The world is not an engineering problem - an argument against technocracy

Chris Dillow has an interesting blog post about the problems with what he calls 'liberal technocracy':

This urge to express all arguments in consequentialist terms is an admission that liberal technocracy has won. The only acceptable arguments for any policy, it is believed, are consequentialist ones – ideally, along the lines of making us materially better off. And everybody seems to accept Mill’s harm principle, and thus argue for bans on the – often elusive – grounds that the activity in question does indeed impose harms onto others.

You only need look at the new found 'neoliberalism' of the Adam Smith Institute to see the onward march of this "what works is what's right" approach to policy-making. Dillow speaks of how some things are, as it were, felt rather than analysed - the "best case for Brexit is an intrinsic one – that it’ll give us a sense of independence and sovereignty" and when advocates try to set out economic utilitarian gains from leaving their argument weakens. I once wrote a similar thing about Scottish independence:

It's the idea of Scotland in that quote from Henry Scott Riddell's 'Scotland Yet' - not about some idea of superiority, certainly no hatred or dislike, just a message of pride, joy and love for the place. And the nation - that thing we try to define with grand words - is all those who share those emotions, that association.

When Kipling wrote about men having small hearts it was about these feelings - we cannot love everywhere and we cannot expect everyone to love the place we love. But we can share that love with those who do and that is nationhood. No government, no kings, no lords, no oil, no First Minister. Just people placing their boots in the soil and saying "this is my country and I'll work with you to make it better".

If you want independence for reason of blood, for reason of hatred or for reason of greed then you deserve to lose. But if you want independence for pride, joy and love of the place that is Scotland then - for what it's worth - you have my blessing and I wish you well.

The idea here is something we've lost from our thinking, one of those virtues Deirdre McCloskey writes about, the idea of faith, that there are things we have to take as felt not as demonstrated by science. This rejection of maximising utility as the only purpose of public policy is perhaps the single most important thing in McCloskey's triology on bourgeois virtues - that ideas matter as much as science does. And it is true since the things we feel cannot be defined by utilitarian or consequentialist argument - here's economist Don Boudreaux:

There are no scientific ‘solutions’ to society's problems. This reality is so in part because in many cases people legitimately disagree over what arranged changes are desirable and which are undesirable. For example, some people join me in celebrating marijuana legalization; other people disagree sincerely and deeply even if there is no disagreement over the predicted health and behavioral effects of marijuana use. There is no scientific ‘solution’ to this disagreement or to any other disagreement that turns on differences in values and preferences.

This reminds me of P J O'Rourke speaking of his politics - "I'm personally conservative" says O'Rourke but believes government, public policy, should be as libertarian as possible. So a man who believes drinking and smoking are sinful can, at the same time as holding these views, support the liberalisation of their use. But, it is more likely that such a person for reasons of faith - belief without evidence - will oppose liberal drinking laws and even propose stricter temperance or prohibition.

Back at university we coined the term "soft loo-paper conservatism" to describe the approach to student politics where the only care was the good management of the student union and its services to the student body (such as, hence the phrase, insisting on better toilet paper in the union buildings' loos). Management was all that matters - Boudreaux quotes a cynical comment from James Buchanan on economists and public policy:

Once he has defined his social welfare function, his public interest, he can advance solutions to all of society’s economic ills, solutions that government, as deus ex machina, is, of course, expected to implement.

The problem is that politics just doesn't work like this - people have views, felt experiences, faith meaning that the answer might be a different one from that produced through the expert's systems. Nor can we ever be perfectly sure that the expert's answer isn't sub-optimal - there are plenty of examples of technocratic solutions to perceived problems that have failed or, in solving one problem, merely acted to create three new ones. Raising the duty on fags seems to work as a means of reducing their consumption but there's a point at which it creates an opportunity for criminal arbitrage - the cost of making a cigarette is so much lower that the sale price it's worth the risk for the criminal to create a black market.

It seems right that government should seek the 'right' solutions in its policy-making but this assumes that there is such a solution and, indeed, that the negatives of such a policy don't outweigh the benefits of the solution. After all, if we take the utilitarian argument in its entirety, it begins to make the case for a sort of Huxley-esque benign authoritarianism, a Singapore-on-Steroids. For my part, I prefer things a little messy because not only are the solutions so often dependent on coercion but they also require that the ordinary citizen's faith and feelings are denied. Maximising utility seems a good thing but it is not the main reason why people do things like set up business, create charities, build village halls, paint, sing, create or innovate. Technocracy treats the world as an engineering problem when it's an unfolding story, explorers in a dense jungle not white-coated scientists in a laboratory.

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Public health is a faith-based ideology not a science

And I accept that you may be happy with your faith in the tenets of the public health folk. To explain, we'll start with this from the Director of Public Health in Sheffield, GregFell:

"The fundamental point is that obesity is a complex systems problem, and the location of fast food outlets can’t be causally disaggregated from all the other factors."

This is a statement of faith, in a belief that the reasons for the increase in obesity from, say, 1980 to 2000 was a consequence of something called an "obesogenic environment" rather than by, for example, changes in human behaviour consequential on increased wealth and improved technology.

The public health position - as captured by Fell in another blog posting can be summarised:

"spot on – stop asking ‘does it work?’ and instead ask ‘how does it contribute?’”

"Complex systems adapt in response to interventions so we shouldn’t necessarily expect changes to distal outcomes."

The premise here is that the 'system' is too complicated for us to understand it - we must act on faith rather than evidence in deciding what is the right thing to do. And individual elements of the system can't be seen as in any way discrete because to do this denies the interconnectedness that is central to the public health faith.

So we persist with ineffective smoking cessation interventions because it is the "right thing to do" and because such interventions "contribute" (and in doing so ignore successful market-based development of effective substitutes). We continue "Tier One" activities despite the almost complete absence of evidence of their effectiveness because using the "wrong evidence paradigm might lead us to do the wrong thing". Now forgive me if I don't fully understand what Fell means by an "evidence paradigm" - the term is used to distinguish between RCT (randomised control trials) evidence and the process of trial and error as well as a welcome shift from the old model of medical imperialism where the doctors diagnosis and conclusion was all the patient received to a model where the evidence on which those decisions are based being shared with the patient. None of this is about doing something you think is "right" despite there being no evidence to support this belief (or worse, as Chris Snowdon observes, actual evidence to say that it doesn't work).

