Keeping Things Simple.

Cut Through: A complex world is incompatible with a simple world. Explanation is incompatible with acceptance. Contrariwise, the ability to distinguish the majority view of reality from reality itself is arguably the most vital adaptation of human evolution, it’s what drives our species forward.

TO EXPLAIN IS NOT TO JUSTIFY. How astonishing, that in 2022 so few people appear to grasp this simple truth. It’s as if expending the mental energy required to understand what is happening in the world will, in some mysterious way, rob us of the capacity to make judgements about it.

And, therein, lies the problem: judging the world is now much more important than understanding it. Complexity has become the enemy of clarity – especially moral clarity. “Keep it simple, stupid” has become the motto of the modern politician: proof of just how dangerous complexity is now perceived to be. Such fetishization of simplicity certainly explains that other great political motto: “Explaining is losing.”

If the world really was a simple place, then the demonisation of those who attempt to explain it would not be necessary. It has always been a problem for those exercising authority over us that the longer we live in the world the more obvious it becomes that it is very far from being a simple place. The more ordinary people begin to appreciate the world’s complexity, however, the harder the job of ruling them becomes. While philosophers may argue that to know all is to forgive all, most rulers take a very different view. In their experience, the more people learn about the reasons behind the rules, the angrier they become.

Perhaps that is why it was generally considered wise, by the rulers, to bolster the authority of the state with the authority of organised religion. Nothing beats organised religion for whittling down the awesome complexity of the world to a few hard, fast, and – most importantly – simple rules. Moses made do with just ten!

Enslave people to the simple “truths” of their faith, and any need for them to come to terms with the complexity of human existence is averted. Omniscience is restricted to God. Only He is able to comprehend the entirety of His universe. Men and women need only know that the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Keep his commandments and all will be well. (Oh, and it’s probably a good idea to keep the commandments of your earthly rulers as well!)

A partnership made in heaven, you might say. Or else, that heaven is the partnership’s most successful invention. Works either way.

The problem with organised religion and its simple truths is that the human imagination, combined with human species’ insatiable curiosity, are forever throwing up individuals who refuse to believe in the comforting fictions of their secular and religious rulers. They can, of course, be suppressed. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!) But the irritating thing about these seekers after knowledge is that they all-too-frequently come up with ideas and techniques that are simply too useful to ignore. Organised religion takes a hit. Living gets more complicated – and so does the whole business of governing an increasingly complicated population.

The answer to this new problem turned out to be relatively simple. Replace the voice of the priest in the pulpit with the voice of the teacher at the front of the class. Replace the wonder of God’s creation with the “nothingbutism” of science. Human-beings are “nothing but” the product of millions of years of evolution. Morality is what works. Evil is what works in ways that make no evolutionary sense. Bad equals broken. Good equals the absence of damage – and difference. The best thing to be is the same as everybody else. Uncomplicated.

The Internet makes simplicity easy. Thanks to social media, the voice of the teacher at the front of the class can be retired in favour of the voices on the individual’s Twitter feed, Facebook Page, Instagram or Tik-Tok. Sophisticated algorithms ensure that practically all of these voices are saying exactly the same thing – keeping the conversation as simple as possible. Never has it been easier for people to know what they think. Never have people had less cause to be tolerant of those who think for themselves.

Attempting to explain to others why they may be mistaken in their thinking is fast becoming a dangerous exercise. For many people, being wrong is an outright impossibility. How could it be otherwise when everyone they know is telling them they’re right?

Introducing the concept of complexity: the idea that in any given situation there are a host of competing factors at work; is interpreted by an increasing number of twenty-first century humans as a criticism of both themselves and their friends. Moreover, since they and their friends are always right, the person “explaining” can only be trying to justify being wrong. And pretending to be right when you’re not right, doesn’t just make you wrong, it makes you bad.

A complex world is incompatible with a simple world. Explanation is incompatible with acceptance. 

Contrariwise, the ability to distinguish the majority view of reality from reality itself is arguably the most vital adaptation of human evolution, it’s what drives our species forward.

Unfortunately, it can also get you killed.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 24 March 2022.

Should We Trust The Science – Or Ourselves?

