fiberglass TOS phaser props known to exist. The prop, which was featured in the hands of a security officer in the episode “Assignment: Earth”, is expected to fetch upwards of $60,000.

TOS Phaser Expected To Sell for $60,000+
The headline item up for grabs at the upcoming Propworx auction is a 47-year-old original series phaser prop featured in a close-up view during the episode “Assignment: Earth”, which aired March 29th, 1968. Only two such phasers are known to exist. This one was positively identified thanks to a unique scratch mark and blemish due to excess paint in addition to matching up the orientation of the phaser’s nozzle ring to what was seen on screen. Propworx, the company providing all of the props for auction, says that the phaser was probablySpace Museum is overseeing the 4th and latest restoration of the original Enterprise model used to film The Original Series. For one day only they let the public in on the process, and TrekMovie’s Jared Whitley has the scoop and photos below.

HERNDON, VA – A small piece of history beamed into town today.

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum held an open house to showcase some of its restoration facilities, and staff spoke with visitors about how they tend to artifacts in their possession at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, a converted hangar bay in Herndon, Virginia, about 25 miles from Washington, DC. Thousands of visitors were able to go through rooms that are off-limits the rest of the year.

The marquee attraction of this event was the original model


used for the starship Enterprise. No bloody A, B, C, or D.

Conservation experts are touching-up the prop, which is over 50 years old at this point. The model had been on display in the 1st floor Smithsonian Museum Store continuously since 2000, so to see it again in the open was as sweet as a glass of tranya. The restoration efforts are preparing the E for her new, more prominent home in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall along side such iconic flying machines as the Spirit of St. Louis, the single-engine plane flown by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 on the first solo trans-Atlantic flight, and the Apollo 11 command module, which landed Neil and Buzz safely on the lunar surface in 1969.

Thousands of people came to seewas finished, there were internal battles between Gene Roddenberry and writer Harold Livingston that saw multiple rewrites arrive on the set daily, and the company that was hired to do the visual effects had to be replaced late in production, causing a frantic rush to have the film ready for its release date. All of those factors, as well as several others, resulted in a film that went wildly over budget and was viewed by some as being dull and boring.

“Return to Tomorrow” is a 672-page book that will provide an oral history of the film, compiled from interviews with 60 of the film’s cast and creators, conducted as The Motion Picture was being prepared for release.

The interviews include William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the entire cast, along


from the various script drafts of episodes, to casting, critic and fan reaction from that time, and much more, including analysis of Star Trek‘s Nielsen ratings, which often tell a different story than the one we’ve been told for the past 48 years.

“These Are The Voyages” Volumes 1

The first two volumes were published by Jacob Brown Media Group, and are available through the company’s website, as well as Amazon and other outlets. The third volume, covering the series’ tumultuous third season, was originally scheduled for release in December. The publisher would like to postpone the release until some time next year, feeling the people need more time to find the first two books. Cushman, however, would like to get it out sooner, and has devised a Kickstarter campaignNine with Michael Piller, which premiered in January of 1993.

Rick Berman offered a somewhat different account in an interview he gave on May 31, 2006, conducted by the Archive of American Television, which is part of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. TrekMovie reported on this wide-ranging interview in 2009 [click here to see video]:

"When Gene died, both Michal Piller and I were involved in creating and writing Deep Space Nine, and we never really got a chance to talk to him about it because he was quite ill at that point. But even with Deep Space Nine and later Voyager, and Enterprise I felt it was important that as long as something had the Star Trek name on it that it stayed true to Gene’s belief


at Mashable, producer Gary Kurtz blasts a number of myths about the 1977 film Star Wars, one of which relates to the franchise that began a decade earlier: Star Trek. Mashable’s Chris Taylor asked Kurtz first about the influence of Joseph Campbell’s book on mythology "The Hero With A Thousand Faces," which Kurtz noted was overblown. They then went on to say that there was something else that was more influential…

But was Star Wars actually more influenced by the Star Trek TV series, which was undergoing a hugely popular revival in syndication in the early 1970s?
Yes. [George] did talk about that [show] quite a bit. I mean Star Trek, the early series, was pretty much all human drama. There was a touch of humor in it, but mostan overall philosophy that favors keeping original material over creating an ideal physical appearance, while keeping the artifact from deteriorating any more. Conservation follows the preservation philosophy and is minimally invasive, utilizing scientific investigation and techniques to maintain original materials, preserving the object’s physical history of ownership and use.

The almost 50-year-old piece of Star Trek history was previously treated by the museum back when it was donated in 1974 and again in 1984 and 1991. The model was first on display at the "Life in the Universe" display but had been moved at least twice before ending up in the gift shop in 1999. One of the reasons for the move was concern over how the ship was being displayed by hanging it and how that could possibly


Lunar Module (and the starship Enterprise). There will also be a new floor plan, new digital "mobile experience" and more.

Promo video for the new Milestone’s of Flight Hall – future home of the original USS Enterprise model

Today TrekMovie finishes up our exclusive interview with writer David Gerrold – this time Gerrold talks frankly about his troubled time working on Star Trek: The Next Generation and coming into conflict with Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman, being ‘blackballed’ in Hollywood and he even gives his thoughts on JJ Abrams Star Trek.

Gerrold Interview Part 2

In part 1 of our interview with Star Trek writer David Gerrold we focused on his time with the original series and animated series, in part 2 we talk about his tumultuous time in the early yearsthe scenes books, plus four e-books, thanks to David. Just click on the contest embed below.

A few days ago we had Douglas Trumbull talking about "saving" Star Trek: The Motion Picture and now in a new interview George Takei is talking about how that first Trek feature was "in trouble from the start." Listen to Takei talk about TMP, failed Paramount salary negotiations and more below.

Takei Talks Star Trek: TMP Troubles & Paramount Salary Negotiations

Yesterday George Takei was the guest on for KCRW Radio’s "The Business," a show about the film and TV business in LA. The show is hosted by Kim Masters, a veteran entertainment industry journalist. After talking about his new documentary "To Be Takei," Masters brought up the subject of the troubles with making Star


Trek: The Motion Picture and also how cast members were paid in the subsequent films. Here is the exchange.

Masters: So going back in time, I wrote quite a bit about the first Star Trek movie…There was a lot of dysfunction in the Star Trek family. Originally they didn’t include Spock and Leonard Nimoy had big issues with Paramount, I think they were in litigation. There were also problems with Gene Roddenberry and they brought in Harold Livingston to write the script and the two of them were at war with each other. I read, and I think I even wrote myself, about how Livingston would write his version of the script and then Gene Roddenberry at one point was intercepting the pages and substituting his own and youplay. He said this is going to be the only one – The Wrath of Khan – he will not do Spock any more because it was affecting his career. So he made them agree and had them write it into his contract that his character would be killed off at the end of Wrath of Khan and he was indeed killed off, but Nick Meyer, the writer, managed to slip in one little bit before he gets killed off. He touches
Dr. McCoy and shares a very cryptic line "remember, remember" and then he goes into that radiation chamber. And it turns out that was the key, and because Wrath of Khan became a box office bonanza for Paramount, they wanted to do another Star Trek film. But


and screenwriter who is best known to Star Trek fans for writing “The Trouble with Tribbles”, one of the most famous and beloved episodes of the original Star Trek series. He went on to pen two episodes of The Animated Series (“More Tribbles, More Troubles” and “Bem”), and served as a story editor on Star Trek: The Next Generation. His non-fiction book, The World of Star Trek, was for many years considered one of the definitive books about The Original Series.

Gerrold has written many non-Trek science fiction books, including the “Star Wolf” series. His novel The Martian Child was adapted into a feature film starring John Cusack, which was released in 2007.

TrekMovie sat down with the science fiction legend for a 2-part interview where we discussed his feelingsCon over the weekend, Nimoy gave his thoughts on his half-century as Spock. He made an appearance via Skype to a packed audience of convention goers who wished he could have beamed over to share the hour with them in person. Relevant to today’s anniversary, there was a point when one fan asked how Nimoy how he landed the job as Spock. The actor recalled the story about a guest role on a series called The Lieutenant, created by a certain Mr. Gene Roddenberry, who was so impressed with Nimoy’s performance and offered him the role as Spock. Watch him tell the story below.

The Lieutenant – Birthplace of Star Trek

Nimoy’s episode of The Lieutenant (which starred Gary Lockwood) was "In the Highest Tradition," which aired February 29, 1964.


It also featured Majel Barrett. Nimoy and Barrett appeared in Roddenberry’s first pilot for Star Trek "The Cage," which was shot at the end of that year, and Lockwood appeared in Roddenberry’s second attempt at a Star Trek pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” which was shot in 1965. The episode was written by Roddenberry and was also directed by Marc Daniels, who went on to direct 14 episodes of Star Trek. Here is a clip from The Lieutenant featuring Nimoy, Lockwood, and Barrett.

Watch a clip of the episode below (via Amalie1701 on YouTube).

Tomorrow TrekMovie will share the full video of Nimoy’s SLCC appearance.

On September 8, 1966 the first episode of of an ambitious sci-fi show created by Gene Roddenberry aired on NBC – in color! 48a late edition to the crew for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, after he initially turned down a deal to do the effects for the movie. In a new video he talks about how he came on board to ‘save’ the movie. Watch it below.

Trumbull on ‘Saving’ Star Trek: The Motion Picture

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Douglas Trumbull talks about how he was brought in help save Star Trek: The Motion Picture after the "studio was panicking." In the end Trumbull’s work on TMP earned him an Academy Award nomination, but the amount of work literally put him in the hospital. Trumbull explains in the video below.

Yesterday the world was shocked by the death of actor/comedian (and Star Trek fan) Robin Williams. Many Star Trek luminaries,


including some who worked with Williams, went to social media to express their condolences. We have compiled those below, plus take a look at some Star Trek/Williams connections – including the TNG role written for him (but played by someone else).

