normblog

The freedom to dress modestly

On the basis of her experience when visiting Morocco, Gabriella Coslovich wonders if there might not be a liberating aspect to modes of dress in which women's bodies are more covered than they sometimes are in the West. She quotes Muslim feminist Rachel Woodlock...

...a sixth-generation Anglo-Australian who converted to Islam in her 20s. For Woodlock the hijab "can become a means of empowerment through reclaiming the female body from the public gaze, from determining what may be observed. In this vision, the hijab is for women's benefit, not men's." Woodlock says: "To stand and say I don't want you to see me is quite a rebellious act."

It took two weeks of self-enforced wearing of more modest garb than I usually would to appreciate that there might be truth in this. Why do some Westerners find this so difficult an idea to grapple with?

Well, I may or may not be a typical Westerner, but for me the idea is in fact very easy to grapple with, or even - by change of metaphor - to digest, that a woman should be able to wear whatever she feels best in, and if that involves more covering of the body rather than less, so be it. It's her choice. The same goes for men. What I do find difficult to grapple with, on the other hand, is that Coslovich can discuss the subject without considering how far this is a choice for women in Muslim countries and how far it is imposed on them. That must surely be relevant to the issue. She is certainly sensitive to pressures that, as she sees it, compromise the freedom of Western women in matters of dress. Referring to some of the standard imagery in advertising, she writes:

These advertisements seemed to me a certain form of propaganda, of brainwashing. Living constantly among them, we become inured to their subtle form of mind control, to the pressure they exert, pushing us towards ways of being and thinking that are intrinsically dissatisfying, distracting us from issues, concerns and activities more rewarding and deserving of attention.

The claim involved in speaking of 'mind control' is disputable, but let's leave it be. If the restriction of women's choices through such means is to be noticed and regretted, then the restriction of their choices through other means - legal means, disparities of power between women and men - would seem to be equally worthy of consideration. Not a word about it, however, from Gabriella Coslovich.

Minding your vowels

A hard task: that's what a man has as that man crafts an anagram, a magna carta, a fat-cat chat, a stray play (and flat act), a haggard ballad, all 'a's.

Even when he gets clever, he needs help. He better settle the debt, deter the Met, engender the set he knew he bet he'd get.

I think it fit if this is writ.

Oh, lowly blog, go for moons, noons, swoons, boons, monsoons. Go tho' slow. Grow tho' know. Glow. Show. No, do - woo. Who? Yoko? Oh...

Guns 'n' sun 'n' dust, but fun. Mustn't bust trust. Must shut up.

The normblog profile 267: Peter ('The Beatroot')

Peter - who blogs as 'The Beatroot' - is originally from London, but works as a journalist in Warsaw. He started his blog to try and highlight the weird and wonderful shenanigans of Polish politics to an English-speaking audience. He is also interested in how the new Polish migrants - Bobski and the Plumber - are portrayed in the British media. He lives with his Polish wife, Ania, and a Shetland sheepdog called Lucy.

What has been your best blogging experience? > I helped stitch up and expose some dodgy 'investigative journalism' into Poles in the UK by the Daily Mail once. That was fun. Something I plan to repeat.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > Trolls.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Just keep going. If what you are writing is interesting then you will get an audience.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Marx, J.S. Mill, John Prescott.

What are you reading at the moment? > It's a book a publisher sent for review. I won't say which one because it is awful.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.

What is your favourite poem? > I don't read poems. But I like listening to them. Roger McGough is good. 'A fascist who pretends to be a humanitarian is like a cannibal, on a health kick, who only eats vegetarians...'

What is your favourite movie? > Cabaret.

What is your favourite song? > 'God Only Knows' by the Beach Boys - proving you only need 2' 42" to show you are a genius.

