Author: Ophelia Benson

Remember the lists of life-altering books? Way back last month – out of sight out of mind? I thought I would link to another, because it has The Uses of Literacy, by Richard Hoggart. As good a reason as any.

So once I started a book-related subject I thought I might as well continue with this article by Mark Edmundson. It says one or two things that I often say to myself (sometimes with oaths, sometimes in a kind of whining sniveling croon).

Yet for many people, the process of socialization doesn’t quite work. The values they acquire from all the well-meaning authorities don’t fit them. And it is these people who often become obsessed readers. They don’t read for information, and they don’t read for beautiful escape. No, they read to remake themselves. They read to be socialized again, not into the ways of their city or village this time but into another world with different values. Such people want to revise, or even to displace, the influence their parents have had on them. They want to adopt values they perceive to be higher or perhaps just better suited to their natures.

Yeah. We’re always hearing about the joys of community these days. But what about the joys of uncommunity, huh? What about the joys of just damn well thinking for oneself? We’re not supposed to say so, in these days when working people have morphed into ‘working families’ as if everybody walked around welded into a unit of no fewer than four at all times – but thinking for oneself has a lot to be said for it. And Edmundson says some of it.

When Walt Whitman picked up the work of his older contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was a carpenter, framing two- and three-room houses in Brooklyn. He had been a journalist; he had written some mediocre fiction — he looked to be someone who would never amount to much. After reading the great essays, Whitman purportedly said: ”I was simmering, simmering, simmering. Emerson brought me to a boil.”

I know exactly what he means. I’ve gone from simmering to a boil a few times. I suppose that’s what these lists of life-altering books are about – the ones that move us from the simmer to the boil.

I am constantly amazed at the stupidity of just about everybody who writes for the Guardian. Here’s one Madeline Bunting:

Over the course of the 20th century, as our technological ingenuity made war ever more brutal

What the hell is she talking about? Has she never heard of the Somme – more than 1 million dead in five months – or Paschendaele?

That was the bit which I found particularly irritating. But the whole thing is full of nonsense.

Among Saturday’s demonstrators were New Labour’s natural allies – fair-minded, decent people, the kind who don’t walk on the other side of the street.

Ridiculous. New Labour people are fair-minded, decent fellows. Not like those dastardly Lib-Dems. Okay, I accept that Tories are bastards.

They were beautifully British – patiently waiting when the march ground to a halt, politely apologetic if they bumped into you, and not overly friendly, the reserve only cracking briefly and occasionally.

Egregious rubbish. Absurd national stereotype.

We can now imagine, in a way that no previous generation has done, the families – just like our own – in a Baghdad suburb whose lives are now hanging in the balance.

The arrogance here is breathtaking. Our generation – I’m not quite sure which generation this would be – has an imaginative sensibility about suffering lacking in previous generations (because of Saving Private Ryan, it turns out). Bollocks.

A tragic end to a good prime minister who was swept to power on a promise that “things will only get better”.

Brilliant prediction! (No doubt whenever Blair decides he wants to step down, the (morally bankrupt) anti-war mob will claim that it was their doing; in which case: brilliant, necessarily true, prediction, Madeline!)

Why does the Guardian print this nonsense? It’s an embarrassment to the Left. I’ll tell you something about their working practices. About six months ago they rang me – could they speak to Julian B. said the voice:

No, he’s not around.

Oh, are you Jerry S?

Yup.

Well, you’ll do. Would you write something for us about the ethics of this guy who stole money from an enthusiastic cashpoint machine? We need it by tonight.

No I bloody won’t, said I.

They asked without knowing the first thing about me; I’m not a philosopher; I have no training in ethics; I have no interest in cashpoint machines; yet they would have published any old nonsense which I’d have put together. No wonder the Guardian is dreadful.

It’s not only the Vatican, of course. Perhaps I was too hard on the Vatican? No. I wasn’t. (I mean, apart from anything else – was their Jesus a huge fan of marriage and having children and family values? No. Was ‘Saint’ Paul? No. So what are they basing all that on? I mean, they’re not even consistent!) But that doesn’t mean I can’t be hard on other god-botherers and spirit-annoyers, does it. No.

PZ Myers has an excellent rant at Pharyngula about the latter group.

The editorial page of yesterday’s Star-Tribune was full of articles on a ‘controversy’, the sequencing of the wild rice genome. I read them all through twice, and I still don’t see what the problem is…other than that usual bug-a-boo of foolish religion…If you’re like me, you’re saying, “umm, what?” right now. For religious reasons, the Ojibwe are asking us to preserve their ignorance and to be ignorant ourselves. It’s a microcosm of the history of the conflict between religion and science—with superstition mixing up a stewpot of ridiculous slop, science lifting the lid and looking inside, and the religious getting all frantic and huffy about it…

Yes but they do it in such a profound, beautiful, spiritual way.

