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Business Advantage. Business is human.

0:30

Hello, welcome to Patented, a history of

0:33

inventions brought to you from History

0:35

Hit. To listen to all of our episodes

0:38

advert-free and to watch hundreds

0:40

of history documentaries, download

0:43

the History Hit app or

0:45

go to historyhit.com slash subscribe.

0:48

And if you're an Apple listener, you can subscribe

0:50

for new ad-free episodes

0:52

within the app.

0:56

Hello and welcome to the show. Dallas here. Thank you

0:58

for joining me. Now then, I've got a little bit of news,

1:00

some good news and some bad news. The

1:03

good news is that this is an absolutely cracking

1:05

episode. It's an

1:08

episode that I've been wanting to

1:11

do really since we started the series,

1:13

gosh, whenever it was, 18 months or so ago. I say that because it's

1:15

a story about science and

1:17

technology, of course, but it's science

1:19

and technology as an example

1:22

of wider culture. We

1:24

tend to think of science and tech very often as

1:26

something other, something that other people do. But

1:31

this episode is a reminder that science and

1:33

technology is a very human thing, as you'll find out. So enjoy the

1:35

episode. I also think it's a very fitting

1:37

final episode, which brings me to the bad news. This

1:42

is the last episode of Patented, which makes

1:44

me very, very sad. Certainly

1:47

the last episode for the time being. And as such,

1:49

I just very quickly want to say a few thank yous.

1:52

First of all, thank you so much to Dan and everyone

1:53

at History Hit for giving me this opportunity

1:56

to do this series. It's been an absolute joy.

1:59

Thank you to everybody who's

2:02

taken part in this series, all the experts, the

2:04

scientists, the engineers. Thank you for taking

2:06

the time to share your stories. Thank

2:09

you to Em and to Charlotte and

2:11

to Freddie, the producers who do all the hard

2:13

work, all the leg work, all the grunt work who

2:16

make my job very, very

2:18

easy. Better producers you

2:20

could not find. Producers and therapists.

2:23

Thank you for putting up with me for the last 18 months. Most

2:26

of all, thank you for listening. Everybody

2:29

who's listened, it's been an absolute honour.

2:31

And I want to say thank you to everyone who's sent

2:34

kind messages, who's got in touch with suggestions.

2:36

We would not have been able to do it without

2:38

you. So thank you very much. Don't

2:40

forget you can go back and look at all the

2:42

other brilliant episodes that we recorded. I'm sure

2:45

there's a few that you've missed. We've done over 150 or so. Tell

2:49

your friends and family all about it still. They'll

2:51

be there for them and yourself to listen to. With

2:53

that, well, I won't say goodbye, but maybe

2:56

just a gentle. In 480

3:05

BC, Persian King

3:07

Xerxes was busy invading

3:09

Greece. Pontoon bridges

3:11

were built to move the troops, but these

3:13

carefully crafted bridges were

3:16

soon destroyed by the ocean. Absolutely

3:20

furious with this, King Xerxes

3:22

ordered the sea to be whipped with 300

3:25

lashes as a punishment. In

3:28

the gourmet night episode of Faulty

3:30

Towers, Hapless Basil Faulty

3:33

is racing in his mini to pick up the

3:35

duck dishes from André's restaurant in

3:37

the town. And at the crucial moment,

3:39

the old mini decides to break

3:41

down. Furious

3:44

Faulty shakes his fists in rage

3:47

at the spiteful behaviour of his car before

3:49

giving it a damn good thrashing with

3:51

a tree branch. I think there's

3:54

a little bit of King Xerxes and Basil

3:56

Faulty in need.

4:02

Hello and welcome to

4:12

the

5:25

show Christy Jennings.

5:28

Nice to see you.

5:54

And before we kind of crack on with

5:57

the subject, just a bit of housekeeping.

6:00

You know, if you Google Paul Jennings, there's

6:03

another Paul Jennings. I didn't know

6:05

this. There

6:06

is an Australian child's author,

6:08

so depending on the demographic

6:11

you speak to, some

6:13

people will think that's who it is and

6:15

say, how can he possibly be your dad? So

6:18

that's not him. So that's it. When

6:21

I signal people to go and look up Paul Jennings,

6:24

not that Paul Jennings. Yeah, not

6:26

that Paul Jennings. Because I was thinking about Googling

6:28

just now. I didn't know he was Australian.

