Chris Hedges brings his anti-fundamentalist diatribe to an end with these words (well, almost to an end):
There is no linear movement in history. Morality and ethics are static. Human nature does not change. Barbarism is part of the human condition and we can all succumb to its basest dimensions. This is the tragedy of history.
Which makes him part of the problem. However, this is not altogether true to the central message of his article. What he really means is that “barbarism is a part of the human condition and we will all succumb to its basest dimensions.” It is a growing conviction. When I first read John Gray’s Straw Dogs I thought it was one of those one-off sorts of things. Surely, I thought, Straw Dogs has not given expression to a wide-spread cultural mood. Yet every now and then I hear the same pessimistic conclusions being advanced as serious contributions to the human conversation. There is no further to go towards enlightenment or truth. We are simply doomed to go on forever dreaming dreams, and imagining that things could get better, that freedom could be extended to more people, peace could actually break out, and we would no longer need to think in terms of the inevitability poverty, famine, war and all their horrors.
In Straw Dogs, John Gray says this:
Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth — and so be free. But if Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. [26]
As Chris Hedges says, history is not linear, and morality is static. Things will never get better, and to think otherwise is to be a fundamentalist, one of those poor sods who actually thinks that thinking and the search for truth can make a difference.
There was almost certainly someone who would take this message from Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage in Norway. It’s interesting (to me, anyway), and apparently uncharacteristic, but when I heard the news from Norway, the idea that it was an attack by Muslims never entered my head. I thought at the time, and still think so now, that the madness did not bear the hallmarks of the Islamic militant. But when it turned out to be the lunacy of an apparently fundamentalist Christian, it was clear that many commentators would immediately point out that, as they had been saying all along, Islam is not really the problem, and all people’s anxieties about “Islamification” are overblown if not hysterical.
Chris Hedges does not disappoint:
The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies.
‘Secular fundamentalists’ shows such a nice light touch, a nuanced appreciation of the threats that face us, but how did Hedges get there from Anders Breivik? Well, of course, straight through the writings of Sam Harris with references to other “fundamentalist atheists” thrown in for good measure. Now, it seems to me that Harris did, in The End of Faith, give a number of hostages to fortune. Nothing was really gained by pondering over the morality of torture or the possibilities of nuclear first strikes; but it was at least couched in terms that should have prevented the misinterpretation that Chris Hedges imposes upon such ponderings. But, I suppose, Harris could scarcely have been prepared for the ravings of a fundamentalist pessimist.
However, why should the actions of one madman suddenly make us think that the madness of radical Islam is not a threat to us? It is a threat to Muslims in Britain, as Maryam Namazie pointed out, only last week, in her speech at the House of Commons, and an especially serious threat to women, where the misogyny of Islam has been given free rein in the establishment of Sharia courts which claim legal jurisdiction over family matters. It is a threat when completely isolated, monoethnic communities, where democracy is not encouraged or practiced, grow up in the midst of democratic jurisdictions. This sort of Islamification, where the misogynistic, patriarchal customs and norms of Islam are permitted to govern and limit the freedoms of so many in countries where those freedoms are founding values, is a danger to freedom and equality, and should be seen to be so. And Anders Breivik’s obscene violence and crazy manifesto should not be allowed to distract us from this.
Religion deprives people of freedom, but some religions limit freedom more than others. Any absolute, comprehensive ideology does so; nor does such limitation of freedom end at the boundaries of such religious ideologies. Roman Catholicism, for instance, is not content to rule on such things as abortion, birth control, homosexuality, assisted dying, and divorce only for its members. No, it seeks to extend its will to society as a whole. Islam is the same. It may seem, as we watch monocultural Muslim communities grow in our midst, that everyone should have a right to live in the way that seems best to them. However, quite aside from the fact that, within such communities, intense pressure is applied to people not to depart from communal norms, it is exceedingly doubtful that the pressure to conform will end there. As was seen recently in Britain, radical Muslims in Muslim majority areas of the country are demanding that Sharia law be applied to those who live there. Of course, some of the popular dailies, like the Daily Mail, have exaggerated the significance of these local movements, but to say that they have no significance, and that the introduction of large monocultural Muslim communities in the midst of free societies pose no danger at all to the public good, is simply wishful thinking.
