Year: 2015

My southbound East Coast (Virgin) (06:32 Darlington to Kings Cross) was delayed this morning for around 40 minutes, halted and slow-running until we got past Retford. Apparently some chav had nicked the signal cables.

Anyway, the extra 40 minutes on board meant I could listen to Start-the-Week following on from Today on BBC R4 before we pulled into KGX. A good one – despite guests from 4 different fields – the focus was altruism and the good life. Worth a listen.

The take-away for my agenda was more group-level evolution – what’s good for the group is good for the individuals, even if each and any individual takes a cost hit – small or large – for the benefit of the whole. Good to hear Sloan-Wilson pointing out Dawkins disagreement. The key was communication and group sizes. Too public do-gooding in too large a group makes if difficult to keep real account of whether the doing is really investment justifying less-good deeds less-publicly later. With many groups across multi-levels any “utilitarian” cascade of accounting is not really an objective matter.

John Gray is one of those philosopher / social commentators that has been dawning on me slowly. Positive mentions since 2008, and that was a link to a “Straw Dogs” post from 2005, and again in 2009 with “Gray’s Anatomy”. Increasingly frequent notices of Guardian pieces picked from social media – including this recent long read “What Scares the New Atheists” – until I eventually went to hear him speak in interview with Will Self a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have for the first time read more than an article, reading his “The Soul of the Marionette“.

First impression is somewhere between Zizek and Eagleton – in the sense of pricking received wisdom on the big issues – unconventional, laconic and erudite, but less flamboyantly so as perhaps befits his surname. Easier to miss until you sit up and concentrate. Until now I’d forgotten my own pre-2014 references already recorded here.

I like what I read. A good read, dead pan as if he’s stating the obvious. If as I do, you already buy what’s wrong with received wisdom – our objectively rational arrogance – as I’ve been calling it for 15 years – then it is obvious. What I don’t buy though is the cup half empty (more like 99% empty) pessimism of his main conclusions – that we are not just misguided and mistaken in our freedoms and competencies to affect the world for mutual benefit, but we are practically helpless and hopeless. Get over ourselves! We are the problem, not part of the solution. Not surprisingly he is accused of the nihilism he naturally denies. We’re doomed, he doesn’t actually say.

His main theme is to sow the seed that a string puppet is more free than we are – a theme he borrows from Heinrich von Kleist. A puppet doesn’t need to expend any effort counteracting gravity, that’s already been taken care of in its puppet world and is therefore free to participate in positive activities. We on the other hand are beset with maintaining and dealing reactively with the infrastructure of living more than acting creatively.

I say main theme, because although it recurs from beginning to end, the main chapter contents are quite distinct topics. Some quite disturbing, by design of course.

In The Puppet Theatre – Roof Gardens, Feathers and Human Sacrifice, he is describing the logic of human sacrifice in Aztec civilisation, obviously perverse to received wisdom. You can’t help develop that uneasy feeling that talking reasonably about positive benefits of such activities is dangerously close to potential supporting arguments for ISIS – a point he eventually makes. It’s an exercise in getting the reader to confront how foreign accepted practice could be.

In Dark Mirrors, Hidden Angels and Algorithmic Prayer Wheels, he contrasts that routine consumption of a small selection of human lives, in an otherwise stable society, with human lives lost in conflict in the mainstream world as we know it. You can’t help feeling he’s unpicking the comfortable arithmetic of Stephen Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature – which of course he is. He’s written critical articles on that work before. Life is more complicated than arithmetic, and arithmetic based on inevitably selective data at that, can lead to unintended consequences.

I like the assured style of declarative writing without pausing to insert supporting references. Maybe it appeals to my “knowing” mentality, but the book is properly referenced, in page-numbered notes at the end of the text.

Two connected topics, where I disagree with his apparent conclusions. Sure, looking at cybernetics as a machine view of systems, and then hoping to use such a view to find free-will and some privileged form of human consciousness in the mechanistic functioning of our brains is a fools quest. But, cybernetics is only a machine view to the computer geeks who’ve come to dominate our tech-driven world. In reality how information is organised and processed to govern our decisions is independent of machine based systems, independent of any physical substrate – or at least it was when Wiener and co developed the idea. It was exploitation of the idea by the “military-industrial machine” – to fund the same people who invented it – that channeled it into computer systems technology.

Some great stuff on conspiracy theories and the quest for meaning. And a dozen other references – in the end notes – that I need to follow-up, not least E M Forster and Nassim Taleb. A thoroughly worthwhile and disconcerting, though-provoking read.

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[Post Note : Hadn’t noticed this 2014 piece by Gray on Dawkins’ closed mind. A man after my own … purely Darwinian evolution of mental models (eg science) tends to mediocrity, a series of lowest common denominators, enough to survive (survive falsification) but not anything fundamentally true or excellent. Apparently Balfour had pointed this out already.]

