The Core Disbelief

I can’t vouch for believers, but from the atheist perspective, arguments about religion seem tediously slippery. No sooner than a point seems to be established the terms of the argument magically change. What sounded like a fact turns out to have been only allegory, and it is the atheist who is branded naive for ever thinking otherwise.

I would like to propose a means of avoiding much of this slipperiness, a simple initial question that can be asked of all participants that will hopefully close-off some of these blind alleys. But first, a couple of examples of the problem.

Let’s start with a big one – the nature of God. Listening to Christian prayers and sermons one could be forgiven for imagining a very anthropic being. He listens, thinks, makes, judges and punishes. He bequeaths His only son. Note that this image is not restricted to the Sunday school and the southern Baptist tabernacle, it can be heard on Choral Evensong on BBC Radio Three – arguably the most intellectually high-brow radio station on Earth:

O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders; Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults, Restore thou them that are penitent, According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord: And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

It seems fair to suppose that for some believers this human-like God is taken at face value. In the absence of alternative descriptions, it will surely be the sort of being that coalesces in the mind of any children listening.

However, should one question the plausibility of such a being it immediately evaporates. Nobody actually believes in this sort of God, it seems (nobody of course, apart from the countless millions who still do.) Instead, this anthropic image is turned into mere allegory. The real God is far more intangible. Variously He is life, nature, human love, an ether permeating all the universe, the cement that binds us, or, in line with 21st century consumer choice, any other form the individual believer wants Him to be. ‘God with a beard’, it turns out, was just a foil created by atheist zealots to discredit believers.

A second example concerns the origin of species. For millennia the church propagated the myth of a six day creation. Eventually geology and rationality rendered this story untenable. But instead of simply dropping the idea of conscious creation, the six days are recast as allegory. Much as God’s being has been transformed into a multitude of inexplicable forces, so have His methods: Perhaps he created us via evolution, His powers “having been originally breathed into a few forms” to quote a rather uncomfortable-sounding Charles Darwin, of all people.

With summits as mobile as these it’s no wonder it’s so difficult to plant a flag. One of the chief causes I would suggest is lack of clarity about the basis of belief – what I see as the crucial dividing-line between atheists and believers. I think it can be clarified with the following simple question:

Aside from other humans, do you believe there are any other intelligent agents at play in your life?
 
Extra-human intelligence really is the issue, the dividing-line between the natural and the supernatural. After all, who would care about non-intelligent super-nature? What would that even mean?

If established at the offing, this question can bypass a lot of the slipperiness that tends to follow. But first we must deal with the agnostics – some will question the question itself. Some people will argue that as they cannot be sure whether such forces are at play, the question cannot be answered. This is usually fielded as an intellectual virtue, with Shakespeare wheeled-out to emphasise the profundity: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio”

We can avoid this however with a clarification of what we mean by belief. One might say that I believe in extra-terrestrial life – in the sense of believing it to be statistically likely, given the size of the universe. But clearly this is very different from believing that some aliens crashed at Roswell. The first sense of belief is inert. It doesn’t modify my behaviour toward other humans, not the way that belief in the Roswell ‘incident’ might.

So when I say “do you believe there are any other intelligent agents at play in your life?” I mean ‘believe’ in the strong sense – in the sense that your daily thoughts and deeds might be affected by this belief. Rather than drive the agnostics out of the temple, with this clarification they are given a clear choice to remain or leave. No-one can keep one foot inside.

Armed with this question we can now return to the original two examples. Let’s look again at the nebulous nature of God’s being. Rather than anything as unfashionable as ‘God with a beard’ many of my contemporaries today would be more likely to describe themselves as ‘spiritual’. This is a gloriously slippery term. It could mean they consider themselves to place little value on material wealth. Or it could mean that they believe each human body is animated by an eternal soul.

Asking ‘the question’ cuts right through the fog. If you don’t believe there to be any other intelligent agents at play in your life your notion of spirituality must be a world apart, literally, from those who do. ‘Spirit’ in this context must just be another attribute of physical and mental being. Transcendence, equally, can only be something you achieve within the confines of your own mind, with your feet planted firmly on the ground.

It’s the same for those who claim to believe in ‘karma’. In fact karma is a great illustration. If you answer no to ‘the question’, but also claim to believe in karma, then you can only be referring to an earthly phenomenon, most likely a version of ‘what goes around comes around’: Be unpleasant to your fellow beings and there is a good chance you will suffer in return. Even if those you wrong are unable to exact revenge, your own conscience may settle the score on their behalf – there is no escaping your own feelings of guilt.

Conversely, acting charitably is liable to make other people like you, and lead you to like yourself. ‘A good conscience is a continual Christmas’ as Ben Franklin so sweetly put it. Now see how different this is from the sort of karma that keeps Earl Hickey in check. That is clearly supernatural, requiring super-human intelligence. Something very clever and very powerful must be watching over Earl, and tweaking his destiny accordingly.

It’s similarly useful when we turn to the origin of species. While a six day creation might seem more ludicrous than the idea of God creating things ‘via’ evolution, the difference is in fact superficial. If you answer no to ‘the question’ then you should be prepared to reject both stories with equal vigour. Along with intelligent design, elan vital and spontaneous generation, creation ‘via’ evolution requires an intelligent agent – to do all the planning and designing. If you find it fanciful for an agent to do this in six days, it should seem no less fanciful in all the other cases.

