Author |
Message |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.20.195
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 12:23 pm: | |
Good Lord, this is new to me. It explains a lot about his fiction (or perhaps just confirms it). http://www.denniswheatley.info/sams_books/lettertoposterity.htm |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 01:05 pm: | |
The letter is ugly, vicious and, as Ramsey says, not at all surprising. No doubt David Cameron keeps a copy of it under his pillow. |
Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.215
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 02:10 pm: | |
3300 words of whinge. One paragraph of methodology. Typical fuckwitted grumpy old man bullshit. |
Tony (Tony) Username: Tony
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.147.55.226
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 02:50 pm: | |
We've all done this. My place is facebook. |
Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.20.119
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 03:47 pm: | |
I don't think I have! |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 05:49 pm: | |
1947 . . . first stirrings of the Cold War? A mounting fear of communism that found its apex in the Vietnam War. Correct me if I'm wrong. |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.244.38
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 07:11 pm: | |
Actually, I find that letter more of an interesting insight into the times and into the attitudes of someone from the "upper echelons" of society, if you'd like to call them that. I don't think it shows a bad personality - just what he considered (from his position/situation) to be the concerns of the day. Yes, Hubert, I think that was the era of the first stirrings of the Cold War, so those views really don't surprise or shock me at all. |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.27.143.115
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 09:34 pm: | |
One certainly shouldn't be surprised that members of the ruling class are motivated by a vicious hatred of democracy, equality and the common people. The only surprise is in finding it so openly expressed. |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.244.38
| Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 10:16 pm: | |
Yes, but was it *hatred* of democracy, etc or simply fear of what might result from it (from his perspective)? I definitely don't agree with his views, but I can understand why he held them at that time - kind of "putting myself in his shoes during that era" I guess. |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.200
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 09:02 am: | |
And the 1970s? The 1980s? The current decade? The names may change but the mindset doesn't change in any way. It's not one frightened individual, it's a position of class loyalty. |
Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.184.63
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 09:39 am: | |
>>>Actually, I find that letter more of an interesting insight into the times and into the attitudes of someone from the "upper echelons" of society, if you'd like to call them that. I don't think it shows a bad personality I don't see how contextualising despicable attitudes makes them any less despicable. This does show a despicable personality, because that attitude is despicable. As David Brent humorously observes, it was okay to call the Dambusters dog Nigger in the 1940s because that was before racism was bad. |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.244.38
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 10:59 am: | |
>>As David Brent humorously observes, it was okay to call the Dambusters dog Nigger in the 1940s because that was before racism was bad.<< Well, yes, that's what I'm trying to say (but probably not very well). Times change. Attitudes change. In the 60s, we thought it was perfectly OK to have white men black up their faces and sing every week as prime-time family entertainment (ie. The Black and White Minstrel Show, for those who are too young to remember it). Or to have white actors black up their faces to play black/Asian people in films. White people at that time simply didn't realise that would cause offence to black people. But times change and we now know differently. However, I agree with Joel that the mindset doesn't change much - there are still bigoted people around today, of course there are. But I still find that Wheatley letter an interesting insight into the mindset of an upper class individual in that particular era. To me, he clearly *was* frightened about the spread of Communism and believing that Socialism was just one step away from it. I'm sure he was frightened about it because of what it would mean for him and his kind, but he clearly still believed it was going to cause a big problem. By the way, I've never read a single work from Wheatley so I don't know anything at all about his writing - save from films made from his books like The Devil Rides Out. |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.15.139
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 12:13 pm: | |
"I don't see how contextualising despicable attitudes makes them any less despicable." Really? Future generations may regard things that each of us is doing (or not doing) right now as utterly despicable. I think we'll (rightly) be seen as responsible for a dark age for the environment, our treatment of the elderly, our medieval prison systems, our profiteering, our sexual and psychological ignorance and our lack of vision. And those are just some of the despicable attitudes that I'm aware of, and by action or inaction tacitly condone. There are many more that we're simply ignorant of. From someone else's point of view, we are the benighted past. On the contrary, Gary, context is everything. |
Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.184.63
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 12:38 pm: | |
Oh, in that case, Wheatley's letter is perfectly acceptable. No more pernicious than me forgetting to recycle my rubbish. Yeah, context. |
Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.184.63