Trek Celebs Wish Robin Williams A Farewell “Nanu, Nanu”

Joining the chorus of millions, many Trek stars expressed their grief over the passing of comedy legend Robin Williams. This included Wil Wheaton, who worked with Williams in the 1997 movie Flubber:

Robin Williams could not have been kinder or more generous when I worked with him in Flubber. My heart goes out to his family.

Pegg is also notable as he is the star of the 2015 sci-fi comedy film Absolutely Anything, which features Robin Williams voicing an alien (along witha number of former Monty Python members). It appears this will be the last feature film with Williams.

Williams Connection To Star Trek

Robin Williams was also reportedly a big fan of Star Trek and he has a couple of interesting connections to the franchise. Having cut his teeth in science fiction with Mork and Mindy, one day in 1978 Williams took a break during the shooting the show on the Paramount lot to visit the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He rode his bicycle to the soundstage, met the cast, and visited the bridge of the Enterprise. According to Walter Koenig (from his book "Chekov’s Enterprise") "his wide-eyed admiration not withstanding, his squeaky-voiced reaction to all the buttons and panels is, "Hmmmm, microwave!""

Williams famous ‘nanu nanu’ handshake


from "Mork and Mindy" was clearly influenced by "Star Trek"

Speaking of Mork and Mindy, in 1982 Star Trek’s William Shatner (playing himself) literally ‘beamed in’ to the show, with a cameo appearance in the episode "Mork, Mindy, and Mearth Meet MILT," watch it below. If you listen closely, Williams’ Mork makes a reference to the rumors that Spock was going to die in Star Trek II (which was still to be released).

In 1991 Williams again connected to the franchise. During the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, executive producer Rick Berman wrote the role of Professor Berlinghoff Rasmussen in "A Matter of Time" for Williams. However, Williams had to decline because of his role as Peter Pan in the film Hook. The TNG role ultimately wentTV division. The world rights deal was brokered by Laurie Fox of the Linda Chester Agency.

Unlike other books which have been written by fans for fans, The 50 Year Mission is an incisive, no-holds-barred look at five decades of Star Trek, told EXCLUSIVELY by the people who were there, in their own words, sharing stories they’ve never told before. The authors have covered the franchise for over three decades and have assembled the ultimate guide to a television classic celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016, and which serves as the final word on the first five decades of this unique pop culture phenomena.

The 50 Year Mission unveils the oftentimes shocking true story of the history of Star Trek and chronicles the trials, tribulations – and tribbles – that


in the words of the people who were actually there, who decades later are finally ready to tell the real story behind the making of an indelible television institution.

"We could not be more excited to be publishing this essential volume," says Deneen. "The 50 Year Mission is likely to be the final word on the first five decades of this incredible franchise with stories about the making of the series that will shock, surprise and thrill you."

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MARK A. ALTMAN has been hailed as "the world’s foremost Trekspert" by The Los Angeles Times. In addition to having covered Star Trek for over a decade as a journalist for such magazines as Cinefantastique, Sci-Fi Universe and Geek, for which he is founding publisher and editorial consultant, Altman alsowrote numerous issues of the Star Trek comic book for DC and Malibu Comics.

But Altman is probably best known to rabid Star Trek fans as the writer and producer of the beloved love letter to Star Trek and award-winning cult classic, Free Enterprise, starring William Shatner and Eric McCormack (Will & Grace), a film about two dysfunctional Star Trek fans who meet their idol, William Shatner, and find out he’s more screwed up than they are. The film won the WGA Award for Best New Writer at the AFI Film Festival and was released theatrically in 1999. A sequel is in the works.

Since leaving entertainment journalism, Altman has been a writer/producer on such hit TV series as ABC’s Castle and USA Network’s Necessary Roughness as well as the


Executive Producer of HBO’s Femme Fatales, which Entertainment Weekly called "a badass-chick anthology series" and the Huffington Post hailed as "Pulpy Fun."

In addition, Altman produced the $30 million film adaptation of the bestselling videogame, DOA: Dead Or Alive, as well as well as House of the Dead, based on the videogame series from Sega.

Altman has spoken at numerous industry events and conventions, including the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, ShowBiz Expo as well as the Variety/Final Draft Screenwriters Panel at the Cannes Film Festival. He was a juror at the prestigious 2002 Sitges Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain and has been a frequent guest and panelist at Comic-Con held annually in San Diego, CA, and a two-time juror for the Comic-Con Film Festival.

EDWARD GROSS is currently theExecutive Editor of Movie Magic and Life Story magazines, Contributing Editor to Geek and regular contributor to Sci Fi Now. In a career devoted to covering film, television and comics as an entertainment journalist, he has been on the editorial staff of such publications as Cinescape, Starlog, Film Fantasy, Femme Fatales, CFQ, Fangoria, Comics Scene, SFX, RetroVision, Not of This Earth and Vampires & Slayers. Additionally, he’s contributed to a number of magazines, among them Nightlife, Slaughterhouse, Total Movie, Premiere, Heroes, Monsterland, Sci-Fi Universe, TV Zone and official publications based on Smallville, Star Trek, Superman, James Bond and Alias.

And there are three newly announced officially licensed Star Trek non-fiction books coming from Insight Editions: "Star Trek: Dressing the Final Frontier," followed by "Star Trek Travel Guide: Vulcan" and


Star Trek with creator Gene Roddenberry. The doc will utilize lost footage from an on-camera interview done by producer James Forsher with Roddenberry back in April 1985. Forsher’s original interview was for a show on censorship in Hollywood. According to Forsher:

Roddenberry gave me an interview that explored the genesis of how Star Trek came about, his personal story of how he fought to create the show in the vision of the future he believed in. He passionately described the battles he fought with the networks, studios and an intolerant society that made the show a truly groundbreaking event in modern television history.

However (somewhat ironically) the Roddenberry interview was cut from the final show – and the interview was lost in a vault for almost 30 years. Now thewas that the production of the film was a troubled one. Filming began before the script was finished, there were internal battles between Gene Roddenberry and writer Harold Livingston that saw multiple rewrites arrive on the set daily, and the company that was hired to do the visual effects had to be replaced late in production, causing a frantic rush to have the film ready for its release date. All of those factors, as well as several others, resulted in a film that went wildly over budget and was viewed by some as being dull and boring.

And today TrekMovie has the first look at a newly announced book "Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture," from author Preston Neal Jones and publisher Creature Features.


This "long-lost" 672-page book will provide an oral history of the film compiled from interviews with 60 of the film’s cast and creators, conducted as The Motion Picture was being prepared for release.

Cover for new book – based on original painting by Roger Stine intended for Cinefantastique (courtesy the Daren R. Dochterman Collection)

The interviews include William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the entire cast, along with director Robert Wise and writer/producer (and creator of Star Trek) Gene Roddenberry. In addition there are dozens of additional interviews with visual effect artists, illustrators, model builders and technicians. According to a press release for the book "no aspect of the film’s creation is overlooked" and it also promises the "unvarnished, uncensored truth" of how the first Star Trek feature was created.

The sourcematerial for "Return to Tomorrow" was originally intended for publication by Cinefantastique magazine in 1979, and author Preston Neal Jones was given unparalleled access to the cast and crew of the film. However owing to the late completion of the film and ambitious scope of the manuscript, it was never published—until now. According to the publisher, the entire manuscript has been "laboriously fact-checked" for release in book form.

Preston Neal Jones’ first excursion into cinematic oral history, “James Whale Remem- bered,” appeared in Forrest J Ackerman’s original Famous Monsters of Filmland. His first book, Heaven and Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter, was hailed as one of the finest works of its kind and earned the Rondo Award for Book of the Year


film series – and he said with television he had to walk a very tight rope. You know, we were dealing with issues at that time – the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War – and that episode where Kirk kissed Uhura, a white man kissing a black woman, that was blacked out in all of the Southern states: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Our ratings plummeted!

(Gene) said he knows that the LGBT issue is a civil rights issue, but he had to keep the show on the air as a television series, and if he pushed the envelope too far he wouldn’t be able to address any of the issues. He’d be canceled. Same thing with feature films now: bigger budget, higher risk. Andtwo of us out, it is now safe for “Star Trek” to deal with LGBT equality.

Takei at Seattle Pride Parade July 10, 2014 – actor says time is now for LGBT character in “Star Trek”

The issue of introducing an LGBT character into Trek been debated for a long time. In 1987 “Trouble With Tribbles” writer David Gerrold tried to break the barrier with an episode titled “Blood and Fire” for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation but it was rejected due to the controversial nature – leading to Gerrold leaving the show (he would eventually use a reworked version the script for the fan series Star Trek Phase II). The possibility came up again a decade later during the later seasons of Star Trek Voyager,


but again it never made it to air. By the time the franchise went off the air in 2005, gay characters had become common on network TV, which may be why writer/producer Brannon Braga has since expressed regret over how Trek was not “forward thinking” on this issue.

As for the new movie era, director/producer JJ Abrams actually expressed surprise that Trek never had a gay character and said he was open to it, but it didn’t happen in either Star Trek or Into Darkness. For his part writer and expected director of the next Star Trek film has also said he would like to see it happen.

Trekking Around The Issue

While Star Trek has not had an explicitly gay character (in filmed canon), the franchise has skirted around LGBTwhen Seinfeld star Jason Alexander guest starred on Voyager episode "Think Tank." As this UPN promo notes, "he may look familiar, but there is nothing funny about him."

Alexander broke from the George Costanza mold of playing a short, stocky, slow-witted bald man chasing women out of his league to play a short, stocky, quick-witted alien chasing Seven of Nine.

Teri Hatcher as "real and spectacular" Sidra and as B.G. Robinson (TNG: "The Outrageous Okona")

Kramer had his own crossovers, including the most famous member of the Trek family to guest on Seinfeld – DS9 star Armin Shimerman, appearing as the title character in “The Caddy.” Endlessly resourceful, Stan the Caddy has the answer to every problem (as seen in the clip below) – but, ironically, costs Kramer a lot of


money with bad advice on lawsuit.

