenous,

It seems to me he is explaining, or at least offering something honestly intended to be an explanation: They are poor because they didn’t do any of the odd and improbable things you have to do to become rich. He’s addressing the question seriously, if not completely.

To me it reads as if he’s thought about the question and thinks you should as well.

Dalrymple’s not infallible; I recall him once badly misunderstanding the American slang “I’m good” as some kind of moral assertion rather than a brisk form of “No, thank you”. I don’t see the problem here though.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 17:24:14 +0000

Much as I like Dalrymple, he’s showing a bias here. Children are not always wrong when they conflict with adults. Maturity is not an unalloyed good.

Certainly there is a duty to know; but asking a question is exactly attempting to carry out that duty. It is perverted and depraved to attempt to to justify deliberately withholding information from a child in this way.

Moreover, if he truly believed it, he is contravening himself. “One of the silliest questions I have ever heard is why some countries are poor. Thus, I won’t explain.”

One of the things proggies and paleoconservatives apparently agree on is that curiosity is a vice.