I’m annoyed. Stu and I blithely assumed that we could tackle Stob Ghabhar (something like Stob Goor) on the Blackmount tomorrow. Got myself some trousers in Black’s at lunchtime but it wasn’t until I was back at work that the need for gaiters hit me, so Ann and I went to Tiso after work. Though I’m a sceptic when it comes to expensive gear, the staff in Tiso are very experienced and knowledgeable: every time I visit the shop I pick up a gem of advice. This time it felt more like a shovelful of shit heaped on my bright fresh fledgling hopes. When I casually mentioned that I didn’t have an ice axe or crampons he immediately wrote off our intended hillwalk: “no way you can do any of the hills tomorrow”. He had been to the Cairngorms recently, waist deep in soft snow that lay on top of compacted snow and ice. That, I concede, is crampon conditions.
So we are left mired hopelessly in indecision. Stu’s picking me up at Stirling station, but after that, only time will tell.
Interesting to read about Roger Scruton, an intellectual giant and clearly a moral man, and his mission to reinvigorate conservatism. This led me to wonder: what is conservatism?
Burkean conservatives wish to conserve heritage; they advocate the current social climate. To a Burkean, any existing value or institution has undergone the correcting influence of past experience and ought to be respected.Burkeans do not reject change, as Burke wrote “a state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation,” but they insist that further change be organic, rather than revolutionary. Full article
If conservatism were only those things maybe I wouldn’t be quite so opposed to it. But does deliberate human action for change not count as organic, or does the organic only cover social evolution, incremental change, change that goes unnoticed most of the time and which isn’t directed by a person or group towards a social goal?
Could I be called a conservative?! I doubt it. It all seems so confused:
Because some conservatives value what they consider ‘natural’ (also in the sense of pre-existing and given), conservatives often appeal to biological theories and biological analogies.
So you find ugly theories such as Social Darwinism, justifying racism, among conservatives. But I can’t claim that all conservatives are racist. It’s not incompatible with the previous quotation, but neither is it implied by it, or necessary to the position. But those are the kinds of opinions and ideas that are associated with it, and which, I would contend, are natural to it. Is conservatism anything more than an instinctive fondness for, and attachment to, the old and extant? This can express itself in hostility to science (again a bit of contradiction), a belief in God, and religious observance (interesting also that conservatism is often an ingredient of environmentalism, and that many conservatives are eco-friendly conservationist types).
What I found remarkable is that there are people for whom conservatism is an ideology, a philosophy of life, promoted as a guide towards a better future – that it’s an attractive ism.
People do like their isms. I used to like my Marxism. I reject that now, but I’ve still got one: humanism. It’s still an ism but there’s enough room for intellectual honesty and freedom of thought, which one never allowed oneself as a Marxist (how’s this for intellectual stiffness – they’re even proud of their “intransigence”, and justify it with heaps of delusional sophistry).
I’m very intersted in Scruton’s critique of Animal Rights, Animal Rights and Wrongs.