Morlocks and Eloi

    I read another piece yesterday about the rioting in England that has gone on for a while now. And in doing so, because I'm a dork, my mind tended to drift to the war between Russia and Ukraine, the war between Israel and Hamas, the soon to be war between Israel and Iran, as well as the rising discontent here at home. That's a full plate, Boss! Yes it is, my wide-eyed friend. Too much of a plate to write about it all at once, don't you think? Please, don't write a term paper. Don't you have another tee time or something? Indeed I do, Sancho. But not until tomorrow morning! Oh, no. Don't worry...baby steps, my friend. 

    As it so happens, a friend asked me the other day what I thought about the rioting in our mother country of England. Interestingly, I found myself, because it was England with its rich history of literature, thinking about one of my favorite novellas; The Time Machine, written more than 125 years ago by H.G. Wells (and it's never been out of print since it was published). For me, I told my friend, it's probably the best fictional representation about what is going on in England right now. And you could make an argument, which I will, that it represents a lot of what is going on in the larger world around us, right now. 

    For the uninitiated, The Time Machine is set in the far distant future and humanity has separated into two branches, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are the effete, gentle, soft vegetarians. They live above ground and play by day. But when night falls, the Morlocks emerge. The Morlocks live underground, do all the work to keep things going, are aggressive and carnivorous, and prey on the Eloi for food. The Eloi are so frivolous that they do nothing to defend themselves from the depredations of the Morlocks. When daylight returns, they return to their harmless little games, as if nothing had happened during the night, even though some of their friends and family have been captured and eaten. They are too weak and unserious to do anything else. 

    I have friends and acquaintances in England who I would characterize as Eloi, creatures of a British civilization that has made itself defenseless against the enemies of their way of life, the Morlocks. Now, unlike in Wells' story, the Morlocks in England are of two types (this according to the English social scientist Theodore Dalrymple); the endogenous and the exogenous. The former are the kinds of people doing the rioting; the latter are the Islamist kind. They want to replace my friends, the Eloi, who have just about managed, up to now, to keep control of society.

    Wells was born into humble circumstances, but it so happens that he was also born a genius. Because of his sympathy with the poor, he was a socialist; but trained as a biologist, he never believed that all people were biologically equal and became a fervent eugenicist.

    I confessed to my friend, almost apologetically, that when I look at the people rioting in Britain, the youngish men, their faces bone and bristle, their eyes wild with hate, I almost feel as if they were of a different species than me. There is a brutishness and ugliness about them that is antithetical to everything I love and respect about civilized man. But their ugliness isn't biological or hereditary (as Wells was quick to assume); it is an ugliness of soul, an antinomian ugliness. The ugliness that rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious, or social norms. Remember what Satan said, in Milton's Paradise Lost on his expulsion from Heaven: "Evil, be thou my good.” These people, as they have turned their backs from anything resembling Western Civilization have said, "Ugliness, be thou my beauty." This is the connection I draw between the riots in Britain, and the other conflicts in the world, including the uncivilized here in the United States and elsewhere, who desecrate great works of Western art for this or that cause. But I digress. 

    Their hideousness (as well as the others just previously mentioned) is educational, social, cultural, spiritual. It is not merely that the endogenous Morlocks are unrefined; they hate refinement, which they associate with the Eloi. If you think I'm overstating my case a tad, feel free to do a search about the rioting in England on YouTube, or just on the internet in general. Or feel free to type the phrase "art desecration in the name of ecowarriors" into Google, or whatever search engine you use.  I'm pretty sure you'll be convinced in about 5 minutes that the anti-civilization Morlocks are having the time of their lives. Even worse, many of the younger Eloi are turning into Morlocks: as the Eloi of our time have failed to reproduce themselves not merely biologically but culturally.

    So where does that leave us, and what will the Eloi do when the riots finally cease? I think, being British, they will pretend that the endogenous Morlocks (those British citizens taking part in the riots) do not exist, that there is no brutishness problem in British life (heaven forfend), and that when, for example foreign resorts refuse to take British tourists because of their repellent behavior, it means nothing and has no wider relevance.

    As to those exogenous Morlocks, those that enter the country year after year, and do not try to assimilate as immigrants had done for generations, the Eloi will appease them, and indeed try to welcome even more of them into the country than have already come, hoping that this will satisfy them. I think when many Brits see their Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, they see the Eloi, and when I see fellow Americans that support terrorist groups like Hamas, or unlimited illegal immigration into the United States (as opposed to legal immigration into the United States, which I am all in favor of), I too, see the Eloi. And more battles on the horizon.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com