A little local fisking
I was reading through the August 29 issue of The Metro Pulse, Knoxville's alternative weekly paper, when I came across the latest writings of Massimo Pigliucci. Mr. Pigliucci, a member of the Rationalists of East Tennessee, and a professor at UT, writes a column published in Metro Pulse called Rationally Speaking. A quick read shows that there is no truth in advertising for this column. While the Pulse doesn't maintain an on-line archive, Mr. Pigliucci does, and has granted permission to reproduce his articles, so let the games begin!
First, let's look at his version of utopia:
The world some of us would like to see, and are fighting to help bring about with our actions and writings, is one in which more people will use reason to make their decisions; fundamentalist religion will be seen as silly at best, and profoundly misguided and dangerous at worst; the environment will be thought of a real priority; war will not be possible because of a truly civilized international system of police and tribunals (you know, just like modern societies are an improvement over the law of the jungle?); and human beings will engage not in the search for profit or shallow consumerism but in the pursuit of true happiness and fulfillment.
This is rational? OK, let's start by looking at the contradictions implicit in his utopia. First he elevates modern society over the law of the jungle, while denigrating every relevant aspect of those societies.
Religion? "Profoundly misguided and dangerous," not to mention "silly." Never mind that religion, regardless of the wrongs wrought , has been the single most civilizing influence on mankind. Yes, wars have been fought in the name of god, but hospitals have been built, charities founded, art sponsored, lives cherished in the same name. Religion has had a far more beneficial influence on the developement of man than it has a negative, a fact which is easily demonstrated. Religious thought is the first example of man applying some intrinsic value to life. In addition, the presence of an after life, with it's attendant restrictions on behavior, provided the first curbs on mankinds animal instincts, and provide the foundation for Mr. Pigliucci's "civilization." It may be that we have outgrown the need for religion, that we can approach life with reverence without the need ofr a supernatural presence. Looking at the world today, I don't think that case can be made, but even if it could, it does not in any way lessen the critical role religion played in getting us to this point.
Profit is also a bad thing, which distracts from true happiness and fulfillment. Never mind that the motivation for profit springs directly from our animal heritage, and as such is completely in tune with our evolutionary origins. Never mind that the desire for profit has created more prosperity and a higher standard of living for the entire world, not just the US. Yes, poverty still exists. But is it just coincidence that those countries with the highest poverty rates are also those countries with the most regulated economies? Is it an accident that every experiment in socialist economy wound up bankrupt? Or that North Korea is starving while South Korea is prospering? A rationalist would look for causality with this many coincidences. Mr. Pigliucci doesn't even consider the question.
He also takes to task our current systems of criminal justice and international law, the systems that brought security to a larger portion of the globe than ever before, implying that they are not "truly civilized" and comparing them to the law of the jungle.
Which brings me to the contradiction inherent in most rationalist philosophies. Mr. Pigliucci is a strict evolutionist. He allows for no religion, no moderating influences, no supernatural forces, no higher mode of being. As such, the only ethical system open to him, without engaging in blatant hypocrisy, is the law of the jungle. The only indicator of success in the evolutionary scheme is the ability of the organism to pass on its genetic code. Any ethical system that compromises that success will die out and be replaced by one that improves the chances for success. Over several million years of evolution, the "law of the jungle" has proven to be the most effective ethical system. Remember that through evolution, we too are the end result of the law of the jungle, and holding ourselves apart from it, in the absence of some other operative force, is sheer hubris.
If we look honestly at our global society today, we see, in fact, that the law of the jungle, regardless of what thin veneers of “civilization” we may have enacted, rules us. The ultimate arbiter of conflict continues to be the application of force, up to and including physical violence. Whether that force is carried out by an individual, or the collective will of the people is immaterial. We still live in a world where might makes right. Unless of course you subscribe to a supernatural system of absolutes. Which, of course, is silly, and might even be dangerous.
I won't hold Mr. Pigliucci's failure to provide any specifics against him. He may have done so elsewhere, and that wasn't the thrust of this article. I'll just note that it is easy to say you are for a "truly civilized international system of police and tribunals." The devil is in the details. What is "truly civilized?" Is there a base package of values, some core of ethics upon which all nations would voluntarily agree? If so, what is the basis for those ethics? Could a body organized around those ethical principles use force to compel compliance from those who have a different set of core values? If so, aren't we back to the law of the jungle, supplemented with the rule of the herd?
Just as an example, Muslim culture directly incorporates religion into their political structure. Mr. Pigliucci would view this as "silly at best, and profoundly misguided and dangerous at worst." Would his international tribunal system force Muslims to renounce or modify their beliefs? Would they be allowed to use violence to do so?
Moving a little further in his article we find this:
To make it even worse, now we have a president who was not elected democratically (hey, I thought that happened only in Third World countries!), who keeps showing a callous disrespect for the environment and an equally abominable close tie to big business, and of whom (for some reason) most people keep approving because he has “character” (by which they must mean that he is able to lie about his past better than Clinton did).
A rationalist? Not by this passage.
First, President Bush was elected in accordance with the laws of our nation, as has every president before him. He is not the first to win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote, nor will he be the last. This in no way illegitimizes his presidency, or means that he was elected undemocratically. The character slur at the end is totally without foundation, and stands as a vacuous attack on a man he doesn't like. What lies about his past has Bush told, and how were they more successful than Clinton's? Both were elected in spite of their pasts. Apparently they were equally successful. Maybe President Bush is seen to have more character because he appears to have learned from his mistakes. While Clinton carried his lying, womanizing ways with him into the White House, President Bush left his wild oats behind him.
Next comes this howler:
Let’s not forget that the Soviet Union and the Berlin wall crumbled in front of our eyes after having been apparently unfaltering symbols of oppression for decades. Equally surprisingly, Nelson Mandela went from political prisoner to head of state in South Africa, and the Milosovic government in the former Yugoslavia disappeared. These things don’t happen if we leave the field entirely to conservative and regressive forces.
Hmmm. Who was President in 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released? And in 1991 when he was elected President of the ANC? And who challenged the Soviet Union to remove the Wall, and who was President when it came down? And who's policies, widely opposed by the left, contributed directly to the economic collapse of the Soviet Union? Why, it was none other than the demon himself, Ronald Reagan. To claim these events as victories of the left is sheer balderdash, unless you want to claim Reagan as a fellow liberal. Or maybe you want to claim that these things happened in spite of Reagan and the Republicans, that when President Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this Wall!" he didn't really mean it. Maybe the fuss kicked up by Tip O'Neill and the Democrats in the Congress trying to prevent the President from carrying out his agenda was all a smoke screen, designed to sow confusion among the American people. Maybe Reagan was a tool of the left all along.
In a pigs eye!
Mr. Pigliucci does not present a rational argument anywhere in this article, preferring instead to rely upon personal attack, unfounded accusation, and a rather embarrassing mistatement of recent national and international history.
But he does type well...
Posted by Rich at September 19, 2002 1:25 PM