This is the beginning sentences of an article written in... 1939, by Abraham Flexner in an article called "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge", issue 179, Harpers.. It has enormous resonance with what is happening in the world today. Some of the useless things we do, have gone into the area of the inane, but by and large we still seek beauty and contentment, despite the shit our leaders throw at us via their petty ideas designed to enrich the rich and fiddle with your poor innards to make sure you're in pain. For these morons, sadists and sociopath, leading means inflicting pain to make you react and become a slave of their intent.

“La vie, c’est chic!” say the French. Style is our bread and butter for being human beyond mere survival. Style and substance are integral, regardless of their importance. Though we place various loadings on the importance of non important things, some of these can become essential in the improvements we desire from life. Abraham Flexner was important in the USA for his “experimental Schooling”. He though that Colleges were not satisfactory. At this level nothing has changed much. In regard to lecturing more and more students, rather than interacting with the process of “education”, the system becomes like a sausage factory. One of the important premise in his first sentence is “wholly or partly”. This means that we can be interested in maintaining and improving civilisation by fighting for justice, equality and decency, while still indulging in artistic endeavour, beauty and useless scientific discovery.

A strange case in point here could be Pamela Anderson. She has been the figurehead of a somewhat vacuous show called “Baywatch” while being a campaigner for animal rights. He latest venture as a “good friend” of Julian Assange could leave a few people speechless. But she is far more adventurous in her ideals than most of us. “I adore Julian. He is a great man… My Julian is the most intelligent, interesting and informed man in existence”. Big words that many people will dispute but I won’t. Assange is the modern version of the German Code “breaker” with a view to expose the lies and methods of the Big Brother government which we elect despite ourselves, in a system created with a spirit of giving everyone an equal chance — as long as you’re not dispossessed, coloured, poor or sick.

Some people will criticise Assange for releasing documents that could place the life of our “brave” soldiers at more risk, especially those working undercover for the glorious CIA or the NSA. This has been a contentious point, though 99 per cent of the other “dumps” are clearly in favour of showing the nasty political cooks, we cannot be too choosy here.

Back to Flexner. He was instrumental in bringing into the USA a lot of pure scientists and thinkers, including Albert Einstein. His views were whether what we know or discover is useful or not, pure knowledge can appear useless, but in the long run be beneficial to humanity as long as the naughty kids don’t use it for devilish activities.   

The work of Maxwell and Hertz were purely oriented towards the goal of understanding the universe. According to Flexner, Marconi “was inevitable”, following these works. A bright engineer, Marconi applied the discoveries of Maxwell and Hertz into a practical idea: radio and communication.

We know the rest.

“We make ourselves no promise, but we cherish the hope that the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge will prove to have consequences in the future as in the past. Not for a moment however, do we defend the Institute on that ground. It exists as a paradise for scholars who, like poet and musicians, have won the right to do as they please and who accomplish most when enabled to do so.”…

We know the rest: the military took over and we invented the atom bomb.

When observing nature from the bench on which I am writing  this short essay, I can see once more the magpie being “shadowed” by a couple of minahs. All are on the ground searching for food, but the minahs relay each other to make sure that the magpie is not up to mischief. The maggie could suddenly fly out and raid the minahs nest.  This is nature in need of protein. This is life.

Le “chic” is our interpretation and the manufacture of the useless – like adding feathers to our head, or elegant clothes to our body. Just for fun or to establish an arbitrary hierarchy. The gilded life of kings and queens was based on the cultivation of this “entertainment” chic — being one way to separate the nobles from the riffraff.  Since the inception of democracy, the rich still try to hog the “chic” and through a complex system of media, from TV to magazines, make sure we, the plebs, still dream about the “chic” (which is uselessly expensive) while being happy with the crumbs from the grind of daily life which brings the rich the ability to afford the more exclusive “chic”.

We know the rest… The magpie at the end of the article by Flexner says so. The Maggie has to live by being a maggie… But what are we but amusing idiots?

Gus Leonisky

You local clown...