The pragmatic evidence about public health leads us to reject the main thrust of this faith's adherents:

The evidence on smoking cessation tells us that reductions in smoking rates are consequential on three things - public education, price and substitutes. Advertising bans, cessation programmes, bans in public places, standardised packaging - all the rigmarole of modern anti-smoking - simply aren't making a difference

Alcohol consumption is for 90% of drinkers almost entirely benign (and arguably health positive) so reducing the whole population's consumption does not reduce harm. Again public education, price and substitutes matter more that warnings, packaging, advertising restrictions and intrusive licensing

The rise in obesity is not a consequence of that "obesogenic environment" (or, if you prefer, "complex system") but rather the result of reduced levels of every day physical activity resulting from the largely beneficial introduction of new technologies (there's a clue in the term 'labour-saving device'). Average calorie intake has fallen while average weight (and weight/height ratio) has risen - this change is not the result of a social shift from cooking and eating our own food to getting someone else to do the cooking for us

You are, of course, welcome to disagree with what I say here but I'm confident there is evidence supporting my position. This means that, if I'm to change my view, you need to produce evidence that falsifies my argument that much of what we're doing in public health is purposeless fussbucketry based on blind faith in the view that public health problems (drinking, smoking, burgers) are caused by problems in the social environment. And therefore that any intervention in that social environment must 'contribute' to reducing its negative impact even if we can find no evidence to support this belief.

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Writing about ideas makes it possible for folk to change their minds

The inestimable Graeme Archer proclaimed yesterday - on Twitter, which is the modern equivalent of what my late colleague David Emmott called 'just pub talk' - that nobody changed their minds reading stuff so it was pointless writing it (I write this from memory as I can't find the Tweet). And that's cool - if you write opinion, you have to believe there's a fighting chance of what you read actually changing somebody's mind. What's the point otherwise?

The thing here is that Graeme's right. We really don't change our minds about things very often and almost never as a result of reading something in a blogpost or hearing something at a lecture. This isn't to say that we don't learn things from these places or, indeed, hear things that make us go wow! I remember being at a lecture about the boundaries of maths where the lecturer (my apologies, I forget her name) said something along the lines of "just because the universe is infinite that doesn't mean it hasn't got an edge". Every day I read things that are fascinating - Josiah Wedgwood created thousands of innovations and refused to patent any of them, the Daddy of Open Source! Our minds aren't changed but they are bigger and we are wiser.

Thing is, we don't change our minds very often about big important matters of ideology, about the faith that's core to the way we see the world. And, when we do change - stop being a socialists, reject belief in God - it's the conclusion of a process not a Damascene conversion brought on by reading an individual article or hearing a solitary lecture. For sure, we do change our minds about mundane stuff - whether we prefer rice or naan with a curry, our favourite singer or how we'd like our hair cut. But on other stuff this doesn't happen often, if at all.

I remember a friend who was a Bradford City season ticket holder, a real enthusiast. In one, possibly drink-fuelled moment, he whispered that the result he looks for first isn't City but Arsenal, the team of his childhood. If it's that damned hard to switch allegiance from a team 200 miles away to the team where you live, what chance is there of Graeme or I writing an article and having you change your view about politics, society or the economy? And, just so y'all don't think it's because Graeme and I can't muster an argument, the same goes for even the wisest, wittiest and best-informed. I'm sure there were ancient Greeks meandering back from the agora after another afternoon of Socrates asking difficult questions, who would say 'dunno what he's on about, it's rubbish and I'm sticking with The Gods, you know where you are with The Gods.'

But we know that people do change their ideological minds - non-believers become believers, redemption and true-seeing are real, they're just not pinged by just one article. This realisation might, as Graeme remarked, suggest that writing opinion and ideas is fruitless, purposeless. But perhaps it's not, perhaps the little seeds we plant in the minds of others allow them to think more broadly about their faith, their ideology. As a conservative, doubt is central to my philosophy - everything is to be challenged, questioned and change only follows this process - and for doubt to work as analysis it has to be informed, it needs fuel. And that fuel is the words of people like Graeme Archer and a thousand others, the lumps of coal that come from writers, poets, singers, those speaking in the public square.

So our words, however small the splash they make in the ocean of ideas, matter and we should not be afraid to speak them. Nor should we fear the words of others, the questions and challenges that latter-day would-be Socrates ask in our 21st century town square. No, say those things, put them out into that world of ideas because who are we to know that, for some person out there, those words are an affirmation of belief, a final jigsaw piece in revelation's puzzle, the spark that lights a fire in that person's heart. We don't change our minds very often but, I'm absolutely sure that, were there fewer words from the likes of Graeme that process of change would be more sclerotic and the world would be poorer.

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Quote of the day - faith and trade

Via Cafe Hayek comes this quote from Richard Cobden:

They who propose to influence by force the traffic of the world, forget that affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very nature if touched by the hand of violence; for as faith, if forced, would no longer be religion, but hypocrisy, so commerce becomes robbery if coerced by warlike armaments.

It's a condemnation of trade warriors like Trump and those more gentle of sabre rattlers like David Cameron with his 'global race'. Trade isn't about wins, losses, victories or defeats. Trade is about mutual advantage, cooperation, collaboration and getting richer together. And the more free that trade the better.

