About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Monday, May 09, 2016
10-year anniversary!
Slightly belatedly, let's celebrate the 10-year anniversary of this blog. My first posts, including this first substantive one, were actually made back on 26 March 2006. Time flies! The blog has had its ups and downs in its role and its popularity over time - and for a period it emigrated to the Skeptic Ink network - but overall this has been a good decade of blogging. It's never been a very high-traffic site (averaging a bit over 1000 views per day at its peak, and somewhat less these days... though I get a lot more than that when I post on the Cogito blog). But it's brought some very interesting people my way, and it's contributed greatly to what I've been able to achieve during the decade.
My Academia.edu page revisited
As I mentioned in a previous post, I've recently built myself a page at Academia.edu. This will bring together a fair bit of information about the academic side of my working life, including a detailed CV and a good selection of my work - with a bias toward older and and/or more obscure pieces.
Do feel free to check it out. Some highlights are:
1. "Science and the Sea of Faith" - previously published only in an obscure small-press publication in Australia.
2. "Should we fear death? Epicurean and modern arguments" - again, previously published only in a fairly obscure collection. I argue that there is a rational basis to fear death, though not as much as we actually do. Check it out for more detail.
3. "Mutants, Cyborgs, AI & Androids" - published in Meanjin in 2004. Meanjin is a well-known literary journal in Australia, but is not so well known elsewhere. Includes some wrestling with ideas about what it is to be human, whether human beings have a particular moral worth - compared to, say, artificial intelligences - and so on.
4. "Anthropomorphic Superbeings and Future Human Societies" - although I've delivered this paper orally, it hasn't previously been published.
5. "How free is the will? Sam Harris misses his mark" - this piece, which responds to Sam Harris's small book on free will (though it's much more than a book review), was originally published on the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal. The version I've uploaded is slightly longer than the previously published version, with some text from my original manuscript restored. There are also some other small tweaks. This is my definitive version.
In all, I've uploaded 18 papers so far, but the above pieces especially make it worthwhile in that they are not readily available to most readers (unlike, for example, articles in the Journal of Medical Ethics). I obviously consider them all to be solid work (or I wouldn't be making them more readily available), even if my interests and emphases have changed a bit since some of them were written.
Do feel free to check it out. Some highlights are:
1. "Science and the Sea of Faith" - previously published only in an obscure small-press publication in Australia.
2. "Should we fear death? Epicurean and modern arguments" - again, previously published only in a fairly obscure collection. I argue that there is a rational basis to fear death, though not as much as we actually do. Check it out for more detail.
3. "Mutants, Cyborgs, AI & Androids" - published in Meanjin in 2004. Meanjin is a well-known literary journal in Australia, but is not so well known elsewhere. Includes some wrestling with ideas about what it is to be human, whether human beings have a particular moral worth - compared to, say, artificial intelligences - and so on.
4. "Anthropomorphic Superbeings and Future Human Societies" - although I've delivered this paper orally, it hasn't previously been published.
5. "How free is the will? Sam Harris misses his mark" - this piece, which responds to Sam Harris's small book on free will (though it's much more than a book review), was originally published on the ABC Religion and Ethics Portal. The version I've uploaded is slightly longer than the previously published version, with some text from my original manuscript restored. There are also some other small tweaks. This is my definitive version.
In all, I've uploaded 18 papers so far, but the above pieces especially make it worthwhile in that they are not readily available to most readers (unlike, for example, articles in the Journal of Medical Ethics). I obviously consider them all to be solid work (or I wouldn't be making them more readily available), even if my interests and emphases have changed a bit since some of them were written.
Thursday, May 05, 2016
The Shame of Public Shaming
by
Russell Blackford, University of Newcastle, NSW
[Originally published on The Conversation.]
Public shaming is not new. It’s been used as a punishment in all societies – often embraced by the formal law and always available for day-to-day policing of moral norms. However, over the past couple of centuries, Western countries have moved away from more formal kinds of shaming, partly in recognition of its cruelty.
Even in less formal settings, shaming individuals in front of their peers is now widely regarded as unacceptable behaviour. This signifies an improvement in the moral milieu, but its effect is being offset by the rise of social media and, with it, new kinds of shaming.
Indeed, as Welsh journalist and documentary maker Jon Ronson portrays vividly in his latest book, social media shaming has become a social menace. Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Picador, 2015) is a timely contribution to the public understanding of an emotionally charged topic.
Shaming is on the rise. We’ve shifted – much of the time – to a mode of scrutinising each other for purity. Very often, we punish decent people for small transgressions or for no real transgressions at all. Online shaming, conducted via the blogosphere and our burgeoning array of social networking services, creates an environment of surveillance, fear and conformity.
Since then, the trend to an online call-out culture has continued and even intensified, but something changed during 2015. Mainstream journalists and public intellectuals finally began to express their unease.
There’s no sign that the new call-out culture is fading away, but it’s become a recognised phenomenon. It is now being discussed more openly, and it’s increasingly questioned. That’s partly because even its participants – people who assumed it would never happen to them – sometimes find themselves “called out” for revealing some impurity of thought. It’s become clear that no moral or political affiliation holds patents on the weaponry of shaming, and no one is immune to its effects.
As Ronson acknowledges, he has, himself, taken part in public shamings, though the most dramatic episode was a desperate act of self-defence when a small group of edgy academics hijacked his Twitter identity to make some theoretical point. Shame on them! I don’t know what else he could have done to make them back down.
That, however, was an extreme and peculiar case. It involved ongoing abuse of one individual by others who refused to “get” what they were doing to distress him, even when asked to stop. Fascinating though the example is, it is hardly a precedent for handling more common situations.
At one time, if we go along with Ronson, it felt liberating to speak back in solidarity against the voices of politicians, corporate moguls, religious leaders, radio shock jocks, newspaper columnists and others with real power or social influence.
But there can be a slippery slope… from talking back in legitimate ways against, say, a powerful journalist (criticising her views and arguments, and any abusive conduct), to pushing back in less legitimate ways (such as attempting to silence her viewpoint by trying to get her fired), to destroying relatively powerless individuals who have done nothing seriously wrong.
Slippery slope arguments have a deservedly bad reputation. But some slopes really are slippery, and some slippery slope arguments really are cogent. With public online shaming, we’ve found ourselves, lately, on an especially slippery slope. In more ways than one, we need to get a grip.
One problem is that, as frequently happens, it was a case of “shame the shamer”. The recipient of the shaming was especially unsympathetic because she was herself a public shamer of others.
The drama followed a distasteful – to say the least – column by Jan Moir, a British journalist with a deplorable modus operandi. Moir’s topic was the death of Stephen Gately, one of the singers from the popular Irish band Boyzone. Gately had been found dead while on holiday in Mallorca with his civil partner, Andrew Cowles. Although the coroner attributed the death to natural causes, Moir wrote that it was “not, by any yardstick, a natural one” and that “it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.”
Ronson does not make the point explicit in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, but what immediately strikes me is that Moir was engaging in some (not-so-)good old-fashioned mainstream media shaming. She used her large public platform to hold up identified individuals to be shamed over very private behaviour. Gately could not, of course, feel any shame from beyond the grave, but Moir’s column was grossly tasteless since he had not even been buried when it first appeared.
Moir stated, self-righteously: “It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of [Gately’s] strange and lonely death.” But why was it so important that the public be told such particulars as whether or not Cowles (at least) hooked up that tragic evening for sex with a student whom Moir names, and whether or not some, or all, of the three young men involved used cannabis or other recreational drugs that night?
To confirm Moir’s propensities as a public shamer, no one need go further than the same column. She follows her small-minded paragraphs about Gately with a few others that shame “socialite” Tara Palmer-Tomkinson for no worse sin than wearing a revealing outfit to a high-society party.
You get the picture, I trust. I’m not asking that Moir, or anyone else, walk on eggshells lest her language accidentally offend somebody, or prove open to unexpectedly uncharitable interpretations. Quite the opposite: we should all be able to speak with some spontaneity, without constantly censoring how we formulate our thoughts. I’ll gladly extend that freedom to Moir.
But Moir is not merely unguarded in her language: she can be positively reckless, as with her suggestion that Palmer-Tomkinson’s wispy outfit might more appropriately be worn by “Timmy the Tranny, the hat-check personage down at the My-Oh-My supper club in Brighton.” No amount of charitable interpretation can prevent the impression that she is often deliberately, or at best uncaringly, hurtful. In those circumstances, I have no sympathy for her if she receives widespread and severe criticism for what she writes.
When it comes to something like Moir’s hatchet job on Gately and Cowles, and their relationship, I can understand the urge to retaliate – to shame and punish in return. It’s no wonder, then, that Ronson discusses the feeling of empowerment when numerous people, armed with their social media accounts, turned on badly behaved “giants” such as the Daily Mail and its contributors. As it seemed to Ronson in those days, not so long ago, “the silenced were getting a voice.”
But let’s be careful about this.
For a start, I am – I’m well aware – being highly critical of Moir’s column and her approach to journalism. In that sense, I could be said to be “shaming” her. But we don’t have to be utterly silent when confronted by unpleasant behaviour from public figures.
My criticisms are, I submit, fair comment on material that was (deliberately and effectively) disseminated widely to the public. In writing for a large audience in the way she does – especially when she takes an aggressive and hurtful approach toward named individuals – Moir has to expect some push-back.
We can draw reasonable distinctions. I have no wish to go further than criticism of what Moir actually said and did. I don’t, for example, want to misrepresent her if I can avoid it, to make false accusations, or to punish her in any way that goes beyond criticism. I wouldn’t demand that she be no-platformed from a planned event or that advertisers withdraw their money from the Daily Mail until she is fired.
The word criticism is important. We need to think about when public criticism is fair and fitting, when it becomes disproportionate, and when it spirals down into something mean and brutal.
Furthermore, we can distinguish between 1) Moir’s behaviour toward individuals and 2) her views on issues of general importance, however wrong or ugly those views might be. In her 2009 comments on Gately’s death, the two are entangled, but it doesn’t follow that they merit just the same kind of response.
Moir’s column intrudes on individuals' privacy and holds them up for shaming, but it also expresses an opinion on legal recognition of same-sex couples in the form of civil unions. Although she is vague, Moir seems to think that individuals involved in legally recognised same-sex relationships are less likely to be monogamous (and perhaps more likely to use drugs) than people in heterosexual marriages. This means, she seems to imply, that there’s something wrong with, or inferior about, same-sex civil unions.
In fairness, Moir later issued an apology in which she explained her view: “I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.” This is, however, difficult to square with the words of her original column, where she appears to deny, point blank, that civil unions “are just the same as heterosexual marriages.”
