A Bookish Life on the Verandah

I have no right to complain of my life so far as the substance I have been given is concerned. The title of this weblog is all about my life on the verandah of my humble but resourceful apartment. I must qualify that humble is a gentlemanly modesty expected of any educated person. Despite having no right to complain, I preserve my right to be concerned. I am concerned about the doom of civilisation and unlike the trampling of Rome by the barbarians when civilisation survived by the skin of its teeth. We are now at risk of oblivion without much to rely on if civilisation is to be saved. One characteristics of this life on the verandah is its bookishness, if you will. There I may have a cigar, a cup of coffee or a dram of single malt, but it is not complete without a book. There is a profound difference between a life of gastronomy and a life of letters. The former is likely to be infesting among the affluent whereas the latter is more likely now than ever to be at the risk of extinction among them. This is a shame when in the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance, those rich people performed their oblige noblesse. They were rich but entirely passionate about art. The rich nouveau become parvenu simply because they lack the organ to appreciate art which, in my opinion, formulates the skeleton of a civilisation, and without which I am doubtful if a society can be classified among the civilised societies. The reason why I am concerned, as I just explained, is because these days the worst is deemed the best, the golden rule to follow, the silver bullet. Quite the contrary, I am afraid the worst, as these attributes were classified in civilised intelligence but muddled through in today's idiots who control the media, would dominate our world such that the once best and good are swamped and die out. Humanity is submerging into barbarism; one which is different from 2,000 years ago in that the latter was barbaric, but with less ingrained detrimental effects than the former. Modern barbarism was created by those good intentions for high quality people. But they are now abused by the worse kind who is given to live a diligent life but who cannot because of their bad genes.