“Pure” Science: The lesson to be drawn from the history of science, however, is that knowledge is always and everywhere embedded in culture. That the one cannot be separated from the other. Culture can empower knowledge, or suppress it; advance it or divert it to the utmost wickedness. Knowledge goes where it’s told.  

“TRUST THE SCIENCE” – those three words have become the mantra of the global fight against Covid-19. That the population must be exhorted to trust the advice of scientists, however, speaks directly to humanity’s diminishing faith in the scientific ethos. There was a time when politicians didn’t have to ask.

Nowhere has this loss of faith been demonstrated more dramatically that on the streets of London, Paris and, closer to home, Sydney. Once revered as a secular priesthood, scientists are now depicted as the willing accomplices of tyrants hellbent on the elimination of all human freedoms. One utterly deranged London protester breathlessly recalled that doctors and nurses had faced the judges at Nuremberg – “and they were hung!”

Leaving aside the absurdity of equating NHS doctors and nurses with Joseph Mengele and his entourage, the reference to the Nazi era is curiously apposite. Scientists of every kind flocked to the new Nazi regime. From rocketeer Werner von Braun, to atomic scientist Werner Heisenberg, scientists embraced Hitler’s new order as the invincible vector of rational modernity. The intellectual promoters of “scientific racism” and eugenics looked forward to working at the cutting edge of a ruthless, ultra-radical, technological society; unburdened by sentiment and driven exclusively by unfettered science.

So, what does this tell us about “the science”? The lesson to be drawn is that knowledge is always and everywhere embedded in culture. That the one cannot be separated from the other. Culture can empower knowledge, or suppress it; advance it or divert it to the utmost wickedness. Knowledge goes where it’s told.

In the guise of scientists, the holders and manipulators of knowledge often pretend to a status entirely independent of the inexactitude of cultural impulses and individual prejudices. But, as the horrific history of the Third Reich bears witness, those calling themselves scientists proved no less susceptible to the ethno-nationalist culture of Nazism than the most thuggish stormtrooper.

Unsurprisingly, scientists resist these assertions with considerable energy. Here in New Zealand, battle has recently been joined between those who argue that “Matauranga Maori”, the Maori way of knowledge, is no less deserving of respect and inculcation than “Western Science”; and those who insist that science and the scientific method transcend all indigenous understandings of the way the world works.

The seven highly respected scientists who penned a letter to the New Zealand Listener (31/7/21) expressing similar reservations, were particularly perturbed by an NCEA working group’s claim that “science is a Western European invention and itself evidence of European dominance over Maori and other indigenous peoples.”

From an historical perspective, however, the seven letter-writers’ objection to this characterisation of science is extremely difficult to uphold. The relationship between race and science in the history of Western imperialism is simply too strong; and the brutal uses to which the fruits of scientific inquiry were put, too irrefutable. Science both enabled – and justified – the European conquest of the world.

By contrast, Matauranga Maori recognises the wisdom of knowledge and culture working together: each one both tempering and expanding the other. Or, as the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Dame Juliet Gerrard, wrote back in 2019:

“[Matauranga Maori’s] approach of embedding practice in society and grounding the project in a community of acceptance before it starts is the very model of ensuring impact and connectivity. Often those trained in Western traditions, however fine, struggle to grasp this until it is perhaps too late. How many technologies will be developed in isolation before we learn that we need to engage our publics sooner, not later, to make sure there is cultural license to proceed?”

Another way of describing this approach might be “the democratisation of science”. Certainly, the tradition of citizen scientists, operating independently of big business and the state, and applying their scientific discoveries in ways that brought obvious benefits to ordinary people, goes a long way towards explaining why Europeans initially embraced the achievements of science.

It was what Churchill called “perverted science” that sowed the seeds of popular doubt and scepticism. Science without scruple or sanction; science driven by national self-aggrandisement and/or private profit.

Dame Juliet suggests that: “To turn the tide on anti-science sentiment, we need to reframe our science as ‘here to serve’ and ‘here to listen’.”

This is all Matauranga Maori asks. Not that we “trust the science”, but that we trust ourselves.

This essay was originally published by The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 30 July 2021.

The Curse Of Cassandra.

