One of Hollywood’s more appealing habits is self-mythologisation. The genre of movies-about-movies is surprisingly rich, ranging from the romance of The Barefoot Contessa to the satire of The Player. Probably the two greatest films of the genre, Sunset Boulevard and Singin’ in the Rain are concerned with the arrival of sound and the disruption it caused to the industry. The former is distinctly ambivalent in its attitude while the latter celebrates progress whole-heartedly. Michel Hazanavicius’ film, The Artist, fits into this sub-genre perfectly with the unusual distinction of being a silent film about the arrival of sound. This gives the film an odd sense of being out of time, as though it were predicting the future, rather like a baroque opera about World War One.

As a pastiche (in the non-pejorative sense) The Artist is near perfect. There is barely a frame in the film which would not pass for the genuine article. The sets, costumes, hairstyles etc are entirely convincing and even the dog seems to belong to a breed reserved for black and white movies. If anything gives the game away it is that The Artist is too good. For one thing the film is not covered in scratches and there are no frames missing. Inter-titles are used much more sparingly than in many silent movies, which often grind to a halt during dialogue scenes and seem to anticipate an audience with the reading speed of a six-year old. The editing is much sharper and so the scenes flow more smoothly. The performances are ideally pitched between an expressive mime and the more naturalistic style we expect today. Acting techniques have changed as much as film grammar in the decades since the silent era and it is to the credit of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo that they are able to play to both eras, as it were. The film avoids the more overt and clichéd symbolism of the time while retaining enough to convince. The score, likewise, maintains a balance between brashness and effectiveness.

What marks The Artist apart from Sunset Boulevard and Singin’ in the Rain is that it depicts the coming of sound as a problem for a male star rather than a female one (Norma Desmond and Lina Lamont in those films). In fact it sets up a series of oppositions between male and female, silence and sound (or speech), past and future which the protagonists must negotiate. As the title implies, The Artist is about an actor who has too high an opinion of himself and is accustomed to his male privilege. His fall from prominence and the concurrent rise of Peppy threatens his sense of identity as a man. Alone in his dressing room, Peppy wears his costume in a scene which prefigures her buying his effects at auction. The earlier scene is sweet and funny but the scene in which Valentin discovers his possessions in her mansion most resembles a role-reversal of Bluebeard and prompts his great crisis. Valentin has found that his identity has been reduced to the shadow thrown on a screen by the light of an empty projector. It is only by accepting the help and love of a woman, renouncing an identity based on male superiority and splendid isolation and entering a relationship in which he is not dominant that our hero can move into the future. And it is through music and dance that this can be achieved. The one transcends speech and the other (at least traditionally) is an activity which requires cooperation between the sexes. Seeing the talkies as female is quite accurate because women were the ones who gained most from the arrival of sound. The 1930s were the golden age of romantic comedy in Hollywood. The screwball heroines like Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rogers and, most notably, Katharine Hepburn were witty, wordy, wise and effortlessly the equals of their male counterparts. It is in these films that Hollywood has come closest to portraying anything close to gender equality.

It is, however, its formal qualities that make The Artist outstanding. By being denied sound the film relies on visual wit and flair to tell its story. It is a corrective to those who mistake being cinematic for reliance on panoramic landscapes or special effects and a reminder that widescreen is a most unsatisfactory and inhuman ratio in which to film. Lastly, the surprising success of the film reminds us of one very important thing which was lost with the invention of sound. Silent cinema was a universal medium. It effortlessly transcended linguistic and cultural barriers and helped to make the world smaller. Charlie Chaplin achieved a level of fame far beyond the hopes even of Bollywood stars today for precisely this reason. With sound the barriers returned and cinema lost its potential to unite the world. Is it a coincidence that the arrival of sound was followed so swiftly by the rise of fascism in Europe? The Artist is a reminder that, however much it may be used to warmonger, cinema can still be a unifying force.

Filed under: Cinema, Review Tagged: Cinema, Michel Hazanavicius, Review, The Artist ]]> http://violatricolorhortensis.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/shadow-play-the-artist-by-michel-hazanavicius/feed/ 0 josephnevard http://violatricolorhortensis.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/what-next/ http://violatricolorhortensis.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/what-next/#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:47:20 +0000 Joseph Nevard http://violatricolorhortensis.wordpress.com/?p=339 ]]> It has become clear to everyone except the professional political class that things cannot go on this way. As the world economy limps from crisis to crisis and world leaders gather to discuss the best way to maintain their positions of power, occupations are spreading around the world and gathering support from, not only the people, but also intellectuals, artists, economists and even religious organisations. The magnificent response of the people of Oakland, California to the savage suppression of democratic rights by the local authorities is one clear sign that the people have had enough. We have reached the bizarre position where only politicians believe that the rich should not pay more tax. Led by Warren Buffet, many of the wealthiest people in the world have expressed support for more progressive taxation. While Republicans vying for the Presidential nomination argue about whether an electrified fence or two fences would better protect the Mexican border the fact is that people are actually leaving the US because Mexico currently offers more opportunities.

The most important fact is that the neo-liberal experiment of the last few decades, what one might call the Great Leap Backward, has failed. In fact this project must be considered to constitute as great a crime against humanity as Stalin’s or Mao’s. Like Stalin and Mao the Washington Consensus argued that ends justified means and that present suffering was necessary to bring about a future paradise. The victims of neo-liberalism are spread around the globe and therefore harder to quantify but by effectively enslaving the developing world with debt, stealing natural resources, refusing medicine and backing violent psychopaths such as Pinochet to quash democracy, the West and the US in particular have damaged the world in a way which will take generations to heal. The best defence of Thatcher, Reagan and the others who supported this policy is folly. Either they were too stupid to realise that the results of deregulation and the forced opening of developing markets would be disastrous or they acted with full awareness of the consequences. Given Reagan’s actions in Central America the latter interpretation is not excessively cynical. Since the end of colonialism proper capitalism has allowed the West to continue plundering the former colonies with the added twist that through debt the exploited now pay their exploiters for the privilege. In the East the rise of China has exploded the myth that capitalism and democracy go together. A pessimist might suggest that without a radical break our future can be seen in China today. Democracy in the West has become less accountable and states have been accruing the powers of tyranny to themselves, possibly in compensation for the fact that the overbearing influence of the financial markets has left them with little power over anything else.