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 12:41 pm: | |
>>>To me, he clearly *was* frightened He doesn't sound too frightened to me. He sounds like as if he wants to get the army to work. As I said, his methodology towards the end is hilariously brief and pitiful - just lip service to that confounded moral decency folk have to adhere to, dammit. In private, he was probably wanking himself off over thoughts of the military slaying proles in the streets. |
Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg
Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 12:49 pm: | |
I didn't get the impression that he "hated democracy" as such, but was afraid of the effects of it, particularly when combined with burgeoning communication technology - which was, as I understand his drift, giving the ignorant too much say and taking power from what he saw as the intellectual and political elite, and also creating populist politics. Yes, he comes across as arrogant, and ignorant in many respects, but he was right about populist politics, particularly at the moment when we are ruled by elitist chameleons (perhaps David Icke is right as well, chameleons are lizards aren’t they?). That of course, doesn’t make democracy or global (and democratic) communication wrong, far from it, it has given voice to a lot of people who would otherwise been completely gagged by their vile governments (blogs, twitter etc). The positives far outweigh the negatives. The point is, there are always are positives and negatives. Also, it is hard, even for me who grew up in the 60s and the height of the Cold War, to grasp the dread of communism that permeated that era, and this letter. Mutual nuclear destruction was seen as a very real possibility. The Soviet Union was doing a good job of mimicking the recently deposed incumbent of the world domination throne (Cuba, Hungary, Poland, and, Czechoslovakia etc. Korea of course - which was a dress rehearsal for WW3 - and Vietnam, the Northern forces of both those tragic little Countries were equipped with MiGs, so it wasn’t just China and the USA with their fingers in those sordid and bloody pies). People were scared. As Protodroid rightly says, context is everything. Cheers Terry |
Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.208.239
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 01:21 pm: | |
I think it depends where (or rather when) you're standing. Back in the 'seventies I worked with a West Indian guy. He was great mates with an English chap. Every morning you'd hear "'morning, fat boy" from Ozzie, and "'morning, nigger" from Steve. It seems really shocking now, but I don't recall it being so forty years ago when I was a lad. I guess if the two hadn't been such close friends it would have been unpleasant, but they were, and it just seemed part of their banter. Nowadays it would, quite rightly, seem offensive (that overused word again), but then, not so much. |
Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.118.224
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 01:30 pm: | |
I feel that your sarcasm weakens rather than strengthens your argument, Gary. |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 01:35 pm: | |
We've known for a long time that Japan had already surrendered when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated, and that the USSR only developed the nuclear bomb after US plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Moscow were leaked. The US and its allies created the Cold War in order to have an ideological weapon again the trade union movement. More recently, we've learned that Thatcher's government held talks with army leaders to set up a military coup if Labour (led by Michael Foot) won the 1984 general election. As the recent campaign by vested interests against US healthcare reform shows, 'genuine fear' is very easily manufactured to ensure that 'wrong' voices are silenced. |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 01:37 pm: | |
In the late sixties a communist friend of my father's who was actually very pro-USSR and all that finally managed to pay the country of his dreams a visit. Don't forget this was a time when we knew next to nothing about life on the Other Side. Lengthy cues in knee-deep snow for just about everything - including water and potatoes. Freezing weather Vh very little or no heating anywhere. Unanounced power cuts. He very nearly got jailed for taking a photograph of a statue. An incessant feeling of being watched. Rotten food, rotten service, busses and trains so dirty he didn't want to use the seats. Any kind of initiative was treated as a major crime. To his chagrin he wasn't even allowed to talk to 'ordinary' people. Upon his return he was so disillusioned he virtually looked like a broken man. |
Joel (Joel) Username: Joel
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 02:07 pm: | |
Stalinism was not Communism – as the CPGB learned to its terminal cost. (And no, I don't think Wheatley was a Trotskyist.) |
Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec
Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.244.38
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 03:03 pm: | |
"Stalinism was not Communism" True. Communism with its true meaning (equality, etc) is unquestionably the right thing. Problem is, people are selfish beings and tend to work for their own ends - gaining power and enjoying all the nice things which go with it. Hence, any "perfect" system like Communism can become corrupt - which is what happened in Russia (and elsewhere - has there ever been a "perfect" Communist state?) But going back to the point Gary made about context - of course context matters. I simply can't understand the argument that it doesn't. As I first said, times change and attitudes change with them. There's no denying that, surely? |
Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert
Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.61.103
| Posted on Friday, August 17, 2012 - 04:08 pm: | |
Context is everything. I thought that 'colored people' was the right term to designate blacks until I innocently tried it on a group of African Americans (or whatever they're called nowadays) way back in 1990. I nearly got smacked in the mouth. |