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Keep the Faith - a thought on atheism and belief

Atheists, or many of them, have an issue with the idea of faith. Much of this stems from a misunderstanding, from the belief that faith and religion are, if not the same thing, close enough so as to be used interchangeably. The approach of public agencies doesn't help here either as they universally use faith as a convenient cipher for religion - 'Faith Organisation', 'Faith Group' and 'Faith Leaders' are, in public policy speak, simply ciphers for religions, churches and priests of one sort of another. The problem is that this misrepresents the idea of faith.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1)

That's how St Paul defines faith in his Letter to the Hebrews. It doesn't talk directly of god or religion or worship merely that faith is our evidence for things we cannot sense. It is the riposte to that sceptical urge for evidence - Thomas thrusting his hand into Christ's spear wound. A rejection of the empiricist idea that things without evidence, without Christ's blood on your hand, are not true or unreal - myths, fairy tales, trite stories. We are serious people for heaven's sake!

"Keep the Faith" is the joyous cry of Northern Soul fans:

Singing and playing sax is still my main occupation these days, but whilst I still possess the same enthusiasm for 60s soul tunes and making people smile - I will continue to try and "Keep The Faith" !

Now some youngsters of today's generation may read this and laugh their heads off - and that's OK - because now is your time. But when you reach 50 I hope you are still as passionate about your music and that you too have lots of genuine friends who like you have also remained resolute throughout in their beliefs.

That faith's an intangible thing, hard to explain to those who don't have it, who aren't Northern Soul people. But it's real and important - as that quote above makes clear it really matters, it's part of identity and belief. A feeling familiar to football supporters loyally slogging through the rain week after week to see their club - dreaming that one day greatness will arrive but knowing differently: sharing this with others among the faithful.

In her "Bourgeois Virtues", Deidre McCloskey quotes philosopher J. Budziszewski:

No argument can be so completely drawn as to eliminate its dependence, conscious or unconscious, on undemonstrable first principles.

On faith.

McCloskey continues later:

The Faith, in other words, need not be a faith in God. Many secular folk believe in a transcendent without God, though approaching him.

The way in which we live, the communities we build, the exploring of our world, the speculation about the universe and the hope for the future we hold - all these things in part depend on us taking things in faith. Without trust our society works poorly and to trust someone, in business or in our personal lives, is an act of faith. For sure we can apply rules to enforce that contract implicit in trust but wouldn't relying on enforcement make for a dreadful world? Isn't it better to have faith in our fellows and act accordingly?

Without first principles we are speculating in a fog. So we take some things as axiomatic and construct argument accordingly. And we are able to appreciate that one person's axiom is another's nonsense - my Dad used to end political arguments proclaiming that 'the dialectic is axiomatic'. Without faith, without acceptance of the unprovable, it is difficult to sustain argument and to promote speculation - to get closer to that thing of faith be it god or non-god.

So when atheists construct an argument from the assumption that there is no god they start with that undemonstrable first principle (no god) of Budziszewski's. It is an act of faith to make this argument. And none the worse an argument for being so.

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Why we need faith in The Market

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” John 20: 24-29

This is the dilemma of faith. You will, I'm sure recall when Arthur Dent is introduced to the babel fish in Douglas Adam's 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy':

The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.'

'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

And, as many have observed, faith does matter because it represents the unprovable premises on which we build our arguments. We are right to, as St Thomas did, doubt but if we only accept that which is before our eyes, what we can see, feel, taste or hear, then we deny things that are really important - love, honesty, creativity, hope.

Here, in a critique of something called 'neoliberalism' (the existence of which I doubt but that's another story) we see the denial of the transcendent, refusing to accept something exists because it is abstract, incorporeal:

The market, which is essentially a useful tool (and like all tools limited) has been converted into a false god The Market. Markets make poor gods for many reasons, but primarily because they don’t exist. A market is a space, not a thing; it is a vacuum; it is a space within which human beings trade stuff. Trading stuff is also useful preparation for doing other stuff, like making, healing, building, growing and creating. The market does not do any of those things - people do - but the market helps people by because people can use trade to get the useful things they need from others. Markets can help people be productive, but they are not productive in themselves.

So The Market exists because people want to exchange. The accumulation of all those exchanges, however conducted, is The Market. And the benefit we get from this exchange - trade as the writer rightly calls it - is that we can focus on the things we're best at, on what David Riccardo called comparative advantage. Here's Don Boudreaux:

...the only economic reason for trade is that each of us produces some goods or services at costs lower than the costs that our trading partners would incur to produce those same goods or services. That is, each of us has a comparative advantage in supplying the goods or services that we sell to others, and a comparative disadvantage in supplying each of the many goods and services that we buy from others.

So The Market does exist (whether or not you use capitals) even though we can't take your hand and plunge it into the spear wound so as to prove its existence. Even where, as with some very important things like health and housing, the state has tried to control (or even abolish) the market, The Market still exists. The best examples here are criminal markets. We have for all sorts of 'good' reasons made some products illegal yet there still exists a market for those products - this is the dilemma of public health's approach to smoking. We are nearing the point, may even have reached it, where further increases in the price of tobacco only act to increase the illegal part of the market - with all the risks associated with criminal markets (we see these with the market in illegal drugs, for example).

The question that our writer poses (although mostly fails to answer) isn't whether or not markets exist or even whether they are a good thing. Rather the question is whether we should 'worship' those markets. Since there is, so far as I'm aware, no actual ritual worship of The Market, I have to assume that this is meant metaphorically and refers to the viewpoint that The Market is the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. But is the belief that the market, under most circumstances, is the fairest means to allocate resources an act of 'worship'? It may be faith just as a belief in the efficacy of democracy, government or the 'rule of law' is an act of faith but it is not worship.

The debate that prompted the comment about markets began with a simple question: if it wasn't the liberal belief in markets that led to the fastest decline in absolute poverty the world has ever seen then what was it? Inevitably this discussion became one about the UK rather than the world and, as these things do, resulted in the assurance that inequality and poverty are essentially the same, and that government is the primary agent of poverty reduction (more specifically that taxation is essential to poverty reduction).

As a conservative I am not a market fundamentalist but I do not believe that, in the long run, taking money forcefully off one set of folk to give it to another set of folk represents any sort of solution to poverty. I'm also a pragmatist and this means that, given the evidence, open markets deserve our support as they are better able to meet human needs than planned systems managed by government. This doesn't preclude regulation or even direct government provision, it merely recognises that we have to balance the social benefits of such actions against the disbenefits of interfering with the market.