Picture this:

(1) A is a Christian, but …

(2) A is a Christian who is also a theologian, a Christian who’s given it some thought, and been able to show at least some level of intelligence, and …

(3) A is a theologian whose belief motivated them to heroic courageous acts that culminated in their death at the hands of the Nazis.

Now consider that:

(4) Some people “criticise” Christians satirically in general for believing in a god like anyone might believe in a “spaghetti monster” – which would be seen as a stupid thing to do – but this is irony, right? so most Christians would accept such a criticism without personal offence – turn the other cheek, etc. (Though there is no actual “argument” in this criticism, other than to make the “and that would be stupid” point. It’s a free country n’all that.)

(5) Another theologian B points out the historical heroism of A (point 3 above), and ends with the footnote that FSM’s (flying spaghetti monsterists and like people) should take that as “a point of reference” – something to think about – no specific message. That’s it. End of.

Then, digressive twitter debate ensues. ie interminable in short bites, because each bite introduces a new topic, without ever agreeing conclusion of any existing topic. So what were the topics?

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Deliberately paraphrasing, to home in on intended issues, maybe this is the assertion from one side : Believing in god or spaghetti monsters is stupid or at least irrational, but this is needn’t be ad-hominem criticism, insulting such people as stupid, unless their personal beliefs in this regard interfere with their public actions.

(Obviously, people hold many beliefs and are motivated to many actions – so apart from some general concept of self-consistency – not all actions are motivated by all beliefs. We’re talking about specific individual beliefs, motivations and related actions.)

So, do individual beliefs form part of their motivations?
And do such beliefs and motivations therefore affect individuals public actions and their intended outcomes?

If no. STOP (Start separate discussion on the individual and free will, etc.)

So, yes, in general actions are motivated by belief:

But do we believe A’s actions specifically were motivated by their Christian belief,
And do we agree A’s – very public – actions were indeed, good, virtuous, courageous and/or heroic say?

(ie not just Christian belief and believers in general, but an individual theologian whose heroic life was very much defined by this fact.) Note there’s nothing exclusive in these statements, about all good actions necessarily being attributed to Christian belief, nor that equally good actions are motivated in others with other beliefs. Just a fact in this individual case.

Yes?

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C : I don’t see the connection [between spaghetti monster criticisms and recognising the goodness of A’s actions]. Criticising religion doesn’t equate to disrespecting individuals such as this, does it?

This is the point – not seeing the connection – does affect the ability to see the relationship between the belief and the “good” action of the individual. The nature of the criticism does affect the view of the individual and the relationship between their beliefs motivations and actions.

So how do we join up the nature of criticism of someone’s beliefs, with opinions (more beliefs) about the quality of them and their actions.

We have a (at least) three things – qualities of people, their beliefs and their actions – individually and collectively, whole and in part. [Now this discussion is 3000 years old. Virtue and the virtues. Old, and knotty too.]

Clearly, objectively, with hindsight, we judge the quality of people in their actions.

At that point we may say their motivations and the beliefs that underpin them are not relevant, so long as their actions appear “good”. (Though even this depends on how much the quality of consequences are indeed apparent at any given viewpoint in time – but for now we may hold that belief and motivation – and any other qualities of the individual – are irrelevant.)

So why then, does anyone criticise anyone else’s beliefs?
Why does anyone care if such criticisms cast aspertions about qualities of the individuals that hold them?

Well, because we do care and we do value them. Beliefs are NOT irrelevant.

We judge historical actions (and expressions of beliefs and motivations, verbal or otherwise, are simply more actions) as a stock of resource in the person – qualities and values – their “virtues”. And we value them because we have to judge who to support, ally with, vote for, be seen having a beer with, now and in the future. A “stranger” about whom we know nothing empirically is either given the benefit of the doubt or treated with caution and suspicion, or typically some combination of the two, until more “objective” evidence emerges. But we value the emerging stock of virtue(s).

C : People “are” – all a mass of countless beliefs and actions. Criticising part is (obviously) not criticising the whole.

Absolutely – individually we are is simply the collection and organisation of the information patterns we hold to date. [Meme theory of individual cognition & consciousness. We ARE our resource of human virtues.] And, before we act, or speak, these are “in our heads” (and hearts).

We can’t criticise (or appreciate) people’s ideas (and their stock of motivations and virtues) independent of the person. They are them. If we care about the person, we must care how we criticise their ideas.

Now for most people with a wide range of beliefs and ideas, it’s perfectly possible to criticise an individual idea (or action or motivation) distinct from a wider complex of ideas. To criticise a part but not the whole individual. Note however for both subject and critic there is some sense of necessary consistency in that complex as a whole. How consistent, and how much effort and competence is put to developing and rationalising that consistent whole, varies enormously – hence the knotty twists of virtue and the virtues, and the examined life. Not all Christians can be theologians. Not all cyclists can be trick-cyclists.