Today the traditional teachings of Anishinabe communities and Western science and genetic research are at an impasse. A tribal nation seeks to preserve and protect a sacred gift from becoming the next genetically modified agricultural crop redesigned for those who see wild rice only as another cash crop in need of modification so as to improve yield, pest resistance, uniform maturation, resilience and creating seed that assures these “improvements.” To Western science, the mere thought that something spiritual might impede scientific research is absurd, unnecessary and only would serve as an unnecessary obstacle to inevitable progress. To Anishinabe people, the sacred relationship with the manoomin is central and cannot be ignored in any discussion on the natural gift as it has been given.

Notice the non-mention of the fact that the sacred gift in question is, you know, food, and that improved yield and pest resistance for a food crop really isn’t such a silly idea – not so silly that it’s necessary to put inverted commas on ‘improvements’. But as PZ points out, a couple of academics do an even better job of spirit-stroking.

Should wild rice be considered as a crop to be domesticated for purposes of economic development, or as a sacred gift from the Creator? Is research on the wild rice genome a sacred obligation of our research universities or a continuation of five-plus centuries of colonizing? Is the role of humankind to subjugate nature with dominion and control, or to more humbly live in harmony with “all that is”?

What a bunch of idiotic questions! What’s with all this ‘sacred’ crap? Is that the only adjective these guys know? And as for living humbly in harmony with all that is – right, next time your fridge is empty, you guys will smile beatifically and live in harmony with that, right? Next time you’re ten miles from where you need to be you’ll just sit down and hope the Creator will give you a lift, right? Next time you want to watch a movie you’ll see that there isn’t one magically projected on your wall but you won’t turn the tv on because that would be dominion and control – right? You guys have no truck with modern technology whatsoever, right? Even to write that article for the Star Tribune, right? You didn’t use a computer, you didn’t phone it in, you didn’t scratch it on a piece of birch bark. I suppose you told a squirrel and the squirrel told the Star Tribune – yes? Or do you perhaps get some benefit from all this subjugation of nature yourself, but then you make yourselves feel in tune with The Wise Ones or some damn fool thing by talking this kind of nonsense. You and the Vatican have a lot in common.

Just a little more on the dear Vatican. Because they are such fun there, I can’t tear myself away from the subject. They say the most amusing things!

Among the fundamental values linked to women’s actual lives is what has been called a “capacity for the other”. Although a certain type of feminist rhetoric makes demands “for ourselves”, women preserve the deep intuition of the goodness in their lives of those actions which elicit life, and contribute to the growth and protection of the other. This intuition is linked to women’s physical capacity to give life. Whether lived out or remaining potential, this capacity is a reality that structures the female personality in a profound way. It allows her to acquire maturity very quickly, and gives a sense of the seriousness of life and of its responsibilities.

No it isn’t, no it doesn’t, no we don’t. I find myself reacting the way Kingsley Amis did when he read a Virginia Woolf novel – with every sentence he would simply contradict. ‘No she didn’t, no they weren’t, no it wasn’t.’ Well this is where difference feminism gets you, isn’t it. I hope Sandra Harding is very proud – because that pile of codswallop up there sounds as if Cardinal Ratzinger has memorized her books. ‘Fundamental values linked to women’s actual lives’ indeed. Speak for yourself, bub! You don’t know anything about my life, or the lives of nearly every woman on the planet, so how do you get to talk about our ‘actual lives’? Huh? And as for informing me what ‘deep intuition’ I preserve of what – well it kind of makes me want to shove your mitre down your throat, frankly. ‘Whether lived out or remaining potential’ – got that? We’re stuck either way. No matter what we do, we’re all basically mommies, even if we aren’t actually mommies. And that structures our personalities in a profound way. Oh yeah? Well how do you explain me then? Huh? A more malevolent, cold, ruthless, violent, feral personality you wouldn’t want to meet, and as for maturity – ! Don’t make me laugh. And I have zero sense of the seriousness of life and its responsibilities, thank you very much; I’m entirely frivolous, I wander around giggling insanely all day long, and if you put a baby in my hands I would immediately drop it on its head. So don’t talk to me about what structures my personality, Cardinal baby, because you don’t have a clue.

Whatever. Celibate priests telling women what to do – you’d think that sort of thing would have stopped by now, under the weight of ridicule if nothing else. But no. And then people wonder why atheists won’t just shut up. That’s one reason right there.

