Reason Undone
Here’s an extract from programme one of Richard Dawkins’ Channel 4 series Enemies of Reason, in which he addresses postmodern emotionalism, 9/11 conspiracies and the egalitarian flattening of values.
The first programme can be viewed in full, in two parts, here and here. The second programme is broadcast on Monday August 20th at 8pm. Of particular interest are the insights of illusionist Derren Brown, the convergence of environmentalism and ‘spirituality’, Dawkins’ encounter with sociologist Steve Fuller and the description of science as “the poetry of reality.”
Professor D uploaded and disseminated by The Thin Man. Update: Part two is online here.
When I was at University (the old Queen was on the throne and shirt-cuffs were made of stiffened paper) certain wags would write on the walls of the science library lavatory, above the loo-roll dispensers, something like “for your arts degree, pull here and tear off”. Our generation was noted for its rueful wit.
I wonder whether Dawkins’s analysis is quite right. I’m not sure that there’s a general (relativist, postmodernist) antipathy towards science. Of course, there’ll always be the Feng Shui nuts and homeopathy bores but most people have the good sense to trust their GP above that sort of caper.
My guess is that the problem lies more in the still-pervasive notion that gentlemen take arts degrees while science degrees are the province of inky-fingered spods. This would be less pronounced now than when I was at University, and the scientists fought back by vandalising the library lavatories, but all the same it is still there.
But the graffiti-wags do highlight another point. Any youngster considering university is bound to wonder whether, when the socialising stops and the essay crisis kicks in, it would be better to immerse yourself in Chaucer or George Eliot (something many people do for pleasure anyway), or to go looking for Volume 17, pp 317-386 of the Journal of Applied Metallurgy.
After all, if you want to get to your forties and have the bolt-hole in the Dordogne, the house in the New Forest and a decent pension plan, you’d be as well to take the arts degree rather than find yourself still on 28,000 a year as a government-funded lab technician.
this isn’t to say that this is a good situation; but where I think Dawkins gets it wrong is in his contention that there’s a general anti-science malaise. I don’t think so. I think that most people value and admire the sciences but are only glad that someone else is willing to do it.
Whatever. I just like the phrase “inky-fingered spods”.
“Inky-fingered spods.”
For some reason that conjures images of 1950’s B-movie aliens, complete with fingertip suckers and noxious oozing. Maybe we should offer some kind of prize for the most improbable yet compelling turn of phrase.
I’m told part one will be uploaded in full later this morning. I’ll post a link when it appears. It’s worth watching the whole shebang, if only to see Dawkins meet the illusionist Derren Brown. I can’t help thinking they should team up and solve mysteries or fight crime. I see a TV series in there somewhere.
I love the idea of a TV series, but they’d have to work on the name.
‘Dawkins and Brown’ is less suggestive of an ace crime-fighting duo than of a small DIY shop, smelling of linseed oil and freshly sawn wood. The door would tinkle on your arrival: “Mr Dawkins, I believe we have a customer”.
Sort of Ghostbusters meets Father Ted.
Horace,
yes we used to have similar in the med school…
“arts degrees.. please take one”
never was it more appropriate than today.
This place is sometimes worth visiting just for the comments. [wipes tears away from eyes]
Thank you. I am now off to walk my dog.
Surely the décor and music count for something too?
http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/hush.mp3
I once bumped into Derren Brown outside Baker Street station. Gave me quite a turn I can tell you. I expected to walk into the station only to discover that, inside, it looked exactly like Charing Cross. After several minutes of being rooted to the spot in chilly confusion, I’d be approached by a stony-faced man and lead through the ticket barrier. Suddenly I’d be on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo staring open-mouthed at Derren Brown’s memsmerically wagging goatee while a capacity audience yelled its appreciation. Golly, would I feel stupid.
It didn’t happen, though. In fact, since that time everything has been perfectly normal…
Horace,
I rather wish Dawkins had spent more time with Derren Brown, whose work, at its best, is art. But astrology, card readings, etc are very easy targets and it would have been more interesting for him to take on more statusful and insidious forms of anti-rationalism. Some of them were touched on fleetingly in the clip above and a longer exchange with Steve Fuller would, I think, have been fun to watch. Perhaps part two will dig a little deeper.
The problem is that Dawkins is barely more attractive than those he dismisses. I’m all with him when he criticises religion as being anti-rational, but his responses to the excesses of atheistic Communism and Nazism is inadequate.
TDK,
I’d like to see Dawkins address the more statusful and insidious anti-rationalism among some fellow academics. What, I wonder, would he make of Duke University’s Arts and Sciences Professor of English, Karla Holloway, who now teaches a course on law, and who claims that guilt is “assessed through a metric of race and gender” and that “white innocence means black guilt. Men’s innocence means women’s guilt.”