6:31

And then I was like, I didn't know he was still alive. And

6:33

then I was like, ah. Tell

6:36

us about your dad, your lovely dad, who

6:38

I never met, but have been

6:40

a massive fan of all my adult life, I think.

6:43

I was

6:43

a tragedy of life, really, that

6:45

we met after he died. And there were

6:47

a few people in my life I'd say that. But if he

6:50

died in 1989, and he was 47

6:53

when I was born, so I think

6:56

I had a very different relationship with him than

6:58

the rest of my siblings. I'm the youngest of

7:00

the lot. And yeah, I mean,

7:03

one-off,

7:04

eccentric, quirky. They

7:07

don't make them like that anymore, that's for sure.

7:09

They definitely do. I mean, he's a writer,

7:12

but I suppose, I mean, a columnist

7:15

more than anything else. I mean,

7:18

I certainly know him from his not even short

7:20

stories, but little columns.

7:22

I mean, he was really of his time,

7:25

if you like.

7:25

But I suppose he was probably the

7:27

first columnist

7:30

in a newspaper. People of a certain

7:32

age would have read him every Sunday, because

7:34

he was, I think, about 25 years on the Observer,

7:37

and it was the oddly enough column.

7:40

And he was kind of the first person to do that,

7:42

sort of observe this kind

7:44

of work. You know, I'm

7:46

going to write a piece about Merle

7:48

and the Lawn, for example, and then

7:51

go off into a complete flight

7:53

of fancy about his relationship with a lawnmower

7:55

or... Oh, you know,

7:58

looking after some friends' cats in London.

7:59

and losing a mouse down a rabbit,

8:02

a mouse hole, you know, all

8:04

that stuff. He's did all that sort of stuff.

8:06

But you know, he had to bang one out every week.

8:10

So, you know, growing up in a household

8:12

with someone, you know, with that kind of deadline,

8:14

having to be that funny every week, quite

8:16

a pleasure. It's hard work trying to be funny.

8:19

If he was around now, he would be having

8:21

his own podcast and

8:23

would be like trying to think of funny

8:25

things to say in his podcast and think of

8:28

funny things to talk about. And

8:31

he died weirdly. He

8:33

died in 1989 way before Twitter. One

8:35

of his last ideas was to do

8:37

a thing of

8:39

I think it was 140 characters in the Times

8:41

every day, which was Twitter. Really?

8:44

Yeah. No, it wasn't 140. Yeah,

8:46

he said. Seriously. He came

8:48

up with that in 1989.

8:50

It's brilliant. Anyway, so that's Paul

8:52

James. But very specifically, I want

8:54

to talk about Resistentialism, which I

8:57

sort of mentioned. The

9:00

thing is about Resistentialism as an idea. It's something

9:03

we all recognize. We

9:05

all know it is something that is hardwired

9:08

into the human brain, this idea that

9:12

spiteful behavior of inanimate objects.

9:15

And psychologists have written about it a lot. And scientists

9:17

have written about it a lot, this idea of agency

9:19

detection and, you

9:21

know, where it comes from, I don't really know. But

9:23

nobody has expressed

9:26

it quite as elegantly, I would argue,

9:28

as Paul Jennings. I mean, there's other versions

9:30

of it, I suppose, Sodd's Law or Murphy's

9:32

Law, those types of things. But

9:35

Resistentialism, it's so beautiful.

9:37

It's so wonderfully thought out and

9:39

the way it's expressed. And I just want to know what

9:42

was its origins. You know of the origins

9:44

of it from him. Did he ever talk about it

9:46

with you?

9:47

Not about that it's

9:50

Resistentialism itself, but he really

9:52

believed it. I mean, you know, he actually

9:54

did. Yeah, but I do as well. That's the thing why

9:56

I'm so obsessed by it because it's like it happens

9:58

all the time.

9:59

So, I mean, I grew up in a household

10:02

where you would be upstairs in the

10:04

house and you would hear from

10:06

the gone,

10:07

oh, that is a hard you. And

10:11

he'd be shouting at the lawnmower

10:13

and he'd just literally talking to the lawnmower

10:15

and going, well, well done. You

10:17

must be delighted with that. And I think actually,

10:20

in all seriousness, I think he was sort of coping

10:22

with alcoholism for how difficult

10:24

life was. So that's where I kind

10:26

of believed it.

