Month: September 2015

With 15 years and several thousand posts, with thousands of links between them in the archives, page rendering is now so slow (without cacheing*) that I am going to have to retire the site and start a fresh one.

That still leaves me with the housekeeping problem of how I keep links to important older posts working (without cacheing*).

(*) Seems I am to remain without cacheing, thanks to the permalink option I selected way back when I first migrated to WordPress, where every link is a query – which would be flattened by the cacheing, thereby losing ALL existing archive links. Need to find some link search and replace mechanism that doesn’t screw up the database, or progressively manually migrate the important links. The strategy adopted will affect whether I can preserve the main address for the site.

[Post Note : looks like with a change of theme, switching permalinks does maintain backward link compatibility in both the cached and live pages, so with a couple of other tweaks I can fix this. Tried out a few ideas on another blog, and will update here in a week or two.]

Brain Eno topical on several axes and interesting to compare with Grayson Perry 2013 Reith Lectures on Art.

In the Peel spirit of encouraging novelty and possibility beyond any established lists or genres, but Eno’s topic not specifically music. Very much on art in the broadest view of culture as the creative arts; and arts, as those things – aspects of stylisation and ornamentation of stuff – that we don’t need to do.

The whole lecture a plea for proper understanding the value of the arts & humanities. Contrasting arts & humanities with “STEM” contribution of distinct numerical quantities to “the economy”, as opposed to patterning & stylisation of information and stuff. Also topical for other reasons, and as a basis for humanity to understand how those “STEM” things do relate to our world.

Creative arts – Creating worlds to imagine, experience and learn from whilst avoiding dangerous crashes in the “real” world. And they can be switched off or stepped away from, if they cause anyone a problem in the external objective world. But not just safe, and not just a luxury or add-on to that objective world; necessary quality and value beyond the quantifiable. We can experience far more through art that we can in real life, and from it learn far more about real life in the real world.

They’re a vehicle to synchronise views of things we cannot all possibly know expertly, or even know of at all, in the “real” world, and anyway even the real world is really the established objective model – an abstraction – of an actual reality. An accepted narrative, with art as alternative narratives. Collectively they also provide “scenius”, an interdependent ecosystem or “scene” for genius, creativity in a synchronised genre of art or culture. That ecosystem includes far-sighted institutions and altruistic social engineering that support such possibilities. Like the NHS, benefits and the dole – without which budding would-be artists wouldn’t be free to discover their art. No individual piece of art is created in isolation, no artist is a genius in isolation.

Interestingly Eno cites Paul Mason in searching for economic models that recognise activity beyond the objective core that contributes to the numbers. The more we have abundant, productive, automated activity on the “STEM” economic inputs and outputs game, the more important to ask the question how do we live a coherent meaningful life outside that objectively productive core of countable-scarce-resource-based economic activity.  The more competitive the capitalist free-market core;’ the more efficiently our living can be sustained by less resources and labour, the more Culture, Art & Humanities form a greater part of our existence – not less. Quoting Barbara Ehrenreich – they simply provide us with the joy of simultaneous existence.

Recommended.

Kenan Malik gave the Stephen Lissenberg Memorial Lecture at the NIESR in London last week (23rd Sept). The full transcript is here on his Pandaemonium web pages: “On Fences and Fractures – or what’s wrong with multiculturalism” so no need for a detailed summary here.

His critique of multiculturalism is not new, but he was able to relate the issues to the topical “Syrian refugee crisis” we are seeing from our European perspective today. My takeaways were as follows:

Firstly we need to be clear what we we’re talking about with Multiculturalism – to recognise the distinction between:

• The reality of lived experience in a society with multi-cultural diversity.
• The idea of a policy to police multiple cultures in that society.

The former is reality, concerned with diversity of our cultural experience. The main thesis however is that the latter has (in general) been a policy failure, though one audience reaction reminded us that even those practitioners enacting multiple local aspects of multiculturalism have their own meta-processes for ensuring policy itself is flexible and avoids a simplistic one-size-fits-all policy mentality. (This was largely an audience of policy makers and practitioners.)

