They've gotten inside my head

While checking up on whether a publication was being cited, I ran across the following rather mystifying 'related searches' list from Google:

I have to say, I neither have, nor have ever had, any particular commercial relationship with any 'house of pancakes'.

However, just personally, I'm a big fan of IHOP going way back.

How Google would know this, however, is beyond me.

If you're wondering...

...why it's so quiet round these parts, there's a simple answer.

We're on holiday.

In the usual place.

Abnormal service will resume shortly.


À la semaine prochaine!

Notes on notes

There is an essay by historian Sir Keith Thomas at the London Review of Books on the subject of note-taking, and -- as unlikely as this may sound, given the topic -- it is delightful.

Although, I'm aware that its appeal may be limited to those who spend their days keeping track of obscure bits of information in the hopes of turning them (someday, maybe, fate willing) into a coherent historical narrative.

In any case, Thomas (now 77) is definitely old-school when it comes to methodology:

When I go to libraries or archives, I make notes in a continuous form on sheets of paper, entering the page number and abbreviated title of the source opposite each excerpted passage. When I get home, I copy the bibliographical details of the works I have consulted into an alphabeticised index book, so that I can cite them in my footnotes. I then cut up each sheet with a pair of scissors. The resulting fragments are of varying size, depending on the length of the passage transcribed. These sliced-up pieces of paper pile up on the floor. Periodically, I file them away in old envelopes, devoting a separate envelope to each topic. Along with them go newspaper cuttings, lists of relevant books and articles yet to be read, and notes on anything else which might be helpful when it comes to thinking about the topic more analytically. If the notes on a particular topic are especially voluminous, I put them in a box file or a cardboard container or a drawer in a desk. I also keep an index of the topics on which I have an envelope or a file. The envelopes run into thousands.

And then he has a passage that sounds, a bit painfully, familiar:

This procedure is a great deal less meticulous than it sounds. Filing is a tedious activity and bundles of unsorted notes accumulate. Some of them get loose and blow around the house, turning up months later under a carpet or a cushion. A few of my most valued envelopes have disappeared altogether. I strongly suspect that they fell into the large basket at the side of my desk full of the waste paper with which they are only too easily confused.

I myself struggle with keeping track of everything I run across and am constantly haunted by the fear of forgetting something and not having it to hand when I need it. Indeed, I've often had the experience of finding ideal pieces of evidence for a particular argument shortly after the relevant article has gone into print; more worryingly, I sometimes come across extensive notes on something that I have forgotten taking.

These problems have only become worse as my research interests have diversified, perhaps particularly so since I've begun to delve into the history of the press in the 1920s. Exploring a period's culture via newspapers is tremendously rewarding and interesting (as I hope my historical bycatch series shows); however, it's also a terribly bitty process, with short passages from here or there needing to be organised into ever-larger agglomerations to actually mean something. (This is not unlike other kinds of sources, but my own experience has been that focusing on newspapers -- at least if you're going to do it across several papers, which you should -- compounds the problem, especially as you have to take into account, say, each paper's target audience and editorial line.)  

My academic training stretches back far enough to a time when notecards and typewriters were still the standard tools of the trade; of course, the computer has been playing an ever-larger role in my work: accompanying the piles of paper that infest my shelves and a goodly portion of my office's floorspace, I have (like most younger historians I know) gigabytes of notes, articles as PDFs and digital photographs accumulated in the archives. The facility to word-search within documents has saved me from suicidal despondency on many occasions, as I've desperately tried to track down something that I know I have read (or even written) somewhere.

Despite our age difference, though, I'm relieved, somehow, to read that Thomas developed his historical methodology haphazardly, as I could say something similar (and, in a different context, have). It's even more encouraging, since he writes such excellent books.

But I recognise that there are some passages that I feel can only have been written by a historian of an earlier generation:

Christopher Hill believed in reading everything written during the period (provided it wasn’t in manuscript), and everything subsequently written about it. He used to buy every remotely relevant monograph when it came out, gut it and then sell it. 

So: read everything written during the period and everything subsequently written about it. The former maybe works for periods when less was written, though even here the expansion of social and cultural history has meant that ever more things can now be counted as 'sources'. And by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the potential source base for this style of broad-brush cultural history becomes incomprehensibly vast.

Moreover, the latter suggestion (reading 'everything written about' a period) is, I think, no longer really a serious option for a historian, unless you're going to limit yourself to a very narrow period and topic indeed. The expansion of the production of history is in large measure a good thing: but it's meant that things are very difficult to keep up with: I find it impossible to entirely keep up with what's being written in British crime and justice history, though the publication of some new (or re-issued) synthetic overviews certainly helps.

Nonetheless, Thomas's method ('soak[ing] myself in the writings of the time') and advocacy of G.M. Young's advice to 'go on reading until I can hear the people talking' remains a valid description of what cultural history, essentially, boils down to. As does this:

Even when all the necessary precautions have been taken, the result will still lack anything approaching scientific precision. For what my method yields is a broad-brush impression of beliefs and behaviour over long periods of time. I am a lumper, not a splitter. I admire those who write tightly focused micro-studies of episodes or individuals, and am impressed by the kind of quantitative history, usually on demographic or economic topics, which aspires to the purity of physics or mathematics. But I am content to be numbered among those many historians whose books remain literary constructions, shaped by their author’s moral values and intellectual assumptions. When writing history, there are rules to be followed and evidence to be respected. But no two histories will be the same, whereas the essence of scientific experiments is that they can be endlessly replicated.

Note (because it is all too easy in these post-modern times to be misunderstood) that the concluding line does not advocate methodological randomness or a denial of the reality of the past; indeed, if there is one thing that has -- fortunately -- kept history safe from the more extreme theoretical currents of recent decades it is its unavoidable dependence on evidence.

Which helps me, anyway, to think that Thomas's conclusion might not be too far off the mark:

That, I think, is a very kindly account of what I try to do: to immerse myself in the past until I know it well enough for my judgment of what is or is not representative to seem acceptable without undue epistemological debate. Historians are like reliable local guides. Ideally, they will know the terrain like the backs of their hands. They recognise all the inhabitants and have a sharp eye for strangers and impostors. They may not have much sense of world geography and probably can’t even draw a map. But if you want to know how to get somewhere, they are the ones to take you.

Well, at least some of them, and you could do far worse than asking historian (and humanist) Sir Keith to tell you the way.

Random notes from the dust zone

Since there are two or three of you who might be wondering what happened to us over the last week or so, we are happy to inform you that we were simply away from our desks and at the coal face of cultural knowledge exchange, i.e. the European Social Science History conference.

The conference was held in Ghent, which is a lovely city that I recommend you visit. (Although give it another year or so: there is some fairly intensive construction work going on in part of the central city (seems to involve installing or replacing tram lines) which means that that part of town is not at its best.) If you're driving, you may wish to tune into Belgium's Radio 1. I can't vouch for their usual quality, but we hit some kind of chart show on the way back (see reference by The Wife) and the music they were playing was far above your average radio fare.

It also introduced us to this song, which is not exactly great, perhaps, but which is nicely absurd and, because of context, took on a special quality.


Arno & DLS Band, 'Brussels'

The conference went very well (thank you for asking), at least from my perspective, and it was a pleasure to renew my contacts with a number of people and also to meet a few other people for the first time.

Of the latter, I especially wish to mention Randy Roth, whose recent book, American Homicide, was one of the featured books at the conference. I have been invited to comment on the book at a conference in Chicago in November, which is a tremendous honour, given how good it sounds, as far as I can judge from a few excerpts and conversations with the author himself. Some discussion of the book's contents might follow in the next few months.

In the meantime, we wish Randy--and a few other people that we met in Ghent--the best of luck in finding their way back to the US in the face of the Airborne Toxic Event volcanic ash cloud that has grounded pretty much all European air travel over the last few days. Given that a bunch of scary maps have tended to place where we live as part of a big red danger zone, we are happy to report that life--other than air travel--carries on pretty much as normal here under the Enormous Ash Cloud.