10:28

Well, this is the thing. It's easy to kind of write

10:30

it off as a bit of a sort of joke philosophy.

10:33

But he writes it as a joke. I

10:35

mean, he writes it in the style of Jean-Paul Sartre, this

10:37

rather pretentious French

10:39

New Wave left bank kind

10:41

of cult scene. And that's part of the fun of

10:44

it. But behind it, there is this

10:46

idea that, well, I mean, you could cycle

10:48

it. Throughout history, all

10:50

humans, I think, suffer from this idea of things

10:53

just going wrong. Give

10:55

us a little idea, because there's a few different essays about

10:57

it in his work. And I do know I'm

10:59

not sure when it first appeared in

11:02

his writing. I think it was 48. I

11:04

think it was in the spectator.

11:08

And I have to confess, I mean,

11:10

because he wrote from the age of 19, there

11:13

is so much material. So

11:15

actually, I reread the report and was essentially Mr.

11:17

Just in Preparations, this. And I thought,

11:20

my goodness,

11:21

no wonder, you know, the

11:23

way that his mind works. And

11:26

so, yeah, I think it started

11:28

pretty early on as a notion

11:31

and an idea that he developed. And I think, you know,

11:33

of its time, it was extremely, it was

11:35

a very well-known

11:36

essay.

11:38

How would you describe existentialism?

11:40

Well, as he was, which is that things

11:43

are absolutely against us. And

11:46

they have a mind of their own, and they are

11:48

spiteful. And they

11:50

decide to do it in order to make

11:52

your life and your day more difficult is how

11:54

I would describe it. And there is an extension of that,

11:56

which I've told you about. I think about the AJO,

11:59

how I told you about that.

11:59

Oh yes, the anti Jennings organization.

12:02

He totally believed which

12:03

was that if you were ever

12:06

held up in traffic, so

12:08

for example if there was a traffic jam and there was a tractor

12:10

in front of you, he

12:11

would say yes that he's a member of the AJO

12:14

and how brilliant and the whole premise of that

12:16

idea was that everything

12:19

that got in your way

12:20

was set up to me. The

12:23

traffic lights always turning red was kind

12:25

of my dad's one. He's like, here they go, they're going to turn

12:27

red. Go on holiday in France and you'll

12:29

be in the middle of nowhere and

12:30

the man would be cycling the other way,

12:32

you know, literally with onions around his neck and he'd

12:35

say he's a member obviously.

12:37

A little bit like the Truman

12:39

Show. Again I think for people

12:41

who've watched the Truman Show, this idea that one's

12:43

whole life is some kind of soap

12:46

opera for other people's enjoyment. It's

12:49

about ego

12:50

too, isn't it? Because it's all about everything that's centered

12:52

around me in order for my life

12:54

to be difficult. I

12:58

suppose the classic examples are things like

13:00

toast always falling jam

13:03

side down is a sort of classic one. When

13:05

I read it, there are millions and millions

13:08

of examples. Pencils when dropped

13:10

always rolling away just out of reach. Pens

13:13

that you're desperately trying to find and

13:16

you suddenly find a pen that you need to write down the important

13:18

sign of, will guaranteed not to work,

13:20

etc. These are all good examples. And

13:22

of course liquid of any kind.

13:25

You could have half a cup of tea

13:28

and drop it on the floor and the liquid

13:30

would be able to spread itself.

13:32

But that was a great thing for him. Yeah.

13:35

A classic of that is you

13:37

put a spoon in the sink because you're washing up

13:40

and you turn the tap on and

13:42

you will get soaked. The water will

13:44

just spray up like beyond any

13:47

reasonable, like the laws of physics

13:49

suddenly turn their head and look the other way every

13:51

time. I mean,

13:53

because your dad was sort of writing

13:56

late 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s.

13:59

through to the 80s. That was his sort of time

14:02

period. This is a podcast

14:04

really about technology.