The No camp

When it comes to the thorny subject of assessing the worth of religion, those who answer no to ‘the question’ can be split into two further groups: Those who see no good in religion at all; and those that still value religion despite their own lack of belief. The first group do exist I’m sure, but I should think their numbers are quite small. It’s a rare atheist who rejects every religious act and artefact. Any non-believer one who has witnessed the happiness, consolation and social bonds enjoyed by some believers would need a hard heart and some hard arguments to condemn the whole enterprise outright. If they are not careful it might come across as envy (not exactly a sin in atheism, but not a virtue either.)

But notice the bold distinction here. Anyone who answers ‘no’ to the question but still wishes to defend the worth of religion must now only be doing so purely for its earthly utility. There can be no recourse to pleasing gods or heavenly rewards. Regardless of what the ‘yes’ camp might believe, all benefits remain in the here and now.

Utilitarian justifications for human behaviour are always more complex than they might first appear. Here are a few pointers at the sort of discussions might arise. The first might be an empirical weighing-up of pros and cons. Any religious belief or practice that appears to increase human wellbeing could be seen as a plus, much as any belief that appears to increase human misery could be seen as a minus – just like we assess the worth of secular beliefs. But as always with utilitarianism it isn’t that simple. Different people have different ideas of good and bad. With God’s judgement out of the picture, who gets to decide which effects of religion are beneficial and which are a curse? Do we just vote on it?

Then there is the question of the motives and methods of such non-believers. If you don’t believe in God but do see worth in religion, how should you yourself act? Should you join-in at prayers even though you don’t believe anyone is listening, or just encourage events from outside the church? Both positions have their downsides. There’s something undeniably ludicrous about going through the motions of a religion you have no belief-in (I remember from childhood.) Then again there’s something distinctly paternalistic about championing other peoples’ belief in myths that you yourself don’t believe-in. What might be your motives here? Do you prefer other people to have a cloudier worldview than yourself?

Furthermore isn’t there something fundamentally dodgy about encouraging children to believe things we ourselves believe to be untrue? Isn’t education about doing our best to paint an accurate picture of the world, not a mixture of strict truths and any untruths we deem useful?

The Yes camp

Those who answer ‘yes’ on the other hand are faced with a much larger set of potential benefits. Naturally they can agree with the ‘no’ camp on all the earthly benefits (and like the ‘no’ camp, they will need to produce empirical evidence to defend these claims – the earthly pros will need to outweigh the earthly cons.) But of course they have a lot more to champion than this – perhaps too much. If prayers really can be answered rather than just provide comfort, and an eternal afterlife really does await us rather than just prevent us from despairing about the briefness of life, and if eternal ecstasy or eternal damnation really do swing on the judgement of one who watches over us, then the earthly consequences of religion seem almost insignificant by comparison. 
 
Of course many modern believers will be horrified at being associated with the last of these images. Once again, nobody actually believes in hellfire and damnation anymore (apart from the countless millions who still do.)  But such dreadful misattributions are an unavoidable hazard if you answer yes to ‘the question.’ If you declare a belief in extra-human agency but have no means of proving what it is – and there is no means of proving it – you inevitably consign your beliefs to the same factual basis as any other supernatural belief – ghosts, devils and very ruthless gods. That these other beings might sound absurd or vile, while you believe your own to be sacred and loving, has no bearing on proof. Once you forfeit the claim to rational justification for your belief, you can’t really complain if non-believers make assumptions about your worldview. What can we do but guess?

Fine then, some will say, damn the evidence – my faith is enough on its own. And that is everyone’s prerogative. But in truth this isn’t really enough for many believers, and this is how so many of the exasperating arguments arise. If most believers were truly content with their faith alone, and really didn’t give a fig about empirical support, then such abominations as intelligent design, Lourdes miracles and the virgin birth would not arise. Like it or not, we humans are desperate for verifiable truth. If we have faith in supermen, we can’t help but want to show people evidence of their works, to back that faith up.

So round and round we go. Miracles provide wonderful evidence until they are shown to be illusions – upon which miracles no longer matter, all that matters is the comfort religion provides to the believer. Similarly, a complex trait of an organism provides clear evidence of God’s handiwork until a more mundane evolutionary path is posited. Then the evidence of biology becomes an irrelevance, and only personal faith matters.

This urge to cross back and forth, from the earthly to the supernatural, is surely a consequence of all that religion has lost to rationalism. Only two hundred years ago, with little fear of contradiction, the whole universe could be explained away as the product of superhuman intelligence. For better or worse, rational explanation has now taken over most of that terrain. However one tries to paint it, there has been an enormous loss of ground, and loss of purpose. Widespread belief in a god who hand-crafted the universe has been reduced to belief in a god because that belief in itself provides comfort to the believer (and even that is open to question.) It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that for some believers this new scheme just isn’t enough to satisfy their needs, and the urge to find empirical evidence for irrational beliefs just won’t lie down.

What’s the purpose of Higher Education?

One term in, and those working in Higher Education are doubtless feeling the initial effects of the cancellation of the university block grant, and hiking of tuition fees.

For the uninitiated, the block grant was what the government used to pay to universities, in large part, to subsidise tuition fees for UK and EU students. With its cancellation, this year’s fees have taken quite a leap. Roughly speaking, if you began your degree in September 2011 you will probably be paying around £3,500 this year for tuition. But anyone who started September just gone will be paying £9,000 – not far off the £10K+ already being charged to international students. Such a big increase was bound to have big consequences. For many school leavers the choice now is either to forget all about university, or accept that most of their working life will be spent servicing debt to the Student Loans Company.

