Yet There Is Method In It

I attended an interesting debate on surveillance and privacy. Interestingly they presented both sides of the argument: that surveillance can have positive, as well as negative, effects – easy access to medical records, shopping reward schemes, more efficient government services, etc. The fact is our current life style is dependent on the surveillance infrastructure that has been established by governments and companies.

On the other hand, are the risks of identity fraud, personal details appearing the public domain, espionage or state suppression of dissidents. The defenders of surveillance often mention is maxim: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” That may be true as far as it goes but who does not have something to hide?

One of the panellists mentioned a few items that some people have a need to hide: their contact details if they are escaping from an abusive relationship, their address if they work in animal testing or abortion clinic, if they have suffered from a health problem that carries a social stigma (for example mental health), if they have suffered from a crime that carries a social stigma (for example rape). Other ideas that were mentioned were: the food that your purchase (which might be interesting if you want private medical insurance or life insurance), your driving habits (car insurance), your friends and group associations (which can be profiled, with debatable accuracy, to show personality traits, sexual characteristics, political tendencies). Just look at the Jeremy Clarkson fraud incident.

If you don’t have anything to hide that is fine. But it is extremely arrogant to extend that principle to the whole of the population. There are currently at least two UK government committees looking at the impact of surveillance on society with their reports due this summer and autumn.

A recent government report cast doubt on the effectiveness of CCTV. One self admitted post-modern panellist said that he still supports CCTV as it comforts the public even if it does not reduce crime. I would agree that crime and the public perception of crime are distinct but interrelated issues, but I would prefer to use resources on measures that actually reduce crime rather than just make everyone else feel secure. (I don’t feel safer since I know its a placebo!)

Anti Citizen One

PS I am reading Kafka’s The Castle which shares some similar themes. And who could forget the movie Brazil?

Nietzsche’s concept of the Will to Power is fundamental to his philosophy and yet often misunderstood. It is also constantly discussed by commentators but they seem to state the history of its interpretation rather than interpreting the idea itself. Indeed, Nietzsche warned against this view of ideas – of collecting and cataloging them:

Everything that philosophers handled over the past thousands of years turned into concept mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp alive. Whenever these venerable concept idolators revere something, they kill it and stuff it [...] (Twilight)

Another mistake of commentators is to say what the will to power isn’t – most typically in relation to the will to existence. I will try not to use this method and positively define the Will to Power. Most of the ideas are Nietzsche’s own but I am contemporized them in places.

1) The Will to Power is the force that determines good and evil. (Read in a footnote but I forget where.)

If I may assume for a moment that morality has an earthly origin, what else can we say of its source? The source by definition must be outside morality. Or more directly, the source of morality is immorality. For example if we say “it is always good to tell the truth”, we are in fact lying since we are just inventing a false objective truth.

My chief proposition: there are no moral phenomena, there is only a moral interpretation of these phenomena. This interpretation itself is of extra-moral origin. WtP 258

Personally, I am greatly influenced by the “it-ought” problem. I have not yet seen a satisfactory solution and I provisionally conclude there is no external source of ought statements. I do accept that “ought” statements are necessary. “Ought” statements provided by society may be tolerated but are not truth. I conclude that morality is completely discretionary. If course I would still suffer the consequences if I was caught breaking the law but there is no truth at work here.

Another theme in Nietzsche is the how much primitive superstition is loaded into language. Morality is not justified by language, rather language is shaped by moral judgments. A linguistic argument for morality is, by definition and by virtue of needing outside definition, not objective and therefore not truth. This foreshadows Wittgenstein’s concept of language games. The Will to Power’s voice is the language game.

Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself — he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator. (Zarathustra, The Thousand and One Goals)

2) The Will to Power is the force that determines knowledge.

Truth is the kind of error without which a species could not survive. (WtP?)

All philosophers love to argue “logically”. Why logic? Why not rather illogical argument? That accusation we can put to all a-priori discussions. The reason for accepting logic is that it seems to be reflecting in the testimony of our senses (a posterior experience). For example, we generally don’t see things as simultaneously X and not X. Therefore any tendency to argue logically is, in fact, an acceptance of the natural world. To disprove naturalism by logic is self contradictory.

Inductive reasoning has the problem of potential over generalization. We may always discover a counter example to a given rule. As Shaw once said “The golden rule is that there are no golden rules”. But we still hold that concepts such as time, space, causality, substance, properties really exist. The ability to do this has no objective basis but we must impose a schema on sensory experience to understand it. To accept that these concepts are real, we must effectively ignore the problem with inductive reasoning – this is an exercise of the Will to Power. We assign value to sensory phenomena and call them arbitrary things: words, language, computer, screen, blog, etc. Note that none of these concepts have any reality except in our minds. But act as if they do – that is valuation.