Not to say that it isn't a bit odd to have the skies cleared of aircraft (or nearly cleared: a few small planes and gliders were out this afternoon, but they fly well below the dust cloud, or at least that's what a computer graphic somewhere explained ...)

This is especially so as it's really only the second time I've experienced this kind of silent sky, the first being in the days after 11 September 2001.

There is something eerie about it.

As there was about something in a conversation with a now-retired historian in Ghent. He who was offering personal reflections on events in the 1960s and 70s and commented on the way that, if they live long enough, historians become not only investigators of the past but also, themselves, 'primary sources'.

This reminded me, in turn, of a discussion I'd had with a dear friend in London a few weeks earlier. I mentioned to him that it had occurred to me that Black Sabbath's self-titled 1970 debut (of which I am very fond) had had its fortieth anniversary in February of this year.

In the course of the conversation that followed, my friend pointed out that from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old today, that event was as distant historically as World War Two was to me at the same age (i.e. 1983).

Now, somehow that's obvious, I know, but I've been haunted ever since by the realisation that not only Black Sabbath but also my own birth is about as historically remote to a modern thirteen-year-old as was the battle of Stalingrad to someone of my generation at that age.

I'll have plenty of time to ponder this tomorrow, as I head off on a long-planned train trip to Britain. So far as I know the trains are running fine...except for likely being packed full of frustrated air travelers.

Ah, joy.

Atheist Field Day

Ok, ok -- I admit it. I don't really have that much to say, I only wanted to write that title. Well, and draw your attention to some of the issues that us poor Germans are told to worry about by the media. And a nice little basket of eggs it has become.

There is, first of all, the outcry by German politicians and bishops about the Hollywood blockbusters shown by private TV channels this Easter (Die Hard (1-3, too!), King Kong and Highlander).

Now there's a few people with nothing else to do .... Shouldn't they be in church anyway? Like you, dear visitor???

Second, the prohibition of the sale of condoms in a chemist's in the sleepy (but staunchly Catholic) town of Fulda in Hesse. The snag: the building that houses said chemist is owned by the Catholic church -- and condoms, as we all know, are the devil's work.

Fulda, one must say, has a reputation for harbouring silly ideas.

This is a doddle, however, compared to the most recent British terror: the fear of Nazi racoons. The sun has it's own characteristic view of the matter. I really and truly love that famous British humour ....

Less cuddly but chillingly beautiful are the oversized creatures discovered in the Antarctic. But beware ... giant Nazi starfish out on a slippery blitzkrieg -- and saluting, too. Next step: Polar Bears that look like Hitler.

For the more arty ones amongst you, a nasty review of Thomas Ostermeier's Mark Ravenhill/Martin Crimp double feature at the Berlin Schaubühne. Here's the trailer (yes -- these days theatre goes movie):




I reckon I gave up on "In-Yer-Face-Theater" after voluntarily exposing myself to Irvine Welsh's totally forgettable play You'll Have Had Your Hole in Leeds in 1998. Though I quite liked Ostermeier's production of Sarah Kane's Blasted. Well, it had Ulrich Mühe in it ....

Finally, in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, John R. Searle seems to get evolution completely wrong.

Happy egg-hunting everyone!

Till things are brighter...

I've been ruminating over the last couple of weeks on an article by Rebecca Solnit at Orion. In 'One Nation Under Elvis', she considers the seemingly unbridgeable divide between urban liberals (or progressives) and the rural communities where many of their issues lie (particularly for environmentalists) but whose residents, Solnit suggests, they consider with -- at best -- condescension and at worst outright hatred.

Solnit's essay is a very personal one (it may be that that is the mode best suited to this issue), but it touches on a tangled parcel of issues of broad relevance. After all, as she rightly points out, the electoral map that was much discussed in 2004 was only a north/south one on the surface: look below it and you'll find that one of the more crucial divides is that between urban and rural, with the suburbs often breaking one way or another based on their proximity to cities or local factors such as the presence of a university.

My home state of Illinois, for instance, is in the 'blue' column, but only because of the enormous electoral weight of Chicago (even if only the living vote only once, the city carries a lot of voting clout). Drive a couple of hours west and you're in a very different world.

The same kinds of divisions were apparent in my adopted home state of Maryland (one stop south of the Mason-Dixon line, don't forget) where the distance between, say, downtown Baltimore or the 'People's Republic of Tacoma Park' and a place like Taneytown was about more than merely geography.

(There were, though, as I recall, more than a few cowboys to be found at the gay bars around the corner from where I used to live in Mount Vernon...but that was Bawlmer, hon.)

Now, some kind of urban-rural cultural divide is probably a historical continuity or global commonality: the rhythms of life, the interpersonal networks, and perhaps many of the needs of living in a city are different than those of living in the country. However, there does appear to be something particularly virulent and odd about the contemporary American version of this conflict.

Odd, because it's not something that is entirely geographical. Solnit, not unfairly, identifies country music as one of the key cultural divisions. Building on her point, I suppose it's fair to say that 'country' is a serious cultural category in the land of my birth. And it's not all about geography.

I have a little bit of personal experience about this.

The town in which I grew up, for instance, was far from 'rural'. But while paying my way through college, I spent a couple of summer and winter breaks working at a steel lacing factory located there, and I came to realise something. (No, before that, I didn't know what 'steel lacing' was either.)

I was one of the few 'college boys' who worked there, which was the source of no small amount of ribbing -- most of it good natured -- but, still, at lunch time you sat and talked with whomever happened to be around. You get to know people.

A quite large percentage of my co-workers drove pickups, were extremely patriotic (I was there when the First Gulf War was under way, so that became hard to miss), loved country music and tended to drop the final 'g' from any 'ing' endings that they spoke. Quite a few were enthusiastic hunters -- or at least gun-owners.

But after work, 9 out of 10, I'm quite sure, did not drive home to a ranch or farm, but rather to a housing development off of some four-lane road chock-full of big box stores and strip malls. And, again, this was northern Illinois, less than an hour's drive from the Chicago Lakefront, when traffic was good. (Which it most often wasn't.)

So what I realised was this: 'country' is very much a state of mind.

Solnit refers to a variety of examples of what we might call urban middle-class disdain of 'rednecks' and assumptions that 'country' means racist. She observes:

So on the one hand we have white people who hate black people. On the other hand we have white people who hate other white people on the grounds that they hate black people. But that latter hatred accuses many wrongfully, and it serves as a convenient coverup for the racism that is all around us. The reason why it matters is because middle-class people despising poor people becomes your basic class war, and the ongoing insults seem to have been at least part of what has weakened the environmental movement in particular and progressive politics in general.

I'll leave you (no, urge you, in fact) to take a closer look at her article, since, as I said, it's full of the sort of personal anecdotes and nuances that are hard to summarise. What it comes down to, however, is more or less a plea to try to address this downward urban glance toward all things rural and twangy, with the argument that this is acting as a serious brake on progressive politics.

In general, I think there's a lot to her argument. The article provoked two quite positive -- and readable -- reactions at Dave Neiwert's Orcinus blog, one from Dave himself, and one from Sara Robinson. Each, in their own way, reiterate Solnit's basic point. Perusing the comments at each response, however, brings you to other perspectives (and to the depressing realisation that there are people who really do hate country music because they think it's 'right-wing'.)

One of the main objections that commenters raise -- one that I think carries some weight -- is that the cultural divide she rightly identifies is not one sided. There are, if you'll forgive the mangled physics of this observation, two sides that are mutually looking down on one another. In short, some of the commenters argue that 'rural communities' (for lack of a better or more neutral term) don't want any kind of alliance with liberals, no matter how much Johnny Cash those young city slickers might have on their I-Pods.

In a great number of cases, their rejection of Solnit's argument (and Neiwert and Robinson's agreement with it) are driven by personal experiences, often painful ones, with the kinds of environments with which she urges greater bridge-building efforts. (One of the more striking of which involves memories of a school bus driver named 'Skeeter'.)

Partly because those arguments are so personal (and so painful), they point to the difficulty of the project that Solnit suggests: if they can be taken as at least a partially valid sample of country folk (at least of the sort of formerly country folk who have turned into the sort to read Orion), then we're talking about more than a clash of grammar and musical tastes.

