Stand Still, Dobbin
You don’t mind if I go on thrashing the equine do you? No, of course you don’t, because you’re used to it. I repeat myself a lot. But then arguments are like that – they go on and on, inconclusively, cumulatively, incrementally. Who knows if one is making any progress or not? But if one thinks there is a point worth making or defending, one goes on.
Marc Mulholland has a new post on all this today. A much politer post than I deserve, too. But I still disagree with much of what he says. For instance:
Some of the criticisms raised deny the reality of group identities, asserting in classical liberal fashion that there is no such thing as society, only individuals (and their families?). I disagree.
One, again, there is a mixing of terms going on. ‘Group identities’ are one thing, and society is another. Two, there is a big difference between wanting to know exactly what is meant by ‘group,’ and denying the reality of ‘group identities’. Three, there is also a big difference between pointing out that groups can contain other groups with power differences and conflicting interests, and denying the reality of group identities. Not that he was necessarily referring to what I said – but I think what I said is a closer match with that paragraph than what Norm said.
Another instance:
I though it need not be said in so many words, but apparently it does. Respecting a culture does not imply valuing equally its every manifestation. Islam, as a ramified mode of human expression, deserves respect. The stoning of women does not. Liberal democracy is a valuable and honourable tradition. Bombing Dresden was a disgrace.
But I still don’t agree. I simply don’t think that all ‘ramified mode[s] of human expression’ deserve respect. (I’m also, again, not sure what that means, but never mind that for now.) Some just don’t. The Mafia, for example. Nazism, for another. Talibanism, for a third. The Interahamwe, for a fourth. Apartheid, for a fifth. And so on. I just don’t think there is a category ‘ramified mode of human expression’ that automatically deserves respect simply because it is a member of that category. Humans can be sadistic murderous thugs, and they can also be sheep-like obedient soldiers who do the bidding of sadistic murderous thugs, so I don’t see that human modes of expression get to be ‘respected’ without further ado.
This part is interesting –
But I believe that group identification – be it nation, religion, football team, Group Blog or Senior Common Room – is a necessary and constitutive part of human nature.
I know what he means, and I used to believe that myself, but I’ve gotten a lot more suspicious of it in recent years. Partly because of some of those modes of expression I mentioned above. The ’90s were not good years for group identification. Serbs, Bosnians, Kosovars, Hutus, Tutsis – they taught us to be wary of those group identificactions, it seems to me. I have a lot to say about this, but I’ll save it for another post.
I do take his point here though:
It was because one’s life was shaped by the question of identity, sharpened by a conflict. Ethnicity determined where one could safely walk, how one would interact with others (there is an anthropological term for this process of identifying ‘strangers’ – “telling”), how one would interpret rhetoric and so on.
Sure. But that seems to me to be all the more reason to be wary of identity and identity politics, not all the more reason to embrace it, still less to try to enforce and protect it via demands for a priori ‘respect’.
I know I should be nice, but:
“Respecting a culture does not imply valuing equally its every manifestation.”
What the hell does that actually mean?
The Taliban presumably had a culture; I should respect it, but without necessarily valuing its every manifestation?
Sorry, but to the extent that it makes any sense – and it doesn’t make much sense – it’s poppycock.
Anyway, what the hell would it mean to respect it, given that I wanted it utterly destroyed?
This stuff is a combination of nonsense and assertion.
Ooops. Sorry OB. You’ve already said all this (in a much more civilised way than I’ve managed!).
I must calm down!
Well, there you go. There are problems of definition again. I expect there is some background assumption that ‘Islam’ constitutes a culture while the Taliban does not – but if so, he does need to spell that out, and then say what it is about the word ‘culture’ that makes it apply to Islam and not the Taliban – which could be difficult! Which is precisely my point.
“I expect there is some background assumption that ‘Islam’ constitutes a culture while the Taliban does not”
It wouldn’t help, because unless he argues by definitional fiat that cultures can’t be as horrible as the Taliban sub-culture, his argument will fail (even if it doesn’t fail in the particular case of Islam).
