John Ray: Dickens

Oakman

Richard A. Abbott wrote:

Unless you know otherwise...

Nope. You are right. His stuff is good.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Lost User

This web site will provide some answers http://www.workhouses.org.uk/[^] and from Channel 4 tv (UK) this Time Traveller's Guide to Victorian Britain[^]

Lost User

Yes, but it is a shame he doesn't show the same professionalism here at the Soapbox.

Stan Shannon

Thanks for the link. Thats interesting information. Dickens, as with most modern leftists, is good at identifying and defining a problem, but really sucks at attributing it to the real cause and thus empowring himself to provide a solution to what ever cause he wishes to attribute it to - greedy rich people obviously, which we clearly need to empower the government to do something about immediately! The simple facts are that, yes, the infrastructure of a rapidly growing society emerging from a more primitive social state and into a modern metropolitan society needed attention from the government. But, otherwise, private British society had the situation well in hand.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Lost User

I notice Ilion and Stan never post on any other message boards. Just a thought.

Visit http://www.notreadytogiveup.com/[^] and do something special today.

Oakman

So. When your posts began to read more and more like a crappy imitation of a backwoods preacher, I wondered what was going on. I wondered if you were still engaged with this board or simply getting your jolies by irritating other people. Now I know.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Oakman

Trollslayer wrote:

I notice Ilion and Stan never post on any other message boards.

I know you meant here at CP, but Troy has posted elsewhere, though it's my understanding that he was finally banned. http://all-too-common-dissent.blogspot.com/2006/04/ilion-troy-d-hailey-just-knows.html[^]

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Stan Shannon

Oakman wrote:

So. When your posts began to read more and more like a crappy imitation of a backwoods preacher, I wondered what was going on. I wondered if you were still engaged with this board or simply getting your jolies by irritating other people. Now I know.

I'm actually pretty sure your's were crafted more to irritate than were mine. I happen to feel confident that most of what we are told of that period of English history is heavily influenced by collectivist propaganda (just as your own flawed views on the American south are). Were there serious problems? Of course there were. Is there any validity based upon those problems to arrive at a conclusion along the lines of "See what becomes of humanity without big government programs to care for the poor!!!!!"? Of course not. Those problems would have been resolved to the maximum possible benefit of all involved without any further empowerment of government.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

Oakman

Stan Shannon wrote:

your's

Here's your first clue for the evening: it's "yours," not "your's." You and Ilion make grammatical and orthographic errors that should not be considered acceptable in a third grader.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Of course there were. Is there any validity based upon those problems to arrive at a conclusion along the lines of "See what becomes of humanity without big government programs to care for the poor!!!!!"?

Here's your second: To the best of my relatively extensive knowledge, Charles Dickens never called for any form of government intervention. Indeed, it is quite obvious in his best known work, A Christmas Carol, that he believes the road to redemption is paved not with the governmental poorhouses, but with private charity as exemplified by Scrooge after his conversion*. There are a number of other examples, but since I doubt your knowledge of the novels and certainly do not think it worth my time to explain them in the detail necessary, I shan't go into them. Here's your third: Artists whether they work with words or paint or stone or music often have "held the mirror up to nature" and shown in excruciating detail the miseries and pain they saw there. Dickens, Miller, Toulouse-Lautrec - none of them thought they had the answer and tried to shove it down anyone's throat the way you do. (Some second raters do try to provide all the right answers - Clifford Odets comes to mind -- but the greats don't bother.) Instead they simply ask all the right questions - by making us ask them. * "Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "My dear Mr Scrooge, are you serious?" "If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?" "My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him. "I don't know what to say to such munificence."

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Ilion

Oakman wrote:

Here's your first clue for the evening: it's "yours," not "your's." You and Ilion make grammatical and orthographic errors that should not be considered acceptable in a third grader.

Stan sometimes makes *minor* (*) grammatical and orthographic errors; Ilíon almost never does (**). (*) And far-too-common amongst the general population, which may go far in explaining how it is that Stans sometimes makes these mistakes, as we are all heavily influenced by what we see and read. (**) And most of the spelling errors Ilíon does post are mere typos he didn't catch; whereas to bitch about "orthographic errors," especially as DryRot has done, implies that the target does not know the correct spelling. edit: One might also note that even though Ilíon rarely makes orthographic errors, much less grammatical errors, he does not jump on others when they do. But then, Ilíon doesn't appear to have a *need* to hold himself as superior to others, does he?

Ilion

Stan Shannon wrote:

Thanks for the link. Thats interesting information.

It’s always my pleasure to propagate interesting information, moreso to those who are interested in receiving it.

Ilion

Trollslayer wrote:

I notice Ilion and Stan never post on any other message boards. Just a thought.

Perhaps these two fine fellows have other interests. Or, as a non-entity such as your own apparently suicidal self might put it, perhaps they have lives. Just a thought.

Ilion

Incidentally, here is the New York Times (!) making much the same basic factual claims about the conditions of the work-houses that Ray does. I'd read this NYT piece a few days before Ray put up his post. NYT: In Reality, Oliver’s Diet Wasn’t Truly Dickensian[^]

Ilion

Trollslayer wrote:

I notice Ilion and Stan never post on any other message boards. Just a thought.

Oddly enough, She-Who-Names-Herself-Selfslayer, I cannot find that you have contributed even *one* worthwhile article to CP. Or even one not-worthwhile article. I see that you have "contibuted" tons and tons of posts in one forum or another, but no articles whatsoever. Just a thought.

Tim Craig

Oakman wrote:

Troy has posted elsewhere, though it's my understanding that he was finally banned.

Remember the ex-paratrooper turned biology professor who was looking to kick his ass?

"Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke

73Zeppelin

It's not just Dickens. It's just about everything, including his own religion. He likes to pretend he knows things, but intellectual pretenders are quickly identified. What is particularly depressing and frustrating is that the more he tries to seem intelligent, the more he demonstrates his intellectual weakness. But that's just textbook narcissim - the pathological kind.

73Zeppelin

I have to say, Jon, that I gauge the intelligence of other people by what I am able to learn from them. Your analyses of Dickens in the context of this thread are impressive.

pseudonym67

Nice The characters in the Pickwick Papers also spend some time in Newgate debtors prison as well. It's gone now its not far from Bank ( where the bank of england is ) and now is part of the city However the Old Curiosity Shop is still there. ( Turn right when you leave Holborn ).

pseudonym67 My Articles[^] Beginning KDevelop Programming[^]

pseudonym67

Richard A. Abbott wrote:

Very often it was better to be in the workplace where you would be warm and fed, rather than at home, where conditions where far more cramped and squalid.

Quite possibly true but at the time there was a general fear of the workhouse and what went on there. In the Our Mutual Friend there is an elderly lady who prefers to take her chances and ends up dying in a ditch to escape the workhouse.

pseudonym67 My Articles[^] Beginning KDevelop Programming[^]

Lost User

Apparently, life in the workhouse was just above the quality of life experienced in Debtors Prisons. Horrible places no doubt but peoples of that era had little choices available to them.