I don't, though, read Solnit as saying one has to necessarily overlook the urban-rural differences (or even conservative-liberal) that exist: she seems to be suggesting that both sides would have much to gain in trying to distinguish those areas where differences remain from those where commonalities exist.

This is not an easy thing.

I wonder whether this kind of cultural divide is quite so pronounced in other places. I know that in Britain the 'Countryside Alliance' has succeeded in making a lot of noise about representing rural interests in the face of an allegedly uncaring (or clueless) urban elite. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that this has had quite the significance of the urban-rural divide in the US (Britain is, after all, much smaller and more densely populated), and I wonder whether it has had quite the cultural impact. There are many ways in America in which a particular kind of cultural code (country music, NASCAR, traditional gender roles, hunting and fishing, perhaps a kind of casual racism -- the latter recalled by Dale here) has come to stand in for a particular set of political beliefs.

I have the sense that the British version of this is quite a different beast.

Here in Germany, you might be interested to note (and if you're not, just skip down a ways) there is a political drama that is in some way relevant. The Green Party is facing the possibility of forming coalition governments in two Bundesländer: Hesse, and the city-state of Hamburg.

That is not particularly unusual in itself, as Germany has a proportional voting system that has allowed smaller parties to have more influence. The more curious bit is their potential coalition partner: in Hamburg the CDU and in Hesse a combination of the CDU and the Free Democrats. (Reminder for Americans: 'liberal' in a European context very often refers to a predilection for small government and free markets 'As much state as necessary, as little state as possible', as the FDP puts it. It's confusing, I know, but it's the US that, for whatever reason, paints its conservative states red, which I've never understood.)

Considering that the Greens are often seen as a 'left' party (and probably in some important sense are) the possibility of the first black-green (or black, yellow, green...parties in Germany are known by their colours) coalitions at a state level have been causing no small amount of political soul searching within the party.

There are certainly what we could call 'cultural' barriers to overcome: the Green movement, after all, came of age in the era of Helmut Kohl, and as a movement that saw themselves in opposition to much of capitalism, militarism and consumerism, they can certainly be placed to the left on most conventional political spectra. However, their suspicion of statism, celebration of self-sufficiency, desire to preserve traditional ways of life and commitment to civil liberties suggest that there are points of agreement with at least some sections of mainstream conservative and liberal politics in this country.

As in America, it is hard not to notice, this is indeed more than a policy debate: it's partly cultural. Polling data shows that the Greens' most solid electoral base consists of well-educated and relatively well-off urbanites. In Germany, as in the US, there is a rural-urban divide of sorts. However, it is my theory -- and any German readers with more knowledge on this point are welcome to chip in if you wish -- that this division is not as stark as the one painted in Solnit's article in the USA.

There is a village not too far from here -- certainly 'rural' by any standard -- that we have the pleasure to have gotten to know through a friend of ours. On the roofs of its houses you would not be surprised to find solar panels, and in the gardens you'll likely find all of the paraphernalia of a conservationist lifestyle that most American (and German) environmentalists are expending so much effort to promote. (I commented on something similar in an earlier post.)

Nonetheless, I feel quite sure that its inhabitants tend rather toward the conservative side of the spectrum when it comes to the ballot box.

There are some Greens, it seems, for whom the idea of even working with Conservatives in a government is anathema. However, I think they have much to gain, not least since it would be the opportunity to gain some new voters while also freeing themselves from a left-wing camp that -- at least for the near future -- seems doomed to internal dissension and competition from a more radical left that seems rather far from electable. Times have changed. Conservatives wear sneakers too.

And, so far as I can tell, a love for Volksmusik has not quite taken on the political significance of country music in America (even if I imagine you'll find relatively few fans of it among Green voters...or among sane voters of any party for that matter....)

As someone who identifies -- though not uncritically -- with the Greens, I'm quite excited by the possibilities that the new alliances open up. Of course, this possibility requires that there are voters who are 'culturally' Liberal or Conservative who are willing to at least consider voting Green.

And that's not a foregone conclusion.

As a final note, I few personal memories about trying to bridge the divide that Solnit describes.

In a former and distant life as a campus activist, I recall that it took a relatively short time for me to become frustrated with the main vanguard of leftist politics at my university. There was a network of groups that tended to all have the same members and who sought to turn every campus issue into their own personal struggle. They were the reason that the Black Student Union for a time refused to work with any predominantly white left-wing group: they had experienced a few too many episodes where erstwhile revolutionaries (invariably white and middle-class) showed up to tell the BSU what real oppression was all about.

In any case, a few friends of mine and I decided to do our own thing and formed a new group that sought out contact with the local unions. One of the first issues we got involved in was the then prominent miners strike at the Pittston Coal company in western Virginia.

The strike was a drawn out and particularly difficult one. And it was clear that kind of people who were directly involved with it were the sort that, in Solnit's article, were the object of so much scorn from her well-educated environmentalist friends.

Along with raising attention to the strike on campus and organising a canned food drive, we called a meeting with local unions and (pro-union) religious groups at a church just off campus. And, indeed, you could sense a cultural divide of sorts in the room.

However, focusing on the commonalities and the issues at hand helped, though, as well as the fact as one of our co-organisers at the university was a history teacher who also happened to be the daughter of miners.

To make a long story short and to not belabour my own small part in these proceedings, our efforts culminated in a talk given by a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) representative who came up from downstate (yes, there is mining in Illinois) to talk to a packed university auditorium about the strike.

Our contacts with local churches and unions ensured that the audience was about equally mixed between students, staff and non-university types. It turned into a rather remarkable evening, and I recall vividly the way that after the talk, one by one, the representatives of the locals that we had helped bring together stood up to pledge their members' support (and money) to support the UMWA. Campus groups chipped in as well, along with and a few local churches. It may not have been decisive. But I like to think that it helped.

The curious thing is that on many other issues we (the students, the churches and the unions) may not have had a lot to say to one another: indeed, we may have been at odds. And there were undoubtedly far more Hank Williams fans among the union members than among the students.

However, at least just for a short time, it didn't seem that that mattered. It was one of the finest evenings of my college years.

The following video is a 'mini-documentary' of the strike. It's quite good.

And I dare you to look down on the people involved.

(Warning: viewers may experience bluegrass music.)

Welcome to Planet LaLa (a fully licenced subsidiary of Virgin Galactic)

Oh dear, what would we do without the British press! Both The Independent and The Telegraph bring us a deeply welcome, indeed essential, piece of news that otherwise would have slipped under our radar: Finally, after all these years, a German TV station will air (dubbed, of course) versions of 'Allo 'Allo.

With due thanks to Tony Paterson of The Independent for that excruciatingly witty headline "'Allo, 'Allo to invade German Screens". My midriff still hurts from all that laughing. You haff vays off mayking us laff indeed. (As the new Citroen ad says, very German.)

Thanks a bunch for this hyper-relevant info. We really have other problems to deal with over here at the moment. There is not only the major leadership crisis currently rocking the SPD. We also have the continuing drama around the polar bear infant 'Flocke' (who is three months old and being weaned off the bottle).

But going beyond the zoo into the human freak-show department, we also have our own, (in)famous incestuous couple, who are intermittently featured at Der Spiegel -- that stalwart defender of those poor people who claim to be victims of that harsh, terrible, inhumane system called "The Welfare State."

In an article about the upcoming decision by the Federal Constitutional Court as to whether this couple -- brother and sister, who are not only deeply enamoured of one another, but who have also sealed their love by producing four (!) children -- should be punished for their luv, the mildly defensive author goes beyond a perhaps understandable sympathy into the realm of scientific illiteracy.

According to Dietmar Hipp, abhorrence of incest is merely a culturally specific artefact of "an evolutionary dread" turned into a "powerful taboo," and does not deserve its illegal status. Apparently seeing evolutionary influences on our psychology as a bit old hat, he calls upon the mythical Oedipus, the French Revolution (though no Robespierre in sight) and Sigmund Freud to vouch for the legitimacy of these blood-crossed lovers. (The temptation to label them "Bro'Sis" is intense, but we will try to resist...oh, fuck it, never mind, we give in.)