Even if she is factually correct about statistical differences between heterosexual marriages and civil unions, this at least doesn’t seem to be relevant to public policy. After all, plenty of marriages between straight people are “open” (and may or may not involve the use of recreational drugs), but they are still legally valid marriages.
If someone does think certain statistical facts about civil unions are socially relevant, however, it’s always available to them to argue why. They should be allowed to do so without their speech being legally or socially suppressed. It’s likewise open to them to produce whatever reliable data might be available. Furthermore, we can’t expect critics of civil unions to present their full case on every occasion when they speak up to express a view. That would be an excessive condition for any of us to have to meet when we express ourselves on important topics.
More generally, we can criticise bad ideas and arguments – or even make fun of them if we think they’re that bad – but as a rule we shouldn’t try to stop their expression.
Perhaps some data exists to support Moir’s rather sneering claims about civil unions. But an anecdote about the private lives of a particular gay couple proves nothing one way or the other. Once again, many heterosexual marriages are not monogamous, but a sensational story involving a particular straight couple would prove nothing about how many.
In short, Moir is entitled to express her jaundiced views about civil unions or same-sex relationships more generally, and the worst she should face is strong criticism, or a degree of satire, aimed primarily at the views themselves. But shining a spotlight on Cowles and Gately was unfair, callous, nasty, gratuitous, and (to use one of her own pet words) sleazy. In addition to criticising her apparent views, we can object strongly when she publicly shames individuals.
Some individuals who’ve been publicly shamed clearly enough “started it”, but even they can suffer from a cruel and disproportionate backlash. Some have been public figures who’ve genuinely done something wrong, as with Jonah Lehrer, a journalist who fabricated quotes to make his stories appear more impressive. It’s only to be expected that Lehrer’s irresponsibility and poor ethics would damage his career. But even in his case, the shaming process was over the top. Some of it was almost sadistic.
Other victims of public shaming are more innocent than Lehrer. Prominent among them is Justine Sacco, whom Ronson views with understandable sympathy. Sacco’s career and personal life were ruined after she made an ill-advised tweet on 20 January 2013. It said: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” She was then subjected to an extraordinarily viral Twitter attack that led quickly to her losing her job and becoming an international laughing stock.
It appears that her tweet went viral after a Gawker journalist retweeted it (in a hostile way) to his 15,000 followers at the time – after just one person among Sacco’s 170 followers had passed it on to him.
Ronson offers his own interpretation of the Sacco tweet:
Much satire and humour is, as we know, unstable in its meaning – simultaneously saying something outrageous and testing our emotions as we find ourselves laughing at it. It can make us squirm with uncertainty. This applies (sometimes) to high literary satire, but also to much ordinary banter among friends. We laugh but we also squirm.
In any event, charitable interpretations – if not a single straightforward one – were plainly available for Sacco’s tweet. This was a markedly different situation from Jan Moir’s gossip-column attacks on hapless celebrities and socialites. And unlike Moir, Sacco lacked a large media platform, an existing public following, and an understanding employer.
Ronson also describes the case of Lindsey Stone, a young woman whose life was turned to wreckage because of a photograph taken in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. In the photo she is mocking a “Silence and Respect” sign by miming a shout and making an obscene gesture. The photo was uploaded on Facebook, evidently with inadequate privacy safeguards, and eventually it went viral, with Stone being attacked by a cybermob coming from a political direction opposite to the mob that went after Sacco.While the Arlington photograph might seem childish, or many other things, posing for it and posting it on Facebook hardly add up to any serious wrongdoing. It is not behaviour that merited the outcome for Lindsey Stone: destruction of her reputation, loss of her job, and a life of ongoing humiliation and fear.
Referring to such cases, Ronson says:
“We see ourselves as nonconformist,” Ronson concludes sadly, “but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age.”
This is not the culture we wanted. It’s a public culture that seems broken, but what can we do about it?
For a start, it helps to recognise the problem, but it’s difficult, evidently, for most people to accept the obvious advice: Be forthright in debating topics of general importance, but always subject to some charity and restraint in how you treat particular people. Think through – and not with excuses – what that means in new situations. Be willing to criticise people on your own side if they are being cruel or unfair.It’s not our job to punish individuals, make examples of them, or suppress their views. Usually we can support our points without any of this; we can do so in ways that are kinder, more honest, more likely to make intellectual progress. The catch is, it requires patience and courage.
Our public culture needs more of this sort of patience, more of this sort of courage. Can we – will we – rise to the challenge?
Russell Blackford, University of Newcastle, NSW
[Originally published on The Conversation.]
Public shaming is not new. It’s been used as a punishment in all societies – often embraced by the formal law and always available for day-to-day policing of moral norms. However, over the past couple of centuries, Western countries have moved away from more formal kinds of shaming, partly in recognition of its cruelty.
Even in less formal settings, shaming individuals in front of their peers is now widely regarded as unacceptable behaviour. This signifies an improvement in the moral milieu, but its effect is being offset by the rise of social media and, with it, new kinds of shaming.
Indeed, as Welsh journalist and documentary maker Jon Ronson portrays vividly in his latest book, social media shaming has become a social menace. Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Picador, 2015) is a timely contribution to the public understanding of an emotionally charged topic.
Shaming is on the rise. We’ve shifted – much of the time – to a mode of scrutinising each other for purity. Very often, we punish decent people for small transgressions or for no real transgressions at all. Online shaming, conducted via the blogosphere and our burgeoning array of social networking services, creates an environment of surveillance, fear and conformity.
The making of a call-out culture
I noticed the trend – and began to talk about it – around five years ago. I’d become increasingly aware of cases where people with access to large social media platforms used them to “call out” and publicly vilify individuals who’d done little or nothing wrong. Few onlookers were prepared to support the victims. Instead, many piled on with glee (perhaps to signal their own moral purity; perhaps, in part, for the sheer thrill of the hunt).Since then, the trend to an online call-out culture has continued and even intensified, but something changed during 2015. Mainstream journalists and public intellectuals finally began to express their unease.
There’s no sign that the new call-out culture is fading away, but it’s become a recognised phenomenon. It is now being discussed more openly, and it’s increasingly questioned. That’s partly because even its participants – people who assumed it would never happen to them – sometimes find themselves “called out” for revealing some impurity of thought. It’s become clear that no moral or political affiliation holds patents on the weaponry of shaming, and no one is immune to its effects.
As Ronson acknowledges, he has, himself, taken part in public shamings, though the most dramatic episode was a desperate act of self-defence when a small group of edgy academics hijacked his Twitter identity to make some theoretical point. Shame on them! I don’t know what else he could have done to make them back down.
That, however, was an extreme and peculiar case. It involved ongoing abuse of one individual by others who refused to “get” what they were doing to distress him, even when asked to stop. Fascinating though the example is, it is hardly a precedent for handling more common situations.
At one time, if we go along with Ronson, it felt liberating to speak back in solidarity against the voices of politicians, corporate moguls, religious leaders, radio shock jocks, newspaper columnists and others with real power or social influence.
But there can be a slippery slope… from talking back in legitimate ways against, say, a powerful journalist (criticising her views and arguments, and any abusive conduct), to pushing back in less legitimate ways (such as attempting to silence her viewpoint by trying to get her fired), to destroying relatively powerless individuals who have done nothing seriously wrong.
Slippery slope arguments have a deservedly bad reputation. But some slopes really are slippery, and some slippery slope arguments really are cogent. With public online shaming, we’ve found ourselves, lately, on an especially slippery slope. In more ways than one, we need to get a grip.
Shaming the shamers
Ronson joined in a campaign of social media shaming in October 2009: one that led to some major advertisers distancing themselves from the Daily Mail in the UK. This case illustrates some problems when we discuss social media shaming, so I’ll give it more analysis than Ronson does.One problem is that, as frequently happens, it was a case of “shame the shamer”. The recipient of the shaming was especially unsympathetic because she was herself a public shamer of others.
The drama followed a distasteful – to say the least – column by Jan Moir, a British journalist with a deplorable modus operandi. Moir’s topic was the death of Stephen Gately, one of the singers from the popular Irish band Boyzone. Gately had been found dead while on holiday in Mallorca with his civil partner, Andrew Cowles. Although the coroner attributed the death to natural causes, Moir wrote that it was “not, by any yardstick, a natural one” and that “it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.”
Ronson does not make the point explicit in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, but what immediately strikes me is that Moir was engaging in some (not-so-)good old-fashioned mainstream media shaming. She used her large public platform to hold up identified individuals to be shamed over very private behaviour. Gately could not, of course, feel any shame from beyond the grave, but Moir’s column was grossly tasteless since he had not even been buried when it first appeared.
Moir stated, self-righteously: “It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of [Gately’s] strange and lonely death.” But why was it so important that the public be told such particulars as whether or not Cowles (at least) hooked up that tragic evening for sex with a student whom Moir names, and whether or not some, or all, of the three young men involved used cannabis or other recreational drugs that night?
To confirm Moir’s propensities as a public shamer, no one need go further than the same column. She follows her small-minded paragraphs about Gately with a few others that shame “socialite” Tara Palmer-Tomkinson for no worse sin than wearing a revealing outfit to a high-society party.
You get the picture, I trust. I’m not asking that Moir, or anyone else, walk on eggshells lest her language accidentally offend somebody, or prove open to unexpectedly uncharitable interpretations. Quite the opposite: we should all be able to speak with some spontaneity, without constantly censoring how we formulate our thoughts. I’ll gladly extend that freedom to Moir.
But Moir is not merely unguarded in her language: she can be positively reckless, as with her suggestion that Palmer-Tomkinson’s wispy outfit might more appropriately be worn by “Timmy the Tranny, the hat-check personage down at the My-Oh-My supper club in Brighton.” No amount of charitable interpretation can prevent the impression that she is often deliberately, or at best uncaringly, hurtful. In those circumstances, I have no sympathy for her if she receives widespread and severe criticism for what she writes.
When it comes to something like Moir’s hatchet job on Gately and Cowles, and their relationship, I can understand the urge to retaliate – to shame and punish in return. It’s no wonder, then, that Ronson discusses the feeling of empowerment when numerous people, armed with their social media accounts, turned on badly behaved “giants” such as the Daily Mail and its contributors. As it seemed to Ronson in those days, not so long ago, “the silenced were getting a voice.”
But let’s be careful about this.
Some distinctions
A few aspects need to be teased out. Even when responding to the shamers, we ought to think about what’s appropriate.For a start, I am – I’m well aware – being highly critical of Moir’s column and her approach to journalism. In that sense, I could be said to be “shaming” her. But we don’t have to be utterly silent when confronted by unpleasant behaviour from public figures.
