Seeing as he would have to repeat the entire semester course if he failed this supplementary exam, and seeing as he knew me as an honest person, and also as one not afraid of speaking the truth about idiocy, it was peculiar that he wanted to hear my answer to that particular time, where you’d presume his state of mind to be somewhat fragile. But the question was asked.

So, I set about answering, and was instantly struck with the atypical nature of my response, which went along the lines of telling him that I couldn’t possibly tell whether he was an idiot or not, based on the evidence available to me. Even though my course does teach and test basic reasoning skills, I said, it’s entirely possible that he simply wasn’t paying attention in class, or had a bad day at the exam, or may be a good thinker without being a good writer (a significant proportion of the final mark is derived from written assignments). I concluded by saying that I couldn’t know, and that he’d be in a better position to answer the question.

He nodded thoughtfully at times, and listened without interruption to an exposition on idiocy that lasted a good 5 minutes. Then he said: “Where did that come from?”, looking at me, clearly confused. The confusion transferred to me, given his question that started the encounter. I said, well, you asked me if you were an idiot.

“No – I asked ‘are you married yet?’”

And I had to laugh at the misheard question, and also answer in the affirmative, for two reasons: one, that the truthful answer was ‘yes’, and two, that I realised that the very tone and content of my response to the question that I thought he was answering served to answer his actual question also. One of the things that has happened in the course of meeting and then marrying S is that the answer that would have come naturally – typically a rather blunt and unsympathetic one – had been replaced by a different style of answer – one that no longer sees my interactions with random others as a competition by default, where it’s paramount to get your blows in first, just in case they don’t get the point that you’re higher up the food chain than you are. The arrogance is quite sad, in retrospect – and if there are any out there who I’ve offended needlessly in the past, I’m sorry. No apologies to any actual idiots, of course – you need to hear the truth, just in case you’re able to do something about it.

One of the many disturbing scenes has early-teen (and younger) children praying to a cardboard cut-out George Bush for him to rid their country of the “evil” of abortion. Another has a young child in complete meltdown, as he tries to deal with the fact of not being able to feel the presence of god around him. Of course, there is no-one around to tell him that it’s okay to let go of your imaginary friends – only a significant amount of peer-pressure reminding him that his life will continue to be empty and meaningless until he gets his Jesus-groove back.

These children are being abused. They can’t help but trust what their parents and charismatic preachers tell them, because they don’t yet have the knowledge and acumen to discern truth from lies. And by the time they are old enough to possess those tools, most of their minds will have been putrefied to the extent that shaking these dogma will no longer be possible. Then, they become parents themselves, and pass the virus along. In the meanwhile, large numbers of the voting population take very important decisions on the grounds of spurious arguments and poor evidence. An army is being created, and that army fights for conservatism and prejudice.

But seeing as the current generation of parents were victims of the same process, it’s difficult to know who – if anyone – to blame. It’s difficult to find anyone who is actually intentionally misleading these children. The parties involve are sincere in their belief that they are spreading truth and righteousness, and we are left with being able to blame only the system, rather than any actual agent involved in reinforcing that system. This powerlessness makes me angry, as a system is less easy to fight than individuals. So what can we do, to try and secure a better future? First, we can present an attractive alternative to religious world-views, by demonstrating that atheists can be happy, moral people, who are capable of as much wonder at the world that surrounds them. In fact, we can probably be more so, in that we have more agency in the actions we take, seeing as they aren’t filtered through the intermediary of the spirit-world. Second, when we get the chance to allay the sorts of troubles and confusions experienced by the child mentioned above, we can embrace our responsibility to remind them that their confusions are generated by falsehoods, and that it really is okay for her to not suffer the same delusions as the god-botherers around her do.

In the meanwhile, my future is looking pretty damn fine. After starting on such a perplexing and traumatic note, it’s ended in the best way possible. An old friend has become a partner, after our wedding in November, and we’ll make sure to protect each other as best we can from assorted threats to reason and happiness. Some true friends have been discovered, and some baggage cast aside. It’s not that surprising how much fun was had along the way – more so that it was so effortless, in that genuine trust and understanding of others feels very different to what I thought it did. And once you know that feeling, the liberation is indescribable.

