normblog

Playground ethics at the EU summit

Yesterday I commented on the fact that the organizers of next week's meeting between EU and African leaders couldn't see their way to excluding Robert Mugabe. In that connection I spoke of political interests and calculations hampering the development of international law. A counter-argument to the case for excluding him doesn't surprise me one bit if it is made in the simple instrumental terms that securing the participation of other African leaders is more important than is penalizing Mugabe and his regime. Simon Tisdall, however, adds another dimension by turning Gordon Brown's refusal to attend the meeting if Mugabe does into a matter of playground ethics. Tisdall regrets the desire of Brown to 'hide from dictators'. He tells us that 'the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has argued that Mugabe's critics should tell him what they think face-to-face'. You might imagine that the issue is about whether Brown has the guts to be in the same room as this miserable tyrant; or is about Mugabe's just needing to be, like, told - told to his face where he has gone wrong so that he might see the light - rather than its being, as I argued yesterday, about applying meaningful penalties against state criminality.

Apropos: if this report (via Mick) is to be believed, the other African nations participating in the EU meeting now want not only that Mugabe should be there as well, but that he shouldn't be subjected to criticism. How very reasonable! What is thought, by those who make them, to be the justification for demands such as these? That European nations have no business taking a view about what African leaders do? I don't know. I'd like to see that justification articulated and defended. All these leaders and these states are part of an international system signed up to conventions, treaties and, generally, standards, the implication of which is that anybody and any country is free to take a view about the conduct of any government anywhere.

In praise of the paperback

Writing about books, Michael Skapinker is celebrating the qualities of the hardback over the paperback - the qualities that make it longer-lasting. He rues the way that 'the years, sunlight and central heating are taking their toll' on the paperbacks he bought many years ago; he resolves to be, from now on, one of the dwindling band of hardback buyers. Skapinker quotes a veteran bookseller who tells him 'hardbacks, without exception, will look better than paperbacks in 30 years' time'.

In one way I have no quarrel with any of this. You can love books in every manifestation, and that takes in the durable old hardback and the shiniest new paperback, both. But I also think that Skapinker may be missing an aspect of the issue in the preference he's settled on. It isn't only because paperbacks are 'lighter... easier to take to the beach and... cheaper' that most people go for them. It's also that many of us think of our relationship to our books over a time span of less than 30 years. That's not being shortsighted. It reflects the much readier availability of books. As someone in a position to look at my shelves and point to books I've actually owned for more than 30 years, I also know that wanting to re-read one or other of them I sometimes don't want to read it in a decades-old edition. One can take a more free and easy attitude to the ownership of books, treating the rather dull and yellowed thing on your shelf as - what it is - just one physical representative of the work in question. You get yourself another copy.

Goodbye to all that? (updated)

I can't say I understand the nitty-gritty of the explanation here but what I do understand of it gives some cause for alarm. You think climate change is a problem? According to this piece in New Scientist, two guys from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland are saying that by studying the universe we may have brought forward its end:

Have we hastened the demise of the universe by looking at it? That's the startling question posed by a pair of physicists, who suggest that we may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, which is thought to be speeding up cosmic expansion.

It's even worse than that makes it look. If you read the whole article (available here), you'll see that but for our nosy observations, the universe might have survived forever. Not any more. Doesn't this undermine your confidence in everything you've been taught: the benefits of knowledge; the solidity of the material world; the indifference of the cosmos to the activities of you, me and (probably) two researchers in Cleveland, Ohio? One may take hope from the fact that their claim is said to be controversial.

Update at 4.30 PM: It turns out there has been a misunderstanding - the hypothesis out of Cleveland, Ohio, is not of the end of the universe, but only that the universe 'might be less stable than we thought'. (Thanks: CA.)

Mishmash

Further to this, this: Jane Shilling today refers to '[t]he BBC's incoherent mishmash of an adaptation of Cranford'. We may be few, but our number is growing.

The normblog profile 219: Martin In The Margins

Martin was born in east London, grew up in Essex and studied at Cambridge and Manchester universities. After a number of years running community education projects, he now works in higher education. Brought up a Methodist, briefly a Catholic, these days he describes himself as a secular humanist with spiritual tendencies. He's been blogging since March 2007 at Martin In The Margins.

Why do you blog? > To help me work out what I think, and because I got fed up being a passive observer of blogging debates.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Seeing my posts quoted by (and receiving nice emails from) bloggers I admire.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > The first month or so when there were very few hits: like speaking to an empty hall.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Blog early and blog often.