For the universities this has raised a range of fears. Here are six of the predicted horrors I have heard mentioned since the cut was first proposed. I will leave it to colleagues in the sector to decide how many are coming true:

• A decline in the number of applicants
• A particularly steep drop in EU applicants as they desert the UK for more affordable countries
• An unspoken lowering of entry requirements to permit more applicants, followed by a lowering of academic standards to retain them (and thereby avoid….)
• The closure of less popular courses
• The tendency for HE to become restricted to the children of the materially better-off
• The transformation of the university degree from a symbol of ability to a luxury product, one that the purchasing customer will fully expect to be delivered once the invoice has been paid.

As they say in question papers, ‘….discuss.’

Rather than get entangled in that, this will be a look at alternatives. How might things be done differently? One option would be no change, or rather a straight swap back – the re-introduction of the block grant and return to the previous cap on fees. This is perfectly possible. Regardless of what politicians might suggest, the UK economy does not stand or fall on this issue. To be tautological about it, this is just what we would be doing now if the whole question had never been raised. Instead we would all be complaining about higher taxes, or worse public services in other spheres, which of course we already are. As long as there are Jaguars on our roads, and swimming pools appearing in back gardens, there is clearly enough money about to subsidise HE. It’s just that subsidies to HE have been identified as money badly spent. At a time of crushing fiscal squeeze HE has been selected to be squeezed out.

One reason is the belief that Higher Education has grown too big. It’s certainly undeniable that it has greatly expanded. Only thirty years ago it was very much an elite enterprise, serving two elite groups: A moneyed elite – the children of the wealthy; and an intellectual elite – academically bright kids, regardless of background. Over the past few decades however, the student body has swollen to include people from neither group. The not particularly wealthy or particularly glowing have been allowed to gain entry. I certainly include myself in this group, and my full BA, ⅓ BEng and ½ MA attest to it. Indeed I can’t think of many of my contemporaries at Poly who fell into either of the original two elites.

However wise this expansion ever was, the current economic disaster supports the arguments of those who always saw it as economically untenable. Indeed the quiet growth of our more inclusive and less elitist HE was always accompanied by the quiet chipping away at the finances that make student life possible. First the Housing Benefit dried-up, then the grants dwindled and the maintenance loans came in, then the tuition fee loans, then the cancellation of subsidies for second degrees. The removal of the block grant is only the latest, most decisive, stage in the process. 

If the government’s aim was to create a smaller HE sector then cancellation of the block grant certainly looks likely to achieve it. But it is hard to see how this is the most intelligent approach. The new system seems to favour mediocre applicants as long as they can pay, while dissuading bright applicants if they can’t. Most rational people would see this as perverse, and slightly demented. Outside the Khmer Rouge there is broad agreement that educational favour should be bestowed upon the intrinsically bright and able. It’s not just a matter of fairness – it’s in everyone’s interests that the excellent have the chance to excel.

                       

So there’s one possibility. Turn the clock back to the 1970s: Raise entry requirements to the point where only an intellectual elite can get in, but then make it free for all who do. Full grants to cover fees and living expenses, and full Housing Benefit. Or if you want a more frugal model we could add a means test, so that the very well-to-do would still have to pay an appropriate fraction. The money recouped could then be used to subsidise the whole enterprise.

Again, this is certainly a workable model, one that worked for decades. But it has its downsides, not least that I never would have gone to university – in itself a national disgrace. But as this is all about reducing numbers, then something or someone has to give, so let's run with it.

Central to support for a return to elite HE is the idea that university really isn't for everyone, even if they might think it is. Perhaps there are things some of us would be better-off doing instead? How many workers genuinely contribute extra value to their organisations through their ability compose a 10,000 word dissertation? Teachers and lawyers certainly, but nurses? Couldn't the world do with less engine designers and more engine repairers, less architects and more carpenters, less MBAs and more small businesses? Might HE subsidies not be better spent on other more vocational forms of training such as apprenticeships or free evening classes?

Besides, if degree certificates aren’t restricted to the intellectual elite what’s so great about degree certificates? If as many people can now write ‘BA’ on a job application as used to write ‘School Certificate’ then hasn’t the degree been devalued to the level of a School Certificate? 

If all that sounds unpalatable here’s an alternative. Rather than be elitist about the students, we could be elitist about the courses. Rather than remove tuition fee subsidies across the board, we could reinstate them for those courses we deem worthwhile. This is obviously a controversial proposition. Different people have very different ideas about what constitutes ‘worthwhile’ study. It all boils down to what you believe to be the point of Higher Education.

Some suggested purposes for Higher Education

If the block grant had been fully and rapidly recouped by extra revenue generated by graduates, we can safely assume that it would never have been cancelled. This hints at one perceived purpose for HE. For many of its critics, the point of HE should be the same as the point of life itself - to generate wealth. ‘Pay your own way’ has been the central political mantra of the past thirty years, and many influential people would like to see it applied as firmly to HE as everywhere else. Any subsidies tax-payers invest in HE should be seen to turn a profit, and sharpish too. Perhaps the panel from Dragons Den can be drafted-in to decide which courses meet the criteria?