Science cannot escape the flaw in inductive reasoning but it attempts to mitigate its effect. So called scientific “dogma” is all conditional knowledge and not objectively true – this is an acceptance of the limitation of induction. Also to use valuations of things but to be economical as possible with valuations is an interesting guideline (also known as Occam’s Razor). But since some valuation is necessary to do any science, objective truth via science is unachievable. But ignore the impossibility of the task and do it anyway – that is Will to Power. This economy of valuation causes science to find a description of reality rather than an explanation of reality. The “explanation” could only exist in our minds.

3) The Will to Power is the abstraction of all other drives e.g. Will to Existence, Will to Knowledge, Will to Virtue, Will to Wealth, Will to Political Influence, etc.

4) Will to Power is a discharge of gathered potential for action. The Will to Power is an abstraction of the source of happiness.

What is happiness? The feeling that power increases, that a resistance is overcome. (The Anti-Christ)

This means we should not seek to abolish resistance to our will since it is necessary for exercise of the will. It is therefore a freedom from ressentiment and slave morality (which states what harmful agents are “bad” and should be eliminated). (Note: happiness is not a proof of truth.)

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage; I do not account the evil and painful character of existence a reproach to it, but hope rather that it will one day be more evil and painful than hitherto— WtP 382 Emphasis mine.

5) Existentially, the Will to Power is a rejection of nihilism.

Ironically, Nihilism claims “life is meaningless” or more accurately “life should be meaningless”. That is itself a valuation of life and therefore a use of the Will to Power. The flaw in nihilism is it is a valuation of life that says there is no “true” valuation. There fore it is a self contradiction.
6) All life has the Will to Power. Throughout history, only a few individuals have ever exercised it on a grand scale.

People always get worried when there is mention of imposition of views from one charismatic leader. The comparison is always of a totalitarian leader and guilt by association. This is not logical. Let me state: “you may not impose ideas on others” is this not ITSELF an idea? And it is value imposed on modern society? This is a self contradiction!

All art and all creating is a value judgment “The world lacks X and should have X. I will create it.”

If I may talk for a moment beyond Good and Evil, we have to be more questioning of our ideals. And yes I am questioning of my tendency to be questioning!

Most influential sources of western culture: Equality (Christianity), The soul (Plato), Right to divorce (Henry VIII), Pursuit of branded goods (Marketing departments), Environmentalism (???)…

7) In some ways, the act of defining the Will to Power IS the Will to Power – since it is act of valuation.

As Brian was accused in the Life of Brian, I am also guilty: “He’s making it up as he goes along!” That is almost the point of The Will to Power. Also a bit like the Wizard of Oz himself: the will to lie to maintain so called “truth” as true. It also reminds me of the justification used by parents though the ages: “Why? Because I said so.”

The one who exercises the Will to Power is closely related to the concept of the superman.

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self–rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. (Zarathustra)

Anti Citizen One

PS I am half way though Nietzsche’s book called, confusingly, “The Will to Power”. I will explain why sometime later.

Some time ago I posted on extraterrestrial philosophy, these were mere speculations as to how other ‘cultures’ and lifeforms may view themselves, the universe and its great questions.

In the introduction to a book I’m reading at the moment came a nice little passage that sets the scene for both existential and postmodern thought.

In a passage that has always remained with me, the young Friedrich Nietzsche envisaged the following scene. Once upon a time, on a little star in a distant corner of the universe, clever little animals invented for themselves proud words, like truth and goodness. But soon enough the little star cooled, and the little animals had to die and with them their proud words. But the universe, never missing a step, drew another breath and moved on, dancing to its cosmic dance across endless skies. – Philosophy & Theology by John Caputo

I dont instantly recognise the words of Nietzsche here and where they came from (perhaps AC-1 can be of some help), but the influence of Nietzsche is unimistakeable.

Leaving aside any indepth argument or discussion on this matter, the following thoughts occured to me.

Quite clearly the first target of Nietzsche here is the notions of Objective morality and truth – that something is absolutely always the case at all times and in all places. Secondly (as is the case with Nietzsche) it is that the whole basis of such speculation, including specifically terminological distinctions such as good or bad, true or false, are quite subjective human inventions.

A petty aside may ask, isnt such speculation upon the speculation an equally subjective invention? Such a thought could lead to a reductio ad absurdum or perhaps even to claim that the whole idea is self-refuting. But I wont get into that maze for now!

With regards then Alien Philosophy it occured to me that this analysis of the inventiveness, not to say arbitrariness of human moral and epistemic speculation is rather important. Lets assume there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and that much like us they are interested in philosophical speculation. Lets also assume that much like us they have not (despite the possible existence of many Wittgenstein types) have resolved all the questions that philosophy raises.  Would they have what Derrida called binary opposites built in to our thoughts like Good/Bad, True/False and so on? Would they similarly have a notion of objectivity, or would they have their own ‘antichrist’ (as Nietzsche famously labelled himself) debunking the lofty and idealistic claims to objectivity of thought?