What?!

I'm sorry, the negative reaction to incest is not triggered by some outdated prejudice. It is, rather, a universal phenomenon among humans and (at least most) animals, and it is a sensible natural strategy to keep that ol' gene pool a mixin'. (The results of failing to stir the pot can be scary: just see the royal family.) Amongst people unafraid of scientific ideas, such avoidance of sibling relationships is sustained (with little or no "repressive" cultural input) by what is known as the "Westermarck effect".

But this is not the only popular science clanger dropped today. The New York Times paints a grim apocalyptic scenario for the world. Of course, it's 7.59 billion years hence, but adapting the old boy scout adage, it seems it's never too soon to be prepared.

Not only does the article report about the doom that faces us all (eventually), it also makes all sorts of really neat suggestions about what to do about it. Like, shifting Venus an inch or so to the left and making preparations for colonising other planets (and presto: start catapulting your bottled water up to Mars now. No doubt Richard Branson will soon offer a semi-affordable shuttle service. Having been unable to get the toilets to work on his crappy trains under normal gravitational influences, he now wants to make a big mess in space...)

Which would be all cool and the gang, you know, if there weren't a few billion more problems that are a bit more down to Earth. (I could write headlines for the Independent any day, I tell you.)

Besides which: consider -- just for a moment -- what we're talking about here. 7.59 billion years is something like twice the amount of time that life has so far existed on the Earth. Homo sapiens has been around for all of about 100-150,000 years ago (give or take a few ten thou...).

What makes these geniuses (or anyone else) assume that we're going to be around to watch our planet be "dragged from its orbit by an engorged red Sun and spiral to a rapid vaporous death"?

Is it just me, or is there something breathtakingly arrogant about this?

I'd give us even odds to make it out of the century, let alone the next millennium...

(But, might I be able to interest you in some real estate on Venus? Get it while it's cheap!)

In defense of naturalist green libertarian social democracy...or something like that

There was quite a remarkable essay by George Monbiot at the Guardian a few days ago that manages to combine zoology, libertarianism and the near-collapse of Northern Rock Building Society.

In particular, he discusses one Matt Ridley, who was not only chair of Northern Rock but is also a well known author of several fascinating books on human nature.

Silly me, I've never made the connection before. (But, then again, I have a difficult enough time remember whether it's Matt Ridley or Mark Ridley, let alone checking on the political allegiances and possible bank chairmanships of the zoologists I read.)

Monbiot gives Ridley's (quite astoundingly radical) libertarian philosophising a good drubbing, but the more interesting bit is where he brings up evolutionary psychology:

I studied zoology in the same department [as Ridley], though a few years later. Like Ridley, I am a biological determinist: I believe that much of our behaviour is governed by our evolutionary history. I accept the evidence he puts forward, but draw completely different conclusions. He believes that modern humans are destined to behave well if left to their own devices; I believe that they are likely to behave badly. If you belong to a small group of intelligent hominids, all of whom are well known to each other, you will be rewarded for cooperation and generosity within the group. (Though this does not stop your group from attacking or exploiting another.) If, on the other hand, you can switch communities at will, travel freely, buy in one country and sell in another, hire strangers then fire them, you will gain more from acting only in your own interest. You'll have an even stronger incentive to act against the common good if you run a bank whose lending and borrowing are so complex that hardly anyone can understand what is happening.

Ridley and I have the same view of human nature: that we are inherently selfish. But the question is whether this nature is subject to the conditions that prevailed during our evolutionary history. I believe they have changed: we can no longer be scrutinised and held to account by a small community. We need governments to fill the regulatory role vacated when our tiny clans dissolved.

In general, I tend far more toward Mobiot's arguments on this issue, even if I think he should avoid the use of the word 'determinist', particularly since so many evolutionary psychologists have been struggling to free themselves of that label and have rightly emphasised interactions between genetics and environment in describing behaviour.

But the larger point that becomes clear is the utter diversity of political views that can emerge from taking human nature seriously.

I note this aspect of Monbiot's reply partly because I have more than once run up against an assertion that evolutionary psychology more or less automatically entails some version or other of radical laissez-faireism and/or the creation of social policy that is 'conservative' in all kinds of undesirable ways. ('Undesirable' from the perspective of the generally liberal people with whom I have had these discussions.)

This is, as I think Monbiot nicely demonstrates, not the case, and I think he is right that the bulk of the evidence on human nature does not lead us to the conclusion that people -- left to their own devices -- will necessarily act in ways that are good. He is right that, for instance:

Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.

Precisely what the parameters and means of 'mutual scrutiny and regulation' should be is, of course, the tricky bit. Nevertheless, I think there's enough evidence from enough quarters to suggest that what is arguably the most successful form of human social organisation so far (with all its faults and shortcomings) -- i.e., liberal social democracy -- is not Homo sapiens's default state.

There are a lot more things that could be said on that, of course, but just to be brief, Monbiot's article has gotten me thinking about libertarianism again since it's something, actually, with which I have a not entirely hostile but somewhat conflicted relationship.

On the one hand, there are many ways in which I find libertarian thinking and commentary to be very insightful. For a while, for instance, I became a regular reader of Reason, with which I typically found myself in, alternatively, nodding agreement and seething disagreement. (In many ways, they're interesting for asking the right questions if not necessarily coming up with the right answers.)

And there have been various other places where I've found some intriguing thinking from the libertarian corner, particularly by those who seek to develop that thought humbly and consistently (i.e., not just screeching about low taxes and free-enterprise but advocating the passing of liberal immigration laws, the ending of the intrusive legislation of morality and the increased protection of civil rights).

Indeed, I would say that, along with social democracy and naturalism (by which I mean recognising our animal natures and connection to the ecosystems in which we live), libertarian principles of freedom form an important source for my -- admittedly perhaps somewhat ramshackle -- worldview.

Unfortunately, many (though not all) of my personal encounters with real, existing libertarians have tended to be rather negative. They have often held strangely simplistic (ranging to naive and fundamentally ahistorical) perspectives on the world and a relentless (ranging to bug-eyed and ranting) distrust of any concept of social or community good beyond (typically very narrowly conceived) individual interests. Libertarianism in these cases seems to only be an ideology for successful entrepreneurs: what it offers for people don't fit that category -- either because they are not entrepreneurs or because they are not successful -- tends to remain either unclear or be quite obviously vicious.

These, furthermore, have often been accompanied by two things.

1) A tendency toward hyperbole (e.g., 'all taxation is theft', sensible gun control laws are 'oppression' and the UN/EU/WTO/IMF/ATF -- and their fleet of black helicopters -- are plotting a tyrannical world government) and a slightly shouty form of unpleasantness

and

2) Almost limitless self-aggrandisement (i.e., seeing themselves among an extraordinarily creative and productive self-sufficient elite that, obviously, would thrive in the radically privatised world they envision creating). (The latter I blame partly on excessive reading of Ayn Rand, but that's another topic for another time. Or, preferably, for never).

Strangely enough, I have also encountered precisely these same two characteristics in many discussions with the radical left (mainly Trotskyists for some reason I'm not interested enough to speculate about). So, rest assured, I'm quite capable of being equal opportunity with my scorn.

Oddly enough, just about all the libertarians I've met have identified themselves as right-wing, even though a lot of the things that dominate right-wing parties (whether in Europe or America) these days -- xenophobia, religion, militarism, a strong desire to regulate morals -- are anathema to what I would see as 'real' libertarian thinking.

There's not, of course, anything inherently 'right-wing' about the notion of 'freedom' or about being suspicious of the state, or of emphasising forms of voluntary self-organisation to provide mutual assistance. These have long been elements in anarchist and some socialist thought, and the European green movement ('neither Left nor Right: Green' being one of their early slogans) has also long had the libertarian notion of decentralising power as one its core principles as well, even if at times it has been emphasised rather less than more. (Just to note one of the more obvious practical examples: green thinking on energy focuses on decentralised, even household, power production, freeing people not only from the centralised power of the state but also from the concentrated power of large corporations.)