Who is your favourite composer? > Bach.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > In our increasingly censorious and fearful times I would give On Liberty another read.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > It's not a philosophical thesis, but the idea that the coming recession will be 'good for us' is politically and culturally degenerate. The chattering classes must have a weird view of what poverty is like. I invite them to come to Poland - a country where the average person was quite poor till the mid-1990s - and tell them that 'having less is more'. They would laugh in their faces.

Who are your political heroes? > I am trying to get through a questionnaire like this one without mentioning George Orwell. So... um, George Orwell? Damn!

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > 'Question everything.' (Karl Marx)

What would you do with the UN? > Turn it in to an international talking shop. Er... wait...

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Fear. You can see it today with the finance crisis... it's a western crisis of confidence.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > Best is yet to come. Human culture has just crawled out of its pram and is now staggering around, uncertain, trying to get its feet.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Don't read advice books or columns.

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? > Yes. Love is a funny thing.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > Um... no.

What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Some people say they enjoy shopping. I don't really get that.

What would you call your autobiography? > I would try and write an autobiography that didn't give lurid revelations about my mental health. So my autobiography would be called Not Written by Alastair Campbell or John Prescott. Or, maybe, Nothing To Declare.

Who would play you in the movie about your life? > John Prescott.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > Somewhere really dangerous. Like Afghanistan... or Iceland.

What would your ideal holiday be? > As above.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Playing guitars, losing at chess, writing out questionnaires for normblog.

Who are your sporting heroes? > George Best, Eric Cantona.

Which English Premiership football team do you support? > What have the two football players above got in common?

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > Marquis de Sade, Mother Teresa... and Brian Clough. We would all get on like a house on fire.

What animal would you most like to be? > An aardvark.

[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.]

Listen to the radio

Visit www.theradio.com. Enter a song or artist where it tells you to 'enter a song or artist'. Type in 'Yesterday'. See what happens. Then, in turn: 'Ruby Tuesday'; 'Me And Bobby McGee'; 'I Can Hear Music'. Type in 'Hank Williams', and from the menu that appears pick Emmylou Harris singing 'Rollin and Ramblin'. Then try: 'Guitar Town'; 'Fort Worth Blues'; 'Dollar Bill Blues', 'Listen To The Radio'. (Thanks: Sue.)

Another thought about 'Zionists'

It's a thought to follow this one from four days ago, and it is prompted by a remark at the bottom of Michele Hanson's column in Tuesday's Guardian. We are told that she attended the launch of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and then we get this:

Which shows that not all Jews are Zionists. And about time too.

Now, this is plainly not the usage of 'Zionists' I was referring to the other day in which it is a prejudicial code word for 'Jews'. The context makes that clear. But note two things about it. First, anyone who knows anything about this subject will know that it is nothing new for there to be Jews who aren't Zionists; it is a very old distinction within the Jewish diaspora. Hanson suggests it might be news. Second, and worse, the remark suggests that a Zionist is a bad thing for a Jew to be. But why so? A Zionist is someone who supports the existence of an autonomous Jewish homeland in Israel - so a Jewish nationalist if you like. We do not know why Hanson thinks that it's bad for Jews to be nationalists; it's just an offhand remark of hers without explanation or elaboration. Yet it indicates how, far beyond the ranks of the out-and-out Jew-haters, comfortably esconced now within any average assembly of well-meaning liberals, there are expectations on Jews that aren't placed upon others - who may, for their part, legitimately be nationalists and attached to the self-determination of their peoples. And it also indicates how 'Zionist', even when not deployed with clear anti-Semitic intent, has come to hold a pejorative connotation, as if the very existence of the Jewish state - not the occupation, not the settlements, not Israeli policies towards the West Bank and Gaza, but the Jewish state itself - was a rank illegitimacy.

That it should be the Guardian that serves as the site for Hanson's casual ignorance and expression of lightminded prejudice is, of course, no surprise at all.

A match made in Japan

You may take this post as a companion of sorts to the previous one. There's a move afoot in Japan to make it legal for people to marry characters from fiction:

In a reflection of the nation's growing obsession with escaping reality, more than 1,000 people have signed an on-line petition to present to the government to establish a law permitting marriage to comic characters.