Unheeded: What god has Greta Thunberg offended, I wonder, to be afforded so many opportunities to deliver so many chilling warnings of climate catastrophe to so many world leaders – to so little effect? Like the Trojan seeress, Cassandra, she looks into the future and sees the ruin that awaits her generation, bears witness fearlessly to the truth, and is viciously derided for her trouble.

IT WAS CASSANDRA’S divinely administered curse: to see the future – but not to be believed. To secure the daughter of the King of Troy’s affections, the god Apollo bestowed upon her the gift of prophecy. When Cassandra, unsecured, refused his amorous advances, the angry god spat into her mouth: corrupting his own gift and sealing the princess’s fate.

Poor Cassandra, when the people of Troy, delirious at their “victory” over the Greeks, hauled within the city walls the mighty wooden horse left behind by their erstwhile besiegers as a “gift”, the seeress ran at it with axe and fire. The angry Trojans restrained Cassandra – calling her mad. The Greek warriors hidden in the horse’s belly, fated to kindle the proud towers of Ilium, were spared.

What god has Greta Thunberg offended, I wonder, to be afforded so many opportunities to deliver so many chilling warnings of climate catastrophe to so many world leaders – to so little effect? Like the Trojan seeress, she looks into the future and sees the ruin that awaits her generation – and bears witness fearlessly to the truth.

Oh how she speaks! Sometimes with the cold detachment of the judge who looks down upon the convicted killer in the dock, conscious only of her duty to pass the sentence mandated by Mother Nature’s, immutable laws.

On other occasions, such as her speech to the Climate Summit in New York on Tuesday morning, Greta’s ice is mixed with fire. The pig-tailed 16-year-old’s voice trembles with emotions that threaten to overthrow her at any moment. Somehow, she regains control of herself, of her voice. Enough to pronounce her crushing judgement upon the generation who, by their obdurate inaction, have stolen their children’s future.

“We will never forgive you!”

Greta Thunberg is not the only player in the Climate Change tragedy upon whom has been laid the dreadful burden of Cassandra. Apollo has also spat into the mouths of the scientists.

All over the world they have laboured to collect the data. New Zealand scientist, Dave Lowe, started recording the slow but steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide as far back as 1973. For more than forty years these men and women of Science have watched the evidence accumulate. Knowing that the possibility of their being in error was getting smaller and smaller with every paper that was presented, every report that was published.

They have peered into the future. They know what lies ahead. The melting ice caps; the rising seas; the deadly storms. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Famine, Pestilence, War and Death have all acknowledged their foresight with a studied nod of their terrifying heads. The scientists, too, have cried out a warning but, like Cassandra – and Greta – they have not been heeded.

Poor Greta. On Tuesday morning she told the assembled leaders of the world’s nations:

“You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that, because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.”

No, not evil, Greta. Say rather that we are enchanted. We can hear you but we cannot act. In the fairy tales you invoked so angrily in your speech, characters rendered so unaccountably immobile would be said to be “spellbound”.

What sort of spell could possibly be powerful enough to bind the whole of humanity: commoners as well as kings? To that question Greta’s speech also contained an answer:

“People are suffering. People are dying and dying ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth”.

Ah, yes – the money. And more than the money. The dream of wealth without consequences; power without restraint. That is the spell, Greta. That has always been the spell. And we cannot break it.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) was also captivated by the legend of Cassandra. In his eponymous poem he writes:

The power is yours, but not the sight;

You see not upon what you tread;

You have the ages for your guide,

But not the wisdom to be led.

Certainly not by a 16-year-old schoolgirl.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 September 2019.

Capitalism’s Comforter: The Myth That The Free-Market Has Liberated Humanity.

The Choice Fruits Of Capitalism: The Right delights in claiming that the dramatic improvements in the lot of ordinary people in the quarter-century since the fall of the Soviet Union, far from being the result of clean water, mass education and mounting political pressures from below, are to be attributed to the beneficence of free-market capitalism. And yet, wherever untrammelled FMC has been installed - as in the Russian Federation under Yeltsin, or in US-occupied Iraq - the results have been catastrophic.

