normblog

All years are equal

I now talk you out of the old year and into the new by drawing your attention to a serious and overlooked injustice: time discrimination. How come, in these greetings at the turn of the year, people are always talking about the future and not the past? Happy new year, they will say, but not hope you just had a good one. How come, hey? This is year-prejudice and has no place in a society aiming to be just, or indeed just aiming to be. You may say, nonsense - it's simply that good wishes for what's still to happen can affect things whereas good wishes about the past can't. Twice mistaken. Merely wishing good things doesn't actually achieve them, and when you run into people you haven't seen in a while, or send them a Christmas card, you often don't know what sort of year they've just had, so you could as easily say happy old year, in the hope that your wish may make it true they've had a good one. But you don't. So why not, hey? Blatant unjustified discrimination. You may say, but what about happy birthday? Well, quite. It proves my point. Happy birthday does generally include many happy returns; but it also registers something of the past by its anniversarial nature.

It's an outrage.

Happy New Year to all and Happy Old Year too.

Song sung blue, song sung Singer

Earlier in the week Geoffrey Wheatcroft treated readers of the Groan to a somewhat dyspeptic asessment of the last two decades and of his - and my - generation. Somewhat? No, more than. It was 20 inexcusable years and (borrowing from Tony Judt) a crappy generation. You can read the details of Wheatcroft's lament, if you wish, here. I dunno: a whole generation, crappy. I have this intuitive notion that crappiness and its opposites are probably distributed in such a way that generations are a bit more mixed. Even when a generation accommodates - to pick an example at random - Nazis, it also includes those who fought them. Anyway, here's an assesment of a different stripe, from Peter Singer. Not that this one's uncritical; but it also contains this sort of thing:

As we reach 65, it is worth asking how our generation has done as stewards of the world we inherited. In several respects we are leaving our children and grandchildren a significantly better world. Progress towards equality, now symbolised by the fact that Australia has a woman prime minister, has been significant. We are also less credulous in our religious beliefs, more accepting of the freedom to have no religious beliefs and less narrow in our sexual morality...

For a generation that can remember when Australia's indigenous inhabitants had no rights to their traditional lands and were not even counted in the national census, Kevin Rudd's apology to our indigenous inhabitants was another important symbol of progress. Needless to say, there is still a long way to go.

The environmental movement that began with Earth Day in 1970 has had many notable successes. In Australia, we lost Lake Pedder, and large areas of old-growth forest that should never have been logged, but the Franklin still runs free, Kakadu has been protected, along with much of our alpine region and many other once-threatened areas of wilderness. Surprisingly, despite the increase in size of our cities, the air is cleaner than when we were young and our wonderful beaches are still a joy to visit.

A new concern for animals shows signs of reversing the habits of past generations that saw them as mere means for our use.

We can also feel some satisfaction in the knowledge that the proportion of the world's people who live in extreme poverty is lower now than it was when we came of age. Far more children go to school - and girls are less likely to stay at home while their brothers go to school. The difference is shown most dramatically in the figures the United Nations Children's Fund provides on the number of children under five dying from poverty-related causes. In 1960 that number was estimated at 20 million. By 2007 it had fallen below 10 million. In the 2010 report, it is down to 8.1 million. That is a remarkable achievement, especially considering that in 1960 the world's population was only 2.5 billion and it is now approaching 7 billion. We must not forget that this still means that 22,000 children die every day and almost all these deaths are preventable. We can and should do much better. Yet if we think about the progress made, we can be encouraged.

So we are passing on to the next generation a world in which the risk of nuclear annihilation has receded, sexism, racism and even speciesism are on the retreat, important areas of wilderness are protected, more children than ever before go to school, and extreme poverty and infant mortality are falling.

The Australian context of some of these remarks cannot obscure a certain difference of temperament here, or is it just mood? Neither, more importantly, can it obscure the highly selective nature of Wheatcroft's gloom.

Unlikely but still possible

Sometimes you blog with opinions, other times with questions. This is me blogging with a question - addressed to anyone who's better than I am on theories of probability. Here's the text from which my question will arise:

Joseph Banks Rhine, a psychologist at Duke, had developed an interest in the possibility of extrasensory perception, or E.S.P. Rhine devised an experiment featuring Zener cards, a special deck of twenty-five cards printed with one of five different symbols: a card was drawn from the deck and the subject was asked to guess the symbol. Most of Rhine's subjects guessed about twenty per cent of the cards correctly, as you'd expect, but an undergraduate named Adam Linzmayer averaged nearly fifty per cent during his initial sessions, and pulled off several uncanny streaks, such as guessing nine cards in a row. The odds of this happening by chance are about one in two million. Linzmayer did it three times.