In economic terms the measure of capitalism’s failure is the growth of inequality. The gap between the global rich and poor has increased over the last few decades. Wealth does not ‘trickle down’, on the contrary it is siphoned up. The poor of the world have been aware of this for years but it was inevitable that the same process should also occur in the rich nations themselves. This inequality has become very apparent in the US and the UK and the political class of neither country has any plan to reverse it. We should bear in mind the importance of inequality. There is good reason to believe that financial inequality is one of the biggest causes of a whole range of social problems. There is for instance, a greater correlation between inequality and violence than between poverty and violence. More equal societies score better in measures of health, education, etc. It can thus be seen that inequality is bad not only for abstract reasons of justice but for sound economic reasons. High crime rates are bad for the economy and expensive to the state. The question is thus, how do we create societies which are more equal and therefore, not only more just, more happy, more democratic, but also better functioning.

It seems to me that there are three options or courses we might follow. Two of these are essentially utopian, though as Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, the real utopians today are those who believe that the current system can continue. The safe course must be a move toward greater regulation, more state intervention, more progressive taxation, mixed economies, etc. This can be combined with serious banking and democratic reform, wiping out third world debt, allowing developing nations to nationalise their own resources and raise import tariffs to protect their economies while they develop. A serious crackdown on worldwide tax evasion could raise enough money to seriously address the problems of world poverty and disease. At the same time real things could be done to protect the environment from the depredations of the market and begin a move toward some form of sustainable economy. This is more or less the old social democratic agenda, long since abandoned by many of the left parties in Europe. The great advantage of this course is that we already know that it can work and, while doubtless angering those who have grown rich by pillaging the planet, it could be achieved without violent revolution.

The first of the utopian options is directly opposed to the previous course, i.e. the genuinely free market. The most likeable of the proponents of this course is US Congressman Ron Paul who always reminds me of Tigger. (And it takes a Tiggerish enthusiasm to maintain his principles and his sanity while forced to debate with idiots in front of a crowd literally baying for blood.) The argument is that the world’s problems are caused by excessive regulation and interference. The opening of developing world markets was not the problem, it was the fact that the US hypocritically maintained its government subsidies and other forms of protectionism while insisting on the right to flood foreign markets with cheap goods. If the free market were only allowed to operate properly then a fair society could be achieved. Whether this is true or not, it is important to bear in mind that this vision is utopian. A genuinely free market of the kind Adam Smith envisaged has never existed so we have no historical evidence that it would work. Free marketeers are rather like Trotskyites in this respect. If one claims that capitalism/communism has been shown not to work they both reply that they have never been properly tried. The Soviet Union did not represent real communism for the one and neo-liberalism does not represent real capitalism for the other. The prospect of an unregulated free market also begs the question, what of democracy? It seems to me that we would have to give up many cherished notions about representative government if this course were to be followed.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

What neither of the options above address is capitalism itself. What if Marx was right? Thus, the third course would be to do away with capitalism altogether. To say that capitalism is the problem is not to deny the power, dynamism and innovation of the market. In fact the very strengths of capitalism may be the problem as they threaten to overpower us. It is worth bearing in mind that among the most recent innovations of capital were those very financial instruments that precipitated the banking crisis. If Marx was right, or if the problem is money itself or our attachment to the idea of private property, then there is no point in trying to create a ‘capitalism with a human face’. It is quite possible that the power of the market cannot be tamed and that any solution that does not address this is no solution at all. Finding and building a viable alternative would represent one of the greatest challenges humanity has faced and a huge risk. I can see no way that capitalism could be ended without violent revolution taking place in most of the developed world so it seems only fair that those who propose it should be prepared to accept that consequence. And this raises the biggest question of all: what should replace it? There are many visions competing for attention in this regard and they all have passionate advocates. I do not intend to discuss them all here but would simply say that if capitalism is the problem then ‘what comes next?’ is the most important question of our time.

It is worth bearing in mind, however, the truth, unpalatable particularly to the young and idealistic, that the fact that there is a problem does not mean that there is a solution. It may not be possible to create a society that lives up to our ideals of justice and liberty. There is, in fact, no good reason to think that we should. This must not be cause for defeatism, however. It is clear that we can do better than this and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to survive.

The camp at St Paul's with Temple Bar guarded by police (photograph: author's own).

On Saturday afternoon Occupy London expanded their protest to a second camp in Finsbury Square. While the media have been suggesting (hoping) that the closure of St Paul’s Cathedral signalled the end of the occupation, the opposite is true. The number of occupiers has grown and their resolve has remained firm. Whether or not this will lead to any real change remains unknown but we can be optimistic that the protest will not end to suit the convenience of broadcasters’ news-cycles or the cathedral’s accountants.

The only criticism of the protest which is not simply the spluttering incomprehension of the 1% that any of the little people should dare to complain, is the one that they have no ideas. Of course, anyone who has had any contact with the camp knows that, quite to the contrary, there are far too many ideas. All thinking people know that the current government’s programme of cuts is bad for the economy and only serving to continue the recession. One is left to consider that either Cameron, Osborne, etc are pursuing a deliberately vindictive policy aimed at punishing the vulnerable, the poor and the under-age while lining their own pockets and those of their cronies in ‘Millionaire’s Row’ (as Dennis Skinner describes the front bench) or they actually believe that they are acting in our interests which qualifies them as grossly incompetent (if not actually insane) and unfit to run a stall at a church fete let alone our national economy. As such it is no surprise that the protesters oppose, as all rational people must, the austerity agenda. Beyond this, however, one finds expressed a dizzying range of ideas for reforming the tax system, the financial sector and the banks. It is precisely this wealth of ideas and the movement’s commitment to a fully democratic process which has meant that a workable manifesto has yet to emerge. It is a matter of some urgency that a coherent policy should appear and that, finally, a popular left movement should begin to take shape.

One reason for optimism is that the movement is driven by young people, people who do not associate radical politics with interminable dry discussions about Marxist interpretation, power struggles in trade unions or vicious infighting between Stalinists and Trotskyites. (I overheard an older union activist today express his approval of the new movement’s open debating process as compared to meetings of the old left.) The older heads in the occupy movement are mainly of the generation that grew up during the anti-capitalist protests of the late 1990s. Somebody recently was asking where this new movement had sprung from but he/she had clearly forgotten the May Day protests, Reclaim the Streets and even the peace camp in Parliament Square of just over a year ago. Like everything that seems new, the occupy movement has roots in the past and it is worth bearing this in mind if you hear anyone say ‘where were they when the economy was doing well and capitalism was working?’ (It would also be worth pointing out that the question rests on a false premise.)

