Author: Ophelia Benson

One or two or more unrelated items of interest. One from Normblog, a moment of dialogue with a very sophisticated theorist of some sort –

All Googling, and that includes self-Googling, is culturally specific and also gendered. There’s an excellent paper on it by Lesley DeTrobe. He-or-she – that’s Lesley I’m talking about, who has renounced maleness and femaleness since June 1999 – there deconstructs the notion of a universalizing universalism, showing this to be a grwelphdoop. The concept of grwelphdoopism is one of DeTrobe’s most illuminating accomplishments. Think Foucault, think Derrida, think Dr Susie Nupledor Jr and her black dog Melvy. Of course, ‘dog’ is itself one of the very grwelphdoops sent packing by DeTrobe, but in the language game ‘humans and animals’ Melvy is a dog.

In the language game animals and humans, on the other hand, no doubt Melvy is a human and Nupledor is a dog – or perhaps Nupledor is just That One and the beloved Nylabone is a human. What would Wittgenstein do? Anyway. There was also a great deal of innocent fun to be had in reading this article about Colin Wilson. I also heard him interviewed on Front Row the other day. What a dork he does sound! I’ve never been the smallest bit tempted to read him, I must say, especially not after reading Kingsley Amis’ and Dwight Macdonald’s lovingly savage essays on The Outsider, both of which make him sound like the biggest pseud of all time. This article merely reinforces that impression – which makes it a very amusing read.

Where it drags is when he gets on to his ideas. His philosophy is basically existentialism with non-rational excrescences and characterised by bizarre nomenclature – Faculty X, Upside Downness, Peak Experiences, Right Men, The Dominant Five Per Cent, King Rats. It seems to constitute an attempt to classify human feelings and behaviour as written by a Martian who has never met an Earthling…As a child he was so introverted, so uninterested in other people, he might have been diagnosed today with Asperger’s syndrome…In a way, sex was his salvation – he wanted to sleep with girls so was forced to talk to them.

You know – I’m not sure that’s all that Asperger’sish. As a matter of fact I have an idea it’s quite common. But maybe the men are just odd here in Antarctica.

And then there was this Thinking Allowed with Deborah Cameron. I commented on another Thinking Allowed with Deborah Cameron a longish time ago, perhaps a year or so ago, and this one is very good too. About the globalization of nicey-nice talk and why that’s not an entirely brilliant idea. Then there was this one more recently about shyness, which deals with some of the same issues. Sometimes not talking is simply a choice rather than a social handicap or a disease, but that possibility seems to get overlooked. Interesting stuff.

It’s all quite interesting, as I said – albeit in a rather depressing way. It shows what a great yawning gulf there can be between secular modes of thought and the non-secular variety; between rational discussion and irrational discussion; between unbelief and belief; between atheism and theism. I’m not sure I think that’s always the case. I think it may be possible for atheists and theists to find some common ground at least sometimes. At least I think I think that – but maybe I only hope it, or would like to think it, or feel as if I ought to think it, because it seems so rude not to. (Which of course is a bad principle, and just the sort of thing B&W is supposed to be against, but it’s not always easy to extirpate every vestige of bad thinking from one’s equipment, is it.) But I must say sometimes I’m just not sure. Thinking airily in the abstract about generalities and likelihoods, it seems possible to think that the two sides can talk (surely?), but then when we get down to it, it becomes rapidly apparent that we can’t.

At least, not unless we maintain a polite silence. Not unless atheists are bashfully tactfully politely quiet about their atheism. Not unless we in fact pretend that we don’t actually disagree with our theist pals about anything. If we pretend it’s all just a matter of taste or inclination – you like blue, I like red; you like pizza, I like curry – then it’s all right. If the atheists pretend or at least allow it to be assumed that they’re atheists because they haven’t thought about it, or they’re lazy, or they just haven’t met the right god yet, then that’s okay, and we can all get along. But if atheists are so aggressive and unfriendly as to say they’re atheists for a reason, and to say what that reason is – then they are ‘strident’. And that’s at best – that’s almost a compliment. ‘X is strident but not actually a homicidal maniac.’ To the really committed theist, atheists are indeed – apparently by definition – homicidal maniacs. Atheists are to be called Madame Defarge and fans of Stalinist outrages – and this by the very people who complain of the fact that secularists don’t always want to work with theists! It’s really quite hilarious, in one way.

But in another way it isn’t, in another way it’s a symptom of the entrenchment of irrationalism in sectors where it ought to have faded away a long time ago. And this is another reason – or another version of the same reason – secularists don’t want to work with theists. It’s because theism depends on irrationalism, and secularists are just never sure that the theists can keep their irrationalism confined to that one area. How can we be sure? How could we? If you let yourself believe something against the evidence in one area, why would you not do so in other areas? What is the difference? What is the bright line that tells people ‘faith okay here, not okay there’? How do people know when to be credulous and when not to be? That’s what secularists don’t know, and that’s why we’re always a little leery of working on secular political issues with people who are not committed to secular ways of thinking. Maybe that’s wrong, maybe there is a bright line, maybe the theists are perfectly capable of keeping things separate. But it’s hard to believe that sometimes.