Malik’s is largely a historical perspective, particularly the former giving the illusion that things are more multicultural in recent times – right up to recent Muslim vs Islamist and topical refugee crisis issues. In fact culture is much more flattened in recent times. Groups with some distinct difference; ethnic, religious, whatever are generally much more aligned on mass-cultural axes thanks to growth of media, travel and communications. (Many examples of reactions to earlier “incomprehensible” groups of immigrants not forgetting the Briton, Roman, Saxon, Viking ancestry of our UK perspective, but also other colonial, European and French examples.)

“Our” culture has always morphed – and always will – by accretion and evolution, and there has always been fear of novelty and change. Perception and fear may be amplified but the reality is less diversity.

The thesis is that policing culture is no more than an aspect governing society with its values and institutions, evolving with its diversity of cultural inputs, but not in any sense defining or preserving diverse and distinct original cultures. It should not be a policy in itself. Policy aimed at directing cultural groups to given cultural ends falls foul of the problem of classifying groups and issues perceived as related to those groups. Which aspect of an identifiable group or which relationship to wider society is often subtle and nuanced, and anyway, these evolve themselves as society and policy evolve. Convenient cultural labels are rarely meaningful classes for policy purposes.

For me, more generally, taxonomies & classifications of groups are always purpose driven, rarely based on immediate objective “properties” of individual members. The colour of skin or religious affiliation or ethnic self-identification may be the most obvious classifying characteristics, but often the least relevant to the issues being policed and the outcomes desired.

The point I made: It is in fact a fetishisation to hope and seek for simple clear objective basis for classifying groups – in all aspects of life in the real world. In fact the exclusive evidence-based scientistic dogma of our time appears to demand it, but it will only ever be a reductionist simplistication. Useful classifications always depend on purposes and contexts, not on treating the subjects as objects. Attaching ourselves to that dogma despite our better judgement, is a fetish.

Harking back to Malik’s title, in the sphere of general taxonomy an adage oft quoted by a colleague of mine is that “good fences make good neighbours”. The emphases being on good and on mutuality. A solid fence that simply reifies a fracture – a difference – is only ever a short-term defensive measure. Fences at state and EU borders are a different matter, they’re not taxonomic but rather a pragmatic matter of policing values and rule of law of existing states. Divide and rule may be a tactical measure, colonially, imperially and, if and when applied to cultural “groups” within a society, it should only ever be recognised for the tactical management tool that it is.

As promised, I’ve obtained and started reading Alice Dreger’s recent (2015) personal account of mis-directed politics both in science and in its place in society. Clearly very much within my own agenda, so as I often do, I like to post a preview of my first impressions and (my own) prejudices, it ensures any eventual review is transparently honest. This interest is meta, about the processes and interactions, but the topic is sex and gender differences.

Firstly, Galileo himself, heroic legend in science, has had so much written already, it’s hard to separate fact from myth and motivation, and these from the valid symbolism that nevertheless remains to the benefit of science and society. In Dreger’s case, she additionally latches onto the spin-on-it / flippin-the-finger allusion in Galileo’s middle finger being preserved as a “religious” relic in Florence. (*) Of Galileo the hero, Dreger acknowledges the common picture containing reality as well as mythology by reference to David Wooton’s (2010) biography. Based on my recent reading of Arthur Koestler (1959), I have to say there is a good deal more myth than fact. His “persecution” and “house-arrest” by the Catholic church really seemed to suit the stroking of his own ego. And, though his terrestrial mechanics and espoused open-questioning of scientific progress, against dogmas of the day, remain immensely important and valuable any day, his actual ideas in cosmology were almost entirely political in practice – (see Catholic church and ego above!) [Interesting up-front dedication by Dreger “For Kepler, who saved his mother.” – Koestler’s hero in the above.]

Talking of the Catholic church, Dreger opens with a thought she suspects not many readers would get in advance – that the Catholic church is in fact full of rational free-thinkers. I’m already there. The Jesuits in general and the Bishops and Cardinals often had much more nuanced and honest views of the relationship between dogma and rationality, than their scientific “enemies” display. [And I have a side thread on intellectuals migrating to catholicism.] Science is often much more dogmatic than religion.