We live in a world largely created by the action of markets, by that specialisation that is central to Adam Smith's ideas and to the concept of comparative advantage. The Market is not an end in itself worthy of worship but rather, for all its abstract nature, a means by which we make for a better world. Without our faith in the efficacy of markets there would be no specialisation, no free exchange and less innovation. Believe!

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Marches and rallies are professions of faith not mere political acts

In his novel 'Necromancer', Gordon Dickson explored the differing traits in human personality. The book acts as a prequal to Dickson's best known work, the Dorsai trilogy. One of the traits or types - alongside military, spiritual and scientific - was one based on faith. In 'Soldier, Ask Not' the second in the Dorsai trilogy, Dickson casts this 'trait of faith' in the manner of a sombre, puritan religion and explores ideas of unquestioning loyalty, community and conformity to rules.

But the origins of these 'Friendlies' that Dickson sets out in ' Necromancer' were what he called marching societies a group of cults whose typical modus operandi was to march through the streets chanting slogans. Now while the book paints these marchers as religious in motivation, Dickson is clear that the link is faith - undoubting belief that something is true regardless of criticism, evidence or argument:

“Let me attest as if it were only for myself. Suppose that you could give me proof that all our Elders lied, that our very Covenant was false. Suppose that you could prove to me”—his face lifted to mine and his voice drove at me—“that all was perversion and falsehood, and nowhere among the Chosen, not even in the house of my father, was there faith or hope! If you could prove to me that no miracle could save me, that no soul stood with me, and that opposed were all the legions of the universe, still I, I alone, Mr. Olyn, would go forward as I have been commanded, to the end of the universe, to the culmination of eternity. For without my faith I am but common earth. But with my faith, there is no power can stay me!”

It's important that, in understanding politics, we appreciate that this faith is as important as the measured, supposedly rational debate that we pretend motivates the politically active. It has, for me at least, been a matter of curiosity why thousands of people who are otherwise pretty normal feel the need to gather in rallies, to stage protests and to march - like Dickson's cults - along the streets waving banners while shouting slogans. When we look back at the Labour leadership campaign, we see the clash of these two approaches to politics - cynical triangulation set against a cult-like certainty of the truth in those chanted slogans. As Nick Cohen argues in this week's Spectator:

Utopias are always banal. Corbyn's Utopia allows his supporters to wallow in the warmth of self-righteousness. They want to end austerity. Stop greed. Bring peace. How they do it is not their concern. Practicalities are dangerous. They take you away from Utopia and back into the messy, Blairite realm of compromises and second-bests.

The problem is (and Cohen - along with many others - misses this) that the Blairite realm has no appeal to the political. It is essentially anti-politics at least in how it deals with the traditional certainties of the left's world view. Those traditional certainties - capitalism exploits workers, socialism is good, businessmen are greedy, Tories are uncaring - are a mantra, exclamations of faith and without them the thing that drives the activist is gone. Without them the left has no purpose and is simply a pale imitation of the cynical, corrupt Tory Party.

If this mantra of socialism, so the left believes, is shouted loudly enough and often enough its message will be heard and the workers' Utopia will come to pass. And, just as in the quote above from 'Soldier, Ask Not', it doesn't matter how often the terrible truth of that Utopia is shown the marchers simply march more and shout louder. The mounds of dead in Soviet Russia and Maoist China make no difference. The warning words in '1984', 'We' and 'Brave new World' don't dent the commitment of the faithful. Riots and bread queues in Caracas merely result in a renewed condemnation of the rich and the greedy.

The rally and the march - things that seem strange and even sinister to most people - serve the same purpose as the Sunday service does to the evangelical. They are shared proclamations of faith, occasions when the believers gather to affirm that belief. These events are as much about this shared experience as they are about changing anything - the 'Save the NHS' march doesn't do anything to achieve that aim but instead brings together the faithful in publicly professing their faith.

Today, with what's called the 'populist' right, we're seeing similar attitudes emerging blinking and unpolished from the right. This isn't really that new - the extreme right has always been a twisted reflection of the far left - except in that there's numbers and momentum. Trump, Le Pen - even Nigel Farage - use that same rhythm of repeated slogans to provide a catechism for the faithful to use. And they use the same targets as the left too - greedy bankers, corrupt politicians, the rich elites and globalisation. There's an appetite for this because the processes of democracy became the realm of marketing rather than debate or discussion. And marketing suits the simple slogans of the faithful far more than the nuanced ideas of the intellectual.

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There are prayers but no protest, no boycotts...why is this?

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Cranmer relates - again - the words of Canon Andrew White, Vicar of Baghdad who speaks of Christians in that sorry nation:

"You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen. A family of 8 all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch. They would not convert it cost them there life. I thought of asking if anybody wanted to see the picture but it is just too awful to show to anybody. This is Iraq today. The only hope and consolation is that all these dear people are now all with Yeshua in Glory."

This good man - a saintly man indeed - presents to us a real extermination, the murder, rape and destruction of a culture dating back over a thousand years. I hesitate to use the word 'genocide' it is too easily bandied about but the motivation of the men who killed that family is clear - they say their religion calls them to destroy Christianity and Christians.

And there are prayers - doubtless pained and anguished. But no protest, no flag burning, no calls for boycotts, no public condemnation from leading figures in the political opposition. Indeed there are no marches, no men, their heads half wrapped in scarves, crying 'death to all muslims' as they gather in anger at what is happening to an innocent Christian community.

I like to think that good Christian men and women would not gather in vengeance but rather to urge on a reluctant government some more vocal criticism of the men who murdered that family in Mosul, who shot thousands of others simply for being the wrong sort of Muslim.

At times I despair at this world, at the hatred that we see in so many places and at the persistence of lies, prejudice and evil. Indeed, for all the men like Andrew White who live each day in celebrating a god of love, there seem hundreds whose god it dark, vengeful and disturbed, who support murder, oppression, rape and the extermination of ancient communities in the name of that god. I hear people who tell me that it is not so, that these men are not of their religion. But do they spit on the ground before them, turn their backs on them, condemn them as the worst of sinners, as men headed for the loneliest, darkest part of hell? Do they throw them out from the place of worship, excommunicate and expel them? Do they?

