In the June issue of The Critic, the doubtful doctor is perplexed by yet another bizarrely worded BBC headline.

“Indigenous” is clearly a term of art: it does not mean merely native to a place, born and brought up there, but — nowadays at any rate — a higher state of being, almost an escape from original, or any other kind of, sin. Indigenes are inherently victims rather than perpetrators.

Over at Takimag, our world-weary doctor laments the social, cultural, and economic decline of Britain and France, although not to the extent as one famous French historian.

Whatever you think, Britain in this respect is very much in the same boat as France. The country has come to resemble more and more a large hotel rather than a homeland of anyone in particular, luxurious for some but cheap and run-down for many.

In the June edition of New English Review, the skeptical doctor pens a wide-ranging essay on invasive insects from China, lizard courting rituals, the theory of evolution, and medical advances.

To jump from watching lizards, or any of the other animals that used to be called lower, to explanations or judgments (or lack of them) about human behaviour is an attempt to disburden ourselves from the inescapable choices that we must make every day of our lives, and therefore of our moral responsibility that weighs on our shoulders like an immoveable backpack.

 

In his last Takimag piece, our helpful doctor describes his sociological adventure volunteering for a few hours as a shop assistant at the Chinese antiques store of some friends.

I suppose the reason for this is our increasingly democratic sentiment, or at least protestations of democratic sentiment. After all, everyone can be a victim, but few can be a hero. Besides, we like to elevate ordinary people who are just like us, as we like to pull down those who are clearly our betters.

In the June issue of the august New Criterion, our cultured doctor attends an exhibition at the Museé Picasso in Paris of art that had been deemed ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis in Munich in 1937.

Please note that this essay is behind a paywall at this time.

The original exhibition, comprising “degenerate” (entartete) works mainly by German artists that had been confiscated and sequestered from German museums and collectors, was intended to provoke the contempt and hatred of its two million visitors. Indignation that the state had paid good taxpayer money for this art was intentionally aroused.

In last week’s Takimag column, our good doctor finds himself having to sit through a thoroughly awful impromptu piano performance at a French railway station.

It has been said that, in any large city, we are never very far from a rat. In life, we are never very far from a psychological puzzle or a philosophical question.

In the May issue of The Critic, our inquisitive doctor calls into question the typical British politically correct, progressive corporate propaganda.

With all this do-goodery, it is a wonder that anyone in the company has time for anything else, though obviously at least some employees do: for how else to explain that the chief executive is paid £6,630,000 a year, of which 84 per cent is bonuses, and has been given £6,000,000 in shares? This, of course, is only part of the company’s commitment to equity.

Dr. Dalrymple returns to The Oldie with a piece commenting on a recent Canadian study concerning the success of medical surgeries being impacted by their timing during the week.

Please note that this essay is behind a paywall at this time.

It is easier to start a health scare than to end one. Likewise, it’s easier to raise public anxieties than to calm them. Perhaps the clearest example is the worldwide panic over the alleged link between the MMR vaccine and childhood autism. No matter how many times the original research is shown to have been faulty to the point of fraud, a residue of suspicion remains in the public mind– to damaging effect.

Back at Takimag, our trusting doctor gets conned online while booking a hotel room after getting redirected to a scam website.

This was a minor inconvenience, but minor inconveniences add up, and life seems after a certain age to be more and more an accumulation or concatenation of minor inconveniences.