And finally in an open-ended and therefore irritating question, lets say we discovered countless extraterrestrial cultures all of whom had similar philosophical speculations and all of whom struggled with the idea of objectivity… what would it take to convince a Nietzcshe that such an objectivity existed?

If we encountered a large number of alien cultures that believed in objective moral values and truths, would – by virtue of their number and perhaps rhetoric – we be consoled into accepting objectivism because they too could believe in it? Or would we be always searching for the exception to the rule – which lets face it when confronted with a vast expanding universe and a near infinite number of possibilities (not to mention parallel and multiverse possibilities) – could provide us with the exception we seek?

Or is it just as likely that even if all these alien cultures believed in objectivity we would just be compelled to extend Nietzsches analysis to all of them – that the “delusion” could be bigger than we all imagined?

I provide no answers. And find but some consolation in the Indian philosopher Samsara’s principle that “what seems, could be” – as unconvinced of objectivity (as opposed to subjectivity) I may be can I really conclusively refute it for now and for all times?

It is as if the capricious gods of rhetoric and irony smiled upon me this morning when I opened the paper and read an article by the never boring (but only occasionally sensible) Peter Hitchens concerning education and the teaching of history. Entitled “So what was your child taught today, sympathy for Mr Hitler?“Hitchens laments the “slow-motion national suicide” that is taking place in the history classes of our childrens schools.

His ire is directed at a worksheet intended for 13 year olds being taught about the Spanish Armada, who are asked to mentally role-play being a Spanish sailor about to set sail, to explore the motivations for the would be invasion of England and to elucidate upon these said motives by drawing up an “anti-english” poster. Further to his already ludicrous outrage, apparently the poor children also had to draw a spider chart illustrating at least four reasons why Spain was angry enough with England that they invasion could have been considered.

What is wrong with this? What indeed is Hitchens question, which he then boldly expounds to us; it is because if we swap the words Spanish with German, the event Armada for the Blitz and then finally Spanish sailor for Luftwaffe pilot we shouldcatch his drift.

Leaving aside the fallacies of the average argumentum ad hitlerum not to mention the barely comparable circumstances of the these two historical threats to England, what else is wrong with Hitchen’s rant. Unable to better himself in presenting the absurdity of his own argument I shall simply leave you to read his words and insightful analysis.

Now, I have actually checked to see how Spanish children are taught the same subject, and I have established beyond doubt that they are not asked to draw an anti-Spanish poster.

Not so long ago, they were taught that Francis Drake, that hero of my youth, was a wicked pirate.

Good for the Spanish.

They at least understand that national history, taught to the young in schools, is the lore of the tribe, the basis of our identity and pride.

It is not a matter of seeing all sides of the argument or working out why other people might have wanted to occupy, plunder and enslave us, as if that wasn’t pretty obvious.

I am in awe at the breathtaking arrogance of the man (ad hominem aside) that history is the “lore of the tribe”, lest anyone need that to be translated for them, I believe he is saying that history is propaganda. That the “basis of our identity and pride” is the myth of our national history, and not actually an account (albeit subjective) of a series of events and motivations.

Pupils are exposed to conflicting scraps of information, grandly called “sources”, and asked to make up their own minds – which means they are robbed of pride in their nation, and left confused and vulnerable to the BBC’s anti-British propaganda and the Leftist monopoly that runs the universities.

Oh I see, so there is something wrong in allowing pupils to “make up their own minds” or in other words to think for themselves?

I’m afraid as Peter Hitchens is well aware (hence the vicious nature of this diatribe) the only propaganda that is taking place here is the notion that recieved historical accounts are fixed, accurate, unbiased, precise and in no need of deconstructive analysis. I guess the nature of his arguing is so vicious purely because the very myths that he extols are the ones used constantly to justify and uphold the status quo of this rotten country that he so admires.

In my previous post Renaissance musings I declare that the postmodern slant on history is one of its great gifts to modern scholarship although by no means does it deserve all the credit for the Scientific method also provides the noble tools of falsification and verification. Tools that when applied sensibly (and as a postmodernist may request sceptically too), allow for us to present history as a reasoned account of events, motives, and causal connections and not simply the self-justifying myths that the establishment wants us to hear and know and think to be true.

It wasnt until the 19th century and the post-enlightenment proliferation of scholarly acedemic and reductionist study of varying topics that we find the “renaissance” being defined and described.

To this day if one were to conduct a ‘vox pops’ survey on the streets quite probably the majority of people when asked about what the Renaissance was, would (if they had any knowledge of it) refer to some vague notion of it being European, humanist, and progressive.  And those with perhaps a greater awareness of socio-cultural history would probably be able to put a place and time to the term – saying probably Italy + 15th Century = Renaissance.

