Bertrand Russell: What's It All About, Bertie?

Bertrand Russell died on this day in 1970.

Fagburn: World Smile Day

Sorry for being away longer than anticipated.

A FOOL did something funny to my computer over the weekend so I couldn't log into Google Chrome, then I hurt my leg quite badly during a 'free and frank exchange of views' with some selfish CUNT who was cycling on the pavement.

As ever, I have been retroactively posting this week's most thrilling stories close to the day they appeared.

PS Yes, it really is World Smile Day. Woo! etc.

Fagburn: Time

Bertrand Russell: Rubbish!

Dear Uncle Bertie died 45 years ago today.
x

Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it...

An Outline Of Intellectual Rubbish.

PS He was so bumming Wittgenstein.

Me: Today

In dealing with human beings, we are perpetually distracted by being told that such-and-such a view is gloomy or cynical or pessimistic: ages of human conceit have built up such a vast myth as to our wisdom and virtue that any intrusion of the mere scientific desire to know the facts is instantly resented by those who cling to comfortable illusions.

Desire And Feeling.

Allout: Facts? Meh!

Love. RT @daniellaskowski: A grandfather's letter to his daughter about her disowning her gay son. http://t.co/Nxx24FFWfK CC @allout
— All Out (@allout) October 3, 2013

Facts don't matter. And that's the truth! FACT!

If you had a daughter who'd done something you didn't like, would you talk to her, or write a letter and post it online?
Also, why are these "heart-warming" "so brave" etc "letters" always handwritten, does anyone still do that?

PS No, I can't prove this isn't real - just like I can't "prove" god doesn't exist. My point is this has "gone viral" without anyone checking it's real - which is easier and actually possible.

Bertrand Russell: The Unbearable Lightness Of Morning

The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the desire to construct than to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others. 

It must be a world in which affection has free play, in which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy have been dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development of all of the instincts that build up life and fill it with mental delights.
Such a world is possible; it waits only for men to wish to create it.

Meanwhile the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions; and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, with the light of morning in its eyes.

Bertrand Russell, Roads To Freedom - Socialism, Anarchism And Syndicalism (1918).

Not much news worthy of comment today, but hopefully we'll bomb Syria and Russia to defend gay freedom!

"Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil"

Bertrand Russell: Time

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."

Bertrand Russell: Died Today, Many Years Ago...

'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil' (Exodus 23:2).

Wittgenstein: 100 Years Of Solitude

In 1913, Ludwig Wittgenstein decided to move to Norway, and live in a remote lodge and think about stuff for a bit.
After he told Bertrand Russell, Bertie wrote;

I said it would be dark, 
and he said he hated daylight. 
I said it would be lonely, 
and he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. 
I said he was mad, 
and he said God preserve him from sanity.

Letter Of The Week: Dear God

Eight-year-old Grace asked an intelligent and penetrating question (Ask a grown-up: If God created everything, who created God?, Weekend, 22 December), to which she received a trite and one-sided reply. There was no attempt to explain why, if the universe was created by a loving God, he felt the need to create the Ebola virus, or polio, or intestinal parasites. And is Dr Fraser unaware of what is going on in Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine and parts of Africa, or does he choose to simply ignore them? And what are the leaders of his religion doing while all these atrocities continue? Debating how many gay, female bishops can dance on the head of a pin. The kindest thing you can say about God is that he doesn't exist; if he did he would almost certainly be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Dick Hadfield
Ludlow, Shropshire.

The Guardian.

Being a wild and crazy guy, I spent yesterday evening reading Bertrand Russell's essay, An Outline Of Intellectual Rubbish - a hilarious demolition job of Christian lunacy and dogma.

Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked Man diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is depressing, but gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape from it, I have been driven to study the past with more attention than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Erasmus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies. In what follows I shall mix the sillinesses of our day with those of former centuries. Perhaps the result may help in seeing our own times in perspective, and as not much worse than other ages that our ancestors lived through without ultimate disaster...

Bertrand Russell: On Silliness

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

Bertrand Russell.

Believe everything you read in the papers, it's all true.
Same with the tellybox.
And anything you see on the internets.
If someone says something happened, it happened.
So don't question anything, ever.
Yay!