Of the two general strands of thought that emerged from the 60s (and which have in various ways been around for long, long before that of course) -- i.e., 1) making a new world and 2) being left alone to do your own thing -- my own emphasis has been shifting toward the latter: partly because it's increasingly clear to me that the first -- whether in its left or right-wing form -- generally leads to Very Bad Things. (NB: Making a better world is, I think, still on the table though.)

Now, I know there are a lot of reasonable and very insightful libertarian ideas out there. (And I know that the Left has its own ideological silliness to answer for.)

Thus, it is encouraging to see, as Dale has pointed out, a thoroughgoing libertarian argument for tackling global warming published recently at Black Sun Journal.

In response to what seems to be a rather unhinged critique of the science of global warming, the journal notes:

Actually, it is the AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming]-deniers who are the collectivists. They support allowing wealthy individuals and corporations to keep engaging in practices that essentially levy a heavy tax-burden on the rest of us. By depleting natural capital, the extractive robber-barons are externalizing their costs to other citizens and future generations. A true individualist libertarian would insist that everyone pay their fair share in the present-day rather than sloughing it off on their children, right? If you want to refrain from sounding completely ignorant and backward on this subject, you need to read and understand the concepts of Natural Capitalism, Externalities, Sustainability, and the Tragedy of the Commons. If you don’t, you have no business claiming to be a true Capitalist.

This article follows another (here), which contained the following:

Let’s look at the nature of our situation: Aside from radiation coming from the sun and other parts of space or the occasional meteorite coming in, and whatever heat is reflected or re-radiated into space going out, Earth is a closed system. Each of the 6.5 billion people who live here therefore have the right (an inherent human right as opposed to an arbitrary legal right) to fully use 1/6,500,000,000th of its resources and atmosphere, which are decidedly finite. If Stelene or Matt Drudge or Michael [Crichton] want to use more than that share of atmosphere or non-renewable resource, they need to purchase it from the people whose share they are consuming. That’s the free-market, right? It’s a classic problem of the commons, and even smart libertarians recognize this.

I imagine there are a lot of things that the writers at Black Sun Journal and I would disagree about. (I'm far from a 'true Capitalist', and they have that Strange Affection for Ayn Rand that I mentioned before and that I Just Can't Comprehend....)

The longer I spend blogging, however, the more I find it is difficult to find anyone with whom I completely agree anyway. But I'm also coming increasingly to the conclusion that, given the enormous decline in the civility of political discourse on the internet (described well, if with a certain justified incivility, at Whiskey Fire here and here) that I have come to see even a reasonable disagreement as, somehow, something precious.

And I am pleased to see the folks at Black Sun Journal take on crackpot irrationalism masquerading as secular, rational and libertarian free-thinking.

There are enough serious discussions to be had, after all.

[Update:] Just after posting this I found (via Pharyngula) a link to China Miéville's recent critique of libertarianism in In These Times. Worth reading. (As is his science-fiction novel Perdido Street Station, which I read recently on vacation.)

The Bastard of Baltimore

'H. L. Mencken', Morgan Meis reminds us in the opening of his essay at The Smart Set, 'was a bastard'. Nevertheless, he points out, if he hadn't been one, the English language (at least in its American guise) would be a great deal more impoverished.




I've long been a great admirer of Mencken's writing (if not necessarily of all his opinions), though I'm sure that having spent a few fondly remembered years in the city most associated with the 'Sage of Baltimore' has helped make me feel more closely attached to him.

Jesse Smith's article on the commemoration of Mencken's birthday on 12 September (via Arts & Letters Daily and something I'd have written about earlier had we not been en vacances) certainly took me back to those years, recounting, as it does, a series of talks and events in the Enoch Pratt library and Peabody Conservatory: I used to live just around the corner from both of them (a bit more literally in the case of the Pratt library).

And they are both lovely buildings.

Furthermore, the atmosphere, as Smith points out, is pure Baltimore, as I recall it:

The Pratt is the perfect setting for such a celebration. There are parts that feel as if they haven’t changed since Mencken wandered its halls. The first day of the celebration, the library’s main elevator was broken. Visitors who didn’t want to climb the stairs to the third floor auditorium — and there were many, Mencken fans being on average quite advanced in age — had to instead take an elevator operated by an attendant. An actual elevator attendant, who had to open the door by hand, and raise and lower the elevator with a handle. The bathroom just outside the auditorium had a shower, and its mirror was a medicine cabinet that actually opened — features for a library that seem like they could only have been logical a century ago.

Nonetheless, reading about the lectures given on his behalf and the people who came to celebrate his memory makes me think, adapting Groucho Marx's famous comment (via Woody Allen), that I would rather not be a member of a club that would have them as members.

Read the article and you might understand what I mean.

Inspired by the Smart Set articles, I pulled out one of the Mencken collections on my shelf (A Mencken Chrestomathy) and I, lo and behold, with only the briefest of skimming glances, ran across the following bits of wisdom:

The old anthropomorphic notion that the life of the whole universe centers in the life of man -- that human existence is the supreme expression of the cosmic process -- this notion seems to be happily on its way toward the Sheol of exploded delusions. The fact is that the life of man, as it is more and more studied in the light of general biology, appears to be more and more empty of significance. Once apparently the chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. A blacksmith making a horse-shoe produces something almost as brilliant and mysterious -- the shower of sparks. But his eye and thought, as we know, are not on the sparks, but on the horse-shoe; their existence depends upon a wasting of its tissue. In the same way, perhaps, man is a local disease of the cosmos -- a kind of pestiferous eczema or urethritis. There are, of course, different grades of eczema, and so are there different grades of men. No doubt a cosmos afflicted with nothing worse than an infection of Beethovens would not think it worth while to send for the doctor. But a cosmos infested by Socialists, Scotsmen and stockbrokers must suffer damnably. No wonder the sun is so hot and the moon so diabetically green (p. 1).

**

Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and inescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself, but also and more particularly by himself -- by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true (p. 8).

**

To sum up:
1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.
2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride (p. 9).

**

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. There is thus a flavor of the pathological in it; it goes beyond the normal intellectual process and passes into the murky domain of transcendental metaphysics. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic infection. What he says, in substance, is this: 'Let us trust in God, Who has always fooled us in the past.' (p.11)

And on it goes, for more than 600 pages.

Wonderful.

Mencken saw his main adversary as the American middle-class, and he invented the term 'booboisie' to describe them. His vision was a useful corrective to the unbounded optimism that has tended to accompany the American cultural soul (which is something different than saying there are not many very excellent things that have -- and continue to -- emerge from the US of A).

In a striking passage from his article, Meis points to a key aspect of Mencken's world-view, in the context of an essay on writer Theodore Dreiser:

Summing Dreiser up one last time, Mencken writes: “His moving impulse is no flabby yearning to teach, to expound, to make simple; it is that ‘obscure inner necessity’ of which Conrad tells us, the irrepressible creative passion of a genuine artist, standing spell-bound before the impenetrable enigma that is life, enamored by the strange beauty that plays over its sordidness, challenged to a wondering and half-terrified sort of representation of what passes understanding.” Ironically, with that one sentence, Mencken redeemed American literature (at least for a minute or two) and realized something of the promise that Emerson and Whitman had gestured to with such profound, irrational hope. But with Mencken, there is no glorious tale to tell, just the desire that someone express the crappy truth as the only glory we’re likely to grasp.

[...]

America had grown up in the decades between Emerson and The Smart Set. In growing up, it gave birth to a brilliant little beast named H.L. Mencken who had the stomach to stare into the odd abyss, to look hard at the “strange beauty that plays over its sordidness.” In rejecting Emerson’s and Whitman’s hope he had to leave behind the vestiges of American Exceptionalism that still linger in Emerson’s rhapsodizing and in Whitman’s singing. He had to show us in our dumbness, engaged in the same fruitless struggle that lays low every beast in time. Funnily, and in spite of all his maddening missteps of judgment, Mencken — in being such a relentless bastard year after year — gave the American voice back a little of its humanity. For that reason alone his birthday, last week, ought to mean something now and for a long time to come.

Yes it should.