Secondly, taxonomy, gender taxonomy in Dreger’s case, is a core topic for me. She is at pains early on to point out the inherent fuzziness of gender for between 1 in 300 to 1 in 100 of us (depending on how … ), before we get to any “so what?” questions. Assignment of classes is always purpose driven, class boundaries are always fuzzy and dependent on your chosen bases for membership. Classes (male or female) are never wholly objective. However this does not mean the identification of major classes of membership must be dismissed as meaningless and useless, far from it. It is always a matter of value and purpose to assign class (gender) in any case. As I’ve written before when it comes to humans, class membership is “identity politics” and more – and there is no better starting-point than self-identity where there are multiple, fuzzy or otherwise overlapping groups and purposes as bases of membership. But this is all about political motives.

Thirdly and finally for now, she says:

” I have come to understand that the pursuit of evidence
is probably the most pressing moral imperative of our time.”

Interesting qualifiers there – not evidence itself and not definitely. Shock. Horror. I’m less strongly pro-evidence than even that. We should always seek evidence and never ignore that which exists, but we must not fetishise evidence to the point that its lack paralyses essential value-based decisions and actions (A view I share with Dick Taverne). Caveats aside, the agenda and signalled conclusions are bang on. She continues:

“Yet … we’ve built up a system in which scientists and social justice advocates are fighting in ways that poison the soil on which both depend.”

So, my own agenda front and centre, I’m reading on …

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Ref:- The main “controversy” that prompted the writing of Alice’s 2015 book is documented in this 2008 Pub Med Central article.

[Post Note: See Alice’s comment below. I have a different view about evidence – for me it’s about appropriateness of evidence, which kinds of evidence for which situations. Evidence per se is not THE most important thing. See also this much later FB thread.]

[(*) Note that her title is also an allusion to Pete Atkins (2004) “Galileo’s Finger” – which I hadn’t noticed at the time.]

 

Not really a review, because much has been written already, and given Rushdie’s own high standards, Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights was something of a disappointment. Suffice to say:

Definitely playful and ingenious, language and content-wise, and the usual mix of fairy-story and ethnic-religious history, full of cultural references between Bombay and New Amsterdam. Entertaining, but the philosophical and warring imperialism angles too thin and a too-thinly-disguised parable for the Western vs Islamist ills of our time. I liked the Ibn Rushd roots, which I’ve previously mused lay behind Rushdie. Underlying plot components put me much in mind of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and every bit as rich, and there is at least one direct reference. The parable however left me with little more than – life’s complicated; better to know and understand our history, including our parallel mythologies, where immediate evidence is mystifying.

Previously, being a fan of Rushdie’s work, I once ranked my readings (I’ve read others since) as follows:

Midnight’s Children (1981) — the “Booker of Bookers” — Truly majestic.
The Satanic Verses (1988) — Wonderfully surprising.
The Enchantress of Florence (2008) — Literally fabulous.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) — Comparatively good.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) — Difficult to appreciate.

1001 Nights fits in there below the Enchantress I’d say.

Day job not going so good right now, a little under the weather and dog-tired yesterday, I accidentally deliberately slept in this morning. But, I finished my C J Werleman notes on the tube, stepped out into the sunshine, grabbed a great breakfast at a little cafe I’d not previously noticed between the tube and the office, was pleased to pick up in Waterstones a copy of Salman Rushdie’s latest released just today in the UK. It’s 9:15 and we’re set up for the day.

So I decided my original title for this post should be relegated to the subtitle behind the more positive opening:

“Extending the Hand of Friendship – how new atheism poisons everything“.

I already posted and added to my pre-review notes (in the previous post) since my reviews are generally for my benefit in extracting what I’ve learned into my own research agenda, But C J Werleman’s “The New Atheist Threat” deserves a standalone review:

CJ – I already feel I can call him that – is an Aussie now resident in US who spent a decade in Indonesia, including being in Bali when the nightclub was bombed. An erstwhile New Atheist in reaction to that experience, published several books well received in that community and a speaker at American Atheist and similar events.