 

IT’S THE RIGHT’S COMFORT BLANKET. Pressed to present a moral justification for their politics, it’s what they reach for. The unquestionable progress of humanity: out of poverty, ignorance and injustice, and towards prosperity, education and more equitable social arrangements; is held up as proof that their ideology works. They are particularly struck by the global improvements that have taken place in the quarter-century since the collapse of “actually existing socialism” in Russia and Eastern Europe. Capitalism, they insist, is not just good for capitalists – it’s good for everyone.

 

It’s nonsense, of course, but the weakness of the argument is not always apparent to those lacking a strong grasp of modern history. The Right’s trick is to conflate the dramatic expansion in human knowledge and technological prowess with the rise of the capitalist economic system. Only a fool would argue that the two occurrences were not closely related, but it would be much more foolish to claim that the latter caused the former.

 

Advances in agriculture, engineering and medicine have indisputably contributed the most to human welfare. The average human-being lives longer and in much greater health than his or her ancestors, not because they had capitalism imposed upon them, but because civil engineers made possible the supply of pure drinking water, and the safe disposal of dangerous waste. The discoveries of scientists and physicians similarly extended human life-expectancy and vastly increased the productivity of just about every aspect of agricultural activity.

 

The history of capitalism is by no means the story of how these scientific and technological advances were harmoniously integrated into its constant quest for increased profits. Improvements in the quality of life of ordinary people were often made in the teeth of fierce capitalist opposition. Even today, attempts by governments around the world to regulate the worst aspects of capitalist profit-seeking are resisted at every turn.

 

Nevertheless, the steady advancement of humanity has proceeded apace. Not because the big-hearted capitalists have been demanding that their workers be given the best of everything, but because workers and peasants around the world have insisted on translating advances in science and technology into measurable social progress for themselves and their children.

 

Almost always this has been achieved by mass political movements harnessing the power of the state to institute mass public education, health and welfare programmes. If the big capitalist corporations sometimes deigned to get out of their way it was only because they realised that the processes of globalisation proceeded more smoothly (and profitably) if the peasants they were enrolling in their vast new sweatshops knew how to read and write, and if the inevitable injuries they suffered could be patched-up at the host nation’s expense.

 

Nor should the impact of international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the Save the Children Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and the International Labour Organisation be underestimated. The humanitarian and social-democratic impulses which gave these global agencies of human progress birth, and which for more than 70 years have kept the flag of true internationalism flying, have been the targets of unrelenting right-wing hostility.

 

It was the capitalist triumphalism inspired by the fall of the Soviet Union, however, that stuck (and still sticks) in the throat of left-wingers the world around. To hear them talk, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had succumbed to a vast horde of right-wing ideologues brandishing copies of The Economist and The National Review. That the Berlin Wall was toppled by Baroness Thatcher – rather than a border guard who refused to open fire on his fellow citizens. Strange, too, how the Right has forgotten that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, not Ronald Reagan, who set the wheels of political and economic reform in motion, and Boris Yeltsin who turned back the coup-plotters’ tanks without a shot being fired.

 

What they have also forgotten, and what fundamentally undercuts all their boasts about the advances of the last quarter-century being driven by the forces of benevolent capitalist internationalism, is the fate of the Russian people after the fall of the Soviet Union. The United States was quick to offer the new Russian Federation all the advice it needed to apply what Washington insisted was absolutely necessary “shock therapy” to the moribund Russian economy. This was capitalism in its purest form: unpolluted by the slightest taint of socialism, or even social-democracy! And what was the result? What sort of society emerged from this capitalistic “Year Zero”?

 

The answer is that Russia was transformed into a vicious kleptocracy in which bribery, corruption and outright gangsterism rode roughshod over every economic principle Adam Smith ever enunciated. A system which had only just managed to work under the Communists, very quickly ceased to work at all. Unemployment, homelessness and alcoholism soared and even those fortunate enough to keep their jobs and their apartments were lucky to get paid once a month or keep the power on. Most tellingly, human life expectancy – that great reflector of the advances of the modern era – began to fall.

 

This is what happens to a country to which the principles of pure free-market capitalism are applied.

 

So, the next time a right-winger reaches for this spurious comfort blanket, remind him that while Capitalism may be correlated with the economic, social and political progress of humankind, any and all claims that it is the cause of our species’ advancement must be rejected as historically and morally unsustainable.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 15 February 2016.