pumpkinstrokemarrow

That being as it may be, that night I dreamed about being mixed up in a performance of Hamlet. The form seemed to be that there were several groups putting on Hamlet, one after the other, in the same theatre on the same evening. One of the groups was a proper outfit involving people whom one had heard of. My group was an amateur affair with myself having landed the role of Hamlet. Scene 1 involved the various groups mixing it in a sherry party sort of format - something which I am very bad at when awake but managed OK in this dream. The well known luvvies thought that the group I was involved in was a bit of a joke, but they managed to be quite kind about my involvement in it. They were sure that I would be OK. Scene 2 was just me, just before the off. I had not succeeded in learning the lines or the cues and was unsure what to do. My ignorance was apt to overwhelm the prompt. Eventually after much pondering I decided that the thing to do was to read my part rather than try and do it from memory. Something which might work out OK as my sight reading is not too bad. Grinds to a halt from time to time, but the chunks between, when the force is with one, are generally OK. Woke up at this point, without the theory having been tested. But the whole thing quite clearly a product of the audience participation, or lack of it, at the Oval.

Moving forward a couple of days, have now had a chance to peruse the paper about St Thomas Aquinas. Difficult stuff - I usually find philosophy difficult - but one point of interest is the notion that a deed cannot be truly good unless the heart of the doer of the good deed is pure. So some people let the goodness of a deed rest on the outcome or consequences of the deed, particularly but not exclusively with respect to others, and these people seem to be called utilitarians. But other people, particularly those of a Jesus persuasion, think that this is not enough. And I do think they have a point; one wants people to do the right things for the right reasons - both rights referring, of course, to what I happen to think is right. I might put up with people doing the right thing for the wrong reason but would not be particularly comfortable about it. This sort of thing happens all the time in offices, council chambers and parliaments: the desire to move forward, to get things done can make for strange bedfellows.

Furthermore, one would like people to do things with good intentions. One wants people to mean well while doing well. And one likes people doing things simply because they are good. Not because of any reward for goodness either in this world or the world to come. The private charity of a poor person is worth more than the trumpetted public charity of a rich man. Not that this last is without merit; after all, the charitable gift has been made and there is, in consequence, less malaria, or whatever.

The trouble with all this is that the utilitarian test is a lot simpler and does not involve poking around in other peoples' tender consciences quite so much.

I also read of a different sort of tenderness. It seems that the French majority in Quebec are still terribly touchy about both English people and the English language. This despite the facts that they have been in the chair for a long time now and that there are tens of thousands of anglophones domiciled in Quebec. Not to mention the tens of thousands of indigenous who, I imagine, would rather speak English than French. To the extent that, so the clipping alleged, a public employee in Quebec is not allowed to communicate in his or her official capacity with a resident of Quebec in anything other than French (or what passes for French so far from the metropolis). Especially if both parties to this communication are English speakers. Jolly well time they learnt that French is what one talks in Quebec. One can understand that, like the Irish, the French Canadians had a rather bad deal over the years. But that is all quite a long time ago now and it is sad that they have not yet been able to move on. Not to mention the waste of resources involved in making people do their business in a minority version of a minority language.