GCSE in Plum Sauce

If someone had speculated thirty years ago that thirty years thence a qualification might be gained by answering such questions as how one might order a take-away, one might have reasonably assumed, in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, that he was forecasting some educational scheme for the mentally retarded.

.....We latter-day souls, however, know better than to assume the best, and we would be right to assume the worst; for such a qualification is now offered to high-school pupils taking the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), the highest qualification that a British high-school pupil might normally attain.
.....According to a report in The Sunday Telegraph (28th August 2005), the GCSE in Leisure and Tourism sets such tasks as “Describe what customers need to do to receive a delivery service from an Indian take-away restaurant”, and “Other than Indian food, name one other type of food often provided by take-away restaurants”. (Regarding the latter task, I feel it is only fair that the writer of the examination paper ought to be set with a task such as “Other than the one here, give another example of a tautology”.)
.....If I were to speculate about the future of education, then I would say that thirty years hence we might see a GSCE in Bolstering One's Self-Esteem, an A-Level in One's Petty Personal Opinions, and a PhD in Feeling Good about One’s Self through Bogus Scholarship. But this would be easy speculation; for these are already present in all but name.

Holidays

I shall be away until Wednesday.

Revolutionary Choices

Weekly Worker is the choleric organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) (CPGB (PCC)), not to be confused with the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), whose organ is the Communist Review, which is not to be muddled with the New Communist Party of Britain (NCPB), whose organ is The New Worker, nor with the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (CPB(M-L)), whose organ is Workers, which on no account should be mixed up with the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (RCPB (M-L)), whose organ is Workers’ Weekly. None of these, moreover, should be confused with the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), whose quarrelsome existence from 1920 and whose disputatious demise in 1991 has given us in no small part this wonderful array of communist parties.
.....As I say, Weekly Worker is the organ of the CPGB (PCC), and it shows all the sore sedition of its socialist forebears, and no fewer of their fantasies. Therein, for instance, a chap by the name of Peter Manson writes with all the bolshiness that a brat can bring to bear. Perhaps if daddy had bought him that pony for his thirteenth birthday, he would have turned out to be an altogether different man. Perhaps then little Peter wouldn’t have determined to continue his tantrum all the way into his adult life. What is certain, however, is that the now adult Mr Manson is angry at the West, and wishes us to glimpse a better world of solidarity, slaughter and socialist revolution:

Just as the ruling class knows who its main enemy is, so too do we. That is why we are for the defeat of the US-UK occupation [in Iraq] and, what is more, uphold the right of the peoples of Iraq to expel the invaders. However, we are not indifferent to the political programme of the Iraqi resistance. In fact there is not a single resistance: there are many resistances, including those who at present are not using the methods of armed struggle.

.....True, if we had to choose, we would prefer the victory even of the islamists or Ba’athists to that of the imperialists. But we do not have to choose between these two forces. We favour the imperialists being driven out at the hands of a working class-led movement, and, crucially, using the crisis caused by the occupation of Iraq to bring about regime change in both the US and UK.

Peter Manson, “Defend the ‘Traitor’ George Galloway”, in Weekly Worker, 589, Thursday, 11th August 2005.

As we have seen, however, we in the United Kingdom are rather spoilt for choice in our revolutionary vanguards. Doubtlessly Mr Manson believes that his particular brand of sedition should take the lead in regime change. Before I can make my choice, however, I would need to know where all the modern communist parties stood on the question of pipe-smoking: the briar or the meerschaum, the long-stemmed or the short-, whether it is a bourgeois reaction or a proletarian affirmation. It would be a terrible shame, however, if bitter deliberation and schism thereover were to result in the delaying of the revolution for another hundred years or so.

