I'm reading a thought-provoking book called God's Philosophers: how the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science, by James Hannam.
It takes the form a compilation of stories about medieval scientific - or perhaps more specifically technical - breakthroughs.
These include the compass, paper and printing, stirrups, gunpower and cannons, spectacles (and lenses), the windmill, mechanical clock and blast furnace.
*
What this impressive list confirms is that a formal scientific structure (such as the Royal Society or specific scientific societies, specialized scientific training at school and university, distinctive scientific modes of communication such as journals) is *not* necessary for scientific progress and the spread of scientific ideas.
Furthermore, the fact that the people responsible for these many major breakthroughs are unknown, suggests that scientific progress is possible without specific mechanisms to reward success. These breakthroughs happened 'despite' the anonymity of the people who achieved them.
An individual sense of vocation, and presumably a small 'invisible college' of fellow seekers to notice the breakthrough and spread the word, seems to suffice.
*
Hannam puts considerable store on the importance of universities, but from what he says most university activity seems at best irrelevant and at worst actively misleading.
Consequently, I would suggest that universities seem to have had little role in promoting medieval science except in terms of 1. providing a basic, what we would think of as 'high school' level of education in mathematics and a few aspects of natural science found in the ancient authors such as Aristotle; and 2. providing a professional livelihood for the handful of scientists by employing them as monks, priests, teachers, physicians and lawyers.
On the other hand, it is clear that (in so far as they were not occupied with Roman Catholic theology and philosophy - and also presumably with law; although this is not covered here) the universities were mostly occupied with branches of knowledge such as astrology, 'medicine' (ie the study of Galen and other ancient authorities) and alchemy. Things we would now regard as bogus.
In other words, medieval universities were *mostly* concerned with the teaching of abstract 'nonsense' - at any rate the validity of their knowledge is a very secondary matter.
The example of medicine, and its importance and prestige in the middle ages, shows that the form of knowledge is all important compared with its validity. What is striking is that medicine was one of the foundational university subjects, and one of the higher professions, purely on the basis of its having an abundance of ancient texts. The fact that this knowledge was bogus (in terms of real world validity) made no difference whatsoever.
This is presumably the natural state of affairs for humans - higher learning is nonsense, and is known to be nonsense by practical people.
*
Intellectuals - the people who have learned the nonsense, and who believe it - are respected (somewhat) for knowing a lot of elegant stuff; but sensible people nonetheless regard these savants as crazy crackpots who must be held on a short leash, carefully controlled, and at all costs kept away from serious situations.
This seems to be the commonest attitude to intellectuals in the middle ages and most societies - and it seems a lot closer to the right attitude than the one which is prevalent nowadays.
*
It strikes me that the universities nowadays have almost returned to the medieval state in terms of content - since almost everything taught in modern universities is nonsense with zero validity. In other words, the average 'fact' taught in a modern university curriculum is untrue - worthless at best and actively misleading more often than not.
If this is a similarity between ancient and modern, a difference is that in medieval universities the curriculum was highly purposive and uniform: students had to learn, to memorize, vast amounts of stuff; and to learn specific skills (such as logical disputation; or the construction of arguments, letters and essays).
By contrast modern universities teach students nothing in particular/ whatever they fancy (probably no two modern students in the UK or the USA ever study exactly the same curriculum) using easy-to-cheat evaluation procedures with no obvious purpose or outcome. Modern students emerge from higher education without mastery of any particular body of knowledge and without any new specific skills.
Also another difference is that most modern universities do not teach *abstract* nonsense, but concrete nonsense. This may be due to the limited powers of abstraction to be found in most faculty and students.
*
So, universities seem to be essentially, through most of their history, about teaching a small amount of useful stuff embedded and lost in a much larger amount of nonsense: the elite universities teach complex, abstract nonsense and the mass of universities teach simple, concrete nonsense.
And very little of this has anything to do with anything.
However, for a very brief period, just a few generations, probably between about 1850 and 1950 and only in a few countries - universities taught a much higher proportion of true and useful material - knowledge that was validated in the real world.
As a consequence intellectuals aquired an undeserved reputation for being useful and trustworthy.
However that era is by now quite a long time ago. Clearly the period up to about 1950 was a temporary blip in the history of universities, an abberation which has now been set right: normal service (i.e. purveying nonsense and churning-out dangerously misguided savants) has been resumed since the 1960s.
It is long overdue that society needs to return to its medieval attitude towards intellectuals; an attitude which regards them as (mostly) harmless maniacs, treats them with amused tolerance, keeps their prevalence down to the small number required for societal functionality - and keeps them away from power as carefully as we keep toddlers away from fireworks.
Friday 10 September 2010
Thursday 9 September 2010
Euthanasia, antibiotics and Terry Pratchett
The matter of euthanasia has been 'in the news' lately in England, because of the advocacy of Terry Pratchett.
(Sorry, but I really cannot call him 'Sir' Terry. Sir has by now become a title overwhelmingly associated with a public career of political correctness and bureaucratic dishonesty, and has utterly lost its old romantic connotations of Arthurian knights in armour fighting evil and rescuing maidens in distress).
I can't think of another living novelist whose work I like and enjoy more than Terry Pratchett - especially his books featuring witches (e.g. Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching).
But there is something I find terribly dismaying about TP's campaign to create 'tribunals' for assisted death:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal
*
As is well-known, TP has recently been diagnosed with a slowly-progressive but irreversible dementing illness - and he has expressed an understandable desire to avoid a prolonged decline into helpless dependency before his eventual death.
Terry Pratchett is a prominent atheist (although his best novels implicitly contradict his abstract opinions concerning the nature of the universe, since they are saturated with transcendental meaning).
Therefore TP's discussion of euthanasia is a clear statement of a humanist world view and its implications. Seeing this spelled-out so starkly, and from an author whom I like and respect, I find an uncomfortable, somewhat distressing experience. It has been on my mind for many months now.
TP's tone is the secular modernistic one that regards the value of a life as purely an hedonic matter - the outcome of a quantitative comparison of pleasant versus unpleasant feelings.
Life's value is implicitly assumed to derive from a surplus of good feelings (pleasure, gratification and independance) over bad feelings (misery, pain and dependance); and TP's argument is that when the good feelings have disappeared or the balance towards the bad has gone too far, then we should be assisted in killing ourselves if and when we wish (with abuses supposedly being prevented by the proposed bureaucratic tribinal).
*
TP wants more people to have the possibility of a dignified death, a 'good' death. But it seems to me that the concept of a good death is meaningless unless life itself is seen as more than a matter of balancing subjective positives against subjective negatives.
Therefore, any discussion of the desirability of euthanasia *must* begin with a clear statement of the nature of human existence and the purpose of life. Because the meaning of death can only be understood in a context of the meaning of life.
I know it is meant as a joke - but the idea that a perfect finish to life would be to "die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod" is horrific. This embodies the secular modern idea that life is *essentially* a matter of maintaining a state of pleasant distraction from awareness of reality (especially the reality of death).
*
But on the other hand, I also find the views of many people who publicly oppose euthanasia to be disturbingly incomplete. TP is describing real and big problems about modern death.
Modern medicine, modern culture, while valuing life no more highly than as a source of pleasure; yet recklessly prolongs this biologically conceptualized existence in vast numbers of humans, using a range of artificial means such as medication and biological support.
The situation is now one in which many people (and an increasing proportion of people) end their lives by enduring many *years* of a twilight, degenerating existence of heavy and increasing-dependency.
In other words, we are nowadays in an extremely un-natural situation. It is this modern and un-natural situation which has led to widespread demands for euthanasia.
Simply to state that euthanasia/ assisted suicide/ assisted death is unacceptable is correct so far as it goes, but does not help this situation. Yet I believe that this situation can indeed be helped, that death can again (on average) be made 'more natural'.
*
Throughout history, death has seldom been dignified or pleasant for humans. The main causes of death in later life have been infectious diseases, starvation, predation/ poisoning and (especially for men) violence and accidents.
The single most important reason why modern people survive for so much longer than in the past is antibiotics. These (and the related antiviral and anti-fungal drugs; also a range of hygienic practices involving antiseptics and disinfectants) mean that humans can survive for many months or years even when very sick, e.g. suffering from advanced cancer or advanced degenerative diseases (such as dementia, Parkinson's disease, strokes and heart disease).
In the past, elderly and/or sick people would (sooner-rather-than-later) rapidly be 'carried away' by overwhelming infectious disease, and this would usually happen over the space of a few hours up to a few days.
Death from overwhelming infection is not likely to be dignified - indeed it is quite likely to involve delirium (acute confusion, disorientation, malaise; maybe fear and paranoia). However, pain, fear and discomfort can usually effectively be treated with opiates - and death is likely to come quickly.
The commonest cause of death among the sick and old was probably pneumonia (which was nicknamed 'the old man's friend'), and other causes may have been bladder/ urinary tract infections, blood-poisoning, gastrointestinal infections and skin infections.
This is because ill people, bedridden or immobile people, people without the ability to care for themselves - are naturally vulnerable to a wide range of infections. Without antibiotics etc. they would soon die.
So it is almost certain that without antibiotics it would be very uncommon for old, decrepit, and chronically sick people to persist for many years in a twilight state of dependant semi-life.
*
Of course there will always be specific and exceptional circumstances in which people are afflicted by prolonged and awful deaths, and these need to be dealt with on an individual basis.
But as a general rule, my advice to Terry Pratchett and others is as follows:
If you are chronically ill or old and want to avoid a prolonged twilight existence of increasing dependency but regard the idea of assisted suicide/ assisted death/ euthanasia with abhorrence; then there are two main things which you should consider.
1. The first and most important is completely to avoid using antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiseptics and the like.
Under ‘natural’ conditions, germs are going to be the commonest cause of death in ill humans, and infection will cut short prolonged sickness and helplessness.
Since everyone will die sooner or later of something or another, we need to remember that preventing one kind of death now, merely means ensuring another kind of death later - and perhaps a much nastier death.
2. Do not use any heroic life-saving measures such as cardioversion/ defibrilliation, ventilation or intensive therapy.
Best is to avoid hospital, hospices and the intensive involvement of health professionals where possible - because if you fall into the hands of health professionals then one or another of them will - sooner or later, for good or bad reason - initiate a course of action such as antibiotics, resuscitation or intensive therapy which it will be difficult/ impossible to reverse once begun.
(Sorry, but I really cannot call him 'Sir' Terry. Sir has by now become a title overwhelmingly associated with a public career of political correctness and bureaucratic dishonesty, and has utterly lost its old romantic connotations of Arthurian knights in armour fighting evil and rescuing maidens in distress).
I can't think of another living novelist whose work I like and enjoy more than Terry Pratchett - especially his books featuring witches (e.g. Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching).
But there is something I find terribly dismaying about TP's campaign to create 'tribunals' for assisted death:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal
*
As is well-known, TP has recently been diagnosed with a slowly-progressive but irreversible dementing illness - and he has expressed an understandable desire to avoid a prolonged decline into helpless dependency before his eventual death.
Terry Pratchett is a prominent atheist (although his best novels implicitly contradict his abstract opinions concerning the nature of the universe, since they are saturated with transcendental meaning).
Therefore TP's discussion of euthanasia is a clear statement of a humanist world view and its implications. Seeing this spelled-out so starkly, and from an author whom I like and respect, I find an uncomfortable, somewhat distressing experience. It has been on my mind for many months now.
TP's tone is the secular modernistic one that regards the value of a life as purely an hedonic matter - the outcome of a quantitative comparison of pleasant versus unpleasant feelings.
Life's value is implicitly assumed to derive from a surplus of good feelings (pleasure, gratification and independance) over bad feelings (misery, pain and dependance); and TP's argument is that when the good feelings have disappeared or the balance towards the bad has gone too far, then we should be assisted in killing ourselves if and when we wish (with abuses supposedly being prevented by the proposed bureaucratic tribinal).
*
TP wants more people to have the possibility of a dignified death, a 'good' death. But it seems to me that the concept of a good death is meaningless unless life itself is seen as more than a matter of balancing subjective positives against subjective negatives.