My criticisms are, I submit, fair comment on material that was (deliberately and effectively) disseminated widely to the public. In writing for a large audience in the way she does – especially when she takes an aggressive and hurtful approach toward named individuals – Moir has to expect some push-back.
We can draw reasonable distinctions. I have no wish to go further than criticism of what Moir actually said and did. I don’t, for example, want to misrepresent her if I can avoid it, to make false accusations, or to punish her in any way that goes beyond criticism. I wouldn’t demand that she be no-platformed from a planned event or that advertisers withdraw their money from the Daily Mail until she is fired.
The word criticism is important. We need to think about when public criticism is fair and fitting, when it becomes disproportionate, and when it spirals down into something mean and brutal.
Furthermore, we can distinguish between 1) Moir’s behaviour toward individuals and 2) her views on issues of general importance, however wrong or ugly those views might be. In her 2009 comments on Gately’s death, the two are entangled, but it doesn’t follow that they merit just the same kind of response.
Moir’s column intrudes on individuals' privacy and holds them up for shaming, but it also expresses an opinion on legal recognition of same-sex couples in the form of civil unions. Although she is vague, Moir seems to think that individuals involved in legally recognised same-sex relationships are less likely to be monogamous (and perhaps more likely to use drugs) than people in heterosexual marriages. This means, she seems to imply, that there’s something wrong with, or inferior about, same-sex civil unions.
In fairness, Moir later issued an apology in which she explained her view: “I was suggesting that civil partnerships – the introduction of which I am on the record in supporting – have proved just to be as problematic as marriages.” This is, however, difficult to square with the words of her original column, where she appears to deny, point blank, that civil unions “are just the same as heterosexual marriages.”
Even if she is factually correct about statistical differences between heterosexual marriages and civil unions, this at least doesn’t seem to be relevant to public policy. After all, plenty of marriages between straight people are “open” (and may or may not involve the use of recreational drugs), but they are still legally valid marriages.
If someone does think certain statistical facts about civil unions are socially relevant, however, it’s always available to them to argue why. They should be allowed to do so without their speech being legally or socially suppressed. It’s likewise open to them to produce whatever reliable data might be available. Furthermore, we can’t expect critics of civil unions to present their full case on every occasion when they speak up to express a view. That would be an excessive condition for any of us to have to meet when we express ourselves on important topics.
More generally, we can criticise bad ideas and arguments – or even make fun of them if we think they’re that bad – but as a rule we shouldn’t try to stop their expression.
Perhaps some data exists to support Moir’s rather sneering claims about civil unions. But an anecdote about the private lives of a particular gay couple proves nothing one way or the other. Once again, many heterosexual marriages are not monogamous, but a sensational story involving a particular straight couple would prove nothing about how many.
In short, Moir is entitled to express her jaundiced views about civil unions or same-sex relationships more generally, and the worst she should face is strong criticism, or a degree of satire, aimed primarily at the views themselves. But shining a spotlight on Cowles and Gately was unfair, callous, nasty, gratuitous, and (to use one of her own pet words) sleazy. In addition to criticising her apparent views, we can object strongly when she publicly shames individuals.
Surfing down the slippery slope
Ronson discusses a wide range of cases, and an evident problem is that they can vary greatly, making it difficult to draw overall conclusions or to frame exact principles.Some individuals who’ve been publicly shamed clearly enough “started it”, but even they can suffer from a cruel and disproportionate backlash. Some have been public figures who’ve genuinely done something wrong, as with Jonah Lehrer, a journalist who fabricated quotes to make his stories appear more impressive. It’s only to be expected that Lehrer’s irresponsibility and poor ethics would damage his career. But even in his case, the shaming process was over the top. Some of it was almost sadistic.
Other victims of public shaming are more innocent than Lehrer. Prominent among them is Justine Sacco, whom Ronson views with understandable sympathy. Sacco’s career and personal life were ruined after she made an ill-advised tweet on 20 January 2013. It said: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” She was then subjected to an extraordinarily viral Twitter attack that led quickly to her losing her job and becoming an international laughing stock.
It appears that her tweet went viral after a Gawker journalist retweeted it (in a hostile way) to his 15,000 followers at the time – after just one person among Sacco’s 170 followers had passed it on to him.
Ronson offers his own interpretation of the Sacco tweet:
It seemed obvious that her tweet, whilst not a great joke, wasn’t racist, but a self-reflexive comment on white privilege – on our tendency to naively imagine ourselves immune to life’s horrors. Wasn’t it?In truth, it’s not obvious to me just how to interpret the tweet, and of course I can’t read Sacco’s mind. If it comes to that, I doubt that she pondered the wording carefully. Still, this small piece of sick humour was aimed only at her small circle of Twitter followers, and it probably did convey to them something along the lines of what Ronson suggests. In its original context, then, it did not merely ridicule the plight of black AIDS victims in Africa.
Much satire and humour is, as we know, unstable in its meaning – simultaneously saying something outrageous and testing our emotions as we find ourselves laughing at it. It can make us squirm with uncertainty. This applies (sometimes) to high literary satire, but also to much ordinary banter among friends. We laugh but we also squirm.
In any event, charitable interpretations – if not a single straightforward one – were plainly available for Sacco’s tweet. This was a markedly different situation from Jan Moir’s gossip-column attacks on hapless celebrities and socialites. And unlike Moir, Sacco lacked a large media platform, an existing public following, and an understanding employer.
Ronson also describes the case of Lindsey Stone, a young woman whose life was turned to wreckage because of a photograph taken in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. In the photo she is mocking a “Silence and Respect” sign by miming a shout and making an obscene gesture. The photo was uploaded on Facebook, evidently with inadequate privacy safeguards, and eventually it went viral, with Stone being attacked by a cybermob coming from a political direction opposite to the mob that went after Sacco.While the Arlington photograph might seem childish, or many other things, posing for it and posting it on Facebook hardly add up to any serious wrongdoing. It is not behaviour that merited the outcome for Lindsey Stone: destruction of her reputation, loss of her job, and a life of ongoing humiliation and fear.
Referring to such cases, Ronson says:
The people we were destroying were no longer just people like Jonah [Lehrer]: public figures who had committed actual transgressions. They were private individuals who really hadn’t done anything much wrong. Ordinary humans were being forced to learn damage control, like corporations that had committed PR disasters.Thanks to Ronson’s intervention, Stone sought help from an agency that rehabilitates online reputations. Of Stone’s problems in particular, he observes:
The sad thing was that Lindsey had incurred the Internet’s wrath because she was impudent and playful and foolhardy and outspoken. And now here she was, working with Farukh [an operative for the rehabilitation agency] to reduce herself to safe banalities – to cats and ice cream and Top 40 chart music. We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.
This is not the culture we wanted
Ronson also quotes Michael Fertik, from the agency that helped Stone: “We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.”“We see ourselves as nonconformist,” Ronson concludes sadly, “but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age.”
This is not the culture we wanted. It’s a public culture that seems broken, but what can we do about it?
For a start, it helps to recognise the problem, but it’s difficult, evidently, for most people to accept the obvious advice: Be forthright in debating topics of general importance, but always subject to some charity and restraint in how you treat particular people. Think through – and not with excuses – what that means in new situations. Be willing to criticise people on your own side if they are being cruel or unfair.It’s not our job to punish individuals, make examples of them, or suppress their views. Usually we can support our points without any of this; we can do so in ways that are kinder, more honest, more likely to make intellectual progress. The catch is, it requires patience and courage.
Our public culture needs more of this sort of patience, more of this sort of courage. Can we – will we – rise to the challenge?
Sunday, May 01, 2016
The Myth of Human Dignity
[This was first published on the Betterhumans website and later republished by IEET.]
Despite what some bioethicists say, our DNA doesn’t hold our moral worth.
In 1997, when the creation of Dolly was announced in the pages of Nature, many of the early responses expressed outrage that the cloning of human beings in a similar way would “violate human dignity.” Similar claims are frequently made about embryonic stem cell research or, indeed, any kind of research that involves the destruction of human embryos. Claims about the violation of human dignity are the stock in trade of politicians, bioethicists, clergymen, newspaper columnists and many others who wish to argue that such-and-such technology must be stopped.
However, it is often not clear what this argument amounts to. If human dignity is “violated,” the means by which it happens often seem obscure. How, exactly, would my dignity be violated if I made a free, well-informed decision to clone myself? Worse, it is difficult even to find a cogent and agreed upon definition of what “human dignity” is.
If we cut through the verbiage, it eventually becomes clear that what is being relied upon is the idea that human beings, as such, are especially worthy of moral respect and consideration. In this context, “dignity” is best understood as “moral worth”; accordingly, the expression “human dignity” refers to a special moral worth that is supposed to attach to us simply because we are human.
But while you wouldn’t know it from many bioethical debates, “human dignity” is a flawed ethical concept—one that we should stop relying upon for making decisions.
The concept of respect
The related concepts of moral worth and moral respect may not be much easier to clarify than that of human dignity, but this cluster of ideas can be better understood if we start with the concept of respect.
Taken at its broadest, to respect something or someone, X, means perceiving X as a constraint on our ability to act self-interestedly, or just according to whim. In other words, if we respect X, we must take X into account before we act. The ways in which we do so need not be moral, at least not in any narrow sense, but there will be something about X that should give us pause.
This might involve no more than exercising prudence. For example, I can be said to respect something inanimate, such as a powerful storm, or even something abstract, such as the storm’s power. My respect for the storm and its power will lead me to think twice before I go driving in the high winds—let alone putting out to sea in mountainous waves.
If I am foolish enough to go out in the storm, my failing is not essentially a moral one, though there may be an element of that if I take others with me, putting them at risk. Even if the direct risk is only to myself, others may love me or depend on me, and I am thus putting their happiness and welfare on the line, as well as my own. Still, in this example, my reasons for respecting the storm are basically prudential rather than moral.
Some other dictionary meanings of “respect” are much narrower than this broad idea of taking something into account. For example, respect can involve attitudes of deference, admiration, esteem or even reverence, for particular individuals. Still, it is clear that we need not feel this kind of respect for every human being whom we encounter, or read or hear about. On the contrary, some people don’t seem to deserve any particular admiration—certainly not our reverence. Some actually strike us as quite contemptible.
And yet, we treat our fellow human beings—even the contemptible ones—as morally constraining our ability to act selfishly or thoughtlessly. We can’t, in other words, just do what we like to other people; we must give their separate interests at least some regard. In this sense, they are all worthy of our respect.
Why respect other people?
So far, so good. It seems that we are morally obliged to respect other people, even if we don’t esteem them all as individuals. This comes to the same thing as saying they have moral worth, or possess dignity. But if we are asked how it is that other humans can impose this kind of constraint upon us—exactly why people merit moral respect—we don’t advance the argument if we reply that it is because they possess the property of human dignity.