It’s a stupid argument. Actually, it’s not an argument at all; it is just assertion.
Anyway, if these guys want to argue that ethnic minorities in the UK have their own culture, they certainly can’t argue that the Taliban didn’t.
Anyway, anyway – it is perfectly acceptable to claim that the Taliban had a culture (absolutely in line with the way us sociologists use the concept).
Oh well if you sociologists use it that way, then I’m safe!
But people do make arguments such that e.g. Islam is a culture whereas other, smaller, more recent items aren’t. That always seems like special pleading to me, but it happens.
They were discussing that on Moral Maze last week, as a matter of fact, the one Johann Hari was on, the one about Blunkett’s religious hatred law. They were arguing about whether scientology should count as a religion or not. That’s what happens when people start trying to fence off certain sets of ideas as beyond criticism, it seems to me – you just wind up fencing off everything, no matter how nonsensical.
“Islam is a culture whereas other, smaller, more recent items aren’t.”
Okay, maybe they will want to make this argument – and they’re entitled to define culture in any way they like, so long as they’re clear about it – but how does it help?
I want to see Islam eradicated from the world (and Christianity too). I’m an atheist. I don’t like religion. So I’d rather it wasn’t around. So again, I’m not sure what it means to say that I must respect Islam.
I just can’t make sense of the argument…
Well, I know. It puzzles me too, just as it puzzled me deeply to find a simliar argument in Martha Nussbaum’s new book. And if I remember correctly it does indeed rely on the word ‘respect’. We must ‘respect’ other people’s metaphysical beliefs. I simply can’t see why we must, and didn’t think she made the case. If we don’t have to respect people’s beliefs in, say, the X-Files, why do we have to believe older metaphysical beliefs? Beats me.
“Beats me.”
Ah well, we’ll probably just remain puzzled!
Well we are quite dim, after all.
The human instinct to group is a survival tool. Joining to fight the ‘other’ is very useful and empowering. It is perfectly natural, and the same arguments, biologically, can be made for rape.
The problem isn’t really with grouping, however, but with the dangerous wiring that can allow people to elevate the group above the individual. Suicidal soldier ants and worker drones are great for the species. I think people are terrified of admitting how the organization of social insects is an adaptation we share.
We have proven we can fight against instinct, that we can identify and control natural impulses; while some might call this moral, I call this ‘areborical’, dissociated from any group-oriented code or values, it is merely that which is against nature. Birth control is areborical. Certainly one could make arguments that suicide (lemmings) and birth control (nomadism decreases inception until a settled period) have been used by evolving groups, but never intentionally, never for the good of the individual agent. Perhaps agenomical is a better term. Only humans can act against their genes.
Mulholland contends that “group identification – be it nation, religion, football team, Group Blog or Senior Common Room – is a necessary and constitutive part of human nature.” There is no I in team. The whole is greater than the parts. It’s Us or Them.
Our nature to protect the tribe (that shares genes with us) has been short-circuited somewhat: non-genetic groups will do now as a focus for those instincts. Religion supplanted and cuckolded that drive. I marvel equally at pyramids and anthills.
I submit that any time the individual is subsumed for the group there is a recipe for disaster. People can work together, certainly, and retain their individuality. There is a point, however, where some lose themselves in the group.
There is a corollary, as well. When you are part of a group, that group almost always has an enemy; if one isn’t present, the group will divide itself into camps. Butterfliers contend one thing, Wheelies another. If you have one view, you must be a Wheelie (or a “classical liberal” as Mulholland called me). Here’s the point:
People who identify themselves with groups have to identify others with a group as well. Hence us ‘atheists’ have a label simply because we don’t believe in one of the dominant religions, along with the Non-Tooth-fairyians. Conspiracists create imaginary opponent groups the same way.