So what is the point of the original footnote.

All beliefs are open to criticism, and criticism includes ridicule (though see separate restraints on gratuitously offensive ridicule beyond the context of satire and irony).

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM) is of the ridicule variety – suggesting the belief (in spaghetti monsters or supernatural gods) is so ridiculous, it’s a ridiculous – stupid – belief to hold. And of course it’s very general, aimed at the belief and believers as a whole. I’ve not seen FSM make any subtle distinctions between belief, motivation and action; simply that the belief is, and hence believers are, ridiculous. [Interesting development re PZ Myers yesterday.]

If the only thing you know about someone (or care about someone) is their theistic (Christian or other) belief or, in the case of A (and possibly B), that belief is actually their defining belief – FSM ridicules the whole of the person you know. As criticism goes, it’s a very blunt instrument.

If you want to criticise someone’s belief by generic ridicule, you better know a bit more about them, their motivations and actions, before implying insult to the whole person. Criticise with care.

Better still, why not try constructive criticism with someone you do have some respect for. But that’s another story.

C = Clive Andrews @CliveAndrews

B = The reverend Richard Coles @RevRichardColes

A = Dietrich Bonhoeffer #SorrydonthavehisTwitterhandle.

[Footnote – B’s own footnote was click-bait of course, but nowhere did it suggest criticism was out of bounds, nor did it suggest any exclusivity of Christian good. It simply said before you criticise – ridicule – Christian beliefs in general, spare a thought for this individual case.]

Post from Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, disowning any association with PZ Myers. (Hat tip to @AMDWaters) I’ve had my run-ins with PZ Myers via his Pharyngula blog several times in the past often, if you look at the links, trying to give the positive benefit of the doubt that the rhetoric is worse than the bite, but most frequently giving up in the face of the baying mob argumentation style stirred up in his comment threads.

In fact it’s quite some time since I’ve looked at anything PZ has said or written – so it’s interesting to read Nugent’s piece. Sounds like PZ is single-handedly taking-up the absence of anyone’s right not to be offended, by offending anyone and everyone gratuitously – even erstwhile allies. Highly irrational (and offensive).

I ventured an opinion in my last post on the state of party politics in the current election campaign. Normally I’m more interested in the principles and practicalities of governance itself, but in a democracy we do each have to make a choice occasionally, so picking between party ideologies and “manifestos” – even individuals and policies – does require careful consideration once in a while.

Having posted those opinions, my attention was drawn to several other posts today. The thread that emerged is a recurring one for me.

However dissatisfied we get with the current “political classes” free democracy demands we value that what we have is a free democracy. After all we seem to value that those without it deserve one. Benevolent dictatorship may be the only option that’s better than all the others – nice work if you can get it – but ultimately those we choose to govern us, we must trust.

Scepticism is “de rigeur” for us rational humans, free to doubt or question anything – a no brainer. But it’s not clever or sophisticated to fulfill scepticism with cynicism (hat tip to Sam @elizaphanian), to treat everything as doubtful or untrustworthy or without authority just because as sceptics we are free to do so. In any case where “to be on the safe side” infringed our otherwise reasonable personal liberty, we’d all be in line to denigrate “health and safety gone mad”. (Unintended consequences – think of the cockpit door in #4U9525)

Jim Walsh, CEO of Conway Hall Ethical Society, posted a longer post that @conwayhall tweeted today, extolling trust to slake our ethical thirst. Why should we allow fear to change otherwise hard-won freedoms? Freedoms based on valuing – loving – humanity, not by default fearing and distrusting ourselves. Sure we address specific fears and risks arising as problems requiring solutions, but let’s not revise fundamental freedoms.

Topically enough then, BBC correspondent Gavin Hewitt suggested – “Fear dominating election campaign.” and BBC political editor Nick Robinson opines – “Europe: Why you can believe Blair on this.” Even Blair, demonised for his mis-justified, and possibly mis-guided, campaign into Iraq – whose “unintended consequence” meant we failed to help Syria when it needed us – demands our trust, on balance, in context. It was Slavoj Zizek’s “Empty Wheelbarrow” that first pointed out post-9/11 that we must be more circumspect than to accept decisive (ie divisive) calls to “for us or against us” action justified by palpable fear.

Fear and cynicism must not be allowed to crowd out trust and love; faith and trust in love.

What’s so funny ’bout … again and again.

 

Struggling with voting choices in upcoming 2015 election. The 7-way debate of last week was predictable. Good to see 3 women leaders, though equally sad to see their “team women” photo-call opportunity not being missed.