Therefore, any discussion of the desirability of euthanasia *must* begin with a clear statement of the nature of human existence and the purpose of life. Because the meaning of death can only be understood in a context of the meaning of life.
I know it is meant as a joke - but the idea that a perfect finish to life would be to "die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod" is horrific. This embodies the secular modern idea that life is *essentially* a matter of maintaining a state of pleasant distraction from awareness of reality (especially the reality of death).
*
But on the other hand, I also find the views of many people who publicly oppose euthanasia to be disturbingly incomplete. TP is describing real and big problems about modern death.
Modern medicine, modern culture, while valuing life no more highly than as a source of pleasure; yet recklessly prolongs this biologically conceptualized existence in vast numbers of humans, using a range of artificial means such as medication and biological support.
The situation is now one in which many people (and an increasing proportion of people) end their lives by enduring many *years* of a twilight, degenerating existence of heavy and increasing-dependency.
In other words, we are nowadays in an extremely un-natural situation. It is this modern and un-natural situation which has led to widespread demands for euthanasia.
Simply to state that euthanasia/ assisted suicide/ assisted death is unacceptable is correct so far as it goes, but does not help this situation. Yet I believe that this situation can indeed be helped, that death can again (on average) be made 'more natural'.
*
Throughout history, death has seldom been dignified or pleasant for humans. The main causes of death in later life have been infectious diseases, starvation, predation/ poisoning and (especially for men) violence and accidents.
The single most important reason why modern people survive for so much longer than in the past is antibiotics. These (and the related antiviral and anti-fungal drugs; also a range of hygienic practices involving antiseptics and disinfectants) mean that humans can survive for many months or years even when very sick, e.g. suffering from advanced cancer or advanced degenerative diseases (such as dementia, Parkinson's disease, strokes and heart disease).
In the past, elderly and/or sick people would (sooner-rather-than-later) rapidly be 'carried away' by overwhelming infectious disease, and this would usually happen over the space of a few hours up to a few days.
Death from overwhelming infection is not likely to be dignified - indeed it is quite likely to involve delirium (acute confusion, disorientation, malaise; maybe fear and paranoia). However, pain, fear and discomfort can usually effectively be treated with opiates - and death is likely to come quickly.
The commonest cause of death among the sick and old was probably pneumonia (which was nicknamed 'the old man's friend'), and other causes may have been bladder/ urinary tract infections, blood-poisoning, gastrointestinal infections and skin infections.
This is because ill people, bedridden or immobile people, people without the ability to care for themselves - are naturally vulnerable to a wide range of infections. Without antibiotics etc. they would soon die.
So it is almost certain that without antibiotics it would be very uncommon for old, decrepit, and chronically sick people to persist for many years in a twilight state of dependant semi-life.
*
Of course there will always be specific and exceptional circumstances in which people are afflicted by prolonged and awful deaths, and these need to be dealt with on an individual basis.
But as a general rule, my advice to Terry Pratchett and others is as follows:
If you are chronically ill or old and want to avoid a prolonged twilight existence of increasing dependency but regard the idea of assisted suicide/ assisted death/ euthanasia with abhorrence; then there are two main things which you should consider.
1. The first and most important is completely to avoid using antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiseptics and the like.
Under ‘natural’ conditions, germs are going to be the commonest cause of death in ill humans, and infection will cut short prolonged sickness and helplessness.
Since everyone will die sooner or later of something or another, we need to remember that preventing one kind of death now, merely means ensuring another kind of death later - and perhaps a much nastier death.
2. Do not use any heroic life-saving measures such as cardioversion/ defibrilliation, ventilation or intensive therapy.
Best is to avoid hospital, hospices and the intensive involvement of health professionals where possible - because if you fall into the hands of health professionals then one or another of them will - sooner or later, for good or bad reason - initiate a course of action such as antibiotics, resuscitation or intensive therapy which it will be difficult/ impossible to reverse once begun.
Comment on comments policy
My policy on comments may need explaining.
I am selective about publishing comments, and - on the whole - only publish a few comments that I feel will (in some way) enhance the blog for its readership.
I think this is necessary because many blogs are spoiled (spoiled for me, that is) by their comment section.
But of course, this policy means that some commenters will put a lot of effort into a comment which will not be published (although I will have read it). I can only say I am sorry about wasting commenters time in this way, but it is the only way that I can manage the comments.
This policy may not be sustainable, and if it is not sustainable I will again disable the comments.
As an alternative to commenting, I would emphasize that I am pleased to get e-mails from readers; and will reply.
I am selective about publishing comments, and - on the whole - only publish a few comments that I feel will (in some way) enhance the blog for its readership.
I think this is necessary because many blogs are spoiled (spoiled for me, that is) by their comment section.
But of course, this policy means that some commenters will put a lot of effort into a comment which will not be published (although I will have read it). I can only say I am sorry about wasting commenters time in this way, but it is the only way that I can manage the comments.
This policy may not be sustainable, and if it is not sustainable I will again disable the comments.
As an alternative to commenting, I would emphasize that I am pleased to get e-mails from readers; and will reply.
Wednesday 8 September 2010
Abolition of slavery
It seems that hardly anybody nowadays is interested in the actual historical process by which the British Empire abolished slavery worldwide.
Many people would assert that the (virtual) abolition of slavery was perhaps the greatest moral achievement of humankind, so far. At any rate, there would be very few people who would openly defend slavery nowadays.
Yet until about the mid 18th century slavery was universally accepted as an institution, all major civilizations had slaves, and it was found in all historically-recorded societies (except simple hunter gatherers).
At that point the British Empire was probably the largest slave trading nation (although there was also a huge amount of slave trading in North Africa, magnitude uncertain).
Most people do not know much about the actual process of abolition of world slavery. If people do know anything at all, it is restricted to William Wilberforce and the parliamentary acts in Britain, or black slavery in the USA.
*
The steps by which slavery was abolished seem quite well established.
1. Around the mid 18th century, English Quakers (Society of Friends) first began to question slavery and decided it was an evil that required abolition. The British were not exceptional in being slave owners and traders - that was universal - what was unique was that the British first decided that slavery was an evil.
2. In the late 18th century a group of evangelical protestants in London (The Clapham sect - William Wilberforce being the most famous) began to organize a campaign to abolish slavery - initially the tactic was to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire but the goal was universal.
3. Over the next few decades the moral conviction that slavery was wrong spread throughout Britain and became a mass moral movement (a mass pressure-group) leading to a series of pieces of legislation which banned the Slave Trade in the British Empire (1807), then slavery in the British Empire (1833).
4. But that was just the beginning. Making laws does not make it so. The British Empire then embarked upon many *decades* of of unrelenting pressure to abolish slavery throughout the world - by whatever means necessary: moral persuasion, diplomacy and treaties, and by military force - especially by the Royal Navy.
These decades of effort consumed a great deal of money, and many lives of British sailors, soldiers, missionaries and explorers - as well as slave traders and slaves themselves (who were for instance sometimes thrown overboard to drown when slaver's ships were stopped by the Royal Navy - to hide the evidence). But the crusade had massive and sustained support among the British population.
Eventually, the goal was (almost) achieved, and slavery was universally condemned - and (almost) universally abolished.
*
Why is this story so little known?
Probably because abolition was initiated by Christians - especially evangelical ('born again') Christians - and these people are not popular among the liberal and leftish commentators who most-often adevrtise a concern with issues of slavery nowadays.
And - although legislation and treaties were important, and although many abolitionists and abolition societies were pacifists (eg. Quakers) - in practice, world slavery was abolished by coercive force deployed by a major world military power - the British Empire; which is currently supposed to be wholly 'a bad thing'.
*
The real lesson of the abolition of world slavery is one which only relatively tough-minded people wish to take on board.
The implication is that to rid the world of a great evil required a sustained and single-minded moral crusade of exactly the kind which many modern intellectuals find simplistic and narrow.
Maybe slavery *could* have been abolished without this kind of 'fanaticism'? - but in fact and reality slavery was abolished by Christian moral fanaticism.
*
Furthermore, to rid the world of slavery also involved military imposition of the will of the British Empire on the rulers of societies who resisted abolition, and who saw nothing wrong in the institution of slavery.
Abolishing slavery involved the death and extra suffering of many people of many types. Maybe slavery could have been abolished with less death and suffering? - but in fact and reality slavery was abolished by a kind of 'the end justifies the means' moral reasoning.
*
Slavery was therefore (mostly, but of course not entirely) abolished as a consequence of the moral conviction of the dominant world power - the British Empire.
At the time, critics from other nations who wished to retain slavery claimed that the British were hypocritical (in ignoring other major problems of their own - such as the horrendous povery and deprivation caused by indistrialization) and that the British were using abolition as an excuse to pursue their own economic and political interets.
No doubt all of these accusations were true, to a varying extent, in different times and situations - the British *were* (like everyone else) hypocrites, and they did turn abolition to their advantage in some ways or even perhaps wherever possible.
Nonetheless, in reality it was the British and not somebody else who for more than 100 years kept up the pressure to abolish slavery worldwide, and poured resources into the task until it was all-but accomplished.
So, world slavery was abolished by hypocrites; Christian, militaristic hypocrites. Suck it up.
*
On the basis of the common assumption that abolishing slavery was a great good, the conclusions that I draw from this are:
1. That abolishing a great evil may require a sustained and single minded dedication in mass popular movements that many modern intellectuals find narrow and simplistic.
2. Abolishing a great evil may require many methods, including the use of coercive force and short/ medium-term sacrifices (including even sacrifice of the group that it is intended to help) to attain long-term goals. Uncomfortable though it is, and open to abuse, we have to accept that the end substanially justifies the means - or else we will probably not attain the end.
3. Abolishing a great evil involves being accused of hypocrisy - and these accusations may be correct. But achieving the primary goal involves sacrifices in secondary goals. It is no doubt desirable that people be morally consistent - but there are worse sins than moral inconsistency. Abolishing a great evil involves focusing on remedying the great evil, but even when the mission is successful it does not abolish all evil. What followed the abolition of slavery was often a very bad situation for the ex-slaves and/or others.
4. In a nutshell, morality in great things may therefore involve immorality in smaller things. Abolishing world slavery entailed death and suffering of many slaves, and other innocent parties. It also involved the British Empire forcibly imposing its own moral values and laws on other cultures. This is a high risk tactic, it is an argument that can be misused - but it is probably true.
*
The persistence or resurgence of slavery in modern times has been in societies which are isolated from communication with the modernizing world (Mauretania, Congo etc), and also in other Middle Eastern societies where the moral case against slavery was never accepted; and in modern Politically Correct societies where members of 'minorities' are allowed to live by different rules than the rest of the population, and where effective action to prevent and reverse slavery is regarded as 'discriminatory'.
In a nutshell slavery (being a spontaneous attribute of settled societies) is a growing presence in the world due to the lack of a modern equivalent of the British Empire which had the zeal, as well as the ability, to use whatever means were necessary to abolish slavery wherever it was found.
Many people would assert that the (virtual) abolition of slavery was perhaps the greatest moral achievement of humankind, so far. At any rate, there would be very few people who would openly defend slavery nowadays.
Yet until about the mid 18th century slavery was universally accepted as an institution, all major civilizations had slaves, and it was found in all historically-recorded societies (except simple hunter gatherers).
At that point the British Empire was probably the largest slave trading nation (although there was also a huge amount of slave trading in North Africa, magnitude uncertain).
Most people do not know much about the actual process of abolition of world slavery. If people do know anything at all, it is restricted to William Wilberforce and the parliamentary acts in Britain, or black slavery in the USA.
*
The steps by which slavery was abolished seem quite well established.
1. Around the mid 18th century, English Quakers (Society of Friends) first began to question slavery and decided it was an evil that required abolition. The British were not exceptional in being slave owners and traders - that was universal - what was unique was that the British first decided that slavery was an evil.
2. In the late 18th century a group of evangelical protestants in London (The Clapham sect - William Wilberforce being the most famous) began to organize a campaign to abolish slavery - initially the tactic was to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire but the goal was universal.