Though we clearly have had different day jobs and life trajectories, I too have benefitted from living and working around the world, west and east, but we’ve arrived at much the same place intellectually on the topic of new atheism. In fact I was there before new atheism existed – which isn’t to brag I’m leading the field – but to emphasise that despite the closeness of the end points, we have significantly different takes on root causes. I was already “trying to keep science and atheism honest” because of the damage simplistic, reductive, anti-theistic and scientistic dogma was doing to science and the place of scientific knowledge in culture generally. He sees New Atheism as dangerously bigoted as any fundamentalism and a dangerous contributor to the downfall of east-west political action and world peace itself. And I agree. Though it’s not where I started, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that “dogmatic rationalism” (an oxymoron hopefully, so really naive dogma masquerading as rationality) is the problem underlying all levels of discourse, decision-making and governance in all contexts.

Werleman states his case against the New Atheists bluntly, assertively and passionately. ie He’s not subtle, and most of his argument is in copious quotes from others, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Karen Armstrong for example. He’s nothing if not well connected and he speaks from a unique position with (for me) a new US perspective on the ills of New Atheism. Of the “four horsemen” Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins cop the most flak, but Dennett, Krauss, Maher, Boghossian, Hirsi-Ali and a host of other less cerebral celebrity New Atheists get the treatment. He nails Harris at every opportunity, though in my experience, when Harris is not spouting anti-theistic anti-religious New Atheism in a political context, I find him more subtle philosophically. Thankfully (my hero) Dennett escapes Werleman’s venom in the wider political context – Dan really is a philosopher and a very good one. Anyway, Werleman’s is a very entertaining read.

In describing the cultish “echo chamber” effect of New Atheism as a movement, I think Werleman is bang on. The sloganising, the rehearsed attack and defense arguments, the reductionism, the simplistication, the plain naive and under-informed-&-over-reaching positions are all real, and can’t improve whilst it’s a militant campaign fought through social media, sound bites and popular books targetted at the choir. Some proper listening and learning required.

Ironically, given the charges of reductionism and poorly argued sloganising Werleman lays on the New Atheists, his own delivery is as I say bold, binary and assertive, though wise-crackingly witty with it. That rhetoric I can live with; the points are well made. Where I do part company with Werleman is his conspiracy theory take on the cause (and danger) of the New Atheist movement as cover for neo-con ambitions. To be clear, he’s not saying New Atheists are an active part of such a conspiracy, you know, that conspiracy of US / Western imperialist, military-industrial-complex hegemony, setting up anti-theist / anti-Muslim “pretexts” for economically and geo-politically attractive internal and international “security” activities. He is saying, rightly, that New Atheism’s sloganising plays into it in highly dangerous ways. Painting “the other” as evil or deranged – to paraphrase a Harris quote he repeats mercilessly. Myself, I don’t hold with the underlying conspiracy theory reasoning, even though he provides a fascinating litany of facts amidst his strong opinions. As I say, I see the underlying “conspiracy” as a much deeper and wider meme of “dogmatic rationality” we’re all suffering from, where our leaders and decision-makers are just more “we” with the same spectrum of human virtues and faults, with higher stakes under greater pressure.

In terms of cataloguing evidence, none is more striking than his penultimate chapter on New Atheism as a propaganda tool for Islamic extremism and how extremist rage is cultivated. Worth the read for that alone; a lot of the content being the author’s personally collected direct evidence, as well as assembled from the public record, on actual motivations of individual extremists in the context of groups of humanity tarred with the same brush. Fascinating, important and indeed, very moving.

So good to see that Werleman’s conclusions ultimately focus on achieving true dialogue – achieving proper understanding to be used in better decision-making (in terms of my own epistemological context) – which includes caring for the people in the dialogue. The story of Mubin Shaikh is salutory. But as he says:

I know what you’re thinking. No, I’m not suggesting we should hug an ISIS fighter, or send flowers to the Al Zawahari. They must be defeated. But the way to defeat them is not via machismo and feel-good hyper-nationalism, but rather it is to starve their recruitment pipeline. You starve their pipeline by dealing with the resentments on which terrorist groups thrive: humiliation, alienation and discrimination.