Nicola Sturgeon was predictably smooth, skilled debater like Nick Clegg, but irrelevant (on principle) unlike Clegg. Irrelevant to UK politics that is, so a relatively easy job to come out serenely above the Westminster party-political sniping. Plaid Cymru predictably still having to compete for their Welsh vote, unlike SNP in Scotland, so narrowly targetted messages from Leanne Wood. Nigel Farage on the other hand with an opportunity to play the broader statesman he was aspiring towards, clearly feeling the need to reinforce his core support with his one-trick message – controlling immigration and stopping foreign aid – especially as stopping foreign aid can be counted as economic policy too (!)

I commented some weeks ago that it was a pity the single issue parties had to pretend to have full manifestos across all policy areas – like the big boys. As special interest groups they’d be better sticking to their core principles as part of negotiating their interests in future alliances, rather than diluting their resources dreaming up economic policies – especially as economic policies are for the birds anyway, be honest. But no, the media wants the effin’ numbers.

Take John Simpson on BBC R4 Today this morning interviewing Natalie Bennett – excellent again, as she was last week. She was tripped up a few weeks ago, when she stumbled over numbers that needed to add up – seen as a major gaff – but in fact that’s when I expressed the opinion above – that the single-issue parties shouldn’t pretend to have government manifestos. They should be marketing their main principles to influence and fit with policies of government parties. Simpson couldn’t get his head round the difference between policy as a statement of principles and governing values, and “manifesto” as plans (and promises and contracts with numbers and dates) for a government. Well done to Natalie for sticking to her point.

It’s a pity “marketing” has to be cast as a necessary evil – tainted by commercial consumer business – whereas what single issues really require is explaining how they (might) fit with bigger pictures. Proper narratives, proper vision. The only “selling” the Simpsons of this world seem to get is arithmetic. Brainless stuff, and irrelevant to the values that matter. As an engineer with interests in Oil & Gas and Energy businesses, I actually disagree with a number of Green policies as plans, but Natalie talks the most sense, and I prefer sense to arithmetic. Principles matter, even if you have to bend them to pragmatism.

Did anyone – in the first week of campaigning – mention foreign policy so far, even once (unless you count Farage)? The threat to stable world peace from Islamism has to be our top issue – other local economic difficulties pale into insignificance. Why should Westminster politicians be trading blows over NHS operational arrangements – simply allocate the tax funds, empower the management, get out of the bloody way and focus on what really matters. (At least no-one’s offered to “reform” education – again – yet.)

Until we have PR – even more critical in these post-two-party-system days – when one party trying to establish its identity distinct from all others is less and less likely to have the complete package, then all the bets for voting on policy content are off. Naturally, I’m a social democrat, so Lib Dem by preference, with acknowledged takes from conservative values (with the small c) and the “united conservatism” angle of UKIP, but Labour in practice since Clegg destroyed all the value previously earned by the gang of four in his alliance with the Tories. Labour in my local constituency – local boy, done good, knows the issues.

Whether you’re Charlie Hebdo, Avijit Roy or Washiqur Rahman no one has the right to murder you or physically threaten you, for what you say or publish. Those are crimes. Unqualified, full stop.

Freedom of expression, does of course come with responsibility for self-restraint, but not restraint based on fear of the above. Restraint based on being constructive, and gratuitous offence beyond a satirical context, is not necessarily constructive. So I’ve always been careful about expressing unqualified support for what such people express freely and why in any given context- other than their freedom to do so, and the absence of any “right” for others not to be offended.

This piece by Rory Fenton in the Independent gets it right, when it comes to the liberal, atheist Bangladeshi Bloggers. The authorities already have a difficult situation to deal with, that’s clear, in terms popular support for blasphemy law and the bloggers in question do seem to be constructive and not to be focussed on offence. Either way, it is clear the authorities, there and here, must condemn the killings and the implicit threat of further terror, and actively pursue those who kill and threaten.

Achieving a secular Bangladesh – where the concept of blasphemy law is banished – is a larger project of course. Meantime, can we please assert that murder and terrorism are crimes; hate crimes. Full stop.

Picked-up this YouTube link to 1984 Stonehenge Free Festival set from Roy. (Just “One Man Rock & Roll Band” at that link now.)

Can’t believe this is as late as ’84, but it so reminds me of his performance delivery during mid to late ’70’s – Essex Uni, LSE, Hammersmith, Blackbushe, to name a few – particularly excellent version of Highway Blues to finish.

[Post Note – As is ever the way on YouTube, I followed additional links to further live Roy Harper videos, and given the Stonehenge ’84 connection I disappeared off down the rabbit hole that is Hawkwind – ending with the BBC Documentary from 2009-ish. The original Westway / Ladbroke Grove punks.]

[Post Note – and reminiscing with the above Stonehenge link I find also on YouTube this recording of Roy from 2016 at De Barras in Clonakilty with Mike Shanley doing a full original-style version of “Me and My Woman”.]