We glorify some aspects of groups and demonise the others. What is the difference between a martyr and a suicide bomber? Between a patriot and a Nazi? Between Black Pride and racism? Between football fans and football hooligans? Between duty and ‘just following orders’?
We do need to have organizations, yes. But we need to fight like hell against subsumation; never allow the group to be more important than the individual. We need to realize that people who seek or crave group identity are like alcoholics, or gamblers. We need to disrespect organizations and respect the individual. We must stop building beehives or face the consequences.
Our laws favour corporations and organizations and that must stop.
I wonder what you will call me now. Evolutionary Randian? A ‘left-wing antihymenopterist?’ or a ‘right-wing proindividualist’? Oh, oh! Can I be a NeoMillsian?
The things we have to live with …
My point about group identification is that you have to take people as they are, not as saints, Kantians, or universal ethicists or blank slates or putty. It’s a question of the pragmatics of keeping the peace. Example: In Belfast, the authorities have invested a fortune in trying to ‘overcome’ tribalism during the past thirty years — a total waste of taxpayers’ money, as it turned out. Nice middle class teachers gave countless lessons about the joys of pluralism but the killings continued.
Then people got around to building walls between themselves and ‘the Other’. And that worked wonders: for no matter how much you hate the ‘others’, you can’t harm them if you can’t get near them — and vice versa.
As to being passionately anti-Darwinian about the ethics: don’t overdo it. Ethical anti-Darwinians are by definition an endangered species.
Which reminds me of what Dawkins said somewhere, namely that evolution selects for those who don’t believe in it.
HOT BUTTON PRESSED — SPENGLER MODE ON
Witness the explosion of fundamentalisms in many parts of the world and the demographic decline of the secularists and the People Like Ourselves.
SPENGLER MODE OFF
Charles
You’re making way too many jumps here.
Evolution can’t select for those who don’t believe it, unless not believing it is an adaptation.
It isn’t. At least not straightforwardly.
Also, it depends who you read; Steve Jones, for example, has claimed that evolution has pretty much stopped for human beings. If you abolished all deaths in the UK before the age of 50, average life-expectancy would increase by one year.
That’s not to say that there is nothing in what you’re claiming. Just that you’re over-simplifying.
Walls? You want to solve the problem with walls? Will we each, in the end, get our own cubicle?
Just because one attempt fails does not mean every attempt will – perhaps the blame isn’t with the concept but rather with the ‘authorities’? Belfast is an example of the worst aspects of groupism–to anyone but an Irishman, the two fighting groups are indistinguishable. They have 100 times more in common than they have as differences. I can’t taste the difference between Tullimore Dew and Jameson’s.
There was someone on Start the Week also saying that evolution has pretty much stopped for humans. I’ve been meaning to post on that, it turned into an interesting discussion.
Well, sure, you have to take people as they are – up to a point. But you also have to try to make them better. A lot better, sometimes. It’s no good just shrugging when they for instance make a virtue of imagining the instant torture-deaths of millions of infidels. You say ‘No! Bad people, bad, bad, stop it this minute!’
Jerry — I’m oversimplifying because a blog isn’t a book. But very briefly: Darwinians don’t believe that if you put a rubber on your willie before practice jiggy-jig you will get up God’s nose and that a ‘yawning chasm’ will open in the earth ‘stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them’. So they have fewer offspring. The godfearers, to avoid those yawning chasms, let nature take its course and multiply like, like … well, like RAPTURISTS.
OB
IMO, the problem with group identification occurs not when one links oneself to a group, but when others insist on identifying one with some group. “The Metaphysical Club” tells of a talented black student who considered himself primarily a philosopher. Unfortunately, everyone else considered him a black first and foremost. He did not prosper.
Been out of touch recently, so if somebody else already made this point, sorry.
“Darwinians don’t believe that if you put a rubber on your willie before practice jiggy-jig you will get up God’s nose and that a ‘yawning chasm’ will open in the earth ‘stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them’. So they have fewer offspring.”