Yet this is the conclusion that too many people are drawing from the Breivik atrocities. Because one madman confusedly expresses his extremism, and acts upon it, the unwarranted conclusion is drawn that Islam — and by extension, all other religions – pose no danger to free societies. Based on this unjustified conclusion, Chris Hedges would seem to be right, we do “live in a fundamentalist culture.” And Chris Hedges is one of them. Instead of making a thoughtful response to Anders Breivik’s madness, he writes like a fundamentalist, purporting to find the enemies of freedom and reason amongst those who value freedom and reason, and calling them fundamentalists, because they insist that judgement should be based on reason and evidence. This is reactionary religion talking. and religion does now pose an increased threat to the freedoms that have been won over the last few centuries, a long, winding road towards greater respect for human beings and their rights. The struggle is not over, and never will be, for Hedges is right about one thing — and possibly only this one — that human beings are given to over-simplification and egotism. We are, as Christopher Hitchens reminds us again and again, primates, and the tenuousness of our hold on reality is often singularly in evidence.
The conclusion to draw from all this is not that there can be no progress, but that the fruits of progress are very fragile, and the outcome is never certain. As John Gray says — and this is doubtless true: “Truth has no systematic evolutionary advantage over error.” (Straw Dogs, 27) Of course, it is hard to know what Gray means by ‘truth’, but at the moment the irrationalities of religion, and their confident distortions of what we know about ourselves and the world, seems about to engulf us once more, and reverse the trend towards greater freedom and respect for human rights. The religious, of course, do not see their beliefs as either irrational or mad, however loopy they may seem to outsiders; they pine for the day when power can be torn from the grasp of reason, and gods will rule again. Staving off that dark age is the responsibility of all those who strive to think clearly and rationally about the world, and we should not be misled by one act of faux-religious madness into thinking that religion is not a threat to us.
No one wants to identify themselves with insane mass murderers, although Breivik’s crimes and insanity bare a remarkable resemblance to the Old Testament God.
But God, like kings and psychopaths have this unusual exception from Christian identity through history. They don’t represent the true Christian position (whatever that is) which is of course all about love, presumably the slavish love and devotion towards their psychopathic masters.
I agree that human nature is fairly static (although probably not long term) but religion has twisted human nature to perform the most barbaric and cruel acts imaginable. So although by nature, humans are not always so good, it is the community that can make humans far more evil and twisted than they would be naturally.
It is the natural reactionary non-thinking of fools to think that because Breivik is evil (which he surely is) then those he disagreed with must be good. And that is part of what makes Breivik’s actions even more insane, because his very insane actions have been a gift to Islamists.
What twisted the mind of Breivik, also twists the mind of those humans who forego the sensible justice of a modern liberal and secular state, for the justice of trible warlords. They are a very real danger.
I think you can tell much about a community in how they treat their children. Does the community encourage their children explore the world and think independently – ultimately deciding for themselves whether to remain in the community or is every attempt made (including murder) to prevent them from leaving? When I read about the threats made to children coupled with the insulation from ideas (homeschooling, library censorship and the like), I have to conclude that the ‘faith’ of these parents is incredibly weak. We have seen that universal public education can make a difference, but it is continually under attack.
“Morality and ethics are static. Human nature does not change.”
Really? So we still practice slavery, still burn witches, still treat schizophrenics as though they were possessed by demons, still slaughter hundreds of human sacrifices to placate Huitzilopochtli?
No, I didn’t think so.
I have not read, nor do I have a desire to read, Breivik’s Manifesto. Perhaps, there is little to be learned from reading it. But, I am very puzzled by what his reasoning must have been. He is opposed to the Muslim incursion into his traditional culture. So, how is killing his own people, including children, supposed to advance his cause? I should think he would have attacked Muslim targets.
What I am trying to get at is that I have not heard any news source, nor have I read in any source, an attempt to address his twisted logic. At first, the horror of the event was the story. Then it was the nation in mourning. Then it was the inadequacy of the police response. Then it was the crazy reaction of Fox News and others to the supposed Christian nature of his motivation.
But, I have not seen a discussion of how he expected his actions to galvanize a nation against the Muslim jihad. Perhaps he thought the publicity of the horrendous event would afford him a stage where he could preach his gospel?
The trend over time from our hunter-gatherer ancestors to today is a steep decline in violence. We are living in the most peaceful time in the history of our species. I don’t understand why people assume a priori that barbarism is inescapable when the evidence shows otherwise.