Rhine documented these stunning results in his notebook and prepared several papers for publication. But then, just as he began to believe in the possibility of extrasensory perception, the student lost his spooky talent. Between 1931 and 1933, Linzmayer guessed at the identity of another several thousand cards, but his success rate was now barely above chance. Rhine was forced to conclude that the student's "extra-sensory perception ability has gone through a marked decline."

If something very improbable happens, even something very very very improbable, its happening is not inconsistent with its improbability, right? That the odds of its happening by chance are one in two million is just to say that it's hardly ever going to happen, not that it won't happen at all. Therefore, if it does happen, it could be that this is just that one time in two million. To hypothesize in such circumstances that something might be the case which defies the laws of nature so far as we've got in understanding these seems a big jump. I mean, shouldn't one at least come up with an explanatory hypothesis for E.S.P. first?

To conclude these meanderings with my specific question: how can the mere improbability of an occurrence be taken as evidence for anything when its improbability is perfectly consistent with its actually happening (though not with its happening often)? (Thanks: E.)

The 'mistake' of universal rights

Take something that is widely, if not quite universally, regarded as a good, form a phrase by sticking the word 'imperialism' on the end of it, and bingo, you now have something bad. The good could be human rights, for example. But once you've turned them into 'human rights imperialism'... oh no, human rights have become an ideological cover for bad things. Thus, Stephen Kinzer at - where else? - Comment is Free. And this is, from him, the passage du jour:

Those who have traditionally run Human Rights Watch and other western-based groups that pursue comparable goals come from societies where crucial group rights - the right not to be murdered on the street, the right not to be raped by soldiers, the right to go to school, the right to clean water, the right not to starve - have long since been guaranteed. In their societies, it makes sense to defend secondary rights, like the right to form a radical newspaper or an extremist political party. But in many countries, there is a stark choice between one set of rights and the other. Human rights groups, bathed in the light of self-admiration and cultural superiority, too often make the wrong choice.

Well, Lawdy Miss Fothering-Truck Claudy. How bathed in the light of self-admiration must one be not to be able to see that in some countries people might have to settle for being raped by soldiers so long as their right not to be murdered on the street is respected; or might have to forego the right not to starve in order to be assured of clean water; or might have to forget press freedom if their children are allowed to go to school? And so on. Anyone can understand that practicalities, real empirical obstacles, may get in the way of pursuing every just cause everywhere at the same time. But there is a code of fundamental human rights that applies precisely everywhere without exception, and for some not-especially-oppressed journo to pontificate disparagingly about these - as in 'an absolutist view of human rights permeated by modern western ideas that westerners mistakenly call "universal"' - is at once repellent and exactly what you'd expect at Comment is Free.

I look forward to the upcoming CiF post, 'End anti-torture imperialism now' - in which some progressive-minded person lets us know why the prohibition of torture is a culturally relative norm that must occasionally be sacrificed to other pragmatic considerations.

Postscript. In so far as the defence may conceivably be mounted of Kinzer's argument here that he's encouraging us to go easy on narrowly 'political' rights - formation of parties, free press etc - if other more basic desiderata are being adequately attended to in the country or countries under discussion, can he really be unaware that this style of argument has a long and (surely now) discredited pedigree? Starting with Stalinist Russia, through China under Mao, to Castro's Cuba, there have always been these apologetic voices to tell you that yes, OK, all may not be entirely well so far as democratic norms are concerned, but steel production is great, or there's a wonderful educational system or there have been great strides made in health care. One is never invited to consider why the peoples enjoying these benefits may not have self-rule as well.

Flower of Zimbabwe

The same editorial mentions that Andy Flower, the England coach, who cut short his career playing for Zimbabwe by staging a public protest against the regime of Robert Mugabe, 'has joined the campaign to save the life of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani'. There's also a news item about this in the paper (£):

Flower, who played 63 Test matches for Zimbabwe before he became a coach, might not have become involved with English cricket if he had not made a courageous human rights protest while playing for his country in the 2003 World Cup.