Aside from the cultural narrow-mindedness, as a strategy this is completely self-defeating. Even if you do hold that the purpose of HE is to make money, the ethos of the Lancashire cotton mill is not the way to achieve it. The unique opportunity provided by HE is that it gives people the chance to think outside the box, or climb whatever shoulders it takes to see outside the box. The potential wealth created by Universities might take decades, perhaps centuries, to pay out. Research, particularly, necessarily entails a large amount of waste. A thousand blind alleys may need to be surveyed before any treasure is found. Crick and Watson would not have fared well on Dragons' Den, but 60 years on and their discovery is certainly paying out.

A less vulgar, but similarly utilitarian, view is to see HE as a means of staffing the economy - supplying all the doctors and teachers and lawyers and managers society needs. This is still all about the economy, but the wider needs of the economic are also taken into consideration. Such graduates may not generate any wealth directly, but they are needed to keep the rest of us bandaged-up and on course.

A closely related, but possibly more subversive, view is to see HE as a means of engineering a better economy, even a better society. Through the judicious application of subsidy we might wean business graduates off the city and back into manufacture, or wean engineering graduates off arms, oil and aerospace, and onto development of renewables. It depends on your politics which one you pick.

  

Then there are the less quantifiable, more lofty, benefits. Many believe the purpose of Higher Education should be to enrich human existence: University should be about nurturing excellence across the board - art, science, philosophy, literature, without thought to material consequences. While this view does not necessarily preclude profit, it allows for all those courses which never will. Indeed it even makes room for courses that positively oppose profit (a good example is the one degree I did manage to complete. That might well have been subtitled “how to hate capitalism and encourage other people to do the same”.)  Some would argue that such courses are a crucial element of a free and progressive society, and underscore what will be lost if business is given too large a stake in functioning of the universities. If HE is to enrich human culture and broaden our horizons it must maintain some freedom and independence from political and economic pressures.

Finally, a couple of more questionable rationales for the existence of HE, or rather, for going to university. The first is ‘for the fun of it’. Although not widely acknowledged, this has always been a serious pull. Long before the term was coined, many of us went for the ‘student experience’ as much as from a burning desire to learn. We’d seen Chariots of Fire and Animal House and didn’t want to miss out on this rite of passage. All very fulfilling on a personal level, but you can see why some tax payers might not want to subsidise it. If anything, this ‘purpose’ is growing, and is now employed as a recruitment device. Universities are vying with each other to be the hippest, with the hottest social whirl. If, as feared, the current set-up of HE is favouring ability to pay over ability to achieve we can expect increasing emphasis on these extracurricular selling points. Wealthier parents can look forward to packing their underachievers off to a three-year holiday camp(us), much as they buy them InterRail tickets during gap year.

Which brings us to neatly to the last and possibly bleakest purpose of University: To give school leavers something to do. The desire to go to University rather than into the workplace is being supplanted by the need to go to University because of the near-extinction of the workplace. With job opportunities ranging from terrible to non-existent, University is becoming a place for many young people to hide away for a few years. This is another ‘purpose’ that both tax-payer and treasury will not be keen to subsidise. If university has become, for some at least, a less humiliating form of unemployment, then government subsidies to HE unavoidably become welfare payments – another reason for them to be cut. Like the official unemployed, the student ‘unemployed’ are forced to turn to their families to bail them out, or to the money-lender in the form of the SLC.

Any campaign to get subsidies reintroduced into HE will be a struggle. The universities’ strongest hand is their cultural and economic worth, but clearly these terms are open to interpretation, if not abuse. Rather than a dogged insistence on a return to the funding of the recent past, perhaps a more forceful argument can be made for funding a more meritocratic and intellectually elitist HE – however that might be achieved. It’s got to be better than the brand of elitism the current set-up seems to be encouraging.

Gunpoint at the Bus Stop

Rather than anything as superfluous as a timetable, the essential component of any modern bus stop is an enlarged image of a revolver muzzle, all but bursting out of the Adshel and up the nose of the waiting passenger. 

Apart from the ambiguous message carried by these posters (Watch this film or I’ll kill you?) and apart from the embarrassing phallus references (What a big weapon. I hope it isn’t compensating for deficiencies elsewhere), and apart from the irony of a society that claims its greatest fear is young men running around with guns, but fills every available public space with images of sexy old men running around with guns, apart from any of that - how boring?

How mind-numbingly boring can urban life become? Over and over again, a man pointing a gun. Occasionally a woman pointing a gun. How many times can the same hackneyed image be produced and reproduced, before one brave child will point and ask, “hold-on, haven’t we seen all this crap before?” and the entire townsfolk can collapse into a heap of laughter and relief?

Well don’t hold your breath. We can only assume the image gets repeated because it generates the most custom. It’s like the way ad-campaigns for detergent persistently return to two women chatting in the kitchen (two Cs in a K, as the ad-industry charmingly describes it.) While it’s possible to sell soap by quoting Goethe, filming in Venice and hiring Vanessa Redgrave to do the voiceover, if two mock-Dorises in a mock-semi works best why not stick to it?

Like sex, violence never fails to catch the eye. Indeed one could denounce Page 3 in the very same terms. Every day, six days a week, for 40 years, a photograph of a pair of breasts. But clearly it’s not like that for the punters. Every day is in fact a different pair of breasts, or perhaps the same pair of breasts but from a different angle, or accompanied by a different smile, or leer.