On reflection, I suspect that the mistake I’d always made was in imagining that human interaction was often a zero-sum game. It sometimes is, to be sure, but far less often than I once believed. Any principles worth holding dear are presumably only valuable because of the utility they generate for you (I’m excluding fundamentalist epistemologies here) and others (assuming we should factor others in at this fundamental level). My primary utility function rested in first doing no harm, which I interpreted as being as irreproachable as possible. This meant that while people may or may not have enjoyed interacting with me, they could at least not accuse me of deceiving them. But it’s not surprising that interaction often ends up being a zero-sum game with this outlook, as my primary engagement with others was largely inward-looking, as a result of the fear of betraying the demands of that utility-function. And being inward-looking, it’s likewise unsurprising that I was often more concerned with my own utility than with that of others – even though I’ve always argued for a contractarian account of morality, whereby what satisfies others may well satisfy me in the end also. A sizeable contradiction was staring at me all along, and it’s unfortunately taken me quite long to spot it.

Avoiding this contradiction was partly a factor of complacence and partly a factor of the support system I embraced, which involved people like-minded enough that the irrationality of my position never had to be exposed. But in being forced to observe the destructive nature of the selfishness that exists at the thin end of this mindedness, I was lucky enough to start being able to observe the alternatives – which, at the end of a very long story for another day – led me to the preacherman mentioned above. There is still much to figure out, but more importantly, there is much that can’t be figured out – and that’s quite alright.

More on this another day – a cocktail, followed by some molecular gastronomy, awaits.

As many of you would know, he was (perhaps unknowingly) referring to the infamous Pascal’s Wager. In my memory – notoriously fallible – of religious education, this was one of the first weapons soldiers for god were issued with. At least, this was true in my battalion. There are common and easy refutations for the wager, such as the simple observation that as much as it is true for god (let us say the Christian one, for the sake of the argument), it is true for the Flying Spaghetti Monster also. So who’s to say that your should not fear his noodly appendage whenever you pray to your false god, Jehovah? Etc. But then, recently (and the link is lost, unfortunately, so apologies for the lack of linkage), I came across a post which asked that we consider the fact that most unknowables, or remote statistical possibilities, may be unpleasant to comprehend, yet not actually merit any impact on our lives.

For example, it is certainly possible that when I leave home tomorrow morning, I may experience some cosmic debris falling on my head, or perhaps some unwelcome amorous advances (for such was foretold in my weekend horoscope, after all). And for the former possibility, given that cosmic debris has actually been observed falling on our heads – or at least in the vicinity of them – it seems a fear grounded in some version of reality. Yet, this possibility makes no difference to my life. It may be that I am complacent in believing that I am safe from such an occurrence, but evidence suggests that it would be a waste of time and mental energy to be concerned about it happening to me. Likewise, I can’t imagine the pay-off for spending time trying to figure out which god is most sensible to try and please. Does one start by determining which one smites the hardest? Or which one has a cooler paradise? God knows. Allegedly. But that doesn’t help me, or you.

Anyway, the believer that this post begins with came to me after the last lecture, and confessed that he was now more than skeptical, but downright distrustful of religious claims in any flavour or colour. But a key remaining concern for him was what difference his conversion would make, particularly in a country like South Africa, which is still so committed to metaphysical beliefs. As I pointed out to him, it’s a long, drawn-out battle, and what keeps me fighting it is that “Six degrees of separation” thing – maybe, someday, someone who one of us has “corrected” will actually be in a position to influence someone who can influence policy, rather than simply influence their friends (or students). We shall see.