Thus, a somewhat belated Obscene Desserts birthday greeting goes out to H. L. Mencken.

I am honoured, for three exciting years, to have walked the same streets as that gloomy, grouchy, misanthropic bastard.

The unbearable slightness of being (Oprah)

I know that there are many many more important things going on in the world today than the thing I am about to talk about.

Nonetheless, I think we should all take a brief moment to consider the infinite intellectual vacuum that is Oprah Winfrey.

This may be blindingly obvious, but it hasn't stopped her from becoming jaw-droppingly wealthy and influential.

What is galling is that she's done this by showcasing precisely that version of vaguely 'spiritual' tear-stained sentimentality that is one of the worst cultural plagues besetting the land of my birth. Having now achieved enormous wealth and influence--when, in short, she is in the position of really making a difference--she's continuing to peddle the same old crap.

I suppose if you're not American, you may be wondering a bit about all this bile, particularly as her image is such a nice one.

And, yes, she has certainly been on the right side of some of the issues that she has taken up, such as gay rights and civil rights. (Very few of which causes, though, have really been controversial or involved her taking any risks.)

Moreover, I don't think that what she's promoting is necessarily very nice at all.

Having never met a bit of meaningless psychobabble that she didn't like, she has for the last couple of decades been one of the reasons that Americans have that distinct habit of blathering endlessly on about their 'issues' and 'codependencies' and inability to 'relate' to their 'significant others' and their never-ending search for 'closure'.

She is one of the reasons why American politics have become so unbearably focused on the minutiae of personality rather than the debating of policy.

And she is part of the reason why so many Americans are susceptible to the comfortably vacuous murmurs of people like Deepak Chopra. (PZ Myers has taken on the tiresome task of addressing Chopra's 'thinking' many times, on issues such as genes, evolution and religion.) Oprah's show was one of the vehicles that made Chopra such a success, so even on that simple ground, she has a lot to answer for.

Oprah-land is an odd alternate-Earth where there are no problems that cannot be solved by a nice chat involving a few tepid burblings about 'healing' and a big dose of positive--to the point of delusional--thinking. All questions have a simple, morally uplifting answer. No obstacle cannot be overcome with the right dosage of spiritualist drivel and 'belief in yourself'.

It is the sugary ease with which such trite views go down that has even made her a 'spiritual leader' of sorts, something that at least some more orthodox believers seem to be concerned about, since Oprah's version of God is rather more ecumenical than theirs. In perfectly post-modern fashion, she takes spoonfuls of yummy spiritual goodness wherever she can find it.

But what kind of message is she flogging, really?

Well, let's take a quick look.

'When you lose a loved one, you gain an angel whose name you know,' she said at a memorial service in the wake of September 11th, concluding, 'May we leave this place determined to now use every moment that we yet live to turn up the volume in our own lives, to create deeper meaning, to know what really matters.'

Oprah, you see, thinks that life always has a message for us. And that message is always, in some way, a positive one.

For Oprah, there is always a pony.

And in this, I know, she is not alone. In fact, there are apparently enough people hungry for this sort of tasteless broth to make her a billionaire.

Its popularity is what makes this kind of nutrition-free blather so bothersome.

Not only does it not, in the end, mean anything, but it is in fact a hindrance to finding meaning. The answers it provides put a stop to further thinking and shut down any possibility of recognising Very Important Things in life: the power of contingency, the essential smallness of our existence, the impossibility of reconciling the contradictions of being a human being.

Her message is the antithesis of one of the most important virtues in the world: humility.

If the main meaning she can find in the carnage of September 11th is a call for each of us to focus even more on ourselves, then I think that in some serious way she may have missed something more important.

But it is clear what Oprah thinks 'really matters'.

Consider the death of her own two-year-old golden retriever, Gracie, which Oprah writes about in the current issue of her magazine, O (and which is the thing that has caused me to go on about this at such length).

Now...in terms of one of those crucial binaries of life, I'm much more a cat person, I have to admit. But, still, I have had enough experience with dogs to know it is possible to develop an emotional attachment to them that, to all appearances, they are capable of reciprocating.

Moreover, one of the key perspectives of a naturalistic world view is the recognition of what we share as living creatures, among them the ability to suffer and feel fear.

So, I think it is difficult to read the story of Gracie's sudden death through choking on a plastic ball without feeling, in some way, moved and saddened.

And then...and then we get to the part where we all are taught The Lesson, from the big O herself.

Because, of course there must be a lesson.

Weirdly, though, it is, more-or-less the same lesson to be learned from mass death caused by terrorist atrocity.

So through my tears and stabbing pain and disbelief and wonder and questions about how and why this happened, I leaned over my sweet and wild and curious and mind-of-her-own Gracie, and asked, "Dear Gracie, what were you here to teach me that only your death could show me?" And this is the answer: This lovely little runt whom I'd brought home sick—on his first visit with her, the vet told me to return her and get my money back—did more living in two years than most dogs do in 12.

Now, I'm not sure how Oprah knows about how much 'living' Gracie did (or about whether, maybe, she'd have preferred to go on living that pampered, raucous lifestyle for a good long time). But, OK, it was her dog, not mine, so perhaps I should not judge.

But...is it just me, or is there something not entirely nice about a dog owner kneeling over their beloved pet just after it has gone through its death throes, and, in effect, posing the following question: 'What's in it for me?'

Because, it seems to me, that is what Oprah did. And that is, in the end, the basis of the lesson she draws.

Her life was a gift to me. Her death, a greater one.

Ten days before she died, I was getting a yearly physical, and to lower my blood pressure I'd think of Gracie's smiling face.

Just days before the "freak accident," the head of my company came into my office to have a serious talk about "taking some things off your schedule—you're doing too much." Maya Angelou called me to say the same thing. "You're doing too much. Don't make me come to Chicago," she chided. "I want you to slow down."

I'd broken a cardinal rule: The whole month of May I'd had no day off, dashing from one event to the next. But though I appreciated everyone's concern, I still had to finish the season. Wrap up the year's shows. Have foundation meetings. Meet with auditors. Review plans for a new building, and on and on. So many people on my list. I literally forgot to put myself on the list for a follow-up checkup.

When the doctor's office called, I confessed. I hadn't heeded what I know for sure. I said, "Doctor, I'm sorry. I had so many meetings with different people, I forgot to put myself on the list."

The next day, Gracie died.

Slow down, you're moving too fast. I got the message.

Thank you for being my saving Gracie. I now know for sure angels come in all forms.

Does this story not suggest a deeply self-centred personality, the sort summed up in the line, 'Her life was a gift to me. Her death, a greater one.'?

Even worse: this is solipsism of the most tenacious and unpleasant variety being sold under the cover of sweet sentimentality.

And this, I think, is one of the keys to Oprah's success.

It's OK, she says, go ahead, see yourself as the centre of the universe. Everything that happens to you happens for a reason. And, to quote a well-known book, it is good. And it is something she 'knows for sure'. No evidence, mind you. She just knows.

Of course.

But who gave this 'gift'? Is Oprah saying the dog sacrificed herself for her owner?

If not, it never seems to occur to her that she is therefore suggesting that whatever force she thinks is guiding the universe thought it was OK to choke a dog to death to give her the simple message that she needs to chill out a bit.

Because, it would seem to me, that is what she is saying happened.

And that strikes me a very nasty world view indeed.

Sadly, it is not one held only by a dimwitted talk show host.

A rather apocalyptic shade of gray

Among the many commentators on the modern state of affairs I have cause to read, John Gray is in a relatively small class: those with whom I agree on many things but who also manage to seriously challenge my thinking even--or especially--when I disagree with them. His False Dawn, for instance, is an excellent tour through the perils (and failures) of unfettered global capitalism, and his book Straw Dogs was one of the most unsettlingly powerful things I think I've ever read. Even when I disagree with him, I find it worthwhile to read (and wrestle with) what he has to say.

And that's not all that common an experience.

He has a new book coming out, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and there is an interview with Gray about the book at the Guardian which makes clear not only the clarity of Gray's thinking but also his unfortunate tendency to take a good insight rather too far.

The argument sounds familiar to that discussed in his Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern and the essay collection Heresies.

