Elven Law

A little light, pre-Christmas entertainment today. The Panopticon was a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept is simple – a watchman can observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.

The design consists of a circular structure with an "inspection house" at its centre, from which the managers or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates, who are stationed around the perimeter. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, daycares, and asylums, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a Panopticon prison and it is his prison which is most widely understood by the term.

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” Quite so. Why is this particularly significant? 

I read today of a baleful, Orwellian descendant of Bentham’s devilish architecture in the form of a new and jolly Christmas tradition, the Elf on the Shelf. Some American parents, some time after Thanksgiving, introduce this impish little creature, which can be perched, hung, or otherwise displayed somewhere in the house. Parents then blithely propagate the Santa Claus myth to their children who are solemnly told that should they misbehave the Elf is watching and he is empowered to inform Santa Claus of any poor behaviour by travelling back to the North Pole overnight. He then reappears elsewhere in the house the following morning. Should Mummy or Daddy have been bingeing on Southern Comfort after the little ones are abed, and inadvertently fail to move the creature to some new vantage point,  the game is up and all is lost unless parents compound the felony by spinning further untruths like 'he has special places that he likes' or 'he must be real; he has his own Facebook page'. Various pointless and Draconian rules can be introduced, especially for parents with Fascist inclinations, such as the child is allowed to talk to the Elf but must not touch it. These rules do not, of course, apply to grown-ups. Some children seem to become unreasonably attached to the little fellow – after all, Winston Smith loved Big Brother, ultimately, but I do question the wisdom of befriending the weaselly little snitch. If he were mine, I'd put him in the blender.

Some are regretting playing host to a diminutive spy. One mother rewrote the Serenity Prayer so that the last line gave her ‘the strength no to throw the Elf on the fire and watch him burn, like Joan of Arc’. Another mother told her children that the Elf had perished, like Scott, in a snowstorm.

At least he’s a low-maintenance guest and even drunk old Uncle George can’t get away with blaming the Elf for finishing the last of the malt whisky.

Darwin's Valhalla

“Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll)

I have been wondering for some time how to write down clearly a few opinions about so-called ‘intelligent design’. Do I ‘believe’ in it or not? If I do, how can I justify such a belief? If I don’t, what can I come up with to satisfactorily replace it? 
It is unwise to ridicule or dismiss the achievements of western science. It is equally unwise to dismiss religious thought as dangerous foolishness. Militant atheism and its vociferous proponents often use scientifically fuelled ridicule as a weapon which is dangerous on the grounds that the objective for such a tactic is to rob the object of such ridicule of the power of reasoned debate – in short we don't like being made fun of and when we are we respond inappropriately. Many scientists also use the tactic of the ‘snobbery of clever superiority’ their science and its conclusions are so difficult to understand that average thinkers like you and I aren’t competent to follow their arguments. Thus we are presented with their conclusions as intellectual  faits accomplis.

In 1874, Max Planck, arguably the father of quantum physics, was in discussion with Philipp von Jolly, a Munich professor who attempted to dissuade him from studying physics by saying that "in this field, almost everything is already discovered and all that remains is to fill in a few holes.”  Planck replied that he did not wish to study new things, only to understand the fundamentals. His later contributions created a paradigmatically astonishing way of looking at the world. The great physical theories are mighty Babels to mankind's formidable collective intellect but are they enough support the pretensions of those who insist it can be, indeed must be, the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world and ourselves? Furthermore, do they offer a coherent description of the cosmos or the methods by which it might be investigated?

I have often supposed that we as a species are hard-wired to 'believe' in something. By this I mean that we insist upon either actively or passively supporting a set of ideas which for us carry moral weight, intellectual resonance and satisfy our unshakable conviction that the course we have chosen is, if not 'right' then more 'right' than others, which some might characterise as ‘faith’. The replacement of traditional religious thought by a belief-system exclusively based on a science which others teach us is correct writes David Berlinski in The Devil’s Delusion, “marks the consolidation in our time of science as the single system of belief in which rational men and women might place their faith, and if not their faith, then certainly their devotion." [or willingness to defend and/or support - parentheses mine]

It might be instructive to reverse the mirror and ask with Berlinski a few difficult questions, all of which have the same answer.

·         Has anyone provided a proof of God’s non-existence?

·         Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?

·         Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life and for us to be here?