If you’re feeling in need of direction, here’s a revealing update on the 10 commandments from Action Skeptics. And, in closing, something that may well make it to a lecture theatre near you, soon (via onegoodmove):

The simple point is that one can extol and present the virtues of logic and consistency without them being all that your interactions are about. We don’t make ourselves less consistent and coherent in being silly, or in being able to let our critical standards rest for a few hours. Instead, we can reinforce the importance of those standards, in that people can then see that they aren’t simply habits, but rather positions that make sense, in their proper context. For myself, perhaps it could be that my lack of empathy encouraged those I thought were my friends to be dishonest with me, but I can’t believe that it excuses that. I do think that one can rank these attributes, in that without honesty, there is little chance for empathy and enjoyment of company to flourish. And as simple, and formulaic, as it sounds, taking care to keep these fundamentals intact now seems crucial to keeping yourself intact – or to developing an intact self.

Be careful out there.

Effective or not, what about promoting chastity is an “evil to be rooted out?”

But I said (4th comment):

Yes, we may all have dogmas, but some of us believe they are evils to be rooted out, rather than virtues to be cherished.

A classic instance of straw man, as no-one who is paying the slightest bit of attention could miss the fact that I’m saying dogmas are evil – not the promotion of chastity.

She says:

And what on earth has it to do with social engineering?

But I said:

The fundamentalist machine of Christianity – and its attendant programme of social engineering – is gathering pace at an alarming rate.

Again straw man, in that I claim that the fundamentalist machine is accompanied by a programme of social engineering, rather than the promotion of chastity being a form of social engineering itself. And notice the unintended consequence of her sentence: in trying to refute me, she now rules out the possibility of promoting chastity being a form of social engineering. And given that the motivation of promoting chastity – and purity balls – is to increase the likelihood of desired family values being adopted (and also to decrease the spread of STD’s, etc.), it seems quite odd to insist that it has nothing to do with social engineering, when that’s exactly what the programme is meant to accomplish…

She says:

I’m inferring here that one MUST be sexually active prior to marriage in order to escape life as one of the “socially retarded.”

I said:

Unless you manage to keep your (now socially retarded) child in familiar surrounds, surrounded by equally socially-retarded friends, they’re basically being set up for some form of world-view collapse at some point in their future.

A sincere reader would have read the piece I link to in the post under discussion. Once they had done so, they would understand that it’s the method of, and motivation for, promoting chastity that I argue can cripple human beings intellectually. I never claimed that being sexually active decreases your chances of being socially retarded – it’s more accurate to summarise my point as being something like: “being brainwashed into adopting moral views on the basis of specious and often contradictory evidence can contribute to social retardation”.

So it seems we have 3 possibilities:

1. That Dana is wilfully misrepresenting me, in order to “win” a staged battle and thus “prove” that my post was nonsensical. This wouldn’t be very Christian of her, so let’s imagine that it’s not the case.
2. Dana sincerely believes that she’s being fair to my post. Given how blatant her misreadings are, it would be quite sad if this were true. But having frequently observed how dogma can blind one to reason, this may be the most likely scenario.
3. That Dana is actually a mole, who is infiltrating the apologist circles in order to destroy them from the inside. Seeing as it’s very difficult to mimic the careful arrangement of misreadings and logical fallacies they specialise in, it wouldn’t be surprising that this attempt of hers would be somewhat transparent, especially if she was only recently tasked with her mission.

To conclude, in utter seriousness: the tagline of “Principled Discovery” is from Psalms 11:3. It reads: “If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?”. The answer seems clear, at least on the evidence of Dana’s blog – they lie.

Consider Lampard’s reflections after a fortnight spent on Roman Abramovich’s yacht. “I suppose people imagine that as a Premiership footballer, my life is quite special,” he hazards. “I would agree, but those two weeks opened my eyes to another world.” Ah, a millionaire yearning to be a billionaire … is there anything more charmless?

At dinner last Friday night, our ragtag collection of Resistentialism were confronted by a tsunami of social disorder. The tsunami was fully embodied in one person, rather than the more typical distribution involving a group of people, each exhibiting one or more elements.