Again. This is over-simplification. It’s an entirely irrelevant point unless belief in Darwinism is an adapation. You can’t pass on an acquired characteristic. Belief in Darwinism is an acquired characteristic.
Your analysis might work, but it isn’t straightforwardly Darwinian. Or rather, it might be – but not the way you’re expressing it at the moment.
Are you just talking about the straightforward reproduction of culture aross generations. Or do you want to argue that there is some kind of Darwinian adapation which makes religion, etc., attractive, and which has selective advantages? Or maybe both?
Jerry, religious beliefs are of course to some degree an adaptation — every society that has survived more than a couple of generations has been dominated by religion in some form or other. It is secular societies that are, in fact, non-adaptive, evolutionary cul de sacs. It’s religious homo progenitivus versus free-thinking homo contracipiens — and the former inevitably wins. We may have all the best arguments but they have the winning streak — Kinder, Kirche, Kueche.
Let’s compare ourselves (e.g.) with the Musselmen and Musselwomen: Muslims belong to the homo progenitivus species; we belong to the homo contracipiens branch. Here’s what Darwin’s illustrious grandson wrote on the topic:
HOT BUTTON PRESSED. DOOMSTER MODE ON
““If I may be permitted so to put it, by the invention of contraception, the species Homo sapiens has discovered that he can become the new variety “Homo contracipiens,” and many take advantage of this to produce a much reduced fraction of the next generation. We have found out how to cheat Nature. However, it would seem likely that in the very long run Nature cannot be cheated, and it is easy to see the revenge it might take. Some people do have a wish for children before they are conceived, though for most of them it has not the strong compulsion of the two instincts. There will be a tendency for such people to have rather more children than the rest, and these children will tend to inherit a similar wish and so again to have larger families than do others. In succeeding generations there will be some who inherit the wish to an enhanced extent, and these will contribute a still greater proportion of the population. Thus, the direct wish for children is likely to become stronger in more and more of the race and in the end it could attain the quality of an instinct as strong as the other two. It may well be that it would take hundreds of generations for the progenitive instinct to develop in this way, but if it should do so, Nature would have taken its revenge, and the variety Homo contracipiens would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety Homo progenetivus.”
The full text of the essay is online at: http://www.trinity.edu/lespey/biol1307/lectures/lect18/lect18.html
DOOMSTER MODE OFF
Well, just for one thing, secularism hasn’t been dominant anywhere long enough for that kind of generalization to be very reliable even without Lamarckian aspect. And for another, secular societies do seem to prosper better than anti-secular ones, so arguably the outlook is better for the people in the former than for those in the latter.
“the problem with group identification occurs not when one links oneself to a group, but when others insist on identifying one with some group.”
Just so. That’s one of the things I’ve been wanting to talk about in this comment I’m threatening. The more we insist on these identity boxes, the more we end up getting stuck in them.
“Will we each, in the end, get our own cubicle?…Belfast is an example of the worst aspects of groupism–to anyone but an Irishman, the two fighting groups are indistinguishable.”
Oh those minor differences…
Ophelia, Mark — wrote reply to you, then it got lost in the post. I must have pressed the wrong button. Back later.
Thanks for the link, Cathal, I found that Darwin lecture interesting. The overall piece gives his theory a less Lamarckian tone.
I want to point out simply having children (of any number) does not count towards evolutionary strength; but rather it is the number of children that reach reproductive maturity. Two children from one couple who have better parental care, better nutrition and resources can produce more ‘viable’ offspring than 10 children who starve, die young, or have no advantages to give.
Having fewer children is an adaptation that has evolutionary merit. Even having no children of your own but providing resources to people who share your genes could be as well (stress on the could).
It seems that many of the ‘higher’ animals have much smaller litters than the ‘lower’ ones. Apes versus mice, whales versus octopi. It is more complex than just a numbers game.