14:06

But sort of technology fits so beautifully, I

14:08

think, into existentialism. And that first

14:11

essay that he wrote, which we think was the

14:13

first essay, the first published essay, 1948, when

14:17

I'm just thinking about what the technology was

14:19

happening in 1948, technology was

14:21

starting to get interesting and

14:23

exciting, kind of post-war, things were happening,

14:25

rockets, all kinds of things. And I'm interested in what

14:28

your dad's take on technology

14:30

was. Was he a sort of technophobe? Was

14:33

he kind of a resistance to

14:35

technology? Was technology then part

14:37

of the existentialist movement as it were? No, I think he

14:40

was fascinated

14:40

by technology. Also,

14:42

I came along later. So an example I would give you

14:44

is, this is one of my favourite stories by him actually,

14:46

is that when I first moved

14:48

to London in 1986, I think, I think

14:51

in that case it's about when answer

14:53

phones first came into fashion,

14:54

if you remember.

14:56

And I got an answer then. And

14:58

the first, and I've probably got the recording somewhere

15:00

still, the first message I ever got on my phone

15:02

was

15:03

my dad saying, Hello,

15:05

darling,

15:06

it's your dad.

15:08

I'm talking to you, and you can

15:10

hear me.

15:11

But you're not there. How

15:14

very sweet. So that's

15:16

how we thought. He's been looking

15:18

at the world and saying, how

15:20

has this happened?

15:21

It's interesting because, you know, wherever

15:23

you are in the civilisation,

15:25

because presumably Romans would have had a resistance

15:28

to this moments, when things would have just

15:30

gone wrong. Presumably cavemen

15:32

would have had the same thing when they were sort of trying to light

15:34

a fire and their rocks didn't

15:36

work, or I don't know, whatever it

15:39

would be. And when

15:41

I read your dad's work about Resistentialism, I'm

15:43

wondering how he would cope in the digital

15:45

age, because Resistentialism, I

15:47

would argue that the battle

15:50

of things against humans

15:51

has been won now

15:54

in the digital age. It's gone so beyond

15:57

annoying in terms of what's

15:59

going on.

15:59

I think I would absolutely love to talk to him now. And

16:05

see, because I think

16:07

there would be some things that utterly would horrify

16:09

him beyond belief. And there

16:10

would be other things that he'd be absolutely

16:13

riveted and excited by. I mean, Twitter,

16:15

he would have been all over Twitter. He would

16:17

have ruled.

16:20

He would have liked it. I

16:22

was just thinking about annoying things under the digital

16:24

age. We live in a world of miracles, and

16:26

yet, say for example,

16:28

I mentioned, you know, printers are the sort of classic example.

16:31

They sit in your room. You don't print

16:33

that much. And the day you need a printer,

16:35

because you've got to print out the script, or something

16:37

important to sing, ink,

16:39

it just won't work. It

16:42

won't work. And there are videos on YouTube

16:44

of people destroying printers in rage.

16:47

Classic. I've made a little

16:50

list. Feel free to add to this. I mean,

16:52

things like, you know, you're

16:54

trying to fill out a form online,

16:56

and it'll say, please complete this field, but

16:59

it'll be grayed out, so you can't click on it.

17:01

Classic. Let's show some account not

17:04

recognized. We could not complete this transaction.

17:07

Use a name or password not recognized. Ready

17:09

to pair. Device not found. Action

17:12

required. Things are against us.

17:15

It's now exploded in the digital world.

17:18

The things have won the battle,

17:20

I think.

17:20

No question about it. It was a losing battle in 1948, but now

17:22

we've had it. Right?

17:24

Yeah.

17:27

Well, your dad's kind of worried about all the things

17:30

like, you know, pencils falling on the ground. That's

17:32

nothing. Honestly, Paul,

17:34

you haven't... Crikey. Honestly.

17:38

What can you do coming into the 21st century? And

17:40

this is the thing. Here we are talking about like, AI

17:43

and like, chat GPT and all that kind of stuff.

