A commentary on "The Frivolity of Evil" by Anthony M. Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple: I found this author through Morten Magelssen of norvegicus, and I have read some of what he has written.
I'm sort of impressed by this author, perhaps more so than I thought I would, considering his political views - more on that later. As a retired inner-city doctor, he has seen so much of the misery of the lower class in Britain, day after day, that he has in his own words become "perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil."
And he's definitively worth reading. There is something about his writing that reminds me of C.S Lewis (which I also disagree with on a couple of critical points). It seems like the writing of someone genuinely interested in understanding human nature.
But his conclusions? Some of them are reasonable, like his belief that the popular incarnation of postmodernistic philosophy matters. I partially agree that value relativism has had an effect on societies increasingly less affected by higher ideals of religion or nationalism. It's just that value relativism is not a determining feature of the lower classes. There's more than enough of it in the middle class as well, and although I don't doubt that this causes unhappiness there too, the sort of cruelty and violence he describes is less prevalent there. And as for traditional values, my impression is that they often stand more strongly in the lower classes - for instance, the poor in the USA are more likely to be religious and less likely to have abortions than the middle class. Britain may be different, I concur.
But the weirdest of his conclusions is that the welfare state is "a necessary, though not sufficient" condition for the social misery he has seen. If you had lived your entire life in Britain, this might be a reasonable (though not particularly well-supported) claim. A.M Daniels, however, has traveled the world and should know better. There are many states with a much weaker welfare system than Britain, with worse or equally bad examples of social misery. The USA, for example. If that welfare system is too generous for his taste, just how bad does it have to get?
The Philipines has no welfare system that I know of. I personally know an example from there, where a man abused his wife to death and tried to sell his children into slavery (they were fortunately saved by the woman's family). That is just an anecdote (so are Daniel's stories) but if you did a study of that kind of "self-inflicted" social misery in the Philipines, I would be suprised if you didn't find a lot of similar incidents. A welfare system is neither necessary nor sufficient for social misery.
I call it social misery. I agree it's something different from poverty, and that it is to a large part self-inflicted, but there are nonetheless some preconditions which have to be satisfied for things to go that bad. Social evil doesn't arise in a vacuum. What I think Daniels dismisses too easily is when these people say they are depressed. Yes, their depression arises in part from their own, short sighted actions (such as abandoning your children when your new lover demands it, an example Daniels uses). However, I wonder if Daniels is a very happy and perpetually optimistic man. For if he isn't, how could he have failed to notice this obvious effect of depression: It makes us short sighed as well! The less faith you have in your future happiness, the more you cling to the pleasures of the moment. It's something I see every day: when my job application is rejected, or the family economy is strained, it's simply harder to do the dishes! Even if I know that I will be happier in a clean home, and I know that my mood makes me short sighted, it just takes more willpower.
Now look at the lower class in Britain, which Daniels describes. When they have descended into such abject misery, it's because they have lost faith in their own potential for happiness. They think there is no way to lasting happiness for them. This is a strong assertion, and I'm not an expert in much of anything, but as I see it this is the only solution that makes sense. Because we know that even evil people want to be happy. And we know that poor people aren't stupid - it's not that they don't know that neglecting their children will have bad consequences for themselves, or even that the pleasure that can be had from revenge and punishment is fleeting. It's that in their hearts they don't believe there is something more.
Now, why are they there? How did they lose that faith? Is it because of the fall of nationalism? Well, it may be a factor, but don't forget that nationalism carries evils of its own. The neo-nazi organisation Vigrid in Norway is by all accounts pretty good at getting people to get their act together, setting them on a "glorious" path of racism and violence. It looks as if the BNP in Britain plays a similar role. Now, people may argue that nationalism doesn't have to export its evil in that way, but I don't see how it can be avoided.
Is it because of the rise of moral relativism? That may be a factor, were really people so much more absolutists in previous days? And how do we explain the comparative happiness of the middle and upper classes, who have plenty of moral relativism of their own?
How can the welfare state be an explanation? Sure, there is slightly less need for a father or a mother these days, in terms of putting food on the table! But certainly the need is still strong? What about the emotional needs? Everyone who has children knows that they really, really need you.
Is it the fall of religion? Certainly that seems to be something significant in Britain, and it's no doubt that faith can inspire people to get their act together. But there are also many religious people who live in social misery throughout the world, and much evil done in the name of religion, like nationalism.
Unlike nationalism, I don't think religion needs to be inherently evil, that depends on the religion. Indeed, nationalism is a form of religion as I see it, and a false and dangerous one as well. I wish I could say that Christianity is the good religion, and in a sense I do, but in what is called Christianity today (and in the last 2000 or so years) there is unfortunately a lot that is neither good nor Christian. The Christianity that was in Britain had/has many problems. While I do believe Christianity - true Christianity - can be a way out of the current mess for Britain as well as the rest of the world, it's not solely from the fall of Christianity that social misery appears. There wasn't all that much of it to begin with.