The most common ‘criticism’ of the protest comes in the trusty form of the ad hominem attack (first refuge of the clueless). I would simply point out that there are people at the camp who do have jobs and that it is possible for somebody to do a day’s work and sleep in a tent outside St Paul’s. What worries me is the hostility one finds expressed. Why should a peaceful protest make so many people so angry? Many people seem desperate to find reasons to dismiss or ignore the protest and I witnessed today a man white with fury at the idea that anyone should dare to say ‘down with capitalism’ without immediately presenting a fully worked out plan for what should replace it. I fear my attempt to illustrate with historical examples the fact that, for instance, the French and American revolutions pulled things down before working out what to do next had little effect on his alcopop fuelled thoughts. Public reaction, however, has been largely positive and donations from well-wishers mean that the on-site kitchen can provide free meals to not only protesters but also local homeless people.

As well as working out a programme it is vital that the movement can reach out to the rest of the ’99%’. Across the country there are small local campaigns against library closures, school and NHS budget cuts, and groups formed to campaign in the interests of pensioners, the disabled, workers, etc. If the occupy movement can serve to bring these groups together and convince them that radical change is necessary then it has a chance of really achieving something. This is already being done and speakers representing trade unions, feminist groups, the disabled, LGBT groups and others addressed the crowd on Saturday afternoon. The sight of a vicar (who works with the unemployed of Tottenham) sharing a platform with a representative of the Sex Workers’ Union suggests that this assembly was somewhat more diverse than our ‘representatives’ in Westminster. There has been much rhetoric about the occupy movement providing an ‘alternative space’ outside the system in which openness and egalitarianism could thrive. I must admit that this seemed rather vague and ‘hippyish’ to me before I actually visited. Having been, however, I would say that the feeling of community is palpable. To be in a place in which people feel goodwill to strangers because it is assumed that they share a common cause is quite a relief compared to the class-conscious, status-obsessed, ladder-climbing, dog-eat-dog,  I’m-alright-Jack, kick-them-when-they’re-down, me, Me, ME culture of everyday life. As long as that remains I think people will stay. They know an alternative is possible because they’re living it.

The tree of life which appeared in On the Origin of Species

An appreciation of the film must start with the title which has two clear references. The first is the biological concept of the tree of life, the family tree of all living things derived from the Darwinian theory of evolution. The second is religious and refers to the tree of life found in the Garden of Eden and, according to the second chapter of Genesis, capable of granting immortality to those who eat from it. Similar myths are found in many religious traditions around the world and trees clearly have an archetypal ‘super-symbolic’ significance. These two meanings are emphasised by the film’s insistence on a dichotomy between nature (cruel, competitive and tending toward death) and grace (selfless, loving and tending toward immortality). The film is prefaced, however, by an epigraph from the Book of Job. As it is soon revealed that the main thrust of the film is the effect on a family of the death of one of its members the film can also be viewed (like Job) as an attempt at theodicy.

The film begins with the arrival of a telegram bearing news of the death of the second of the O’Brien’s sons at the age of nineteen. The grief of the parents (Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt) is depicted along with the alienation of the elder brother, Jack (Sean Penn), still struggling to come to terms with his sorrow on what may be the anniversary of the tragic event. At this point the film seems largely concerned with geometry. Jack, an architect, is seen in aggressively angular modern buildings, all triangles and right angles. This is contrasted with the chaotic geometry of nature, rock formations, waves, etc, the kind of geometry which mathematics still struggles to describe. Indeed the curves and irregularities of Penn’s face look increasingly out of place in the rows of triangles he may himself have designed.

This sequence of mourning leads into the most (in)famous part of the film. As the soprano from Zbigniew Priesner’s Requiem repeatedly sings the word ‘lacrimosa’ (tearful) we are taken on a cosmic journey from the beginning of the universe to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The key to this seems to me that repeated ‘lacrimosa’. What are tears compared to the vast expanse of time and space? Or is the universe itself tearful? In a version of the anthropic principle we can see grief, resulting as it does from love, as investing meaning in the whole of creation. Psalm 148 says “Praise ye him [God], sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light” (verse 3, King James). Perhaps this sequence suggests that the stars should also join in mourning the death of a nineteen year old man. It is this sequence which has prompted comparisons to Stanley Kubrick but the similarity is, I think, rather superficial. Malick is unique and if this film is to be compared to anything it is perhaps closer to Tarkovsky’s Mirror than 2001.

When we return we find Jack watching a tree being replanted in the centre of the office complex. This is certainly not a ‘tree of life’, cut off as it is from the rest of nature with no chance of reproducing. The image sends him into a reminiscence of his childhood which will make up the bulk of the film. It is at this point that one first thinks of Proust. The evocative nature of the following scenes and the fact that they are not an objective flashback but a subjective series of reminiscences reinforces a reading of the film as a Proustian exercise which may be important later.

This long, central section of the film begins with Jack’s birth. There follows a depiction of ‘toddlerhood’ which is the best, if not the only, cinematic attempt to capture the world of a young child which I have seen. In fact, the only similar thing I can think of is the opening of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Much of the effect is achieved by the simple, but surprisingly rarely used, technique of shooting at the child’s eye-level. We see the world as an alien, Brobdingnagian place and the adults in it as giants and, in the case of the father, rather remote.

It is at this point that I must confess to a personal interest. As Jack grows up there is a montage set to Smetana (‘Vltava’ from Ma Vlast). This happens to be a piece which I have known since childhood and is perhaps the most evocative piece from the whole repertoire for me personally. Combined with the fact that I am, like Jack, the oldest of three brothers this meant that the film seemed to speak to me directly and to be about my own childhood. From hearing other people’s reactions, however, it seems that this is a common experience. Many people have written or spoken of the intense connection that the film made with their own memories of growing up so it seems that the credit for this does belong to Malick and not to a musical coincidence. (I do not know if there is a gender divide here. The film is so much about boyhood that it might not have the same effect on women.) This might be the place to comment that Malick, like Kubrick and Tarkovsky and almost all truly great film-makers has an unerring ear for music. The use of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and others in this film is worth the ticket price alone.