The episode "The Caddy" is also noteworthy as it features Trek veterans Brenda Strong (Rashella– TNG "When the Bough Breaks") and Phil Morris (who has appeared in TOS, Star Trek III, DS9 and VOY) playing the popular recurring Seinfeld character,attorney Jackie Chiles. All three Trek vets can be seen in the clip below.

And the above are just a sampling of the many people who visited both Seinfeld’s New York City and Star Trek’s future. However, the most important influence Seinfeld may have had on the Trek legacy is helping Wrath of Khan enter the popular culture. In the eighth season episode "The Foundation,” Jerry concludes Star Trek II was the best of the Trek films after a marathon viewing with Kramer (who likesfranchises, this updated edition of the acclaimed Ships of the Line hardcover collection now includes more than 75 additional images brought together for the first time in book format—spectacular renderings featured in the highly successful Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series. With text by Star Trek’s own Michael Okuda, the story of each of these valiant starships now comes to life.

A legendary sci-fi epic as you’ve never seen it before—including the Klingon Bird of Prey, the Bride of Chaotica, and the Enterprise herself, all literally bursting off the page.

Star Trek is one of the most enduring franchises in Hollywood entertainment history. Part of the public consciousness since 1966, it spans the worlds of television and the movies and counts millions of fans worldwide. Now Star Trek


Pop-Ups delivers seven iconic Star Trek moments in a new way—popping off the page in three dimensions. From the original USS Enterprise in flight to the dreaded Borg cube from The Next Generation and beyond, here is an unforgettable series of alien encounters and thrilling action scenes, featuring memorable moments from Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Bursting with energy and ingenuity, Star Trek Pop-Ups will capture the imaginations of fans young and old. 7 pop-ups and 25 illustrations, all in color.

The award-winning series on the making of the original Star Trek continues with a look at the third season. Blurb on series below

What makes these books unique?These are the Voyages, TOS contains hundreds of previously unpublished insights and recollections from actors, directors, producers, and production crew, capturingscenes in the form of original staff memos — including Gene Roddenberry’s own memos, recorded while reading drafts of the series scripts — contracts, schedules, budgets, network correspondence, censor reports from NBC Standards and Practices, and other newly-uncovered documentation. Read about the making of each episode as the episodes are being made, straight from the typewriters of the people who were writing them.
The books bring forth new information such as the documented truth behind the writing of "The City on the Edge of Forever," Season One’s most acclaimed episode and winner of the Hugo and Writers Guild Awards. Rumors about who wrote what in this episode have been circulating for years. Now, what really happened and who deserves credit, is revealed at last. Notably, the actual Nielsen ratings,


‘in character’ throughout. This is a book, written in the early 24th century, to document the history of the Federation’s first 150 years.

Unboxing video

The Main Event

The true focal point of the “Federation” experience is the book itself. Printed on thick, high quality paper, it reminds me significantly in its construction of a coffee table book that was around my house growing up that covered the first 75 years of the history of General Motors. The book is sturdy and well constructed, with an understated, yet noble, cover. A subtle sparkly sheen highlights the reflective UFP seal, and the weight of the book immediately lends a measure of credibility to the presentation that previous paperback chronologies have lacked.

Breaking open the cover and flipping through the book, the first eye-catchingelement is the artwork. Only one straight photograph is used in the entire book, one of Captain Archer on a Klingon ‘wanted’ poster. The remaining artwork, which is extensive, is presented in a wide array of styles. Illustrative crew Joe Corroney, Mark McHaley, Cat Staggs, and Jeff Carlisle present works that immediately draw the eye and mind into the historical experience. The art itself has the look of something that would be commissioned for a museum exhibit.

After the artwork, full page and facing page spreads next bring in the reader’s attention; spreads that exhibit significant documents from Federation and other sources, as well as translations into English. These documents cover a wide array of history, from planetary mining rights on Capella to High Council reports on humanity in


the wake of the Broken Bow incident. While illustrative of various points fleshed out in the historical narrative developed by David A. Goodman for the book, it is the actual historical narrative itself that stands out for either adulation or scorn.

Setting down to read the text itself, one immediately feels that they are reading a middle school or high school level history text book. In particular, the experience reminded me of reading about the growth and development of the British Empire in my middle school world history book. Broad strokes are drawn, with pivotal events, figures, and concepts being covered in each section. Just like a contemporary history book, there are clearly defined eras of evolution and ethic demonstrated throughout the Federation’s first 150 years.

Sample spread from Starbut it is also a work of fiction. Essentially "Federation: The First 150 Years" is a history book set in the Star Trek universe.

Federation history on its interactive pedestal

It is also more than just a fancy hardcover coffee table book, it is more of a collection set. The book comes on an interactive pedestal which includes additional audio from George Takei. There are also a number of inserts for the book of important historical documents from Federation history.

Federation history book with pedestal and additional documents spread out

To create this unique Star Trek tome CBS looked to David A. Goodman who is an accomplished screenwriter and huge Star Trek fan. He was a producer and writer on Star Trek: Enterprise as well as a writer and producer for a


Inactivated

The US Navy Ship USS Enterprise (CVN-65) is the eighth ship (not counting the Space Shuttle) to bear the name "Enterprise." It was christened in 1960 and was the first nuclear powered carrier. It has engaged in multiple combat operations, starting with the Vietnam War in 1965.

The "Big E" is the first nuclear powered carrier to be taken out of service by the US Navy. While the ship has been ‘inactivated’ it has yet to be fully ‘decommissioned,’ but that should take place no later than March 15th of 2013. The ship needs to have all the nuclear fuel removed before it can be decommissioned. The remains of the ship will be scrapped by 2015.

Before the event Star Trek’s William Shatner announced he would be in attendance topast the creators have shared images and details on the web. And now they are revealing the scripts they wrote as well. Details below along with an exclusive image.

Star Trek: Final Frontier Scripts Revealed Online

The idea behind "Star Trek: Final Frontier" was to create a new animated series (possibly to run on StarTrek.com or maybe on TV) set in a darker future for the Federation, with a new USS Enterprise crew determined to return it to the the glory days. CBS never produced it but the team of Dave Rossi, Doug Mirabello and Jose Munoz had developed concept art, story boards and a number of scripts. We have shown some of the art here before in previous articles (here and here) but Mirabello has now contacted TrekMovie to


event many fans still regret happened. All are worth noting here.

25 Years of TNG
The first anniversary worth reviewing is the one that received the most media attention: the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Some great articles from Wired, TIME and more were written in celebration of this silver anniversary, and on two separate occasions the full cast of the series took to convention stages to mark the occasion.

The Next Gen anniversary was also celebrated earlier in the year with the release of the amazing remastered Star Trek: TNG Season One blu-ray set. The set was the result of a herculean effort by the folks at CBS-Paramount Home Video to scan all the original elements that were used in the production of the series and theshort and sweet 4-year run 11 years ago

A Sad Anniversary: Star Trek: The Experience Closure
The final September anniversary worth noting is an unfortunate one… it’s now been over four years since the closure of Star Trek: The Experience, the much-lauded interactive tourist attraction that was housed at the Las Vegas Hilton.

While there has been Star Trek tourist attractions since (the Star Trek Exhibition is currently in Orlando in a semi-permanent installation, and the Mad Science Star Trek Live education show may return in some form) nothing since has matched the sheer scope and glory of the Experience. Speaking as a fan of the attraction and friend of several people who worked there, we still miss it.

Joseph Dickerson is a writer, User Experience Architect (and Star Trek fan) focused


inflammation, all of which adversely affect vision and the general health of the eye.
As another non-limiting example, there are two kinds of diabetic retinopathy. The first is non-proliferative retinopathy, which is an earlier stage of the disease characterized by increased capillary permeability, microaneurysms, hemorrhages, exudates, and edema. Most vision loss during this stage is due to the fluid accumulating in the macula due to vascular leakage. This accumulation of fluid is called macular edema and can cause temporary or permanent decreased vision. Prolonged periods of vascular leakage can ultimately lead to the thickening of the basement membrane and formation of soft and hard exudates. The second category of diabetic retinopathy is called proliferative retinopathy and is characterized by abnormal new vessel formation, which grows on the vitreous surfaceSunderland have received an eight-figure investment from an American consortium

Sunderland executive director Charlie Methven has confirmed there has been a "significant investment" of funds paid into the club by American consortium 'FPP Sunderland Group'.

Methven has said the injection of capital will take Sunderland "to the next level", however, the director has declined to reveal the amount.

FPP comprises American businessmen Glenn Fuhrman, John Phelan and Robert Platek while Dell Computer magnate Michael Dell is also believed to be involved in the investment process - but in a passive role.

2:36 Highlights of the Carabao Cup last-16 match between Oxford United and Sunderland. Highlights of the Carabao Cup last-16 match between Oxford United and Sunderland.

The group have been in talks with the Sunderland hierarchy for months and as it stands, Stewart


in Matisse. Intensity makes one sort of force, and restraint another, and power is manifest in both.

Imagination is electricity, order is gravity. Order builds in stone, imagination writes in flame. It is the god that answers by fire. It knows the joy of speed, while regularity has the serene dignity of stillness.

Orderliness, grown to an excess, stiffens into autism. Imagination riots into schizophrenia. Form congeals into ritual, force flares into rapture.

'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' What matter if you curse or bless, praise or blame, so long as you do it all with gusto and relish? 'Energy is eternal delight.'

The energies of art are at once anarchic and organizing.

2 Imagination

In art energy is imagination, and order is form. A great work isour automated ascent. Nothing without imagination, but no imagination without tradition.

Imagination is the wings which we have not yet grown.

We imagine by creating, and by creating we realize more than we can imagine.

3 Whole and parts

Only a dull work adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

Shakespeare, like the Bible and all true poets, is great sentence by sentence, line by line, phrase by phrase, and not by his overarching plots and designs, which he stole from others. As a storyteller he is derivative, contrived, naive and inefficient. As a poet he is deep, new and all-knowing. So Emerson wrote, 'Every poem must be made up of lines that are poems.'