A Modern Heresy

How would you credit the idea that breeds of dog are an illusion, a social construct, and an outdated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concept? You would think it ludicrous, wouldn’t you? How about human races? Ah, now there we have it! They’re an illusion, a social construct, and an outdated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concept, aren’t they?
.....Empirically, breeds in dogs and races in humans are similar. Yet in cherished belief, they are wholly different. Under no political compulsion to see breeds of dog as anything but what they are – as having biological reality –, we can see breeds of dog for what they are. But under political compulsion to see human races as anything but what they are – as having biological reality –, we can be compelled into thinking them a social myth.
.....At least this is how it is in the West. In Japan, for instance, the claim that human races are a myth would strike most as utterly against all evidence; and so it is, but then the population of Japan has not yet been reduced to the level of useful idiocy that the West now enjoys. In England, the mere mention of the possibility of the biological existence of race brings everyone out in a sweat. Good people just know that race is an outdated and unscientific concept, so outdated and unscientific, in fact, that any rational discussion or modern scientific evidence to the contrary is deemed heretical.
.....It is not only race that we are not allowed to see. In England nowadays, to come to one’s senses and see the world aright is treated as the grossest solecism. We must all commit ourselves to some sacred and binding falsehoods, lest we cause offence to the readily and expediently offendable; we must all repudiate the evidence of our senses and place our faith in the sayings of our intellectuals, lest we be denounced. For have you not heard? While our senses are irredeemably corrupt, and reason a useless organ, the political sayings of our opinion-shapers and masters are the hardest facts and the unchallengeable tenets of truth.
.....Every fallen age has its sacred falsehood to which it is a heresy not to commit, and this age is no different.

Wrestling with Tenure

There is scholarship and then there is sociology; the latter is alike to the former in the same way that a collage pasted together by the mentally retarded is akin to fine art. Perhaps the only thing to be said for sociology is that it keeps its professors away from the more important occupations in society, such as medicine, where they might with wonted contrariness prescribe the disease and symptomise the cure.

.....That it is not now a serious intellectual discipline is illustrated by the following excerpt from a study by Danielle Soulliere, published in the Electronic Journal of Sociology:

Aim

The aim of this study was to investigate the themes of masculinity revealed in television professional wrestling programs and to explore the way in which these themes of masculinity were constructed by these programs.

Method

In total, 118 episodes of WWE programming were recorded and analysed for themes of masculinity.

Results

During the initial viewings, it became apparent to the researcher that the announcers, audience and performers were intimately involved in the construction of masculinity. . . . [Moreover] . . . the following major themes were revealed to be significant markers of masculinity and are consistent with the dominant hegemonic masculinity prevalent in North American society: aggression and violence, emotional restraint, dominance, achievement and success, competition, toughness, risk-taking, courage, and heterosexuality. These themes effectively define what it means to be a man in professional wrestling as well as the larger society.

(Danielle Soulliere, "Masculinity on Display in the Squared Circle: Constructing Masculinity in Professional Wrestling", Electronic Journal of Sociology (2005))

Now, for the sake of brevity, I have left out some of the finer details of the method, such as the swallowing whole of the theory of social constructivism; and for the sake of sanity, I have not included all the fatuous results. It is enough to say that, after umpteen-hours watching – sorry, investigating, exploring and analysing – the blusterous exertions of spandex-clad baboons, Ms Soulliere has concluded, firstly, that wrestlers behave like blusterous baboons in spandex, and secondly, that this behaviour is socially constructed.
.....The whole tedious affair could have been boiled down to the following non-argument:

I, and some of the writers I cite, think that masculinity has certain characteristics and is socially constructed.

I have watched many hours of professional wrestlers displaying these same characteristics, which I think are socially constructed.

Therefore,

I think masculinity is constituted of these characteristics and is socially constructed.

That which is banal in this study is already known: that society affects men and men affect society. And that which is absurd is yet to be shown: that society constructs masculinity in toto. If I might venture an opinion, I would say it all sounds like a well-paid, socially flippant waste of time.

Fewtril #19

I should not be surprised to hear it said that the bourgeoisie is also to blame for the occurrence of haemorrhoids.

Feminists and Fruit-Flies

Biological determinism is the hypothesis that the only causal factors in an organism’s behaviour and development are biological. This necessarily excludes social and environmental factors. There is probably not one biologist in the world who accepts it; and since this is a world not lacking in distorters and counterfeiters, there is hardly a biologist in the world who is not accused of it.