·         Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?

·         Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?

·         Has secularism in the twentieth century been a force for good?

·         Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of method, thought and opinion within the sciences?

·         Does anything in the sciences or in scientific philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?

The answers to all of the above are 'no' but this of itself is not enough. Merely casting doubt by ‘straw man’ hypothesising randomly like confetti will not bring us nearer to the truth. While all the descriptive language makes for interesting or offensive reading, it does not change the facts. If we push aside all emotion, insults, character assassinations and credibility attacks, instead try to look for facts, what do we find?

In his book “The Deniable Darwin” Berlinski identifies a number of issues that evolution has neither addressed nor overcome to find the necessary supporting facts and become a viable theory to qualify its entering into the realm of truth. To assert that 'it works but we're working on it ' doesn't convert a theory into anything more than a hypothesis or series of conjectures, much less a law. At this late stage in its life, evolution is still little more than a workable hypothesis that has been kicked around for a long time, supported by paper-thin conjectures. Here are a few of Berlinski’s observations from an article ‘All Those Darwinian Doubts’:

·         The suggestion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences, quantum electrodynamics, let’s say, is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen unyielding decimal places. Darwin’s theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.

·         Field studies attempting to measure natural selection inevitably report weak to non-existent selection effects.

·         Darwin’s theory is open at one end since there are no plausible accounts for the origins of life.

·         The astonishing and irreducible complexity of various cellular structures has not yet successfully been described, let alone explained.

·         A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors and depart for Valhalla leaving no obvious descendants.

·         Tens of thousands of fruit flies have come and gone in laboratory experiments, and every last one of them has remained a fruit fly to the end, all efforts to see the miracle of speciation unavailing.

·         The remarkable similarity in the genome of a great many organisms suggests that there is at bottom only one living system; but how then to account for the astonishing differences between human beings and their near relatives, differences that remain obvious to anyone who has visited a zoo?

It appears the “theory” of evolution is closer to a religion than a science, for it takes faith to believe a theory lacking a foundation of facts. A noted characteristic of devotees is their being dogmatic to the point of not being open minded enough to be led by the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, prediction, testing, and corroboration. They have a strange tendency to skew any results to support their initial view that “God does not exist” instead of letting their work lead them to its inherent conclusion, one which may be less palatable.

Regarding Berlinski’s motives, as a secular Jew he is not asking anyone to believe in God, indeed perhaps he doesn't want to; rather he is quite clear that he wants the “theory” of evolution to undergo surgery to become a healthy, viable, actual scientific theory rather than the pseudo-scientific dogma it currently is. He wants scientists to face up to and tackle the many issues and get cracking on solving them. With some reluctance, I am inclined to agree.

Wagging Fingers

What an interesting week it has been and there's lots I'd quite like to write about, but since this little morsel captured my attention, I'll say a brief word or two about it. Palestine is a sort-of, nearly member of the International Club - let's stop calling it the UN because it's neither united nor comprised, now, exclusively of 'nations'. This has had some interesting spin-offs, not least that someone has found some money, which was probably donated by the US, to erect a few signs which seem to have sprung up in Judea and Samaria. It all seems a bit weak, finger-wagging and feeble to me.

I wonder who the warning is for?  In my innocence and naivete, I can't help feeling that there seems little point in erecting such a notice, howsoever helpfully in three languages, unless some kind of sanction will be brought against those who for whatever reason choose to ignore it. Surely a better warning sign might read something like this one on the left. No ambiguity here - the word 'trespasser' is a dead giveaway. Seven possibilities are presented although execution of the first - do pardon the pun - might be considered a sufficient deterrent. A trespasser is somebody who, without permission, stomps his dirty black boots over your nicely manicured lawn and wreaks havoc and destruction on the prize roses, which you don't much care for, so, you lay down a few simple ground rules to discourage him. Unfortunately, the law of trespass doesn't quite cut it in the first caption.The world has rewarded the party which has consistently refused to lay down its arms, rejected the Oslo proposal, systematically pursued violence and moreover taught its children to do so and removed the framework on which basis Israel made many risky concessions. In short, the Israelis donated the land and invited the PLO to look after it. Ah.

Democracy Postponed

It’s not just been election time in the USA. Kuwait – where I used to live – has called yet another election. Which prompted a few thoughts about the whole democratic process.  A friend was kind enough to provide a few numbers.