Once we understand how all these concepts relate to each other, we can see that this is no more helpful than being asked why oil burns and replying that it is because oil possesses the property of flammability.
Our reason for responding to other humans as beings whom we cannot treat just as we want, without regard for their interests, is that they possess a rich set of intrinsic and social characteristics that we feel we cannot ignore. The intrinsic characteristics at issue include sentience, self-consciousness, rationality, moral agency, autonomy, the ability to formulate life plans, deep inner experience and simply the shared knowledge and burden of mortality (I owe this composite list to thinkers as various as Bertrand Russell, Robert Nozick, Peter Singer and Raimond Gaita).
Babies and children don’t possess all of those characteristics, at least not to the same degree as adults, but they possess others that compel us to have regard to their interests. Indeed, they strike us as uniquely appropriate subjects of our care and kindness. Not least important are their developing human minds and personalities, and their social dependence if they are to grow and flourish. As do adults, they also have their place in our societies, a very important one, since all societies see children as their hope for the future—no society would last for long if its members thought or felt otherwise.
Respecting nonhumans
If we think about nonhuman animals, we quickly realize that the species we have encountered to date possess only some of the characteristics that I’ve listed. However, animals do possess sentience, to varying degrees. Some appear capable of suffering in ways that go beyond physical pain. Some possess quite high levels of intelligence, and they are able to bond with us socially. All of these characteristics of animals may be enough (at least in particular cases) to make us feel we owe them considerable respect—moral respect, not the merely prudential kind that makes us avoid getting into unarmed combat with a rhinoceros or a tiger.
If we think about this seriously, some of us may feel compelled to vegetarianism. For the rest of us, it seems that an appropriate response to nonhuman animals is to at least kill them with the minimum of cruelty. At the very least, we should ensure that they are not subjected to extreme pain or to lives of suffering. All of this discussion suggests that nonhuman animals possess some dignity, understood as moral worth.
What about inanimate things? These, too, may sometimes constrain our actions, if only because harming them might harm other human beings or other sentient animals. (I set aside the tricky question of whether inanimate things can ever have interests of their own.) Even some individual trees, such as the General Grant redwood in the US and the magnificent Tule Tree in Mexico, seem to possess extraordinary value. To destroy or harm them would be reprehensible. The same can apply to works of art, to certain landscapes or seascapes and even to some complex and valuable machines.
By this point, it seems that we must show some moral respect not only to other human beings, but also to many other beings and things.
What if we encountered another species as intelligent as ourselves? We can, of course, imagine circumstances in which it would be rational to treat any such beings as our enemies—for example, if they were warlike and showed a low regard for our moral worth. But could we just treat them however we wanted? Would we be entitled to torture them? What if, like us, they felt terrible psychological suffering when their young ones died? Could we just slaughter their young anyway?
Our ability to bond socially with these other creatures—or their ability to bond with us—might be very relevant to how we would treat them. Likewise for their possession of characteristics such as sentience, self-consciousness and the capacity for deep emotional experiences. By comparison, the fact that they would not have human DNA seems of little relevance.
At this point, we can conclude that being human is not a necessary condition for having moral worth.
At least in principle, it is not even a necessary condition for having moral worth to the same degree as human adults and children.
Nor, I argue, is it a sufficient condition.
The moral worth of embryos
A human zygote or embryo is biologically of the species Homo sapiens, as I am, and as I can assume all my readers are. Does that give a zygote, or an early embryo, the same moral worth as an adult human being or a human child?
No. An early embryo is a tiny blob of cells that bears no resemblance to an adult or infant human being, except insofar as its DNA contains certain species-specific sequences of base pairs of nucleotides. An early embryo lacks such characteristics as sentience, awareness or rationality, or any of the other psychological or social characteristics that give adult or infant human beings their moral worth.
Nor is it a good argument to suggest that an embryo has the potential to develop these characteristics if it grows into a fully formed human being. The short answer is that the potential to develop morally significant characteristics is just not the same as actually having those characteristics right now. (But there is more to be said here; I have discussed this in comprehensive detail in my article “The Supposed Rights of the Fetus.”)
This leaves open the possibility that some abortions—for frivolous reasons or at an unnecessarily late stage—might turn out to be morally wrong. As for infanticide, I cannot put the point more plainly than Francis Fukuyama (in his Our Posthuman Future), who states that, “It is the violation of the natural and very powerful bonding that takes place between parent and infant.that makes infanticide such a heinous crime in most societies.” However, invoking the supposed human dignity of a zygote or an early embryo borders on irrationality or superstition.
DNA isn’t a deciding factor
It is plain that the moral worth of human beings, other animals and inanimate things is not dependent on the presence or absence of human DNA. The presence of human DNA is neither necessary nor sufficient to bestow moral worth. Instead, there are many other characteristics that strike us when we consider how we may (ethically speaking) treat someone or something.
There is, of course, something attractive and true in the idea that we humans all have great moral worth, despite our individual differences. This idea can be invoked to argue, for example, that people of all racial or ancestral backgrounds should be treated equally under the law and, moreover, with kindness and consideration. After the horrors committed by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, and similar horrors that have continued since in many parts of the world, it is surely worth making the point—as strongly as possible—that we are all very similar under the skin.
If the phrase “human dignity” helps us keep this in mind, perhaps it can be retained as shorthand to refer to the moral worth of all adult or infant human beings, irrespective of race or ancestry.
However, our moral worth does not reside in the fact of our Homo sapiens DNA. For this reason, it makes no sense to argue about bioethical issues, such as cloning and stem cell research, on the basis that there is a specific human dignity. The concept of human dignity is a blunt tool for any careful analysis of those issues. It is a tool that we should discard.
Despite what some bioethicists say, our DNA doesn’t hold our moral worth.
In 1997, when the creation of Dolly was announced in the pages of Nature, many of the early responses expressed outrage that the cloning of human beings in a similar way would “violate human dignity.” Similar claims are frequently made about embryonic stem cell research or, indeed, any kind of research that involves the destruction of human embryos. Claims about the violation of human dignity are the stock in trade of politicians, bioethicists, clergymen, newspaper columnists and many others who wish to argue that such-and-such technology must be stopped.
However, it is often not clear what this argument amounts to. If human dignity is “violated,” the means by which it happens often seem obscure. How, exactly, would my dignity be violated if I made a free, well-informed decision to clone myself? Worse, it is difficult even to find a cogent and agreed upon definition of what “human dignity” is.
If we cut through the verbiage, it eventually becomes clear that what is being relied upon is the idea that human beings, as such, are especially worthy of moral respect and consideration. In this context, “dignity” is best understood as “moral worth”; accordingly, the expression “human dignity” refers to a special moral worth that is supposed to attach to us simply because we are human.
But while you wouldn’t know it from many bioethical debates, “human dignity” is a flawed ethical concept—one that we should stop relying upon for making decisions.
The concept of respect
The related concepts of moral worth and moral respect may not be much easier to clarify than that of human dignity, but this cluster of ideas can be better understood if we start with the concept of respect.
Taken at its broadest, to respect something or someone, X, means perceiving X as a constraint on our ability to act self-interestedly, or just according to whim. In other words, if we respect X, we must take X into account before we act. The ways in which we do so need not be moral, at least not in any narrow sense, but there will be something about X that should give us pause.
This might involve no more than exercising prudence. For example, I can be said to respect something inanimate, such as a powerful storm, or even something abstract, such as the storm’s power. My respect for the storm and its power will lead me to think twice before I go driving in the high winds—let alone putting out to sea in mountainous waves.
If I am foolish enough to go out in the storm, my failing is not essentially a moral one, though there may be an element of that if I take others with me, putting them at risk. Even if the direct risk is only to myself, others may love me or depend on me, and I am thus putting their happiness and welfare on the line, as well as my own. Still, in this example, my reasons for respecting the storm are basically prudential rather than moral.
Some other dictionary meanings of “respect” are much narrower than this broad idea of taking something into account. For example, respect can involve attitudes of deference, admiration, esteem or even reverence, for particular individuals. Still, it is clear that we need not feel this kind of respect for every human being whom we encounter, or read or hear about. On the contrary, some people don’t seem to deserve any particular admiration—certainly not our reverence. Some actually strike us as quite contemptible.
And yet, we treat our fellow human beings—even the contemptible ones—as morally constraining our ability to act selfishly or thoughtlessly. We can’t, in other words, just do what we like to other people; we must give their separate interests at least some regard. In this sense, they are all worthy of our respect.
Why respect other people?
So far, so good. It seems that we are morally obliged to respect other people, even if we don’t esteem them all as individuals. This comes to the same thing as saying they have moral worth, or possess dignity. But if we are asked how it is that other humans can impose this kind of constraint upon us—exactly why people merit moral respect—we don’t advance the argument if we reply that it is because they possess the property of human dignity.
Once we understand how all these concepts relate to each other, we can see that this is no more helpful than being asked why oil burns and replying that it is because oil possesses the property of flammability.
Our reason for responding to other humans as beings whom we cannot treat just as we want, without regard for their interests, is that they possess a rich set of intrinsic and social characteristics that we feel we cannot ignore. The intrinsic characteristics at issue include sentience, self-consciousness, rationality, moral agency, autonomy, the ability to formulate life plans, deep inner experience and simply the shared knowledge and burden of mortality (I owe this composite list to thinkers as various as Bertrand Russell, Robert Nozick, Peter Singer and Raimond Gaita).
Babies and children don’t possess all of those characteristics, at least not to the same degree as adults, but they possess others that compel us to have regard to their interests. Indeed, they strike us as uniquely appropriate subjects of our care and kindness. Not least important are their developing human minds and personalities, and their social dependence if they are to grow and flourish. As do adults, they also have their place in our societies, a very important one, since all societies see children as their hope for the future—no society would last for long if its members thought or felt otherwise.
Respecting nonhumans
If we think about nonhuman animals, we quickly realize that the species we have encountered to date possess only some of the characteristics that I’ve listed. However, animals do possess sentience, to varying degrees. Some appear capable of suffering in ways that go beyond physical pain. Some possess quite high levels of intelligence, and they are able to bond with us socially. All of these characteristics of animals may be enough (at least in particular cases) to make us feel we owe them considerable respect—moral respect, not the merely prudential kind that makes us avoid getting into unarmed combat with a rhinoceros or a tiger.
If we think about this seriously, some of us may feel compelled to vegetarianism. For the rest of us, it seems that an appropriate response to nonhuman animals is to at least kill them with the minimum of cruelty. At the very least, we should ensure that they are not subjected to extreme pain or to lives of suffering. All of this discussion suggests that nonhuman animals possess some dignity, understood as moral worth.