.....Biologists understand the complex nature of gene-environment interactions: that genes as well as environmental factors play a significant role in being and behaviour, that genes and environmental factors affect, each to differing extents, the being and manifold behaviours of an organism. Though humans have a significant overlay of cultural factors, their behaviours too are affected by their genes -- to what extent differs for each behaviour. Going by the scientific evidence, the basics of this would all be uncontroversial stuff, but then many persons are less concerned with scientific evidence than with sacred nonsense.
.....Except for the most recalcitrant of Lysenkoists, few socialist ideologues would run red with wrath were the genetic factors in the behaviour of fruit-flies to be discussed, and I suspect that part of this is because fruit-flies don’t form pressure-groups. Whenever a new study finds evidence for genetic factors in some human behaviour, however, the cry rings out: biological determinism! For it seems that socialist ideologues cannot brook the idea that anything might stand in the way of “social progress”, as they euphemistically call it, and so they must damn as deterministic anything that admits of biology.
.....There are a few scientists who refuse to accept the reality of genetic factors in human behaviour: Richard Lewontin, Steve Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, for instance. (See their co-authored book Not in Our Genes, which is a long attack against the straw man of biological determinism). It is no accident that these three are also Marxists. I do not suggest that their being Marxists invalidates their arguments, but I do suggest that their being Marxists doesn’t excuse them from having to present any valid arguments at all.
.....Upon the mass of idiocy and ignorance, spurious arguments depend, without which eminent scoundrels could find no vocation. As Cardinal Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz wrote in his Memoires, “Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can’t understand”. And if an argument the stupid can’t understand also happens to come down on the side of their wishes, the stupid are hooked. I say all this by way of dealing not with such eminent rascals as Richard Lewontin et alia, but with those in the intellectual slums, upon whose stupidity and ignorance eminent scoundrels play.
.....I found one of these soft targets when I chanced upon a weblog called Mind the Gap (“a feminist blog created by women in Cardiff. We aim to provide a welcoming space for the discussion of gender politics, feminist ideas and activism”). Now, it would be an ill-spent day in which one sat for the most thereof wondering how to make a feminist hysterical. It is but the work of a moment, needless to say. The mere mention that there are biological differences between men and women, for instance, is enough to have one of them screaming of biological determinism:

This issue [of biological determinism] just makes me so mad! When I try and articulate my feelings . . . well . . . if you didn’t know me, you might think I’d turned into the kind of crimson-eyed, slavering feminist fiend usually found only in the fantasies of the UK Men’s Movement.

Well, I can’t deny it: she does a good impression of one. She continues:

I’ll try and keep this short – actually, I have little choice in that because I don’t know enough about biology to write at length. I have no head for science. I probably shouldn't even attempt to have a go, being as I spit blood every time I come across another piece of biological determinism masquerading as scientific fact.

Undaunted by her avowed ignorance, and unimpressed with the idea that she might need a head for science in order to know what the scientific facts are, she goes on to say:

They’ve been trotting out the old ‘men and women are different’ story for thousands of years, in order to justify the ‘men and women are unequal’ situation. In the nineteenth century, in the West, this rhetoric was illustrated in the doctrine of ‘separate spheres.’ Basically, this supported the rising bourgeosie middle-class’s desire [to] get women to stay in the home and look after their men and children. . . .

. . . This is all about fixing people, pinning them down to their biology and their bodies, closing down prospects and shutting off possibilities.

And that’s it. Millennia of commonsense observation across every kind of culture, years of scientific research by the finest minds, and some parping cretin from Cardiff believes that biological facts, ranging from genes to testicles, are little more than powerful bourgeois myths! And what is this ignoramus’s understanding of biological determinism? Why, it is a label for any biological fact she doesn’t like!

Fewtril #18

Committees which thrive on problems should in all honesty adopt the motto: “We'll consider anything but a solution”.

The Comforting Thought of George Monbiot’s Death

I’m all for a noble serenity towards those regrettable but unavoidable facts of life, such as death. After all, there is no dignity nor anything else to be had by running around weeping and gnashing the ivories at the outward bleakness of life. Moreover, I should fain forbid all poetry on the subject, if only for the sake of decency and a good night’s sleep.

.....There are some persons, however, who claim not only to be untroubled by the thought of their own death, but also to be positively comforted by it. One such man is George Monbiot of The Guardian, who has this to say on the matter:

Darwinism implies that the only eternal life we have is in the recycling of our atoms. I find that comforting.
(“A Life with no Purpose”, The Guardian, 16th August 2005.)

I too must accept – as an agnostic – that life may well be no more than that which Mr Monbiot describes, but I fail to see how I could derive any comfort from this. Hot buttered toast is comforting. I dare say the thought of an eternity with seventy-two virgins promotes optimism. But the thought of personal annihilation in a cold, purposeless universe is hardly what I'd call heartening. Indeed, it strikes me as odd that a man might claim to take the prospect of his own utter annihilation as comforting.

