Majority-Minority
There is a lot lurking behind this question (as there so often is with questions of this kind) about what is more interesting – the widespread acceptance of a given social practice or custom, or the minority dissent from it. For one thing there is the comparison or analogy with everyday life and with present politics, reform, ideas of progress and improvement. Looked at in that way, it may be said that at least in some ways the reformist side is more interesting than the pro-status quo side. That’s almost a truism, or what Jerry S calls in that scholarly way of his that I can never hope to emulate, an argument by definition. Imagine to yourself a conversation. X says ‘the way this is done is all wrong and could be done much better’ and Y says ‘nonsense, the way it’s done now is exactly right and should be left as it is.’ Which is more interesting? Which offers more of an opening for further conversation, for thought and research, for something to do and plan and hope for? (Other things being equal, of course – assuming the reformer is not a monumental bore and windbag while the status quo-ist is not. Sadly, not always the case in the real world.) Or to put it another way, X says ‘the way this is done is unjust and an outrage and causes needless misery to millions of people’ and Y says ‘Oh? I’ve never thought about it’ and changes the subject to last night’s game. Which person (ceteris paribus again) seems more boring?
So in that sense it may seem true that dissent from the majority way of doing things is more interesting than mindless or conformist acceptance of it. Thoreau certainly seems a great deal more interesting than the quietly desperate people around him. Huck is more interesting, with his despairing decision to go to hell, than the self-regarding slaveowning hell-avoiders around him. The great Bartolomé de las Casas is more interesting than the murderous Indian-abusers he exposed. Montaigne is more interesting in his views on Indians in ‘On Coaches’ than the indifferent people around him. As people, dissenters and reformers are generally more interesting – though that also of course depends on our views of what it is they’re reforming. On exactly what the majority and minority practices are. I’m not sure I find people who rail about the dangers of women running around in the streets with their hair uncovered just doing whatever they want to do without asking a man, particularly fascinating. So there’s another complication, another place we have to be careful to distinguish between some and all. But in addition to that, another reason the conformist view is also interesting is because it is not just personal. It is also for instance a moral question. I for one find it fascinating to read about the rationalizations that Southern slaveowners were able to come up with, because it is interesting to know how people can justify to themselves what now seem to us intolerable cruelties. I find it interesting to read the Jefferson-Adams letters, for instance, partly for this reason. Jefferson is a fascinating study (and I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so: there have been a good few books on the subject lately). He had all the equipment to see things otherwise, including his friendship (broken for many years then restored) with both Adamses, yet he didn’t. Surely the reasons are interesting! Was it just because he wanted the wine and the books and the upkeep of Monticello? Would he have thought the same if he hadn’t owned any slaves? If not, can any of us trust ourselves to make disinterested judgments on moral questions? And that’s just one example.
Well it’s a large subject, and I don’t have time to write a book on it, so that will do for now.
Basically, you’re implying (quite rightly) that a good knowledge of history helps when you’re trying to figure out why people in the past thought differently than we do today, or that a good knowledge of anthropology helps when (say) you’re trying to understand why the towelheads have a different approach to female circumcision than we have over here in the civilised world.
Take a relatively recent case: the Tuskegee experiment. I always thought that was a straightforward good guys-bad guys story until I read what Richard Shweder had to say about it (“Tuskegee re-examined” – http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA34A.htm).
Or take all that ‘Dark Continent’ stuff about female genital mutilation — again, I refer to the master, Richard Shweder, whose essay “Moral Realism withour the Ethnocentrism” (http://www.ceu.hu/legal/ind_vs_state/Shweder_paper_2002.htm) contains a fascinating section entitled “Is Female Cirumcision a Human Rights Violation?” His conclusion: no, not necessarily.
Yep, familiarity with the data always helps. There is hardly any human practice (short of sacrificing virgins) that cannot be justified in some circumstances.
Hmm. But I’m dead set against going overboard with this stuff – particularly when it’s a matter of present, contemporary, on-going abuses as opposed to abuses in the past and how we judge their perpetrators. Or to put it another way, one can have understanding etc for the perps in both cases, but in the case of the present, it is still often necessary to – judge, condemn, intervene. Or to put it another other way, no doubt any (including sacrificing virgins) human practice ‘can’ be ‘justified’ in ‘some circumstances’ [note how much wiggle-room all those words or phrases allow] – but it doesn’t follow that the practice should therefore proceed unmolested.