What about inanimate things? These, too, may sometimes constrain our actions, if only because harming them might harm other human beings or other sentient animals. (I set aside the tricky question of whether inanimate things can ever have interests of their own.) Even some individual trees, such as the General Grant redwood in the US and the magnificent Tule Tree in Mexico, seem to possess extraordinary value. To destroy or harm them would be reprehensible. The same can apply to works of art, to certain landscapes or seascapes and even to some complex and valuable machines.
By this point, it seems that we must show some moral respect not only to other human beings, but also to many other beings and things.
What if we encountered another species as intelligent as ourselves? We can, of course, imagine circumstances in which it would be rational to treat any such beings as our enemies—for example, if they were warlike and showed a low regard for our moral worth. But could we just treat them however we wanted? Would we be entitled to torture them? What if, like us, they felt terrible psychological suffering when their young ones died? Could we just slaughter their young anyway?
Our ability to bond socially with these other creatures—or their ability to bond with us—might be very relevant to how we would treat them. Likewise for their possession of characteristics such as sentience, self-consciousness and the capacity for deep emotional experiences. By comparison, the fact that they would not have human DNA seems of little relevance.
At this point, we can conclude that being human is not a necessary condition for having moral worth.
At least in principle, it is not even a necessary condition for having moral worth to the same degree as human adults and children.
Nor, I argue, is it a sufficient condition.
The moral worth of embryos
A human zygote or embryo is biologically of the species Homo sapiens, as I am, and as I can assume all my readers are. Does that give a zygote, or an early embryo, the same moral worth as an adult human being or a human child?
No. An early embryo is a tiny blob of cells that bears no resemblance to an adult or infant human being, except insofar as its DNA contains certain species-specific sequences of base pairs of nucleotides. An early embryo lacks such characteristics as sentience, awareness or rationality, or any of the other psychological or social characteristics that give adult or infant human beings their moral worth.
Nor is it a good argument to suggest that an embryo has the potential to develop these characteristics if it grows into a fully formed human being. The short answer is that the potential to develop morally significant characteristics is just not the same as actually having those characteristics right now. (But there is more to be said here; I have discussed this in comprehensive detail in my article “The Supposed Rights of the Fetus.”)
This leaves open the possibility that some abortions—for frivolous reasons or at an unnecessarily late stage—might turn out to be morally wrong. As for infanticide, I cannot put the point more plainly than Francis Fukuyama (in his Our Posthuman Future), who states that, “It is the violation of the natural and very powerful bonding that takes place between parent and infant.that makes infanticide such a heinous crime in most societies.” However, invoking the supposed human dignity of a zygote or an early embryo borders on irrationality or superstition.
DNA isn’t a deciding factor
It is plain that the moral worth of human beings, other animals and inanimate things is not dependent on the presence or absence of human DNA. The presence of human DNA is neither necessary nor sufficient to bestow moral worth. Instead, there are many other characteristics that strike us when we consider how we may (ethically speaking) treat someone or something.
There is, of course, something attractive and true in the idea that we humans all have great moral worth, despite our individual differences. This idea can be invoked to argue, for example, that people of all racial or ancestral backgrounds should be treated equally under the law and, moreover, with kindness and consideration. After the horrors committed by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s, and similar horrors that have continued since in many parts of the world, it is surely worth making the point—as strongly as possible—that we are all very similar under the skin.
If the phrase “human dignity” helps us keep this in mind, perhaps it can be retained as shorthand to refer to the moral worth of all adult or infant human beings, irrespective of race or ancestry.
However, our moral worth does not reside in the fact of our Homo sapiens DNA. For this reason, it makes no sense to argue about bioethical issues, such as cloning and stem cell research, on the basis that there is a specific human dignity. The concept of human dignity is a blunt tool for any careful analysis of those issues. It is a tool that we should discard.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Russell Blackford page at Academia.edu
For anyone interested, and who might not see this in some other way, I've built a page for myself on the Academia.edu site. The new "Russell Blackford" page includes several previously published articles that I've uploaded to give them additional life. Among them, there's a slightly longer and better version of my ABC Religion and Ethics Portal article on Sam Harris and free will: among other tweaks, I've restored some cut material and reverted some changed wording between my manuscript, as sent to the ABC, and the version that was published in April 2012. Some of the original editing done on the manuscript by the ABC improved it, but IMO not all. So this is the director's cut if you want to think of it that way.
Among others, I've also included my "Science and the Sea of Faith" piece, which is not otherwise readily available.
And I've also included a quite detailed academic CV, if you're by any chance interested. I'm not expecting that readers of this blog are going to besiege me with job offers, but I do think it's worthwhile having a CV Out There online that gives something of the full story: something a bit less minimalist and austere than I'd usually write about myself. (The CV on my own website now pretty much mirrors the Academia.edu one, but I'm not expecting anybody to run off and compare them, so I won't bother you with that link.)
Among others, I've also included my "Science and the Sea of Faith" piece, which is not otherwise readily available.
And I've also included a quite detailed academic CV, if you're by any chance interested. I'm not expecting that readers of this blog are going to besiege me with job offers, but I do think it's worthwhile having a CV Out There online that gives something of the full story: something a bit less minimalist and austere than I'd usually write about myself. (The CV on my own website now pretty much mirrors the Academia.edu one, but I'm not expecting anybody to run off and compare them, so I won't bother you with that link.)
Friday, April 15, 2016
Live long! Live free!
With just one change in the spelling of a word, I'm reposting this - in the spirit of 1. keeping a record and 2. making the piece available to new readers - from the Longevity Meme site. It was first posted there on November 15, 2002. In turn, "Live long! Live free!" was based on an article, "Life Extension and its Enemies", first published in Quadrant magazine in December 1999.
Since the predecessor to "Live long! Live free!" was written almost 17 years ago, and the piece was revised/abridged in this form nearly 14 years ago, I don't necessarily endorse every sentence. Still, it seems to hold up pretty well. If I have a reservation, it's that I now take an overall more pessimistic view about existential risks to humanity. That might change my emphasis when writing de novo about such topics.
I.
If some H.G. Wellsian counterpart to me had been alive a century ago, and speculating about the future development of science and technology, how would his contemporaries have reacted if he'd managed to make a series of broadly accurate prophecies about the 20th century?
He might have predicted how communications in the developed world would be revolutionized by the spread of telephones, radio broadcasts, television and the Internet. He might have described the emergence of sophisticated motor cars, aviation, space vehicles and probes, impressive ocean vessels, large-scale engineering techniques, freely available electricity, awesome weapons of mass destruction, extraordinarily precise scientific instruments, and biomedical advances in fields such as antibiotics, organ transplants, contraception and genomics. By the turn of the millennium, so he might have prophesied, all fields of human enterprise and activity would be altered strangely, dramatically and deeply by science and technology.
At the beginning of the 20th century, anyone seriously putting forward such a vision would have risked being called a crackpot, a fraud, or extravagant opportunist - at best, some kind of utopian dreamer. Yet exactly these innovations and more have come to be. While it is difficult to predict just what technological and social changes will take place during this new century and millennium, recent experience suggests they will be enormous. The development of technology will further shape how we live, how we see ourselves, perhaps our very nature.
Barring a successful program by governments to suppress technological change, we will increasingly transcend our biological limitations. In particular, it is possible that current research on the causes of human aging will lead to genuine breakthroughs in maximum life expectancy, not merely average life spans, opening up dramatic changes in social organization and mores.
II.
Those who oppose the development of futuristic technologies often express skepticism as to whether they are possible. There are, indeed, scientific and philosophical arguments as to why some technologies may not be feasible, at least as they are currently imagined by speculative thinkers. Despite the swiftness and power of our aircraft, we have never equalled the freedom and beauty of the birds.
However, as more technologies move from the realm of pure speculation to that of in-principle achievability, skepticism will increasingly be superseded by frightened resistance from neo-Luddites, with expressions of repugnance when new technologies appear "unnatural" and appeals for relinquishment when they appear too powerful. Radical technologies to extend human life are already encountering opposition, even though it is too early to state authoritatively that our maximum life expectancy, as opposed to the average life span, can be increased.
My fear is that we are more likely to turn out to be the last generation of mortals than the first generation of immortals. Yet, some scientists well qualified in the relevant fields speak openly of the possibility that aging can be defeated. There is at least a hope that we can live far longer, healthier and more active lives than ever before. This realization has caused a backlash, and it is surprisingly difficult to find support for such an attractive prospect from the cultural elites. On the contrary, writers, intellectuals and journalists display a negativity towards radical life extension that often shades into horror or disgust.
Worse, there is every sign that this backlash could grow into a widespread political struggle to ban life-extending technology and research. The current reaction to genetic technologies provides a precedent for this. The political forces that would be ranged against any effective life extension technology could easily win out-at least for a time. We have already seen such bizarre statements as Margaret Wertheim's wish to have the "choice" of a society in which she is not only free to decline the use of radical life extension technology, but in which everyone else is prevented from doing so, even if they want to. She actually argues for this in the name of freedom!
Supporters for legislative prohibitions will be found on both the Right and Left of the traditional political spectrum. The religious Right advocates the coercive use of state power to control private behavior inconsistent with its moral and metaphysical views. The Left has largely renounced its support for individual liberty. Many left-wing intellectuals and political agents see the political arena as one where power is to be seized and used to impose their own visions of the good. They have abandoned the classical liberal ideal of a society in which people are free to pursue their own values and life plans with as little restriction as possible. In those circumstances, Wertheim will not be alone in wishing to invoke the state's guns and police to suppress any radical life extension technology that begins to look feasible.
III.
Why all this resistance to something that seems good-the prospect of living much longer, of living healthily and actively deep into what we now think of as old age... and beyond? Why the urge to suppress our freedom in this area? Often, the opposition seems to be on metaphysical grounds, or it flows from a rationalization of death's inevitability as somehow desirable.
Wertheim is opposed to life extension fundamentally because she sees it as "selfish", but that alone is not usually a reason for conduct to attract legal prohibition. We are normally free to pursue self-regarding interests as long as we don't interfere violently or unreasonably with the bodies or property of our fellows. To be fair, she develops an argument that is not obviously ridiculous. She posits the following dilemma. If the technology is developed, it will either be restricted to a wealthy elite or become widely available. If it is closely confined to the wealthy, this will increase the gap between rich and poor. If it is spread widely, particularly if this applies globally, the outcome will be environmentally disastrous.
