Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Physician of His Country

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Nov. 7, 2025 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

14:35

The Physician of His Country

It's important to learn from others. Metatron's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1q59FBoDNA

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	The other day I published my reflections on Italy video after I'd returned from Italy.
	And yesterday many people sent me urgent messages saying, my God, you've angered Metatron.
	And they sent me his video.
	And I watched Metatron's video.
	I'll leave a link in the description so you can go and watch too.
	And I was really, I really enjoyed it.
	I was really impressed with it as well.
	Because he has understood the spirit in which the video was delivered.
	And honestly, at parts, it was genuinely laugh out loud.
	I was honestly surprised.
	I thought he was going to give me more of a chewing out than I got.
	And there are some bits where he didn't agree with me, but there were other bits where he did.
	And I really enjoyed the way that he took any of the critiques I had because it's the noble way to deal with such comments.
	And it got me reflecting on why I was even making these sorts of videos anyway.
	And I think they're useful, and it was, I think it's important for us to understand our own perspectives.
	Because a while ago I read this book that I have here.
	It's called The Character of England.
	And it was published in 1947.
	And what it is, is a list of essays, a series of essays, in fact, 27, yeah, 27 essays, written by intellectual notables of the time and edited together by a famous professor called Ernest Barker.
	And it is, like all books from like 100 years ago, well, 80 years ago, it is superb to read.
	The language is beautiful.
	It hasn't been perverted by the latter half, the scientization of our language in the latter half of the 20th century.
	And so it's a joy to read.
	But it's a self-conscious English analysis of England from a position that isn't hostile.
	And that's actually a rarity these days.
	It seems very, in fact, it's hard to think of many things that actually would qualify.
	Weirdly, Jeremy Paxman's, is it the English, I think it's just called, is actually a fairly good modern approximation of it.
	But because this comes from such a breadth of different authors, and because it is informed by the customs, manners, and the spirit of a different era, this just feels more nutritious to read.
	But there's, like I said, there's an essay in here called An Englishman Abroad, or The Englishman Abroad, by a lady called Rebecca West.
	Now, I don't know who Rebecca West is, but she says at the end of her essay, and this essay really stuck in my mind.
	Out of all of the essays in this book, it really stuck in my mind because actually, I think that the points that she's making in here are just as valid now as they were then.
	And she in fact leans a lot on Englishmen traveling to Italy throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as inspiration to what she's trying to get across.
	One of the points that she makes is that there are several Englishmen who go to Italy.
	And I got in trouble for making this note on Twitter the other day.
	A lot of people give me a lot of backlash for this, but I stand by it.
	The Italians are a more artistic people than we are.
	They are more interested in art and aesthetics than we are.
	Now, I'm not saying we are not interested in art and aesthetics.
	What I am saying is it is just noticeable that the Italians are more concerned with art in a formal sense.
	And as Rebecca West points out, to the Italians, architecture is an extension of art and it is important in their civilization and the way that they live their lives.
	This is clearly an important thing to them in a way that is superior to ourselves.
	And I think that what I was trying to get at with my video and the video that Method responded to is that I think the English actually view their entire civilization in a more artistic way than the Italians do, which is, I think, what my critique of the distinction between the public and the private in Italy was.
	Because Metro agreed that, yeah, the streets are chaos and they're poorly maintained in many times.
	But I think the point of the private in Italy being incredibly strictly regulated and beautifully maintained, that has a kind of that revealed something to me.
	And this is actually a point, again, that Rebecca makes in this, is that the country estate is a work of art in England.
	That is, the whole thing, the style of living, the style of life, the whole thing is the work of art, which is why, and I'm not saying that Italy doesn't have this or anything, but it's why it's very characteristic in England to have very beautiful little villages that are made from local stone for houses that have been essentially the same for hundreds of years.
	The medieval cottage that the peasant was forced to live in now costs you a million pounds if you want to live in it.
	That sort of, and there are so many of these little villages that are just in themselves artistic endeavors.
	And so we don't have such beautifully decorated churches, but what we had, what we have and what we're losing, is a way of life that itself is the art project.
	And so that's one of the reasons why the English, I think, view their public lives as an extension of their own private lives.
	Whereas the Italians, I don't think, think that.
	I think that they view their private lives to be separate from the street, very separate from the street.
	And for us, actually, that's not how we approach these things.
	And that, I'm not saying that's good or bad either, right?
	That's obviously tangibly different.
	And there are benefits to both sides.
	I mean, like I said, we have beautiful churches and cathedrals and country manor houses that have beautifully painted roofs and whatnot, as many people pointed out.
	And I didn't say that we didn't have those things.
	It's just that these things are unbelievably abundant in Italy.
	And even the small things like family-run restaurants are, I just found them more beautiful.
	I just found them that there was more care taken for the thing.
	But we have much more care taken for those things that are shared.
	And those things that we expect everyone to have care on and care with is something that's notably different for us.