Comic books known as "manga", animated "anime" films and on-line virtual reality games have become increasingly popular in Japan, with fictitious characters frequently elevated to celebrity status.

The man leading this initiative says he wants a change in the law because he is 'more at ease in the "two dimensional world"'. You may think that he and others like him have vivid imaginations. But I would disagree; they're stick-in-the-mud realists. Why do they need a change in the law? They should just go ahead and marry.

Reasons for not knowing

There's an essay by Ronald Aronson at Butterflies and Wheels that raises some interesting issues. The essay is entitled 'Choosing to Know', and in it Aronson poses a question and puts forward a thesis both of which I would like to comment on. I should emphasize that, so focused, my discussion of the piece is selective. It doesn't adequately register all that is of interest in what Aronson writes. You might like, as they say, to read the whole thing.

The question that interests me is this one:

[W]hy is our society awash in weird beliefs, which people embrace despite an absence of scientific support and against logic and evidence?

Aronson is referring here to the US, the rejection by many Americans of evolution, the widespread acceptance of Creationism, and belief in ghosts, UFOs, witches, astrology (a state of affairs, he says, that 'would make the Enlightenment weep'). But it's the general bearing of his question, rather than its precise historical instantiation, that I want to focus on. I'm wondering whether, as a general question, it is well formed.

What I mean by this is that it will make sense to ask of any particular weird belief, or category of weird belief, why it is that people hold it. But I'm not sure that asking in a general way why people hold weird beliefs - or, otherwise expressed, why they believe things that aren't true - can yield a single and satisfying answer. We think, as a rule, that it is a sufficient reason for believing something that the something is true. Where, on the other hand, we come across a person believing what we know to be false, we look for an explanation for their false belief. We might or might not find one. But even if we do, it won't necessarily be the case that this will be the same kind of explanation as the one that fits someone else's false belief on another matter.

Why does A believe that his son B is an honest person, when most of B's acquaintances know this not to be the case? Perhaps A doesn't have all the information he needs to make a sound judgement. It may be the very same for C and her daughter D – who, like B, is widely known for her dishonesty - but it also may not. Perhaps C does have the information she needs but can't face the conclusion it leads to and so reinterprets the information in a way which will sit more comfortably with her view of her daughter. Why does E not recall something that passed between him and F last time they met and therefore have a more favourable memory of the encounter than F does? Or G believe that touching wood makes a difference to anything, or H think that one number is better for her at roulette than any other is? The explanation for why people believe that a certain group of others is inferior to them, when they aren't, may be different in kind from the explanation why some think the collapse of the Twin Towers was a put-up job, if indeed the same explanation applies for all of those who think this.

There are many different kinds of influence upon belief and therefore there need be no unity amongst the things that cause false belief. Even true beliefs can be held for reasons other than their being true. Here's an example. It could be the case that, for some true belief Z, person J holds it - although it's true - because it suits her interests to do so; counterfactually, she would continue to hold Z should Z turn out to be false. In other words the self-interested reason for holding it is doing the real work. I think this fact strengthens the case for doubting that there's a satisfying general answer to the question why people hold weird, or false, beliefs.

In addition, I'm sceptical of the notion that there could be a time free of all falsehood and illusion. The battle for truth against error is like the one for moral and social progress. It is a never-ending task, not a linear movement leading to some altogether transparent future of perfect knowledge.

As for the thesis of Aronson's that I want to comment on, it is his application to the general question about weird belief of the following distinction: between (a) the conditions that cause such belief, and (b) the choices people make in embracing ignorance, as he puts it, and their motives for doing this. He writes:

To choose not to know is an act of bad faith: we seek to deny what we in some sense already know is there, and we degrade ourselves by willfully suppressing our awareness of it. We do so because we don't want the situation we ignore to be the way it is. Through imprisoning ourselves in ignorance we seek a kind of fantasy makeover of the world to fit our desires, crippling our understanding rather than adapting ourselves to the world by knowing it as it is and acting accordingly. We deny what may be troubling or disheartening, threatening or terrifying.