Order coheres and unifies, imagination disunites and disaggregates. Mental play is a centrifugal force that spurts


this as sign that we must have found the kingdom.

Sermonizing writers, like Dickens, sense that a bald moral victory will not do. They must show you the good gaining the world, and wrongdoers forfeiting their souls and their loot. They guarantee that if you leave off jostling to get what you want, it's sure to fall in your lap. Though excoriating greed, they make their heroes millionaires. And they rail at vengefulness, while arranging a crafty retribution for the culpable. And though they paint hypocrisy as the one unforgivable sin, their own art works by devious indirection. Their narration makes use of all the wiles for which they so righteously condemn their villains.

A great poet such as Milton dares to assert as an artist the same overweening pridelike the resurrected flesh, 'is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.' How is it born, but by debauching innocence? An artist is an undiscovered traitor. They are so eloquent in broadcasting their love for our sad dust because they have left it so far behind them. The only pacts they make are with the prince of sin.

Hold fast to your integrity, but don't allow it to taint your work. As Catullus wrote, singers ought to be chaste, but not their song. 'Art,' Picasso said, 'is never chaste.'

TASTE AND TRADITION

Contents

Taste

Standards

The medium

Forms and genres

Tradition

Periods

Beauty

TASTE

Taste, like all the rest of our traits, is disjointed and fragmentary. Try to trace the shape, and you'll miss the colours. Contemplate the colours, and you'll fail to catch the form. And few of


us have much zest or judgement for more than one or two of the arts.

Imagination is the car, taste is the driver.

Let pleasure guide what you read, but only if you have first learnt to read for some worthier end than pleasure.

'He that ploweth should plow in hope,' as Blake urged. Create your work in hope, but judge it in despair. Who of us has not felt the exhilaration of working better than we know, and then the dismay of discovering that what we have made falls far short of what we planned?

A writer has a brace of adversaries to tussle with, first the blank page, and then the full one.

Tact is the passive of taste. Taste selects, tact forbears.

Few of us have the taste to be disgustedis at its core material. It grants the power to realize all the promise of its medium. It is morally wayward, but fixed in its sensible form. Shakespeare makes a world of pure words, Mozart of notes, and Velasquez of paint. And if words, notes or paint had been taken from them, they would have ceased to create. As the soul lives in this flesh and would die outside it, so a prolific mind can think only by immersion in its medium.

There is more imagination in Le Corbusier's austere modifications of the built form than in all Gaudi's grotesqueries. And there is more vision in one of Cézanne's unobtrusive still lives than in the nightmares of Fuseli or Piranesi. Art must be perennially revolutionizing its means of representation.

15


depth of imagination. So in life there are no tragedies, but mere mishaps.

Greek and french tragedy is formally frigid, imaginatively impoverished and emotionally incontinent. The sole reason to read it is to learn how great Shakespeare is, and how right he was to keep clear of its bombastic minimalism, pompous choral insipidities, kitsch mythology, crass spectacle, sophistic debates, copybook moralizing, pretentious yet prosaic rhetoric, and formal monotony. All its bellowing has less to say to us than one quiet work of heartbreaking savagery by Conrad or Faulkner.

Great stories of crime, such as Dostoyevsky's, Hawthorne's or Hugo's, tell of the vindication of the culprit's soul or of the damnation of the detective.

22 The stupidity of story

In good fiction the tale justifies the telling. But in great fiction the tellingcount in speculation. Stories are the despair of art, as opinions are the desolation of thought. 'The story,' Henry James wrote, 'is just the spoiled child of art.'

Great writers know that a good plot is necessary to a great fiction. Readers think that it is sufficient.

The tale belongs to mere entertainment, the treatment to high art. But we care for art only insofar as we find it entertaining.

Stories pander to our wishes. Art sets free our imagination.

Most tales of fantasy lay bare the poverty and greediness of our fantasies.

Lesser writers know how to narrate a plot most effectually, since they have no rich insights to deflect them from it. There are so few great short stories, because they have no time to do more than get through a


counterbalance the gross obstinacy of our own judgment, and to preserve the works of deep originality from each epoch's thirst for crude novelty.

The soul is too shallow to harbour the huge bulk of a work of art. It must moor out in the broad sea of tradition.

As art tells the truest lies, so tradition is the most sagacious foolishness.

Why commend what time tells you to? Yet time will tell you where to find all the best things.

The dead make up the most vital community, because they are not a community at all. And posterity frames the best consensus, since it is made without the need for agreement.

The past, which reigns as the sovereign of the long age, saves us from fashion, which rules as the usurper of theits class by induction from its examples, and then we recognize its features in its particular embodiments. The proportions of a flamingo would look out of place in an eagle, and the plumage of a peacock would spoil a swan.

Ours is an ugly species which is full of breathtakingly lovely individuals. And a human being is beautiful because for a few short years she possesses in an abnormal degree those features which typify the human form but which most humans are deficient in.

Human kind is at once the ugliest and the most beautiful species. The rest of the animals are beautiful only in the type, and ugly only in the botched exceptions. Humans are ugly as a rule, and beautiful only as rarities.

If beauty were proportionality of parts,


use. Braggarts are as loquacious as the high-minded are laconic, who are too proud or too modest to explain.

Artists draw their energy from their pride, and their taste from their shame. Pride directs, shame corrects. Pride bestows imagination, force and exuberance. Shame stamps its order on it, and lends it awareness and restraint. Audacity spurs you to write, and shame schools you to write well. Pride hates to seem conventional, and shame hates to seem eccentric. But when they couple they can breed fresh thoughts in foursquare bodies.

Guilt imagines all things, and fright observes all things. Guilt and fear dig up the truth, and pride shapes for it a form, which craft refines in complaisance to the inherited canons of taste.

Shy people write as a way to showmind can focus the rays of truth in one penetrating beam.

The greeks did not know solitude. So how could they have learnt to know themselves?

COSTS OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

**6 The cost of self-knowledge**

We are at once the maze, the monster and the seeker. And our self-recognition proves to be a self-consuming. The heart is a cramped labyrinth. Find its inmost chamber, and a pygmy minotaur will devour you.

If I were more acquainted with my own heart, I might not inflict on it such grave wounds, though I might not be able to bear them so lightly. Self-knowledge seems to cause you no hurt, till it demolishes your life. Like an unexploded bomb, it does no damage till it's been detonated by calamity. It is as much use as an umbrella


we knew what we were, we might not find it quite so easy to love ourselves as we do.

We so dote on this self of ours of which we know so small a part. Our self-love burns with a queer kind of ardour. We can't bear to spend a moment alone with its object divested of our jangling distractions.

I'm too lazy to get to know my real self. But how doggedly I toil to burnish the brazen figurine of my sham one.

We set up our own self as the god of our idolatry, and like any deity we worship it from afar in fog and mystery. The less we know of it, the more devoutly we adore it.

11 Self-deception and the world

The world throbs with deception and self-deception,all the more creditable things, I like to feel that there is one thing at least that has forsaken me.

Art and philosophy help you to bear only those woes that you need no help in bearing.

The consolations that you take up to ease your pain will end by crippling you unless you could get on just as well without them. Like subtle parasites, they keep alive the gloominess that they batten on. They act on us like sweet poisons and toxic medicines, palliating the symptoms of our bereavement, while prolonging the disease. Look for solace, and you will meet it at every turn. But if you need it, you will find how insidiously it will sap your strength.

You blunt your pain not just by the particular illusions you


to choose the right way at each stride.

Custom is an impotent autocrat whose sway would topple on the spot if I once refused to bow to its directives.

20 The vanity of habit

We take up our habits to push our self-interest, and we hold on to them to keep up our self-regard. Rigid people are less intent on succeeding than they are to cling to the customs that hamper them from doing so. They would rather give up a chance for gain than a fixed idea. They force their ampler designs to bend to their crabbed routines. And then they stick to these for years after they've ceased to subserve the objective for which they took them up.

'Even the most adept egotist,' Nietzsche says, 'regards his set ways asdestiny.

Perfection compels you to admire, but blemishes kindle dry admiration to a blaze of love. The flaws of the one you're fond of form gullies which you level by flooding them with yet more fondness. So they come to be some of the traits that most endear them to you.

To be adored is a common enough fate. How intoxicating to win a person's love, but how sobering to keep it. And how it chills the heart to recognize what you are cherished for.

Love is a commonplace passion which makes the whole world seem miraculous.

It is not love that is the prime social bond, but jealousy and possessiveness.

30 The selfishness of love

Love and friendship prune your selfishness into more acceptable shapes, but they don't weed it out. 'Our true


breaking of worlds.

The strongest bonds are knitted from the most tenuous fibres.

Your friends are those whom you have to forgive, even when you have done them wrong.

You must love someone dearly, or else not care for them in the least, if you can forgive them for the wrongs that you do them or for forgiving you.

42 We descend to meet

Isn't most friendship less a form of love than a mere means of joint amusement? It's not so much our friends that we like as the enjoyable things that we do with them. We cluster in groups to share our mutual delusions and featherbrained recreations. We want to snatch the most fun for the least sweat. 'Almost all people,' as Emerson says, 'descend to meet.' And we cease torather talk to a dunce than listen to a sage?

Why do some people, who scintillate in their urbane talk and pastimes, shrink and turn niggling in the vocations that they give their lives to? How can they be so sparkling at the periphery, and so dull at the core?

What a mercy, that no one cares to recall all the crass and stupid things that I've said.

People are like birds. The worst songsters scream the loudest.

47 Solitude

You must be exceptional, if you can win and keep your joy in retirement or your truth in the crowd. Your solitude should be as replete and well-tempered as society, apt to tease and shame you into good humour.

Some people are too dense to shine in society, and some are too empty to


as Augustine argued, nor are we what we forget or what we have repressed. Are we not much more than each of these, but all of the things that we think, dream, hope, love, desire, own or aspire to?