Presumably the same microscopic differences are at play in the "bang! bang!" posters. Depending on the bus stop, you might be threatened by a cool man or an angry man or a sweaty frightened man being pursued for a crime he did not commit. He may be a goody or a baddy or a bit of both. He might look anxious about killing you or so casual he doesn’t even interrupt his mobile phone call. If it’s a female assailant she may also throw-in a huge pair of sweaty breasts just to guarantee a fix on your attention.

Presumably it’s these subtle differences that prevent the moviegoer from noticing and despairing of the repetitive imagery. Instead, they feel enticed and compelled to purchase the product.

Arguments about cause and effect regarding violent cinema are as old as cinema itself. Rather than open that can of worms, a more solid complaint can be levelled at advertisements for violent films. If some humans wish to spend their leisure time sitting in the dark watching graphic re-enactments of the worst aspects of human behaviour, it certainly is possible to construct an argument to defend their right to do so. But two can play the civil liberties card. Those of us who are repulsed by such images should also have the right not to have them thrust in our faces.

BBC News: Come here for America in all its glory

The most effective propaganda is invisible, passing itself off as reality even to those producing it. "Come here for America in all its glory" is the current banner heading for Mark Mardell's BBC webpage, in his role as North American Editor. Knowing little else about Mardell one can only assume that his opinion of the US is no great departure from that of his two predecessors, Justin Webb and Matt Frei. Both were outspoken fans and defenders of the US during the Bush II years (see Frei’s Washington Diary and Webb’s dewey-eyed farewell for the full picture.)

Unless some strange coincidence is at play then, it seems fair to conclude that the job of BBC ‘North American Editor’ is only open to those who hold a positive view of the United States and its impact on the world. John Pilger need not apply. This seems rather odd when one considers the self-proclaimed ‘impartiality’ of the BBC. It is not as if any other nation is accorded this privilege. It is hard to imagine the BBC hosting a webpage promising “France in all its glory” or “China in all its glory”, let alone “Iran in all its glory”. Likewise, if the BBC's Europe correspondent publicly railed against "anti-European attitudes", he or she would be met with mirth, and possibly find themselves spending more time with their family, rather than interviewed and given the opportunity to promote their book on the subject.

I’m sure many Britons feel this differing treatment is justified, on the grounds that there simply isn’t anything glorious about these other places. But that just begs the question whether we only feel this way because we have been immersed in it from birth, readers and journalists alike.

Does the US deserve all the glory? The way Webb and Frei frame the evidence makes it difficult to come to any other conclusion. For any properly functioning BBC correspondent all criticism of the US must be carefully ‘contextualised’. The standard form is ‘yes, there have been mistakes, but just look at the benefits’. ‘Mistakes’ is a crucial word here as the suggestion of cynical intent on the part of the US is definitely ruled out. So ‘mistakes’ covers slavery, segregation, Guantanamo, Abu Graib, and a record of installing and supporting some of history’s most repressive regimes. Alongside ‘mistakes’ we also have ‘difficult choices’. This includes napalming villages, the only atomic bombings in world history, and of course the on-going support of many of today’s worst tyrants - ‘difficult choices’ likely to find themselves reclassified as ‘mistakes’ in years to come.

Regarding the benefits, Frei cites iPods and the Bill of Rights, “Henry Ford; the Wright brothers; Bill Gates; the Boeing corporation; Desperate Housewives; The Sopranos and, of course, SpongeBob SquarePants” not forgetting “the freedom to dream and create without fear of prosecution or recrimination”. From Webb, “the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured”; “the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness”; “space and youth and hope. The rest of the world can seem so jaded in contrast”, and not forgetting “the stolid, sunny, unchallenging, simple virtuousness of the American suburban psyche” that “I have come to value - to love, actually.“

Of course we can all play at this game: Never mind the mustard gas, at least the trains run on time. Cost/benefit analysis of human history is always going to be a difficult call. The reader will have to decide whether Frei and Webb’s balance sheet really does show a surfeit of glory rather than a debt of pain.

At first glance the idea of a ‘pro-region’ regional commentator might seem only sensible. If the BBC wants to know the ins and outs of a region’s politics it might help to employ people who can ingratiate themselves with the powerful. Like ‘embedded’ war journalists, if you want to get close to the action you need to get close to your hosts. But perhaps the analogy is too good. Just as we should be wary of embedded war reporting we should be wary of embedded political reporting. Being ‘close to the White House’ is difficult to distinguish from being in the pocket of the White House. You cannot expect to honestly appraise the powerful and still expect to remain buddies. They will move away from you, or have you moved away from them.

And of course if this was is the best method of impartial data collection, how come the BBC doesn’t employ it across the board? There’s no sign of schmoozing when it comes to covering the politics of Venezuela, Cuba or Iran. On the contrary, when the BBC wants to verify facts about these countries it tends to rely on the word of Washington! Indeed, much as it seems to be the duty of BBC correspondents to admire some countries, they also seem editorially-bound to scorn others, and it is surely no coincidence that the BBCs list of nice and naughty countries keeps perfectly in-step with the outlook of Westminster and Washington.

Our media play their part in training us to trust (or perhaps, love, actually) our fellow humans in some countries, while at the same time training us to fear and mistrust our fellow humans elsewhere. At the most crucial moments these invisible assumptions can corrode our critical abilities. Aggressors can be painted as liberators, or even victims, simply because it is too much of a leap of imagination to believe that these old family friends could be acting in a cynical way. Likewise, victims can be painted as aggressors even as the bombs rain down upon them, or as the threats to bomb them reach boiling point.