.....Now, for all I know, this attitude might describe a perfect state of stoical ataraxia, but then again, it might describe a perfect state of numbness. But is it not more likely that it describes as perfect a state of pretension as one is ever likely to find in life? As a claim it serves well to display a supposedly dauntless, rational and no-nonsense attitude towards life and death; but I wager that it is a species of pretension that enjoys wide circulation amongst those who would have themselves seen as hard-headed; for who amongst them would dare first admit that he is not exactly chuffed at the prospect of his own death?
.....Perhaps I do the man a disfavour; for I must concede that I do not know what it is like to be George Monbiot. It may be hell, than which anything – even everlasting oblivion – is more agreeable. If that is the case, then I should like to join Mr Monbiot in finding the thought of his death quite comforting.

Fewtril #17

A fool believes that an extraordinary intellect says extraordinary things, and thus one has only to wait a short time before he says something extraordinarily stupid.

Hackish Humbug

Our journalists have been clinched by a queer mania that takes the form of a besetting urge to describe morons as “obviously bright”. I gather that so great a gap between description and reality is most likely a function of a perverse ideal of social justice; for almost invariably the moron afforded this hackish approbation is not some lamebrain or braying dolt of the middle or upper classes, but rather some wan-witted lowly rascal from the streets. The latter receives the largesse of our journalists; the former can expect no such charitable misrepresentation.

.....This bug of belying beneficence, that would in vain redress the scales of life, has its other side in miserliness, whereby a well-to-do person of ample wits is characterised as being a bit dim. Accordingly, if we were in madness to overthrow our senses and take the journalists at their words, we would build a picture of Britain in which the lowest quarters abounded with intellectual talent, and above which there was only a steady growth in privileged dimwittedness. False description weighs nothing, however, and serves only to measure the falsifier’s shortcomings.

The Rot Spreads

The rot of social inclusion spreads to Glyndebourne, “home of genteel country house opera and black-tie picnics”, which is “to try to update its image by staging a rap version of one of Mozart’s best loved works [Cosi Fan Tutte]”. (Ben Dowell, “Glyndebourne invents da hip-hopera”, The Sunday Times, 14th August 2005.).
.....According to Mr Dowell of The Sunday Times, “The decision to stage the new Cosi . . . is part of an attempt by David Pickard, general director of Glyndebourne, to attract younger audiences to the medium.” The illogic of this ruling philistine goes something like this:

The youth of today is not attracted to x,
Therefore, in order that it is attracted to x, we must make x not-x.

Charlie Parker, a hip-hop producer and creative consultant to this travesty, is quoted as saying: “Traditional British people have to start re-examining themselves and their culture in terms of addressing the new age.” In other words, it is imperative that we destroy all vestiges of culture.

Fewtril #16

We moderns have a provocative way of dealing with our useless and talentless citizens: we make the conditions amenable to their shortcomings, so that they might become designers, architects, museum curators, and gurus of every kind.

A London Jinn

Happen I do not venture too far when I say that Her Majesty’s Government is a coterie of scoundrels to be trusted no further than my grandmother can kick a piano; or that its lust for power and the superfluity of its latest security measures ought to unsettle every free-born man. These words said, let no man suggest I am a friend of this government.
.....Others too find the government’s new security measures disagreeable, though for different reasons. Saad al-Fagih for one has this to say in The Guardian:

No one will be more pleased than Osama bin Laden with the new measures announced by Tony Blair. . . .
. . . The harsher the measures adopted by Britain and other western societies, the nearer we will get to fulfilling Bin Laden's strategic aim.

("Give Up Your Freedoms or Change Tack", The Guardian, 11th August 2005)

Of all the iniquities and incompetences with which I might accuse the British government, it had not occurred to me to suggest that its increasing security measures are likely to be inadvertently pleasing and helpful to Osama Bin Laden. After all, as a leader of an international terrorist organisation that requires freedom of movement for its operatives in enemy lands, he is unlikely to tug his beard for joy to learn that the populations of those lands are to be subjected to more monitoring and regulation. As Yoram Schweitzer, writing in Strategic Assessment, spells out:

The no-holds-barred rules by which they [al-Qaeda] are governed are adapted to suit their capabilities and beliefs, and involve exploiting the freedoms of the liberal societies they penetrate and within which they operate. . . .
. . . [T]he power and influence of public opinion in many Western countries further compounds the already existing difficulties in trying to develop a unified Western policy against terrorism that is effective, consistent, coordinated, and binding. The inherent nature of democratic systems that sustain and even foster opposing ideas constitutes a major obstacle to the ability to coordinate a uniform policy, be it on an intra or inter-state level.