"Of the 3.8 million population, only 1.2 million are Kuwaiti. Among the Kuwaiti nationals, only 422,000 are eligible to vote.  That’s  35%. The voting age is 21 and servicemen in the police and army are banned from taking part in the ballot.  How very instructive. Why should democratic rights be taken away from the very people who are supposed to protect the Constitution. Female voters make up 54 per cent of the electorate, having been given the vote in 2005. I wonder how free they are to actually cast an unbiased vote or do they look to their husbands for political guidance? How very cynical of me. Polling opens at 8:00am (0500 GMT) and closes 12 hours later, with the first results expected after midnight (2100 GMT) as ballot papers in Kuwait are still counted manually." Are they, indeed.

People have been out on the streets in protest. Sometimes, it’s not clear exactly what the protests are about – but electoral reform is high on the agenda. Kuwait's Constitutional Court recently rejected the government's move to amend a controversial electoral law. The much-anticipated ruling maintains the division of the country into five electoral constituencies which some see as a cynical move to hold on to power and prevent co-ordinated opposition. From an outsider’s viewpoint it looks very much like a clash between the Old and Young Guard. The Old are the ruling family who pays lip service to democracy without much enthusiasm for change – the New have travelled, seen how other people are engaging in the democratic process and want a piece of it, perhaps even to the extent of a genuine constitutional monarchy. It's no surprise that the lawmakers, with fine disregard, forbade gatherings of more than twenty people not so very long ago, but since most protesters had Twitter accounts, it didn't matter very much.

Neither are people prepared to put up with their politicians becoming embroiled in one financial scandal after another – less than a year ago thirteen MP’s were summoned by the public prosecutor to account for vast sums of money being transferred into their accounts with no apparent justification. This  endless bickering and continuous conflict has taken its toll on the psyche of Kuwaitis and some have begun to question the feasibility of their pioneering model – at least in Gulf terms - of representative politics. This in turn has dissuaded GCC intellectuals and people who looked at Kuwait as a beacon for democracy in the region and discouraged investors who have stayed away from the hostile environment of Kuwait and its Byzantine, ragged and untamed politics.

But, back to the 35 per cent. Why so alarmingly few and what constitutional wrinkle disbars the remainder, I found myself asking. After the US elections, I picked up a piece from Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist on the planet, it would seem, who has his own flavour of Blackshirt commentary. He presses for voters to question possible candidates on their religious beliefs, suggesting that any prospective MP who actually believes in literal transubstantiation, for example, or any other belief which in his eyes defies logical scrutiny (like Joseph Smith’s angelic visitors, or, worst of all a man who actually rose from the dead) has disqualified himself from public office on the grounds that if he applies the same fatuous logic to his work in Government, there’d be a tax on the fairies at the bottom of the garden. I'm always amused whenever I read about a big atheist gathering since it's democracy which allows them to meet freely in the first place, this democracy having been founded on a moral and religious foundation on which it relies for successful operation.

Without Words

A friend died last week. He had had cancer which had metastasized. He had been ill for some time and the last thing I did for him was help him write a letter in English to a subscription account in the UK cancelling his newspapers. I was unable to go to his funeral, since I was away in Morocco at a wedding but hundreds of others did to mourn his passing and recall a life well lived. I was reminded of the timeless circles of our small lives which run inexorably, much as we might otherwise wish. And yet, so many others have suffered even worse. We imagine that war, death and destruction happens somewhere else and its bestial excesses sometimes leave us as detached observers, disbelievingly watching and hardly able to imagine that such things still happen in serene, well-ordered societies such as those we inhabit. Our women do not suffer rape and brutality as the survivors did when the Red Army entered Berlin in 1944,  we do not have to queue for water because infrastructures have been destroyed, our children do not have to learn how to protect themselves during an air-raid warning. Romans 8:28 is sometimes hard to hold on to especially in the light of unspeakable cruelty and pain which assails us all from time to time, either directly or, mercifully, only in the media. A bus full of kindergarten children was hit by a train in southern Egypt and nearly fifty  promising young lives were lost. Over 150 people were killed on both sides in the latest clash on the Gaza border, including six men who were accused of being 'Israeli spies', according to the UK’s ‘Daily Mail’. They were dragged through the streets of Gaza City and executed in front of a chanting mob. Witnesses said the six were taken to an intersection in the north of the city where they were summarily shot for providing intelligence that helped Israel pinpoint key figures in Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were subsequently targeted by their warplanes and eliminated. Gunmen chained the body of one of the alleged collaborators to a motorcycle and dragged it throughout the main streets of Gaza City as a warning to others. It is as if we have learned nothing since the fall of Troy when Hector's body was dragged behind Achilles' chariot. More than a little resonance of Blackshirt nastiness here; my sense of outrage is almost without words.