As Jack grows into a mildly delinquent boy we see the development of his relationship with his sensitive, musical (and doomed) brother and with his parents. The father starts out as a man disappointed at his failure to succeed as a musician (due, we assume, to World War II) and increasingly embittered by his failure to make a fortune as an inventor. Meanwhile, he is strict and patriarchal at home, attempting to teach his sons the hard, Darwinian virtues (in the terms of the film, the way of ‘nature’) he believes are necessary to succeed in  the world. Malick is an American film-maker so the American Dream is never far from his concerns. While the father fails, Jack will go on to succeed but, it appears, finds success meaningless. Despite a few outbursts of violence the father is not abusive. He is probably fairly average by the standards of the time and Brad Pitt maintains a thread of decency throughout his portrayal. After one outburst in which he effectively chases his family from the dining room he sits back down to continue eating in a gesture of nonchalance but Pitt’s hands show that the character is as terrified by what he has done as anyone else. This is a portrait of a man trapped by a masculinity which is in conflict with his role as a parent and consequently forced to act in bad faith. Indeed this struggle between his role as ‘man of the house’ and carer for his children is perhaps the most moving element of the film. There have been few men on screen so much in need of feminism. He does finally achieve a moment of grace when he sees that his sons are the great achievement of his life and that he does not want or need anything else.

The mother represents the way of ‘grace’ and her portrayal as a kind of angel, in touch with nature and the ‘spiritual’ has been much criticised. She is very much the kind of post-war ‘housewife’ that Betty Friedan set out to liberate and one might see her devotion to religion as an attempt to find meaning in a life that condemns her to domestic imprisonment, despite her university education. As Jack grows more like his father his idealisation of his mother becomes more problematic, especially once his sexuality begins to emerge. He adores her as helplessly as Proust’s narrator but also scorns her apparent weakness and inability to stand up to either her husband or her children. The complicated feelings of Jack are never really resolved and this section ends when the family are forced to move away for the sake of the father’s job. The scenes in which they leave the empty house are a climax to the whole section and provide an ending to what is a largely narrative-free series of vignettes.

The final section returns to the adult Jack and largely consists of a strange scene in which he is reunited with his family on a beach. This may be meant to evoke an afterlife and the ocean can certainly be used to represent eternity. If, however, we follow a reading of the film as Proustian and so concerned with memory, we might see this as something like the ending of Le Temps Retrouvé. (The scene reminded me of Raúl Ruiz’s adaptation.) Jack has discovered that the solution to the problem of grief is memory. His brother lives on as long as he remembers him. Memory allows us to regain time and, in some sense, conquer death. Shortly after the scene with the dinosaurs we see one of the boys claiming to have discovered a dinosaur bone in a field. Despite their extinction dinosaurs survive as fossils (and indeed their DNA survives in the birds descended from them) which are metaphorically the memories of the earth. We leave traces behind us and the most important traces are in the minds of those who loved us. Perhaps here there is a synthesis between ‘grace’ and ‘nature’, love and fossilisation. Darwinian evolution is not only about the struggle for existence but equally importantly about inheritance. After all, as Dawkins has argued, organisms are only machines that are used by genes to ensure their own immortality. This seems to me to be a more interesting reading than simply seeing the promise of an afterlife as the solution to the problem of evil.

I should add that the film is beautifully shot and the childhood scenes have the quality of evoking the senses of touch and smell which only the greatest film-makers are able to achieve. One’s memories of the film are often strikingly tactile. The performances of the children are simply stunning. There is no acting visible here, only observed behaviour. In one scene Jack defiantly stands up to his father but his words are half-mumbled and he leans away as if preparing to run. We see the huge psychological effort needed to make even this rather feeble gesture of independence. If I have a criticism of Malick it is that, despite his reputation for being obscure and ‘difficult’, I often find him too literal. It was not really necessary for the young Jack to explain that he had become more like his father than his mother as we had spent the last hour watching precisely that process. I hope that a shot near the end of a mask sinking in the sea was not supposed to be as clumsily symbolic as it seemed. But these are quibbles. The Tree of Life is the best American art film since There Will Be Blood.

Julian Fellowes has recently received publicity for his claim that discrimination against posh people constitutes a ‘hate crime’. The rich, powerful and well-born deserve protection from casual ‘classist’ comments made on television. When posh people are regularly subject to violent attacks in the street on the basis of their accents then he might have a point but trying to equate the mild resentment of ordinary people against a class which has raped, plundered and profiteered for centuries with the persecution of homosexuals, ethnic minorities and women (by that very class) is offensive not only to common sense but also to basic decency.

The nightmarish James Delingpole defended this position with the argument that we should not discriminate against posh people because they are basically better than us. It is for this reason that we should be thankful that Cameron and his schoolboy chums have returned to their rightful place on top in order to continue the historic mission of their class: robbing from the poor to line their own pockets. Supposedly they are better than us because they have better schools but this is a bit of a myth. The public school system does not inculcate critical thought, open-mindedness or self-examination. Instead places like Eton concentrate on exam success and self-presentation. The products of public schools are not, in my experience, notable for intelligence, only for appearing intelligent. They have an absolute confidence which allows them to speak on any subject as though they were expert despite having no knowledge of it whatsoever. This is why ‘Boy’ George Osborne is able to be Chancellor despite having no discernible understanding of basic economics. This also explains why, of all teenagers, posh teenagers are the most annoying. They are at a stage where they have learnt to hold in contempt anyone ‘beneath’ them in the social hierarchy (i.e. you and me) but not yet mastered the charm which allows their parents to convince the unwary that this contempt is in fact a great favour and privilege. Noblesse oblige.

The recent sickening display of forelock-tugging servility by the deferent masses and the sycophantic mass media in relation to the posh celebrity wedding hardly suggested a country which is finally turning against its historic exploiters. Rather it seemed to all true democrats and egalitarians a depressing reminder of how far we are from realising the ideals of the Levellers or even the Chartists. The referendum result which followed reinforced the impression of an electorate suffering from Stockholm syndrome. So as the former members of the Bullingdon club strip this country of its assets the problem is surely not that people hate the upper class but that they don’t hate them enough.

Meanwhile the rat-like, waste of a genome James Delingpole, erstwhile opponent of discriminatory language, also appeared in print to defend the use of the word ‘chav’. His argument was that it was simply a modern version of ‘oik’, i.e. posh people always treated the proletariat like sub-humans so why stop now? According to the BBC the ‘chav’ stereotype ‘has been reinforced by “grotesque” sketches about chavs written by public school educated comedians like David Walliams and Matt Lucas. A 2006 survey by YouGov suggested 70% of TV industry professionals believed that Vicky Pollard was an accurate reflection of white working class youth.’ This of course reinforces the view that people who work in television are deserving of far fouler language than I am prepared to use here. It has become increasingly the case that the working class are allowed on television only to be mocked and derided by the middle class. Those television professionals are representative too of the kind of people who run gossip magazines and write for the tabloid press: privately educated white boys who only have a job because their daddies gave them a leg up who wouldn’t last five seconds on a council estate but think they’re ‘street’ because they take cocaine and once met Dizzee Rascal.

