Once a man’s understanding has settled on something (either because it is an accepted belief or because it pleases him), it draws everything else also to support and agree with it. And if it encounters a larger number of more powerful countervailing examples, it either fails to notice them, or disregards them, or makes fine distinctions to dismiss and reject them, and all this with much dangerous prejudice, to preserve the authority of its first conceptions. So when someone was shown a votive tablet in a temple dedicated, in fulfilment of a vow, by some men who had escpaed the danger of shipwreck, and was pressed to say whether he would now recognize the divinity of the gods, he made a good reply when he retorted: ‘Where are the offerings of those who made vows and perished?’

The same method is found perhaps in every superstition, like astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgements and so on: people who take pleasure in such vanities notice the results when they are fulfilled, but ignore and overlook them when they fail, though they do fail more often than not. .. Even apart from the pleasure and vanity we mentioned, it is an innate and constant mistake in the human understanding to be much more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives, when rightly and properly it should make itself equally open to both; and in fact, to the contrary, in the formation of any true axiom, there is superior force in a negative instance.

– Francis Bacon, The New Organon

Reading the second part of Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun has for me been a dreamlike experience.  I gave up on the first part once because it got too weird, but now that I’m attuned to Wolfe’s style, that is no longer a problem.  Now it works like hypnosis.  A few paragraphs in, and my brain shifts to a different gear: Slow, focused. Dreamlike.

The story takes place at the end of Earth’s life, when the sun is cooling, a setting introduced in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories.  Everything that could happen has happened, and people are surrounded by monuments from greater times.  The end is coming, or possibly the birth of a better world.

Events follow a jagged path that seems random but at the same time full of meaning.  There are echoes of mythology: Christian, classical, and modern.  And there are events that seem meaningful at first, then turn out not to be.  The protagonist, an exiled torturer, is given a magnificently named sword at the beginning, which he carries through all his adventures.  And then he loses it, and the story continues.  It was just a sword.

A gem that brings dead people back to life is possibly just a gem, or possibly magical.  A boy that shares the torturers name seems to represent something, but we never learn what.  Questions remain unanswered, and what I’m left with afterwards is mostly the feeling that I’ve been through something wonderful, something that resonated deeply with me.  Just like a dream.

Nor should we attach much value to consensus itself and its longevity. There may be many kinds of political state, but there is only one state of the sciences, and it is a popular state and always will be. And among the people the kinds of learning which are most popular are those which are either controversial and combative or attractive and empty, that is, those which ensnare and those which seduce assent. This is surely why the greatest geniuses in every age have suffered violence; while men of uncommon intellect and unerstanding, simply to preserve their reputation, have submitted themselves to the judgment of time and the multitude. For this reason, if profound thoughts have occasionally flared up, they have soon been blown on by the winds of common opinion and put out.

The result is that Time like a river has brought down to us the light things that float on the surface, and has sunk what is weighty and solid. Even those authors who have assumed a kind of dictatorship in the sciences and make pronouncements about things with so much confidence, take to complaining when they recover their senses from time to time about the subtlety of nature, the depths of truth, the obscurity of things, the complexity of causes, and the weakness of human understanding; yet they are no more modest in this, since they prefer to blame the common condition of man and nature rather than admit their own incapacity.

– Francis Bacon, The New Organon

Fremskrittspartiet er det ene av de to ekte opposisjonspartiene i Norge.  Det er riktignok ikke klart hva slags opposisjon de representerer.  Andre partier har politiske plattformer, FrP har personlighet, og da først og fremst Carl I. Hagens personlighet.  En vinglete, opportunistisk personlighet som har introdusert noen av de beste og de dårligste ideene i norsk politikk.

Kong Carl av Jan Ove Ekeberg og Jan Arild Snoen er ikke en god Hagen-biografi.  Vi får en skisse av personen Hagen, men den går sjelden i dybden.  Derimot er dette en interessant fremstilling av FrP’s historie, og spesielt av FrP’s personlighet, blandingen av liberalistiske, konservative og populistiske strømninger som Hagen etter et par utrenskninger til sist fant en levedyktig balanse mellom.

Det er spesielt fascinerende å lese hvordan Hagen bygget en partiorganisasjon ut av Anders Langes Parti.  ALP var ment som et anti-parti, Langes personlige folkebevegelse.  Hagen brøt med ALP nettop derfor, og det var kun Langes død som fikk ham tilbake igjen.  Lange skapte FrP helt utilsiktet.

Jeg kunne forresten tenke meg å lese mer om Anders Lange.  De puslespillbitene jeg har funnet fra hans liv gir inntrykk av en blogger før sin tid: Egenrådig og uforutsigbar, med en så sterk vilje til å dytte sine personlige meninger på folk at han stiftet både Anders Langes Avis, Anders Langes Frihetsbevegelse, og Anders Langes Parti.  Fantastisk!

Det er FrP han vil bli husket for, men jeg mistenker at Lange er en langt mer interessant person enn Hagen.  Hvor i all verden er den store Lange-biografien?