Year by year our recollections are clarified by our illusions. The eyewitnesses of the resurrection incised it on their hearts in sharp but incredible and conflicting details.

49 The haunting

We each die a second death, first the death of the flesh, and then of the world's remembrance of us.

Grief foreshortens the perspective of our pain, but distances us from our lost joys. The death of those you loved may seem like yesterday, but their life an age ago. Their going stays with you, their life is what you've lost. Do weBuddha, never laughs.

A messiah is a heretic and blasphemer come to unshackle the elect from the old sire's hard justice. He brings the glad tidings that by his merciful intercession his father has damned no more than nine tenths of us to burn in ever-living flames.

In two thousand years there has not been a single born christian, not even the one who died on the cross. He was too drunk on his messianic errand to be a sober pilgrim.

Jesus seldom communed with seraphim, but he was fretted by legions of devils. Like all who claim to show us the way to heaven, he seems to have spent more time fantasizing about the lurid punishments of hell.

22 The imitation Christ

Perhaps the true Jesus of self-forgetting wisdom was left in


by faith, that is, an imaginary reward for an imaginary virtue.

Faith is the fake satisfaction of a shallow need.

A creed will soon die out once its believers start to care whether or not it is true.

Any prejudice that needs to be fortified by reason will in the end be felled by it. 'To give a reason for anything,' Hazlitt says, 'is to breed a doubt of it.' A faith that could be brought down by countervailing evidence would scarcely be faith at all.

The two sources of faith are scripture and tradition, but anyone who made a study of these would lose all grounds for faith.

If we treat faith as a wager, and God as a gamble, then how could the soul be worth playing for?

Faith alone can beand silly chaff feeds their fervency, you're apt to be made sick by it.

In epochs of strong faith people were keen to fight for their beliefs which they were willing to change a year later at the behest of their prince.

Wilde notes that 'truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.' The gods, like all living things, are subject to the laws of natural selection. An extinct religion must be a false religion. We take it that a living god must have a living flock. Who these days could do homage to the deities of Egypt or the aztecs? It's impossible to bring a dead god back to life, as Julian the apostate found when he tried to resuscitate the divinities of Rome.

A creed


more ludicrous that the great God should be born and die as a mere man, than that he should come back to life? But we find it more marvellous that he should do what no mortal could do than that he should have done what no deity would deign to do.

The idea that a god would take on man's shape is so flattering to our human vanity, that it never occurs to us how degrading it is to his divine dignity.

The sole proof of the Gospels is the miracles, and the sole proof of the miracles is the Gospels.

Jesus held in his palm the power to cast out devils, but lacked the plain sense to grasp that they are not real. Anyone now who set up to cureare canonized by the credulity of pious sheep. Faith comforts a tepid disciple, but would crucify a true one. False disciples use it to crucify their foes. It is the good news only for smug half-believers.

The Lord is not a lamb. He is a prowling tiger. And anyone who loved him would be torn limb from limb.

A saint is a lunatic inflamed by fanaticism and stupefied by orthodoxy.

A church lives not by the zeal of its flock but by their cold compliance. It is founded by fanatics, administered by careerists, and populated by laodiceans.

We never come to the end of our worldly credulousness. But we quickly wear out our capacity for true conviction. Did God lend us faith as a blindfold, so that his shining would not sear


die and be weighed in the scale today. But if they don't expect to die this very day, then they take it that they will go on indefinitely here on earth. We don't honestly believe that our souls will live for an eternity after death, because we don't feel in our hearts that we are going to die. The foremost wonder, as Yudishtira says, is that each day death comes, and yet we live as if it could not touch us.

Each of us is a little town besieged by death. But inside life goes on as if it had never heard of the threat.

We doze through time, and dream that we will wake for eternity. We die like beasts, and hope to live on like gods.

The belief inthe privilege of remaining their cursed selves. The saints must give up their souls in order to gain the kingdom.

59 Immortal blasphemy

To believe that we are immortal is the great blasphemy, since we thereby lay claim to the same status as the divine. When we dared to assert that we would live for all time, we arrogated the prerogative of God. We stretched forth our impudent hand, and took also of the fruit of the tree of life, and ventured to eat up eternity.

In the beginning the iron gods laid it down that we must die and return to dust. 'When the gods made man,' Gilgamesh was told, 'they allotted to him death, but life they held fast in their own keeping.' But now we maintain them as


for eternity.

Life has played us such filthy tricks, we may well fear that death won't be the last of them. Since this life is hell, it might stretch out till the crack of doom. We may wake to find that the nightmare will have no cease. The thought that it won't go on for ever is all that could keep a sane person going.

Death, like most good things, comes too late for many of us, but at least it does come.

Try to run from your troubles, and you will need to strain all your muscle to lug them with you.

The light drizzle of small irritations will in time drench you as thoroughly as a sudden downpour of woe, yet it still feels quite different.

13 Narrowing unhappiness

The heavyhearted havethe lust for gain. Happiness, like money, won't meet your needs, but the lack of it will wring your heart. And though wealth won't content you, possessing more of it than others may almost do so. Life's a whore that smiles on none but those who can pay.

Money won't make us happy, but neither will any of the more exalted goods that we count on to do it.

Money may not be able to buy love or happiness, but the brutal drive that can heap up money may be the force best able to seize love and happiness as well, or at least to make others believe that it can, which is the next best thing.

The poor can now afford the jaunty and hectic greed that the rich have


learn that happiness is too little. Yet it is still worth attaining, so that you won't have to waste your years in the hunt for it. But once you have built your house of joy, however light it may be, it will crush you when it collapses.

How little it might take to make us happy. But most of us want a lot more than that.

If you can't tell from your sufferings how little life matters, you can at least tell from your success.

Does happiness count for nothing, since the lowest worm lusts for it? Or does the least creature have an illimitable value, because it too yearns to win joy? Even a squashed bug squirms for life.

We aim so low, yet we still miss our mark. Like Madamein themselves, or else to inveigle their satellites to have faith in them. They know that hope sells and that what is sold is hope. If you want to get rich, you need to have hope. And if you aim to inspire hope, you need to believe.

Our optimism yokes the force of our naive self-belief to the cunning of our worldly self-seeking.

The success of optimism confirms the pessimist's worst fears. How does such a meretricious creed win so much trust?

Few of us waste our expensive pessimism or our arduous hopes on anyone's plight but our own.

We love to appear to hope against hope when we know that the failure of what we hope for will not touch us.

Optimists charm us, because they shine back to us our own


hoaxed, not because our uncorrupted heart is too trusting to heed our judicious misgivings, but because our clamorous voracity drowns them out. And we are so easy to cheat, not because we are so guileless, but because we are so greedy. 'How willing the vulgar are,' Scott says, 'to gull themselves when they can find no one else to take the trouble.' As Machiavelli knew, a mark always meets a quack half way.

15 Our cunning credulity

We fool ourselves ingenuously but not innocently. The self-seeking that makes us cunning makes us credulous.

I'm glad to be gulled by my own mad fancies, so long as I can brag that I'm an astute exception. But most of the time I choose to be swindled with everyone else, rather than profit onfeared. And our victories prove more insipid than we hoped. But our self-satisfaction helps us to digest the one, and lends seasoning and savour to the other.

How modest or how conceited we must be, to have achieved so little and still to be so self-satisfied.

All satisfaction springs from self-satisfaction. Most people are so pleased with themselves, that they are pleased with all the rest of the world as well.

SELF-REGARD

**23 We are proud of our demeaning self-interest**

Since we can't sate our greed without the forfeit of our proper self-respect, we all protest that the schemes that profit us do not demean us. But we may still blush to seek the prizes that even our pride wants us to get. We have to make our profligacy our pride, since we


disillusioned by our success. Our aspirations outstrip our abilities, but our smugness outweighs our disappointments.

Few of us have the pride either to see that we have failed or to be sickened by our sordid victories. Our minds are not large enough to size how small our success is.

We hold our own value so dear, that we don't have to win, and can't grasp that we have lost. We are too pleased with who we are to be much put out by the massacre of our darling hopes.

I rate my own acumen and schemes too high to count myself a failure, and I rate others too low to count them failures. I have done as much as anyone could do. And they have got more than their poor endowmentsthey had been weaker, they may have had to grow wiser. They are strong enough to bear the ill-effects of their own missteps, and so they have no reason to stop committing them.

The illness may make you too weak to tolerate the remedy. But your dread of catching it may render you too timid to do anything but try to shun it. What does not kill me makes me stronger, protests the dying animal. What does not kill me proves that I lack the spirit to kill myself when all that made life worth living has left me. It leaves me too fagged for more than a skulking self-protection. Pull down the shutters and keep out the plague. Though prevention may seem preferable to cure, it may do


praise

We have such a rich store of self-esteem, that we can afford to spend a large sum of it to buy a crumb of others' esteem. And yet some fling away all the world's regard, in their rage to banquet their own yawning self-regard.

Some people market their golden gifts to purchase a moment of the dull world's attention. To snap up the refuse that they want, they trade all that they cherish. They are in such a rush to reach a goal, that they lose their way. If they thought less grandly of their worth, how could they bear to sacrifice it for the paltry awards that they crave? What low dodges we sink to, in order to keep up our high opinion of our own deserts.

A whispercoax them to think more highly of their own. And that's never hard.

CONCEIT

**16 Pride and conceit**

True pride is cool and nonchalant. Conceit is at once touchy and dependent.

Our conceit shields us from humiliations which would prove fatal to our pride.

Though you may outdo a person's virtuosity and feats, how could you get the victory over their conceit?

Proud people pay too dear for good turns. Braggarts deem that they are due all the favours that people do them, and so they pay them back too stintingly.

How could our self-opinion be overthrown, when it's based on nothing at all? If it weren't so groundless, it might not be so hard to shake. No success reared it, so what shock could topple it, or even leave a dent in it?

