Marriage and Democracy -- what's law got to do with it?

While Professor Julian Rivers was giving evidence to (or, as it looked to me, being interrogated by) the Parliamentary Committee for the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill, he made what seemed to me a rather good point, which was to question why there should be any state involvement in marriage at all.

One of the justifications for the government’s proposed change, which has been deployed by a number of politicians and pundits, is that the Church doesn’t own marriage, and indeed it doesn’t, as you can discover for yourself by reading Edward Schillebeeckx’s excellent Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery (London: Sheed and Ward, 1976). The Church’s involvement in conducting weddings is a comparatively late development, and its role in legally defining the terms of marriage even later.

However, it would be equally true to say that the State doesn’t own marriage either — not if we think of ‘ownership’ in terms of it being the subject of a mass of laws and specialist lawyers, anyway. If Lynn Cohick, author of Women in the World of the Earliest Christians (Grand Rapids Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009) is to be trusted (and I can think of no reason why she shouldn’t be), few couples in the Roman world of the New Testament were actually married in a manner that depended on a formal and recognized legal process.

Similarly, in our own culture we have the myth of the ‘common law marriage’. Now of course such an entity has no legal status — that is to say, the courts will not admit or enforce any rights or claims on the basis of common law marriage. But the myth grew up no doubt in part because in the public mind there could be a recognition that a thing exists de facto even when it does not have any status de jure. Indeed in Australia (where things may also be different legally) a ‘partner’ in such a relationship is known colloquially as one’s ‘de facto’.

What this proves is that, rather like when traffic lights break down, the general public is actually capable of working out who goes with whom and on what basis, and of recognizing ‘marital-type relationships’ even where the law has no remit. Not least, we have seen this in the loose using of the term ‘marriage’ for the contracting of civil partnerships when they were first introduced.

Furthermore, the oft-quoted Marriage Act of 1753 was not about defining or controlling marriage per se but, as the full title says, “for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage”. It is emphatically not the case, as sometimes seems to be implied, that marriage as we know it was somehow ‘invented’ at that point. Rather, the regulations regarding the conducting of weddings were tightened up, basically to prevent escalating property disputes arising out of rights conferred by the law itself on those who were actually married. (The irony is that the precipitating legal case took place in Scotland, but the Act did not apply there.)

Notice, however, it was the law’s involvement in matters of property which precipitated the law’s further interest in marriage. The problem (namely of unrecognized claimants on an inheritance) could presumably have been resolved by doing away with the inheritance right, which given that the government feels entitled to take part of that inheritance to itself anyway, by means of laws in its own favour, is not beyond imagining.

My thoughts on this were further prompted this morning by reading a comment by an Americanjournalist Patrick Pexton on the opposition of ‘religionists’ to same-sex marriage. “ We want to write words, read books, watch movies, listen to music, and have sex and babies,” he wrote, “pretty much when, where and how we choose.”

Now there might be those who want to argue that the freedom to have sex or a baby is not quite the same as the freedom to put on a CD or, indeed, to blog. Nevertheless, his plea has a certain merit. Why should the law regulate with whom I have sex (provided I’m not hurting anyone else and blah, blah, blah) any more than it regulates the music to which I listen?

And that being the case, why should the law regulate with whom I set up home? Specifically, why should the law regulate whether this domestic arrangement is something I want to call ‘marriage’ or something I’d rather keep to ‘shacking up’? The answer, it would seem from the civil partnerships legislation in this country, comes down to a few things like property, pensions and whether my partner can be treated as a ‘relative’ of mine in extremis. In other words, in practical terms it comes down to other areas where the law interferes. (Hence, if I have a baby, for example, the law insists I provide for it — something which society may feel is a better alternative than burdening the tax-payer, but which otherwise would depend on my exercising my freedom.)

Rather than extending the legal definition of marriage, then, why not tell the State and the lawyers it ought to be none of their business whom I marry, and demand that they sort out the law so as to increase, rather than further constrain, my liberty?