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On 'right wing fundamentalism'...

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It is commonplace to describe religious fundamentalism as 'conservative' or 'right-wing'. In one respect this is simply laziness, a sort of sloppy thought-process from left inclined folk who assume that, because they don't like what those religious folk are saying, they are 'right wing'. Here - and I'm not having a dig at Jonathan who is a sincere liberal, at least in the modern, leftist meaning of the term - is a good example:

#Christianity, like #Judaism and #Islam, alas has it's right-wing religious nutters pic.twitter.com/RD4hGq6ZfF
— Jonathan Fryer (@jonathanfryer) July 24, 2014

However, this got me to thinking about whether there's a world where liberal fundamentals are considered to be the views of 'nutters'. We could argue that this was - and still is in China - the official line under communist regimes. But, it then struck me that we already live in a world where those who hold to the fundamentals of liberalism - all those things that start with the qualifier, "free" - are often considered to be slightly loopy.

As a society we have a hit and miss adherence to those things we had in our Bill of Rights and that the Americans' put in theirs - free speech, free assembly, free choice and so forth are more honoured in the breach than considered fundamental. And we allow for our legislators and our courts to limit and restrict these freedoms, these fundamentals of a liberal society.

I am reminded about the debate Bradford Council held under the helpful heading of 'Islamaphobia'. The motion put forward by Respect was a very lengthy exposition of  'islamaphobia' as a concept so as to provide a justification for new restrictions to those liberal fundamentals in the interests of a thing called 'community cohesion'. The Conservative Group, in respecting those liberal fundamentals, put down an amendment that replaced the lengthy motion with this:

"Bradford Council affirms its belief in free speech"

The amendment was defeated as Labour, Respect and Lib Dems voted against - preferring instead to support an amendment that sought to deny rights to speech where the subject was religion.

Our defending free speech was seen as 'unhelpful' rather than an assertion of principle. And we see this everywhere - in the enthusiasm for press regulation (by that mythical thing called an 'independent body'), in the locking up of people for being grossly offensive on social media and in the banning of protest and agitation. Oh and we see it in the banning of drinking outside and smoking inside.

Yet when people agitate in support of these fundamentals, especially people arguing for free speech and personal choice, terms like 'libertarian nutter' and 'right wing troll' pop up like mushrooms in a fairy ring. We say we support free speech but then join in the fray when some semi-celebrity screams about needing controls on social media. We sign petitions in favour of gagging the press because Stephen Fry doesn't want the newspapers to be nasty to his friends. And then, having done this, we call for the heads of essentially harmless Christians because they don't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

Another bunch of us want to stop people doing things we don't like, especially when we can claim they're bad for people's health and, worse still, cost the NHS money! So fast food shops are banned near schools, sugar taxes are proposed, smoking is forbidden almost everywhere and drinking outside is stopped. Yet we'll then proclaim our support for a 'free society' when we really means a 'free-to-do-what-we-allow-you-to-do society' which isn't the same thing at all.

I'm guessing that holding to the fundamentals of a religious faith in an essentially secular world is pretty hard work. But, if our faith is in those liberal principles written down in those bills of rights, it is just as hard. Defending free speech is easy when we agree with the speaker but a whole lot harder when that speaker is saying something unpleasant, offensive or disturbing. Speaking up for personal free choice is easy when its about the convenience of modern living but when some person makes a choice to abuse themselves it's much harder to stand by those principles.

If 'right wing' is the right term to apply to those who hold to the fundamentals of a given religious belief, it should also apply to every fundamentalist - including those strange people who are utterly consistent in defending liberal principles like free speech and free choice. And who set out their philosophy as:

"Don't hit people and don't take their stuff."  

If believing this makes you a right wing nut-job then count me in!

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Real religious faith versus the murderous corruption of faith...

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Via Cranmer's blog:

He has lost a thousand of his parishioners over the past year alone - murdered by Muslim militants; many of them summarily shot or beheaded. He has recently been speaking to numerous fellowships in the UK to raise awareness of the situation in Iraq, and he received death threats last week from ISIS/ISIL (or IS [Islamic State], as they now wish to be called). Notwithstanding the danger, he has returned to St George's in Baghdad to continue his work. He wrote:

We go back to Iraq on Tuesday. There are so many needs to provide and we thank our Lord for how he has provided for us to meet these needs through you. We have so many Christians who have literally been ousted from their homes with nothing, they are living on the streets.Please pray that we may be able to show them the love of Jesus and provide their needs.

The Islamists are trying to eradicate the symbol of the cross from their new Caliphate.

There was no Mass in Mosul last Sunday for the first time in 1600 years. Those Christians who risk worship must do so in silence, praying under new Sharia regulations that have silenced every church bell in the city. 

Cranmer provides a place where people can give practical, cash help alongside their prayers. I hope many do perhaps including some on the spiritual journey of Ramadan right now.

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Things that aren't extremism

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Today is clearly a day to talk about  extremism. But to do this we need first to know what people mean by 'extremism'. Here are some things that are not extremism:

1. Living your life according to the tenets, strictures and requirements of a religious faith

2. Asking that the institutions of society recognise your right to live according to your religious faith

3. Promoting your religious faith to others as a good way of living

4. Asking that a school respects your faith in its education of your children

5. Criticising the action of government where those actions attack the practice of your religious faith

The problem is that we appear - regularly for Islam and increasingly for Christianity - to confuse religious orthodoxy with extremism and seek to marginalise religious belief where is doesn't accord with the assumed mores of the secular majority. We also have a new intolerance of ideas - we may believe otherwise but for many Christians, Muslims and Jews homosexuality remains a sin (just as sex outside marriage remains a sin). To seek to close down this belief - to demand that people believe otherwise - is to reject a central premise of our society: the idea of free speech. And this, for me, is a far worse extremism than being a devout Muslim, Jew or Christian.