What are your favourite blogs? > Lately I've discovered a number of excellent new blogs, but I couldn't manage without my daily visits to Mick Hartley, Harry's Place and normblog.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Antonio Gramsci, Mikhail Bakhtin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jessica Benjamin.

What are you reading at the moment?> Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française and Robert Caro's The Power Broker: Robert B. Moses and the Fall of New York.

Who are your cultural heroes? > Jan Vermeer, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fernando Pessoa, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by José Saramago.

What is your favourite poem? > At the moment it's Pessoa's 'Un Soir à Lima' in Richard Zenith's translation.

What is your favourite movie? > Either Les Enfants du Paradis or Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

Who is your favourite composer? > A toss-up between Mozart and Thelonius Monk.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > Israel/Palestine is the most recent. Like many on the left, I used to be one-sidedly pro-Palestinian but now acknowledge that there are legitimate claims on both sides.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > 'A lie that brings a smile is better than a truth that brings a tear' (or words to that effect) - spoken by Kris Kringle in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > E.P.Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class gave me a lifelong love of social history and an enduring sympathy with the socialist humanism of its author.

Who are your political heroes? > Tom Paine - and Gramsci again.

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > A constitutional settlement that would abolish the monarchy and House of Lords, disestablish the Church of England, and establish a federal British republic with a Bill of Rights.

What would you do with the UN? > Limit voting rights to countries that passed an annual human rights inspection.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Fundamentalism plus technology.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > Improvements in attitudes to women, homosexuality and disability in the past 20 years are enough to confirm one's belief in continuing human progress. But further progress is not inevitable and needs to be fought for every inch of the way.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Just do it.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Probably not, but I'm intrigued by the way that being in a long-term relationship leads (in my experience anyway) to a meshing of political opinions.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Imagination.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Self-absorption.

What would you call your autobiography? > I Haven't Started Yet.

Who would play you in the movie about your life? > Robert Redford.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > New York City.

What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > Full-time writer.

Which English Premiership football team do you support? > I'm not really a football fan, but there's a visceral family attachment to West Ham United.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I'd give up full-time work and finally get round to completing that unfinished literary masterpiece. Perhaps.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

An unwanted presence

Today is the 60th anniversary of the UN vote that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Hamas have chosen the occasion to call for the decision to be rescinded. As reported, the Hamas statement is blunt:

Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem... there is no room in it for the Jews.

(See also here.)

What is human dignity?

Ophelia at Butterflies and Wheels is asking what 'human dignity' means. She says she considers it meaningless. Because I don't agree, I want to have a go at saying what the phrase means. Ophelia also says that she dislikes it: she finds it grandiose, inflated, sentimental. I take this to be a separate point. The phrase could be sentimental (for short) without being meaningless. In any event, I won't engage at length with the sentimentality criticism. I will merely say that, while 'human dignity' may be open to sentimental usage, I don't think it has to be so used; it can be used in a sober and measured way.

What, though, does it mean? One way of giving the meaning of a term is to display some of its standard uses. We show that we know what it means by using it correctly. Another way is to offer synonyms, approximate synonyms, or terms that are closely related to the one whose meaning we're interested in. In trying to get at the meaning of 'human dignity', I will proceed from the first method to the second. I will (a) give some examples in which I think the phrase is properly used and then (b) move towards trying to explain its meaning by reference to cognate terms.

(a) At Auschwitz and other death camps, the prisoners were made to stand out in the open completely naked, sometimes in freezing temperatures, assailed by biting winds, policed by armed guards with dogs and who had the power of life and death over them. This situation - described by one writer as a condition of 'radical nakedness' - is a paradigm case of what we call an assault on human dignity. It's not the only bad feature of it. These prisoners were altogether helpless, they were generally hungry and sometimes freezing, they knew they could be killed at the merest whim and they had no institutional or other protection against that. But either in addition to or in consequence of these several afflictions, their human dignity was denied.

Other examples could be cited from the same terrain: of people forced to engage in exhausting but pointless toil (shifting heavy rocks from one place to another and then having to shift them back again); of people being demeaned (by being refused permission to go to the latrines when they were suffering from diarrhoea); and so on. These, too, are examples of an attack on human dignity. What are we saying in saying that?