17:46

Let's get the printer sorted out first. Figure

17:48

out how to hook up a printer to a thing

17:51

and then worry about AI. I spent a

17:53

good percentage of my life turning up

17:55

in venues, assorted venues,

17:58

to give talks about things. And

18:00

I've got

18:03

to the point now in my advanced stage that

18:06

I do things like, okay, I make the presentation,

18:09

I convert Keynote into PowerPoint

18:11

pre-1997 so that it cannot

18:14

fail to work. I then email

18:16

whoever a copy of it, get them to check

18:19

it, and I go through various processes, and

18:21

I turn up for the day, and I guarantee not

18:23

once has it ever worked. You get like

18:26

four people with PhDs gathered around a laptop,

18:28

and then they say, then they say healthily, huh, that's

18:31

strange, that doesn't normally happen. And

18:33

that's when I go into the rage, because it

18:35

happens all the time, every single time it happens.

18:38

I've

18:38

been teaching presentations for 20 years. I've never

18:40

yet seen someone go to the

18:42

laptop, click on the slides and go, good morning,

18:44

everybody. What happens is everybody

18:46

goes, right, hang on, hang on,

18:52

always.

18:52

And so I know better. And

18:54

so I always say to people, stitch them,

18:57

get rid of them, and when people

18:59

try and convince me this is the way it's all about, I say,

19:01

but it's not, because the whole point about

19:03

getting up and talking is human interaction.

19:06

It is not showing up. Well,

19:08

that's

19:09

it. And I think it's important, you know,

19:11

technology moves on at a pace,

19:13

even more so now, than

19:16

ever before. And it's easy just to go, oh,

19:18

it's all marvellous, isn't everything wonderful? And it's

19:20

nice to plug the human

19:22

into it, and our fallibilities and our human

19:24

brains, when butted up against new

19:26

technology, you get existentialism,

19:31

the general annoyance. I

19:33

wonder what the future of it is. Do you think, I

19:35

mean, I would argue that in the digital age, the

19:38

things have won. We are now

19:40

enslaved to the things. It's not just

19:42

that things are annoying, but that's the things

19:44

that have actually enslaved us.

19:46

Yeah. And you know, if you've got kids

19:49

and phones, and, you know,

19:51

how are you going to undo it all? I

19:54

often think that. I wonder, you know, this part

19:57

of me that wants to undo it and just go

19:59

backwards

19:59

a bit.

19:59

course you can't,

20:02

it's his progress isn't

20:04

it? But

20:05

I've got a 13 year old son and his whole

20:08

life is his own and he's

20:10

controlled by it. My father would

20:12

be horrified by that. I've

20:15

got a kind of foot in two camps. I mean I love it and

20:17

I think technology is amazing

20:19

and interesting and fascinating but I definitely have

20:21

a a residentialist

20:24

camp as well. I'm just wondering if there's

20:27

a therapy or something we can do

20:29

to help people. Assuming the war

20:32

has been lost, which

20:34

I genuinely think it has, I think the

20:37

residentialists, the things

20:39

have won, but how

20:42

can we live with it? Well I think it's

20:44

really helpful to know that it's true and

20:46

that's absolutely what my dad was all about

20:48

really, is that if you understand that that's

20:51

happening, at least that

20:53

helps you

20:55

I think. If you really

20:57

understand that things are going to get

20:59

in your way and they'll do it on purpose inevitably,

21:03

it enables you to

21:05

have a sense of humour about it doesn't it?

21:07

That's the key.

21:08

That's it. That's all you

21:10

have to do is have a sense of humour. Know

21:12

it's going to happen. You

21:13

know, you talk to him and say well done, you

21:16

must be very pleased with that.

21:16

No one was there. I mean

21:20

I'm not joking, he did not do it for comic effect.

21:23

You would hear him talking.

21:24

Christie, it's a pleasure talking

21:26

to you. Thank you so much for coming in. My

21:29

relationship with technology

21:31

is your dad is always

21:33

in the back of my mind and

21:36

long may he remain in the back of my

21:38

mind. Not in a weird creepy way but

21:40

you know just there.

21:42

Well

21:42

wouldn't it be nice if we could bring him back

21:45

because he would have absolutely loved

21:48

talking to you. He, well

21:51

he's here. These books, these wonderful data

21:53

storage systems, biological data

21:56

storage systems, paper, are

21:58

like kind of fossils of the mind.

22:00

So you can go and pick up Paul Jennings and

22:02

chat to him whenever you want. Thank you so much! Thank

22:04

you. That's it.

