Author: Ophelia Benson

Dave asked if I planned to say anything about the comments on Scott’s Inside Higher Ed interview. I thought I would mention just one item, in the most recent (at the moment) comment, because it has a certain risible typicality. It comes from someone who calls herself, matily, ‘Violet’, an associate professor in the midwest, addressing another commenter.

I’m sorry to hear that postmodern thinking wasn’t for you. I suppose it’s up for debate whether or not we should abandon the teaching of postmodernism, a cultural movement which dominated the latter half of the twentieth century, solely based on your negative experiences.

There. I like that. I didn’t know postmodernism had ‘dominated the latter half of the twentieth century’ – did you? I also don’t know what that means – did postmodernism dominate plumbing in the latter half of the twentieth century, and transportation, and chemical engineering, and ecology, and the weather, and wars, and rumours of wars, and demographics, and epidemics, and revolutions, and medicine, and tv, and agronomy, and everything? Just, everything about the latter half of the twentieth century, every event, every object, every pattern, everything? And if so how did this domination manifest itself? Did everything, like, cower before the massive power and bulk and teeth of postmodernism? Or what?

Well, that’s probably not exactly what she meant, she probably just wrote carelessly. She certainly reads carelessly, as you can see if you read her first comment – she misreads every single answer of mine that she elects to comment on. Maybe she meant something far more modest, such as that postmodernism dominated, let’s say, intellectual life in the latter half of the twentieth century. I’m betting that’s what she meant. That seems like a fair reading, don’t you think? Not uncharitable? Or perhaps she meant only academic endeavor? Or perhaps she meant only academic endeavor within the humanities and social sciences? That would certainly be radically narrower and more modest than what she did say. And yet, even narrowed down that drastically, it’s still not true. But her thinking it is true is absolutely typical of ‘postmodernism’ at its preening worst. (If you don’t believe me, just remind yourself of that letter Judith Butler wrote to the NY Times about its Derrida obit. Go on. We’ll wait.)

And then, amusingly, having been so opaque herself, she goes on to ask a commenter who is less than fond of postmodernism a lot of sharp questions about what exactly he means. That’s a postmodernist thing to do.

(I have to say this though. What’s with the first name bit? Who invited her to call me by my first name? Eh? I certainly didn’t. Is that a postmodern thing too?)

This is good. A letter to the Times.

John Wainwright (letter, May 31) states that “tolerance implies that we have no right to challenge the behaviour of individuals or organisations that we disagree with or deem harmful”. However, the word tolerance has not been defined in this way until very recently. The traditional dictionary definition of tolerance is “the ability to endure”; that is, the ability to endure someone else’s expression of an opinion, even if we find it insulting, demeaning or offensive. This does not preclude criticism of their beliefs but it should preclude censorship of them.

We’ve encountered this muddle many times. It comes into play with the use of words like ‘offensive’ and ‘respect’, too, and now with this new use of ‘human rights’. There was for instance that discussion about what kind of ‘respect’ people should be required to commit to for job purposes. I disputed the idea that employers get to demand signed promises to ‘respect and value the differences among us’ with no specification of what kind of differences were meant – or, for that matter, of what was meant by ‘respect and value’. No doubt what they meant was non-persecution and non-tormenting of people for stupid reasons such as their race or gender or sex pref or hairdo – but that’s not what they said, and it’s risky to sign things on the assumption that they mean some vague thing that hasn’t actually been said when there is ample room for them to mean something else. But that’s just what we keep being gently but firmly pushed to do: to tolerate and respect and value anything and everything, and at the very same time (look sharp, now) support the human rights of religious groups to demand respect for their most profound beliefs, and to enforce that demand by censoring and closing down plays and art exhbitions. Erm – but aren’t those expectations in tension? Yes, of course they are, but that’s your problem, not ours; just sign the promise and shut up. So it is our duty to respect and value and tolerate Ruth Kelly’s human right to have her personal profound beliefs which are in sharp tension with the duties of her job but of course that is her business, not ours, and if we press her on the point, why, we might as well say that people of ‘faith’ can’t do jobs like hers, and that’s absurd!

One can’t help noticing a certain lack of clarity in all this.

It’s a bit like belonging to a Nazi party, or the KKK, or the God Hates Fags gang, and then trying to claim not only that of course one’s belonging to that organization doesn’t in the least mean one can’t “speak up” for the rights of Jews or blacks or gays, why on earth would it, but also that even asking the question is absurd and outrageous and indignation-worthy. It’s a bit like that, but to many observers it doesn’t look like that, because we’ve been so relentlessly trained to think of religious beliefs and teachings as in some profound way entirely different from political beliefs. But why would they be? Because it’s taboo to challenge them, that’s why – and that’s a terrible reason.