Racists and Culturists

Not so long ago it was acceptable to attribute variations in human ability and achievement to variations in ethnicity. The nineteenth century’s eminent thinkers were content to attribute specific mental traits to specific ethnic groups. Some races, it seemed, were not equal to others. Some were brighter or dimmer, kinder or slyer or more indolent, more violent or less capable of sexual restraint.

Consequently, Europeans (who by good fortune discovered themselves to be the brightest race) used these beliefs to justify their conquest and subjugation of other races. Some races needed saving from themselves. Some races were too feeble-minded to drag themselves out of their primitive state. They were certainly too backward to exploit the riches of the lands God was benevolent enough (yet oddly naïve enough) to have bestowed upon them. The technological superiority of Europe could be explained as a product of biological superiority.

After the racially motivated atrocities of the Second World War such views fell from polite conversation. They are still with us of course, but they are far less likely to be voiced. Now if one has a hunch about the inferiority of a particular ethnic group it is safer to blame the culture of that group, rather than its genes.

This is not say that all who decry Islam are just closet haters of Arabs and Pakistanis, or that all those who criticise Israel are just closet haters of Jews. Some are and some aren’t. Some people genuinely do fear other peoples for their culture alone, rather than their biology. For all his delusions, I doubt Tony Blair is a racist in the biological sense. He is pro-capitalist, pro-western and pro Judeo-Christian – to the extent that he is desensitised to the killing of anyone who challenges the influence of these cultures. People of other worldviews can go to hell, and he spent his time in office sending them there. But I doubt biology plays a part. You can be any colour you like with Tony, as long as you subscribe to his mind-set.

This is clearly not the case with the BNP or the EDL, regardless of their protestations. Theirs is old-style biological racism with the thinnest coat of culturist whitewash. Five minutes in the pub would be long enough to discover that you were in the presence of the master race (as so often with master-races, appearances can be deceiving.)

Between these two poles lies a mass of confusion and inconsistency. Many racists and culturists swap clothes freely, as the argument swings. Most people who attribute social evils to race never quite spit out what they mean at root. One moment it sounds like a criticism of biology, the next a criticism of culture. For the sake of clarity then, it might help to spell out the differences. To take a fictional example, one might imagine the rantings of an Eastasian racist:

The people of Eurasia are born lazy.
The people of Oceania are born violent.

Clearly these are biological traits - genetic, fixed, and irredeemable. While not a recipe for genocide, this it is certainly a key ingredient. These are the first steps in the relegation of a section of humanity to a subspecies, the transformation of humans into animals, and, if history is the judge, the same treatment as animals. They may end up feared and isolated, or patted on the head and an attempt made to train them. Breeding with them might be frowned upon, and any offspring born of such a union find themselves spurned. They might not be accorded the same property rights as full humans, and their land considered ripe for exploitation by the more ‘advanced’ races. At the extreme end they may be rounded-up and enslaved, or rounded-up and exterminated.

Alternatively, the more sophisticated Eastasian xenophobe might take the modern ‘cultural’ line:

The people of Eurasia are merely victims of a worldview that causes them to be lazy.

The people of Oceania are merely victims of a worldview that causes them to act violently.

This certainly is less damning. The implication is that if babies from Eurasia and Oceania were brought to the safety and civilization of Eastasia they would develop and prosper as well as any Eastasian child. For all the cultural loathing, at least everybody remains human. One might hope that this key difference would suggest better treatment, and in some respects it might. Presumably this culturist stance would rule out slavery and mass extermination, at least on racial grounds. It implies that everyone should receive equal treatment before the law, and that no-one should be considered less-than-human on grounds of race.

It seems odd to conclude that hating people for their beliefs is any better than hating them for their skin colour, but that could be just because hating people is always wrong. So we could wind it back to ‘mistrusting people'. Is it better to mistrust someone for their beliefs than mistrust them for their skin colour? Here I suppose the answer has to be yes, at least in some cases. A person’s skin colour doesn't govern their actions. It is our thoughts that determine what we do - how nice or nasty we are to others. We can justify mistrust of someone if we believe they harbour harmful thoughts. If we don’t like someone’s ideology we can strive to keep them out of positions of power and influence. This is the heart of political struggle.

But of course if your judgement of another person’s culture is based on ignorance, then your views can be every bit as dumb as a prejudice based on skin colour. You can be every bit as bigoted in selecting cultural traits as you can be in picking racial traits. Furthermore you can be just as fascist in your treatment of those harbouring ‘enemy culture’ as you can of those harbouring ‘enemy skin colour’.

In contrast to the nineteenth century, the invasions and occupations of the early twenty-first century were not justified on racial grounds. This was a ‘clash of civilisations’ not races, or so we were told. Aside from the lies about hidden weaponry, these were wars against regressive culture, toxic politics, the ‘mediaeval mind-set’. Yet when you look at the consequences the differences are trivial. A country is invaded and its civilian population is slaughtered. Anyone resisting is imprisoned and tortured. A regime is installed conducive to the wishes of the invaders, and the country’s riches are syphoned away. An everyday story of nineteenth century racism, just without the racism.

If your possessions are stolen, is it of any comfort to be told it was done because of your ideology rather than your biology? Would a grieving parent care that their children were killed in a dispute over culture rather than race? While it is possible to criticise culture in a way that is never permissible with race, it is the thin end of a wedge. ‘Culturism’ can be every bit as bigoted as racism, and its consequences can be just as awful.

