Dalrymple And More

On June 2, 2005, Theodore Dalrymple (Dr. Anthony Daniels) spoke at the Harvard Club in New York to celebrate the release of his book Our Culture, What's Left Of It: The Mandarins and the Masses.

The following is an excerpt (23:00 to 25:00)^a:

Well, it often seems to me that many intellectuals in the Western world have acquired - or perhaps learned is a better word - the kind of blindness brought on by dogmatic theoretical propositions of the Galenical kind, and they approach the world much as Dr. Hall^b approached his patients with an unshakable theory that led, and leads, to absurd and often dangerous prescriptions. The patient's survival is in spite of, and not because of, the prescriptions of the doctor - or the intellectual - and is attributable to his strong constitution.

However, any constitution can be undermined if enough clisters, sudorifics, emetics, diuretics, venesections, and purges, are given. My book, then, is a protest against the blind disregard of reality caused by theoretical presuppositions that seem to me at least as absurd as Galen's humoral theory. And as to why people adopt theories that are in conflict with the most minimal honest reflection and observation, I'll quote T. S. Eliot who, while not always right, was in my opinion right about this.

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

He might have added "the endless struggle to look well in the eyes of their fellow intellectuals and fear of losing caste." And it is against this dereliction of duty that I have written.

The video:

Theodore Dalrymple: Our Culture, what's left of it

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRghdJjNqg)

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A related video from Dr. Thomas Sowell:

Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGvYqaxSPp4)

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Sowell uses a few important quotes in the book mentioned:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. [1]

-- C. S. Lewis


A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will. [2]

--Eric Hoffer


The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. [3]

--Paul Johnson

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a. I apologize for any transcription errors. I deleted various speech disfluencies.

b. The Dr. Hall being referred to here is Dr. John Hall, a 17th century physician (Wikipedia). The book being referred to is Hall's Select observations on English bodies, or Cures both empericall and historicall performed upon very eminent persons in desperate diseases (1657).

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[1] Lewis, C. S. "God in the dock." (1970).

[2] Hoffer, Eric. The temper of our time. Buccaneer Books, 1992.

[3] Johnson, Paul. The Quotable Paul Johnson: A Topical Compilation of His Wit, Wisdom and Satire. Macmillan, 1994.