17 Pride


through the whole world. So why is the mouth honour of five flunkeys enough to turn our heads?

Fake praise is good enough for me, if I trust it will last. And if a flattering semblance stays fixed, I'll be glad to take it for fact.

7 We praise the mediocre

We can make out small and commonplace talents with our own eyes. But we need to be taught to see great and noteworthy excellencies. We must be trained to discern which are the original minds by those whose minds are in no way original.

We dote on cheap and second-rate things. But we coldly commend the best, since we love only what is like us. We voice our awe for what is great because we have no choice. I prefer toto be so short of it. Work, the inveterate demeaning affliction of the many, has become just as much the vaunt of the few. All now honour it, because all now sense that they have no choice but to do it. These days it's only the most destitute who can afford not to work. And they alone are condemned to bear the ennui and reproach of leisure.

Those who think that the only work worth doing is the work that is paid know of nothing better to do with their leisure than to pay to be amused.

5 Money, employment and independence

'Money,' as Emerson wrote, 'often costs too much.' Few wares are worth the days and hours that we have to waste to earn the cash to buy them. But


so it's scarcely real. Wealth gains its reality by being paraded before others. Time is an intrinsic good, and is therefore of far less value than wealth, which is a status-marker.

The right use of money is to buy more time. But we have so little use for our time that the best we can do with it is to try to make more money.

You need a great deal of leisure if you're to get your true work done. But most of us now sprint so fast that we have no time to shape what might last. As Kraus notes, democracy 'makes no provision for those who have no time to work.'

9 Leisure and independence

We have made life rushed and bustling enough to match our sense of our ownon the side of the angels, because we reject the devil that the world rejects.

3 The prince of this world

Even the devil's disciples are sure that they are doing God's work.

The Lord may have made our metal, but it's the fiend that beats it to the shape he wills.

God made this globe for us to thrive in, and the prince of sin to teach us how. God's existence accounts for the creation, and the devil's accounts for all that followed. The Lord made the heavens and the earth, but Satan made the world, both the best and the worst of it. God may be the chairman of the board, but he leaves its day to day running to Lucifer, his trusty lieutenant. Who has not seen enough of


How could you find time to make a fortune, if you had first to make a soul?

Society is a system of conveniences which gives us the means to thrive without a soul.

24 Treachery

In this double-dealing world even the perfidious may be betrayed by their own conniving loyalties.

Can't we count on an unfeeling corporation, such as a bank, more than on the most upstanding individual?

People's competence is of more use to us than their probity, as their envy would be more gratifying to us than their pity.

Tell the truth, and you will lose everyone's trust. Hold fast to your integrity, and they will all desert you. The world is sure to make a fool of you, if you are foolish enough to refuse to fool yourself.

Life is a treacherousbring themselves to wake up and face their real fears.

Cowards, like tottering autocracies or our ebbing democracies, squander their strength battling phantom enemies, because they lack the firmness to discern who their real ones are.

In order to keep up their courage, some cowards have to steel one another with the dangerous lie that their enemies lack the grit to put up a fight.

Cowards tend to treat most amicably those whom they like least. They dread lest their dislike will be detected. And being cowards they quail at what they hate.

29 Shocked into daring

Fear jolts some people to acts of mad fearlessness. And it imposes on others such a long and exasperating circumspection, that they are at last stung to act rashly just where rashness will bring them to


virtues, but if we lack courage, we can't put them to use.

What extraordinary tenacity you need just to get through a single hour on this ordinary earth. As Woolf says, it is 'very, very dangerous to live even one day.' All that you own is at stake each instant, regardless of how little you have to play for.

Who needs more fortitude, the few who die glorious but alone in the van, or the mass who fall unsung in the ranks?

14 The courage of despair

The wise know why they should give up hope, the undaunted carry on as if they did not. It may take as much staunchness not to scare yourself with phantom frights as it does not to flinch from real ones.

When we meet with disaster, weingratitude

We are so unappreciative, because we undervalue what others give us and overvalue what we get for ourselves. What we prize highly we come to believe we have earned by our own unaided efforts. The self-regard of the receiver devalues what the self-regard of the giver puts such a high price on.

Few of us feel very remorseful or beholden. We set our own worth too high to reckon that we owe much to those that we have harmed or to those who have helped us.

Our ingratitude is as sincere as our self-belief. And our gratitude is as feigned and grudging as our modesty. How could we feel grateful? We can't see that we have a thing to thank our benefactors for.

21 Gratitude and resentment

Be generous to a person,


interaction.

The wine of gratitude soon sours to a vinegar spleen. Our sense of indebtedness soon curdles once it's been through a brief churning in our mind.

Giving and gratitude make such a soup of pride, spite, recriminations, expected dividends and bad faith, that cold monetary exchange smells pure and clean when set beside them.

JUSTICE

**22 Justice**

Love and justice are both blind. But justice refuses to see persons, while love fails to see everything else.

The unjust, if they don't see their assailants justly castigated by the world, at least have the satisfaction of knowing that the world is unjust and the right to persist in their own wrongdoing.

Criminals merely break the law. Judges corrupt it.

Lawbreakers ought to be punished with stern finality for their crimes, for the very reason that theiraccustomed to get. And if we don't, we gather that it is what others get. If we fail repeatedly, we feel that we have a right to fare well for a change. And if we fare well, we infer that we should not have to fail when we have grown so used to victory. Yet we guess that others, if they have met with ill luck all the time, must be inured to it. But if they have fared well, they are now due their quota of reverses.

None of us complains of injustice when we get more than we have earned the right to. And which of us these days has not done that? Nothing is good enough for some people, though they themselves are not good for


the condition of others will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself.'

We grow hardhearted to the ordeals of others, either because we've not had to go through anything like them ourselves, or else because we have. We make light of them, because we have had no occasion to feel how heavy they are, or else because we have weighed them and found that we could bear them with ease and so we think that others should as well.

I don't accept that any trouble that I am not prone to can be quite real. The maladies that I suffer from are unmerited afflictions. But the maladies that others suffer from are defects which they have been too weak to subdue.

Pity is one luxury that thelive. The deaths of others are mere gossip for us.

Other people's afflictions and achievements are mere comic relief for the serious drama of our own. Humour is the best medicine that we have to deal with the woes of others, or at least it is the one that we use most frequently.

We are quick to feel pity, so as to throw into relief our own admirable rectitude.

We build sepulchres to blazon how affectingly and glamorously we mourn. 'Funerary pomp,' as La Rochefoucauld says, 'has more to do with the vanity of the living than with the commemoration of the dead.' A funeral is a celebration of human self-importance.

Even your death does not belong to you. As soon as it comes, they snatch it, and use it to bedizen


whom it means to affect. Our soft heart feels betrayed, when those whom it pities forsake their anguish. What right have they to suffer less than we deem they should?

We don't need others to pity us when we fail, since we never fail to spare ourselves the truth.

CONSCIENCE

Contents

Guilt

Shame and pride

Convention

Crafty confessions

Self-justification

Innocence

Forgiveness

GUILT

We preserve our good conscience by practising our bad faith.

We don't care what real carnage we cause, so long as it is not set before our eyes. Our decency demands that we cover up the foul consequences of our deeds. A good society is careful to conceal the brutal force on which its wealth rests. But there's no need for it to be so scrupulous, since its citizens don't much mind.

Conscience, as Freud says, may chide you likecandidates who protest that they won't act like slimy politicians, till they refuse to bribe us with all a politician's oily enticements.

13 The pretence of good intentions

In their efforts to seduce our prim pretences, malignant leaders have to talk finer than they mean to act, and honourable ones have to talk worse.

A democracy is a marketplace of competing lies, in which the majority sits in judgment on which ones best seem to flatter its self-regard and feed its self-interest.

Our leaders must flatter us that we do our best at all times. But we do the least best that we can get away with. And yet we do go as straight as we have to in our race to snap up as much as we can. And most of


of the few before happiness. Our new democracies choose the instant greed of the many before happiness.

Capitalism will degrade the globe to a vast factory to stock a vast shopping mall. And socialism will reduce what is left to a vast sickroom. The right would burn up the earth as an unholy offering to liberty and material self-interest, and the left to equality and moral self-conceit.

A conservative is now someone who insists on their right to keep on consuming in the careless way that they've grown used to, which is the very thing that has turned the old world on its head. They want nothing to change, so as to be left free to get and spend in the same way that is bound to change everything.

Conservatism isis that which breaks all the chains off our own appetites.

37 The golden calf

The modern state has turned into a cow of gold, dispensing day by day the milk of human kindness from its distended udders. The state used to make serfs of its citizens by brutally repressing them. Now it does so by benevolently indulging their wants.

Democracy robs the populace of the self-determination which they need if they are to act as good participants in a democracy. By rendering them mild and compliant, is it readying them to be offered as helpless prey to a coming god of blood? It is the benignant dictatorships that are the most degrading. They don't confiscate our freedom by force, but lure us to give it up of our own will.


to breed a turbulent but abounding creation. It mates the force of instinctual energies with the force of constraint and organization.

Past civilizations were hard like a diamond or the claws of a jaguar. Ours is hard like a rock drill tearing up the earth. Previous epochs were realms of force. Ours is the realm of mass.

The sweet works of imagination, whose creation and contemplation make life worthwhile, were framed when life for most people was not worth living. And now that we have made life worth living for most people, we have lost the power to frame the sweet works which make it worthwhile.

'We can conceive of nothing great,' Nietzsche says, 'which does not involve a great crime.' You can tell the great seminal periods by the stenchwith a view to promoting trade. Most are artefacts forged by nineteenth century nationalism or nineteenth century imperialism.

A nation, even more than an individual, owes its character more to circumstances than to the so-called spirit of its people.

The development of political institutions lags behind the problems that they are required to solve. When Europe was in need of the centralizing nation state, it still had only ramshackle local feudal authorities. And now that the world needs supranational powers to deal with global threats, it still has to make do with outdated nation states.