I would think using the term “towelhead” to refer to millions of people couldn’t be justified. Especially since towelhead tends to refer to Arabs (and at least here in the states, Sihks) and female circumcision is practiced widely in sub-Saharan Africa and not at all by Sihks and…, oh you get the idea.
Gosh, you guys let the ethnic slurs slide but get bent about definite articles. That does tell you something about the difference between the States and the UK.
I took ‘towelheads’ to be ironic or perhaps ‘ironic’. It’s not my favourite kind of irony, but that’s what I take it to be.
And as for ethnic slurs – well that’s what this whole disagreement was about. I consider the statement about what all secularists did – “the same cannot be said of the secularists. They were all on the side of the outrages committed in the French Revolution, in Stalin’s Soviet, and Mao’s China” to be precisely a group slur as well as untrue. That was exactly my point. It may be that the plain meaning of the statement is not what was intended by it – which is exactly why it does matter what one says. Why ‘Precision of language matters, if you want to be understood.’ It’s not a matter of getting ‘bent’ about definite articles, it’s a matter of saying they make a difference. There is a difference between the two. See? You just can’t get away from it.
Yes, to spell it out: ‘towelheads’ was meant ironically, but perhaps I shouldn’t have used the T-word without surrounding it with quotation marks. And by referring to an article which highlights the ‘bright side’ of female circumcision, I was in fact trying to put paid (en passant) to certain Ann Coulter-style ‘ethnic slurs’, such as the argument that Arabs are basically savages who mutilate their children just for the kick of it.
Of course, that’s not to say that Islam isn’t a load of crap and that you have to be a near-moron to take the Koran seriously. But that’s another story.
Ironic? As in unknown to the character but known the reader? Doesn’t seem to apply here. Or are we talking the Alanis kind? Fly in the chardonnay, rain on your wedding day…., but then, that would undermine the whole precision of language thing again.
There is a not-so fine tradition here in the states called “the screed” in which one exaggerates to great ends to make one’s point. I maybe putting thoughts into Ralph’s head, but I think that was what he was doing in his original set of posts, pointing out that the secular left (whatever that is) is not going to be able to dump Bush without help from the religious left (whoever that is). From Jonathan Edwards, to Tom Paine, to modern day folks like Ed Abbey it’s American as apple pie, mama, baseball, and country music. Not that that’s necessarily a good thing. The policy wonks get spanked in elections, for example. And “all of the people, some of the time” seems to be more like “all of the people, most of the time” now days.
Sigh.
Is it just me, or maybe a British thing, but I’ve noticed this on I think Crooked Timber (something to do with the unfortunate Alanis as well) too, that people take the word ‘ironic’ to mean dramatic irony, when, well it just doesn’t.
So clearly ‘towelheads’ is -meant- to be ironic in this context as in:
“A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.”
Americans often deliver this kind of irony as sarcasm (with a funny inflection in their voice).
But poor old Alanis, with the possible exception of ‘rain on your wedding day’ (although I can see where she was coming from) was clearly thinking in terms of:
“A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)”
Sorry, rant over, just that I’ve been thinking that ever since they started the whole, ‘no actually Alanis, it isn’t ironic’ thing when the song was released (way back in ’96 or something?) – of course that doesn’t stop it being a rubbish song.
Hmm, looking at the lyrics, maybe its 50% ironic, 50% ‘really just rather unfortunate’.
“load of crap”?
“near-moron”?
More irony?
“There is a not-so fine tradition here in the states called “the screed” in which one exaggerates to great ends to make one’s point.”
That’s quite interesting. I haven’t heard that term before! It interests me because I often talk (and write) quite hyperbolically myself – so very hyperbolically that I generally assume it’s obvious that I’m being hyperbolic. (My brother and I both do this; I’ve always wondered if we picked it up from each other or if it’s actually inherited. I think it might be the latter. There is a rhetorical strain in our family on the maternal side…) It’s not absolutely always obvious, though, or at least sometimes people don’t realize that I’m being hyperbolic. But here’s what I do then: I explain that I was talking hyperbolically. Sometimes I preface the explanation with a ‘Sorry’ by way of acknowledging that my hyperbole can be misleading or confusing. I don’t grovel, but I do make the implicit admission that I was unclear.
“And “all of the people, some of the time” seems to be more like “all of the people, most of the time” now days.”
I know. If only we could somehow manage to have even semi-rational election campaigns. But that seems to be way too much to ask.