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2007/08/checking-in-with-karla-holloway.html
http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/English/faculty/karla.holloway
Astrologers, dowsers and low-budget humbug merchants are not a mortal threat to intellectual life, or to society as a whole. Irrational ideologues and tenured race fantasists have a much more poisonous effect on soft student brains and on the broader political culture.
Dammit, Satan never sleeps.
I think Holloway has a point about whom we choose to mourn. We have had an on-going case in Vancouver for some time now–several dozen Aboriginal women over a period of time disappeared off the streets. There was very little public interest; in fact, very little police interest for quite a while. Now a fellow has been charged with killing them all and feeding them to his pigs. If several dozen white women disappeared off the streets, even if they were prostitutes, I suggest it would have become news long before this case did.
I have also noticed, from time to time, the differing media treatment of black girls and white girls who disappear. I know this is anecdotal, but I do think that the media pay more attention to the latter, on the whole. That there are other explanations, I cannot dismiss; but to accuse Holloway of being a “race fantasist” because she thinks race has something to do with it, is a bit much.
At the risk of appearing inflammatory, let me juxtapose two things: 9/11 and the Iraqi sanctions undertaken after the elder Bush’s adventure. 9/11 was an atrocity, and received immense coverage. The deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to the sanctions did not. Indeed, there are pitched battles about the figure–some say it’s only a little over 100,000. But Madeleine Albright, once Clinton’s Secretary of State, was happy to accept the higher number–and (in)famously stated that these children’s deaths were “worth it.” [Source: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084%5D.
No outrage. No racism involved? I wonder.
Dr Dawg,
Morning. Re interest in missing people, I suspect that broadly speaking people are more inclined to be concerned, or more concerned, by missing people with whom they identify, to whatever extent and for whatever reason. Some may be concerned by missing people with whom they feel they ought to identify or be seen to identify with. And I imagine the ‘feeding them to the pigs’ angle is much more newsworthy than the unfortunates involved, and newsworthy pretty much regardless of the victims. Wait a minute. There are Australian aboriginals in Vancouver…?
If you cast an eye over Holloway’s pompous and florid pronouncements regarding the Duke “rape” case, you’ll see her readiness to project her own fixations onto others and to argue that practically all relevant motives are based on skin colour and/or gender. And, of course, her willingness to denounce those who disagree as by default racist, patriarchal or malign – again, regardless of evidence or logical contradiction. This is where the fantasy kicks in most obviously. Her eagerness to deploy plantation metaphors and phrases like “kneeling to white male privilege” (and numerous variations thereof) says a great deal about her objectivity and general outlook. She is, I maintain, prone to fantasy.
And it seems to me that Dawkins’ gimlet eye would be more profitably cast over targets that are no less irrational yet much more statusful and influential. Students and policy makers are not, I think, terribly likely to be swayed by crystal healers or spiritualists. They are, however, more susceptible to the claims of statusful academics who wield “expertise” in sensitive issues. We can laugh at aura photographers with impunity, and almost as a sport. Less so tenured professors with unyielding ideological agendas.
David:
No, there are First Nations Aboriginals in Canada; there are Aborigines in Australia. I haven’t heard any news of the latter being fed to pigs.
But you give me my point, in part: “I suspect that broadly speaking people are more inclined to be concerned, or more concerned, by missing people with whom they identify.” And not by people with whom they don’t. Which is a component of that complex institutional phenomenon known as “racism,” is it not? When you think about it, identifying with people you don’t know based upon their skin colour is…well, odd. Socially conditioned. Racist.
As for Dawkins, while I find him interesting, the sociobiology connection causes me considerable unease. Many years ago, in knee-jerk fashion, I referred to this specious, reductionist non-science as “fascist.” Turns out my gut instincts were right: this area of study, now called “evolutionary psychology,” has proven attractive to the genuine article: Kevin MacDonald, Phillippe Rushton…which gets us back, circuitously, to the issue of racism.
Dr Dawg,
“When you think about it, identifying with people you don’t know based upon their skin colour is… well, odd. Socially conditioned. Racist.”
Well, it’s not *necessarily* racist and I certainly don’t find it “odd”, or indeed “socially conditioned”. Whatever you want to call it, it’s what people often tend to do and, so far as I can see, have always tended to do, perhaps for evolutionary reasons. I don’t want to bang on about Holloway, but it’s scarcely news that people often show most concern for others with whom they identify in some way, for whatever reason(s). What is remarkable is that Holloway and many of her peers should so eagerly couch this fairly banal observation in terms of some malicious and institutional “oppression”, or insinuate that this is some exclusively Caucasian attribute.
Holloway is, alas, far from unique in this regard and similar fixations preoccupy other “race professionals”. The Guardian’s Gary Younge, for instance, sees racism and oppression in every subject he turns his attention to. On a clear night I’m sure he could detect racism on the Moon.