50 Imperialism

An empire is the murder of the cultures that it conquers, and the suicide of the civilization that hopes to suck life from them.

How righteously we now condemn the evil of colonialism, yet how tightly


and maudlin, wide-eyed and wised-up, populist and plutocratic, coordinated and disorderly, conformist and exhibitionist, regimented yet anarchic, bumptious and epicene, just being born and a long while dying, a light to the nations and an abomination, a dustbowl flowing with milk and honey, puritan and lewd, a giant blinkered by its own sanctimoniousness, rich and in debt, globalized and parochial, self-intoxicated and self-doubting.

The United States is not a country but a plague, the pox americana. It has infected the globe with the fever of its venal optimism, so well-meaning and so self-serving. It is a land of optimists who live in terror of some enemy which they themselves have conjured up. The union may have grown great had it been content to stay small. It chose instead toby colonizing every corner of it, we plan to save our rapacious species by colonizing the galaxy.

Having pillaged the planet so heedlessly, why would we deserve to live through its jaunty holocaust? We act like its spoilt brats, sulkily set on mangling it if it won't disgorge all that we hunger for. We will wear out the old earth in our vain striving to slake our thirst for unstopping novelty. This planet is our plaything. We will break it and scrap it and get a new one.

6 Our frantic activity will kill us

We all spin like tops, knowing that if we slowed down, we would totter and fall. The earth can't be saved, since we can be coaxed to do better but not to do less. And there's


the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.' We all wring our hands over the destruction of the earth, while we all go on doing the things that are destroying it. There's more money to be made and more fun to be had from ruining the planet than from repairing it.

The long-suffering earth won't last through a few more centuries of our scramble for happiness.

We will lay waste the whole earth to get our hands on things that are wasted on us.

19 From misery to ecological collapse

We subsist in a brief interim of frantic happiness between the end of universal misery and the dawn of universal destruction. We have had the best of it, and it has not been much good. Our prosperityhas hoisted us an inch above the ground for a brief term. But its loss will bury us a mile below it for all of time. We will presently be more forlorn than ever, ground between our ancient afflictions which we can't evade and our gluttonous new appetites which we can't resist or satisfy.

By seeking to cure our chronic woes we will turn them into acute and lethal ones. We will fall victim to the frenzied remedies that we take up to heal the wound of our being. Nothing now will change, and it will all keep on getting worse. Life will soon revert to a fevered gloom more black and miasmal than it's ever been.

All our good days are done, our bright dawns have waned, their freshness


and mangle the earth. Sinfulness hath slain its thousands, and good will slay its ten thousands. The world is in such a state, not because the few rogues stop at nothing to get what they want, but because the many good people do so.

We are doing all the good that we can, and it will soon have put paid to the earth.

We are the salt of the earth, and we crust it so thickly, that it's small wonder the ground will bear nothing.

Our selfishness will crush the earth beneath its boot, but our benevolence couldn't save it. We are so intent on obliterating it, that by acting in unison we will do so the sooner. Malice slew its multitudes, but virtue will bring death to the innocent earth.

There'sWe fiddle with our fine moral discriminations, and meanwhile our material might goes on callously decimating the earth. The gross physical consequences of our acts will far outweigh their exquisitely judged motives.

It makes no difference now how well-meaning our views might be. In the world market we are all mere consumers. And the righteous and the unrighteous together will soon have sucked the earth dry to its last drop.

Our race with its greeds and gods has dropped like a slow asteroid on this sad planet. This will be the sum of the moral significance of our incorrigibly moralizing breed.

What a profusion of physical inputs it takes to keep a disembodied intelligence running. The future of humanity is a sum that doesn't add up.

We are transfixed by the spectacle


to fight back, the past and the future, the memory of the dead, the blackened planet.

Democracy mows down everything to clear a path for its marauding greed. It claims every right for its own, and abrogates all its duties to the rest of creation.

All great things have been made by elites. But the humblest of us will have a hand in democracy's crowning work of world destruction.

32 The one equal species

All of us now know that we are born equal because we all belong to the one species that is superior to all lower grades of living thing. And they are too weak to wrest our privileges from us. We are all equal because we are biologically separate from the rest of the beasts. And this separateness givesDeliverance by annihilation

We are the one indispensable species, since we alone have been entrusted with the mission to kill all the rest.

Far more effectually than any buddha we will soon make a lasting release from the cycle of birth and death by snuffing out all sentient life for good. The salvation that our cursed species brings this earth will be a universal extermination.

Life is an evil machine. Our consciousness has cranked it up to such a pitch of restless frenzy, that it will soon break its springs. Our wisdom has not found a way to make the wheel stand still. So our avarice will set it spinning so fast that it will burst into flames. Our cruel breed will grant a merciful deliverance to the earth that it


no need to think.

'In speaking,' Trollope wrote, 'grand words come so easily, while thoughts, even little thoughts, flow so slowly.' We dawdle behind the truth, because we are too quick to speak and too reluctant to reflect. 'It's where a thought is lacking,' Goethe said, 'that, in the nick of time, a word turns up in its place.'

We don't let truth get in the way of our style. But don't we allow all the rest of our wants to get in the way of truth?

'We all do no end of feeling,' as Twain said, 'and we mistake it for thinking.' We prefer to feel rather than to think. But we prefer to think that we feel rather than feel in good earnest. Thinking is hard, feeling is easyCowardice finds out the truth

We are not afraid to think, though we may claim to be, so that we don't have to do it or so that we can boast of our daring if we do.

Your cowardliness will teach you more than your courage could have done. For a thinker, to live fearfully might be the next best thing to living dangerously. Timorous people sound life much more deeply. They die so many times before their death, that they see more of life than the steadfast. They're all the time peering through the pane of their disquiet on the watch for what might be approaching to scare them.

The valiant never taste of death but once. It's cowards who chew it over all through life, and get to know


how many things you need to shut your eyes to or unlearn, if you aim to search out more of the truth.

Some sticklers split hairs because they know so much about a small area, and some because they know a mere smattering. Those who know nothing love to point out how little others know.

Both doggedness and dabbling come to the same thing in the end, namely a flat and dry formalism.

Smug pedants presume that they are sedulous perfectionists.

Some people become formalists because they have no sense of form. They note the punctuation of a sentence, but are blind to its deep pattern.

41 Parasitic critics

Would literature now seem alive, if its carcass weren't wriggling with so many industrious critical maggots? But a worm in the guts of a lionus on the watch. So the spur that alerts us makes us unjust to what we see.

If vengeance did not inflame us, how would we have brought to light so much of the truth? Revenge may lie to others, but it burns to learn all that might help it to fillet its victims.

We need the dark energy of malice to keep our mental world expanding.

Where there is no treachery, there will be no truth. Thinkers are turncoats whom we can't trust to acquiesce in the congenial lies by which we thrive. They work, as Blake says, by 'the infernal method, by corrosives.' They aim to bring to fruition the work that the serpent began.

Only a bad angel, shorn of all but pride and spite, is free to spy


how can you think stringently, if you don't doubt their heart and your own and all the shows which the false world takes for truth? In daily life credulity saves the most time, but in thinking contempt does.

Contempt whets the intellect, admiration dilates the imagination. 'Damn braces. Bless relaxes,' as Blake notes. Suspicion sterilizes like a mental disinfectant.

If your aim is to grasp their true nature, you must have perpetrated all the abominations that you indict, be the victim of all the diseases that you diagnose, and dote on all the follies which disgust you. 'There are,' Wilde says, 'poisons so subtle that to know their properties one has to sicken of them.'

SCEPTICISM

**9 The presumption of scepticism**

Most of the things that people believe are not even worth doubting.

Mosttaste for.

The sole use of an established orthodoxy should be to incite the mind to restless heresy.

As 'the fool by persisting in his folly would become wise,' so cynics by persisting in their cynicism would turn back to enchantment. They sigh for the luxuriant credulity of superstition to sweep away the parched calculations of the faith-starved present. Better the vivid and breathing faith of an age of magic than our own passionless instrumental rationalism.

Reason acts like a heartless bailiff, coldly evicting settled views which have lodged in the one spot for generations.

13 Too great to be true

Some thoughts are too great to be true, but far more are too true to be great.

Aren't most of the great puzzles of philosophy, such as whether we exist or not, too


one true God. We may not need a creed to put our trust in, but don't we still crave an idol to crook the knee to? And yet most of them are too unworldly to keep our loyalty for long. Our idolatry is as fickle as our faith.

We bow down to idols, because we assent too soon, and crave too much, and think too little.

Though determined not to worship idols, we still make an idol of our worship.

Who could be so naive as to trust that all falsehood will fall to pieces as soon as they've smashed its latest idol? If people don't spend their credulity on one kind of bilge, they will spend it on some other. Faith is just one of the forking tributaries of theinexperience has long guessed. 'A moment's insight,' says Oliver Holmes, 'is sometimes worth a life's experience.' By the deployment of what Wordsworth styled 'feeling intellect,' artists imagine the experiences that the rest of us have to live through.

We plunge into experience, and find that it wets us just up to our ankles.

Life holds out such rich possibilities, yet we taste it in such a thin form. It can be so stinting, yet we imagine it so prodigally. How penetratingly we feel the most casual occurrences, but what sparse sense we glean from the most overwhelming marvels.

Those who have no imagination set great store on wide experience.

People assume that they get their ideas from experience because it supplies them with the anecdotes which is what they have instead of


wrote, 'one learns to know the world not, as it would seem, by immediate inaugural contact with things, but through the signs of things, words, pictures, stories.' We experience our prejudices, and prejudge our experiences.

Most of us stay home in the cosy fug of our own preformed views. We don't venture out in the bleak midwinter of new truth.

We crib most of our views from others. And so we depute to them the task of making sense of the world for us. We read events in the drab code of our tags and catchwords.

33 Travel

A site comes to be picturesque because it has been pictured so many times. 'When a thing is a wonder to us,' Twain says, 'it is not because of what we see in it,intensity for profundity.