Indeed the term ‘Renaissance’ generally evokes the image of Italian culture. architecture and characters of that period, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Gallileo etc. For me personally I always have visions of the Italian City-states, and the flowering of republican democracy.

But of course the Renaissance was much more than just that. It was a time of political and religious upheaval, it saw the rebirth of humanistic philosophy. The dawn of the modern scientific age took place alongside the birth of modern european imperialism, capitalism and all its ‘darker’ relations such as slavery, colonialism, the exploitation of resources.

But funnily enough the Renaissance is a myth, insofar as it wasnt a single cultural, or geographical (or for that matter historically) specific event. Of course we could describe culture (particularly european) as undergoing a seismic shift in capability and ambition, that is not deniable. But what is questionable is the story of what the Renaissance was, the myth and interestingly enough as I referred to at the beginning, the idea of the Renaissance as a period of european cultural, political and scientific flourishing was only conceived of in the 19th century.

Changes in perspective means that we are now questioning the recieved knowledge of the renaissance (or its own account of itself). An example of postmodern historical deconstruction (that has in my opinion been valuable).

There are two things that interest me and perhaps prompted me to post on this. The first was the view that a culture has of itself (and how this fluctuates according to variations in accepted values). The second was the two-way global scale of the renaissance, obviously the European domination of the world, but also the non-european catalysts for this change in capablity and ambition.

I was prompted to muse on the first of these themes by the 19th century Swiss academic Jacob Burckhardt who in 1860 published The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. In this seminal work he argued that the peculiarities of the Italian political environment in the late 1500′s led to the creation of a specifically modern individuality. “Man became a spiritual individual” with the revival of classical antiquity, the greater range of explorers and an increasing unease with organised religion. This was compared critically with the lack of individual awareness that Burckhardt defined as characteristic of the middle ages where:-

Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family or corporation.

In other words pre-15th century man was a tribal and herd-like animal without any powerful sense of personal identity.

What is interesting from the postmodern perspective is that a deeper study of Burckhardt or his French contemporary Jules Michelet (who drew similar conclusions) is that they were ideologically motivated individuals. Their respective historical metanarratives were written as both an affirmation of enlightenment ideals and as a defence against the collapse of certain of its principles (for example the re-establishment of the monarchy in France and the collapse of the republic). In other words, their account of the Renaissance (of what it was) and their account of its importance relied more upon their interpretation of historical facts presented as a justification for their political, philosophical and religious ideals for the 19th century. Consequently until comparitively recently their “version” of the Renaissance has been the iconic one familiar to us all, but it would seem is also less than accurate.

An interesting aside, as an existentialist reading the above quote of Berckhardts describing Medieval culture, one wonders whether anything much has changed? How many people in the present day define themselves in accordance with the expectations or demands of others? (Refer to AC-1′s post on advertising for some examples of modern herd mentality).

Finally the second point raises some interesting musings. The Renaissance as a non-specific period of cultural flourishing was indebted to external non-modern and non-european influences. There are too many to list them all, so just two shall suffice for now.

Schools and the idea that education should be available for all had their origins in renaissance humanist thinking. But the motivation wasn’t (as we would suppose) to broaden the mind of the individual in order to question themselves and society around them – although this was a desired aim. The reality was learning by rote and vocational based education preparing students for employment – little more than worker-mould factories!

A different example (and one that endlessly fascinates me) that had widespread ramifications for the development of science and economics was the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numerals, the discovery or appropriation of the “zero” and the rise of modern mathematics.

In brief, it was a Pisan merchant Leonardo Pisan, who is known to the world as Fibonacci who in the 13th century used his experience of the Arabic method of reckoning profit and loss in the marketplace, who introduced numerals as we know them. Fibonacci explained the use of the numerals from 0 to 9, the use of the decomal point and their application to practical commercial problems. He also can be credited (bizarre as it may seem to us now) with the introduction of various calculating functions such as + addition, – subtraction and x multiplication into the european arithmetic vocabulary (functions previously unknown).

The arabic commercial practise that Fibonacci borrowed from itself came from a cultural flowering and “Renaissance” that took place in the Islamic east. Indeed the mathematical term “algebra” and its constituent principles are directly taken from Arabic al-jabru (meaning restoration). Furthermore in and around 825AD a Persian astronomer known as Abu Ja’far Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowarismi wrote a book which included the rules of arithemtic for the decimal positional number system, called ‘Kitab al jabr w’al-muqabala‘ (‘Rules of Restoration and Reduction’). This astronomers name, when Latinized is given to the basis for the further study of one of modern maths cornerstones: the algorithm.