Children’s Career Aspirations - an exchange with CBBC

Dear BBC,

I would like to complain about the contribution CBBC appears to be playing in creating unrealistic aspirations in its young viewers.

As you may have heard, a recent study has detected a marked shift in the career aspirations of British Children over the past 25 years. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Twenty five years ago, youngsters wanted to become teachers, bankers or doctors. But pre-teens today are hoping to find fame through sport, pop music or acting”….”And what they watch on TV is now rivalling their parents as the biggest influence on children's choice of careers”….”Becoming a sports star like footballer Wayne Rooney is the top ambition of today's pre-teens the dream of 12 per cent” or “following in the footsteps of X Factor winner Leona Lewis and making it big as a pop star.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/6250626/Children-would-rather-become-popstars-than-teachers-or-lawyers.html

Now look at a selection from last Saturday’s CBBC schedule, much of which I sat through with my step daughter. (The listings and comments are taken from the Guardian website)

07:40 MOTD Kickabout
Football show featuring stars from the worlds of sport and entertainment
08:30 The Slammer
Four imprisoned entertainers perform for their freedom,
10:00 School For Stars
[speaks for itself]
10:30 The Big Performance
Choirmaster Gareth Malone coaches a group of 10 shy children to perform in public, before they face the challenge of singing for an audience of 40,000 at the London Proms in the Park
11:55 Newsround
Current affairs reports aimed at a younger audience [that is, current affairs heavily weighted towards sport and celebrity]
13:30 Dani's House
Comedy show about the misadventures of a highly strung 17-year-old actress……………

Is it not fair to say such a schedule fuels this worrying trend in childrens aspirations? Isn’t it time CBBC set a good example, and moved away from celebrity culture?

Thank you for your consideration. I await your reply.

Best wishes,

Martin Johnson
Brighton

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Dear Mr Johnson
Reference CAS-1061839-S78PDQ
Thanks for contacting us about CBBC.
I understand that you feel programme such as ‘Newsround’ and ‘Dani’s House’ encourage children to want to become pop stars or footballers instead of doctors and teachers. I note that you feel this is the wrong example to be setting for children and you think we need to move away from celebrity culture.
We set out to provide children with a wide variety of programmes in order to cater for their different ages, tastes and needs. We believe we are constantly in the forefront of children's programming, and offer the widest range of imaginative and informative programmes but we do appreciate that not every programme will appeal to every child.
Over the years there has been a substantial change in the style and presentation of children's programmes. However, such changes tend to be a reflection of changes in society. The BBC must remain in touch with its audience and responsive to its needs.
Please be assured the programme makers take their responsibility to our young audience very seriously. Indeed, every effort is made to meet the expectations of parents and children in our audience during this programme and all content is subject to our strict set of Editorial Guidelines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/
Nevertheless I do appreciate that you feel our programme promote celebrity culture therefore please be assured that I’ve registered your complaint on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that’s made available to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.
The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.
Thanks once again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind Regards
Claire Jordan
BBC Complaints

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Dear Claire Jordan,

Thank you for taking the time to answer. I’m not sure why you chose to highlight ‘Newsround’ and ‘Dani’s House’ – my case is hardly weakened by ‘School For Stars’ or ‘The Big Performance’. These four programs alone constitute over 90 minutes of fame obsessing in one morning schedule. You suggest that there is “a wide variety of programmes” catering to “different ages, tastes and needs”. Can you please send me an example? Where is a program that celebrates any plausible or socially useful role such as doctor or teacher or refuse collector? Where is the truly aspirational scientist, rather than the stereotypical nerd scientist of ‘Dani’s House?’

You also suggest that the “BBC must remain in touch with its audience and responsive to its needs.” But surely there is more to children’s needs than their immediate desires, particularly when those desires are fostered by a celebrity obsessed media. Rather than the need to cry at auditions, or the need to cling to an illusion of fame, what about the need to contribute to a humane society?

No doubt CBBC could serve the immediate desires of many teenagers if it racked-up the sex and violence – just like the evening programming – but quite rightly this would be considered detrimental to the outlook of children. As there is now also compelling evidence to suggest that the media is having a negative effect on the career aspirations of children isn’t it time to put celebrity in the same box? Isn’t it the duty of the state broadcaster to buck the celebrity trend, rather than foster and exploit it?

I’d rather not be added to an ‘audience log’, I’d rather my concerns were addressed.

Best wishes and waiting to hear.

Martin Johnson,
Brighton

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Dear Mr Johnson

Reference CAS-1083455-1YBSTM

You complaint has been forwarded to me as the Controller of CBBC.

I’m afraid that I can’t agree with the assertion that CBBC is ‘Celebrity Obsessed’.

We cover a wide range of programming on CBBC and the values that underpin our content include empowering and inspiring children; helping them make sense of the world around them; providing them with positive role models; introducing them to worlds and individuals they may otherwise not experience, and crucially providing them with moments when they can just laugh out loud and be silly.

I take a different view on the shows you mention and do not believe they are focused on ‘fame obsessing’ - on the contrary the values I mention above are evident in many of them.

In The Big Performance choirmaster extraordinaire Gareth Malone takes ten shy children who love to sing but are terrified of performing in public due to the fact that were bullied in the past. He takes them on a journey to restore their fragile confidence and to finally perform in front of the nation on Children In Need night linking up with other children’s choirs across the UK. I’m extremely proud of this show and believe it will have inspired and empowered many children watching at home.