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Do you believe in Santa Claus? More on the case for HS2

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In the remake of Miracle on 34th Street (the slightly schmaltzier version of the classic movie) a wave of people across New York - including a couple of baddies - sport "I believe" badges as part of the campaign to liberate Kris Kringle from the asylum.

This statement of faith - an assertion of a truth without evidence or hope of evidence - is the essence of the film. "If the government of the United States can place its trust in God without evidence," proclaims the judge, "then the State of New York can say it believes in Father Christmas."

So it is with HS2. As each economic, social and fiscal argument in its favour falls down we end up with pure faith:

The HS2 rail project would help "rebalance" the UK, former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has said.

The senior Tory called the high-speed line a "really imaginative project" to spread the prosperity of London and south-east England around the UK.

We are to ignore the "men with slide rules" (better described as "the evidence") and charge into the future regardless:

"All over the world governments are making decisions about a future which they cannot predict but in which they believe."

Hallelujah! Shake that tambourine! I believe!

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As society becomes less religious I find myself profoundly unmoved

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Yesterday evening I watched two episodes of The Borgias - there I saw, just as I did reading Neal Stevenson (and others) work, The Mongoliad, the reality of organised religion. Not the honest piety we are told is its feature but rather the rapacious pursuit of power and the aggressive destruction of anything that seems to be competition. Having cowed and captured the state, religion took the instruments of the state's power - swords, soldiers and torture - and used them to exercise and sustain control.

Not in the interests of salvation but in the service of power. It was a reminder that, however much we may wish otherwise, the nature of religious authority is more political that spiritual - even if they no longer carry on quite so rapaciously as did Rodrigo and his family.

So today, with that reminder in my mind, I was struck by the Heresiac's observations on a YouGov poll:

A new YouGov poll confirms that religion among the younger generation is in headlong retreat. A mere 25% said that they believed in God. A further 19% said that they believed in a "greater spiritual power", while a full 38% now claim to have no religious or spiritual beliefs at all. The remainder were agnostic. Essentially, then, this is a non-believing generation. 10% said that they attended religious services at least once a month (this is quite close to the long-term average for the population as a whole), but the majority (56%) said that they never went. In perhaps the most significant rebuff to traditional religion, 41% thought that it was the cause of more harm than good in the world. Only 14% (a considerably smaller figure than that for belief in God) thought that religion was, on balance, a good thing.

It seems that far from (as some foolish stats-mongers contend) us having a Muslim majority in a few years, the reality is that we will have an atheist majority. Perhaps some fear this eventuality - I find myself unmoved. Not by the prospect of atheism - it is a foolish belief - but by the obvious failure of organised religion to grasp the ideals and ideas of today. I have a feeling that religion as a great institution is nearing its final days - all the baggage of the state tacked onto god (as if we still need our rulers to have some pretence of his endorsement) no longer works.

This will not make us a better society or less divided. But we will not be the worse for the demise of organised religion.

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Why Atheists are wrong...

The Symbol of a new Faith

No, I'm not about to launch into some sort of proof of god's (or gods for that matter) existence but just to cry a little at the problem with atheism. I've always liked to play with metaphysics:

Let me start, dear reader, with the one clear fact in all this – there is a “creation”. OK it could be an entirely accidental creation, it could be a glorious combination of accident and subtle external intervention or the Great Goddess Woo might have made it from tears at the death of her pet dog. What you believe here isn’t important – what is important is enquiry – asking the question.

You see atheism is as much an act of faith as believing in gods and less so that believing in fairies. Atheists can no more prove their position than can bearded monks sitting on the flanks of Mount Sinai. And the bearded monks are often far more metaphysically interesting and open to doubt that the "skeptical" atheist.

A while ago I had a gentle little dig at the great prophet of militant atheism, Richard Dawkins:

I make no secret of my disagreement with Dawkins – his spiritless, dry, confrontational obsessions have created an atheism that is no longer fundamental but that requires a range of beliefs beyond the essence of atheism. That essence is, of course, very straightforward – that there is no god. What Dawkins has done has been to take upon himself a jihad directed at anyone who does not adhere to his obsessions – unreconstructed Darwinian evolution, a view that religion is a pathology and utter contempt for any promotion of a religious viewpoint.

Indeed the adherents of Dawkins have set about creating a religion - it even has a name now: Atheism Plus (or A+) complete with a funky logo. Soon all the little Dawkinsites will be wearing badges with this symbol - a bit like the little fish symbol that evangelical Christians wear or maybe a green turban or a gold bracelet.

These Atheist jihadi are keen to set out their stall - amidst all the denial of religiosity, our Atheists demand that Atheism must change society, just as does Christianity, as it is with Islam:

If there is no god, if religion is a sham, that has significant consequences for how we should structure our society. 

These atheists - followers of the prophet Dawkins - do not stop with believing that there is no god but go much further. Religion must be first condemned and its influences removed from any public influence. Atheism these people tell us must be practiced:

Atheism sensu stricto may be a specific assertion about a fact of the universe, but atheism as practiced is a defining idea in a mind and a powerful foundation for a human community. It has meanings and implications that we must heed and use for achieving our goals.

Let me adjust that so you can understand:

Religion sensu stricto may be a specific assertion about a fact of the universe, but religion as practiced is a defining idea in a mind and a powerful foundation for a human community. It has meanings and implications that we must heed and use for achieving our goals.

The statement makes just as much sense (which to me is absolutely none) in either version. Atheism is wrong. Not because there is a god but because to assert god's non-existence is no different to asserting god's existence. And to construct a faith-based organisation that singles out other faith-based organisations as targets is indistinguishable from the Islamic idea of jihad or the evangelical injunction placed on Christians.

The logic of Atheism dies when you treat it as a religion. And, because atheism requires a profound act of faith, it can only be a religion.

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Learning from Jehovah's Witnesses...

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Sunday last I chanced across some Jehovah’s Witnesses as they plied their proselytising ways in Harecroft, a little hamlet between Cullingworth and Wilsden. I didn’t stop to chat but the occasion popped into my mind when I read David Green’s latest piece on scientology.