A very short review of Human Is? by Philip K Dick

I am not normally one for short stories but I mainly enjoyed this collection. The anthology contains the inspiration for the movies Paycheck and Total Recall – strangely I have seen neither. I had expected a fairly straight forward collection of sci-fi technology related themes but I guess I should have known better from the Dick novel/films Blade Runner, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly! The theme is not so much technology but on reality and human cognition. The majority of stories have humans trying to understand reality, often via some abstracted representation – and usually doing a poor job of it. Post modernists might say that there is no objective reality to be mistaken about but I am not going to address this today!

My favorite stories were: Adjustment Team – where a man discovers his awareness of reality turns out to be rather like Plato’s cave dwellers – a bit incomplete. It reminds me of the anime short “Beyond” from The Animatrix. I don’t want to say too much about either.

The Mold of Yancy – asks if a totalitarian regime could be created not from oppression but from persuasion…

Oh, To Be a Blobel! – I thought this was darkly hilarious. I won’t even attempt to describe the plot although wikipedia has a good attempt.

And one story I did not find as appealing: The Pre-Persons – rather than the usual Dickian questioning of reality this had a strong underlying message. The story was a parody of the pro-choice movement. The story imagines a world where abortion was legal up to twelve years after birth. The reason given is children have no soul and are unthinking automatons until this age. The situation is compounded by street patrols of dog catchers who also collect stray and unwanted children. Obviously Dick does not really believe in this but it is an attempt to point to the absurdity of calling something alive at the moment of birth and not before.

He has a point that it is in some ways totally arbitrary. Of course that is not hard to rebut from existentialism! What right have people not to be murdered? Is that not also arbitrary? And any point chosen to limit abortion/contraception is in some sense arbitrary… The point I am trying to make is we must decide upon arbitrary rules to live – or the alternative is nihilism.

Anti Citizen One

I was inclined to write this after reading an interesting article by Stuart Jefferies in the Guardian concerning the great social divide between religion and secularism that is becoming increasingly intolerant.

“We must accept the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” H.L.Mencken

This perceptive comment by an American Journalist many years ago would seem to provide a compelling argument for respecting other peoples beliefs and disbeliefs and most importantly not allowing disagreements about it (which psychologically rest on matters of taste) to spoil friendships. And yet in the latter 20th and early 21st century it would appear that the ‘argument’ between these two deeply entrenched sides has led to the souring of the relationship and a greater dependence upon the law courts and parliament to seperate and adjudicate.

“You have a triangle with fundamentalist secularists in one corner, fundamentalist faith people in another, and then the intelligent, thinking liberals of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, baptism, methodism, other faiths – and, indeed, thinking atheists – in the other corner. ” Colin Slee – Dean of Southwark

The battle then, for thats what it is, is no longer about people of faith and people of no faith simply agreeing to disagree and living their lives in accordance with their tastes and with respect to the laws of their society, it has become (between the fundamentalists) a war, a desire to eliminate or subjugate the other. But why should this be so? Why should this situation that has previously been timid have become such a violently contentious issue?

According to Tariq Ramadan a Muslim scholar and senior research fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, it is due to a fear of the “other”. Secularists and people of faith particularly post 9/11 and post cold war have grown to distrust and fear the other, and percieve a ‘threat’ where perhaps none exists. This seems to me, along with an intellectually stale uncritical and literal acceptance of the ‘key discourses’ (both religious and secular) to have the ring of truth to it. The “other” so central to postmodern ethics and politics, the object with which we are compelled to identifiy in postmodernism, is now described by otherwise intellectually rigorous scholars with abusive terms and mocking scorn. It seems the “other” has never been so far away as it is now, when people of faith condemn to the hellfires those who are heathen and heretic and when atheists such as Dawkins describe faith as a poison, dangerous to self and society, that euphemistically calls “gerinoil” (an acronym for religion).

But abuse is nothing as compared to the sort of language that borders on incitement to hatred or dogmatic ideology. What is going on, truly, in the minds of the author or the reader when someone reads Christopher Hitchens for example conclude the opening chapter of his book God is not Great with words such as these?

“As I write these words and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.”

Is this not the language of the crusade? Is this not the language of the rabble rouser and the mob? What is being inferred here? That our way of life is in danger thanks to religion and religious people, they will destroy us… unless. ‘Unless’ what? In response to Hitchens the obvious question is, ‘so what are we to do about it?’ – I don’t think I need to elaborate, hateful polemic and hateful propaganda transform into hateful actions sooner or later. Although Hitchens would despise my comparison I must say it nonetheless; in the late 1920′s many Jews would have been revolted at the fiercely anti-semitic polemic evident in Hitler’s raving manifesto Mein Kampf, but too few would have interpreted in it a warning of soon-to-come pogroms, ghettoization and genocide. Precisely the same criticism can be levelled at people of faith too when their dogmatic and unshakeable belief in the righteousness of their God and their scripture leads them to make such violent statements of intent about throwing homosexuals off of tall buildings, or condemning people for making lifestyle choices such as Gay marriage or abortion. Though some may find such choices not to their taste is this justification for condemning them, describing them as abomination, the worst of the worst, and reason to blow them up?