Well, we do not normally suppress goods and services because they may be disproportionally available to the rich. The whole point of legitimately acquiring wealth is that it becomes possible to buy things that are unavailable without it. However, it could be argued that the possibility of a radically extended life would be so important that it should become accessible to everyone. It is one thing (so the argument might go) to live in a society where some people possess many times the material wealth of others. The problems are an order of magnitude greater in a society where the rich have transcended their biology, leaving others behind and creating a formerly unimaginable gap between their interests and those of everyone else.
There is some force in this. It is certainly arguable that every attempt should be made to offer the choice of powerful new technologies, such as radical life extension, as widely as possible, as quickly as possible. But this confronts us with the other horn of Wertheim's dilemma. She relies on the undoubted fact that the Earth has a limited carrying capacity for human beings, which would be tested all the more severely if life expectancy increased.
At the same time, improvements in biomedical technology do not happen in a vacuum. For example, widely effective use of nanotechnology for biomedical purposes would exist only in a world that had developed nanotechnological manipulation for other purposes, such as new kinds of manufacturing. Powerful technologies for augmenting the human life span by attacking the genetic bases of aging would exist only in a world with high levels of genetic expertise for other uses, such as improved nutrition. No effective technology for radical life extension will be developed while work in other technological fields stays still. A world in which radical life extension is available will be one with vastly greater resources than ours.
Furthermore, there is a tendency for populations in developed countries actually to shrink unless growth is encouraged by the state through migration programs and other means. Affluent and educated people turn away from having large numbers of children in order to concentrate on other domains of their lives. If high levels of technology including, but not limited to, radical life extension became available globally, it should not be assumed that long-living human beings would breed at the rates that have predominated in past centuries under quite different social and economic arrangements.
A society of the very long-lived people might appear strange to us and do many things differently, but it need not have a devastating effect on global resources. In any event, no one has ever suggested that such considerations provide a legitimate argument against sanitation, immunization, safe roads and other measures for public health and safety, though average life spans would be reduced drastically if these were abandoned. Any interference by the state with people's control of their own bodies is surely a last-ditch resort for dealing with population problems.
Fortunately, the opponents of life extension will not have things all their own way. It is one thing to ban a technology such as reproductive cloning, which is likely to have attractions for relatively few people. It is quite another to deny us technologies that open up the possibility of dramatically enhanced lives for everyone. For myself, I see the argument as one between people who are committed to advancing the power of medical science to give us more life, and those who prefer to deny our freedom and impose their personal moral views. The position of the latter group is neither intellectually persuasive nor an acceptable basis for public policy in a liberal society. As the debate begins over radical life extension, I have no doubt which side I am on.
Since the predecessor to "Live long! Live free!" was written almost 17 years ago, and the piece was revised/abridged in this form nearly 14 years ago, I don't necessarily endorse every sentence. Still, it seems to hold up pretty well. If I have a reservation, it's that I now take an overall more pessimistic view about existential risks to humanity. That might change my emphasis when writing de novo about such topics.
I.
If some H.G. Wellsian counterpart to me had been alive a century ago, and speculating about the future development of science and technology, how would his contemporaries have reacted if he'd managed to make a series of broadly accurate prophecies about the 20th century?
He might have predicted how communications in the developed world would be revolutionized by the spread of telephones, radio broadcasts, television and the Internet. He might have described the emergence of sophisticated motor cars, aviation, space vehicles and probes, impressive ocean vessels, large-scale engineering techniques, freely available electricity, awesome weapons of mass destruction, extraordinarily precise scientific instruments, and biomedical advances in fields such as antibiotics, organ transplants, contraception and genomics. By the turn of the millennium, so he might have prophesied, all fields of human enterprise and activity would be altered strangely, dramatically and deeply by science and technology.
At the beginning of the 20th century, anyone seriously putting forward such a vision would have risked being called a crackpot, a fraud, or extravagant opportunist - at best, some kind of utopian dreamer. Yet exactly these innovations and more have come to be. While it is difficult to predict just what technological and social changes will take place during this new century and millennium, recent experience suggests they will be enormous. The development of technology will further shape how we live, how we see ourselves, perhaps our very nature.
Barring a successful program by governments to suppress technological change, we will increasingly transcend our biological limitations. In particular, it is possible that current research on the causes of human aging will lead to genuine breakthroughs in maximum life expectancy, not merely average life spans, opening up dramatic changes in social organization and mores.
II.
Those who oppose the development of futuristic technologies often express skepticism as to whether they are possible. There are, indeed, scientific and philosophical arguments as to why some technologies may not be feasible, at least as they are currently imagined by speculative thinkers. Despite the swiftness and power of our aircraft, we have never equalled the freedom and beauty of the birds.
However, as more technologies move from the realm of pure speculation to that of in-principle achievability, skepticism will increasingly be superseded by frightened resistance from neo-Luddites, with expressions of repugnance when new technologies appear "unnatural" and appeals for relinquishment when they appear too powerful. Radical technologies to extend human life are already encountering opposition, even though it is too early to state authoritatively that our maximum life expectancy, as opposed to the average life span, can be increased.
My fear is that we are more likely to turn out to be the last generation of mortals than the first generation of immortals. Yet, some scientists well qualified in the relevant fields speak openly of the possibility that aging can be defeated. There is at least a hope that we can live far longer, healthier and more active lives than ever before. This realization has caused a backlash, and it is surprisingly difficult to find support for such an attractive prospect from the cultural elites. On the contrary, writers, intellectuals and journalists display a negativity towards radical life extension that often shades into horror or disgust.
Worse, there is every sign that this backlash could grow into a widespread political struggle to ban life-extending technology and research. The current reaction to genetic technologies provides a precedent for this. The political forces that would be ranged against any effective life extension technology could easily win out-at least for a time. We have already seen such bizarre statements as Margaret Wertheim's wish to have the "choice" of a society in which she is not only free to decline the use of radical life extension technology, but in which everyone else is prevented from doing so, even if they want to. She actually argues for this in the name of freedom!
Supporters for legislative prohibitions will be found on both the Right and Left of the traditional political spectrum. The religious Right advocates the coercive use of state power to control private behavior inconsistent with its moral and metaphysical views. The Left has largely renounced its support for individual liberty. Many left-wing intellectuals and political agents see the political arena as one where power is to be seized and used to impose their own visions of the good. They have abandoned the classical liberal ideal of a society in which people are free to pursue their own values and life plans with as little restriction as possible. In those circumstances, Wertheim will not be alone in wishing to invoke the state's guns and police to suppress any radical life extension technology that begins to look feasible.
III.
Why all this resistance to something that seems good-the prospect of living much longer, of living healthily and actively deep into what we now think of as old age... and beyond? Why the urge to suppress our freedom in this area? Often, the opposition seems to be on metaphysical grounds, or it flows from a rationalization of death's inevitability as somehow desirable.
Wertheim is opposed to life extension fundamentally because she sees it as "selfish", but that alone is not usually a reason for conduct to attract legal prohibition. We are normally free to pursue self-regarding interests as long as we don't interfere violently or unreasonably with the bodies or property of our fellows. To be fair, she develops an argument that is not obviously ridiculous. She posits the following dilemma. If the technology is developed, it will either be restricted to a wealthy elite or become widely available. If it is closely confined to the wealthy, this will increase the gap between rich and poor. If it is spread widely, particularly if this applies globally, the outcome will be environmentally disastrous.
Well, we do not normally suppress goods and services because they may be disproportionally available to the rich. The whole point of legitimately acquiring wealth is that it becomes possible to buy things that are unavailable without it. However, it could be argued that the possibility of a radically extended life would be so important that it should become accessible to everyone. It is one thing (so the argument might go) to live in a society where some people possess many times the material wealth of others. The problems are an order of magnitude greater in a society where the rich have transcended their biology, leaving others behind and creating a formerly unimaginable gap between their interests and those of everyone else.
There is some force in this. It is certainly arguable that every attempt should be made to offer the choice of powerful new technologies, such as radical life extension, as widely as possible, as quickly as possible. But this confronts us with the other horn of Wertheim's dilemma. She relies on the undoubted fact that the Earth has a limited carrying capacity for human beings, which would be tested all the more severely if life expectancy increased.
At the same time, improvements in biomedical technology do not happen in a vacuum. For example, widely effective use of nanotechnology for biomedical purposes would exist only in a world that had developed nanotechnological manipulation for other purposes, such as new kinds of manufacturing. Powerful technologies for augmenting the human life span by attacking the genetic bases of aging would exist only in a world with high levels of genetic expertise for other uses, such as improved nutrition. No effective technology for radical life extension will be developed while work in other technological fields stays still. A world in which radical life extension is available will be one with vastly greater resources than ours.
Furthermore, there is a tendency for populations in developed countries actually to shrink unless growth is encouraged by the state through migration programs and other means. Affluent and educated people turn away from having large numbers of children in order to concentrate on other domains of their lives. If high levels of technology including, but not limited to, radical life extension became available globally, it should not be assumed that long-living human beings would breed at the rates that have predominated in past centuries under quite different social and economic arrangements.
A society of the very long-lived people might appear strange to us and do many things differently, but it need not have a devastating effect on global resources. In any event, no one has ever suggested that such considerations provide a legitimate argument against sanitation, immunization, safe roads and other measures for public health and safety, though average life spans would be reduced drastically if these were abandoned. Any interference by the state with people's control of their own bodies is surely a last-ditch resort for dealing with population problems.
Fortunately, the opponents of life extension will not have things all their own way. It is one thing to ban a technology such as reproductive cloning, which is likely to have attractions for relatively few people. It is quite another to deny us technologies that open up the possibility of dramatically enhanced lives for everyone. For myself, I see the argument as one between people who are committed to advancing the power of medical science to give us more life, and those who prefer to deny our freedom and impose their personal moral views. The position of the latter group is neither intellectually persuasive nor an acceptable basis for public policy in a liberal society. As the debate begins over radical life extension, I have no doubt which side I am on.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Some updated census information on religion in Australia
1901
2011
- ANGLICAN .......... 17.1
- CATHOLIC ........... 25.3
TOTAL XIAN .......... 61.1
OTHER REL. ............ 7.2
NO RELIG/N .......... 22.3
INAD DESCR .......... (seemingly) 9.4
===============
- ANGLICAN .......... 39.7
- CATHOLIC ........... 22.7
TOTAL XIAN .......... 96.1
OTHER REL. ............ 1.4
NO RELIG/N ............ 0.4
INAD DESCR ............ 2.0
===============
1996===============
- ANGLICAN .......... 22.0
- CATHOLIC ........... 27.0
TOTAL XIAN .......... 70.9
OTHER REL. ............ 3.5
NO RELIG/N .......... 16.6
INAD DESCR ............ 9.0
===============
2001
- ANGLICAN .......... 20.7
- CATHOLIC ........... 26.6
TOTAL XIAN .......... 68.0
OTHER REL. ............ 4.9
NO RELIG/N .......... 15.5
INAD DESCR .......... 11.7
===============
2006
- ANGLICAN .......... 18.7
- CATHOLIC ........... 25.8
TOTAL XIAN .......... 63.9
OTHER REL. ............ 5.6
NO RELIG/N .......... 18.7
INAD DESCR .......... 11.9
2011
- ANGLICAN .......... 17.1
- CATHOLIC ........... 25.3
TOTAL XIAN .......... 61.1
OTHER REL. ............ 7.2
NO RELIG/N .......... 22.3
INAD DESCR .......... (seemingly) 9.4
===============
Wednesday, March 09, 2016
Old Man's War, by John Scalzi - comments, and a sort of review, with spoilers
Last year I wrote posts on, respectively, Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.
