A recent civil suit against a restaurant chain has made Dalrymple deeply critical of the US civil justice system:
It is against natural justice that a person should be able to make a claim against a defendant and have nothing to lose, only something to gain, whereas the other party, the defendant, loses whatever the outcome, in time, in worry, and financially (his costs are not recoverable either in theory or in practice).
Are slight reductions in unaffordable spending really austerity?
Suppose that, for a number of years, my spending had been larger than my income, so that I had accumulated a large debt. Suppose also that I had nothing to show for my excess expenditure, which has all gone to increase my level of current consumption. Interest payments on my debt now exceed my outlays on such items as food, clothing, and shelter. The bank to whom I owe the money tells me that things cannot continue like this.
I agree that things cannot go on in the same way, and, as a token of my seriousness, I promise that henceforth, I shall not drink my nightly bottle of Meursault but only half a bottle of Chablis. This will reduce my excess expenditure from, say, 6 percent of my annual income to 4 percent. I call this sacrifice of Meursault for Chablis “austerity.” Would anyone take me seriously?
Many aspects of life could perhaps be divided into classicism versus romanticism, says Dalrymple, writing at The New English Review. While he certainly identifies more with the rationalism of a David Hume or an Alexander Pope, Dalrymple also sees the need for the intuition and passion of a John Keats and wonders what the right balance between the two is.
Clearly Hume would be more in favour of classicism than of romanticism, and on the whole I am with him there. But virtues, aesthetic as well as moral, turn into vices when pushed too far; classicism can become dry, formalistic, and deadening if it is permitted to go on for too long, while romanticism, called into being as a revolt against it, can become in time posturing, insincere and hectoring. Clearly there is a need for both, but what is the happy medium between them? Can it actually exist?
You know the answer.
Human interest cannot be calibrated to its objects in strict proportion to their importance, says Dalrymple in New English Review. For example, take prurience about murder…
…not only because such a standard might not be easy to find or prove, but because human beings are simply not constituted like that, and it would be horrible if they were.
At Taki’s Magazine, Dalrymple once again shows that analysis of medical studies indicates that much modern medical activity is useless or even harmful. So why is it carried out?
[W]e can safely conclude that annual health checks as carried out in Britain are a waste of time—unless wasting time by occupying it is the whole object of the activity, in which case wasting time is not wasting time but using it gainfully. Gainfully, that is, to the person who wastes his time (the doctor) rather than has his time wasted for him (the patient). His time is well and truly wasted.
More research is needed. But in the meantime, lay off the milk and eat more yogurt and cheese.
Writing at Taki’s Magazine, Dalrymple takes on that genre of self-help books devoted to improving one’s time-management skills, or as one such book describes it, “successful self-management”:
[I]s the self an entity that can or ought to be managed? Surely the self and its manager in this case are one and the same. Or must I appeal to my inner department of human resources?
That Matthew Williams was a criminal should have been obvious to his victim. Her decision to return to his room may have been unwise, and ended in him eating her face until she died. But at least she didn’t judge him!
An Australian paper published in the Lancet shows that acetaminophen is no better than placebo in the relief of lower back pain. No matter, says Dalrymple. I’ll still take it. “So much for being a rational man.”