Bad faith can certainly play a part in someone's refusing to recognize a truth which they have in some sense perceived; there is such a thing as wilful ignorance. At the same time, to make this a major explanatory cause for beliefs that are very widely held strikes me as a form of wishful thinking: as if to say that all these millions of people really know the truth already but won't own up to it; or that the reality of things is always there before us and seeing it takes no effort. This is a misconception that is at one with believing there could one day be a world free of all error and illusion. We are imperfect beings and the obstacles to knowledge, both within us and without, are many and various.

Life as a fundamental value

Giles Fraser puts in question the professed humanism of secular humanists. Why? Because they (or at any rate some of them) think an individual's wish to die, if it is conscientiously arrived at, should be respected. This shows, he thinks, that secular humanists don't take seriously 'the idea that the human is of fundamental value'. He goes on to suggest that Christians make better humanists because they believe in a human dignity that derives from God.

Stephen Law has replied to Fraser (under the same link: scroll down). I want to add two points to what he says. First, belief in the fundamental value of human life is no less solid a ground, just in itself, than belief in God is, for a humanistic moral standpoint. As belief in God is a matter of faith resting on nothing beyond its own presuppositions, so belief that human life is a fundamental value needs nothing beyond itself and its presuppositions - that there are universal human needs and interests - to serve as an axiom for moral deliberation. Second, it is futile to pretend that countenancing the premature end to a life, or more than one, is unique to secular humanists. Other than absolute pacifists just about everybody recognizes, for example, the right to use lethal force in self-defence if it is the only way of saving one's own life, and the possibility of just wars by contrast with unjust ones. Everybody, that is, including plenty of Christians. Believing that life is of fundamental value is not the same thing as believing that it is the only fundamental value - freedom is another one - or that life may never be taken or voluntarily forfeited in any circumstances. (Via B&W).

Lost libraries?

It's a fairly well-known piece of practical wisdom that telling the truth has advantages over lying even from a self-interested point of view - such as that you're less likely to make a mistake about your story. Another big advantage of truth-telling is that lies tend to require further lies in their support since the first lie is inconsistent not only with the truth which it denies but also with other truths in the same general vicinity.

Bring on the Holocaust-deniers. Here's the Chancellor of the Iran University of Science and Technology:

If the Holocaust is indeed a historical event that really took place, why don't they allow this issue to be investigated? Why don't they let academic circles investigate this issue? This alone is an indication that it is a fabrication, with no historical validity.

Does this guy have any conception of how much study has been devoted to the Holocaust? I mean, I don't know how to do the quantification, and wouldn't bother to even if I did, but I think it's safe to say that the amount of Holocaust-'investigation' there has been will stand comparison with that devoted to many other famous historical events. Holocaust-denial thus yields the denial of the existence of study of the Holocaust. What next? Since many of the libraries of the world have substantial holdings of work about the Nazi destruction of the European Jews, it might be time to deny the existence of libraries.

The Contentious Centrist has the story and the link.

Missing dimension

I'm interested by the terms in which the recent US incursion into Syria - 'when US forces crossed the Iraqi border into Syria to kill Abu Ghadiya, a man they said had been funnelling "foreign fighters" allied to al-Qaida into Iraq' - has been discussed by some commentators. I leave aside strategic/tactical issues: whether the strike was prudent or wise. But there's a legal and moral framing of the action summed up in the claim here that it 'trampled on state sovereignty'. This legal and moral framework, however, is not deployed to comment critically on the circumstance that foreign fighters allied to al-Qaida were being 'funnelled' - funnelled, that is, from Syria into Iraq. This would appear to be relevant, unless it's not true. But it doesn't even enter the frame. As if it's just part of a natural background that bears no moral interrogation. In fact, violating state sovereignty can take more than one form.