I think the explanation lies also with Daniels fellow conservatives. Those who proclaim that everyone can rise from rags to riches, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. Those who have created economic conditions favourable to themselves. Those who see themselves as so distinct and superior in morality and intellect, that it quite understandably provokes a reaction, and leads the poor to take pride in their misery - who would like to join that crowd of self-righteous know-it-alls?
And in this one thing Britain comes in a category apart from comparable countries with much lower levels of social misery: They have an old class system. They had kings, they had nobility, they had an upper class based on wealth from colonies. Perhaps for that reason, the lower class was also always very self-conscious, and still is. Britain also has a long history of connection with India, and in that ancient culture the imperialists met the notion of a caste system. A notion very much in dissonance with Christian ethics, but very appealing as a tool of justification for opression. This notion combined with darwinism to create social darwinism and eugenics, and with them the shameless contempt for weakness which unfortunately lies at the heart of much that calls itself "conservativism" today.
I've come across a very, very interesting blog, Obsidian Wings. Finally, sense! What initially prompted this post was an article by hilzoy about morality. It's a wonderful article. It has the excellent writing skill that I've come to expect from blogs like Crooked Timber, but alas, this post could never have been posted there. Consider this: a liberal philosopher, writing seriously and eloquently about striving to become a better person! When did we last see that? C.S Lewis?
Of course, googling to find more by this excellent author, I see that not only does she quote Lewis (in another must, must read article!), but she apparently became a christian after reading his works at age 13.
I wonder if Morten Magelssen reads her? If you don't, and you read this, Morten, I suggest you read hilzoy on hatred, and consider changing the link from Melanie Phillips to Obsidian Wings instead. (Melanie Phillips is very much guilty of the hate whipping Lewis warns us about, and the final straw for me was when she claimed global warming was a leftist conspiracy.
And of course, I'd had to look at that blog if only for the hilarious tagline.
Comments disabled pro spam, Harald Korneliussen can be contacted on vintermann at gmail, as usual.
I see on the google blog that the mad scientists at google have been putting up videos of some internal presentations. They especially make a mention of this one. That's interesting, it looks like the things Aaron Swartz wrote about, Jeff Hawkin's ideas about AI and so on. It's really exciting.
I've been thinking about those things since I first read about them, it's so exciting. I have tried to think of hierarchical recognition algorithms and how to get them to work, but there's always something I can't figure out for myself, and so I've never sat down and coded a line of it. Not that I would have the time for that, really.
But this thing has been on my radar for a while, and knowing that google works on it really excites me. Perhaps we will see advanced machine translation, image recognition, speech to text and so on in our time?
I'm going to have a look at that talk.
Comment on deltoid:
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"The question of death penalty is like abortion, it's an ideological question and studies like that are pretty irrelevant."
That depends. Yes, it's a moral issue: death penalty will still be wrong even if it's effective in reducing crime/improving the economy/getting the "right" people elected/whatever. Same with abortion, I say. But that doesn't mean studies are worthless. For instance, a recent study in Norway found that a large percentage of women having abortions felt that their boyfriend forced them. That's important both to proponents (because they'd better think of something to do about it!) and opponents (because it illustrates nicely that legality affects what people can be forced to do - the same reason slavery is illegal, and legalized prostitution is problematic).
I came across Amiga Music Preservation yesterday, and today I used the opportunity to grab some files by the two big computer music heroes I remember from my childhood: Mahoney and Kaktus (Pex Tufvesson and Anders Berkeman). While I was there I noticed another one, Jogeir Liljedahl, who I know comes from my hometown. I almost laughed out loud when I saw that he had written a piece about "Myrstad Mathus"!
It's great to have the music of my childhood avaliable like that. It's sure to invoke nostalgia, but perhaps some of the music has stood the test of time?
It's strange to see how these people have made the transition from subculture heroes into obscurity. The change must have been dramatic - Pex "Mahoney" Tufvesson, for instance, writes that he has a huge pile of fan mail from that period, so much that he hasn't opened it all.
Some act as if nothing was changed, some try to document the history of their movement. Some, like Anders Berkeman, leave only the tiniest hints on their pages that yes, that was me with the mods. Some even have managed to make a career out of it, but it's of course nothing like their former fame.
Some are dead. Another one from my hometown apparently died after a brief admission to a mental hospital. It's a bit alarming that I can find out that just by googling... But at least the memory of "Bug" lives on in one of many people who listened to his music when we were young.
When I look at the pages mentioning them, I see that most of them were part of cracker groups. They were also music, demo and graphics art groups, of course, but some of those groups there were razzias against... It definitely paints a complex picture of the culture. Is it any wonder I was disappointed when I read The cathedral and the bazaar, and found out that Eric Raymond dismissed the entire world I grew up with with a few contemptuous phrases?