	I mean, for example, the noise on the train is a non-English thing.
	English people expect quiet and peace on the train.
	This is why Ed Davy was basically being racist the other day when he was complaining about foreigners on the train talking without having headphones on or whatever and listening to videos of having headphones on.
	This is a parochial English prejudice because we expect other people to essentially maintain our public spaces in the way that we are maintaining them as if they were our own private spaces.
	And this is just a distinction with Italy.
	It's just not the same in Italy.
	And the reason that I'm saying all of this is because of this essay.
	Because at the end of the essay, she says that she throughout the essay, she's pointing out all of the experiences of various Englishmen through the ages who have gone abroad and learned something important from it.
	And what you see in the differences in foreign lands are ways of teaching yourself about your own, your own civilization.
	You reflect on it and you realize, why is that different?
	What exactly are they doing differently and why is it giving you a different result?
	And this is important for England itself.
	She says, the Englishman abroad has been his country's physician, giving it the necessary medicine to relieve its congestion.
	As in, a lot of the time, because of our, shall we say, I don't want to say slothful, but glacial civilization, we often let problems fester for much longer than we should.
	When the continent is moving rationally to solve their problems, we will often be stuck in a kind of deadlock and it's a bit of a joke that, yeah, we'll solve our problems in like 100 years' time.
	But that's what the Englishman going abroad is for, is to understand the differences between us and them and what we can learn from those differences.
	And in many ways, how we can improve ourselves or at least solve a particular problem to remove a blockage that has found itself politically and culturally and socially to be unpleasant and for whose time has come to be moved along.
	And this is why I make the videos on my reflections abroad.
	This is why these are actually, I think, important and interesting.
	And when I'm highlighting the differences, I was genuinely trying to be nice.
	I'm not trying to be judgmental and I'm not trying to be cruel either.
	I am genuinely trying to understand why they're different.
	And I'm quite happy to say that it's coming from my personal perspective and my biases as an Englishman who are informing this.
	And that's, I don't think, objectionable either.
	And I think it's far more honest than pretending to have some sort of objective view on these things.
	But it's for a reason, because if you are an Italian or a Sicilian, for example, and you understand what the English are like, then I can help be a physician to you too.
	And through this kind of discourse, we can both actually improve what we have.
	And just even if it's just our understanding of our own civilizations, this is what the purpose of it is for.
	And this is what I think is good for not only our country, but everyone else's country too.
	And I think generally, it contributes more broadly to the bettering of the discourse and understanding between nations.
	Even if I wasn't being as nice as I possibly could have been.
	I think sometimes, though, it is a difficult thing in modern society for us to accept that actually the really true friend is the one who will tell you the hard truths without flinching, but without trying to hurt your feelings by pointing out that, look, this is genuinely somewhere an area of life in which you need genuine improvement.
	And one because one of my favorite things in the world is to find foreign accounts of England and read foreign accounts of England.
	Because a lot of the time they're not trying to be horrible or anything.
	It's just the same in reverse.
	They're just like, wow, I just don't understand why the English are like that.
	One of my favorite things is Carol Chapek, the Czech poet, who came to England in the early 20th century and he was watching the English walk on the grass with pure abandonment.
	And he was like, oh my God, they walk on the grass here.
	And yeah, because we're free.
	We are free people and we're free to walk on the grass.
	And it's such a silly and trivial thing.
	But that kind of observation, again, he was acting as a physician to his own people with his observations on England.
	And lots of people have done that.
	And that's great.
	And so, like I said, I think it's just, it is an invaluable thing to spend a bit of time just genuinely thinking about the differences between our cultures and why they matter and what's the cause of them and what the product of them is.
	And whether they're good or bad.
	Not even good or bad.
	I don't mean it like that.
	I mean, I'm trying to describe a kind of appreciation for the particularity and the differences.
	Because it would be quite horrific if actually the world was homogenized through the liberal blender of international capitalism and everything was just turned into a McDonald's and a Starbucks and every person on earth spoke the same language and acted in the same way.
	It would actually be quite horrible.
	It would be terrible, I think, because I genuinely enjoy experiencing these strange cultures and being able to actually consider them as foreign cultures, but through a charitable light and through an honest light, through an honest lens as well.
	Anyway, I don't exactly know where I was going with this.
	It's just this particularly, I think this is important.
	And this is one of the things I hate about the left trying to make cultural appropriation and cultural critique stigmatized, trying to say it's racist or it's inappropriate or something like that.
	I really despise that approach because you have to honestly look at your own culture's strengths and weaknesses.
	And actually, usually a foreigner visiting is the best way to do those things, who will actually give you an honest assessment from their perspective.
	And it's always more useful if you understand the perspective and the sort of, I don't, the natural prejudices, but not negative prejudices of the people that you're talking to because it just contributes to the general stock of wisdom.
	So anyway, yeah, go watch Methottron's video.
	It was really, really good.
	Like I said, I really, I was genuinely laughing at some parts.

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