And the thought wasn’t the usual, ‘good grief, what are these people on’ but a question. Simply put, is there anything we can learn from Jehovah’s Witnesses – or for that matter Mormons and Scientologists?

After all, these groups are the successful end of barking pseudo-christianity – there are over seven million JWs, around 13 million Mormons and Scientology claims several million (although the true figure is perhaps below 500,000).

Set against a world population of several billions these aren’t big numbers but that isn’t the point – these are organisations with extremely heterodox beliefs (I am being kind here) and that require adherents to make significant life changes to belong. You can’t simply toddle along with the same old sinful practices, you will have to tithe, you will have to separate yourself from the corrupt world and you will have to accept the disciplines of the church.

So what can we learn?

Around a dozen men and women were out on a September morning knocking on the doors of people in Harecroft. Knowing full well that the response would be varied – from a door slammed rudely in the face to polite engagement. Every now and then someone will get a bite – rather than the slammed door, real interest and a discussion about what Jehovah offers.

Every week these people go out seeking to spread their message. Not in a cynical, worldly-wise manner but from sheer conviction and duty. We can, in our snide, knowing way, mock what these people believe but we should learn from their commitment and sense of conviction. We do not do this, we have ‘better-things-to-do’, places to go, grand jobs to undertake and much else of importance and moment.

Gordon Dickson wrote Necromancer as a prequel to his Childe Cycle (the most famous part of which is the Dorsai Trilogy) in which he set the context for man’s splintering as he expands through space – and the search for ‘responsible man’, a drawing together of three core traits: faith, courage and intellectual curiosity. Groups such as the Jehovah’s Witness are echoed in the “Friendlies” – planets populated by true believers.

The lesson we can draw from faith isn’t that it can ever take the place of enquiry – the problem with fanaticism is that is brooks no questioning, no doubt – but that we need faith to provide the motivation to go to Harecroft on a cold morning and knock on doors. Not just one morning but morning after morning – without the self-imposed discipline of duty, without true belief you will not do this, you will stay in bed and read or lounge on the sofa and watch the telly.

Without faith – however transient – we will not act to persuade others of what we believe. If there is only doubt, mere scepticism, then there can be no truth and no justice. This is the lesson I take from those dozen men and women in Harecroft that morning – a lesson to believe and to make sure others are told of that belief.

A reminder that knocking doors, making phone calls, writing letters – engaging with the world – cannot be substituted with slick PR, with shiny ads and with banks of computers. A prompt that two minutes of face-to-face conversation communicates more than the cleverest of advertisements or the most well-crafted of press releases.

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Tenets of the New Puritans #5: All faiths are powerful - and this is no exception

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Churches, as they grow, become institutions akin more to business and industry than to salvation or to the glorification of God. The Puritan ‘movement’ was a response to this trend – it was an endeavour to recreate a ‘pure’ faith where the relationship between man and God was mediated only by God’s words not by the interpretation of a self-interested clergy.

When the term “New Puritan” was coined it did not reflect this pure intention but the consequences of the Puritan faith. For, just as was the case with the Church it condemned, Puritanism became an institution, it found itself leaders and it sought control of secular authorities to promote its message of purity. And, of course, to condemn the sins of others.

The origins of New Puritanism lie in the USA – in the advocacy of healthy lifestyles by people such as Jim Fixx and in the long campaign to ‘expose’ the tobacco companies’ covering up of the harm tobacco does to people who smoke. However, at the heart of the faith is the worship of self and this provided the chink in the armour of freedom that New Puritans can exploit. Here’s Irma Kurtz speaking of this in her 1987 essay in the Journal of Medical Ethics:

Are health educators the new puritans? Yes, of course they are. They would cleanse and purify the new religion. The new religion is a paltry faith. It is worship of self. Religions get the puritans they deserve, and the new puritan is not much more than a rather fussy housekeeper who doesn't want cigarette ash on the carpet. Some of the new puritans, that is the medicos, are also the new priests. They are expected to intervene between mankind and the supernatural (such an untidy concept, the supernatural). They are expected to provide a course of treatment, a daily regimen, a kind of ritual that will offer two results previously required directly from God. The first is happiness, and the second is longevity.

And Ms Kurtz spotted the trend towards personal innocence and victimhood:

They relieve the individual of responsibility for himself which means they must blame the social order. This is a classic puritanical tactic. The poor fools who smoke, for example, are victims of a selfish society that refuses to outlaw tobacco. The poor girls who have teenaged pregnancies are, paradoxically, victims of a society that allows them contraceptives. Overweight is not the product of gluttony but of a failure of the glands, or of mother's love. Suicide is not the result of existential despair, but of divorce. The new puritan would deprive people of the privilege of taking responsibility for themselves. They would no longer allow people the right to make mistakes. They would deprive people of the chance to survive mistakes. The new puritan would restrict freedom because to his way of thinking, the free man will take liberties. The puritans say the whole of our society is depraved because individuals in it are fat, drunk, or unfaithful.

And this campaign – this faith in the perfectibility of mankind through healthy living – became a business of healthy living. New Puritanism became an industry – we have commented on the role that the pharmaceutical industry has played in developing the approved drugs that will replace the bad drugs of sinful lifestyles. However, we should also remember that these businesses – with their huge research and development budgets (supplemented by huge charitable funds such as Johnson and Wellcome that remain under the effective control of the pharmaceuticals industry) – are the primary funders, after the state, of the New Puritan campaigns against “unhealthy lifestyles”.

However, it is the capture of the UK’s National Health Service and especially its public health and primary care arms by the New Puritans that has provided the industry with its biggest boost – Action on Smoking & Health, Alcohol Concern, AERC and an ever expanding collection of other organisations concerned with eating, smoking and even going out in the sunshine. This industry employs tens of thousands of people – mostly on good wages – to run campaigns, conduct “research”, lobby decision makers and play a central role as “stakeholders” for the health sector.