There is bad faith even in our exposure of bad faith.

'Give a man a mask,' Wilde says, 'and he will tell you the truth.' We may come closest to the truth when we cast out a few flippant witticisms which we don't in the least believe in. The rest of the time we dwell in our world of earnest illusion.

37 We become the parts we play

I form my most authentic self by acting out the roles that my advantage has urged me to take up. I wear my disguises lightly because I am such a mystery to myself. Play an ensemble of parts, and you may learn how much you are patched up from the parts that you play. Keep on one seamless mask and you'll


it. And we keep up our sincerity by saying it over and over.

It's not hard to give your faith to a thing if you've not thought about it.

The devil is a deceiver. Like all righteous beings, God is a self-deceiver.

Sincerity is the virtue of those who lack the self-awareness to see how far the most heartfelt belief is made up of play-acting, self-interest, convenience, vanity and habit.

Those who scruple to tell a downright lie will submit to living a whole life of upright self-deception.

40 Taken in by our own sincerity

If we weren't so sincere, how could we keep up our pretences with such conviction?

Sincere people believe in their own belief, not in the truth.

How many base things we wish to be but not seem. And how many finehave the knack of pattering coherently about large ideas, though I don't quite know what they mean. But I get by with seeming to make sense and mimicking the sense that the people round me seem to make.

45 Truth is unspeakable

Truth is so unspeakable and indecent, that it has to be secreted in writing. It is what you can never say in table-talk. It had to wait for the invention of writing to bare its nakedness.

Truth may at times rise to our lips like vomit, but we've learnt how to keep it down. We dare tell it only to those whom we don't know or don't care for. Thus Stein said that she wrote for herself and strangers.

Most people can't speak the truth because they don't know what


too weak to express their passions.

47 Words are too strong for our weakness

We make a world of superlatives. We treat words like our children. Our souls may be shrivelled and dislocated, but we still live expansively in language.

Those who have starved ideas carp that speech is too thin and bloodless to do justice to all their profuseness.

When I write, I search for the most forcible terms to match the strength of my thoughts. But when revising, I come to see that my thoughts don't deserve to speak so loud. 'Of two words,' Valéry counselled, 'always choose the lesser.'

My words prove to me that I do indeed feel what I know I ought to. And I know what I ought to feel because I have heard the words thatothers' gaze.

KITSCH

Contents

Dead civilization

Capitalism's style

Effects of kitsch

Novelty and nostalgia

Sentimentality

Clichés

DEAD CIVILIZATION

**1 Culture, civilization, kitsch**

First culture, then civilization, now kitsch. First myth, then poetry and prose, now cliché. At first tradition, next reason and imagination, now ingenuity and images. First the tribe, after that the state, last the borderless and atomizing market. A culture is soon crushed by a civilization, and a civilization is soon consumed by kitsch.

For primitive peoples life drums a beat, for the civilized it sounds a melody, but for us it makes mere noise. And we just want to make it more and more raucous. We have declined through the ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, and have at last reached the age of plastic, cheap, mass-made, characterless and toxic. 'Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye,


art.

It used to be our ethereal creeds that abstracted us from the real world. Now it's our mundane devices.

We laud as civilization the mass affluence which has drowned it. 'The telephone is his test of civilization,' Wilde wrote of the middle-class philistine, 'and his wildest dreams of utopia do not rise beyond elevated railways and electric bells.'

We are not all artists, in spite of what sentimentalists say. But technology makes each of us a producer of kitsch.

11 Political kitsch

The public realm has at all times been theatrics. But each age fears that it is uniquely stagy, because the tawdriness of its own histrionic style repels it. Each kind of regime has developed its own style of prancing kitsch. Fascism made it gargantuan and belligerent, absolute kingship triumphal andhave to package it as a narrative. Story is the form which is most characteristic of capitalism and bourgeois individualism.

We love stories, since they rush us on from one episode to the next with no need to think, expecting to be surprised by some new twist. And we want to live in the same way.

We delight in anecdotes, but we have lost the relish for art.

All of us love stories, but few of us care for literature. All of us love images, but few care for paintings. And all of us love a tune, but few love music.

13 Performance

Every work now must be staged as a performance. And every performance exists to produce its instantaneous effect.

Kitsch turns every event into a facetious or poignant story to be performed


less to the thing as it is than to our own prior response to it. So we weep when we picture how we wept before. 'We are moved,' Pavese says, 'because we were previously moved,' or even because we were not, or because somebody else was.

I melt at reminders of objects whose originals would leave me cold.

Kitsch knows how to play on all our childhood memories. And our memories of childhood make up an anthology of kitsch. The aroma of the same dead flowers will delight us for the rest of our lives.

Our tastes are fixed for life in early youth when we are most attuned to the hackneyed attractions of kitsch.

A choice piece of kitsch marks each stage of our lives. And we recall our milestones byreal cause that made you feel. We weep not because we see the victims aching, but because we see the onlookers weeping. We are more touched by the tears of the bystanders than by the pangs of the sufferers.

28 Self-intoxicated sentimentality

Those who purpose to affect others must first act as their own audience. So stirred are they by their own playing that they form a persuasive template for their real audience to follow. They intoxicate them by their own self-intoxication.

People gaze on the anguish of others as a show to arouse their emotions. And then the spectacle of their own sensibility gets the better of them. They consume sentimentality in producing it, and produce it in consuming it. 'The orator,' Montaigne notes, 'will be moved by the lilt


wilderness, which we make a home in with our clichés.

Some people's stock opinions can be elicited as predictably as the saliva of Pavlov's dogs. Speak the right words, and their lips will dribble the reflex formulas that you have heard each time before.

The trunk of speech is now held up only by the clichés which are strangling it, and the sole fruit that it yields are catchphrases.

We trust that we have mastered a theme or a style when we can fluently improvise its overworked idioms.

I loathe others' jargon and verbiage as much as I love my own. And I label their views as platitudes if they sound foreign to my own, but I'm dazzled by any that deviates an inch from the standard ones and that damns themthey can make more art. 'The lust of the goat,' as Blake states, 'is the bounty of God.'

You discipline your heart by resisting temptation. But you widen your mind by giving way to it.

The stance of the thinker should be a decent outward obedience and a licentious inner freedom.

LOVE OF TRUTH

**15 We don't love truth**

We claim to think so much, we in fact think so little, yet we prize thinking so dear. Why do we shy from what we claim to do so zealously? Why do we set such store on what we are so loath to do? And why do we prize so dear what yields us such sparse pay?

We know enough of the truth to know that the truth is not what we want. And we


start to believe it for real? When it has caught up with you, what haven could you hope to find? 'In much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.'

Life is a brute beast that's devouring you. You can't stop it, but you can stick in its craw by understanding it.

Truth blinds you, first with its brightness, then with its gloom.

It's not we who make our way to great truths. They hunt us down and find us out.

Truth doesn't care for us or wish us well. It scalds and skins us, and strips us of all that we have, and leaves us battered and humiliated.

30 The damage of ideas

The world, though so brute and unreasoning, can be turned on its head by an idea, butonly by one like christianity or communism which is as banal and fraudulent as itself. An ideology in the real world spills as much blood as splintered glass in a kindergarten. Ideas are pitiless. Even those who give them no thought may still be snared as their prey and prisoners. And whole countries, such as Russia, while remaining unenlightened, have been brutalized by the most chimerical creeds. 'Ideas are dangerous,' Chesterton wrote, 'but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas.'

31 The truth will not make you free

Honesty follows a devious calling. It is indifferent, but wants to make you different. It holds out to you the promise of freedom, but it binds you to a stern obedience. Honesty tempts you to


flatter us

Life, like Narcissus, gazes into the pool of art in order to admire its own face. Literature is a great glass which shows us more substantial than we are.

What we want from art is flattery and make-believe that we can take for truth. We expect it to tell us that we are ample and anguished, that we are afflicted because we are grand and grand by the grace with which we endure our afflictions.

Kitsch plays for us the anthems of our self-admiration.

We want stories to take us to a threatening place and make us feel safe there, just as we want to go abroad and feel familiarly at home.

LIFE FOR ART'S SAKE

**45 Nothing matters but style**

For true artists there's nothing serious in mortality but style. 'To thosewe would do well to leave it to the animals, who live so much more beautifully than us.

We grow happy by striving for a goal that we won't reach. And why should we care how unhappy we make the people round us by our striving?

Deem a single purpose all in all, and you will soon deem the whole world nothing at all.

What dry stalks of purpose stoke the raging blaze of our meaning and importance. We will incinerate the globe to keep it alight.

What makes life unendurable alone makes us endure it. We are harassed by the selfsame wants and hopes that we live for. And so we pay with our happiness to get what we deem we could not be happy if we lacked. Like moody Ahab,


behind which our demolition of the world goes on apace.

Technology has rejuvenated our old race, and infused it with the restless drive of spoilt adolescents.

26 Humanism

Humanism would have us believe that we are exceptional in our nature and central to the purpose of the universe. No wonder that we are all now humanists, puffed up as we are with our own sacred afflatus. It is the apotheosis of a species alienated from the earth and intoxicated by its own omnipotence. The god that it bows down to is a self-adoring and suicidal deity. We are as pitiless as gods, and just as doomed.

Secular humanism has tamed and gelded our kind far more effectually than any creed could have done.

The mortal animal has grown or shrunk to a baffledteeming superfluity.

36 Truth is not a human need

Most of us are agnostics on the great questions, not because we find it so hard to make up our minds what we think of them, but because we give them no thought at all.

Most of the deepest truths are too scandalous or else too obvious to be spoken. But few of us care enough for the truth to see how scandalous it is. How could we be horrified by the truth? We are just too heedless of it for that.

Ideas bore us. Truth disgusts us.

Few of us think enough to be perplexed by life's mysteries. We're just scrambling to ride its rapids with as few bumps and overturnings as we can manage, while scooping up all we can of the