All this may seem terribly radical, but as has been observed in this debate, it used to work quite well until the lawyers got involved on matters affected by, but not central to, that which we call ‘marriage’. Deal with issues of property and pensions separately — for example through similar regulations to those governing civil partnerships — and let the people decide whom they wish to marry, and surely one achieves one of the chief goals of democracy, which, let us not forget, has been defined as ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’.

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Forging the chains of our own bondage

Preparing to teach on 'Wisdom' and the wisdom literature yesterday at TEAM in Cambridge, I came across (and subsequently used) this quote from Martin Luther:

This I do know, that no state is governed successfully by means of laws. If the ruler is wise, he will govern better by a natural sense of justice than by laws. If he is not wise, he will foster nothing but evil through legislation, since he will not know what use to make of the laws nor how to adapt them to the case at hand. Therefore, in civil affairs more stress should be laid on putting good and wise men in office than on making laws; for such men will themselves be the very best of laws, and will judge every variety of case with a lively sense of equity. And if there is knowledge of the divine law combined with natural wisdom, then written laws will be entirely superfluous and harmful. Above all, love needs no laws whatever. (The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, LW 36:98)

Luther, I think, understood better than most (certainly far better than most Christians today) the 'oil and water' nature of law and grace. For Luther they were both aspects of God's dealing with humankind, but they were not equal 'goods'. On the contrary, the law, ultimately, was the antithesis of human good, since it addressed us in our sinful state and brought only condemnation.

The gospel, by contrast, was a blessed relief from not just moral or ceremonial law, but law as a principle. And whilst Luther recognized the continuance of two 'kingdoms of God' in this world - one under the law, magistrates and the sword, and the other under the gospel, charity and the word - he was adamant that we must keep the two distinct in our thinking and our practice and that we must esteem the second more than the first.

The New Perspective approach to Paul has, I think, muddied the waters on this as on so many other things. I was struck yesterday, however, by the words of Galatians 3:19: "Why, then, the law? It was added because of transgressions ..."

This word 'transgressions' refers not simply to 'boundary markers' of the community but to the adherence to God's ways and ordinances (cf Dt 17:19-20). The law was not only there to identify 'members of the covenant community' but to identify and limit their sins and sinfulness. And this was as much a moral as a ceremonial matter.

When Paul speaks of the law which most identified his intractable sinfulness he picked on the commandment not to covet - a moral law if ever there was one. This was the law that killed him, and this was the law to which he died in Christ. And so we must see that all law is, in principle, a sign that we are not yet living under grace.

Were Christians to grasp this understanding better, and were they to apply it as radically in their approach to society as Luther did in his, we would perhaps have something more interesting to say, beginning with this: the more society departs from the grace of the gospel, the more it will live under man-made laws which, because of our lack of wisdom (Rom 1:22) will increasingly do more harm than good.

Without either the gospel or a knowledge of the laws of God, we will forge the chains of our own bondage.

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Obama’s Afghan surrender will follow us home

It took thirty years for the British army and security forces to bring the situation in Northern Ireland to the point where terrorists were willing to give up fighting before becoming part of mainstream politics.

During that time there were many calls to abandon the province, the ‘Troops Out’ movement being just one voice amongst many. Even in the general public on the mainland, there was widespread disillusionment about the worthwhileness of the military commitment and the cost in money and lives.

Fortunately, not just for those on the mainland but for the people of Ireland, there was just enough determination to see the worst of the conflict through to a solution.

There were many misunderstandings and mistakes on the way. English politicians, in particular, never really ‘got it’ regarding Ulster Protestantism, and there was no Canon Andrew White around to spell out the real importance of religion in the situation. Had this been appreciated, I personally believe the conflict could have been resolved ten or fifteen years sooner.

In the end, however, sheer stubbornness and the growing skills of the security forces, combined with a communal weariness over tit-for-tat killings, all combined to make the conflict something everyone wanted to bring to an end. That, and the fact that we didn’t have Wootton Bassett.

The efforts of the people of Wootton Bassett to honour the returning war dead from Afghanistan are entirely commendable. Unfortunately, in the post-Diana era, they have created an emotional flash-point which simply cannot coexist with the kind of determination necessary to bring such a conflict to a satisfactory conclusion.