It is remarkeable to note but both sides feel threatened, and when ones way of life is threatene, then much as one would if your life itself was under threat, moves are taken to build the barricades and defend oneself. But unfortunately the deeper one digs the bunker the further one removes onself from the “other” and the less likely one is to even try to attempt understanding, respect, tolerance and reconciliation.

Perhaps most remarkeable of all is that this battleground is being drawn up by intellectuals who should know better. Whose intelligence is such that they should have learnt the lessons of history regards intolerance and absolutist dogmatism. So what are we to do?

Some say education is the key. But how? At Exeter university the Christian Union was banned from its facilities because membership of the Union required a person to sign up to a testimony of beliefs, which naturally as it is a worldview is liable to offend somebody somewhere. Because of its anti-homosexual opinions it was banned. Rightly so perhaps, for surely homophobia has no place in society – but an educational institution banning a society – has all tolerance and freedom of expression – including the freedom to express unpalatable opinions – been eradicated?

Then of course there are faith schools. I shall say little on these as our blog has covered this topic and the pro’s and con’s more than enough already. But is abolition of a system that at present provides choice the answer of tolerance? John Sentamu Archbishop of York sees more sinister forces at play. The abolition of faith schools on the grounds that they are indoctrinaire is just a cover for aggressive secularist policies. What next? The British Humanist Association thinks that religion has too much of a foothold in politics. Certainly with anglican bishops in the house of lords and public rituals broadcast on tv and religious oaths in use across the lands courts, they may have a point. But, is this evidence of an underground movement to subvert the state and the freedom of its citizens by a religious minority (majority if faith identification rather than practise is the criteria) or is it just emblematic of an anachronistic system that hasnt quite realised that the days of ‘Christian Britain’ and the British Empire have long ceased to be true or relevant?

Of course the media and popular culture has got into the act too. The danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed sparked protests and counter protests, Jerry Springer the Opera has angered evangelicals who want a return to the old strict blasphemy laws. Even childrens authors are having a go, Phillip Pullman argues that atheism should be taught in schools.

“What I fear and deplore in the ‘faith school’ camp is their desire to close argument down and put some things beyond question or debate. It’s vital to get clear in young minds what is a faith position and what is not, so that, for instance, they won’t be taken in by religious people claiming that science is a faith position no different in kind from Christianity. Science is not a matter of faith, and too many people are being allowed to get away with claiming that it is.”

If he is talking about the teaching of a seven day creation as literal truth, or of intelligent design being taught as a challenge to evolutionary science, then yes perhaps there is a problem that needs to be addressed. But is this true of faith schools in general, or is he guilty of the very thing he deplores closing arguments down. Isn’t that what teaching atheism in schools is aimed at doing? Isn’t that what his childrens books hope to achieve? Isn’t that what Dawkins explicitly stated as his intention when he wrote the God Delusion?

I believe it is. From my perspective as a postmodernist, Modernity is now in crisis. The fundamentalist corner of religious and secular thinkers are plunging us into a new dark age. As rigorously dogmatic as each other all emphasis on practise and inner peace is ignored in favour of beliefs.

“It is not just in the rigidity of their unbelief that atheists mimic dogmatic believers. It is in their fixation on belief itself… When they dissect arguments for the existence of God, atheists parody the rationalistic theologies of western Christianity.” John Gray professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics.

Science may not be a faith, in the literal meaning of the word, but it is a worldview and its methods nothing more than a toolkit to present and verify it, and is therefore totally neutral regards religious claims (when both language games stay in their respective corners I admit!).

“No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don’t accept there’s doubt in all things, you’re being intellectually dishonest. ” Rabbi Nueberger

Would it that the fundamentalists of both sides could see and share this postmodern view. It is bad enough when a society tears itself apart over whether its employers may allow its workers to wear a religious symbol while at work, and to debate the values of faith and secularism. But when ‘believers’ and I deliberately use that word of both sides use the language of hate, scorn and derision then I fear we are building ourselves a huge bonfire that is going to do irreperable damage.

What have we come to when an otherwise respectable intellectual and scientist such as Richard Dawkins can comment publicly – as though it was worth us bothering to listern – his opinions on the worker who wanted to wear her small crucifix to work.

“I saw a picture of this woman. She had one of the most stupid faces I’ve ever seen.” R.Dawkins

Surely we have learnt the lessons of Soviet Russia who tried and failed to eradicate religion forceably. Are not people free to choose, should we not as Mencken asks tolerate with a sense of irony the peculair oddities in the beliefs of ‘others’. If we dont then the divide will only get deeper and the comments of Richard Chatres Bishop of London, will I fear, for both secularists and religious minded people come to be true.