Oddly many of the people who will use the word ‘chav’ to demean the less fortunate will then idealise the ‘white working class’ when attempting to justifying their racist views on immigration. But middle class hypocrisy is surely as old as civilisation. Much of the ‘chav’ stereotype is based on ‘anti-social behaviour’ of the kind which nice, bourgeois people don’t like: vandalism, petty theft, drug-dealing. (I have never understood why actions which were already criminal were rebranded as ‘anti-social’.) There is also the suspicion of benefit fraud which costs us literally less than one per cent of the money being spent to renew Trident.

In fact that popular middle class pursuit, tax evasion, costs us fifteen times as much as benefit fraud. Isn’t the really anti-social behaviour that of those who, affording private education and healthcare, refuse to pay their share to provide education and healthcare to the less fortunate? The comfortable middle class benefit disproportionately from state spending yet consistently vote against anyone who suggests they should have to foot the bill. Meanwhile they cheat on school entrance applications, complain every time they get caught committing driving offences (or claim that their partner was driving that day), allow their dogs to terrorise children (‘he’s just being friendly’) and generally treat the law as though it were something which applied only to other people. This is truly anti-social behaviour because it erodes the social contract and makes the notion of civilised life meaningless.

It is not so long ago that John Major claimed that we lived in a classless society and Tony Blair claimed that Britain was a meritocracy. It seems to me that the fact that they were lying is the reason for a renewed interest in class. If this is a meritocracy then the only reason poor people exist is because they deserve to be poor. As the myth of the classless society becomes increasingly untenable those who forgot Marx will be surprised by reality. Inequality has increased over the last few decades and Britain is far more hierarchical now than it was in the post-war decades. No reasonable person can view this society as anything other than immoral and unjust.

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. (Warren Buffet)

It might be time for a counter-offensive.

The series is made in the Channel Four house style (i.e. by people who still think that time-lapse shots of urban traffic are exciting, three decades after Koyaanisqatsi) with irritatingly repetitive editing and a self-consciously ‘controversial’ presenter. In fact Ferguson’s unappealing on-screen persona seems to be essentially a Jeremy Clarkson impression, although his Scottish accent occasionally slips through. He is constrained by the nature of television to focus each episode, not only on one of his ‘apps’ (which are what a normal person would call an innovation or idea) but also on one geographic area and one period of time. For instance, the rise of western science is seen in relation to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the increasing influence of Islamic orthodoxy through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although some of these juxtapositions are revealing the sometimes artificial structure makes his thesis appear more simplistic than it is.

A painting from the Chinese age of exploration.

Or it would, if one could work out what his thesis actually is. On one level he seems to be attempting to answer an important question and one which needs to be understood by anyone attempting to understand the modern world or trying to change it, namely, what are the causes of the most noticeable fact about human history up to this point, the dominance of the globe by Western culture and civilisation? Ferguson’s answer is to identify six factors (competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic) which he feels are responsible. This, however, is not an answer to why “the West is best” but rather how the West became dominant. The obviousness of this list is made apparent in an opening scene where a classroom of bored teenagers come up with most of the list for him. The really interesting thing would be to investigate why these things appeared in Europe and not elsewhere. Aside from the odd muttering about “conservative Confucianism” he does not really offer any explanation.

Luckily though, the question has been addressed by, for instance, Jared Diamond. In Guns, Germs and Steel he argues that the basic factor in Western dominance was geography. In the fifteenth century China entered an age of exploration, sending huge ships on voyages of discovery as far as East Africa. This abruptly ended at the whim of an Emperor and within a few years Europeans began their own exploration. As Diamond and Ferguson argue, the difference was competition. European nations were in constant competition with each other particularly, at this point, for spices (the arrival in Anatolia of the Turks had effectively cut Europe off from the east) and no European leader had the power to prevent Europeans building ships. Thus, in this case, the fragmentation of Europe gave it an advantage over the unified and integrated China. Having identified competition as the prime factor Ferguson ends his investigation. Diamond, however, goes on to suggest that the reason behind this is simply one of topography. Europe is a fiddly place with many islands, peninsulas, mountain ranges and other natural barriers (think of the Swiss, hiding for centuries behind their mountains). Europe is thus difficult to unify politically and likely to give rise to small independent states (please remember that most of the Roman Empire was outside what we would now call Europe, most of Germany and eastern Europe always remained unconquered). China, on the other hand, has a relatively uniform coastline and accessible interior and has thus been unified for millennia. This is why the whim of a Chinese Emperor could lose his country the chance to establish world dominance. (It seems reasonable to assume that the Chinese were only a few years away from ‘discovering’ America. How’s that for a counter-factual?)

Having failed to really examine the root causes of Western dominance Ferguson does show the ways in which it is being challenged by ‘the rest’, principally China. In one of his more interesting conceits he tells the story of the Cold War by focussing on jeans. Denim became a symbol of American freedom and as such was highly valued behind the Iron Curtain. The popularity of these blue trousers becomes for Ferguson an index of the spread and success of consumerist civilisation. An irony which he does not point out is that to the Greeks and Romans trousers were considered to symbolize barbarianism, favoured as they were by the tribes beyond their borders. Now that China manufactures clothing on a massive scale, jeans can no longer be seen as intrinsically American but rather a global uniform. Similarly, other aspects of Western achievement have been appropriated in other parts of the world, reducing the West’s monopoly on power and wealth. In this sense then Ferguson seems to be offering a revision of Fukuyama’s famous ‘End of History’ thesis. While the Western capitalist model has triumphed this does not necessarily mean that the West will maintain its position. In fact, the very success of the West means that nations like India and China will be able to catch up.

It would seem to follow from this that there is little for the West to fear. If its values have spread so efficiently then a dominant China will pose little threat to the European way of life because it is only by adopting this way of life that China can succeed. Ferguson seems to differ. For reasons which he fails to explain he seems to believe that continued Western dominance is imperative. He argues that the decline of the West is a result of complacency and an undervaluing of its own achievements. It could certainly be argued that scientific progress is under greater threat in the West, from religious fundamentalism on one side and the pseudo-science of alternative ‘medicine’ on the other, than elsewhere in the world. India certainly seems to be preparing to become a leading scientific nation. One might also consider the difference in voter turnout between Western democracies and the relatively young democracies of the non-Western world. The central theme is one of decadence and this is why Ferguson repeatedly harks back to the fall of Rome (although he never actually discusses Roman civilisation). This decadence, however, is undoubtedly a result of the very success of consumerist capitalism which he sees as so civilising. Though aware of this problem Ferguson can only suggest that people save more and run up less debts. This is a very responsible suggestion but one which runs counter to the needs of the corporations and financial institutions whose greed is the fuel of consumerism. Essentially, as the last few years have shown, Ferguson’s ideal of civilisation is untenable.