More recently, I've read John Scalzi's 2005 novel, Old Man's War, which can be understood as an updated version of both. I haven't read any of the book's increasingly numerous sequels, so I'm going to comment on it isolation.
Old Man's War has received much attention over the past decade or so, and it's widely regarded as one of the most important science fiction novels, so far, of the new century. On balance, I think that response is justified, and that the book is in many ways a worthy successor to Starship Troopers and The Forever War. To be honest, I found much of the dialogue and exposition too hokey, but the story is involving and suspenseful. Some irritations aside, it held my attention.
Like the novels by Heinlein and Haldeman, Old Man's War is told in the first person by a military recruit - John Perry in this case - telling us about his enlistment, training, combat experience, and other (mis)adventures. As with the earlier novels, there is much emphasis on the daily hardships of military life, though it is clear enough that the narrator has at least survived to tell the tale.
Scalzi updates the vision of futuristic military technology: instead of emphasizing armoured battlesuits, he portrays his warriors as radically enhanced via genetics and other biological innovations. Although they do wear high-technology suits as protection, they rely mainly on superhuman strength, speed, reaction times, and so on, together with wonderfully advanced guns and communications systems.
The major twist is that the military of the future enlists older recruits: enlistment is for volunteers who have turned 75. On joining up, they are augmented by having their minds uploaded into biologically enhanced clones of themselves, physically aged about 20. Though the exact nature of what will happen is not revealed to them in advance, they do receive strong hints that they will be rejuvenated in some way, and indeed this is their major inducement to enlist. The rejuvenation is simply much more radical than they expect or can imagine. (In this novel at least, Scalzi does not deal with the issue of whether the recruits' identities are preserved by the uploading process.)
As with Starship Troopers, there is no end in sight to the war, although in this case it is fought against a variety of alien civilizations squabbling with each other, and with colonists from Earth, over territory - or in the case of one especially highly advanced civilization, fighting for less scrutable reasons. At the same time, we are left with hope for an optimistic outcome for the main character (similar to that ultimately gained by William Mandella at the end of The Forever War).
In writing, last May, about The Forever War, I noted how its portrayal of the military - and of warfare - is far more bitter and cynical than that of Starship Troopers (which could surely be used as recruitment propaganda). Yet there is a sense in which Haldeman's book has a happier ending than Heinlein's, since its war is not actually "forever". Old Man's War neither glorifies the military and a commitment to military life, in the way of Starship Troopers, nor condemns them, in the way of The Forever War. If anything, Scalzi makes the difficulties and the tedium seem less oppressive than we are shown by either Heinlein or Haldeman - though there are plenty of deaths of sympathetic characters, and the narrator is put through numerous kinds of hell. The difference is not so much in the kinds of events described as in the distinctive voice of John Perry: he seems detached and intelligent both in his role as a narrator and during the various episodes that he recalls (this is, perhaps, appropriate for a man of more-than-mature years who has had time to acquire much worldly wisdom before he even signs up).
As Old Man's War ends, war seems to be neither a necessity that transcends any moral demands (providing, rather, a backdrop to them), as in Starship Troopers, nor to be, as in The Forever War, sheer unnecessary craziness. The sense, rather, is that pursuing alternatives is difficult, perhaps almost impossible. We need to try, but meanwhile we also need to carry on. One character who preaches diplomacy rather than war is shown as both essentially right and as a sanctimonious, egotistical fool (there may be a way to achieve what he wants, but not here or yet or easily... and he's a fool not to realise that).
That's a more complex vision than we're used to in science fiction novels, perhaps, though possibly a realistic one; I'll be interested to find out where Scalzi takes it in the sequels.
More recently, I've read John Scalzi's 2005 novel, Old Man's War, which can be understood as an updated version of both. I haven't read any of the book's increasingly numerous sequels, so I'm going to comment on it isolation.
Old Man's War has received much attention over the past decade or so, and it's widely regarded as one of the most important science fiction novels, so far, of the new century. On balance, I think that response is justified, and that the book is in many ways a worthy successor to Starship Troopers and The Forever War. To be honest, I found much of the dialogue and exposition too hokey, but the story is involving and suspenseful. Some irritations aside, it held my attention.
Like the novels by Heinlein and Haldeman, Old Man's War is told in the first person by a military recruit - John Perry in this case - telling us about his enlistment, training, combat experience, and other (mis)adventures. As with the earlier novels, there is much emphasis on the daily hardships of military life, though it is clear enough that the narrator has at least survived to tell the tale.
Scalzi updates the vision of futuristic military technology: instead of emphasizing armoured battlesuits, he portrays his warriors as radically enhanced via genetics and other biological innovations. Although they do wear high-technology suits as protection, they rely mainly on superhuman strength, speed, reaction times, and so on, together with wonderfully advanced guns and communications systems.
The major twist is that the military of the future enlists older recruits: enlistment is for volunteers who have turned 75. On joining up, they are augmented by having their minds uploaded into biologically enhanced clones of themselves, physically aged about 20. Though the exact nature of what will happen is not revealed to them in advance, they do receive strong hints that they will be rejuvenated in some way, and indeed this is their major inducement to enlist. The rejuvenation is simply much more radical than they expect or can imagine. (In this novel at least, Scalzi does not deal with the issue of whether the recruits' identities are preserved by the uploading process.)
As with Starship Troopers, there is no end in sight to the war, although in this case it is fought against a variety of alien civilizations squabbling with each other, and with colonists from Earth, over territory - or in the case of one especially highly advanced civilization, fighting for less scrutable reasons. At the same time, we are left with hope for an optimistic outcome for the main character (similar to that ultimately gained by William Mandella at the end of The Forever War).
In writing, last May, about The Forever War, I noted how its portrayal of the military - and of warfare - is far more bitter and cynical than that of Starship Troopers (which could surely be used as recruitment propaganda). Yet there is a sense in which Haldeman's book has a happier ending than Heinlein's, since its war is not actually "forever". Old Man's War neither glorifies the military and a commitment to military life, in the way of Starship Troopers, nor condemns them, in the way of The Forever War. If anything, Scalzi makes the difficulties and the tedium seem less oppressive than we are shown by either Heinlein or Haldeman - though there are plenty of deaths of sympathetic characters, and the narrator is put through numerous kinds of hell. The difference is not so much in the kinds of events described as in the distinctive voice of John Perry: he seems detached and intelligent both in his role as a narrator and during the various episodes that he recalls (this is, perhaps, appropriate for a man of more-than-mature years who has had time to acquire much worldly wisdom before he even signs up).
As Old Man's War ends, war seems to be neither a necessity that transcends any moral demands (providing, rather, a backdrop to them), as in Starship Troopers, nor to be, as in The Forever War, sheer unnecessary craziness. The sense, rather, is that pursuing alternatives is difficult, perhaps almost impossible. We need to try, but meanwhile we also need to carry on. One character who preaches diplomacy rather than war is shown as both essentially right and as a sanctimonious, egotistical fool (there may be a way to achieve what he wants, but not here or yet or easily... and he's a fool not to realise that).
That's a more complex vision than we're used to in science fiction novels, perhaps, though possibly a realistic one; I'll be interested to find out where Scalzi takes it in the sequels.
Power porn: Some thoughts on the space opera of E.E. "Doc" Smith
I've been reading some of the work of E.E. "Doc" Smith, which has exerted a great influence on more modern science fiction series, not least the Star Wars movies.
Though the writing is often clumsy, or indeed - for readers used to more restrained and literary fare - melodramatic to the point of hysteria, there's also much of interest. Smith creates an extraordinary range of monsters, alien environments and civilizations, and generally a lived-in universe.
Some of his villains are remarkable, far more interesting, for my money, than his near-flawless heroes. Notably, Marc DuQuesne, the calm, cultured, supremely competent, and strangely honourable villain of the Skylark books, provides a template for many of the great supervillains that followed in comics and movies. Like some of those later villains, DuQuesne is both a worthy - and often successful - antagonist and an invaluable ally, when the occasion arises, against worse evildoers.
In Galactic Patrol, from Smith's Lensmen series, there is a passage (1977 Jove edition p. 121) in which one of the mysterious and powerful Arisians sets out the moral stakes explicitly. He is speaking to Helmuth, the book's calculating and resourceful villain:
During this dialogue, Helmuth is rebuffed in his quest to discover the workings of the Lens, a powerful device that the Arisians have given to the good guys to advantage them in their civilizational struggle against Helmuth and the piratical Boskonians. As we also see in the Skylark series, the overt theme is scientific responsibility, and particularly the responsible uses of powerful technology that can be employed for advanced weaponry. The role of a Gray Lensman - an especially powerful agent who is given a great range of personal freedom and discretion - involves both responsibility and pride. Thus, Kinnison, the main protagonist of the Lensman books is told (p. 141 of the same edition of Galactic Patrol):
I'm surely not the first critic to have noticed how this plays out, as the books question and examine the responsible uses of power, while also amounting to pornography-like fantasies of power in which the (supposedly) morally upright heroes wreak endless death and destruction. It's fascinating, at any rate, to read E.E. Smith with this tension in mind.
Though the writing is often clumsy, or indeed - for readers used to more restrained and literary fare - melodramatic to the point of hysteria, there's also much of interest. Smith creates an extraordinary range of monsters, alien environments and civilizations, and generally a lived-in universe.
Some of his villains are remarkable, far more interesting, for my money, than his near-flawless heroes. Notably, Marc DuQuesne, the calm, cultured, supremely competent, and strangely honourable villain of the Skylark books, provides a template for many of the great supervillains that followed in comics and movies. Like some of those later villains, DuQuesne is both a worthy - and often successful - antagonist and an invaluable ally, when the occasion arises, against worse evildoers.