And I should point out I’m not endorsing Dawkins’ general outlook or any particular claim he makes. There are several issues on which he and I might well part company. I am, for instance, agnostic regarding some ultimate cause and purpose of the Universe. (Though perhaps ‘cause’ and ‘purpose’ might not be *entirely* fitting terms.)
Madeleine Albright’s comment was made on 60 Minutes which as far as I know is a top 10 rated TV show, which rather undermines your point about lack of interest. The reporter Lesley Stahl subsequently won an Emmy and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Journalism Award. The “deaths” received coverage in many national papers including the Guardian and wherever John Pilger is published. Protesters regularly handed me leaflets quoting up to a million deaths.
The sanctions were not a measure solely of the US but of the UN. They were linked to compliance to UN disarmament resolutions. Sanctions excluded medical and other humanitarian supplies. There was no impediment to importing such materials except the will of Iraq’s rulers. It is to be noted that whilst those children died, Saddam was refurbishing his palaces.
One might suggest that, the rulers of Iraq saw a benefit in allowing their own citizens to suffer rather than comply with the UN. What might that benefit be? Perhaps they thought that there would be enough willing fools to effect a premature termination of the sanctions.
Now you report NONE of that background. The only narrative you entertain is that sanctions caused the deaths. You do not consider the possibility that the responsibility lies with the Iraq’s. In other words you look at a brown man killing another brown man and without a second thought hold someone white responsible. Is it that you expect no better of brown people? In my book, failure to hold non-whites to the same standards of behaviour as whites is classic racism.
I recall from my youth a satirical article deriding regional newspapers for their parochial interests. Something along the lines of “Yorkshire Post: Titanic hits iceberg – man from Leeds feared drowned”.
If Dr Dawg cannot understand why a regional newspaper might show a regional interest then he is unlikely to understand why a national media outlet shows a national interest.
Just think how many people I discriminate against when I write my diary at night. All those people I exclude or ignore. How shocking!
The 500,000 (and yes, I’m aware of Garfield’s work, so let’s call it “only” 100,000 or so to be on the safe side)were mentioned in that brutal way, but they did not generate anything like the subsequent interest that 3,100 deaths did in New York.
In any case, here’s a little background:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/2004/01sanctionsworth.htm
Hussein created dependency among his people by establishing an efficient distribution of what food there was. Meanwhile, much of the Oil for Food money was skimmed off the top–reparations to Kuwait being accounting for a bout a third of it. The US and UK routinely put “holds” on allegedly “dual-use goods”–like baby incubators. UN officials such as Hans von Sponeck, seeing the results of this up close, quit in protest.
There are some good articles here as well: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/oilindex.htm
I have no idea what Karen is talking about. She is certainly not replying to any point I made or tried to make.
“being accounting for a bout a third”
Yikes. Read: “accounting for about a third”.
Is it racist when the Yorkshire Post pays more attention to Leeds deaths than to say Manchester deaths?
Of course it isn’t. But just whom are you arguing with?
If the Yorkshire Post paid more attention to white Leeds deaths than Black Leeds deaths, I might suspect something of the kind. I have observed that sort of thing from time to time here in Canada and the US.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/missing-white-girl-syndro_b_51632.html
Are you being deliberately obtuse with Karen?
In the thread above I read an exchange with between David and yourself including “‘…people are more inclined to be concerned, or more concerned, by missing people with whom they identify.’ And not by people with whom they don’t. Which is a component of that complex institutional phenomenon known as ‘racism,’ is it not?”
The local newspaper showing more concern for a missing Leeds man than a missing Manchester man is explicable in non-racist terms as you acknowledge. By extension the national newspaper showing more concern for a missing UK citizen than a missing German or Zimbabwean is equally non-racist. Is it not?
Back to Iraq.
I don’t propose to conduct a correspondence on the ins and outs of the sanctions. You’ve supplied what I consider to be a highly partisan link, so I’ll do the same: http://www.reason.com/news/show/28346.html
I’m more interested in the fact that given there are competing narratives you seem to exclude completely the possibility that there is any Iraqi culpability. Did they invade Kuwait; did they evade their responsibilities to disarm; did they take six years (when most alleged deaths occured) to accept oil-for-food; did they build palaces rather than import medical supplies; did they conduct genocidal campaigns against their own citizens post war?
When the first gulf war ended it, sanctions were imposed to remove Saddam. It was said to be a more humanitarian option than continuing the war. Perhaps that was a wrong judgement, but I can’t help but notice that the same people who demanded an end to fighting in 1992 were the first to criticise the sanctions alternative. It seems the west can never do right.
Finally I want to ask about “Hussein created dependency among his people by establishing an efficient distribution of what food there was.”