("September 11, Two Years Later", in Strategic Assessment, Vol 6:2, Sept. 2003)

For all I know, Bin Laden might perversely harbour some malicious satisfaction at the curbing of the freedoms of Western populations, but this could hardly help his own cause – on the contrary, as pointed out by Mr Schweitzer, it is likely to hinder it; for, if anything, the curbing of these populations' freedoms is likely to give their governments a freer hand against him.
.....It is such an odd suggestion, in fact, that I am rather curious why anyone would express it; for it seems to approve the contrary of what would be most harmful to Sheikh Bin Laden’s organisation.

.....My curiosity might find succour in that, according to some sources (here and here, for example), Saad al-Fagih has been associated with al-Qaeda for some years, and thus it is hardly surprising that he would advocate the contrary of any measures that would frustrate al-Qaeda’s operations.
.....Moreover, it is interesting that The Guardian would invite an associate of the enemy to comment on measures taken against that enemy.

Fewtril #15

To call oneself educated, it is not enough to be able to read a book; rather, it is to be able to understand the history of thought that led the writer of the book to get into such a frightful mess.

The Old Chicanery

It cannot be imagined how much misery has been caused by those who would make the world a happier and safer place. The reason such an avowed intent has produced its opposite is usually because, either the would-be do-gooder comes from the good-fairy-and-daisy-chain school of unthought, in which it is believed that the hard edges of reality can be smoothed off by goodwill, fantasy and the vigorous rubbing of fluffy bunnies; or the intention is really a sham, and the real motivation is to destroy the present system and replace it with one in which the “do-gooder” would enjoy more power.

.....It is often hard to distinguish between the two; for in the pursuit of power, the fraudster is prepared to be mistaken for the well-intentioned fool. This brings us swiftly into consideration of Mr George Monbiot of The Guardian, who believes that, “The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first”. ("The New Chauvinism", The Guardian, 9th August 2005.)
.....An assumption underlying this claim is obvious: that patriotism is a cause of unhappiness and danger. Another is not so obvious, and may be one of two: that patriotism is either not a cause of happiness and safety, or, if it is, that the happiness and safety brought about by its absence outweighs the happiness and safety brought about by its presence. These two assumptions together are necessary and sufficient for Mr Monbiot’s assertion that an absence of patriotism would see the world “a happier and safer place”.
.....The first assumption is largely uncontroversial: there can be little doubt that patriotism is the proximate cause of some of the world’s unhappiness and danger. But the second is different. Is patriotism not also a source of happiness and safety? Do men not feel happiness in the love of their homeland, and do they not find safety amongst their like-minded fellows? If Mr Monbiot concedes that patriotism is a source not only of unhappiness and danger but also of happiness and safety, then the onus is on him to show that the happiness and safety of its absence outweighs those of its presence.
.....This is not easy to do. One of the hard edges of reality is that man tends to prefer the familiar over the foreign. Against man’s natural proclivities, therefore, a war must be fought if he is to be changed at the intellectual’s preferred pace. The claim that he will be happier and safer because of this war against him, however, is one that can only find a place in the perverse and philotyrannical utterances of intellectuals; for we have seen this war against man’s nature, and nothing has been more productive of slaughter and slavery.
.....There is no doubt that the attitude that Mr Monbiot evinces is more common than it was a hundred years ago; and this must fill Mr Monbiot and other “Friends of Humanity” with hope. Indeed the following statement of his might stand as a gloomy mantra of modern decrepitude:

I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other.

In fitting with this, it ought to be said -- lest anyone think him insufficiently hard-headed -- that Mr Monbiot is not ashamed of being his mother’s son, but he has no idea why he should love his mother more than any other.

Fewtril #14

Hitherto we have deplored the incompetence of intellectuals, yet we might well be thankful for so clear a guide to knowledge; for what intellectuals do not know is probably worth knowing.