(b) One thing we are saying is that the human worth of those prisoners in the camps was being denied. Making them stand naked and vulnerable in the circumstances I have described was a way of announcing that anything - anything at all - could be done to them. There is a similar implication in the other examples: 'we can work you to exhaustion for no reason, you can be forced to shit yourself in public - you are beings of no value'. To put the same thing differently, the respect or status we normally hold to be due to people simply in virtue of their humanity has here been removed. Note that this is different from more particular kinds of dignity which may be thought to attach to individuals occupying particular offices or positions of authority, honour or privilege. I do not go into that. If the subject is human dignity, then whatever it is must attach to humans just as such.

One oddity of Ophelia's argument, as it strikes me, is that it holds to the meaninglessness of 'human dignity' while at the same time insisting that humans shouldn't be degraded or humiliated. But 'degrade' carries on its face that there is a standard in light of which some person is being reduced (in grade, in rank); and 'humiliate' does likewise, for it involves the idea of humbling, which is a lowering and therefore from something higher. Of course, it could be that the standard against which we judge that someone is being degraded or humiliated is merely a particularistic one - as when a deposed monarch is made to sweep the streets. But if we believe - as Ophelia does believe - that there are general standards valid for the treatment of all human beings and just because of their humanity, then it seems logical to say that there are general forms of human degradation and humiliation and that human dignity is the thing they assault.

Law and inconvenience

One of the deficits of the international legal system is the way in which respect for, and enforcement of, legal norms is obstructed by political interests (see section 4 here). Consider the case of contemporary Zimbabwe. In a world governed by the rule of law, Robert Mugabe would by now be, if not behind bars, then caught up at one or another stage of a legal process to try to make him answerable for the crimes of his regime. Not only does he remain at liberty and in power, however; political calculations dictate that he must be a participant in the upcoming conference of EU and African leaders in Lisbon.

One of the ways of making an effective reality out of international law is for some states to impose penalties on other states when they transgress. Here, with a man who has shown himself ready to starve the people over whom he rules, the EU organizers aren't even willing to exclude him from an international gathering.

Jews returning

It makes sense that Israel, as a Jewish state, should want to encourage Jewish immigration. It also makes sense that the Jewish community in Germany should want to see its numbers increase: the growth and flourishing of that community can't undo a tragic history but it can contribute to restoring a significant Jewish presence within German life. The two different agendas shouldn't create a difficulty. Individual Jews contemplating migration to one country or the other can make their own choices. But a difficulty has in fact arisen: an Israeli agency, Nativ, is to expand its activities amongst Russian Jews who have emigrated to Germany, and to do this under the formula of 'confront[ing] the dangerous assimilation of former Soviet Jews in Germany'. Germany's Central Council of Jews takes exception, and they're right to. The encouragement of Jewish immigration to Israel shouldn't be undertaken in a spirit that would treat Jewish life elsewhere as intrinsically problematic. (There is some background here and here.)

Teddy bear's picnic

In connection with the case of Gillian Gibbons, in a Sudanese jail for her alleged insult to Islam in the naming of a teddy bear, the Guardian has an instructive editorial today. Here's the key passage:

This sad little Sudanese tale is part of a larger story, from the Rushdie affair to the storm over the Danish cartoons, in which some Muslims, and some Muslim governments, seem to be almost searching for slights and fights, to be almost determined to be insulted, pushing aside those ready to take a more tolerant and relaxed view.

There are objective reasons why Muslims are now more prickly about their rights and about what non-Muslims say about them than they used to be. But the resulting process is one in which the lines which non-Muslims must not cross are being repeatedly redefined, always more restrictively, at times with dire penalties threatened. The majority of Muslims may be much less concerned than the activists and radicals, but it is the activists and radicals who often set the pace. This constant raising of the bar does not increase respect for Islam but instead makes it appear coercive and threatening. In Sudan, it is not the bear which is of little brain.

What is instructive about this is the way in which the paper that has made such a specialism of root-causes 'understanding' these past few years here gestures towards it once again, this time to retreat from it. There are 'objective reasons', it tells us, for the sort of sensitivities that have now once again, in the case of Gillian Gibbons, been activated. Yet, instead of being urged to understand sympathetically or to reflect on who else might be at fault in the case than the relevant Sudanese authorities, the Guardian's leader-writer simply cuts to a blunt conclusion: not to put too fine a point on it, their action is brainless, without justification. Nice to have a lesson in not making feeble excuses from the newspaper that has been so full of them.

But what is the secret of the variation? It's a very simple one: the causal reference ('objective reasons') is exculpatory or mitigating only when you want it to be, and not otherwise.