'It Stifles Ideas, Makes Cowards of Us All'

I have always taught my sons that if something is popular there’s probably something wrong with it. I know, I know: the obvious exceptions to the rule come to mind – Shakespeare, Dickens, the Beatles. Specifically, I’m thinking of ideas. They too have their fashions. What I’m suggesting is common sense, not snobbery, dogma, policing of opinions, or loyalty oaths. A healthy, skeptical, well-informed, open mind will come naturally to its own conclusions, regardless of what’s in vogue, and that same mind will naturally respect the right of others to formulate their own opinions, regardless of how ridiculous they are. In some quarters, such talk is heretical, but where’s the fun in going along with the mob? Never before have I witnessed so powerful a surge of herd-think. Of course, I’ve read about Mao’s Cultural Revolution.  

Thanks to the industrious Jeffrey Manley (and Dave Lull) at the Evelyn Waugh Society’s website, I’ve learned that the novelist’s granddaughter, Daisy Waugh, inherited the cussedness gene. In an op-ed titled “Unpopular opinions are in danger of extinction – but you can change that,” the daughter of Auberon Waugh writes:

“Self[-]censorship muzzles creativity. It stifles ideas, makes cowards of us all, and makes conversation very boring. Worse than that, one day, it might just jump up and bite you in the arse.”

In Robbery Under Law (1939), her grandfather understood the threat of arse-biting: “Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on. There is no more agreeable position than that of dissident from a stable society. Theirs are all the solid advantages of other people's creation and preservation, and all the fun of detecting hypocrisies and inconsistencies. There are times when dissidents are not only enviable but valuable. The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history.”