The Spurious Claim that Anthropological Reports are More Certain than Arithmetic Facts

Quite often these days, there emerges from the close and sordid pages of an academic journal an anthropological report that tells of a distant, little-known tribe whose members do not know how to do arithmetic or how to count above two. In radically “sceptical” quarters, this is greeted with gleeful credulity, embraced as further proof – aha! – of the relativity of knowledge. An enfant of the terrible kind will perk up and say, “Seven plus nine equals sixteen only by social convention, and thus it does not constitute a universal truth”. Hoping we miss the tautology of this statement, he will regale us with the anthropological tale where this simple arithmetic reportedly does not hold true, and tells us that it is only we in our cultural arrogance that would foist our arithmetic faith on another culture.

.....Yet though he claims to doubt that an arithmetic fact such as seven plus nine equals sixteen is a universal truth, he holds no doubt in his empirical “fact” that there is a culture as described that holds a differing view, notwithstanding the evidently more uncertain grounds whence this “fact” was derived. If he can doubt the legitimacy of arithmetical or logical facts, what explains his faith in anthropological reports that are, after all, on epistemically less certain grounds? With all his doubts, how did he accept this “fact”? If this were not indication enough of intellectual bankruptcy, consider the conclusion that he drew from this anthropological “fact”:

Not every part of humanity knows how to do arithmetic,
Therefore,
Arithmetic ‘facts’ are not universally true.

It takes no great brain to spot that this is an invalid argument: it is a delightful piece of sophistry that takes the form of an equivocation. The conclusion does not follow from the premise, and thus it does not follow that the conclusion has anything legitimate to say about arithmetic facts. The conclusion should read: Arithmetic know-how is not universal. An established anthropological fact this may be, but then I don’t know that it is – I am told so by some anthropologists, but given the past commitment of some anthropologists to using their field not as a means of gaining knowledge of other cultures, but rather as a political tool in the cultivation of their own, I remain sceptical of the claim. Of course, I know that arithmetic know-how is not universal in one sense: amoebas, for instance, cannot add up, and British school-children have great difficulties, but then I doubt these are what the chaps have in mind when they use the phrase “universally true”. So what is meant, then?

.....Note the implicit criterion in the argument that for something to be true, it must be universally believed or known to be true, and thus conversely, that something is false if it is not universally believed or known to be true. I suppose, therefore, that what is meant by “universally true” is “universally believed or known to be true”. And yet time and again, the phrase “universally true’ is foisted into an argument, where properly the term “universally believed” or “universally known” should stand. This is in an effort to support the belief that truth is relative to culture and so forth, and yet it is merely a sophistic restatement of that belief. At the risk of labouring the point, consider the following reformulation of the illogicality: Because x is not known among culture A, it is not universally true. The proper conclusion should read: it is not universally known, which states merely that there is ignorance of the facts somewhere, but not that the facts are not known elsewhere.

.....We have then, on top of a spurious argument, the curious idea that a thing is false precisely because not everyone believes in it, and that a thing is true only if everyone believes in it. Well, I can tell you now that not everyone believes that anthropologists are intelligent, well-adjusted persons who seek honestly to clarify our understanding of the world.

Fewtril #13

It may fairly be conjectured that, if we sat an infinite number of French philosophers at an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, they would still produce nothing but gibberish.

The Mayor of Fatuity

In The Guardian today, Ken Livingstone makes a curious statement in the course of arguing for the admittance of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to Britain: “Whatever his individual views, he is seen as a moderate and is fiercely opposed to al-Qaida”.