With Henry Olonga, his team-mate, who was the first black player to represent Zimbabwe, Flower wore a black armband during the game against Namibia in Harare. The pair released a statement explaining that they were "mourning the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe" and that they were "making a silent plea to those responsible to stop the abuse of human rights" in the country.

Both Flower and Olonga left Zimbabwe shortly afterwards and moved to England. In 2003 their stance was given wider recognition with the Anne Frank Award for Moral Courage.

Now Flower is 'urg[ing] the Iranian authorities to free her [Ashtiani] without condition'. Zimbabwe or Iran: the struggle for human justice is indivisible.

The turn of the wheel

A Times leader today (£) celebrates England's retention of the Ashes - and who can blame them? England's dominance of the series has been fully deserved; I extend my congratulations to the team and its supporters. The Times is concerned to stress that this achievement should now be used as 'a staging post on the way to sustained excellence', but you will understand if I put that hope behind me without further comment. My interest is in the paper's explanation of England's success:

England have been superior in every respect, with bat and ball and in the field... Australia played badly, and the country's decline is an unavoidable part of the story...

I concur with all of that and therefore with the last bit: Australia's cricketing decline. I think the present series allows us to close the open judgement I recorded in February 2007 after Australia's 5-0 whitewash of England then just concluded:

In the English summer of 2005, a thrilling and unforgettable series made it look as if the period of Australian dominance might be over. But it turned out not to be so, the recent clean sweep in Australia making 2005 look like an exception, narrowly achieved, rather than the first light of a new dawn. But who can tell? The 2006-7 result, even in taking the general tendency of almost two decades to its extreme limit, may in the end turn out to have been a final flourish - with the retirement of Shane Warne an appropriate marker for, as well as one of the principal causes of, this closure.

Final flourish was right. In 2009 England won back the Ashes but, as in 2005, the result was so close that the relative strengths of Australia and England could still look rather uncertain. Not any more. Not only is the period of Australian ascendancy well and truly over, but the national team looks to be falling apart. It needs two opening batsmen since right now it has no real opening batsman of appropriate toughness and technical skill; it could do with a middle order with some resilience, having at the moment only Hussey in that role; Australia needs a good spin bowler, and some fast bowlers more impressive and consistent than those they have; and Ricky Ponting - a great, great player - is out of confidence and out of form. So everything needs attention, and I don't know, from here, what young cricketing potential there is to begin the rebuilding process. But a full rebuilding is the size of the problem. The Ashes wheel, as the saying goes, has turned. I look forward to its turning again.

Haggard for the president

Did I ever tell you about Merle Haggard? Yes, I did; I surely did. Still, no harm in talking about him again. Merle is speaking up for Obama:

They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he's doing certain things that he's not. It's just a big old political game that I don't want to be part of. There are people spending their lives putting him down. I'm sure some of it's true and some of it's not.

There's also the president's 'nice handshake'. (Thanks: SC.)

University of literature

Concerned that study of the humanities is not getting an adequate defence within the public sphere, including from humanities professors, who (he says) undersell their subjects, Alain de Botton sets out the case he thinks ought to be made:

My own answer to what the humanities are for is simple: They should help us to live. We should look to culture as a storehouse of useful ideas about how to face our most pressing personal and professional issues. Novels and historical narratives can impart moral instruction and edification... It should be the job of a university education to tease out the therapeutic and illuminative aspects of culture, so that we emerge from a period of study as slightly less disturbed, selfish and blinkered human beings. Such a transformation benefits not only the economy but also our friends, children and spouses.

Alain is writing of the humanities in general, but I want to focus on what he says only as it relates to the reading and study of literature. So focused the case, it seems to me, divides into two different cases. Or, at any rate, that is the suggestion I want to explore.

Alain has a fair bit more to say echoing the above passage. Thus, he quotes Mill: 'to make capable and cultivated human beings'. And he speaks of helping people 'to find meaning [and] understand themselves', of disseminating 'emotional or ethical life skills', of a 'knowledge concerned with things that are not only true but also inwardly beneficial, providing comfort in the face of life's infinite challenges, from a tyrannical employer to a fatal diagnosis'.