“efficient”. Are you for real? It is generally accepted that Saddam showed favour to those he thought were loyal and maltreated opponents, and that’s putting it mildly. Is that what you mean by “efficient”?
TDK:
Someone’s playing obtuse, all right, but it isn’t me.
“The local newspaper showing more concern for a missing Leeds man than a missing Manchester man is explicable in non-racist terms as you acknowledge. By extension the national newspaper showing more concern for a missing UK citizen than a missing German or Zimbabwean is equally non-racist. Is it not?”
Yes, of course. But I wasn’t discussing that case. I was discussing the case of Iraqi sanctions, their effects on children publicized on US national television, that generated barely a ripple domestically. I will suggest to you and Karen and anyone else who wants to set up an analogy between this and Leeds vs. Manchester, that had the children involved been white and blue-eyed, the outrage would have been in the Category 5 range, whether the kids hailed from the US or elsewhere.
I was also discussing the Vancouver case. I’m not referring to newspapers in Leeds, but to newspapers in Vancouver. And again, had several dozen white women disappeared off the Vancouver streets, we would have seen a replay of the Green River strangler drama. Because the women were Aboriginal, however, their loss was not newsworthy.
The link I posted was one of many possible ones on the so-called “missing white girl syndrome.”
What I mean by “efficient” was a distribution system that ensured that food was distributed amongst the population in the midst of the sanctions. That’s a matter of public record–I posted the link already. One doesn’t have to be a Saddam-apologist, and I assuredly am not, to recognize the destruction that sanctions caused. What about the military uses of baby-incubators? I note that you dodged that one.
TDK:
I has already read the Reason piece with attention. It flails away at the “looney left,” and then concludes:
“It seems awfully hard not to conclude that the embargo on Iraq has been ineffective (especially since 1998) and that it has, at the least, contributed to more than 100,000 deaths since 1990. With Bush set to go to war over Saddam’s noncompliance with the military goals of the sanctions, there has never been a more urgent time to confront the issue with clarity.”
So we are dealing with only 100,000 deaths (according to Reason), not 500,000. I had already stated, above: “I’m aware of Garfield’s work, so let’s call it ‘only’ 100,000 or so to be on the safe side.”
Perhaps you would enlarge on the point you thought your reference was making on your behalf.
Please, carry on. Don’t mind me.
[ wheels jukebox into middle of room ]
http://fp.ignatz.plus.com/dredel.mp3
Ah, finger food. Almost makes it worthwhile getting shirty. 🙂
Aren’t I just the dream host? And look, I wore a tux too.
I don’t dispute that people must have suffered under the sanctions. If you choose sanctions in preference to war to achieve some objective then you do so knowing that to work it must have some effect. Those who established the sanctions assumed that they would lead via popular revolt and government change. For the record, I think the sanctions were a counterproductive policy. Popular anger against the Iraqi government was already present in the Kurdish and Shia regions but was unlikely to rise elsewhere.
The sanctions were imposed not in a vacumn but as a result of Iraqi actions both before and during the sanction era. If we deprive a man of his liberty for committing a criminal act, then of course he suffers but it would be foolish to describe his suffering and not hold him responsible for his actions that lead to his present situation. By extension the Iraqi government must hold at least some responsibility for the suffering of the Iraqi people.
As I said I’m more interest moving beyond the ins and outs to understanding why the narrative excludes blame, any blame upon the Iraqis.
I’m going to be quite busy in the next few days so let me make a more general point. A common factor in left wing accounts of events, such as sanctions, is the tendency to lay all the blame upon the western actors and none upon the “other”. There’s an underlying racism in this as if the only people capable of changing events for better or worse are the west.
An article in the Times today discusses slavery and tells us that wars in Africa were caused by the west supplying guns, that slaves were only worth conch shells. Worth conch shells to who?
“By extension the Iraqi government must hold at least some responsibility for the suffering of the Iraqi people.
“As I said I’m more interest moving beyond the ins and outs to understanding why the narrative excludes blame, any blame upon the Iraqis.”
What, precisely, is signified by the polysemous “the Iraqis?” The Iraqi state? Saddam Hussein? The people, under his iron heel? If the latter, why were they being punished? What were they expected to do?
I’m happy to place some blame upon the “other,” if you can identify precisely who the “other” happens to be. The sanctions, after all, were to encourage the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (Bush Senior, you may remember, allowed the Shi’ites in the south and the Kurds in the north to be slaughtered when they tried it). That reminds me a bit of the fight manager saying to his outclassed fighter, “Get in there–the bum can’t hurt us.”
So the Iraqi people were, it seems, being punished for not overthrowing a bloody tyrant who would have had no compunction in putting hundreds of thousands of them to painful deaths. There must be better strategies.
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