.....Before this statement was made, Mr Livingstone’s argument for the admittance of Qaradawi to Britain posited a moral parity between Israeli leaders and supporters of Palestinian suicide bombers, such that if we were to ban the latter from Britain, we should ban the former. But Mr Livingstone must have felt that it was also important to make some case for Qaradawi’s moderation, or, to put it another way, to persuade us that he is not an extremist. I think that Mr Livingstone is right to see this as important to the acceptance of his argument. We do not wish, after all, to admit some extremist homicidal lunatic.
.....The only expression in Mr Livingstone’s essay that suggests that Qaradawi is a moderate, however, is the one quoted above. Now, if it is meant to persuade us of his moderation, as would be useful to Mr Livingstone’s argument, it does a poor job; for it does not even address his moderation. It says only that he is seen as a moderate and that he opposes al-Qaeda. Well, I might say two things: (1) that Tracey Emin is seen as a talented artist with impeccable taste; and (2) that the Bolsheviks fiercely opposed the Mensheviks. The first testifies to the existence of cretins (or fakers); the second, that one extreme may oppose another.
.....But perhaps I have been unfair to Mr Livingstone, and his statement does address Qaradawi’s moderation. In other words, the statement is not simply meant to point out that Qaradawi is seen as a moderate, but rather that it is meant to intimate that he is a moderate. To judge his moderation, therefore, we need to assess his views. Yet with a flighty “whatever”, the mayor asks us to disregard Qaradawi’s views, the very things by which we must judge his moderation!
.....Thus, if Mr Livingstone wishes only to point out by this statement that Qaradawi is seen as moderate, then his statement reads as follows: Whether his views are extreme or not, he is seen as a moderate and is fiercely opposed to al-Qaeda. If, on the other hand, we are charitable in our interpretation, and believe that he means to intimate by this statement that Qaradawi is a moderate, then the statement is as follows: Whether his views are extreme or not, he is a moderate and is fiercely opposed to al-Qaeda. The first is fatuous and does not support the case for Qaradawi’s moderation, which would support Mr Livingstone’s case for his admittance into Britain. The second is absurd, and supports the case that Mr Livingstone has not obeyed his own exhortation for “clear thinking, not rhetoric”.
.....Mr Livingstone should hope, therefore, that we are not charitable in our interpretation; otherwise we should think him absurd.

Fewtril #12

Most people think they possess ideas, but usually it’s the other way round.

The Spurious Claim that Science is a Religion

The claim that science is a religion is clung to with imbecilic desperation. The claimant hopes to besmirch science; for science is no respecter of bollix, and thus it makes many enemies. At first sight, one might think that the claimant would be embarrassed and shamed by so bold a display of his intellectual shortcomings. But it must be borne in mind that the claim is most often uttered not in thoughtful reflection, but rather in a zealous attempt to suggest that science is no better than a religion, the implication being that, like religion, it relies on faith, and that its assertions are no more founded than those of, say, Shinto or Christianity or Islam. Now, before I go any further, what I attack here is not religion or faith, but rather the deliberate conflating of these with science and knowledge.

.....It must be said that the claim that science is a religion rarely comes from theistic religionists, but rather from left- and right-wing political and ideological extremists, whose presence is common enough, unfortunately, for them to avoid the label extremist. The claim is attractive to them because, if scientific knowledge is just another faith, then it has no bearing on their own particular political or ideological faiths – that is, they can continue to maintain their beliefs in the face of contradictory knowledge.

.....The claim hinges on the question of faith. Science reasons from basic assumptions, the so-called faiths of science:

1) Things exist; the world is real
2) Things are knowable; the world is knowable
3) There are laws that govern the world
4) These laws are knowable
5) It is possible to reason about things, and to make rational inferences from the observed to the unobserved.

.....Science makes these assumptions, the same assumptions that you make if you wish to survive in the world, ones which help you to boil an egg, catch a bus, not walk off cliffs, avoid pain, or find your pen to write nonsensical treatises on the unknowability of things, assumptions so basic that they are necessary for life. Call these assumptions facets of faith if you wish, but you make a mockery of words as well as of yourself; for if one wishes to maintain the humbug that the world of knowable objects and laws is a faith, then one ought to reflect that we are first bound to this not by science but by the necessity of living; and if these things are faiths, then living itself is a religion to which we are bound thereby; and if one calls living a religion, what cannot be called a religion?

.....It takes only a cursory glance at science and religion to discover that they are very different indeed. The realist assumptions of science—to which we are all sincerely committed—provide the grounds from which all knowledge is derived. The process of science thereafter is one of building knowledge and theories that are established or tested by observation and reason. Scientific theories stand or fall by the evidence. Science says no more about the world than can be observed and reasoned about it. This cannot be said for religion, however. Religion is based on other assumptions that go beyond the mundane. Consider the following:

• God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (Christianity)
• There is no God but Allah and his prophet is Mohammed (Islam)
• Kami Izanagi and kami Izanami created the world and its elements (Shinto)

Now, it would be remiss of me to suggest that science is not a religion because it does not make any of these particular claims. Science claims none of these things, that is for sure, but what sets it apart is that it cannot claim anything like them; for it cannot postulate what is unobservable and untestable—its very ethos is one of observing the world and testing its theories against it. A religion, on the other hand, has as its foundation something more: some inexplicable and inscrutable power at work behind or beyond or above the world, one which is unobservable and untestable, constituting a faith that is preserved as sacred against, indifferent, or unanswerable to observation. Now, for all I know, one of the religious propositions given above is true, though I doubt each of them, the point being that each requires faith in order that one believe them to be true.