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
I haven’t read Breivik’s manifesto beyond a few excerpts either, Smith, nor do I intend to: I get enough exposure to stupidity, bigotry, and evil just reading the ordinary daily news. However, I think I can answer your question.
Breivik’s ravings were full of bigotry — explicit and extensive racism and sexism. In fact, he was so virulently racist that it’s hard to see his anti-Muslim ranting as having any primary basis in rejection of their religion as such. Instead, Islam was his enemy because it is the religion of brown-skinned interlopers. To bigots of Breivik’s ilk (“White Power” types in the U.S. being prime examples), the only creatures more despicable than the actual objects of bigotry are those the bigots see as “collaborators” and “traitors” — that is, those who directly oppose bigotry and support social equality and fairness. That’s why Breivik targeted his attacks where he did: The only things worse than brown people and uppity women are those who support equality for brown people and women, those accursed liberals.
As for advancing his cause, lunatics like Breivik often fantasize that there are actually many more people like them out in the world, millions who share their sentiments but are too cowed by the powers that be to express or act on those sentiments, and who can be inspired by example. In fact, this fantasy is so common that it might well be a universal marker of those who preach and practice terrorist violence: Osama bin Laden’s fevered fantasies of a widespread Islamist uprising that will literally take over the world depend on the same “logic,” the conviction that the world is chock-full of people who share the terrorists’ seething fanatic hatreds (whatever they might be) and are just waiting to be led by example into open war against “the Enemy.”
Yes, I was going to mention Pinker’s remarks, and I think he’s largely right, but there are situations in the world that, given just the right conditions, could roll back practically every reasonable advance that has been made over the last three hundred years. It’s not too late to get much, much worse!
I used to think that people were clearly getting smarter. Then George W. Bush was elected for a second term, and I started to have doubts. But I still tend to think progress is fairly certain, given that we can avoid Ice Ages, Green World Governments and meteor strikes. My reasoning goes like this: as long as people can see there is a better way to live, they will be motivated to adopt it. And it’s getting easier for people to see that all the time. The greatest aid to progress ever devised is modern communications. And the advertising industry has played an important part in telling people what they can attain with education in an open society.
Bear in mind too that it’s the people we don’t normally see who are making the fastest progress — Chinese farmers and Indian call-centre workers and Ghanaian goat-herders. Maybe the US is stagnating or even going backwards, but that’s still only a tiny setback compared to the massive march forward in India and China.
Anyway, we’ll see what the next round of censuses say about religious affiliation. I suspect they will be good news, for the West at least. Cautious optimism is the order of the day.
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While it is wrong to see history as a linear progression – and many historians have been fighting hard to get textbooks to drop that narrative – to say that “Morality and ethics are static” is just mind boggling. Morals and ethics change all the time, as even a cursory glance at history should tell you.
And why are the atheists accused of being nihilists and offering no hope?
“Barbarism is part of the human condition” is a classic deepity. It just sounds more profound that the true but prosaic “Some human beings at some times commit barbaric acts although at significantly declining rates”. Plus it gives an essentialist tinge to the situation that isn’t scientifically accurate.
Sure, things could turn around, and the decline in violence is no excuse for complacency, but the idea that we are essentially violent is just nonsense.
I agree, Daniel, and the fact that, if things do get much much worse, it will almost certainly be largely because of religion, should lead the religious to think more seriously about rationality of religious belief systems. Indeed, as a central aspect of practically all people yet known, and characterised, as it is, by irrationality, extreme experiences and emotion, if barbarism is a part of the human condition, religion is perhaps the chief witness to that fact.
Religious people look to another world which is more real than the one they are actually living in. They think that lots of imaginary things are more real than what actually happens. They think that if death means personal annihilation there is no point in being alive; there is nothing to hope for and existence is meaningless. So atheists are naturally seen as nihilists. Only eternal life seems to give them any sense of purpose. In essence, they regard their earthbound existence as a vale of tears, a sham, a mere preparation for the true life to come. They devalue everything that is meaningful to us.
That is why they don’t do as much as they could to improve our mortal lives, why they encourage suffering, and why they don’t care, or care very little, for human rights or for anything else which might distract people from obeying the will of god and looking towards the eternal glory they have dreamt up for themselves.