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Rich's Square of Rednessblog THIS 13 ottobre Back off JackJack Straw, a big bigwig in the British government, recently wrote an article criticising the wearing of the niqab (the veil worn by Muslim women that covers the face). His criticism stemmed from the fact that covering the face made social interaction very difficult and was a conscious statement of difference from the rest of British society. A few days later, the Daily Express ran a poll in which 97% of respondents agreed that the veil should be BANNED. Jack Straw is a very, very smart guy. He was probably pushed out of the foreign office because he said going to war with Iran was 'inconceivable.' And he's a very good constituency MP in an area with a sizeable muslim population, so it's not as if he's pontificating from a position of total ignorance. But he is wrong. How many of us chat over MSN without even hearing a VOICE, let alone seeing a face? And isn't dressing as a goth or a nun also a statement of cultural distance? It's totally legitimate to discuss mysognistic religious practices as part of a wider debate about empowering women from all communities. But to focus just on the veil and talk about 'statements of difference' makes jack sound like a fool. Which usually he isn't. 15 maggio Jazz Playing Scientologists I can't really post political blogs amy more, as it's too much like work. So non-politics related stuff includes: - saw a jazz band playing the in the centre of town sponsored by the CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY! This whole 'religion is cool and fun-filled' stuff is so passe. Give them a few years and Al-Qaeda will be hosting bbq's. - bought Bubba-Hotep and Fight Club for £8. Is being happy you bought fight club in a sale missing the point? - realised i now like OCEAN COLOUR SCENE. This is a big deal for me, because when i was 16 going on 17 i absolutely hated them. I thought they represented everything that was bad about modern, hippy pseudo-leftwing rockers who were trying to recapture the spirit of the 60s without understanding anything about the time. Weird to realise you've become what your teenager-self despised. Ah well, you can't stay angry forever. Just as long as you stay aware of the world outside yourself. 28 marzo Raging Ken Just how great is Ken FUCKING Livingston? He called the new American Ambassador a "crook" because he wouldn't pay the congestion charge! AWESOME. Lots of times when you hear that a politician's said something dramatic, normally they've tripped over their own tongues or been trapped into saying something. Example: Blair recently was trapped into saying that promising to go after serving a full 3rd term had been 'a mistake.' That was a total trap- the interviewer actually interrupted him at that point to block Blair from inserting a 'however.' There was no slip up in Ken's statement. He actually said his piece, then added the bit about the ambassador being a crook AT THE END, and entirely for fun. It was a grade 1, "fuck you" addition to the end of a very rational argument. Like an ice skater who totally outperforms their rival, then pirhouttes at the end of the set and flips off their opponent while doing so. Didn't have to do it, but it's just so much more FUN. Ken must never lose office. He is a god. 14 marzo I HAVE SHARED A BOWEL MOVEMENT WITH MICHAEL MARSHALL-SMITH Oh yes. I was in a rush. Getting to the Harper Collins Crime Tour talk required me to wolf down food and dash to the bus stop in a very short time frame. So, as is my want, when I got there I spent a minute or two in a cubicle in the gents, slowly collecting myself as other parts of me plopped free. Suddenly I freeze. A voice from outside the cubicle: "What time are we on?" I was so excited I almost fell off the bowl. Michael Marshall (as he is now known) is exactly like the main character in all his books. Witty, alienated, abrupt. Two of the other writers on the 'tour' were babbling on about how they researched everything in their novels down to the minutest detail. Marshall: "I don't have the social skills to do research, so I just make it all up." THIS GUY RULES. There was a sticky moment when I asked the first question and somehow managed to suggest all his main characters were the same (I said they were 'recognisably his' which he saw right through). But he still signed my book, and after I babbled like a groupie teenager I think he saw I wasn't intending to be critical. What a great evening! 06 marzo Dispatches & EvangelicalismAll hail Rod Liddle for taking the evangelical bull by the horns in Dispatches on Channel 4 tonight. His argument would have worked better if he’d shown a little restraint and dispassion, rather than obviously sneering at the people he interviewed.