3. Over the next few decades the moral conviction that slavery was wrong spread throughout Britain and became a mass moral movement (a mass pressure-group) leading to a series of pieces of legislation which banned the Slave Trade in the British Empire (1807), then slavery in the British Empire (1833).
4. But that was just the beginning. Making laws does not make it so. The British Empire then embarked upon many *decades* of of unrelenting pressure to abolish slavery throughout the world - by whatever means necessary: moral persuasion, diplomacy and treaties, and by military force - especially by the Royal Navy.
These decades of effort consumed a great deal of money, and many lives of British sailors, soldiers, missionaries and explorers - as well as slave traders and slaves themselves (who were for instance sometimes thrown overboard to drown when slaver's ships were stopped by the Royal Navy - to hide the evidence). But the crusade had massive and sustained support among the British population.
Eventually, the goal was (almost) achieved, and slavery was universally condemned - and (almost) universally abolished.
*
Why is this story so little known?
Probably because abolition was initiated by Christians - especially evangelical ('born again') Christians - and these people are not popular among the liberal and leftish commentators who most-often adevrtise a concern with issues of slavery nowadays.
And - although legislation and treaties were important, and although many abolitionists and abolition societies were pacifists (eg. Quakers) - in practice, world slavery was abolished by coercive force deployed by a major world military power - the British Empire; which is currently supposed to be wholly 'a bad thing'.
*
The real lesson of the abolition of world slavery is one which only relatively tough-minded people wish to take on board.
The implication is that to rid the world of a great evil required a sustained and single-minded moral crusade of exactly the kind which many modern intellectuals find simplistic and narrow.
Maybe slavery *could* have been abolished without this kind of 'fanaticism'? - but in fact and reality slavery was abolished by Christian moral fanaticism.
*
Furthermore, to rid the world of slavery also involved military imposition of the will of the British Empire on the rulers of societies who resisted abolition, and who saw nothing wrong in the institution of slavery.
Abolishing slavery involved the death and extra suffering of many people of many types. Maybe slavery could have been abolished with less death and suffering? - but in fact and reality slavery was abolished by a kind of 'the end justifies the means' moral reasoning.
*
Slavery was therefore (mostly, but of course not entirely) abolished as a consequence of the moral conviction of the dominant world power - the British Empire.
At the time, critics from other nations who wished to retain slavery claimed that the British were hypocritical (in ignoring other major problems of their own - such as the horrendous povery and deprivation caused by indistrialization) and that the British were using abolition as an excuse to pursue their own economic and political interets.
No doubt all of these accusations were true, to a varying extent, in different times and situations - the British *were* (like everyone else) hypocrites, and they did turn abolition to their advantage in some ways or even perhaps wherever possible.
Nonetheless, in reality it was the British and not somebody else who for more than 100 years kept up the pressure to abolish slavery worldwide, and poured resources into the task until it was all-but accomplished.
So, world slavery was abolished by hypocrites; Christian, militaristic hypocrites. Suck it up.
*
On the basis of the common assumption that abolishing slavery was a great good, the conclusions that I draw from this are:
1. That abolishing a great evil may require a sustained and single minded dedication in mass popular movements that many modern intellectuals find narrow and simplistic.
2. Abolishing a great evil may require many methods, including the use of coercive force and short/ medium-term sacrifices (including even sacrifice of the group that it is intended to help) to attain long-term goals. Uncomfortable though it is, and open to abuse, we have to accept that the end substanially justifies the means - or else we will probably not attain the end.
3. Abolishing a great evil involves being accused of hypocrisy - and these accusations may be correct. But achieving the primary goal involves sacrifices in secondary goals. It is no doubt desirable that people be morally consistent - but there are worse sins than moral inconsistency. Abolishing a great evil involves focusing on remedying the great evil, but even when the mission is successful it does not abolish all evil. What followed the abolition of slavery was often a very bad situation for the ex-slaves and/or others.
4. In a nutshell, morality in great things may therefore involve immorality in smaller things. Abolishing world slavery entailed death and suffering of many slaves, and other innocent parties. It also involved the British Empire forcibly imposing its own moral values and laws on other cultures. This is a high risk tactic, it is an argument that can be misused - but it is probably true.
*
The persistence or resurgence of slavery in modern times has been in societies which are isolated from communication with the modernizing world (Mauretania, Congo etc), and also in other Middle Eastern societies where the moral case against slavery was never accepted; and in modern Politically Correct societies where members of 'minorities' are allowed to live by different rules than the rest of the population, and where effective action to prevent and reverse slavery is regarded as 'discriminatory'.
In a nutshell slavery (being a spontaneous attribute of settled societies) is a growing presence in the world due to the lack of a modern equivalent of the British Empire which had the zeal, as well as the ability, to use whatever means were necessary to abolish slavery wherever it was found.
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Forgiveness, Mercy and Repentance (Gandalf, Frodo and Saruman)
I have always been troubled about the attitude shown toward Saruman by first Gandalf then Frodo, at the end of the Lord of the Rings.
Saruman is a corrupted wizard (a goodie turned baddie) who is the second most important villain in LotR. He is defeated by a combination of the Riders of Rohan and the Ents; and, after being offered and refusing a chance to repent and reform, he is imprisoned by the Ents in the tower of Orthanc.
However, after only a few weeks (and after the prime evil leader Sauron has been defeated and destroyed) Saruman is allowed by the chief Ent (Treebeard) to leave the tower and wander free.
In other words, Treebeard shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and lifts his punishment.
When Gandalf discovers that Saruman has been released, he believes that Treebeard has been hoodwinked by Saruman's almost magical rhetorical skills; and that releasing him was a mistake.
However, when Gandalf and a group of the Fellowship accidentally meet Saruman later in the journey, Gandalf does not make any attempt to recapture Saruman; but allows him to continue his wanderings.
In other words, Gandalf shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and lifts his punishment.
Saruman goes to the Shire and accelerates the process of enslavement, torture, killing, looting and environmental destruction which he had set into action shortly after Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin had left on their quest. When the four hobbits return to the Shire they need to fight and defeat Saruman and his gangs of ruffians; and in doing so several hobbits are killed and others injured.
So, Gandalf's mercy has by this point led to considerable death among hobbits and destruction of the Shire (plus even more death among the ruffians - who are first offered and refuse a chance to repent, surrender and leave without molestation).
Even after all this, Frodo offers Saruman a further chance to repent, which he refuses. Then Frodo shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and does not impose punishment.
Saruman then stabs and tries but fails to kill Frodo, after which Frodo again shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and does not impose any punishment.
Eventually Saruman is killed by his servant Wormtongue, who is slain by the other hobbits before Frodo could stop this.
The result of Frodo’s last acts of mercy was the death of both the unrepentant Saruman, and the on-the-verge-of-repenting Wormtongue.
*
My feeling is that while Gandalf and Frodo are obviously just in offering Saruman repeated opportunities to repent, and that in their hearts it is right that they forgive Saruman; they are both at fault for showing Saruman a mercy (a reprieve from just punishment) which he did not deserve and which led to great harm. I mean, Gandalf and Frodo's repeated acts of mercy led to harm to others, although not to Gandalf and Frodo.
I am also troubled that Saruman - unlike his mass-slaughtered and mass-imprisoned minions (which included men, as well as orcs, wolves and other perhaps intrinsically-evil creatures) - was hardly punished for his wicked deeds.
Such punishment would have been deserved, and it could perhaps also have brought Saruman towards a realization of his wickedness. To let him wander free did none of this.
I wonder how these acts of mercy would have seemed to the men of Rohan, for example. Saruman simply walking free at the end of these terrible wars; having lied, betrayed, corrupted - not to mention having unleashed orcs on women and children... and so on!
Why should Saruman *not* be punished?
*
My interpretation is that Gandalf and Frodo were - understandably - exhausted; and for that reason behaved wrongly in showing mercy to Saruman.
They had both, in fact, from perfectly understandable exhaustion lapsed into a lazy and immoral attitude of pacifism - which is at root a kind of pride, pride in one's own superiority, a reluctance (born of exhaustion) to go through the psychological struggles and compromises of judgment, punishment etc).
Indeed, it was wrong for Gandalf and Frodo to have taken it upon themselves to judge in this matter - since both were (at this point in the story) merely biding their time and settling their affairs prior to leaving Middle Earth. Both had done their duty, succeeded in their primary tasks, and neither had an eye to the future of Middle Earth.
Therefore, the right thing for Gandalf to have done would have been to step aside for Aragorn to make a judgment (or to send Saruman back to the King Aragorn for this purpose); the right thing for Frodo to have done was to step aside for Sam, Merry and Pippin to make a judgment - or perhaps also to refer the matter to King Aragorn (imprisoning Saruman and Wormtongue in the meanwhile).
*
The whole business illustrates for me a confusion between forgiveness and mercy which is very common.
People seem to assume that to forgive somebody also entails showing them mercy - such that a person who is forgiven is not punished.
This is surely completely and utterly wrong!
Universal forgiveness is quite simply a duty, which everyone must strive to achieve - but universal mercy would be wicked, catastrophically wicked.
It is a gross misunderstanding to imagine that wrong deeds ought never to be punished, and that punishment is only done from resentment.
What should have happened (surely?) is that Gandalf, and Frodo, and the Riders of Rohan and everyone should ideally have forgiven Saruman; but that Saruman should have been punished - and punished severely, up-to and perhaps including execution of his earthly body (as an angelic spirit Sauman's soul was presumably immortal within the life of the world).
In my opinion, the repeated mercy that Gandalf and Frodo showed towards Saruman was at best inappropriate soft-heartedness and at worst a kind of 'aristocratic' lenience - whereby rulers are (from a sense of solidarity) more considerate and merciful towards each other than they are to the common people.
*
Did Tolkien intend to imply this kind of interpretation?
I am not at all sure - but I would not be *too* surprised if he did; wanting, at some level, to show us mistaken mercy borne of exhaustion as being yet another of the many ill effects of the war of the ring.
Saruman is a corrupted wizard (a goodie turned baddie) who is the second most important villain in LotR. He is defeated by a combination of the Riders of Rohan and the Ents; and, after being offered and refusing a chance to repent and reform, he is imprisoned by the Ents in the tower of Orthanc.
However, after only a few weeks (and after the prime evil leader Sauron has been defeated and destroyed) Saruman is allowed by the chief Ent (Treebeard) to leave the tower and wander free.
In other words, Treebeard shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and lifts his punishment.
When Gandalf discovers that Saruman has been released, he believes that Treebeard has been hoodwinked by Saruman's almost magical rhetorical skills; and that releasing him was a mistake.
However, when Gandalf and a group of the Fellowship accidentally meet Saruman later in the journey, Gandalf does not make any attempt to recapture Saruman; but allows him to continue his wanderings.
In other words, Gandalf shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and lifts his punishment.
Saruman goes to the Shire and accelerates the process of enslavement, torture, killing, looting and environmental destruction which he had set into action shortly after Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin had left on their quest. When the four hobbits return to the Shire they need to fight and defeat Saruman and his gangs of ruffians; and in doing so several hobbits are killed and others injured.
So, Gandalf's mercy has by this point led to considerable death among hobbits and destruction of the Shire (plus even more death among the ruffians - who are first offered and refuse a chance to repent, surrender and leave without molestation).
Even after all this, Frodo offers Saruman a further chance to repent, which he refuses. Then Frodo shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and does not impose punishment.
Saruman then stabs and tries but fails to kill Frodo, after which Frodo again shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and does not impose any punishment.
Eventually Saruman is killed by his servant Wormtongue, who is slain by the other hobbits before Frodo could stop this.
The result of Frodo’s last acts of mercy was the death of both the unrepentant Saruman, and the on-the-verge-of-repenting Wormtongue.
*
My feeling is that while Gandalf and Frodo are obviously just in offering Saruman repeated opportunities to repent, and that in their hearts it is right that they forgive Saruman; they are both at fault for showing Saruman a mercy (a reprieve from just punishment) which he did not deserve and which led to great harm. I mean, Gandalf and Frodo's repeated acts of mercy led to harm to others, although not to Gandalf and Frodo.