Bishops and Books

Where we come from, it would seem, is as significant as where we’re going. The Bishop of Durham, Rt Rev Justin Welby, after only a year as a bishop, is to fill the ponderous sandals of Rowan Williams whom history will record as being the most theologically learned after Anselm.  I for one would have lost the bet, along with many others, the dark horse slipped past the post almost without anybody noticing. Much has been made of his past as an oil executive, but also the fact that he, like the PM and Mayor of London, is a ‘posh boy’, an Old Etonian. It’s all too British for words; the fact that he once worshipped at HTB – as did I – is one of the few things we do have in common and  despite the fact that I went to one of the Very Best, obsessing about school backgrounds is outmoded, a little bit trivial and as far as the Press is concerned, contagious. He’s awfully, awfully senior in the pecking order, being ranked first above all non-Royals, called ‘your Grace’, and given a palace to live in. He’s OK about women bishops – as am I, why not – he is not a supporter of gay marriage; neither am I and, worse, feel the need to justify my opinion. If we go down some kind of sacramental memory lane, the word has great significance insofar as one presents oneself before God and his representatives, the congregation, makes vows based upon a homiletic liturgy about children and so forth and thereby binds two people of the opposite sex to a contract made in heaven. There's just not enough historical leverage to widen the goalposts. Two men or women are unable to bring their own children into the relationship, so some other word needs to be found when they wish to publicly and quite legitimately conjoin themselves, which I support and if the C of E must needs write a special set of words and phrases, then, so be it, but let full civil rights be enough without using the M word. Interestingly, the Catholics don't have 'binding teaching', just a 'preference' - try asking Father O'Brien to marry you if you happen to share the same gender. Welby, who lost his firstborn child in a car accident, might be seen as a dinosaur in this respect alone, everywhere else he may well be (sorry) the man for the iPad generation, where rules change, as in business,  with remarkable fluidity.

Damian Thompson, the Catholic journalist whom the Church Times once described as a ‘blood-crazed ferret’ is someone whose writing I have begun to enjoy, much against my earlier prejudice. His new book is certainly worth a look – he argues that human desire is in the process of being reshaped. Shunning the concept of addiction as disease, he shows how manufacturers are producing substances like iPads, muffins and computer games that we learn to like too much and supplement traditional addictions to alcohol, drugs and gambling. He argues that addictive behaviour is becoming a substitute for family and work bonds that are being swept away by globalisation and urbanization, with which I tend to agree. We part company a little when he argues that the battle to control addiction will soon overshadow familiar ideological debates about how to run the economy, and as whole societies set about “fixing” themselves, the architecture of human relations will come under strain as never before. Let my psych friends take note – if he’s right, it looks like the client pool is going to increase exponentially as decadence and social cohesion decline. I think it’s undeniable that we are experiencing a social paradigm shift of huge proportions and are just dimly beginning to realise that revolutions such as the one sparked by computers-for-all and the World Wide Web is changing us and will change us irrevocably as a species; furthermore our understanding of these changes necessarily lags behind the changes themselves. Which brings me back to where we come from, and, coincidentally, sex.

It has been argued in a firecracker best seller “Sex at Dawn” that human beings evolved in primal hordes of hunter-gatherer groups in which sexual interaction was a shared resource, consequently shared paternity. The authors further argue that the genetic imprint left by such behaviour is manifested today in the seemingly worldwide phenomenon of male infidelity. Men, they argue, are naturally polygamous, sometimes serially, sometimes not, and women, who have a limited number of eggs as genetic currency, tend to want to spend them more wisely. If we are to believe that our species is metamorphosing into primal urban hordes, without the responsibilities of maintaining social cohesion, a return to more primal sexual behaviour is not inconceivable, but, obviously for different reasons, even desirable. The book further asserts that sexual promiscuity in the absence of territorial disputes over land and possessions tends to lead to peaceful coexistence rather that the aggressive masculine behaviour necessary to maintain and subjugate a territory which is ‘owned’. If so, war may become nothing more than a rumour.