PS Bertie, one of the 20th Century's greatest men and leading anti-theists, had as his motto the following quote from Exodus; ''Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." 
Humbly, I hope that could be Fagburn's motto, too.  
Good day. 

Fagburn: A Short Break

Sorry, I'm really pissed off and angry with the world, writing this blog has been very satisfying but it's just making me rage right now, so I'm going to to take a break.
The monumental stupidity of some people makes me wonder why I bother.
Probably best if I disappear for a bit so you don't have to listen to my stupid random rants.
Read Marx - Class is all.
Read Bakunin - You don't need any fucking leaders.
Read Russell - Maybe we could be rational one day.
Read Gramsci - On the spectacular achievements of hegemony.
Read Wittgenstein - "The world is all that is the case."
Read Chomsky - On the spectacular achievements of propaganda.
How about questioning things instead of believing everything you're told?
But the world won't listen!
Oy vey!

Wittgenstein: Never Understand

"I was sorry not to have seen you at Christmas. It struck me as rather funny that you should want to hide from me, for the following reason: I have been morally dead for more than a year! From that you can judge for yourself whether I am fine or not: I am one of those cases which perhaps are not all that rare today: I had a task, did not do it, and now the failure is wrecking my life. I ought to have done something positive with my life, to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I am stuck on earth, and now I am gradually fading out. My life has really become meaningless and so it consists only of futile episodes. The people around me do not notice this and would not understand; but I know that I have a fundamental deficiency. Be glad of it, if you don't understand what I am writing here."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, letter to Paul Engelmann, January 1921.
Ludwig to Bertrand Russell on Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921; "Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it.”
Never understand.
You'll never understand me, yeah.
"The world is all that is the case..."
"And whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words." (Kürnberger, dedication in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)
I. Love. You.

Back Soon...

Sorry I've been away, been feeling a bit down in the dumps - and didn't want to take my bad times out on others.
Back later...

Iran: Human Rights Watch Report

We Are a Buried Generation Discrimination and Violence against Sexual Minorities in Iran
Based on testimony from more than 100 Iranians, this report documents discrimination and violence against LGBT people and others whose sexual practices and gender expression do not conform to government-endorsed socio-religious norms. Human Rights Watch analyzed these abuses within the context of the government's violations against its general population, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, invasions of privacy, mistreatment and torture of detainees, and the lack of due-process protections and fair-trial guarantees.

Read the Press Release - Read the Report

To paraphrase the late, great Palestinian scholar and activist Edward W Said, what people in the West know about homosexuality in Iran is a stupid cliche.
Human Rights Watch have bothered to try to find out what life is really like there.
Brian Whitaker, an editor at The Guardian's Comment Is Free and author of Unspeakable Love: Gay & Lesbian Life in the Middle East, has written a fairly neutral piece on the publication of this report.
Whitaker notes correctly;
"Unfortunately, the LGBT issue – epitomised by the notorious photograph of two male teenagers being hanged – has also been embraced unscrupulously by some, in the hope of bolstering support for a military attack which has entirely different goals and motives. This, in turn, leads to accusations from the other side that anyone who complains about the treatment of LGBT people is simply picking on Iran and trying to start a war.
"Regardless of motives, though, it's a fact that Iran's treatment of sexual minorities is bad and, by international standards, somewhere near the bottom of the league. It is one of only seven countries worldwide that retains the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts (the others are Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan and some parts of Somalia and Nigeria).
"But disappointingly for those who like to keep things ultra-simple, the picture is not uniformly black. Small numbers of Iranians (mainly in the middle and upper classes) identify themselves as gay or lesbian, and some are surprisingly open about it. There are also embryonic LGBT communities in major cities, such as Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz, with well-known cafes, restaurants and parks that serve as meeting places..."
Of course for many - even enlightened Guardian readers - this is all unsayable, unthinkable.
Just read the hysterical comments beneath it.
George Orwell must be spinning in his urn.
For them, Iran is our enemy and so of course they kill gay men.
But there simply is no evidence Iran executes gay men "simply for being gay".
True, we can't be prove that they don't, in secret, just as Bertrand Russell would argue that you can't ultimately prove that there is no God, or that there isn't a tiny teapot, invisible to the human eye, endlessly circling around the Sun.