22:07

I hope you enjoyed that episode. You

22:10

now have a word to describe

22:12

the annoyance of your

22:14

life, a vocabulary that

22:17

describes the seemingly spiteful

22:19

behaviour of everyday objects. A huge

22:21

thanks to Christie for coming on and taking

22:23

the time to share that wonderful story. A real

22:26

personal story. I've been a huge fan of Paul's for a long

22:28

time and I've been wanting to do this episode for a

22:30

long time. I hope you enjoyed it. I

22:32

hope you found it interesting. That relationship

22:35

between humans and the things

22:37

that we make. We are going

22:39

to be taking a break from

22:42

the patented, that is for me. But

22:44

in the meantime, I thought I would leave

22:47

you in a capable hands, a capable

22:49

word of Paul James. This

22:51

is one of his reports on Resistentialism.

22:55

Thank you very much to everybody

22:56

who supported patented over the last 18 months.

23:00

It's been an absolute

23:02

pleasure. Thank

23:03

you for your company and I look forward to talking to you soon.

23:19

Hatred of one's father at Victoria. Clapham,

23:23

a nightmare of cream-painted plumbing

23:25

and baths in the sky. Sorrow

23:27

and angst over the fish in the dining car.

23:31

Then Dover, looking guiltily

23:33

northwards at the death of the spirit.

23:36

After the suicidal W1 milk bath,

23:38

the red-haired men on the trams,

23:41

what heart's ease to

23:43

be in Paris once more. To

23:45

see the familiastres,

23:47

the cyclism, the metro. To

23:50

hear the grand-crisse anglote

23:52

du monde. The insouciant

23:54

talk of the patisseries, the badinage

23:57

of the apisseries.

23:59

the bubbling creative

24:02

activity of the little Resistentialist

24:04

cafe where the disciples of

24:06

Pierre-Nachette-Vontre meet

24:09

to discuss this fascinating new philosophy.

24:12

Listening to Vontre for several evenings

24:14

I perceived that Paris still

24:17

brandishes the sword of European

24:20

thought, flashing brightly against

24:22

the dull Philistine sky. Resistentialism

24:29

is a philosophy of tragic

24:31

grandeur. It's difficult

24:33

to give an account of it in textbook

24:35

English after hearing Vontre's

24:37

witty aetheryms, but I will

24:39

try. Resistentialism derives

24:43

its name from its central thesis

24:45

that things res resist

24:48

resistre men. Philosophers

24:52

have become excited at various times,

24:54

says Vontre, about psychophysical

24:57

parallelisms, about idealisms,

25:00

about the I-thou relation,

25:02

about pragmatism. All

25:04

these were, so to speak, pre-atomic

25:07

philosophies. They were concerned merely with

25:09

what men think about things. Now

25:12

Resistentialism is the philosophy of what

25:14

things think about us.

25:17

The tragic comic answer

25:19

after centuries of man's attempt to dominate

25:21

things is our progressive losing

25:24

of the battle. Things

25:28

are against us is the nearest I

25:30

can get to the untranslatable

25:32

lucidity of Vontre's profound

25:35

aphorism, les chauds sont

25:37

contre nous.

25:39

Of course, Resistentialism represents

25:42

to some extent a synthesis of

25:44

previous European thought. The

25:46

hostility of things has been dimly

25:48

perceived by other philosophers. Gauté,

25:51

for example, said that three times

25:54

has an apple proved fatal, first

25:57

of a human race in the fall of Adam,

26:00

secondly to Troy through the gift

26:02

of Paris, and last of all

26:04

to science through the fall of Newton's

26:07

apple.

26:08

This line was, of course,

26:10

pursued by Martin Freidegg in his

26:12

monumental work, and of course

26:14

Martin Heidenseek, the latter

26:17

reached the position that man could not control

26:19

things, but although there are flashes

26:21

of perception of the actual hostility

26:24

of things in his later work, it was left

26:26

to Vontre to make the brilliant jump

26:28

to the existentialist concept of the planned,

26:31

numinous, quasi-intellectual

26:34

opposition of things as

26:36

a single force against us. One

26:39

reason for the appeal of Resistentialism

26:41

to the modern mind is its bridging

26:44

of the gulf between philosophy and science.