That is: religious thinking never disappeared from Western society but rather emerged in new and ostensibly secular forms, in particular through the notion of Progress (in all its 19th-century capitalised glory). The key theme in Straw Dogs was to question this notion (which Gray sees as still deeply embedded in most forms of scientific humanism) by emphasising the true insight from science: we humans are all animals. This naturalist truth thus makes any notion of Progress, Gray says, illusory.

So far, I think, so good, and there are some very eloquent--and even darkly poetic--passages in Straw Dogs (and other works) which argue against that all-too-human pitfall Gray condemns in his Guardian interview: hubris.

But then there come those seemingly inevitable moments where Gray recklessly drives his very good idea off the cliffs, adopting a notion of history as merely cyclical (partly via a sometimes intriguing but also sometimes questionable enthusiasm for eastern mysticism) and dismissing any possibility of positive social change.

In Gray's terms, arguments that history has brought with it many meaningful and significant improvements or that point to the possibility of significant social reform are the mark of the utopian dreamer. And, since he (rightly) points out that efforts to create utopias almost always end in tears and blood (when they're not simply farcical), today's utopian is, by implication, tomorrow's totalitarian.

Amidst all of the valuable warnings about the dangers of hubris and the reminders of our essentially animal natures, it is difficult to see any possibility even for measured, incremental improvement in our collective human condition. This is, ultimately, a problem, since, while I share a great deal of Gray's pessimism, the historical record--in many times and places--is not simply one of relentless misery.

This is so beyond the merely technological improvements (anaesthesia, antibiotics, the flush toilet, etc.) that Gray admits as a kind of progress.

Just as one example that I've spent more than a little time thinking about, there is the long-term diminution in the Western European homicide rate over several centuries. If a 20 or 40-fold decline in murder isn't a directional historical phenomenon as well as an improvement of a kind, I'm not sure what is. (Not, of course, that we should get complacent: what goes down, in this case, of course, may someday go up, especially since the underlying biological basis of who we are hasn't changed in the meantime.)

One could, of course, mention several other forms of small-p progress, from the tortuous abolition of slavery in the West or the hard-fought expansion of civil liberties. To admit that none of these has led to a new Golden Age or to be aware that human life will most likely always be plagued by insoluble problems that result from our being mammals with conflicting desires and needs does not, I think, require the claim that these achievements have been meaningless.

The problematic result of this all-or-nothing (or, rather, taking Gray's often agreeable pessimism into account, 'nothing-or-all') view of the world is that a lot of finer distinctions get lost. For instance, his continual critique of people such as Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson or Daniel Dennett as hopelessly utopian believers in the big-p version of Progress.

In his Guardian interview, for instance, Gray seizes on a statement he found in Dawkins's The God Delusion about the human potential to 'rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators' (i.e., our genes) as evidence of Dawkins's affirmation of 'human uniqueness' and ultimate reliance on a 'Christian world-view'.

The comment is actually one that Dawkins made some time ago, first, I think, in The Selfish Gene. In fact, it was the closing sentence to the last chapter of that book, the one on 'memes'. In the revised edition I have, Dawkins has footnoted it, leading the reader to a lengthy discussion of the negative reactions this statement raised, particularly among those who saw it as contradicting the rest of his book (which argues, you might recall, that all living things are essentially 'survival machines' created by genes).

To his critics (among them Steven Rose), Dawkins responds:

What they don't understand...is that it is perfectly possible to hold that genes exert a statistical influence on human behaviour while at the same time believing that this influence can be modified, overridden or reversed by other influences. Genes must exert a statistical influence on any behaviour pattern that evolves by natural selection. Presumably Rose and his colleagues agree that human sexual desire has evolved by natural selection, in the same sense as anything ever evolves by natural selection. They therefore must agree that there have been genes influencing sexual desire--in the same sense as genes ever influence anything. Yet they presumably have no trouble with curbing their sexual desires when it is socially necessary to do so. .... We, that is our brains, are separate and independent enough from our genes to rebel against them. As already noted, we do so in a small way every time we use contraception. There is no reason why we should not rebel in a large way too.
(The Selfish Gene, 1989 [1976], 331-32)

Now, some (maybe like Gray) might conceivably take the last sentence as a grand utopian promise.

But I humbly suggest that recognizing the limits to our abilities to be rational (a good thing to do, I think) need not lead to the conclusion that we cannot ever be so.

(Moreover, to 'rebel against' something is not necessarily to be successful: Dawkins's argument might be seen as a call to an endless struggle rather than a prediction of an easy victory, as Gray seems to interpret it. His choice of sexual urges as his main example would seem to lead to that conclusion, don't you think?)

I think it is clear from Dawkins's body of work that he is 1) aware of the significance that humans are animals and 2) rather sceptical about the possibility of revolutionary change in human nature.

The same, I'm quite sure, could be said of Dennett, Wilson and Hitchens.

Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to reading Black Mass sometime, and will probably do so with the usual mixture of vigorous nodding and occasional frustrated head-shaking that have known with his other books. (Here is a cyclical pattern if ever there was one.)

I think, in the end, that it's a perfectly reasonable (and, more importantly, fully accurate) position to say, borrowing from Norbert Elias, that there are progressions in history, but no Progress. That is, while there is nothing inevitable and foreordained about where we're going as a species (nor necessarily anything ultimately positive about that direction), the patterns that emerge from perusing our past add up to something more than merely 'one damned thing after another'.

And I think Gray would be a much greater thinker if he could admit that and refrain from creating debates where they aren't necessary.

There's too much real strife--intellectual and otherwise--out there for indulging in shadow boxing with people who, I think, are fundamentally on the same side.

But there's me being (perhaps uncharacteristically) optimistic.

Sorry.

Won't happen again.

Catching up: Cute Knut, Europe's birthday and Sharia on the Main

If you've had the sense that things have gotten a bit slow around here (with regard to the amount of posting) then you'd be right. This awareness would also mean that you are what we might call a 'regular reader', and, as such, I thank you not only for your good taste but also for your perseverance.

The relative dry spell is partly to do with the amount of travelling around we've been doing recently. In the last month or so, we've been in the US, Greece and, last weekend, the Netherlands. As I mentioned, I'm not really that good at firing off quick insights spontaneously from some internet café somewhere. Others can do that well. Not me.

No: my insights, such as they are, require hard work, a comfy chair and a large pot of green tea.

But my online word-mill has also been grinding somewhat more slowly due to my efforts to make some headway in the work I have to do in the real world (or, let's say, the world in which I do work for which I get paid).

Which, I'm happy to say, has been going well. My contribution to the upcoming Ballard conference (which looks like it'll be fascinating...programme and new information can be found here) now at least has a beginning, middle and an end (which certainly makes things better for the audience). Crucially, it also seems to be roughly within the required length. (If you're a regular reader, you will also be aware that I do suffer from a bad case of chronic verbosity.)

Getting so far with the paper is important, as it is at this stage with conference papers that I begin to cease panicking. And, to be honest, I think the paper itself might not be so bad. We'll have to see. With any luck it may see the light of publication someday.

I've also been trying to make some serious progress on the main project I'm researching, about which, now, I plan a book. More on that as it develops. But, just by means of explanation, I've been busy.

Obviously, however, there have been a lot of events and debates which have touched on some of the long-term interests here at Obscene Desserts (nature, Europe, multiculturalism) so I didn't want to let them slide by without at least a few words...

...at least with regard to those stories that have made it seem Germany was the centre of the universe over the last week or so.

Cute Knut

First, our household has of course been in the grips of a veritable Eisbär-mania since the story of Knut broke a few weeks ago. Undoubtedly you've heard of the the world's most famous Ursus maritimus, who, rejected by his mother, has been raised by a dedicated (if somewhat hirsute) ersatz-parent.

Now, the story of Knut's abandonment by his mother is, on its own, thoroughly heart-string-tugging (and I'm surprised that Eva Hermann hasn't rushed in to give that heartless career-bitch the dressing down she deserves), as was the decision by one of his keepers to take over parental duties.