All this may be rather more than His Grace is willing to consider at the present time. Perhaps he might start with something less ambitious, like designing a mitre that makes him look a little less like this. Sorry, everyone.

None of the Above

I’m not a voter – if I were and there had been a square for ‘none of the above’, I might well have placed my electronic finger on it. I am, I have to say, slightly more relieved than not that after endless marathons on television, fundraisers, advertisements, propaganda and economies of truth, America has let the same guy through the front door of 1600 again, postponing the arrival of the inevitably lavish decoration bill that Mrs Romney would almost certainly have insisted upon. For two billion dollars of advertising revenue, quite a lot can be achieved, or, in this case, absolutely nothing. Same old, same old. But, perhaps, not quite. Washington is a fickle mistress, prone to deceit and revolving door loyalties and much as I would like to believe it, I’m unconvinced that things are going to turn out all right in the end.

The president will almost certainly use his final four years to concentrate more on foreign policy. Mr Netanyahu, despite a phone call of congratulation to Mr Obama, may not even be accorded the civility of further interview – instead, he may find himself being sidelined to the bread and soup line - the expensive menu being offered to Abbas, or members of the Muslim Brotherhood. I rather wonder if the President’s last thoughts before turning out his bedside light might be to swear a private oath to himself that he is going to achieve what Carter, Clinton and the Bushes failed to do – find a solution in the Middle East. After all, it’s only politics. Negotiation and even-handedness ought to be able to solve everything since all the players have been dealt hands from the same pack of cards… Not so. Israel has unique status in the world – the Judaeo-Christian heritage which underpins the entire rule of law and freedom of speech enjoyed by the West began with inscriptions on stones brought down from the mountain.

The greatest satisfaction over the re-election of Obama is not being felt in the Democratic Party, deliriously happy as they must surely be. It is not being felt among the media, whose howling and gibbering no longer qualifies them the status of objective observers since they have shown themselves to be a corrupt, partisan mob, peddling the demonising propaganda that was a hallmark of the campaign. It is not being felt among the smug decadents of the western Left who now scent the blood of all who defy their secular inquisition, remorselessly bullying Mitt Romney who didn’t quite have the stones to stand up to them. No, the greatest satisfaction is surely being felt in Iran.

With four more years of delicate and skilful procrastination afforded them by the American voter, Iran must have breathed a collective sigh of relief since it can be sure that it will be able to complete whatever construction is underway in the bunkers of Tehran and Qom, possibly with the covert help of Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett whose roots lie deep in the Chicago Democratic machine. I'm not going to leave this without stating the case for what might happen if the appeasers prevail. The British writer Douglas Murray is at his compelling best at the Cambridge Union, here.

In addition, who could have possibly predicted that the Arab Spring would have spawned so much Islamism in Egypt and Libya – all quite benign, of course. Had the West been paying attention they might have foreseen what looked almost inevitable since well-organised regimes are much better placed to fill the void generated by a power vacuum.  If power is to be placed in the hands of the people, the people - especially the poor and most easily manipulated - will vote for whomever they perceive is looking after them best, in this case, the Muslim Brotherhood and similar who  along with healthcare and roads will systematically impose their own Shari’a motivated dictatorships on those who have elected them, to which the people submit willingly because the imam told them to and this is how they have been taught that democracy works.

The US, faute de mieux,  is apparently backing al Qaeda affiliates in Syria; refused to come to the aid of Americans being attacked by al Qaeda in Benghazi as a result of which four American officials were murdered; and has repeatedly hung Israel out to dry against Hamas’ genocidal Palestinian attackers and a cacophony of Judeophobic slander. 

Europeans love Barack Obama because in  a surge of schadenfreude, they watch the neutering of US exceptionalism. What they don’t realise is that they too, spavined and  lobotomised by consumer ‘rights’, state dependency, victim culture, sentimentality, postmodern-religion, post-nationalism, post-Holocaust and Empire guilt, are themselves on a slippery slope towards a neutralisation whose irrational and bigoted hooves are already being heard thundering over the ideological landscape.