26:47

Indeed, some of Vontre's followers go

26:49

so far as to claim that Resistentialism

26:52

is just a transcendental version

26:55

of modern physics. Some examples

26:57

do make this clear. For instance, readers

26:59

of this journal will recall the interesting accounts

27:02

that appeared some time ago of the

27:04

experiments in which pieces of toast

27:06

and marmalade were dropped on various

27:08

samples of carpet, arranged in order

27:11

of quality from choir matting

27:14

to the finest kerman rugs.

27:16

The marmalade downwards incidents

27:18

were found to vary directly as the

27:21

quality of the carpet. More

27:23

recently, researchers in the American

27:25

field by Noyes and Krangenbacher,

27:28

two Americans, have involved

27:31

literally thousands of experiments in which subjects

27:34

of all ages and sexes sitting in

27:36

chairs of every conceivable kind

27:39

dropped various kinds of pencil. In

27:42

only three cases did the pencil come

27:44

to rest within their reach. Gonk's

27:47

hypothesis, formulated by our own Professor

27:50

Gonk of Cambridge Trichological

27:52

Institute, states that a subject

27:54

who has rubbed a wet shaving

27:56

brush over his face before applying the

27:58

cream cannot

27:59

However long and furiously he shakes

28:02

the brush,

28:03

prevent water from dribbling down his

28:05

forearm and wetting his sleeve

28:08

once he starts shaving. Gonck

28:10

has also, of course, carried out some brilliant

28:13

research on colostards, shoelaces,

28:15

tin openers, and the third

28:17

programme, atmospherics. Ventre,

28:21

however, scorns the false positivism

28:24

of the scientists with their fussy

28:26

desire to dominate. Things

28:29

cannot be dominated. Resistantialism

28:31

is a tragic philosophy. It

28:34

sees that man is doomed by things

28:36

the moment he attempts to achieve anything outside

28:38

his own mind, which, like

28:41

Disney's flying mouse, is

28:43

not a thing at all. To

28:45

the Resistantialist man is no

28:48

thing, or rather a pseudo-thing.

28:51

The nearest I can get to Ventre's subtle expression,

28:53

pseudo-chus. Things are the only

28:56

reality possessing a power of action

28:58

in which we can never aspire. The

29:01

Resistantialist ideal is

29:03

to free man from his tragic destiny

29:05

of thing-hauntedness by refusing

29:08

to enter into relation with things.

29:11

Things always win, and man

29:14

can only be free from them by not doing anything

29:17

at all. This

29:19

brings me to the aesthetics

29:21

of Resistantialism. Readers of this

29:24

journal are already aware of the profound

29:26

effects of the new philosophy on art and

29:28

literature. We've already seen Ventre's

29:31

play Puit Clos, which

29:33

expresses Resistantialism, in

29:36

a dramatic parable in which three old

29:38

men walk round ceaselessly at the bottom

29:40

of a well. There are also some

29:42

bricks in the well, these symbolised

29:45

things, and all the old men

29:47

hate the bricks as much as they do each other. The

29:50

play is full of their pitiful

29:52

attempts to throw the bricks out of the top of the well,

29:55

but they can, of course, never throw

29:58

high enough, and the bricks always fall.

29:59

always fall back on them.

30:01

In the musical field, there is already

30:03

a school of existentialist composers

30:05

among the younger men, notably Dufay

30:09

and Kodak. Recognition

30:11

of the thinness of musical instruments,

30:13

the tendency of the French horn to make

30:16

horrible gloving noises, the

30:19

tragic mathematical fact that if music

30:21

goes at more than a certain critical speed,

30:23

the friction of the violinist bow will set

30:26

fire to the strings, is behind

30:28

Kodak's interesting symphonietta

30:31

for horns, trumpets, strings,

30:34

sousaphones and cymbals without

30:36

any players. At

30:39

one of the Resistentialist cafes, Agfa,

30:42

one of the painters in Vontre's entourage,

30:45

told me that he's contemplating an exhibition

30:47

of his work in London, and if this

30:49

bold venture succeeds it will be

30:51

a great day for the readers of this journal. But

30:54

of course it won't be the same thing

30:56

as here in Paris among the

30:59

insouciant talk of the patisseries,

31:02

the Badinage of the Epissaries.

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