But if that wasn't enough, there was a debate about whether he should be put to sleep. A few people based this argument on the ground that bottle feeding was not 'appropriate to his species', which, to be honest, I couldn't quite follow. (Bottle feeding is illegitimate because it's not species-typical...lethal injection, on the other hand, is an ancient polar-bear custom?)

What is somewhat irksome, though, is that during this discussion it was sometimes simply claimed that 'animal rights activists' wanted Knut put down. This gave the impression that this was some kind of broad environmentalist consensus. The resulting firestorm of protest made clear that this was not so. In the end, it seems, Knut will live. And that makes us here very happy.

Because we get to look at pictures like these. And watch videos like this. Which we do. Just about every day.

Considering the attention (and extra income) he's brought to the Berlin Zoo, I don't think anyone should be too concerned about the way he's going to be treated. Moreover, he has managed to make some friends in high places, including the German environment minister.

And, I see, he's also gotten some coverage in Britain. Perhaps, along with bringing attention to climate change he might thus also be able to ensure that when British children think of Germany, they think 'cute and cuddly' rather than 'Nazi and scary'. (Though he's probably got as much chance of doing that as stopping climate change.)

I have to say, however, that I hope the interest in Knut--as well as in the grim situation facing his counterparts in the wild--outlasts the 'Cute Knut' period.

As is true for all of us, he's not going to be small and adorable forever.

I also fear that an anti-Knut backlash is probably inevitable. Perhaps it will come from parents, driven mad by their childrens' new polar-bear obsession. (To which, I have to say, at least it chips away at the little beasts' Harry Potter obsession.) Perhaps it will come from those who will argue that it is somehow inappropriate to give all this attention to a little bear when so much of the world is going to hell.

I can understand that argument. On the other hand, I think it may be because of the latter that a simple story such as this one has had such appeal.

Happy Birthday, EU

It was remarked in the German media that the attention given to Knut managed to overshadow the signing of the Berlin Declaration by representatives of the 27 nations of the European Union. This is unfortunate (though I don't blame Knut himself, of course) since I think that the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome (which then formed the EEC, the precursor to the EU) is something to celebrate.

This needs a much longer discussion--which I shouldn't simply jam into an already long post about a baby polar bear--but suffice to say that I am a great admirer of what Jeremy Rifkin once formulated as the 'European dream'.

Precisely what that means is something open to debate and discussion and some contemplation. But I think the declaration (available in all European languages here) is not a bad start.

This is not the place--for the moment--to go into all the shortcomings of European politics and Brussels bureaucracy. There are many of those, and like any great admirer of anything, I've learned that the object of one's affections can sometimes seriously disappoint.

But what disappoints me even more are two things.

First, it seems to me that the current peace which Europe enjoys is too often taken for granted, hence, the importance of a strong and reformed EU in maintaining that happy situation is too-often overlooked.

Second, there is a very odd discussion around the idea of an EU constitution which seems to have little to do with the document itself. Some years ago, I indulged in a rather ill-tempered presentation of my perspective on some of the ways that Europe is viewed. (The ill temper, I maintain, was fully justified at the time.)

More recently, another version of kneejerk Europhobia was brought home to me in Crete, though not by the Cretans. In the midst of a (very tasty) dinner, the topic of Angela Merkel's popularity in Britain came up. Worriedly, it was observed (by a Brit) that, 'She's trying to revive the constitution', something that may negatively affect her standing in Britain.

Now, it is certainly true, in fact, that Merkel has made getting this process under way a priority of Germany's six-month presidency of the European Council. The Berlin Declaration was part of this.

However, the comment in question was said in an uneasy tone and with an anxious expression that would be more appropriate had it been, 'She's trying to foment anarchy, destroy our cities and poison our children.'

There are reasonable areas to debate in the constitution as it was proposed, of course, but I suspect that our companion's reaction to it had little to do with an informed opinion about the principle of subsidiarity.

Not, of course, that this kind of attitude can all be blamed on the British. It was the French and the Dutch, after all, who rejected the constitution. However, interestingly enough, at least a significant portion of those who voted against it (and this is something that many sneering critics of the EU overlook) did so because they wanted rather more of the social model than --they thought--they were getting.

A travesty of Justice? Ja. A reason to panic? Nein.

Finally, there was a story from not too far down the road in Frankfurt, where a judge refused a woman's request for an accelerated divorce proceeding at least in part based on her (the judge's) reading of the Koran. The woman, who had been abused and claims to have been receiving death threats from her hopefully soon-to-be-ex spouse, had sought to evade the normal requirement of a one-year separation before a divorce is granted on the basis of her treatment.

However...things took a surprising (and disturbing) turn (via Spiegel International):

The judge rejected the application for a speedy divorce by referring to a passage in the Koran that some have controversially interpreted to mean that a husband can beat his wife. It's a supposed right which is the subject of intense debate among Muslim scholars and clerics alike."The exercise of the right to castigate does not fulfill the hardship criteria as defined by Paragraph 1565 (of German federal law)," the daily Frankfurter Rundschau quoted the judge's letter as saying. It must be taken into account, the judge argued, that both man and wife have Moroccan backgrounds.

This story, justifiably, caused a storm of outrage across pretty much all of German society. And that's a good thing, as this was an outrageous decision.

However, listening to some of the media commentary and sampling blog commentary, I became more than a little uncomfortable about how the story was being used. For many, the incident seemed in one way or another to be just the latest sign in the Islamification of Europe, allowing some commentators (generally right-wing and generally hostile to Europe in any case) to dig out their favourite term, 'Eurabia'.

Now, I'm as convinced that this was a foolish and unjust decision as anyone. However, what it signals is, I think, far from clear.

There have been some who have claimed that such mistaken decisions are a widespread problem, and I'm sure that the observation that this was not an 'Einzelfall' (unique case) is probably correct.

However, I was listening to legal experts (professors of law from somewhere...sorry, I can't now recall where) on the radio last week who were commenting on the case. They made a couple of good points.

First, the practice of taking 'cultural background' into account in legal proceedings is neither something new nor did it emerge specifically in regard to Muslims. It was, instead, suggested that such considerations entered German courts decades ago mainly in response to cases involving southern European men who, let's just say, brought with them a different notion of when and where violence was legitimate, and who were killing each other as a result of some version of a culture of 'vendetta' or because of slights against their 'honour'. The courts, in facing these cases, took into account 'cultural background' as a mitigating factor in sentencing for those perpetrators who had been socialised from childhood into a particular macho subculture.

Now, this may or may not make sense from a legal, moral or policy perspective. But, it would seem to be correct--if my source was accurate--that the origins of the legal principle in question lie less in a cowardly caving into Muslims than in a much longer history of cultural-legal interaction that began, fundamentally, an inner-European problem.

Moreover, as even the original Spiegel article notes, the practice of treating cultural background as a mitigating factor in domestic abuse cases has been declining and has even become 'seldom' in recent years. This, too, was the view of the legal experts I heard on the radio.

Clearly, taking 'cultural background' of whatever sort into account in a court is a problematic principle. But is it fully inappropriate? I'm not sure. Courts, after all, accept a wide variety of mitigating and aggravating factors. And they have for a very long time. (In my book, I examined (among other things) ritual fistfighting among working-class men in England in the nineteenth century. The courts, in evaluating those cases, paid very close attention to whether the men involved had followed 'customary' rules in beating each other to a pulp.)

My point is merely this. There is a great deal of anger over this case, which I share. There is also, it seems, a use being made of this case which I think should be considered carefully. Is this evidence of the accelerating 'Islamification' of Europe (as the screaming 'Sharia in Frankfurt' headlines would lead us to expect)? Or, as a more sober look at this case suggests, does it seem more to be a sorry example of a declining (though misguided and still too common) willingness to allow cloudy cultural thinking to dilute clear legal principles?

As the recent sign and sight multiculturalism debate suggested, it's difficult to have a reasonable discussion about these things. There's a lot of stupidity, too, to go around, and this applies to all political persuasions. As I tried to suggest, though, I think a little differentiation in thinking and careful examination of the evidence in practice, might help.

There are times, though, that I think that reasoned discussion might be as endangered a species as the polar bears.