Supplementing this collection are the health journalists – those on specialist magazines and those working for nation and local news organisations – who spend their time regurgitating the thousands of press releases, conference reports and other publications that, like an avalanche of righteousness, pour out from the New Puritans. These journalists are uncritical – they never challenge the premises of the New Puritans or even question the origin and provenance of the claims these people make. Claims with no scientific basis at all like eating five portions of fruit and vegetable a day or the “recommended safe level” for alcohol are treated as if they are articles of absolute truth rather than fictions dreamt up for the purpose of promoting the New Puritan message. Like the Church that the Puritans desired to cleanse, the New Puritans have become a self-sustaining institution concerned with the preservation of the jobs and the business as much as with the campaigns themselves:

Plymouth Stop Smoking Service has 15 staff in its team and Mr Moody recognises concern about the cuts planned by the Government.

And the industry is well organised – the government funds “drugs and alcohol” teams and partnerships that get together to share “best practice” – groups in every area focused primarily on responding to the problems with alcohol. These are usually under the aegis of a “safer communities partnership” – note the message that the New Puritan agenda is about making you safer:

Wellbeing Partnership. It is necessary that all the partnerships that make up the Bradford Local Strategic partnership (LSP) should play their part in implementing it. Tackling alcohol misuse has been identified as a key issue in the health theme of “The Big Plan”, Bradford’s Sustainable Communities Strategy, and tackling it is central to achieving several of the critical issues in the Safer and Stronger Communities theme.

And such an approach cannot be gainsaid – Bradford’s “Big Plan” maybe ostensibly fall under the responsibility of local politicians but, as a ‘partnership’ process, those councillors have limited control – it would be nearly impossible to get the ‘alcohol strategy’ changed let alone to remove the New Puritan aspects of the plan entirely. And this would be the case even were a majority of those councillors elected on a specific platform to remove the malign influence of New Puritans.

The New Puritan industry is enormous, it encompasses over half the roughly £5bn spent by the Department of Health on public health supplemented by money from local councils, from the police and from local primary care trusts. Plus of course the millions invested by the pharmaceuticals industry and its “charitable” agents in the campaign to portray us as victims and to promote the ‘good’ drugs produced by these kind and noble businesses. There are thousands of people who derive their livelihood from this industry – most in public institutions or their active agents (often referred to as “charities” in this context).

If we want change – to be the cavaliers, so to speak – we can be like Prince Rupert and charge into the New Model Army with flags flying, buttons burnished and sabres shaken. And, like the gallant Prince, we would lose. Or we can sit in a tree and watch as the contradictions of the New Puritan creed destroy it. Perhaps though, to help along the way a little disobedience might be in order!

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Welcome to The Church of Public Health, spiritual home to the New Puritan

A while ago I wrote a piece entitled “The new Puritans” in which I drew parallels between the assault on the pleasures of the ordinary man and the dour, stolid faith of the Puritans:

Just as did the Long Parliament, today's New Puritans propose to use the power and authority of the state to control pleasures of which they disapprove.

The smoking ban, calls for restrictions of alcohol, the attacks on video games, films and magazines for portraying terrible and lustful images, and a terrible contradiction in our attitude towards and treatment of children. These are the signs that these New Puritans are winning the battle – and it all seems so reasonable, doesn’t it?

And the driver for this new puritan ethic is the cost to society – smoking we’re told “costs the NHS” billions, complex costing are prepared demonstrating just how much our boozing is destroying the economy and now we are regaled with the terrible costs of eating the wrong sort of food:

Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said parents had to be made aware of the "hidden risks" of poor diet for their children. "Fatty liver disease is becoming a very common chronic liver disorder in Western countries and causes serious ill-health. In addition, many cases of fatty liver disease are linked to being obese. We all need to be aware that fat is not only stored on our body surface, but in and around our internal organs too."

Welcome my friends to the Church of Public Health, the high priests of which have only your interests at heart in their quest to reduce the risks of modern living – cigarette smoke, alcohol, transfats, sugar, salt and Ronald McDonald. To understand the core articles of this church’s faith we can turn to its scriptures – lovingly provided for us by the Faculty of Public Health:

Public health is about improving and protecting the health of groups of people (or 'populations') rather than treating individual patients. It is concerned with 'the bigger picture'. Public health professionals must take action to promote healthy lifestyles, prevent disease, protect and improve general health and healthcare services for their local 'population' – which could be a rural community, an entire city or even the global population.

And the Faculty’s Manifesto includes:

A minimum price per unit of 50p for alcohol
No “junk-food” advertising in pre-watershed television
A ban on smoking in cars with children
Compulsory front-of-packet labelling for all prepared foods
Banning transfats
Presumed consent for organ donation

These proposals are supported by some of the dodgiest arguments (but remember this is a Church so acceptance of the argument is a matter of faith in the expert not in the revelation of truth). Over recent years the Church of Public Health has captured our National Health Service to the point where clinical investment choices are being directed not by proper processes of diagnosis and appraisal but by the Church’s obsessions – smoking, drinking and diet.

And the guardians of truth – our media – do not question or challenge the statements of the Church of Public Health and its priests. They appear regularly on the radio and television, in the pages of the newspapers and in a host of specialist magazines and what they say, their supposed evidence, is never challenged. If these priests say alcohol consumption is rising (when it’s not) no interviewer ever questions that statement. When the acolytes of the Church say that smoking costs the NHS billions, no-one points out how much smokers save by dying early or how much revenue they contribute to the exchequer. And when the discussion turns to excess weight, no broadcaster ever asks why we don’t talk more of personal responsibility rather than blame an advertising clown all the time.

I do not think that I will succeed – I feel as a lone voice in the wilderness. But I have had enough of this Church’s mission – a mission that has wholly corrupted the idea of public health, which treats us as recalcitrant children unable to make our own decisions about our own health. So I shall over the coming weeks look in turn at all the tenets of the Public Health – the New Puritan – faith, at smoking, at drinking, at diet and at our attitude to children and young people. Hopefully, this small heresy of mine will get some readers, will turn a few folk away from the New Puritans and will encourage others to question the lies of Priests of the Church of Public Health.

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