One virtue of the series is that it covers world history. Television in Britain seems to reflect the National Curriculum in concentrating almost solely on the Tudors and World War II (both periods offering great opportunities for national pride). In bringing to the screen the stories of, for example, French and German colonialism and Simon Bolivar Ferguson has done a service to viewers. It is a shame, therefore, that these things are seen through such a biased prism. He fails to see anything to condemn in Britain’s nineteenth century role as drug-pushers to the Chinese and hypocritical defence of this as ‘free trade’. In discussing the ‘development gap’ between North and South America he fails to note that US foreign policy has been directly aimed at stifling democracy in the south. His discussion of the Ottoman court invokes all the clichés of Orientalism and he describes, for example, Turkish armies as ‘hordes’. None of this is very surprising in a series from Channel Four who seem to consistently confuse pointless controversialism with freethinking. Having said all this, I lost any respect for him halfway through the first episode when he wrongly attributed Shakespeare’s phrase “this sceptre’d isle” to Henry V. He cannot be much of an expert on Western civilisation if he is so ignorant of its greatest achievement.

A major factor in voter apathy is the fact that our system is dominated by two parties who have little to separate them in ideology. This is a direct result of the current voting system which encourages tactical voting. The failure of the Lib Dems to turn their poll figures into seats during the last elections is a result of people being too scared to take a chance on a small party and switching to a tactical vote at the last minute. I personally decided some time ago that I would always vote for what I actually wanted and as a result I ‘waste’ my vote every election.

We have a chance to end this now. Those of us who already vote for smaller parties will have more influence on the outcome of elections while people who usually vote tactically can vote honestly. This will, I’m sure, increase the vote share of the Green Party for instance and could result in a more varied intake to Parliament. This will be good for everyone except the two main parties. (And by everyone I mean the population at large.) It could also lead to a more comprehensive reform of the electoral system in the future. A ‘no’ vote will be taken to mean that change is unnecessary and it will be decades before such an opportunity occurs again.

The arguments made by the ‘no’ campaign include cost, fairness and unpopularity. Firstly I would say that if we really are too stingy to pay for elections then things have become pretty bad. Why not just ditch the whole expense of having a democracy at all? Secondly, politics is a complicated business. Few people vote for a party because they wholeheartedly support its entire manifesto. Ranking candidates in order of preference better represents the way people actually make voting decisions. While AV may not be ‘fair’ by analogy to a running race (the analogy made in the propaganda leaflet) it is probably more likely to reach a result which is more in line with a general consensus. This might be seen as voting for grown-ups and would seem more democratic and thus fairer. Thirdly, it must be obvious to everyone that the option of AV is a stitch-up. The Tories chose this system to offer the Lib Dems because they knew it was unpopular and therefore easy to argue against. As I said above, this is the only choice we are likely to get, but a ‘yes’ vote could be the gateway to a better system.

There remains the issue of Nick Clegg who finds that the decisions he made to ensure that we had this referendum are being thrown back at him by the very people he supported. The ‘no’ campaign is trying to make the referendum about the popularity of Clegg but there is the problem that by portraying Clegg as a Quisling you make David Cameron Adolf Hitler. As Cameron represents the ‘no’ campaign it makes no sense to vote against Clegg because by doing so you endorse his evil master. Apart from anything we should vote ‘yes’ because Cameron doesn’t want us to and he is the real villain here.

From another perspective it is worth considering the consequences of the vote. A ‘yes’ vote will annoy the Tories and possibly cause some trouble in the dark caverns where the old anti-Cameronians lurk, plotting the re-establishment of the British Empire while complaining about feminism under a picture of Margaret Thatcher. Whether they would have the potential to cause any real trouble is hard to say. It would also allow Clegg to regain some credibility with his own party and strengthen his position there. A ‘no’ vote will be spun by the Tories as an endorsement of their entire program and possibly provide them with the impetus to enact whatever ghastly legislation they reserve for special occasions (scrapping the minimum wage perhaps?). It would, however, destroy Clegg. It is not impossible that he would lose the support of his party and be ousted by anti-coalitionists. The coalition would collapse and after a brief struggle an election would have to be called. Ed Milliband would triumphantly enter Downing St and surprise everybody by turning into Britain’s Roosevelt and leading us all into a glorious future of  prosperity, social justice and sustainable energy. (We can dream. But why is FDR not talked about these days? Presumably because there’s a myth that cuts are the answer while the most successful response to a global depression in history was to do precisely the opposite.)

To make your voting decision based on the last paragraph would be to vote tactically and I have already suggested that we have a chance to do away with tactical voting. Just vote ‘yes’ so we can enjoy the look on Cameron’s face when he sees the result. (I do have a few suggestions which would genuinely improve the system which I may reveal if anyone is interested.)

To examine religion’s record as moral guide let us take the example of slavery. (I will be talking mainly about Christianity but the points apply to the other western religions, Judaism and Islam.) Slavery was common in the ancient world and, though many do not realise this, continued in Europe well beyond the fall of the Roman Empire. By some modern definitions, mediaeval serfdom would also count as slavery. The transatlantic slave trade was not an aberration but an expansion of practices already relatively common. Today, however, slavery is widely acknowledged as immoral and one would be hard pressed to find anyone who would wish to condone it, even on the internet. (There are of course many people, if not a majority, who implicitly endorse slavery. Many of the products sold in the west are produced by slaves and there are more slaves in the world now than at any other point in human history. Some have pointed out that since the Civil War, America has simply outsourced slavery, realising that it is cheaper to use slaves in the developing world than go to the expense of transporting and keeping them. From a Marxist perspective one might argue that capitalism is in fact necessarily dependent on slavery.)

It is clear that the establishment of a consensus about the immorality of slavery since the eighteenth century has coincided with the rise of secularism. While many of the nineteenth-century abolitionists were religious believers the moral basis for the condemnation of slavery comes from the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, a predominantly Deist philosophy. Christianity had for centuries, however, condoned slavery and it was not until 1965 that the Catholic Church unequivocally condemned it, over a century after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Pro-slavery advocates used Biblical arguments to justify holding slaves (in addition to arguments based on the right to property which I have argued elsewhere is not morally justified). Where is religion’s guiding moral hand?