I am also troubled that Saruman - unlike his mass-slaughtered and mass-imprisoned minions (which included men, as well as orcs, wolves and other perhaps intrinsically-evil creatures) - was hardly punished for his wicked deeds.
Such punishment would have been deserved, and it could perhaps also have brought Saruman towards a realization of his wickedness. To let him wander free did none of this.
I wonder how these acts of mercy would have seemed to the men of Rohan, for example. Saruman simply walking free at the end of these terrible wars; having lied, betrayed, corrupted - not to mention having unleashed orcs on women and children... and so on!
Why should Saruman *not* be punished?
*
My interpretation is that Gandalf and Frodo were - understandably - exhausted; and for that reason behaved wrongly in showing mercy to Saruman.
They had both, in fact, from perfectly understandable exhaustion lapsed into a lazy and immoral attitude of pacifism - which is at root a kind of pride, pride in one's own superiority, a reluctance (born of exhaustion) to go through the psychological struggles and compromises of judgment, punishment etc).
Indeed, it was wrong for Gandalf and Frodo to have taken it upon themselves to judge in this matter - since both were (at this point in the story) merely biding their time and settling their affairs prior to leaving Middle Earth. Both had done their duty, succeeded in their primary tasks, and neither had an eye to the future of Middle Earth.
Therefore, the right thing for Gandalf to have done would have been to step aside for Aragorn to make a judgment (or to send Saruman back to the King Aragorn for this purpose); the right thing for Frodo to have done was to step aside for Sam, Merry and Pippin to make a judgment - or perhaps also to refer the matter to King Aragorn (imprisoning Saruman and Wormtongue in the meanwhile).
*
The whole business illustrates for me a confusion between forgiveness and mercy which is very common.
People seem to assume that to forgive somebody also entails showing them mercy - such that a person who is forgiven is not punished.
This is surely completely and utterly wrong!
Universal forgiveness is quite simply a duty, which everyone must strive to achieve - but universal mercy would be wicked, catastrophically wicked.
It is a gross misunderstanding to imagine that wrong deeds ought never to be punished, and that punishment is only done from resentment.
What should have happened (surely?) is that Gandalf, and Frodo, and the Riders of Rohan and everyone should ideally have forgiven Saruman; but that Saruman should have been punished - and punished severely, up-to and perhaps including execution of his earthly body (as an angelic spirit Sauman's soul was presumably immortal within the life of the world).
In my opinion, the repeated mercy that Gandalf and Frodo showed towards Saruman was at best inappropriate soft-heartedness and at worst a kind of 'aristocratic' lenience - whereby rulers are (from a sense of solidarity) more considerate and merciful towards each other than they are to the common people.
*
Did Tolkien intend to imply this kind of interpretation?
I am not at all sure - but I would not be *too* surprised if he did; wanting, at some level, to show us mistaken mercy borne of exhaustion as being yet another of the many ill effects of the war of the ring.
Changing attitudes to retirement in medicine and academia
The idea of retiring on a generous pension after about 40 years of 'work' seems likely to have become obsolete by the time I get the opportunity; but even without considering such things, attitudes towards retirement from medical practice changed incredibly quickly between the time of my graduation from medical school in 1982 and the time of my 25th reunion.
*
Up until the 1980s it was very difficult to get doctors to retire - mostly they went on and on working, unless or until they were almost-literally levered-out from their surgeries and offices.
But by 2007 it was common for doctors in their late forties already to be talking about how much they looked forward to retiring, and wishing that they could retire already.
A great deal had happened in that quarter of decade. One thing of relevance was the feminization of medicine, with women becoming a majority of graduates (my generation was roughly at the point when equal proportions of women and men were graduating in medicine - since that point it has been an increasing majority of women). A smaller proportion of women than men have a strong sense of vocation.
More important has been the bureaucritization of medicine and the take-over of medicine and health services by managers (and their puppet-masters - the politicians).
*
But why this difference?
I don't think it was due to greater virtue, altruism, or sense of duty among the older generation.
But I do think there were a higher proportion of doctors who cared about, were devoted to, *their subject*, in an abstract sense. More doctors with a sense of vocation, that is.
Some of this was due to sex differentials. But another major factor was status. In 1982 it was a very high status thing to be a doctor - doctors were given a tremendous amount of prestige, and themselves felt very proud to be doctors. So, people wanted to stay working as doctors (even if at a reduced committment), to stay active in the profession - since it was much more prestigious to be a practicing doctor than a retired doctor.
In other words, a sense of vocation was supported by status; and when status was bound up with a profession, a professional was more likely to perceive himself qua professional. His identity was bound-up with his work.
This fits with the fact that quite a lot of the doctors who were most reluctant to retire were exceptionally conceited and arrogant types, who were obviously reluctant to hand over the reins of power. They apparently wanted to *be* doctors more than they wanted to *do* medicine.
*
Something pretty similar applied to academia as well - indeed, from what I could gather, many academics in the arts and humanities published very little during their years of employment; but did (or at least completed) their best known work several years after statutory retirement age.
*
Yet now people are apparently desperate to stop medicine or academic pursuits as soon as they can afford to.
Clearly, since the bureaucritization of life which has proceeded so far in the UK, the professional classes (including managers themselves - who usually *hate* their work) have lost all sense of vocation, are unrewarded by status, and therefore feel that they are working only for money and are giving-up nothing important in retiring.
*
Up until the 1980s it was very difficult to get doctors to retire - mostly they went on and on working, unless or until they were almost-literally levered-out from their surgeries and offices.
But by 2007 it was common for doctors in their late forties already to be talking about how much they looked forward to retiring, and wishing that they could retire already.
A great deal had happened in that quarter of decade. One thing of relevance was the feminization of medicine, with women becoming a majority of graduates (my generation was roughly at the point when equal proportions of women and men were graduating in medicine - since that point it has been an increasing majority of women). A smaller proportion of women than men have a strong sense of vocation.
More important has been the bureaucritization of medicine and the take-over of medicine and health services by managers (and their puppet-masters - the politicians).
*
But why this difference?
I don't think it was due to greater virtue, altruism, or sense of duty among the older generation.
But I do think there were a higher proportion of doctors who cared about, were devoted to, *their subject*, in an abstract sense. More doctors with a sense of vocation, that is.
Some of this was due to sex differentials. But another major factor was status. In 1982 it was a very high status thing to be a doctor - doctors were given a tremendous amount of prestige, and themselves felt very proud to be doctors. So, people wanted to stay working as doctors (even if at a reduced committment), to stay active in the profession - since it was much more prestigious to be a practicing doctor than a retired doctor.
In other words, a sense of vocation was supported by status; and when status was bound up with a profession, a professional was more likely to perceive himself qua professional. His identity was bound-up with his work.
This fits with the fact that quite a lot of the doctors who were most reluctant to retire were exceptionally conceited and arrogant types, who were obviously reluctant to hand over the reins of power. They apparently wanted to *be* doctors more than they wanted to *do* medicine.
*
Something pretty similar applied to academia as well - indeed, from what I could gather, many academics in the arts and humanities published very little during their years of employment; but did (or at least completed) their best known work several years after statutory retirement age.
*
Yet now people are apparently desperate to stop medicine or academic pursuits as soon as they can afford to.
Clearly, since the bureaucritization of life which has proceeded so far in the UK, the professional classes (including managers themselves - who usually *hate* their work) have lost all sense of vocation, are unrewarded by status, and therefore feel that they are working only for money and are giving-up nothing important in retiring.
What are saints? What is their value?
Until I encountered Eastern Orthodoxy, I never could understand saints and could not see the value of saints.
*
This failure was not particularly surprising because modern secular culture has no resources for describing saints; while (to my mind, and at the limited level of my understanding) Roman Catholicism seems to conceptualize saints in mostly ethical terms: saints are seen as exceptionally altruistic people, highly devout people who adhere strictly to the laws of behaviour.
The best known modern RC saintly figure is therefore Mother Teresa: who is seen as having been exceptionally altruistic in a self-sacrificing way. But the altruism is portrayed in a material, secular sense.
This, for me, created an unfortunate notion that saints were something like truly sincere and exceptionally hard-working charity workers - and a tendency to judge them by their *effectiveness* in their social work.
So that the sanctity of Mother Teresa is evaluated by measuring the effect of her charitable work on the frequency and severity of poverty in Calcutta...
Clearly this was a wildly mistaken idea of sainthood on my part - but it derived from a 'this worldly' idea of saints as essentially 'workers' for the material good of others who also followed ethical and devotional rules with exceptional precision.
*
But (as I understand it) Eastern Orthodoxy sees saints as people who have attained the after-life perspective while still in this-life on earth; who are living in the City of God while still inhabiting the City of Man; who have their feet on the ground but their minds in heaven.
Lucky Christians experience a foretaste of life after death, but saints have begun to live the life after death (in communion with God) even before death.
Such people (i.e. saints) are extremely rare and may absent in some places and some periods of history; because sainthood comes at the end of a prolonged process of incremental purification including ascetic discipline and prayer - and people are more likely successfully to 'complete' this difficult process (called theosis) when there is sound guidance from others who are advanced on this path - and in some times and situations there are no such people to provide help.
*
One special general value of saints in this world is therefore as intermediaries between heaven and earth; as people who can truly answer questions and provide specific knowledge which would otherwise be inaccessible to humans.
*
This failure was not particularly surprising because modern secular culture has no resources for describing saints; while (to my mind, and at the limited level of my understanding) Roman Catholicism seems to conceptualize saints in mostly ethical terms: saints are seen as exceptionally altruistic people, highly devout people who adhere strictly to the laws of behaviour.
The best known modern RC saintly figure is therefore Mother Teresa: who is seen as having been exceptionally altruistic in a self-sacrificing way. But the altruism is portrayed in a material, secular sense.
This, for me, created an unfortunate notion that saints were something like truly sincere and exceptionally hard-working charity workers - and a tendency to judge them by their *effectiveness* in their social work.
So that the sanctity of Mother Teresa is evaluated by measuring the effect of her charitable work on the frequency and severity of poverty in Calcutta...
Clearly this was a wildly mistaken idea of sainthood on my part - but it derived from a 'this worldly' idea of saints as essentially 'workers' for the material good of others who also followed ethical and devotional rules with exceptional precision.
*
But (as I understand it) Eastern Orthodoxy sees saints as people who have attained the after-life perspective while still in this-life on earth; who are living in the City of God while still inhabiting the City of Man; who have their feet on the ground but their minds in heaven.
Lucky Christians experience a foretaste of life after death, but saints have begun to live the life after death (in communion with God) even before death.
Such people (i.e. saints) are extremely rare and may absent in some places and some periods of history; because sainthood comes at the end of a prolonged process of incremental purification including ascetic discipline and prayer - and people are more likely successfully to 'complete' this difficult process (called theosis) when there is sound guidance from others who are advanced on this path - and in some times and situations there are no such people to provide help.
*
One special general value of saints in this world is therefore as intermediaries between heaven and earth; as people who can truly answer questions and provide specific knowledge which would otherwise be inaccessible to humans.
Monday 6 September 2010
The decline of medicine refutes modernity
When people are asked about the success of modernity, they usually refer first to medicine.
I mean that when people are asked to evaluate life in the modern world compared with life at any historical period, the most frequent justification for preferring modern times is medicine.
The benefits of medical progress are primal and self-justifying in a way which can only be matched by breakthroughs in food supply and shelter. But, for moderns, medical progress is the epitome of 'progress' - probably because it represents the most direct relief of suffering.
Medical progress is the number one test case for modernity.
*
I have even heard the whole thing boiled down to immunization and antibiotics, or to 'anaesthesia' - the existence of which are said to justify modernity against history; as in 'how would you like to live in a world without '*'.
In other words, a growing ability of modern medicine to prevent and cure many diseases (diseases which previously shortened life and caused great suffering on a huge scale - or to abolish pain) is taken to be the strongest evidence of progress, the clearest achievement of civilization in the post-industrial revolution era.
Consequently, the major, least controversial benefit that 'Western' civilization can bring to the undeveloped world has for many decades been said to be medicine.
This is hardly controversial nowadays - what the Third World supposedly needs more than anything in the world is good health care.
