Author: Ophelia Benson

It’s great that the Home Office is taking on forced marriage. But in looking at their page on the subject, I was unable to help looking at things in the margin of that page, which prompted feelings of dread and nausea and revulsion. So I clicked one of the links and the feelings got worse. Is this just me? See what you think. The page in question is called (the nausea begins already) ‘Faith Communities’.

Multi-cultural communities are often multi- faith communities and this should be fully recognised in policies aimed at promoting diversity. Fostering understanding and respect between different faiths is vital in practically implementing community cohesion strategies.

Partly it’s just the language. It’s the irritating insistence on repeating the words ‘community’ and ‘faith’ as often as is humanly possible, or indeed oftener. As if anyone might be in danger of not getting the idea, that we’re supposed to think both are good things, really good things, really really good things. And then there is the absurdity of insisting on community and diversity at the same time. Well which is it?! But more basically there is the peremptory expectation of understanding and respect between different ‘faiths’. They don’t get it, do they. ‘Faiths’ are just the things that are not good at mutual ‘respect’ and ‘understanding’ because part of what is supposed to be respected and understood, part of what is supposed to be held as a matter of ‘faith’, is who the Big Guy is, who the Big Guy’s prophets or children or PR agents are, what the Holy Book is; and the ‘faiths’ in question have different answers to those questions. So hammering away at ‘faith’ at the same time as expecting them to understand and respect each other is – ludicrous, frankly. It is only to the degree that the ‘faith’ becomes attenuated and weak and not really doctrinally or dogmatically adhered to that mutual respect and understanding become possible.

And that of course is quite apart from the way that the whole idea simply ignores the existence of the faith-free, and of secularists. And then there’s the thing about community cohesion strategies. Oh how that does make the fjords seem to glimmer invitingly in the distance – the welcome antidote to and refuge from mandatory cohesion. I so don’t want to cohere. You know? Not unless I choose to anyway. Not unless I’m allowed first to consider (quietly, in a corner by myself somewhere, in silence and calm, without any social workers or parish outreach personnel or community cohesion officers gripping me by the back of the neck and squeezing) exactly what it is I’m expected to cohere to. Not unless I have time and ability and suitable conditions to examine every line of the contract before signing it. But that’s just what that passage doesn’t mention. It’s all very unconditional and demanding. It’s like conscription rather than like joining a club. As a matter of fact it’s like forced marriage as opposed to the voluntary kind. Ironic that the HO is opposing forced marriage on one page while demanding rhetorically-forced community cohesion on another page. The problem is the same. No, I want to see if I can stand the prospective spouse first; I want to be able to say no. No, I want to see if I can stand the prospective community first; I want to be able to say no.

And it’s the same with respect and understanding, as well as cohesion. All three of them are things that really shouldn’t be expected or demanded ahead of time, sight unseen, no matter what the content. They all ought to be things that are in our own gift to bestow or withold as we choose. We really have to be able to choose our friends and the people we respect because we actually do respect them, as opposed to having them thrust upon us by the Home Office or by the district nurse.

Just to let you know, a system crucial for B&W’s functioning seems to have shut down completely, so if it all freezes or disappears, that’s why – it’s not because I’ve run off to the fjords.

Meanwhile I’ll just keep going as long as it works. Who knows, maybe that will be years!

Now this is satisfying. A lot of people telling the infuriating smug NY Times what a crap review that review by Wieseltier was. It would be all the more satisfying to see Wieseltier admit as much and express remorse and embarrassment at the horrible juvenile abusive spittle-flecked tone of it – but this is satisfying all the same.

Sam Harris:

Wieseltier writes with triumphal smugness about the “excesses of naturalism” that apparently blight Dennett’s work. He might as well have pointed out the “excesses of historical accuracy” or the “excesses of logical coherence.” If utter naturalism is a sin, it is one only from the point of view of religious faith — a faith that has grown ever more blinkered in Reason’s glare.

A philosopher at Duke:

There can be few better examples of the sort of protectionism about religion that Daniel Dennett wrestles with in “Breaking the Spell” than Leon Wieseltier’s shallow but interminable ad hominem rant…Nothing makes plainer the extent of Wieseltier’s protectionism about religion than his willingness to pay the price of treating science as just another optional philosophy…[I]t is a symptom of the millennial protectionism that Dennett so patiently and eloquently urges us to forgo at least long enough to examine religion as a natural phenomenon.

Dave Barash:

Asking Leon Wieseltier to review Daniel Dennett on religion is like asking Karl Rove to review Ralph Nader on politics. Wieseltier is one of those who, in Dennett’s terms, has “belief in belief.” Such individuals are hardly likely to provide a balanced — or even interesting — assessment of what it takes to break the spell that holds them in thrall.

And I love this one – Philip Blond and the millions like him, please note:

In his review of “Breaking the Spell,” Leon Wieseltier couldn’t resist the reflexive accusation that building a worldview on a scientific base is reductive, and as is often the case, he trotted out the existence of art to capture our sympathies. As a composer, I am weary of being commandeered as evidence of supernatural forces.

Ha! Yeah. That’s only a sample; read them all; very satisfying.

Not a good day. A frustrating day, a malfunctioning day, an irritating day. Email problems – or perhaps correspondent problems. It can be so hard to tell. When someone ignores several emails, you may decide ‘well, I guess I can take a hint (however belatedly)’ and stop emailing, but then when the same person emails on unrelated subjects, you think ‘Hmm, did my emails not get through?’ so you ask – only to be ignored again. Then you scratch your head until the blood drips onto the floor and the cat squalls in alarm, wondering whether what we have here is an email problem or an irritating correspondent problem. This causes bad temper and a strong desire to be in Norway wandering among the fjords.

Actually I always have a strong desire to be in Norway wandering among the fjords, but it becomes stronger and sharper when I’m being frustrated and irritated by either 1) email or 2) paralyzed correspondents, or perhaps both. That’s when I start to think dreamily about dear little huts with one chair and one cup and one plate, 749 miles from the nearest neighbour. You didn’t know that about me, did you? You thought I was very gregarious and friendly and even-tempered – and so I am, most of the time, but I have this side, this element, this aspect that is all misanthropic and hostile. Normally, though, I’m very warm and mellow and approachable. Well okay not really warm and mellow and approachable, but frigidly civil, at least. Not savage. Not violent or explosive. Not the type to shout horrible names and fling dishes around the room. Tame, anyway. Sort of.

Other things are malfunctioning too, of course (well they always are, aren’t they). People asking me if I want to do huge time-consuming jobs for them, and when out of politeness (see? I’m lovely, really) I say okay, they drop the job in my lap with a great thud and say ‘no hurry’ as if the whole thing had been my idea. Very peculiar. People beseeching me to go to a (ohhhhhhhhhh) class reunion. People wearing those ridiculous woolly boots when it’s fifty degrees outside. (It’s worse in California. There they wear them when it’s seventy degrees. Why don’t their feet explode?) People building things and cutting things and polishing things and kind of shaking things up and down and bouncing them around, on all sides of me. Seriously – this neighbourhood is in a permanent state of construction and renovation. Wallop wallop wallop on this side, nerrrrr on that side, mutter mutter shout laugh mutter chat in front. I really ought to move my desk out onto the street, it would be quieter.

So that’s this day’s malfunctions. Therefore tomorrow will be much better – that’s a law of nature.

Thought for the Day. Via Deborah Lipstadt’s blog History on Trial, from a correspondent…

Although I am not anti-semitic, your Jewish greed is overbearing and crippling.