Harald Boehmer, a
chemical specialist in the field of natural dyes, once wrote: ‘Synthetic dyes
contain just one colour. But in madder
[a natural, root-based, red dye] there is red, of course, but also blue and
yellow are in there as well. It makes it
softer and at the same time more interesting’.
What actually he is
saying is that natural dyes have a different sensory (and arguably
psychological) effect than artificial dyes.
Both appear similar to the naked eye, but one, for want of a better
term, leaves a more lingering aftertaste.
A case can be made to
extend the conclusion beyond merely dyes and colours. Junk food, for example, which while
fulfilling the primary role of filling our stomachs is supposedly lacking in so
many other ways.
Indeed, an argument can
be advanced that we are creatures who are designed to be fed, stimulated,
informed, developed, fulfilled etc.
on different levels, both conscious and unconscious, in every facet of our
lives. Something can truly satisfy us only
to the extent that it meets these various needs. If it doesn’t then various mouths of our
nature go unsatisfied.
In a somewhat ‘more is
less’ analogy, we can also argue that the modern world, while snowing us under
with new products and technologies and sensations, is at the same time starving
us of real satisfactions. How else to
explain the relentless popular drive to consume?
The thing is, we know
when something satisfies us or otherwise. We don’t have to mull over it, we give it an
automatic thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
The increasingly rare
experience of, say, seeing a good film in the cinema can have the same physical
effect as if we had enjoyed a good meal.
A feeling of being sated, of not being driven in pursuit of some new sensation, of being comfortable
taking time out to mentally chew over what we have seen.
Unlike most modern
art—indeed, most modern anything—we
don’t have to interrogate ourselves as to whether we enjoyed it or not, we just
know. If you have to rationalise
something to arrive at how you think
you should feel about it, then you are just kidding yourself.
People are increasingly
being trained to have no confidence in their own judgements. We have spin-doctors in every element of our
existence, not just in politics. They
are often called ‘critics’ and ‘experts’.
Their technique is generally to patronise and sneer at those who do not
share their elevated world view, all as a way of beating them into submission. Yet the truth is that if you dig down into
their philosophies, then you generally find very little. At root, they are what the Americans call
‘snake-oil salesmen’.
And the snake oil that
they are selling is the same old snake oil dressed up in different bottles that
has been around for hundreds of years. Its
modern guise is that of the half-baked liberal agenda—or as Hillary Clinton
calls it, the ‘new decency’—of constantly evolving rights and empowerments and categories
of victimhood. It claims to be building
a new society, but really what it is engaged in is the destruction of the old,
whose roots lie unbroken back to times immemorial.
‘The peasantry is the repository of the
culture of a nation,
not the tired nonsense of festivals and
plays,
but a bridal chest in which is gathered
what is worthwhile
down the ages,
the sole surviving land-line running
back to base
beneath the creeping barrage of history
. . .’
Or something like that.