First, the concept of conversation seemed completely alien to her, in that your words typically served only as triggers for her next monologue, with the connection between your prompt and the ensuing monologue often not being entirely clear. This behaviour is however not that uncommon, so I’ll move on.
More troubling was the disjuct between word and world, such as exhibited by Frank in the introductory extract. If I were less lazy, I’d explain this more carefully as an example of false consciousness, for that is what it is. But for this post’s purposes, the issue at stake is a person’s belief in themselves as having charateristics x, while their words and (often) deeds provide evidence for their possessing characteristics y. Then, their self-image is so solidified that conversation relating to this disjunct is usually pointless.

We all do this. But these inconsistencies are usually quite subtle, in that they relate to seldom exhibited or tested beliefs and actions. Our tsunami for the evening, however, harboured the belief that the post office clerk she had been dealing with the day before was atypical of post office clerks, in that this particular one deserved mention, because she was not a “drone”.

Debored made the fatal error (not having met the tsunami before) of engaging in conversation on the topic. It transpired that post office clerks are usually rather dim-witted, but that this particular one had a dull glint of intelligence or cunning in her eyes, evidenced mostly by the fact that Tsunami’s needs were serviced efficiently – or at least more efficiently than she expected, given the context. Now again, I hasten to add that we all make class distinctions, even if we try not to, or try to deny that we do.

But when the question of being patronising was raised, in accusing Tsunami of that sort of attitude with regard to the clerk in question, the response was the thing that had me fleeing the scene to avoid serious breaches of social decorum. Tsunami said something like: “No, I wasn’t surprised at her efficiency because she was black, or a woman, or something of that order. It’s just that you don’t normally find that kind of efficiency at the Post Office”.

And no, of course you don’t. People who don’t have the opportunity or aptitude for secondary or tertiary education (not intended as a comprehensive list of the relevant factors) often find themselves in clerk-sort-of-jobs, and their troubleshooting and customer assistance routines may not be as efficient as we’d like. But Tsunami’s statement expressed the belief that condescension was a type of attitude which was only possible with regard to race or gender – thereby quite neatly (in her mind) exonerating herself from having racist or sexist attitudes, and licensing her to be condescending towards people in low-level admin jobs. One could even go so far as to say that her statement allows for condescension around gender or race to creep back in, under the guise of what shall henceforth be known as “The Clerk Rule of Social Engagement”. We can’t know, in this country, whether it’s because she’s a clerk, or because she’s a woman and/or black, why we are surprised when we get more efficient service than we expected to.

On top of all this, I can also report that at some point in the evening, Tsunami bit Slack2Slack on the shoulderblade. She’d met him once before this evening. And no, you couldn’t mistake him for the sort of person who appreciates being greeted in this fashion by relative strangers.

I’d imagine it possible that living in an authoritarian society for so many years could lead one to think that complaining over dinner is the most one can do, and that it’s only once something becomes authorised as a “cause” that change is possible. How something becomes a cause is of course a related problem, in that the ordinary person doesn’t feel that their complaint to the press or radio will have any effect. And that same person is unlikely to be able to motivate a few hundred others to march in protest. But if one listens to CapeTalk in the afternoons, one can imagine Lisa Chiat’s painful earnestness being exploited in order to organise a march or two.

Anyway – it’s clear that those responsible for our power supply issues should resign, and would likely do so even in anticipation of the public outcry in a city like London. It also seems clear to me that Alec Irwin, our Minister of Trade and Industry, should resign after his blatant lies around this issue.

And finally, back to the Krog/Watson thing: just like the Bristow-Bovey case, it’s clear that this one will make no difference, except to be a point of reference in future plagiarism allegations. Some people now believe that Watson is a prick (or have had that belief strengthened) and that Krog has been wronged, and others believe that Watson is a principled, courageous man and Krog a plagiarist. But the same 100 people who buy books by South African authors will keep buying the books of the authors they have always bought, and no-one in the former camp will campaign for an apology, and no-one in the latter camp will boycott Random House, or protest when Krog is appointed to a post at your University.

I love the world of theory, but sometimes – just sometimes – it gets too damn theoretical.