.....I wish to coin a new word, not gratuitously I trust you’ll find:

overstand, vt. To subordinate sense and reason to faith; not to understand the world, but rather to interpret the world through faith in something higher, greater, ‘more real-worldly’ than the world; to interpret according to faith and not evidence; to believe that something is the case irrespective of evidence; to make facts subordinate to an inscrutable purpose and an ineffable standard.

Science is an attempt to understand the world; religion, an attempt to overstand it. The world takes primacy in science. Under religion, however, the world is interpreted in an unworldly way—that is, there is something more, something higher, a purpose, a spirit, something beyond the mundane. As such, it can deny the world its primacy: the world is something lesser, a pale shadow of something greater. This primacy of unworldliness explains why the belief in something beyond the world can take precedence over anything in it: facts may be denied because they contradict the belief in the higher power or purpose. This is no less true with what are sometimes called “secular religions”. In Marxism, for instance, the world is subject to an historical inevitability, an ineffable purposive force that guides humankind to its predestined, communistic end. Nevertheless, there is a perfectly good word which is aptly redolent of the stench of such things: ideology.

.....In conclusion, I return to what was expressed at the beginning: that the real reason why miscreants call science a religion is not because they think calling it so helps us to understand what science is, but on the contrary, because they hope the confusion of the one with the other will suggest a parity of justification in beliefs, and in so doing, help protect their own politically, religiously, or ideologically inspired beliefs from the knowledge which the process of science affords us. The failure to distinguish between science and religion has no merit except to expose the meritless nature of him who fails to distinguish between them.

Sophistical Machinations: No. 4 (Deep Implication)

In the never-ending business of defaming one’s foe, it is very desirable to impute to him the cause of all the world’s ills. Sometimes, however, the foe of one’s foe is guilty of acts that are far more despicable than those of one’s foe. Pragmatically, one would like to make a friend of the foe of one’s foe. A problem thus presents itself: How is one to gain the moral high ground over one’s foe, and impute to him all the world’s moral ills, when one’s new-found friend is morally lower than one’s foe and an outstanding contributor to those ills? Failure to deal with this problem will have the unhappy consequence that one will seem to be on the same moral footing as one’s despicable friend, and on a lower one than one’s foe.

.....Happily, the solution is as simple as the simple minds it is designed to deceive. It is only a matter of sophistical machination to impute to one’s foe the root causes of all the evil acts perpetrated by one’s friend. For sure, a little theoretical rationalisation is useful, but it does not take much intellectual effort to convince the ideologically susceptible that all the acts of one’s friend are caused ultimately by the actions of one’s foe. One’s friend is exculpated from all blame for his acts, because these are seen as righteous reactions to the actions of one’s foe.

.....It is interesting to note in this scheme, that one’s friend is absolved of responsibility, made a passive amoral automaton, a blameless animal of the lower orders, devoid of free will. One’s foe, on the other hand, is charged with full responsibility not only for his own actions, but also for those of his foe. He is seen therefore as an active being capable of moral choice and free will; in short, a human being.

Celebrated Non Sequiturs: No. 1 (The Modern Educator's)

Everyone is to some extent indoctrinated unsystematically with the assumptions implicit in society,
Therefore,
Systematic indoctrination is permissible.

Dalrymple

"I am always astonished by the way people always suppose that, if there were any justice in the world, they would be better rather than worse off. To the contrary, many should thank their lucky stars that there is no justice in the world: for otherwise they would die in prolonged agony."

Theodore Dalrymple, "Why equality of opportunity is impossible to achieve - but intellectual elitism can offer opportunity to all" The Social Affairs Unit, 28th July 2005.

Fewtril #11

If we are to believe what we read in our newspapers, courage is possessed by anyone who suffers misfortune.