*
Rather than to critique the validity of this argument, I simply want to point out that since medical progress *is* the major validation of modernity, the failure of medical progress is the most powerful refutation of modernity.
I have previously written about the failure of medical progress from the mid-twentieth century, and that for half a century we have been living through a medical research bubble -
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/98/1/53
Yet the failure of medical research, defined as above, is stark: in broad terms we have not disovered any new classes either of antibiotics or pain killers for many decades.
Just think about the shocking magnitude of this *failure* of modernity: for decades people have been going on and on about the wonders and triumphs of medical progress, its importance - yet our civilization has failed to sustain this progress.
The failure to sustain medical progress is the most significant failure of modernity.
*
The reason we have failed to sustain medical progress are doubtless manyfold, but in essence I think it is because modernity has chosen bureaucratic expansion above creative individual discovery.
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2010/04/cancer-of-bureaucracy.html
We prefer process over results - consequently we have a truly massive and expanding medical research process with zero or negative results.
*
It is not just medical research that has collapsed, but the whole practice of medicine.
As I look around medicine it is my impression that doctors know less, can do less, have less spirit, less sense of vocation (or none at all), are less able, make fewer breakthroughs, suffer greater losses of knowledge, have poorer judgment, do worse science, are less honest and have more wrong ideas than they did a generation ago.
And of course, doctors are increasingly managed by ignorant and spiteful time-servers, replaced with inferior professionals and by protocols, and denigrated.
This despite - or rather because - medicine as a social system has expanded by about an order of magnitude (c. tenfold)
*
Medicine has declined substantially and continues to fall apart.
The only reason that this decline is not blazingly obvious is the massive and continuing expansion of dishonesty: hype, spin, adevrtizing, public relations, propaganda...
In the UK government run NHS, they are not even *trying* to improve things any more - real medical progress has been abandoned.
Instead, efforts go into re-defining medicine and thereby re-defining progress in medicine: subordinating medicine to political and commercial goals, unrelenting information manipulation and media stunts.
*
So, if the primary benefit of modernity is going-going and will soon be gone - then what price modernity?
What is to justify modernity when medical progress is recognized as having stopped? And then decline becomes impossible to disguise?
When we lose the ability to prevent and treat infections, reliably to provide painless surgery and relief of suffering?
When we fail even to use basic hygeine in hospitals? (In the UK, hospital infections by antibiotic resistant germs are now so common that people are rationally beginning to avoid hospital in the same way our ancestors did.)
When we have lost the remnants of medical capability, then even medical knowledge?
*
What happens then is that modernity is refuted. Progress will be seen to have stopped, to have been a sham.
And modernity will be refuted not merely abstractly and intellectually, but in a way which is apparent to anyone - in terms of death and suffering.
I mean that when people are asked to evaluate life in the modern world compared with life at any historical period, the most frequent justification for preferring modern times is medicine.
The benefits of medical progress are primal and self-justifying in a way which can only be matched by breakthroughs in food supply and shelter. But, for moderns, medical progress is the epitome of 'progress' - probably because it represents the most direct relief of suffering.
Medical progress is the number one test case for modernity.
*
I have even heard the whole thing boiled down to immunization and antibiotics, or to 'anaesthesia' - the existence of which are said to justify modernity against history; as in 'how would you like to live in a world without '*'.
In other words, a growing ability of modern medicine to prevent and cure many diseases (diseases which previously shortened life and caused great suffering on a huge scale - or to abolish pain) is taken to be the strongest evidence of progress, the clearest achievement of civilization in the post-industrial revolution era.
Consequently, the major, least controversial benefit that 'Western' civilization can bring to the undeveloped world has for many decades been said to be medicine.
This is hardly controversial nowadays - what the Third World supposedly needs more than anything in the world is good health care.
*
Rather than to critique the validity of this argument, I simply want to point out that since medical progress *is* the major validation of modernity, the failure of medical progress is the most powerful refutation of modernity.
I have previously written about the failure of medical progress from the mid-twentieth century, and that for half a century we have been living through a medical research bubble -
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/98/1/53
Yet the failure of medical research, defined as above, is stark: in broad terms we have not disovered any new classes either of antibiotics or pain killers for many decades.
Just think about the shocking magnitude of this *failure* of modernity: for decades people have been going on and on about the wonders and triumphs of medical progress, its importance - yet our civilization has failed to sustain this progress.
The failure to sustain medical progress is the most significant failure of modernity.
*
The reason we have failed to sustain medical progress are doubtless manyfold, but in essence I think it is because modernity has chosen bureaucratic expansion above creative individual discovery.
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2010/04/cancer-of-bureaucracy.html
We prefer process over results - consequently we have a truly massive and expanding medical research process with zero or negative results.
*
It is not just medical research that has collapsed, but the whole practice of medicine.
As I look around medicine it is my impression that doctors know less, can do less, have less spirit, less sense of vocation (or none at all), are less able, make fewer breakthroughs, suffer greater losses of knowledge, have poorer judgment, do worse science, are less honest and have more wrong ideas than they did a generation ago.
And of course, doctors are increasingly managed by ignorant and spiteful time-servers, replaced with inferior professionals and by protocols, and denigrated.
This despite - or rather because - medicine as a social system has expanded by about an order of magnitude (c. tenfold)
*
Medicine has declined substantially and continues to fall apart.
The only reason that this decline is not blazingly obvious is the massive and continuing expansion of dishonesty: hype, spin, adevrtizing, public relations, propaganda...
In the UK government run NHS, they are not even *trying* to improve things any more - real medical progress has been abandoned.
Instead, efforts go into re-defining medicine and thereby re-defining progress in medicine: subordinating medicine to political and commercial goals, unrelenting information manipulation and media stunts.
*
So, if the primary benefit of modernity is going-going and will soon be gone - then what price modernity?
What is to justify modernity when medical progress is recognized as having stopped? And then decline becomes impossible to disguise?
When we lose the ability to prevent and treat infections, reliably to provide painless surgery and relief of suffering?
When we fail even to use basic hygeine in hospitals? (In the UK, hospital infections by antibiotic resistant germs are now so common that people are rationally beginning to avoid hospital in the same way our ancestors did.)
When we have lost the remnants of medical capability, then even medical knowledge?
*
What happens then is that modernity is refuted. Progress will be seen to have stopped, to have been a sham.
And modernity will be refuted not merely abstractly and intellectually, but in a way which is apparent to anyone - in terms of death and suffering.
Sunday 5 September 2010
Pascal on extreme virtues - versus Rorty
"I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time an excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who possessed extreme courage and extreme kindness.
"Otherwise it is not rising to the heights but falling down.
We show greatness, not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Pensees. Number 681 - Penguin Classics translated A.J Krailsheimer, 1966.
*
Comment, it used to be common sense that any individual virtue in excess or unbalanced would lead to vice. Somehow this universal perception has been lost in the context of secular leftism.
Richard Rorty (1931-2007) is representative of contemporary liberalism in trying to build an ethic around a single primary virtue - i.e. the virtue of kindness, empathy, minimization of suffering, elimination of humiliation.
When I used to read Rorty I would read this stuff, and it seemed very obviously wrong, obviously incoherent.
But Rorty was obviously clever, people took Rorty seriously, people took this ethic seriously (and implicitly based modern public policy upon it) - so I assumed I must be missing something important and that Rorty couldn't be just plain wrong, he couldn't really be spouting utter nonsense.
But he was - he really was...
*
P.S. I actually exchanged a couple of e-mails with Rorty, who regarded himself as a great democrat. I put it to Rorty that a belief in democracy entailed regarding a democratic decision as superior to a decision by an expert such as himself.
I observed that the fact that US democracy would elect a Republican president as often (or more often) than a 'liberal' president, must mean (because 'democracy-knows-best') that an alternation between right and left must be better than having a Democrat elected all of the time.
But Rorty would not accept this line of reasoning, he found it hard to believe that there could be any value in a right wing administration. And that therefore democracy was making a mistake whenever it elected a right wing administration.
It seemed to me very obvious that Rorty was not actually a democrat at all - since he regarded his own judgment as superior to that of the democratic process.
Now, I am not a democrat either, nowadays - but even in those days when I was a doctrinaire democrat, I found it remarkable that Rorty could not perceive this very obvious contradiction in his own thought.
"Otherwise it is not rising to the heights but falling down.
We show greatness, not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Pensees. Number 681 - Penguin Classics translated A.J Krailsheimer, 1966.
*
Comment, it used to be common sense that any individual virtue in excess or unbalanced would lead to vice. Somehow this universal perception has been lost in the context of secular leftism.
Richard Rorty (1931-2007) is representative of contemporary liberalism in trying to build an ethic around a single primary virtue - i.e. the virtue of kindness, empathy, minimization of suffering, elimination of humiliation.
When I used to read Rorty I would read this stuff, and it seemed very obviously wrong, obviously incoherent.
But Rorty was obviously clever, people took Rorty seriously, people took this ethic seriously (and implicitly based modern public policy upon it) - so I assumed I must be missing something important and that Rorty couldn't be just plain wrong, he couldn't really be spouting utter nonsense.
But he was - he really was...
*
P.S. I actually exchanged a couple of e-mails with Rorty, who regarded himself as a great democrat. I put it to Rorty that a belief in democracy entailed regarding a democratic decision as superior to a decision by an expert such as himself.
I observed that the fact that US democracy would elect a Republican president as often (or more often) than a 'liberal' president, must mean (because 'democracy-knows-best') that an alternation between right and left must be better than having a Democrat elected all of the time.
But Rorty would not accept this line of reasoning, he found it hard to believe that there could be any value in a right wing administration. And that therefore democracy was making a mistake whenever it elected a right wing administration.
It seemed to me very obvious that Rorty was not actually a democrat at all - since he regarded his own judgment as superior to that of the democratic process.
Now, I am not a democrat either, nowadays - but even in those days when I was a doctrinaire democrat, I found it remarkable that Rorty could not perceive this very obvious contradiction in his own thought.
Too kind for kindness
C.S Lewis commented that if there is one virtue in which modern civilization excels, that virtue is kindness.
*
Peter Kreeft expands on this:
"We have reduced all the virtues to one, being kind (...)
"But why have we reduced all the virtues to being kind? Because we have reduced all the goods to one, the one that kindness ministers to: pleasure, comfort, contentment. We have reduced ourselves to pleasure-seeking animals.
"But why have we reduced ourselves to pleasure-seeking animals? Because we are implicit materialists. Our ethics are always rooted in our metaphysics, and modern ethics is rooted in modern metaphysics, the modern world view, which is the superstition that all that is objectively real is nature, which in turn we have reduced to matter."
Peter Kreeft - A Civilization at Risk: Whatever Became of Virtue? http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0036.html
*
And there is another twist on this - because, by having reduced all virtue to kindness, our civilization fails to sustain kindness.
You can see this in schools that strive to create a kind environment yet fail to do so because they are kind to bullies, who thrive un-checked.
On a larger scale we have societies that are kind and gentle with the violent, and so decline into terror.
This is, of course, the failure to discriminate.
We created a kind space, but will not defend the kind space, because to do so entails making a discrimination on the basis of kindness, which strikes us as being an unkind thing to do - so the unkind will take-over and render kindness impossible.
*
(The unkind will take over - will not leave the kind people alone - because even unkind people naturally prefer to live among kind people - who doesn't! But unkind people value other things more highly than they value kindness, and so they will be cruel in pursuit of their primary values. And so to the extent that unkind people dominate, they will destroy the kind society.)
*
We really will *not* defend kindness - our primary virtue! We value kindness so much that we will do nothing that is not kind in its defence.
This inability, unwillingness, flat refusal to be tough in a tough world - even in pursuit of gentleness - seems to be an intrinsic flaw in modernity.
We have created unprecedented gentleness; but the gentleness has become compulsive, undiscriminating, universal, blind. Kindness unbalanced, undefended by any other virtue. Kindness unto victimhood.
To be so short-sighted, so short-termist, so lacking in common sense makes me wonder whether we really are so kind after all. Such 'kindness' is a species of laziness! - a glib moral laziness which is impatient with enduring that struggle which is intrinsic to the human condition.