Behold, it’s August. Well not really, not where I am. I’m kind of lying when I say that. It is August where B&W is (if B&W is where its database is), but it’s not August where I, typing these words onto this little computer screen, am. So if I (as opposed to someone else) say it’s August, I’m telling a falsehood, because where my body is, it’s 4:30-ish in the afternoon on July 31. But I’m also not telling a falsehood, because it is August in other places – but it’s not August for me, the one uttering the sentence. So is it a lie, or not?

Oh stop playing silly buggers. Anyway the point is it’s August or near enough, and that’s only a month to September, and in October the Dictionary is published. So that means it’s soon. Much, much sooner than if it were still July. And speaking of books being published – here’s another, this one not until May 2005. My colleague has been very busy. It’s a terrific book, too.

Now – I did summon you here for a reason. I just wanted to draw your attention to a few remarks about Francis Crick. One from the Telegraph obit:

In 1960 Crick accepted a fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, on condition that no chapel was built in the college. When in 1963 a benefactor offered the money for one and the majority of college fellows voted to accept, Crick refused to be fobbed off with the argument that some members of the college would “appreciate” a place of worship; many more might “appreciate” the amenities of a harem, he countered, and offered to contribute financially. The offer was refused and he resigned his fellowship.

And the other from Matt Ridley’s article yesterday.

Throughout his life he was high on the drug called rationality. He could never get over how much could be deduced about the world if you stick to logic and eschew mysticism…He disliked religion even more than philosophy, but he wore his lifelong atheism lightly. His letter to Churchill suggesting that Churchill College build a brothel rather than a chapel (Churchill had written saying “no one will be required to enter it against his will”) was hilarious rather than offensive.

And then a passage from Crick’s own account of the matter:

I have no doubt, as will emerge later, that this loss of faith in Christian religion and my growing attachment to science have played a dominant part in my scientific career not so much on a day-to-day basis but in the choice of what I have considered interesting and important. I realized early on that it is detailed scientific knowledge which makes certain religious beliefs untenable…A belief, at the time it was formulated, may not only have appealed to the imagination but also fit well with all that was than known. It can nevertheless be made to appear ridiculous because of facts uncovered later by science. What could be more foolish than to base one’s entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at that time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important then to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?

Refreshing, isn’t it, compared to the floods of sugary drivel people pour out on the subject. One gets so very tired of the latter kind of thing, over here in the land of the believers. P Z commented on that at Pharyngula today, in relation to something Kerry said:

And let me say it plainly: in that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them.

Huh? Well if it’s not us and them, then why mention only people of faith, and not people of no faith (or as P Z put it, people of reason)? And why mention people of faith in that particular way, as if they were an excluded minority? What, have Democrats been excluding ‘people of faith’ all this time? News to me! Well of course we know why he said that, he said it because of all the drivel there’s been about how he doesn’t say ‘God’ every third word or whatever the hell the complaint is. But it’s irritating all the same.

But not as irritating as this crap:

The Pope will call on leaders of the Roman Catholic church today to attack feminist ideologies which assert that men and women are fundamentally the same. The Vatican is concerned that this belief is eroding what it regards as women’s maternal vocation.

Oh is it. Is it really. Well that’s good to know. Women’s maternal vocation. Just like that. So the idea is that all women without exception are obliged to whelp? Doesn’t matter whether they want to or not, whether they think they’d be any good at it or not, whether they have other plans or not, eh? Just, yo, you’re one of the ones with ovaries, so get to work, hon! Whereas people with dangly bits get to choose whether they whelp or not. At least, J-P seems to have chosen, doesn’t he? Or is it rude to point that out. But no doubt all this sort of thing is over my head.

In a letter to bishops on the participation of men and women in the church and the world, the Pope’s chief theological spokesman, the German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, stresses, as the pontiff has done on several occasions, that the book of Genesis is unambiguous on this point.

Ah. Well in that case. If a three thousand-year-old story is unambiguous on what women are supposed to do, then who are we to argue. And it is quite wise

Recent decades have seen a plunge in birth and fertility rates, particularly in the Roman Catholic heartland of southern Europe, as women struggle to combine jobs with their traditional roles as mothers, homemakers and carers. Church representatives have argued that this is symptomatic of a breakdown in values, and particularly a greater selfishness among young couples more interested in consumer goods than creating life.

Oh right. Of course. It is very selfish of people to be more interested in doing what they actually want to do than in ‘creating life’. Any life? Tomatoes? Fruit flies? No, I suppose the dear Church representatives mean human life, of which there is such a terrible shortage on this planet. Actually that line of thought is not exclusive to celibate Catholic priests, I’ve seen it in other places lately too. There’s this peculiar bit of orthodoxy out there (orthodox in the sense that a lot of people seem to think it) that people who don’t have children are ‘free-riding’ on people who do. And what’s even more special is that they like to say so. It won’t be long before all childless atheists will be rounded up and interned, at this rate.