“If you exile religious communities to the margins, then they will start to speak the words of fire among consenting adults, and the threat to public order and the public arena, I think, will grow and grow.”

Tolerance and respect for diversity will cost us substantially less than intolerance, division and hatred for others beliefs.

A Libertarian and Relativist quote taken from the Christian Anarchist Leo Tolstoy. Somewhat compatible with discourse theory.

 ”That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organisation were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organisation, while those who suffer from it – and they are ten times as numerous – think and say quite the contrary.” Leo Tolstoy – The Kingdom of God is Within You.

The terms social order and organisation can be replacd with any form of discourse of power. Although the numbers that can be said to suffer from it will vary proportionate to the power of the discursive practise.

This brief outline of Foucault’s theory of discourse is intended to bridge other ideas that I have posted on; such as language games (Wittgenstein and Feyerabend), and recently libertarian socialism. Rather than detail the connections between the three, i’ll leave it to the reader to deduce (or to comment and enquire on). Besides I think the connection is fairly obvious.

The theory of discourse is a postmodern ethical argument concerning discourse and power. Here the term discourse means an historically evolved set of interlocking and mutually supporting statements. It is the ‘language games’ of particular intellectual disciplines, which could also be described as ‘discursive practice’. They usually accept some dominant theory/philosophy to guide them, i.e. science and rationalism. But importantly these discursive practices also include contentious political activity. In other words the discourses define and describe their antagonists, evident in concepts such as ‘irrational’, ‘criminal’, ‘insane’, ‘terrorist’. At the same time the discourse, as well as labelling those who are the archetypal anathema to its orthodoxy, also expresses the political authority of its protagonists.

Prisoner: As God is my judge, my Lord, I am not guilty.

Judge: He is not. I am. You are. Six months.

The language games that each disipline adopts enacts the authority of those empowered to use it within a particular group. Thus when I see a surgeon, his authority is enhanced by his use and application of medical knowledge and terminology. He is empowered to operate on me by my compliance, which accepts his authority in surgical discourse. The opposite would be the case if when I see the surgeon his diagnosis and prognosis was performed in accordance with the interpetation of astrological data. He may be very knowledgeable about my horoscope, but he lacks the sort of authority I would expect from a surgeon, and thus no way would I consider empowering him to anaeasthetize me and open me up! The same is true across the disciplines, thus scientists and theologians often engage in conflict because neither accepts the authority of the other to speak about the others discipline.

But discourse theory is concerned with more than just providing a critique of appropriately acquired and applied knowledge. It is concerned with the political use of authority and empowerment to subordinate, exclude and marginalize those who are defined as being outside, antagonistic, antithetical to the discipline.

We are familiar with the term ‘knowledge is power’ in Foucaults theory this can be rephrased ‘discourse is power’. Law, Penology, Medicine* are powerful discources that in some cases are rathe robviously designed to exclude and control people, such as those diagnosed as criminally insane or ill. – * Such an investigation is relevant also to Institutional Religion, Political Systems, Education, Philosophy etc.

The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was unsupported by these fine, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalistarian and asymmetrical that we call the ‘disciplines’ such as exams, hospitals, prisons, the regulation of workshops, schools, the army. -Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison

Consequently for postmodernists there is an imperative to identify with the victim and to analyse power from the bottom up. Foucault attempts to show that the will to exercise power beats humanitarian egalitarianism every time, and this implies the guilt even of the Enlightenment reliance upon universal principle and reason. With echoes of Feyerabend, Reason and Rationality are identified as being incipiently totalitarian, because the appeal to an always correct Reason is itself a system of control and will always exclude what it makes marginal, defining it as non-rational, irrational and the like.

Rationalism and its supporters define what constitutes Reason, but furthermore are its sole arbitors, thereby excluding and marginalising its critics, its opponents and whosoever else it decides. The tag ‘irrational’ implies a lack of authority, non-validity of argument, deprived and perhaps even depraved. Those thus labelled are therefore either to be pitied, ridiculed (commeansurable identification of religious believers with those who believe in Fairies at the bottom of the garden, for instance), ignored, excluded from meaningful dialogue (see the arguments had between El Sordo and AC1 on whether non-rational arguments including notions of sentiment and feeling can be valid or included), marginalised from the economy of discourse (which university would fund an atheist theologian, or a pseudoscientist in physics?).

The normalizing discourses, that various disciplines define and enact, go beyond merely intellectual segregation, but also in numerous situations impinge upon the liberty of individuals and even groups. Thus the medicaly ‘reasonable’ psychiatrist is empowered and endowed with the authority to define the ‘unreasonable’, pass judgement upon them and to lock them in an asylum. Such prejudicial discourses can be found everywhere, sexists, racists, imperialists all use similar techniques. They make their normalizing discourse prevail, they create their own deviants and exclude them accordingly. (The Patriarchal influence of most early religious philosophy significantly contributed to the oppression of women and their role in society over thousands of years.)

