Life According to John

John Derbyshire, that is... I found this gem at the end of one of the Derb's denser articles, (this one about the trials of translating his pop-math book into Russian). I think it is a rather profound description of life and where within it value is to be found:

The nations of the world are great lumbering behemoths ridden and directed, more often than not, by gangsters, poseurs, or buffoons. Nestled in their coarse hides, though, are parasites like myself and Aliosha, not much bothered by great matters of state or the antics of vapid "celebrities," but endlessly fascinated by language, history, mathematics, music. We must be baffling to the gangsters and buffoons, as baffling as they are to us. Sometimes the rougher kind of rider will, with a flick of his crop, flatten a few of us. "Only in Russia is poetry respected — it gets people killed." So quipped a Russian poet, shortly before being killed himself by one of the biggest gangsters of all.

My own country is not like that, for which I am everlastingly grateful. In matters of national leadership, we trend much more towards the poseurs and buffoons than to the gangsters. Should things ever change, I hope, without of course being able truly to know, I should go on doing what I am doing, taking my pleasures as I take them now, and cherishing the freemasonry of thoughtful, bookish, skeptical, humorous, and unworldly people everywhere — the only fellowship of the spirit that means anything to me.