Theism (as classically defined) implies the existence of objective truth and it would seem that this must include objective moral standards. For religion to take the moral high ground it must have access to these standards. (There are other philosophical issues with the notion of taking our moral standards from a god or gods which are pointed out by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro.) If the morality taught by a religion can only at best keep pace with the moral standards of the culture at large then it seems clear that the claim to a higher moral knowledge is false. To put it more logically: if there exists objective morality then slavery is either immoral or moral and this will be true in all times and places. If slavery is immoral then religion cannot claim access to divinely inspired knowledge of the moral law. The alternative would seem to be that if religion is true then slavery can be justified. Who has the moral high ground now?

There are of course the religious liberals, or what one might call ‘Tony Blair Christians’ who would see no problem in religion updating its moral teaching to adapt to the standards of the time. These are the kind of people who talk a lot about ‘spirituality’ and would not dream of making absolutist claims or proselytising. They are difficult to argue with because they refuse to take up any kind of position and want, like Tony Blair, to be liked by everyone. (I should point out that most of them, unlike Tony Blair, are not war criminals.) They might stress that religion provides a moral inspiration to the individual rather than a guide to society as a whole. It is certainly true that many good deeds have been inspired by religious feeling but if the definition of good can change there is no guarantee of morality. Should society’s moral standard fall we would expect religion’s to also. And if religion endorses immoral behaviour then it will inspire such behaviour in individuals (as it clearly has done during the witch trials or in the cases of the murderers of abortionists in the US) who will consider themselves good and will see no need to reflect rationally on their actions. Thus, the liberal follower of religion is still worse off than the philosophical secularist who must work out a rational moral and ethical standard and constantly reflect on this and aspire to a higher standard.

It follows then that whatever consolation the religious believer takes from their faith, they cannot but be less moral than the non-believer who must not only make her or his own moral decisions but also take responsibility for them. To follow a Socratic line one would say that only the philosopher can be virtuous as only the philosopher seeks truth. As this quest for truth is based on the questioning of all conventional wisdom or received opinions it follows that the religious believer cannot be a true philosopher and cannot therefore be properly virtuous.

N.B. I’m well aware that atheism will not guarantee moral behaviour and examples of immoral atheists have no bearing on the argument.

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine.

Many would agree that a feminist revival is well overdue and, if the recent comments of Tory MPs are anything to go by, it would seem that the elected representatives of patriarchy are launching pre-emptive strikes. Sexism and misogyny in popular culture have increased exponentially over the past decade or so. A glance at children’s fashion suggests that girls graduate from princess dresses to stripper outfits before they reach puberty and television now presents cosmetic surgery as liberation. But perhaps the most insidious manifestation of the new sexism is the pseudo-science of gender difference. We have been bombarded by news-stories claiming that another stereotype has scientific backing: ‘Study shows: women really are bad drivers’, etc. Meanwhile a sizeable library of books has been published which claim ‘bravely’ to speak the truth’ about gender difference (presumably against the opposition of publishers who just hate to get their titles in the bestseller list).

As Cordelia Fine is careful to point out, this is nothing new. Ever since women started agitating for greater power men have tried to use science to keep them in their place: phrenology yesterday, neuro-imaging today, plus ça change… In Delusions of Gender Dr Fine takes apart the claims of the ‘scientific’ sexists and shows them to be based on bad science, false assumptions and prejudice. The first of these false assumptions is that we have tried gender-neutral parenting yet gendered behaviour persists. The fact that a few liberal parents gave their daughters toy cars in the 1970s does not constitute a large-scale social experiment. Anyone attempting to create an ungendered environment today would have to exclude television, newspapers, magazines and most children’s books. In her description we live in a half-changed world with half-changed minds and we see half-changed genders. The second false assumption is that there are major gender differences which demand explanation. For example, it is a common claim that men have a greater mathematical ability than women and various scientific-sounding reasons are given for this. This is easily tested and the interesting thing is that the results vary depending on what the subjects are told beforehand. If subjects are told that women usually do less well on the test than men then the women taking the test will do less well. If, however, subjects are told that women usually do just as well as men then the results show no gender difference. Similar results have been found testing other supposed gender differences. This not only shows the claim of gender differences in maths and other areas to be nonsense but has much wider implications. It seems that the triggering of a gender stereotype has a negative effect on these subjects’ performances but gender stereotypes are constantly reinforced in daily life and so would seem to have an impact on people’s behaviour all the time.

Experimenters unwittingly prejudicing the outcomes of tests is one example of bad scientific practice in the field of gender research. Fine uncovers many more. As is common in bad science she uncovers examples of cherry-picking of data, non-existent references and faulty methodology. Added to this is the famous ‘desk-drawer phenomenon’ in which studies which have inconclusive results are never published; left in the desk-drawer. As a result only those results which please the researcher see the light of day and so provide a biased view of the actual research. Other studies from which bold conclusions have been drawn have never been replicated. It is also worth bearing in mind that most of this research is done in the west with little attempt to provide evidence which is cross-cultural, a sine qua non, one would think, for making any argument that gender has a biological basis. Fine picks her way through the studies to show us how flimsy much of the evidence commonly cited actually is.

The culprits most commonly fingered for gender difference are hormones. We are told that our brains get fixed in the womb by hormones but Fine shows that this is pure speculation, there is simply not enough evidence to make this claim, partly due to the difficulty of measuring foetal hormone levels. There is no doubt that hormones are important in sexual development but the evidence has tended to show that they do not affect behaviour in the simplistic causal way which is often claimed, neither is it clear how great an effect they have on the brain.

For it is the brain which is often central to these arguments. It is worth pointing out that the brain is plastic: it does not get ‘fixed’ or ‘hard-wired’ at any point. Victims of brain-damage are often seen to completely rewire their neural circuitry to compensate for the damaged parts. Brains are created as much by nurture as by nature and one might argue that nature’s most important contribution is to give us brains that are so flexible, adaptable and responsive to the cultural environment. It follows that finding differences in the brains of adult women and men does not necessarily tell us anything about biology but may be a symptom of a gendered culture. The fact is that neuroscience is in its infancy and our understanding of the brain is severely limited. Fine points out that the claims made by the neurosexists today will soon look as naive and ridiculous as those made a century ago, or a few decades ago. The once popular claim that women have a larger corpus callosum (the connection between the two sides of the brain) and are therefore more ‘whole-brained’ is no longer tenable as the evidence shows no such difference. Anyone working in this field would do wisely to be extremely tentative about the claims they make.