The division I now propose is one between, broadly speaking, utility and understanding. For both are present in the argument that Alain makes. As applied to the reading of literature, this should, on the one hand, 'help us to live', provide 'a storehouse of useful ideas', better enable us to deal with 'a tyrannical employer'; and, on the other hand, tease out 'illuminative aspects of culture', make 'cultivated human beings', and help us to find meaning and understand ourselves.

I do not for a moment deny that having a better, a deeper, understanding of things can be practically useful; it can, of course. But the reason I distinguish the utilitarian case for the reading of literature from the promotion-of-understanding one is that the former seems to me to be diminishing in a way that the latter isn't. I mean, suppose someone says that from reading Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, he or she learned something useful which they then applied to their own marriage(s), that by reading Philip Roth they were helped in thinking about the prospect of death, that after reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy they found it easier to cope with a cruelty they had suffered personally; whereas someone else professes to have had no help at all from reading assorted novels by Anne Tyler, George Eliot, William Maxwell and Anita Brookner, whether in his marriage, or in raising his children, or in coping with her employer, or with a personal misdeed done against her, or with anything. Supposing all this, or some variant of it - are we then to say that the second someone's reading has been a total waste of time? Don't evade the issue by suggesting in your turn that maybe this second someone obtained handy lessons in hill-walking or bird-watching, or in how to relate to a difficult teenager. Suppose they're just not very good in translating their reading into practical lessons; or that the spread of their reading doesn't mesh with the particular problems they face in life.

My point is that reading fiction surely has another rationale than the narrowly utilitarian one - i.e., that it will be useful in your life. I think it does have another and better rationale: namely, that it tells - or shows - you stuff about the world which you otherwise might not get. Plus: for those who enjoy it, it's enjoyable. This is enough. Even if the study of literature can be useful as well.

We the sheeple

Here's one of those book-of-the-year features in which various more or less well-known folk pick their book of 2010. Once you get there, make your way over - by means of the little arrow on the right - to Simon Winchester at number 21. His book of this year is Tony Blair's A Journey; but not for reasons that flatter either the volume or its author. No, rather because it has provoked Winchester.

It provoked in me inestimable feelings of a deep disappointment, derived from the astonishment that Britain's political system, and her sheep-like, TV-obsessed voting public, had ever handed the reins of a government that had once been in the hands of such as Gladstone, Disraeli, Salisbury, Lloyd George and Macmillan (not to mention the greatest of them all) to so mediocre, vain, mendacious, tawdry and intellectually shabby a figure as this memoir's author. I want Tony Blair forgotten... [etc]

This outdoes ordinary Blair-hatred. For not only is he (the former prime minister) mediocre, vain, mendacious and all the rest of it. These bad qualities also rub off on those who participated in electing him: the British voting public is nothing less than 'sheep-like'. I remember similar judgements on the US voting public after it handed George Bush a second term. And I can only imagine what one is supposed to think, along similar lines, of the French and Italian voting publics, to say nothing of any other national voting public beyond these four. So... Blair-hatred plus contempt for humankind. I hope Simon Winch[e]ster has been enjoying his Christmas.

Knocking your own side

Taking off from the present travails of Australia's cricketers, Sam de Brito speculates, in the Sydney Morning Herald, about why the present team are as unloved as they are by the Australian cricket-following public. His hypothesis: there's just too much - too much of them and for them. '[T]oo much cricket... too many formats, too many uniforms and too many players in those uniforms across those formats'; and too much media exposure, too many ads and endorsements, the cricketers overpaid.

I'm not going to quarrel with any of this. Maybe there's something in it. But even if it's true, I think there's something else more general which de Brito overlooks, though there's a clue to it in his own remark in passing (apropos the current state of 'unlovedness') that 'This is unheard of when teams are winning'. Exactly so. Anyone who watches live football will know the impulse which seizes some proportion of a team's supporters when the team is taking a beating, especially when playing poorly: the impulse to start shouting at members of the team in an angry, even abusive, way; to moan loudly about how pathetic they are. It's not the only impulse. There's also an opposite one, namely, expressing your support whatever: 'We'll keep the red flag flying high cos Man United never die', 'You'll never walk alone', and so forth, sung defiantly. Yet anger and abuse from the fans when their team is getting stuffed is one well-known response, all the same. Is it a psychological distancing? OK, that's my team but, bloody hell, I don't want to be associated with them in this guise, associated with this piss-poor aspect of them; I have my standards after all.

In any case, I'm with Australia, thick and thin. But they need to rebuild the side.