Ruth Kelly[‘s]…full title is secretary of state for communities and local government…which involves responsibility for equality, including gay rights. It is this last responsibility that lit a firestorm when her appointment was announced, with activists arguing that one of the country’s most high-profile Catholics was unfit to speak up for rights that her church actively opposes. In the same terms, many women’s rights campaigners have argued that her position as minister for women is also questionable…[G]iven that her faith is explicitly anti-abortion and anti-contraception and that its very highest level of priesthood is open only to men, is she really the best-placed person in government to speak up for women’s rights?

I would say no. I would say there is a real tension there, and that it’s no good just pretending that tension is inconceivable. But that’s the road Kelly takes.

As a devout Catholic, though, is there room for manoeuvre on these issues? Does her faith clash with women’s rights? “No! . . . Oh come on!” Kelly exclaims, frustrated. “We risk getting into the situation where you say people of faith can’t hold these jobs – I mean, that’s absurd!”

No it isn’t. That’s just it. It’s unacceptable, it’s ‘offensive’, it’s taboo, but it’s far from absurd. It’s simply no good pretending that “faith” never conflicts and never can conflict with secular ideas about rights and justice and equality.

Wow, that was a shock. I was at the county library today – at a branch of the county library system, that is – and on my way out I passed a catalogue terminal and had a wild and crazy impulse to look up Why Truth Matters. I didn’t think they’d have it of course, just thought I’d make sure. But what a shock I got – they’ve ordered three copies. That’s a lot of copies.

One is for Redmond. Maybe that’s Bill Gates’s copy.

Speaking of libraries – last Saturday I went to a talk-book signing thing at a local branch (of the city library this time) with Marjane Satrapi, who wrote and drew Persepolis and Persepolis 2. I kind of didn’t expect very much – maybe out of caution. Partly I just didn’t expect her to speak much if any English, because I know she lives in Paris (and went to school in Vienna) so it seems a bit much to expect her to speak English on top of Farsi, French and German (and, it turns out, Swedish and Italian). Anyway I just had modest expectations. But she was amazing. She was amazing. She looked like her cartoons of herself, for one thing. She has a strong face, strong eyebrows, and a great wicked smile. And she speaks English just fine, thanks, and has a lot to say, and what she says is worth hearing. It was exhilarating. The place was packed. It was good.

Oh and I found out how to pronounce her name, which I’d wondered. It’s Marzhahn.

Update: outeast pointed out in comments that the article linked is, shall we say, long on rhetoric and short on evidence; or perhaps a joke; anyway that it seems to misrepresent what the game is actually like. Somebody play it for me and find out, okay? I certainly don’t want to play it.

Did you look at the Christian dominionist video game items? Exciting, aren’t they? Thrilling to know there are people with views like that out there, planning, planning, planning…

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission – to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice.

That sounds like a fairly large number of infidels. In fact it sounds like everyone except dominionist Christians. How long before they take to hijacking planes, one wonders.

This game immerses children in present-day New York City – 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian.

New York – obviously. Home of the infidel. The UN. ‘New York intellectuals’ which is code for Jews. Jews. Atheists. Intellectuals. Catholics, Muslims, foreigners, queers, arty types, people with a sense of humour, free women, journalists – oh the place is a sewer, I tell you.

The designers intend this game to become the first dominionist warrior game to break through in the popular culture due to its violent scenarios and realistic graphics, lighting, and sound effects…Could such a violent, dominionist Christian video game really break through to the popular culture? Well, it is based on a series of books that have already set sales records – the blockbuster Left Behind series of 14 novels by writer Jerry B. Jenkins and his visionary collaborator, retired Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye.

In other words, yes, easily. Oh well. Antarctica might be warm enough to live in before too long.

PZ has a comment here.

Someone told me the other day that argument isn’t, shall we say, my strong suit – by which I think was meant I’m terrible at it. Oh, I thought, and picked up the classifieds to look for another job. This time I might even try to find one that pays money, however little. That’s what I get for leaving school in the seventh grade. Not that I regret it – those years on the streets were the making of my character.

But so I was amused to see this entry on a philosophy-type blog (a transgendered one at that) that’s full of recommendations of good skeptical, philosophical, scientific and similar sites, and says in a paragraph on logic-oriented sites –

If you lack familiarity with the basics of the subject then The Fallacy Files is a good place to start – it categorises the major logical faults and gives clear illustrative examples. The list sits alongside a blog which subjects news items to argumentative criticism. A similar site, although not a blog, which does the same thing for mathematics, is Numberwatch which has a regular Number of the Month page lambasting innumeracy in the media. My favourite blog, however, in this field is the Notes and Comments of the Butterfliesandwheels site which is dedicated, as they put it, to “fighting fashionable nonsense”. Most (all?) of the entries are written by Ophelia Benson with just the right amount of righteous [indignation] and rigorous logic.

Well, in that case, I’ll put the classifieds back in the zebra’s cage for now.