*
In theory, it should be easy to correct this blindspot - for example I thuogh it would be corrected after the 9/11 terror attacks. I thought that 9/11 would shock our civilization into the necessary changes.
But it didn't happen then and it is not happening now.
If a kind society is weak in its own defence then it will be replaced by much un-kinder society that is stronger in other virtues - such as courage; and all the gains in kindness will be lost.
*
Peter Kreeft expands on this:
"We have reduced all the virtues to one, being kind (...)
"But why have we reduced all the virtues to being kind? Because we have reduced all the goods to one, the one that kindness ministers to: pleasure, comfort, contentment. We have reduced ourselves to pleasure-seeking animals.
"But why have we reduced ourselves to pleasure-seeking animals? Because we are implicit materialists. Our ethics are always rooted in our metaphysics, and modern ethics is rooted in modern metaphysics, the modern world view, which is the superstition that all that is objectively real is nature, which in turn we have reduced to matter."
Peter Kreeft - A Civilization at Risk: Whatever Became of Virtue? http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0036.html
*
And there is another twist on this - because, by having reduced all virtue to kindness, our civilization fails to sustain kindness.
You can see this in schools that strive to create a kind environment yet fail to do so because they are kind to bullies, who thrive un-checked.
On a larger scale we have societies that are kind and gentle with the violent, and so decline into terror.
This is, of course, the failure to discriminate.
We created a kind space, but will not defend the kind space, because to do so entails making a discrimination on the basis of kindness, which strikes us as being an unkind thing to do - so the unkind will take-over and render kindness impossible.
*
(The unkind will take over - will not leave the kind people alone - because even unkind people naturally prefer to live among kind people - who doesn't! But unkind people value other things more highly than they value kindness, and so they will be cruel in pursuit of their primary values. And so to the extent that unkind people dominate, they will destroy the kind society.)
*
We really will *not* defend kindness - our primary virtue! We value kindness so much that we will do nothing that is not kind in its defence.
This inability, unwillingness, flat refusal to be tough in a tough world - even in pursuit of gentleness - seems to be an intrinsic flaw in modernity.
We have created unprecedented gentleness; but the gentleness has become compulsive, undiscriminating, universal, blind. Kindness unbalanced, undefended by any other virtue. Kindness unto victimhood.
To be so short-sighted, so short-termist, so lacking in common sense makes me wonder whether we really are so kind after all. Such 'kindness' is a species of laziness! - a glib moral laziness which is impatient with enduring that struggle which is intrinsic to the human condition.
*
In theory, it should be easy to correct this blindspot - for example I thuogh it would be corrected after the 9/11 terror attacks. I thought that 9/11 would shock our civilization into the necessary changes.
But it didn't happen then and it is not happening now.
If a kind society is weak in its own defence then it will be replaced by much un-kinder society that is stronger in other virtues - such as courage; and all the gains in kindness will be lost.
Saturday 4 September 2010
The primacy of truthfulness in Western civilization
I am not sure, but I suspect, that above all, Western civilization became powerful because of its ethic of truthfulness.
This was probably even more important a factor than intelligence and creativity (although they are needed - just that they are not sufficient and maybe not distinctive to the West).
English people have been, on average, very truthful (by world historic standards) - and this may account for their having triggered modernity - and may have been more important than their intelligence and creativity (after all, the English seem quite dull to many other nations). On the whole the English could believe each other, which is very useful.
Something similar could apply to several other of the European and Anglosphere nations which have been influential in the post-industrial revolution era.
*
There is no doubt that a truthful society has great advantages in efficiency and effectiveness - as is becoming clear in England now that standards of truthfulness have declined so far and so fast.
When communication systems contain more noise (lies and errors) than signal (truth) then there comes a point where no communication of information, no understanding of information, is possible.
*
One cause of decline is bureaucracy. Individuals may or may not be truthful in the spirit of truth; but bureaucracies cannot be truthful.
At most, bureaucracies can stick to the letter of the law - follow regulations. Bureaucracy is intrinsically 'managerial' - it deals with perceptions not truths.
Another cause is social specialization, so that different and highly selective standards of 'truth' apply in different social systems - legal truth is different from truth in science which differs from truth in electoral politics, civil administration, the media, the military etc.
In a secular society, nothing holds-together these different 'truths' and they each become amoral and instrumental.
*
The distortion of important information in the public sphere is now so gross as to be stunning - whole categories of vital and obvious reality are excluded.
And reality is defined in terms of the public sphere: direct personal observation and experience carry zero validity when they contradict the public sphere.
The only similarly stunning aspect is that this is unnoticed by the intellectual class - or, when noticed, dishonestly denied - or when denials are ineffective, mocked - or when mocking is ineffective, vilified and suppressed.
*
The process is very widespread - and the elite have developed communications media where reality is defined by diktat: validity is defined by grants, prizes, coverage - or simply asserted.
Now that our intellectual elite has discarded truthfulness (even as an ideal) everything is unravelling pretty rapidly. Yet this unravelling is unrecorded.
Future historians will be amazed and perplexed to discover that among the unimaginably large output of the public communications media; major causes of civilizational collapse were unrecorded and unremarked. They will wonder how this was possible.
*
The reason is that truth is (part of) reality: if you do not believe in truth you do not believe in reality.
As a civilization we do not any longer believe in truth and therefore we do not believe in reality.
To us moderns, achievements are not real, and threats are not real.
Therefore, instead of observing threats, trying to understand threats, trying to deal with threats - we *manage* threats.
Meanwhile, in real-reality the managed-threats are destroying us.
*
And everyone knows it, at the individual level - except the ruling elites who embody and engineer the social ethos, because for them nothing is really real.
This was probably even more important a factor than intelligence and creativity (although they are needed - just that they are not sufficient and maybe not distinctive to the West).
English people have been, on average, very truthful (by world historic standards) - and this may account for their having triggered modernity - and may have been more important than their intelligence and creativity (after all, the English seem quite dull to many other nations). On the whole the English could believe each other, which is very useful.
Something similar could apply to several other of the European and Anglosphere nations which have been influential in the post-industrial revolution era.
*
There is no doubt that a truthful society has great advantages in efficiency and effectiveness - as is becoming clear in England now that standards of truthfulness have declined so far and so fast.
When communication systems contain more noise (lies and errors) than signal (truth) then there comes a point where no communication of information, no understanding of information, is possible.
*
One cause of decline is bureaucracy. Individuals may or may not be truthful in the spirit of truth; but bureaucracies cannot be truthful.
At most, bureaucracies can stick to the letter of the law - follow regulations. Bureaucracy is intrinsically 'managerial' - it deals with perceptions not truths.
Another cause is social specialization, so that different and highly selective standards of 'truth' apply in different social systems - legal truth is different from truth in science which differs from truth in electoral politics, civil administration, the media, the military etc.
In a secular society, nothing holds-together these different 'truths' and they each become amoral and instrumental.
*
The distortion of important information in the public sphere is now so gross as to be stunning - whole categories of vital and obvious reality are excluded.
And reality is defined in terms of the public sphere: direct personal observation and experience carry zero validity when they contradict the public sphere.
The only similarly stunning aspect is that this is unnoticed by the intellectual class - or, when noticed, dishonestly denied - or when denials are ineffective, mocked - or when mocking is ineffective, vilified and suppressed.
*
The process is very widespread - and the elite have developed communications media where reality is defined by diktat: validity is defined by grants, prizes, coverage - or simply asserted.
Now that our intellectual elite has discarded truthfulness (even as an ideal) everything is unravelling pretty rapidly. Yet this unravelling is unrecorded.
Future historians will be amazed and perplexed to discover that among the unimaginably large output of the public communications media; major causes of civilizational collapse were unrecorded and unremarked. They will wonder how this was possible.
*
The reason is that truth is (part of) reality: if you do not believe in truth you do not believe in reality.
As a civilization we do not any longer believe in truth and therefore we do not believe in reality.
To us moderns, achievements are not real, and threats are not real.
Therefore, instead of observing threats, trying to understand threats, trying to deal with threats - we *manage* threats.
Meanwhile, in real-reality the managed-threats are destroying us.
*
And everyone knows it, at the individual level - except the ruling elites who embody and engineer the social ethos, because for them nothing is really real.
Friday 3 September 2010
What is the use of universities?
The use, or value, of universities can only be measured with reference to the aims of society as a whole - to talk about the disinterested or autonomous pursuit of knowledge for its own sake &c is an evasion (or worse).
(Nobody really believes or actually behaves that way - I mean, nobody at all acts in such a way that it can be seen that they regard autonomously-pursued, disinterested, blue-sky, curiosity-driven knowledge for its own sake as a sufficient justification of the existence of universities in their current or any other form. People merely *say* things like this in order to be 'left alone' to pursue their vocation (which is the best reason for saying this kind of stuff); or to do what amuses them, gains them status, pays their salary, grants them power or whatever. Or perhaps to argue against what strikes them as patently false ideas such as that higher education exists primarily in order to enhance the economy.)
Anyway, in a secular society based primarily on the individualistic or utilitarian pursuit of gratification (maximization of pleasure, minimization of suffering) - a society where gratification is to be attained by inflation of individual pride (euphemistically-termed 'self-respect' or self-development) combined with serial distraction to deal with insoluble paradoxes, meaninglessness and purposelessness... In such a society it is inevitable that universities will be seen in terms of their contribution to such a project; at least when the question is pursued to the bottom line.
In a 'scientific' society - where the implicit aim is to maximize power over 'nature' - universities would be perceived in terms of this function.
A socialist society might be devoted to something like the eradication of differences and universities would be evaluated in terms of their contribution to this goal; or maybe a politically-correct society might be focused on promoting favoured groups to displace disfavoured groups and would enlist universities in this scheme and judge them according to their contribution to this goal...
But in what I would term a 'Byzantine' theocratic society, where the bottom line of societal justification was seen in terms of things being conducive to the pursuit of Christian salvation (rather than this-worldy gratification) - creating and defending a public environment where people might choose and sustain a Christian life - then the role of universities, and their success or failure in this role, would have a very different complexion indeed.
(Nobody really believes or actually behaves that way - I mean, nobody at all acts in such a way that it can be seen that they regard autonomously-pursued, disinterested, blue-sky, curiosity-driven knowledge for its own sake as a sufficient justification of the existence of universities in their current or any other form. People merely *say* things like this in order to be 'left alone' to pursue their vocation (which is the best reason for saying this kind of stuff); or to do what amuses them, gains them status, pays their salary, grants them power or whatever. Or perhaps to argue against what strikes them as patently false ideas such as that higher education exists primarily in order to enhance the economy.)
Anyway, in a secular society based primarily on the individualistic or utilitarian pursuit of gratification (maximization of pleasure, minimization of suffering) - a society where gratification is to be attained by inflation of individual pride (euphemistically-termed 'self-respect' or self-development) combined with serial distraction to deal with insoluble paradoxes, meaninglessness and purposelessness... In such a society it is inevitable that universities will be seen in terms of their contribution to such a project; at least when the question is pursued to the bottom line.
In a 'scientific' society - where the implicit aim is to maximize power over 'nature' - universities would be perceived in terms of this function.
A socialist society might be devoted to something like the eradication of differences and universities would be evaluated in terms of their contribution to this goal; or maybe a politically-correct society might be focused on promoting favoured groups to displace disfavoured groups and would enlist universities in this scheme and judge them according to their contribution to this goal...
But in what I would term a 'Byzantine' theocratic society, where the bottom line of societal justification was seen in terms of things being conducive to the pursuit of Christian salvation (rather than this-worldy gratification) - creating and defending a public environment where people might choose and sustain a Christian life - then the role of universities, and their success or failure in this role, would have a very different complexion indeed.
Thursday 2 September 2010
Cosy corners
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defintions of 'cosy':
Positive: Of a person: comfortably sheltered, snug; of a place: sheltered, warm and comfortable, inviting; of a person or thing: warmly intimiate or friendly.
Derogatory: complacent, smug, unadventurous, parochial.
*
I have always loved, sought-out cosy places; especially in cafes, pubs, libraries, and even in the countryside (niches in old graveyards, the edges of woodland etc).