In School for Stars the message is that it takes real motivation, commitment and sheer hard work to succeed in any field. The programme-makers skilfully explain the importance of attainment in both the academic and performance fields and provide an antidote to the idea that success is achievable by just desiring it.

Newsround will continue to cover sports and entertainment in addition to news stories that matter to children and I believe we get that balance right. Over the last year we’ve travelled the globe to help our audience understand the big news stories - we have been to Kabul to explain what it’s like to be a child growing up in a warzone; provided context to the earthquake in Japan; looked at the impact of the drought in Africa. On the domestic front we provided extensive analysis of the summer riots; the problems in the Eurozone; the newspaper-hacking scandal. Our award winning specials have covered subjects as diverse as autism, cancer and how young people’s lives are affected by their parents’ relationship with alcohol.

You asked for examples of shows that ‘celebrate a plausible or socially useful role’ - there are many but I have listed just a few examples below:

Steve Backshall inspiring the next generation of wildlife experts and adventurers in Deadly 60 and Live ‘N Deadly.

Helen Skelton from Blue Peter undertaking immense physical and mental challenges and living up to her mantra ‘impossible is just a word’.

Horrible Histories engaging children with the themes and narratives of history and encouraging them to find out more for themselves.

Richard Hammond passionately bringing science to life in ‘Blast Lab’.

Dick and Dom exploring the work of wildlife rescue centres and vets in Dick and Dom Go Wild.

Six children training with the Metropolitan Police to see what it takes to be a policeman in Cop School.

Coming up we have a number of new series including ‘We Could Be Heroes’ where we follow children training with the emergency and rescue services. We also plan to shine a light on the subjects of biology and medicine in a new series fronted by two very exciting young doctors.

I hope my reply addresses your concerns and if you want I’m very happy to continue this conversation with you on the telephone.

Best wishes,
Damian Kavanagh
Controller CBBC.

Everybody Hates Liberals

Across the political divide, ‘liberal’ seems to have become a dirty word. In part this is just due to the multiple meanings that have grown around the term. Nevertheless if we look at the various reasons people give for despising ‘liberals’ some interesting common threads can be found.

Obviously ‘liberal’ in the UK is currently suffering from the Liberals with a big L forming a pact with the Conservatives. To the left this proves an old hunch – Liberals were just closet Tories, all along.

Then there is the US reading of liberal, which is really just a counter to ‘conservative’. A liberal in this sense can mean any form of leftist, socialist or even communist, so plenty to hate there. Confusingly however, since Thatcher and Reagan there have also been neo-liberals to hate. This is liberal in the sense of free-market liberalism – loathing of tax and state intervention, so firmly on the political right.

Then there are the more colloquial usages. There is the woolly do-gooder ‘liberal’, the stereotypical Guardian reader/writer, corduroy-clad social worker or social studies teacher. Close behind is the Fabian socialist, the top-down social reformer who sees the problems of the lower orders as something that can be solved by a benevolent intelligentsia. Many on the left and the right find common reasons to despise these sorts of liberals. Both groups see a self-serving bureaucratic class, patronising, paternalist and naïve, one which fails to address structural problems and instead does rather nicely out of the awful state of things. Rather than urge people to fight their own battles and solve their own problems, these sort of liberals prefer to appoint themselves as saviours, infantilising the downtrodden and robbing them of their autonomy.

And of course there are the ‘liberal interventionists’ the sort who brought liberty to Iraq and Afghanistan – a liberal fig-leaf to hide the diminutive organs of the naked imperialist. Although these liberals might seem a million miles from the woolly do-gooder kind (and many woolly do-gooder liberals would the first to condemn them) it is interesting to note the paternalistic similarities. In both cases an elite of well-educated and well-to-do white folk judge themselves to be in a better position to evaluate and plan the lives of lesser beings. If it so happens that you need to kill most of them along the way then so be it. One can also see a link here to the ‘free-market’ liberals. Anyone who does not wish to participate in the ‘free-market’ may find themselves coaxed towards liberty at the point of a gun.

Such widespread distaste for liberalism might seem odd in a democracy. After all, isn't democracy all about liberty? But of course while most people might claim to cherish liberty there is no agreement on what it is, or how it might be attained. Some see it as something that needs to be carefully engineered by the state. Others see it as the wholesale abolition of the state. In Economics alone, many self-proclaimed liberals are poles apart. Liberal individualists argue that liberty is born of zero tax and unrestricted corporate freedom. Liberal collectivists argue that liberty requires progressive taxation and spending, to create a level economic playing field.

Naively, we might assume that liberty is simply the removal of restrictions, but of course that would leave murderers free to murder and rapists free to rape – hardly a liberating situation for the rest of us. Clearly liberty has more to do with carefully chosen limits on some human desires than it has to do with boosting ‘freedom’ in the abstract. Thankfully, most of us agree on rape and murder, but there is far less agreement elsewhere. For some, liberty would include the right to wear a veil, or take drugs, or slap your children. For others these are infringements of liberty, freedoms that need to be prohibited in the name of higher liberty. And what of the liberty to push your own vision of liberty on others? What about the liberty to make someone else wear a veil, or buy your opium, or host your airbase?

If your notion of liberty boils down to nothing more than ‘free to comply with my notion of freedom’ then you might as well call it fascism and be done with it. But even the most sincere and judiciously chosen freedoms will always seem like gross infringements of liberty to some people. And you can be sure they will hate you for it.