In Galactic Patrol, from Smith's Lensmen series, there is a passage (1977 Jove edition p. 121) in which one of the mysterious and powerful Arisians sets out the moral stakes explicitly. He is speaking to Helmuth, the book's calculating and resourceful villain:
"Evil and good are of course purely relative, so it cannot be said in absolute terms that your culture is evil. It is, however, based upon greed, hatred, corruption, violence, and fear. Justice it does not recognize, nor mercy, nor truth except as a scientific utility. It is basically opposed to liberty. Now liberty - of person, of thought, of action - is the basic [sic] and the goal of the civilization to which you are opposed, and with which any really philosophical mind must find itself in accord."This contains Smith's denial of moral absolutes (we are often shown alien civilizations with their own local mores and folkways that are presented without any denigration), his preference for thick moral description over terms such as "good" and "evil", and a concise account of his ostensible values.
During this dialogue, Helmuth is rebuffed in his quest to discover the workings of the Lens, a powerful device that the Arisians have given to the good guys to advantage them in their civilizational struggle against Helmuth and the piratical Boskonians. As we also see in the Skylark series, the overt theme is scientific responsibility, and particularly the responsible uses of powerful technology that can be employed for advanced weaponry. The role of a Gray Lensman - an especially powerful agent who is given a great range of personal freedom and discretion - involves both responsibility and pride. Thus, Kinnison, the main protagonist of the Lensman books is told (p. 141 of the same edition of Galactic Patrol):
"You are to be as nearly absolutely free an agent as it is possible for a living, flesh-and-blood creature to be. To the man on the street that would seem to spell a condition of perfect bliss. Only a Gray Lensman knows what a frightful load it really is; but it is a load that such a Lensman is glad and proud to carry."However, these books are also a kind of power porn, inviting their readers' excitement over the constant depictions of awe-inspiring, "incredible" (a favourite word in these books) - and very often destructive - feats of power. This, surely, is what made Smith's books so popular: we are led to identify with the heroes as they perform their - well, yes - incredible actions. Even the bad guys gain our sneaking admiration with their own remarkable feats, as well as the cunning that they bring in their wars against the wonderful and righteous heroes.
I'm surely not the first critic to have noticed how this plays out, as the books question and examine the responsible uses of power, while also amounting to pornography-like fantasies of power in which the (supposedly) morally upright heroes wreak endless death and destruction. It's fascinating, at any rate, to read E.E. Smith with this tension in mind.
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Blast from the past: On disinviting speakers
The following was first posted on the Skeptic Ink site on 16 March 2013 - under the heading "Disinviting Speakers - the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate debacle". It expresses some general views about the rare circumstances in which it is socially legitimate to disinvite speakers. Clearly, none of those rare circumstances applied to the especially egregious case of Professor Albert's disinvitation, and they would seldom apply even to less obviously egregious cases. One of my most popular posts on this site related to the disinvitation of Elizabeth Moon by WisCon in 2010, and disinvitations are an ongoing problem.
It's worth thinking about this again at a time when many high-profile people (Germaine Greer, Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, etc.) have recently received, or have been threatened with, disinvitations.
==================
Jerry Coyne has a post about a recent debacle relating to the annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, a large public event hosted by the American Museum of Natural History. Speakers and topics are currently chosen by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The problem that’s come up is that Dr Tyson invited Professor David Albert as one of the panelists to take part in the debate, to be held on 20 March this year. That invitation was extended (and apparently accepted) in October 2012, but it was rescinded in early January 2013. If you look at the comment thread, scrolling down to near the end, you’ll see that Dr Tyson gives an explanation – that about two months after issuing the invitation he realised that he’d set up the debate in a way that was contrary to the event’s traditions. It was turning into a philosophical debate about broad and abstract questions, such as the nature or concept of nothingness, rather than a debate between working scientists on a strictly scientific issue. Indeed, the event has never previously included a philosopher on the stage.
Or something like that. I may have missed certain nuances, and I don’t wish to be unfair… so check for yourself to see how Dr Tyson explains his decision. The background is that Professor Albert had given an unfavorable review to Lawrence Krauss’s book A Universe From Nothing, and the two of them would have been part of a panel discussing issues related to the book’s thesis. Taking the explanation at face value, it appears that Professor Krauss was not involved in the decision and should not be blamed for it.
You’ll also see, immediately afterwards on the thread, a response to by Massimo Pigliucci. I think Professor Pigliucci is correct in this instance: the reasons given for the disinvitation were relatively weak, and it is too late to rely on such reasons after a speaker is already locked in. If such considerations are going to be relied on, it should be before speakers are approached, not after a speaker has accepted in good faith (and spent two to three months of living and planning on the expectation of taking part in the event).
Do I think that speakers should never be disinvited? No, that would be going too far. I can think of cases where it would be clearly defensible and other cases that are at least rather murky and grey. What if, between the invitation/acceptance and the event, the speaker says or does something sufficiently outrageous and dramatic to bring the event into disrepute? I think there could be cases where such conduct might be so serious that a disinvitation would be clearly defensible… while less serious cases might fall in a grey area with reasonable arguments on both sides. However, it should not be enough that the speaker has merely stated (even robustly) a position that the organisers object to and find offensive. If someone is disinvited on these sorts of grounds, I’d at least want to see an argument that the conduct was beyond the pale of what is accepted in a pluralist society where many opposing views are publicly advocated. Accepting an invitation certainly does not mean that you must, until the event takes place, avoid expressing opinions that offend the organisers.
What if misconduct by the speaker not previously known to the organisers comes to light? In a sufficiently serious case, the organisers might be justified in disinviting.
What if the organisers and speaker have agreed on a topic but later the speaker makes it clear that he or she insists on speaking on another topic? In a very clear-cut case, the speaker might announce unilaterally a determination to speak on something obviously different from what was agreed or understood. A greyer area might be if the speaker indicates a strong inclination to “twist” the meaning of the topic, so that it is very different from what the organisers reasonably thought they were agreeing to (or indeed, were asking the speaker to address in the first place). This can be a matter of judgment, but in some cases I’d think that the disinvitation was at least within the proper discretion of the organisers (even if I wouldn’t have made the same judgment call).
I’m sure there are other circumstances where a disinvitation might be warranted. Doubtless the categories of cases are not closed, but they would usually have something to do with the speaker’s questionable conduct (or revelations about it) after the invitation and acceptance. One exception, I suppose, might simply be some kind of financial exigency requiring the scaling down of an event (perhaps with a reduced number of speakers from what was first planned).
Nothing like any of this seems to have been the case with Professor Albert. What we are seeing is, apparently, just a change of mind about the nature of the event long after he had given his agreement to the invitation. This sort of thing should not happen – once an engagement is locked in, the speaker should be able to plan on the basis that it will stand, barring some unusual occurrence or some disreputable or unreasonable conduct by the speaker. Professor Albert appears to have been treated badly here, and this episode should stand as an example of how not to do things.
It's worth thinking about this again at a time when many high-profile people (Germaine Greer, Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, etc.) have recently received, or have been threatened with, disinvitations.
==================
Jerry Coyne has a post about a recent debacle relating to the annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, a large public event hosted by the American Museum of Natural History. Speakers and topics are currently chosen by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The problem that’s come up is that Dr Tyson invited Professor David Albert as one of the panelists to take part in the debate, to be held on 20 March this year. That invitation was extended (and apparently accepted) in October 2012, but it was rescinded in early January 2013. If you look at the comment thread, scrolling down to near the end, you’ll see that Dr Tyson gives an explanation – that about two months after issuing the invitation he realised that he’d set up the debate in a way that was contrary to the event’s traditions. It was turning into a philosophical debate about broad and abstract questions, such as the nature or concept of nothingness, rather than a debate between working scientists on a strictly scientific issue. Indeed, the event has never previously included a philosopher on the stage.
Or something like that. I may have missed certain nuances, and I don’t wish to be unfair… so check for yourself to see how Dr Tyson explains his decision. The background is that Professor Albert had given an unfavorable review to Lawrence Krauss’s book A Universe From Nothing, and the two of them would have been part of a panel discussing issues related to the book’s thesis. Taking the explanation at face value, it appears that Professor Krauss was not involved in the decision and should not be blamed for it.
You’ll also see, immediately afterwards on the thread, a response to by Massimo Pigliucci. I think Professor Pigliucci is correct in this instance: the reasons given for the disinvitation were relatively weak, and it is too late to rely on such reasons after a speaker is already locked in. If such considerations are going to be relied on, it should be before speakers are approached, not after a speaker has accepted in good faith (and spent two to three months of living and planning on the expectation of taking part in the event).
Do I think that speakers should never be disinvited? No, that would be going too far. I can think of cases where it would be clearly defensible and other cases that are at least rather murky and grey. What if, between the invitation/acceptance and the event, the speaker says or does something sufficiently outrageous and dramatic to bring the event into disrepute? I think there could be cases where such conduct might be so serious that a disinvitation would be clearly defensible… while less serious cases might fall in a grey area with reasonable arguments on both sides. However, it should not be enough that the speaker has merely stated (even robustly) a position that the organisers object to and find offensive. If someone is disinvited on these sorts of grounds, I’d at least want to see an argument that the conduct was beyond the pale of what is accepted in a pluralist society where many opposing views are publicly advocated. Accepting an invitation certainly does not mean that you must, until the event takes place, avoid expressing opinions that offend the organisers.
What if misconduct by the speaker not previously known to the organisers comes to light? In a sufficiently serious case, the organisers might be justified in disinviting.
What if the organisers and speaker have agreed on a topic but later the speaker makes it clear that he or she insists on speaking on another topic? In a very clear-cut case, the speaker might announce unilaterally a determination to speak on something obviously different from what was agreed or understood. A greyer area might be if the speaker indicates a strong inclination to “twist” the meaning of the topic, so that it is very different from what the organisers reasonably thought they were agreeing to (or indeed, were asking the speaker to address in the first place). This can be a matter of judgment, but in some cases I’d think that the disinvitation was at least within the proper discretion of the organisers (even if I wouldn’t have made the same judgment call).
I’m sure there are other circumstances where a disinvitation might be warranted. Doubtless the categories of cases are not closed, but they would usually have something to do with the speaker’s questionable conduct (or revelations about it) after the invitation and acceptance. One exception, I suppose, might simply be some kind of financial exigency requiring the scaling down of an event (perhaps with a reduced number of speakers from what was first planned).
Nothing like any of this seems to have been the case with Professor Albert. What we are seeing is, apparently, just a change of mind about the nature of the event long after he had given his agreement to the invitation. This sort of thing should not happen – once an engagement is locked in, the speaker should be able to plan on the basis that it will stand, barring some unusual occurrence or some disreputable or unreasonable conduct by the speaker. Professor Albert appears to have been treated badly here, and this episode should stand as an example of how not to do things.
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