The love of cosy corners used to be characteristic of the English - and the best English architecture is often replete with cosiness: think of traditional college buildings.
Yet in modern life it is almost impossible to find a cosy corner anywhere - all is harsh light, sharp angles, hard surfaces. Modern architecture can be cramped but never cosy.
Over the century from 1850 to 1950 the English intellectual elite swung all the way around from the positive to the negative attitude towards cosy; and they imposed their adolescent disdain for cosiness on everybody else.
I mean the secular intellectual attitude which sees anything 'cosy' as complacent, smug, unadventurous, parochial - and since the secular mandarinate rose to dominance they have been eliminating cosiness from the modern environment, whether we like it or not (mostly not).
*
But in my book, to be anti-cosy is to be guilt-riddled, submissive to power, cosmopolitan, restless, distractable, empty-headed. To be anti-cosy is to be the kind of loud-mouth or show off who enjoys sitting in the middle of an open-plan office or canteen engaged in publicly broadcast discussions on their mobile phone.
I have been reading the Harry Potter books to accompany my daughter: clearly one reason for their success is their depiction of Hogwarts in terms of being an epitome of old fashioned English cosiness: soft chairs beside open fires, old libraries with study corners, dark pubs with semi-enclosed circles of chairs, trains with corridors and private compartments, schools with small, enclosed classrooms...
Only adolescents and secular intellectuals (who remain emotional adolescents) despise cosiness. Decent people treasure it.
Positive: Of a person: comfortably sheltered, snug; of a place: sheltered, warm and comfortable, inviting; of a person or thing: warmly intimiate or friendly.
Derogatory: complacent, smug, unadventurous, parochial.
*
I have always loved, sought-out cosy places; especially in cafes, pubs, libraries, and even in the countryside (niches in old graveyards, the edges of woodland etc).
The love of cosy corners used to be characteristic of the English - and the best English architecture is often replete with cosiness: think of traditional college buildings.
Yet in modern life it is almost impossible to find a cosy corner anywhere - all is harsh light, sharp angles, hard surfaces. Modern architecture can be cramped but never cosy.
Over the century from 1850 to 1950 the English intellectual elite swung all the way around from the positive to the negative attitude towards cosy; and they imposed their adolescent disdain for cosiness on everybody else.
I mean the secular intellectual attitude which sees anything 'cosy' as complacent, smug, unadventurous, parochial - and since the secular mandarinate rose to dominance they have been eliminating cosiness from the modern environment, whether we like it or not (mostly not).
*
But in my book, to be anti-cosy is to be guilt-riddled, submissive to power, cosmopolitan, restless, distractable, empty-headed. To be anti-cosy is to be the kind of loud-mouth or show off who enjoys sitting in the middle of an open-plan office or canteen engaged in publicly broadcast discussions on their mobile phone.
I have been reading the Harry Potter books to accompany my daughter: clearly one reason for their success is their depiction of Hogwarts in terms of being an epitome of old fashioned English cosiness: soft chairs beside open fires, old libraries with study corners, dark pubs with semi-enclosed circles of chairs, trains with corridors and private compartments, schools with small, enclosed classrooms...
Only adolescents and secular intellectuals (who remain emotional adolescents) despise cosiness. Decent people treasure it.
Wednesday 1 September 2010
Carl Elliott on the nature of modern psychiatric research
Carl Elliott has published a shocking, truthful, rigorous and brave article on the gross dishonesty and immorality typical of modern Big Pharma-funded psychiatric research; using as the example his own employer the University of Minnesota.
http://anewmerckreviewed.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sgp-seroquel-suicide-motherjones.pdf
*
"Many clinical studies place human subjects at risk — at a minimum, the risk of mild discomfort, and at worst, the risk of serious pain and death. Bioethicists and regulators spend a lot of time and energy debating the degree of risk that ought to be permitted in a study, how those risks should be presented to subjects, and the way those risks should be balanced against the potential benefits a subject might receive.
"What is simply assumed, without much consideration at all, is that the research is being conducted to produce scientific knowledge.
"This assumption is codified in a number of foundational ethics documents, such as the Nuremberg Code, which was instituted following Nazi experiments on concentration camp victims. The Nuremberg Code stipulates that an “experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society,” and “the degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.”
"But what if a research study is not really aimed at producing genuine scientific knowledge at all? The documents emerging in litigation suggest that pharmaceutical companies are designing, analyzing, and publishing trials primarily as a way of positioning their drugs in the marketplace.
"This raises a question unconsidered in any current code of research ethics. How much risk to human subjects is justified in a study whose principal aim is to “generate commercially attractive messages”?"
Carl Elliott. Making a killing. Mother Jones. September/ October 2010. http://motherjones.com/toc/2010/09
*
Comment.
It is this kind of thing, which has been going on for several decades, getting progressively worse - that has led me to my current position that the medical research literature is so dishonest, so full of deception, so distorted as to be scientifically worthless.
Medical research is by far the largest branch of 'science' in the world today. Yet as a generalization medical research is much-worse-than-useless, because actively misleading.
What an appalling achievement! To have expanded the resources and personnel of medical research by an order of magnitude over half a century; while simultaneously converting it into a deadly amalgum of marketing, politics, bureaucracy and amoral careerism.
http://anewmerckreviewed.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sgp-seroquel-suicide-motherjones.pdf
*
"Many clinical studies place human subjects at risk — at a minimum, the risk of mild discomfort, and at worst, the risk of serious pain and death. Bioethicists and regulators spend a lot of time and energy debating the degree of risk that ought to be permitted in a study, how those risks should be presented to subjects, and the way those risks should be balanced against the potential benefits a subject might receive.
"What is simply assumed, without much consideration at all, is that the research is being conducted to produce scientific knowledge.
"This assumption is codified in a number of foundational ethics documents, such as the Nuremberg Code, which was instituted following Nazi experiments on concentration camp victims. The Nuremberg Code stipulates that an “experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society,” and “the degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.”
"But what if a research study is not really aimed at producing genuine scientific knowledge at all? The documents emerging in litigation suggest that pharmaceutical companies are designing, analyzing, and publishing trials primarily as a way of positioning their drugs in the marketplace.
"This raises a question unconsidered in any current code of research ethics. How much risk to human subjects is justified in a study whose principal aim is to “generate commercially attractive messages”?"
Carl Elliott. Making a killing. Mother Jones. September/ October 2010. http://motherjones.com/toc/2010/09
*
Comment.
It is this kind of thing, which has been going on for several decades, getting progressively worse - that has led me to my current position that the medical research literature is so dishonest, so full of deception, so distorted as to be scientifically worthless.
Medical research is by far the largest branch of 'science' in the world today. Yet as a generalization medical research is much-worse-than-useless, because actively misleading.
What an appalling achievement! To have expanded the resources and personnel of medical research by an order of magnitude over half a century; while simultaneously converting it into a deadly amalgum of marketing, politics, bureaucracy and amoral careerism.
Minimal Christianity, not even Mere Christianity, may be all that is possible
I have been thinking about the apparent impossibility of what C.S. Lewis described as 'Mere' Christianity in the modern world.
From a Christian perspective, the religious decline (including decline in many churches) has been so great since Lewis wrote his talks in the 1940s that what seemed like a very basic definition of proper Christian life now seems over-idealistic and unattainable to many people - including myself.
My feeling is that many modern people, especially (perhaps) intellectuals, cannot even take one single baby step on the path of Christian life; but can *at best* only make the very first move, and the first move is not a step on a path but rotation round an axis.
*
To 'repent' is to 'turn away' - specifically to turn away from 'sin'.
But sin should not be thought of as a (long) list of forbidden and compulsory behaviours, instead the essence of sin is the 'natural' or default state of the human organism in this life at this point in time.
Sin is a false understanding of the nature of reality, and a wrong understanding of the purpose of human life.
So repentance is to turn-away from a false and wrong understanding of our situation, and a turning-towards a correct understanding of our situation.
Turning and affirming the attitude we ought to have, wanting to have that attitude.
Having turned, a true Christian church would help us progress at least some way along the path ahead (it is not impossible, this has happened, and some have reached the end of the path while still on earth); but many Christian churches are, by now, fundamentally corrupted and blinded by worldliness, by politics, by dishonesty.
Or else we may simply be too weak to join and follow a church. Too weak or (more likely) too thoroughly corrupted.
And some people will never take even the first step, but before anything further can be accomplished, before a single step can be taken, they will turn (or be turned) back towards the world. By weak distractibility or by conceit or by evil intent they will be tempted or they will simply forget their understanding, they will lose their desire to believe and behave in accordance with reality.
And some people will be discouraged and will despair, and some will recognize their own weakness and be embarrassed and ashamed and will give-up.
*
This recurrent failure to hold to truth and to sustain belief is not even worthy of being called ‘back-sliding’ because there has not been any progress to slide back from!
Rather, it is like looking at the light, then getting bored, then turning back to look again at the dark, or to become curious about what is in the dark, or to seek to spy-out something nasty in the dark.
So, every time we manage to turn and look at the light, and begin to want to progress towards the light; we are either distracted, or desire to take another look at the dark – and we do so, every time, it seems inevitably.
The only answer is to turn again back to the light: again and again. With sorrow for failure to have the correct attitude fully and at all times. (Recalling, with humility, that many have gone far towards this, and some have succeeded in reaching this.)
Turning every day, multiple times a day, by whatever means are effectual. Never getting any closer to the light; never getting any of the consolations of progressing towards the light (never getting closer to God)…
*
So minimal Christianity is not a positively desirable strategy, indeed it is a miserable strategy – it is a last resort.
But at least we continue to turn. And that least is, we are assured, enough - *just* enough - to make the difference, the ultimate difference.
This is not a recommendation – because clearly mere Christianity (if you can do it) is better than minimal.
But if minimal is all that is possible (at present, or in the long term) for some or many or most people under modern conditions, then so be it.
If so, then by all means embrace minimal Christianity. It is infinitely better than the alternative.
From a Christian perspective, the religious decline (including decline in many churches) has been so great since Lewis wrote his talks in the 1940s that what seemed like a very basic definition of proper Christian life now seems over-idealistic and unattainable to many people - including myself.
My feeling is that many modern people, especially (perhaps) intellectuals, cannot even take one single baby step on the path of Christian life; but can *at best* only make the very first move, and the first move is not a step on a path but rotation round an axis.
*
To 'repent' is to 'turn away' - specifically to turn away from 'sin'.
But sin should not be thought of as a (long) list of forbidden and compulsory behaviours, instead the essence of sin is the 'natural' or default state of the human organism in this life at this point in time.
Sin is a false understanding of the nature of reality, and a wrong understanding of the purpose of human life.
So repentance is to turn-away from a false and wrong understanding of our situation, and a turning-towards a correct understanding of our situation.
Turning and affirming the attitude we ought to have, wanting to have that attitude.
Having turned, a true Christian church would help us progress at least some way along the path ahead (it is not impossible, this has happened, and some have reached the end of the path while still on earth); but many Christian churches are, by now, fundamentally corrupted and blinded by worldliness, by politics, by dishonesty.
Or else we may simply be too weak to join and follow a church. Too weak or (more likely) too thoroughly corrupted.
And some people will never take even the first step, but before anything further can be accomplished, before a single step can be taken, they will turn (or be turned) back towards the world. By weak distractibility or by conceit or by evil intent they will be tempted or they will simply forget their understanding, they will lose their desire to believe and behave in accordance with reality.
And some people will be discouraged and will despair, and some will recognize their own weakness and be embarrassed and ashamed and will give-up.
*
This recurrent failure to hold to truth and to sustain belief is not even worthy of being called ‘back-sliding’ because there has not been any progress to slide back from!
Rather, it is like looking at the light, then getting bored, then turning back to look again at the dark, or to become curious about what is in the dark, or to seek to spy-out something nasty in the dark.
So, every time we manage to turn and look at the light, and begin to want to progress towards the light; we are either distracted, or desire to take another look at the dark – and we do so, every time, it seems inevitably.
The only answer is to turn again back to the light: again and again. With sorrow for failure to have the correct attitude fully and at all times. (Recalling, with humility, that many have gone far towards this, and some have succeeded in reaching this.)