Having demolished the claims made by the determinists, Fine goes on to show how gendered our culture is and the evidence that this does have an effect on our behaviour. Anyone who has been to a toyshop recently will have noticed how divided the world of children is. I was stunned to see that globes (as genderless a piece of equipment as one could imagine) are now sold in boys’ and girls’ versions. This kind of environment has a huge impact on children’s self-conceptions and beliefs. When educationalists argue that schools should account for ‘inherent’ sex differences in their curricula they are in fact creating the differences they claim are inborn. If girls are told that they are not suited for maths then they will not grow up to be mathematicians. The influence of gender stereotypes on our daughters and sons as they strive to create their identities reduces their potential and narrows their possibilities. When feminists complain about the portrayal of women in advertising or on children’s television they are not nit-picking. This is a crucial battleground for any further progress toward a fairer world for women and by extension men. Of course, it is not impossible that biology plays a role in behavioural sex difference (I should point out that the title of this piece is meant to parody over-excited newspaper headlines), though it seems to me that any such differences would cluster around reproductive behaviour rather than more abstract cognitive functions. Apart from anything, the cultural explanation for gender differences in maths are far more plausible than the myths of the evolutionary psychologists.

Throughout this book Dr Fine methodically picks her way through the scientific literature, providing copious notes and extensive references. At the same time, however, she maintains an ironic wit and a readable style. She is careful to explain the evidence she is examining and does not assume prior knowledge, making the book perfectly accessible to the non-scientist. While some may find the painstaking attention to detail a little trying I think this is necessary. Writing on such a topic Fine will attract criticism, particularly from those she criticises, and any mistakes would be seized upon and used to invalidate her argument. For anyone interested in gender equality this book will be invaluable not only to help refute the pseudo-science of conservatives but also because it shows us how much there is still to do.

Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus)

It has recently been reported that Barbary macaques have been observed to recognize family members from photographs shown to them by researchers. Scientists have once again chipped away at our sense of humanity’s unique and special status. Much research in primatology and animal cognition has shown that behaviours and abilities we thought of as belonging only to humans are in fact shared with other primates and sometimes with more distantly related animals. This kind of research is fascinating for the light it sheds on human evolution and human nature but seems also to present philosophical problems to many people.

I would like to use the concept of Copernican Revolutions which will be familiar to some of you. With his rearrangement of the solar system, Copernicus shifted the earth from the centre of the universe, a position it had occupied for thousands of years, and replaced it with the sun. This was the first in a series of astronomical discoveries which progressively humbled humanity’s sense of being at the centre of everything. It became clear that our solar system is not at the centre of our galaxy, that the sun is only one of billions of similar stars, that our galaxy is only one of billions of galaxies and that the nature of the universe means that it is meaningless to describe any one point in space-time as the ‘centre’. Many physicists would now argue that our universe is only one of a multitude of universes. Science has made us smaller and smaller and less and less significant.

A few decades before Copernicus published his life’s work another discovery had undermined European complacency when Columbus returned from the ‘New World’. The theological problems posed by the existence of intelligent alien life (would aliens have souls and in what sense would Christ’s redemption apply to them?) remain an issue for contemporary Christians but it is often forgotten that this has already happened. The discovery of people and civilisations in what would come to be called the Americas, rocked Christendom for precisely these reasons. Debates were had across Europe over whether these newly discovered people were even human (i.e. in possession of immortal souls) and if so, how a just God could place them in a position where knowledge of the gospel had been impossible. (Interestingly I was told by a Mormon that the revelation of Joseph Smith deals with precisely this issue.)  The realisation that we (i.e. Europeans) were not alone and the consequent questioning of assumptions was a contributory factor to the upheaval of the Reformation.

Since then many discoveries have continued this sense of displacement and uncertainty and forced us to question our sense of our own importance. Darwin showed that not only were we not specially created, we were not even specially evolved. Instead we were one of many contingent outcomes of a blind, ateleological, algorithmic process. Freud suggested that our free will was a rationalisation of uncontrollable subconscious drives while B.F. Skinner argued that we were simply following our training. Anthropology showed that there are many ways of living and that the things we took for self-evident truths were simply cultural biases. Genetics reduced the difference between us and chimpanzees to only a few per cent of DNA. Research into primates has revealed that much of what we considered uniquely human (linguistic ability, social organisation, culture, tool use) can be observed in our near relatives. We have come a long way since Hamlet could describe ‘man’ in these terms: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god – the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!” (II, ii, 293-297)

It is striking how many of the discoveries listed above have been received with anger and opposition. It is hardly necessary to detail the trouble that Copernicus and Darwin caused. When it comes to the monkeys and apes there is a particularly noticeable phenomenon. When apes have been taught to communicate through sign language, for example, and display the linguistic abilities of a young child sceptics have been quick to defend human difference. Behaviour which would be praised in their own children is assumed to be qualitatively different when performed by non-human primates. Assertions with no supporting evidence are made that these animals are simply engaging in primitive mimicry or instinctual behaviour rather than the ‘noble’ reasoning of humans. (There may indeed be such a difference but my point is that we must use research to find and define it rather than simply assuming it.) It is interesting to see that the same attitude applies to artificial intelligence research. Philosophical arguments which seek to deny that computers could be ‘like us’ seem to rely more and more on the idea that there is an indefinable difference between our thinking and their thinking.

There is currently controversy over whether or not chimpanzees have theory of mind (the ability to see the world from another’s perspective) although interestingly it has been suggested that crows show evidence of it. I recently asked a primatologist about this and he said that theory of mind probably exists along a continuum with some animals having a small amount, others more and so on. This might explain apparently contradictory results in chimpanzee research. It seems to me that most if not all of our attributes will turn out to be at the end of such continua. It is often thought that there was a particular moment when hominids made the leap to humans and various theories as to what it was that precipitated it. I think it makes more sense to see the process as the gradual acquiring of various cognitive and anatomical attributes which at some point reached a kind of critical mass. It was not the invention of language, or music, or tools, but the combination of these various things which allowed us to become human.

This all rather begs the question of what we mean by ‘human’. And this is why these ideas have caused such violent opposition. The special place of humanity is a common cultural belief around the world, reflected in creation myths, for instance. An evolutionary past in which distinguishing between members of in-groups and out-groups was important for survival may have left us predisposed to overvalue our own species and so undervalue others. It is almost redundant to point out that this has had dire consequences for many of the species with which we share the planet. Understanding our true place in the world and the paradigm shift which must occur in our own consciousness is surely a prerequisite for living in the natural world rather than in opposition to it.