But his main assertions were right. The evangelical emphasis on subjugating reason to faith IS dangerous. Stripping away reason doesn’t open up pathways to God. It opens the pathways to our darkest neuroses. And from the evangelical standpoint, there is absolutely no way of differentiating between the two.
Bad Science
It is the subjugation of reason to emotion that allows evangelicals to treat evolution and creationism as theoretical equals. Rod Liddle’s outburst against this was justified. If you are a scientific relativist you must also accept that man could equally be made of flesh and blood or red Leicester cheese, or that the world was created by a flying spaghetti monster.
Science is different from philosophy because we rely on objectively discernable phenomena to inform our views. Even where something cannot be 100% proven, there can be such a weight of evidence that supports one theory that it becomes intellectually dishonest to disregard it.
Bad Logic
And it is dishonest in another way. Evangelicals hate relativism in philosophy. The idea that there are many pathways to God is anathema to them. Yet in science creationists are happy to affect blindness to any notion of objective truth and let reality spin on its ear.
You would think the inherent contradiction between moral and scientific relativism would be the subject of much evangelical debate. But ultimately, I don’t think evanglicals are concerned with intellectual coherence. They are concerned with aligning their reality with that of the Bible. Questions threatening that alignment are ignored, or forgotten about, or seen (most tragically) as a test of faith.
Bad History
I say tragically because we have been here before. A generation ago it would have been Marxist revolutionaries who believed what you learned in schools couldn’t be trusted; Marxists who believed every perspective had to be subjugated to the truth espoused by the Supreme Soviet. Their belief led nowhere good.
It’s easy to see the appeal of religion today. Dispatches was punctuated by actors with fake grins trying to flog us pointless tat. Contrast that miserable superficiality with the honest passion of the young evangelicals in the programme- who would you trust more?
There is much deeply wrong in the world, and socialism, the system that came closest to understanding the nature of the wrongness and showing us ways of fixing it, is now seen as a joke by almost everyone. But without socialism we are left only with the desperate lure of the money-lenders, and the shining eyes of the priests. 04 marzo Something new to feel guilty about!I'm thinking of cutting down on my critics. How many of us ever bothered with primary sources? How many of us just zipped straight for the commentary, the critique, the analysis written by someone else? What does it say when all we look for is the summary, the meaning that all the flowery gumph is dancing around?. It's at least partially a market thing. Before I invest a large amount of my time in any text, I want to know if it's worth my while. Why invest the ever more precious hours of your life in something if you have no idea how it will turn out? Relying on reviewers and columnists to distill information is, in the short term, a rational economic choice. But if we carry on doing so, we risk subjugating our own opinions and perspectives to a tiny and sometimes bitter elite. Commentators aren't gods: if they were, they would have made their earthly incarnations something much cooler than commentators. If we rely too much on critics and commentators in deciding how we should spend our time, we lose both our power and our voice. And, obviously, one more thing: our genuine sense of wonder. Oh yeah, how fatuous do I sound... 02 marzo Thoughts on Ming...Why Change? That's the message of Ming's face. He could advocate the abolition of the English language and people would still see him as a 'safe pair of hands.' His wife's great though. She got her degree from the Open University and her dissertation was on strong women in Coronation Street. Now THERE'S a role model. Everyone's saying Ming's too old to appeal to voters. A pretty odd observation considering that the average voter is getting older as all the other party leaders are getting younger. Ming's age puts him MORE in touch with the average voter. But unfortunately that average, grey voter is far more likely than their younger counterparts to already be set in their ways and permanently aligned to a political party. Younger voters act more like consumers and generally don't "get" the importance of sustained support for a political party. So, unfortunately, age does count. Being old may put you in touch with more of the population. But it doesn't put you in touch with the idiots who hold the power.
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