… is the idea of defeating terrorism … one Marvin Gaye song at a time, really that silly?

As I’ve mused many a time before, what is so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

Peace to you too CJ. The New Atheist Threat is a much needed contribution to the meme pool.

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[Post Note: Tweeted a few references to this Harvard conversation – and since obtained their book, reviewed here by Sarah Brown – but credit to Harris for appearing to have listened and learned in his recent dialogue with Maajid Nawaz @QulliamF. Harris appeared subdued, chastened even?]

[Updated here : 10th Sept.]

Reading a very interesting book, The New Atheist Threat by C J Werleman; someone I’d not even heard of until a couple of days ago. An Aussie now resident in US who spent a decade in Indonesia, including being in Bali when the nightclub was bombed. An erstwhile New Atheist in reaction to that experience, published several books well received in that community and a speaker at American Atheist and similar events.

However, like myself and many other rationalist, secular, humanist atheists, he now sees the extremist anti-theist, anti-Muslim – reductively scientistic – agenda of New Atheism as at best flawed and at worst as dangerously bigoted as any other fundamentalism. In my case I was already seeking alternatives to the overly scientistic environment before 9/11, 7/7, Bali et al turned it into the anti-theistic, “militant” atheist, New Atheism vs Religion wars we’ve come to know and love.

[As a book, it’s not subtle, particularly well-argued, well-edited or even proof-read it would seem. Feels rushed to publication and I know nothing of the publisher; Dangerous Little Books. No index and only approximate referencing in end notes, though sources explicitly acknowledged.]

The case is stated assertively and passionately, and relies on copious quotations from others – Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky and Karen Armstrong for example in support, as well as his “four horsemen” targets. Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins cop the most flak, but Dennett, Krauss, Maher, Boghossian, Hirsi-Ali and a host of other less cerebral celebrity New Atheists get the treatment. An entertaining read.

Along with plain ignorance and bigotry, binary polarisation, conspiracy-theory, lack of nuanced subtlety and quality of argument are all part of his charge against the New Atheists. Ironic or what? – Alanis Morisette (*) That said, and I’m only half-way through, it’s so assertively stated that it almost feels like case-closed. What’s to argue? Hardly a word to disagree with so far, in my case. Stuff that needed saying and great to get a US perspective on the need to counter the extremes of New Athesim, so already recommended, for all its flaws.

I can see the look on many a face. He he. I’ll report back when I’ve reached his conclusions.

[Continuing, but still not quite finished.]

In terms of the cultish “echo chamber” effect of New Atheism as a movement, I think he’s bang on, and he speaks from a particularly well qualified and well-connected perspective. The sloganising, the rehearsed attack and defense arguments, the reductionism, the simplistication, the plain naive and under-informed positions are all real, and can’t improve whilst it’s a militant war fought through social media, sound bites and popular books targetted at the choir. Some listening and learning required.

Very much the tide I’m personally fighting against. Keeping them honest.

Where I do part company with Werleman is his conspiracy theory take on the cause (and danger) of the New Atheist movement as cover for neo-con ambitions. We all take responsibility for our actions, and for the recent histories of our states, but Werleman casts this as the conspiracy of US / Western imperialist, military-industrial-complex hegemony. Ironically, as I’ve said already, he is perhaps also being somewhat binary, reductionist and simplistic as those he accuses. A conspiracy to oppose the conveniently mis-perceived Islamic conspiracy.

My position remains that both are misguided. The real underlying fault is in our model of rationality.

(*) The twitter traffic is entertaining, to say the least. The arguments will run, but it’s a great contribution.

[Update after completion.]

I decided to write a more publicly targetted overall review (pulling in extracts from the above with later thoughts).

Below, all I’ve added are some example editorial errors – as example feedback, not itself a criticism of the work. Part of my strategy is to understand where writers were coming from when I’m reading them, and the typos gave me the impression of a rush – urgency – to publish.

[TBC]

….