3 August, 2021
Dear Reader,
These two are too often confused. An American wit, whose name I can’t recall, once defined a pessimist as ‘an optimist with the facts’. I must admit I love that kind of pithy, cynical humour that Americans do so well. Such cracks work well because there’s at least a grain of truth in them.
An optimist is one who looks on the bright side of things, but without necessarily much regard to reality. A cheerfully optimistic statement such as ‘most people can always be relied on to do the right thing’ might make us feel good, but if we do take the trouble to look at the facts we quickly discover that there were times and places in human affairs when most people didn’t do the right thing!
It’s more comfortable to look to the past for examples. Most people in the ante-bellum US south kept slaves or had no principled objection to slavery; most people in pre-war Germany thought that Jews were a threat to their society and acquiesced, at least, in their removal; most Vikings thought that coastal villages were fair game for pillage and rapine; most Romans in Nero’s time probably thought that all Christians were arsonists and traitors.
We can all make our own lists – it’s not hard to do – to undermine our confidence (if we had any) in the essential decency of most people’s behaviour most of the time.
But those instances are all in the past, aren’t they? The optimist trusts that we’ve learned from the lessons of history and believes that we’ve moved on and that we’re heading for a kinder, gentler society: no more bullying, less intolerance and bigotry. They point to the abolition of capital punishment in many jurisdictions, an end to caning and beating in schools, equal rights for women, wage justice, social security networks, free education and public libraries, vastly superior medical treatments and longer life expectancy.
All these things together amount to a strong argument for optimism. I truly hope that we’re right in coming to that conclusion. But hope is the key word. On the basis of my experience of human activities I’m afraid that there are grave reasons for a certain amount of pessimism. I hope that things will improve always and everywhere, but I know that they won’t unless we are constantly vigilant against the nastier aspects of our nature that can pop up – even in disguise – at any time, anywhere. The very existence of Twitter and Facebook reminds us that there is a great deal of anger and hatred circulating in the cybersphere. We know, too, that unpopular or unfashionable opinions will not generally be reported in the mainstream media, or if they are will be distorted and their sources often maligned. If we are Christians our Hope reaches far beyond and soars above mere feel-good optimism.
A NEW REFORMATION
US writer Francis Maier looks at the work of John Colet in the years leading up to the Reformation: ‘Looking back can help us think forward, because memory matters. History matters.’ Colet’s marvellous 1512 Convocation Sermon will upset many people’s ideas about pre-Reformation thinking. You can read it here.
AVOIDING MALE AND FEMALE STEREOTYPES
This piece by Chiara Bertoglio takes a sweetly irenic look at some of the extreme views that drive the impulse towards sexual transitioning.
ASSAULT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Constant vigilance is necessary. Catherine, a Catholic teacher, has been disciplined for simply explaining her church’s teaching on abortion.
ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
Gerard Henderson says that poor research can lead to absurd conclusions.
A READER’S THOUGHTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
William Kininmonth responds to a comment of mine in our 15 July newsletter: And the task is getting harder as crazy notions spread like wild fire and become wilder as they spread, often claiming the authority of science, and using the muscle of popular mass culture to cower most people into acquiescence, if not belief.
He writes:
I was fortunate back in the late 1960s at graduate school to have a supervisor who would continually remind his charges, ‘There are no gods in meteorology. If you cannot work it out from first principles then you do not understand it. How different today when the ‘authority of science’ seems to be the basis for learning.
Climate change is a case in point. Essentially the IPCC (the climate gods) say: ‘before industrialisation Earth was in radiation equilibrium (it absorbed as much solar radiation as it emitted longwave radiation to space); adding more CO2 to the atmosphere reduces longwave emission to space, therefore it follows that the Earth will heat up. The caveat is that the only way to determine how much Earth will heat is through the projections of computer models – thus computer modellers have a hallowed place in the pantheon, the shaman of climate science.
It does not take too much to deconstruct this hypothesis. Earth receives excess solar radiation over the tropics and emits excess longwave radiation over middle and high latitudes. Even ‘near radiation equilibrium’ can only occur if excess heat is transported from the tropics to higher latitudes by the ocean and atmosphere circulations, the circulations of interacting fluids. Why should there not be a naturally varying climate? Because the computer models are so constrained to maintain stability that they cannot exhibit internal variability. Thus we have the brilliant conclusion that because the computer models exhibit little internal variability then the climate system also has little internal variability and any change is due to CO2!
It does not help that the computer models exhibit exaggerated warming, ‘which must be dangerous’. From first principles it can be shown that they have an order of magnitude exaggeration. And yet, Earth has warmed from the Little Ice Age when there were widespread crop losses and famine due to the cold and the shortened growing seasons. Satellites show a greening planet over recent decades as Earth has warmed and CO2 (a natural plant food) has increased. Given a preference I would take warming any day!
The (mistaken) authority of climate science and a popular mass culture are driving western civilisation into economic suicide. It should be of concern to everybody that the Russian Academy of Sciences openly disagrees with the CSIRO view, and the Chinese show no concern with the IPCC conclusions.
William Kininmonth joined the Bureau of Meteorology in 1960. He was Australian delegate to the World Meteorological Organization’s Commission for Climatology. He was a member of the Australian delegation negotiating the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, and a consultant on climate to the World Meteorological Organization. His book Climate Change: A Natural Hazard was published in 2004.
CORRECTION
The link to Nick Gibb’s speech in the 26 July newsletter was incorrect. This is it.
With best wishes to all our readers,
David Daintree
SUMMER SCHOOLS 2022
10-14 January – Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin – a one-week intensive reading course for people with some Latin, or a willingness to undertake some self-instruction or brush up beforehand. Guided readings of pieces from the Bible, Saints Ambrose, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, as well as poetry both sacred and secular, and good Latin narrative prose. This will be the Hobart Latin Summer School’s 30th year!
In the aftermath of Pope Francis’s recent motu proprio, it is important to point out that this course has nothing whatever to do with controversies over the language or the rite by which Mass is celebrated. True Latin is the official language of the western Church, but it is also rich in prose and poetry, sacred and secular. Moreover it is arguable that some knowledge of Latin is essential to the proper understanding of other European literature. T S Eliot wrote: ‘Without knowing any Latin you may write English poetry; I am not sure whether without Latin you can wholly understand it!’
17-21 January – Western Civilisation – an Overview. This is a pilot venture. We shall cover five major areas: History (Greece, Rome, the emergence of the modern world), Literature (Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare), Philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, the Scholastics, ethical theories), Theology (the person of Christ, Scripture, Sacraments) and Art (painting, Sculpture, architecture, music). Lectures by Xavier Young, Dr David Moltow, David Daintree.
We have had several expressions of interest already so are certain to go ahead (failing another Covid eruption). We are still keen to find a locally-based person (or persons) who would like to offer some broad-ranging lectures on western painting, sculpture and architecture.
Write for further details about either of these short courses.