Well, I tried to preserve the anti-secularist’s anonymity, but I was not permitted. So very well. Now that that’s not an option, I’ll just go ahead and take a look at some more over-the-top religious rhetoric. Barn door me no barn doors, this sort of thing is both interesting and important, so I will not machine-gun it (despite being Mme. Defarge) but I will question it.

Cite me, if you will, Mr. Halasz, the secular leftists in the French Revolution who fought its excesses. Cite me, if you will, the secular leftists in Stalin’s Soviet who did not support it or look the other way when churches were razed. Cite me, if you will, all the secular leftists, in Mao’s China, who fought for the right of traditional religion there.

That part is interesting as an example of – what, self-deception, confirmation bias, careless reading? Something like that. Because of course the problem is that in the original comment our anti-secularist forgot the word ‘leftists’. A key omission – and one that he apparently didn’t even notice. Obviously, there is a large difference between saying ‘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’ and saying what I quote above. Simply as a factual matter (and that’s all I was talking about) it’s just absurd to say that all secularists were ‘on the side of’ anything whatsoever about Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China. Does the name Ayn Rand ring any bells for example? Or, as I said, Bertrand Russell, who had no use at all for the Soviet version of Communism. Or any number of other secularists, right-wing, left-wing, apolitical, you name it. Not all secularists were fans of Stalin, that’s all there is to it.

But it gets livelier.

Ophelia Benson’s Bertram Russell is no evidence against what I said. The infidelity of the secular left is a huge embarrassment, of course. It is both unfaithfulness toward G_d and unfaithfulness with its religious allies. Our friend, OB, is simply Madam DeFarge at the keyboard, instead of fiddling with her knitting needles.

Well of course Bertrand (not Bertram, obviously) Russell is indeed evidence against what he said, if not what he now wishes he’d said. But that’s by the way. It’s the next bit that’s really fascinating. The ‘infidelity’ of the secular left? Infidelity according to whom? And a huge embarrassment? Meaning secular leftists are supposed to be hugely embarrassed by leftist atheism? Well, I’m not, I can tell you that much. What I’m embarrassed by is woolly-mindedness in people who ought to know better. And then I have to wonder, how can one be ‘unfaithful’ toward a being that doesn’t exist? Yes I know, now all the defenders of wool will get indignant with me for making such a flat assertion. But if the theists get to say that it does exist, why don’t we get to say that it doesn’t? (It’s a rhetorical trick, you know, that business of assuming god exists as opposed to arguing it or leaving it tentative.) But if you prefer, how can one be ‘unfaithful’ toward a being that one has no good reason to believe exists? How can one be ‘unfaithful’ to someone or something one has never made the slightest promise or commitment to of any kind whatever? Eh? One might as well go up to a perfect stranger in the street and shout ‘You bastard, you’ve been unfaithful to me!’ And then unfaithfulness with its religious allies. Ah. Perhaps now we can begin to understand why people like me don’t want religious allies in the first place. It’s because we don’t want to risk having to listen to this kind of thing. Because we don’t want ‘allies’ who expect us to be ‘faithful’ to some non-existent figment of their imaginations, and actually feel entitled to reproach us if we’re not, that’s why. And of course because they get so worked up about the whole thing that they end up calling us names. Our ‘friend’ forsooth. I suppose Mme. Defarge is the only murderous ruthless secular woman he could think of on short notice. If I’d been a man perhaps he would have called me Josef Stalin, at the keyboard instead of fiddling with the Gulag. So believers demonstrate what polite, civil, calm, reasonable people they are. But actually that’s not fair. I know perfectly well that not all believers are as out of control as this particular one. He’s in a class by himself.

Okay I just got through saying I don’t drone about personal stuff here and don’t chatter about trivia, and now I’m going to do just that. Well not trivia – it’s immensely important, actually. But chatter, and drone, and personal(ish), yes. Well not exactly personal, but of more interest to me than to some people. Most people. Okay all people.

What, what, what, what is it, you’re screeching, what can it possibly be, hurry up and tell us, we’re on the edge of our chairs, please please tell us. Okay. You remember the baby. The one that got launched into the world in such an almighty rush, the one that zoomed off into the distance without a backward look, the ungrateful little bastard. The one that came back for a day to get improved and polished and corrected and slapped. Right? That one. Well it’s back for an even shorter visit, so short that it doesn’t even have time to make it all the way over here to the back of beyond thousands upon thousands of miles away from that big city where all right-thinking people live, to visit me. No, it’s only visiting that other fella, who kind of wishes it would go the hell away and leave him alone. But that’s not the news! No no! You thought it was, didn’t you. You were rolling your eyes and sighing and telling each other what a pathetic bore I am. But that’s not it. No, it’s that the baby has a new suit of clothes. Boy does it ever. It has such a gorgeous set of clothes that – that I don’t know what. Words fail me. That people will not be able to keep their hands off it, I guess.

In short, and to drop the tiresome metaphor, which amuses me but no one else – the Fashionable Dictionary has a cover. We now know what it’s going to look like. And dollink, it looks fabulous. Seriously, it does. It has a great cartoon on the front, and blurbs on the back, and red lettering – sweetie I just can’t tell you how nice it looks.

There. That’s my ration of inane self-obsessed frivolous jokey trivia for the month.