The most important point that postmodernists make about the role of discourse is that it is not confined to the obvious formal contexts, such as the law courts. It inescapeably permeates the whole of society from top to bottom, from judges pronouncements, to scientific journals, to TV advertisements, to pop songs, to newspapers. The more dominant a discourse is within society, the more natural it seems and ironically the more it justifies itself by appeals to nature. Everybody, the postmodernists claim, absorp these subordinating norms, because they are often an intimate part of our language, of which we adhere to unwittingly as though they were facts rather than psychologically and politically motivated features of our talk about it.

The task for postmodernists (and indeed everyone) is to provide an ethical solution to the chauvenistic influence of discourse. This is a failing of Foucault, he identifies a problem, promotes ‘struggle’ and rebellion as solutions, but does not detail beyond what Lyotard suggest: small-scale local reforms*. In other words small groups of the excluded (i.e. Homosexuals) could unite and fight against exclusion, but how do we eradicate exclusion from society wholesale (and is it even possible).

* The Zapatista rebellion in South Mexico, and the Abahlali baseMjondolo of South Africa are excellent example of small-scale postmodern rebellion and may well induce egalitarian change in their societies, but what relevance does it have for us? Note with the Abahlali part of their discourse excludes the political intervention of wellmeaning outsiders.

Another task for postmodernists is to evaluate the role of individual agency and responsibility within discourse. Is it enough to attirbute blame to the discourse of power that flows through individuals, or does the individual themself hold some accountability. (This has some relevance to our recent Institutional Religion discussion).

The critique of discourses of power has one final important role to play in modern philosophy. The role and identity of the self. Certain theories have developed that propose that concepts of the ‘self’ are inseperable from the various discourses of power that flow through us. Thus for a very simple example a male (generally) is inherently a patriarchal sexist, he has to play the role that is defined as being male. Unfortunately there is too much material to explore this further, thus postmodern theories on self and identity must be reserved for a different post. I will conclude with a quote and the plot for a postmodern novel.

A human being is “not a unity, but a process, [is] perpetually in construction, perpetually contradictory, perpetually open to change.” Catherine Belse, Critical Practice

In John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse the narrator Ambrose, describes the difficulty of writing a story called ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ about a character called Ambrose who is Lost in the funhouse. He is visiting his family which includes visiting a funhouse. But he is described by an author who is perpectually aware of the fact that he is telling a story and that he is using literary conventions to do so. Ambrose systematically loses his autonomy and is identifiable as the function of the authors story, the creature of the person who is writing him.

The ultimate conclusion, and possible topic for another post, is that human identity, the ‘self’ is a fiction.

In furthering my studies of the Zapatista movement of South Mexico I came across this group. Abahlali baseMjondolo is a South African Libertarian Socialist movement. The name is isiZulu for ‘the shack dwellers.‘

Rather than go into extensive detail into the aims of the movement (which I will leave to the individual to research via the links provided) I will just give a very basic outline of the principles of Libertarian Socialism and the Abahlali baseMjnodolo .

Libertarian Socialism rejects the roles of the state or the political party in the promotion of liberty and social justice. Both party and state are top-down political movements, therefore removed from the realities of the struggles it purports to represent. Liberterian Socialists instead look towards trade unions, workers councils, citizens assemblies and non-bureaucratic decentralized means of action.

An example of LibSoc is the Zapatista movement of South Mexico which places the revolution in the hands of the people. There is no party, there is no single political theory, there is merely community action and communal consensus. All members of the community have a voice, all participate within the rule of the community, and a system of ‘ministerial’ rotation. In other words the machinery of power is rotated amongst the whole community over a period of time.

Zapatista and Abahlali baseMjondolo are examples of postmodern revolution. Practical realities replace theory. It is not anti-theory, but theory arises secondary to practical experience. Thus as an example in the Durban shack townships the role of religion is very important to the people. Instead of imposing a secular view from above (as in classical Marxist theory) Abahlali respects and promotes the equality of personal belief. Other examples from Chiapas (South Mexico) is that different communities have different economic templates, some maintain money, others have transferred to a gift economy.

Abahlali has three key areas in its philosophy.

• Politics of the Poor. This means politics conducted by and for the poor. Instead of by wellmeaning outsiders. The political process is liberated to include in its functions the people it aims to help. In practise this means that the political process takes place where the poor people live, at whatever time is convenient for the people of that area, it is conducted in their language, and respects their indigenous cultural identities.
• Living Politics. This has two meanings. 1) that its politics is shaped by experience not theory. Political education creates its own elites that impose ideas upon others. 2) Living politics is democratic and communal.
• Peoples Politics. The whole community participate, decisions are based upon the consensus of the whole. The system does not allow for representational politics, or the establishment of a professional political class. Personal power and financial reward are rejected.