Turning every day, multiple times a day, by whatever means are effectual. Never getting any closer to the light; never getting any of the consolations of progressing towards the light (never getting closer to God)…
*
So minimal Christianity is not a positively desirable strategy, indeed it is a miserable strategy – it is a last resort.
But at least we continue to turn. And that least is, we are assured, enough - *just* enough - to make the difference, the ultimate difference.
This is not a recommendation – because clearly mere Christianity (if you can do it) is better than minimal.
But if minimal is all that is possible (at present, or in the long term) for some or many or most people under modern conditions, then so be it.
If so, then by all means embrace minimal Christianity. It is infinitely better than the alternative.
Friday 13 August 2010
Decline of the West Explained
I have made another mini-e-booklet from this blog, which is titled Decline of the West Explained and is posted at - http://declineofwestexplained.blogspot.com/
Tuesday 10 August 2010
The Story of Real Science
I have posted up a mini-e-booklet called The Story of Real Science - drawn from this blog:
http://thestoryofscience.blogspot.com/
If anyone has comments, please post them here.
http://thestoryofscience.blogspot.com/
If anyone has comments, please post them here.
Friday 6 August 2010
Blog posting suspended - probably until September - thanks!
Thanks very much indeed to all the people who have regularly read, and recently commented, on this blog while I have been posting daily.
I have found it very helpful, indeed essential, to continued thinking and writing to know that a reasonably cohesive group of people were reading and thinking about the stuff.
In many ways, the blog readership has proved to be better in this respect than when I publish stuff in the the scientific/ academic literature or mainstream media.
For example, in the mid-1990s I used to publish fairly often in the Times (of London) and from a writerly perspective it was like shouting into the void. (Although I was quite well paid for wasting my breath, so it wasn't _all _ loss!)
I will soon be having a holiday, and also trying to collect the blog entries into some kind of sequence to be published (online, free) as a kind-of-book (perhaps an on-going book which I might continue adding-to and editing, at least for a while).
My intention is to get back to daily blogging at the start of September; so I hope those who have liked it so far, will come back then.
I have found it very helpful, indeed essential, to continued thinking and writing to know that a reasonably cohesive group of people were reading and thinking about the stuff.
In many ways, the blog readership has proved to be better in this respect than when I publish stuff in the the scientific/ academic literature or mainstream media.
For example, in the mid-1990s I used to publish fairly often in the Times (of London) and from a writerly perspective it was like shouting into the void. (Although I was quite well paid for wasting my breath, so it wasn't _all _ loss!)
I will soon be having a holiday, and also trying to collect the blog entries into some kind of sequence to be published (online, free) as a kind-of-book (perhaps an on-going book which I might continue adding-to and editing, at least for a while).
My intention is to get back to daily blogging at the start of September; so I hope those who have liked it so far, will come back then.
What is to be done? - first steps from Fr. Seraphim Rose
"We must remember that Christ expects from us not missionary fervor, but a changed life and a warm heart.
"The missionary fervor is on a secondary level, on the external side.
"We see numerous examples of people with great missionary fervor who did not place first the internal side of changing themselves, warming their hearts and raising their minds to a higher level, as Kireyevsky describes. These people became "burnt out" and fruitless, and some of them even left the Church.
(...)
"The need to be "right" is again on the external side of Chritianity. It is important, but not of primary importance. The first priority is the heart, which must be soft and warm.
"If we do not have this warm heart, we must ask God to give it, trying ourselves to do those things by which we can acquire it.
"Most of all, we have to see that we have not got it—that we are cold. We will thereby not trust our reason and the conclusions of our logical mind, with regard to which we must be somewhat "loose"."
From Fr. Seraphim Rose - Raising the Mind, Warming the Heart
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/rose_raising.aspx
***
Comment:
There is a tendency on for those the political right to have a hard, cold 'heart'.
Perhaps it is part of the psychology of becoming independent of the prevailing leftist ideology, perhaps hard-hearted people are attracted to the right in order to rationalize their disposition?
The political left is wrong - incoherent, dishonest, self-hating and smug; but often the political right is correct but harsh, selfish.
However, hard-heartedness and coldness are not acceptable. They are something that needs to be acknowledged, repented and worked-on *before* considering a program of action.
Even if the politics is correct, even when a person is right in theory; then all this will lead to harm if pursued in the wrong spirit.
A hard-hearted, cold-hearted spirit will always corrupt and subvert any 'system' - no matter how correct it may be.
"The missionary fervor is on a secondary level, on the external side.
"We see numerous examples of people with great missionary fervor who did not place first the internal side of changing themselves, warming their hearts and raising their minds to a higher level, as Kireyevsky describes. These people became "burnt out" and fruitless, and some of them even left the Church.
(...)
"The need to be "right" is again on the external side of Chritianity. It is important, but not of primary importance. The first priority is the heart, which must be soft and warm.
"If we do not have this warm heart, we must ask God to give it, trying ourselves to do those things by which we can acquire it.
"Most of all, we have to see that we have not got it—that we are cold. We will thereby not trust our reason and the conclusions of our logical mind, with regard to which we must be somewhat "loose"."
From Fr. Seraphim Rose - Raising the Mind, Warming the Heart
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/rose_raising.aspx
***
Comment:
There is a tendency on for those the political right to have a hard, cold 'heart'.
Perhaps it is part of the psychology of becoming independent of the prevailing leftist ideology, perhaps hard-hearted people are attracted to the right in order to rationalize their disposition?
The political left is wrong - incoherent, dishonest, self-hating and smug; but often the political right is correct but harsh, selfish.
However, hard-heartedness and coldness are not acceptable. They are something that needs to be acknowledged, repented and worked-on *before* considering a program of action.
Even if the politics is correct, even when a person is right in theory; then all this will lead to harm if pursued in the wrong spirit.
A hard-hearted, cold-hearted spirit will always corrupt and subvert any 'system' - no matter how correct it may be.
Thursday 5 August 2010
What is to be done? - mostly negative steps
We live in an era of ideology, and this ideology is becoming totalitarian, all-pervasive, compulsory - even as it loses self-belief and mass support, even as it destroy the conditions for its own existence.
So we have the daily spectacle of seedy, corrupt, time-serving Brezhnev bureaucrats trying to whip themselves into a frenzy of leftist zeal as a prelude to forcing the same upon us.
It is all terribly unconvincing, which is why it has become increasingly nasty and coercive - otherwise nobody would go along with it.
Any-way... the point is not to replace one incoherent, unmotivating totalitarian ideology with another; but to do away with ideology. Politics should be emergent, not primary.
So negative tactics are likely to be the main strategy.
***
Is this a workable plan? :-
If you can: pursue and seek the truth, create beauty and be virtuous.
But if you can't, then...
Don't lie or dishonestly mislead, don't support ugliness, don't work hard and well to create situations that are morally wrong: in a nutshell don't *assist* the dark side.
Or, at the very least, don't assist the dark side more than you absolutely have-to or for longer than you absolutely have-to.
***
It is remarkable how many people have the right ideas, but - without a gun to their head, nor even any credible threat of sanctions - knock themselves out, give their best efforts, to implement bad new stuff.
Better to do nothing, or as little as possible, than to assist in harm.
***
Do not participate, if possible, in procedures and processes of which you disapprove . Participation generates legitimacy.
When you cannot oppose, do as little as possible to support. And do not give of your best, nor even second best - but the least that can be gotten away with.
If you cannot speak out, then remain silent. If you cannot remain silent, say as little as possible.
If embedded in a corrupt situation, a harm-promoting situation, an institution which is making things worse overall; get out if you can. But if you can't, then it is better to do little or nothing, than to do a good job in a bad cause.
***
In a modern society, most middle class jobs are about controlling other people ('managers' of one sort or another) - these jobs are nearly always harmful. They are first and inevitably harmful by the resources the jobs themselves consume; but this harm is multiplied - sometimes many-fold - by the further costs these managers inflict on other people whom they control - in terms of imposing wasted time and effort (form-filling, meetings etc.), but also by making other people do wrong things. Any small specific goods achieved are grossly outweighed by the harmful tendency of the job, by the reinforcement of the system of ideology and bureaucracy. On average, and overwhelmingly, a modern manager working hard and efficiently and doing a good job (by managerial criteria) therefore does immensely more harm than an idle, time-wasting, prevaricating manager.
***
Politics is mostly about one's own life. Expressing political views and voting are feeble by comparison. One's life *will* have an effect; albeit an effect increasingly diluted by distance from it.
***
[For an example of how *not* to behave, the most successful scientists of the past 50 years provide an egregious example. The most successful scientists mostly presided over the creation, operation and prestige of 'the peer review cartel' - i.e. the oligarchy of manager-scientists who preside over the peer review system that determines publication, grants, jobs, promotions and prizes; and which has generated the progressive bureaucritization of science to the point that most science is now *nothing but* the allocation of 'validity' by peer reviewers. Individually, most of these commisars of science express great reservations about the present system; but, individually, they almost all joined in. Their reasons vary from the quasi-altruistic one of 'If I didn't do it, then somebody else worse would' to the careerist 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em'.]
So we have the daily spectacle of seedy, corrupt, time-serving Brezhnev bureaucrats trying to whip themselves into a frenzy of leftist zeal as a prelude to forcing the same upon us.
It is all terribly unconvincing, which is why it has become increasingly nasty and coercive - otherwise nobody would go along with it.
Any-way... the point is not to replace one incoherent, unmotivating totalitarian ideology with another; but to do away with ideology. Politics should be emergent, not primary.
So negative tactics are likely to be the main strategy.
***
Is this a workable plan? :-
If you can: pursue and seek the truth, create beauty and be virtuous.
But if you can't, then...
Don't lie or dishonestly mislead, don't support ugliness, don't work hard and well to create situations that are morally wrong: in a nutshell don't *assist* the dark side.
Or, at the very least, don't assist the dark side more than you absolutely have-to or for longer than you absolutely have-to.
***
It is remarkable how many people have the right ideas, but - without a gun to their head, nor even any credible threat of sanctions - knock themselves out, give their best efforts, to implement bad new stuff.
Better to do nothing, or as little as possible, than to assist in harm.
***
Do not participate, if possible, in procedures and processes of which you disapprove . Participation generates legitimacy.
When you cannot oppose, do as little as possible to support. And do not give of your best, nor even second best - but the least that can be gotten away with.
If you cannot speak out, then remain silent. If you cannot remain silent, say as little as possible.
If embedded in a corrupt situation, a harm-promoting situation, an institution which is making things worse overall; get out if you can. But if you can't, then it is better to do little or nothing, than to do a good job in a bad cause.
***
In a modern society, most middle class jobs are about controlling other people ('managers' of one sort or another) - these jobs are nearly always harmful. They are first and inevitably harmful by the resources the jobs themselves consume; but this harm is multiplied - sometimes many-fold - by the further costs these managers inflict on other people whom they control - in terms of imposing wasted time and effort (form-filling, meetings etc.), but also by making other people do wrong things. Any small specific goods achieved are grossly outweighed by the harmful tendency of the job, by the reinforcement of the system of ideology and bureaucracy. On average, and overwhelmingly, a modern manager working hard and efficiently and doing a good job (by managerial criteria) therefore does immensely more harm than an idle, time-wasting, prevaricating manager.
***
Politics is mostly about one's own life. Expressing political views and voting are feeble by comparison. One's life *will* have an effect; albeit an effect increasingly diluted by distance from it.
***
[For an example of how *not* to behave, the most successful scientists of the past 50 years provide an egregious example. The most successful scientists mostly presided over the creation, operation and prestige of 'the peer review cartel' - i.e. the oligarchy of manager-scientists who preside over the peer review system that determines publication, grants, jobs, promotions and prizes; and which has generated the progressive bureaucritization of science to the point that most science is now *nothing but* the allocation of 'validity' by peer reviewers. Individually, most of these commisars of science express great reservations about the present system; but, individually, they almost all joined in. Their reasons vary from the quasi-altruistic one of 'If I didn't do it, then somebody else worse would' to the careerist 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em'.]
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