It is the job of soldiers to kill and, as they remind themselves with typical humour, Afghanistan is a ‘two way range’. The enemy shoot back and sometimes they kill in return. An acceptance of this and the willingness to tolerate the consequences is part of what is known as ‘morale’, and morale is an essential element in victory. It is not guarantee of success, but its absence is a sure guarantee of failure.

And in both Iraq and Afghanistan, morale has generally been good. The modern soldier is much less like those who fought in Vietnam. There are no demonstrators in the colleges chanting, ‘Hell, no, we won’t go!’, for example. Indeed, the modern soldier is unlike any in this country since the introduction of conscription in the First World War and the ending of National Service in the 1960s. For the equivalent, you would have to go back to the professional armies of the nineteenth century. And a professional army accepts risk in a way that a conscript, however brave, does not.

Thus it is not the soldiers who are asking to be brought home (read the British Army blog linked from this blog). Rather, it is the politician, who is sensitive to public pressure.

That is why President Obama’s announcement of a dramatic pull-out from Afghanistan has to be seen as tantamount to surrender. There is still the rhetoric of reaching a successful conclusion, but it is a clear signal of the absence of will. Imagine if, in 1984, following the Brighton bombing, Margaret Thatcher had announced the intention that all troops would be withdrawn from Northern Ireland by 1990? Now you can imagine how the Taliban must be feeling today — ‘it is only a matter of time’.

And the reality of the situation can be gauged by responses in the media here — not just the actual articles, but the comments, most of which seem to be along the lines of ‘about time too, we were stupid to get involved in the first place’. Above all, the perception of many seems to be that this will finally bring the conflict to an end.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not a conflict from which we can walk away, because it is already present in our own Western communities. Rather what it will do is embolden globally those who are committed to armed jihad.

The place to look, I think, will not be the comments sections of the Guardian, the Independent or even the Telegraph and Times, but the jihadi chat rooms. There, I suspect, the doom and gloom following the death of Osama bin Laden is being replaced by a new optimism. Just when it looked like America indeed had the will and the determination to pursue its enemies to the ends of the earth, light has appeared at the end of the Afghan tunnel.

But remember, those chat room participants do not, by and large, live in Afghanistan. They are not even confined to Pakistan, or the Middle East. They live in Bolton, in London, in New York and in Sydney. And their view will be, ‘We almost beat you in Iraq, and we’ll beat you in Afghanistan. Next we’re going to beat you on your home territory as well.’

As one writer put it yesterday, “America is no longer capable of being the policeman of the world, and may retreat to its historic isolation. Across the Channel, the debt crisis is wrecking the European dream. History is moving faster than ever, and taking us into a new and formless world.”

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“Right becomes wrong and left become right”

I am still immensely enjoying Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia, as I blogged about last week. As I continue to read, however, I am struck by a recurring theme regarding the makers of Western culture about whom James writes.

Many of them have been victims of one, or sometimes even both, of the two secular ideologies which dominated so much of the last century — to the right, Nazism, and to the left, Marxism. Almost inevitably, these individuals come across as tragic, and indeed are often heroic.

Yet at the same time there are others, for the most part no less talented or dedicated to their particular field, who have actually lent their support precisely to these ideologies. And this surely raises some interesting questions about the whole ‘cultural’ enterprise.

Here we have people who can rightly be regarded as cultured intellectuals. Indeed, they are themselves culturally creative. Yet sometimes they are entirely blind to movements and forces inimical to human, and therefore cultural, flourishing.

It has to be said, moreover, that this is particularly noticeable regarding attitudes on the ‘left’. Here, it seems, people of considerable intellect have, nevertheless, been constantly willing to justify self-evident wrongs and to deny every allegation of moral deviance, in a manner that seems entirely at variance with their own evident capacity for understanding and analysis in other respects.

Thus people who really should have known better have supported, at various times, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and even Pol Pot.

To go beyond James’s own examples, many of us remember Jane Fonda’s visit to, and endorsement of, North Vietnam in the 1960s. And what of the World Council of Churches’ support for violent ‘liberation’ movements in the Third World?

Part of the picture is, of course, that the political left tends to align itself with causes that appeal to the best of human instincts — the desire to help the physically poor and the socially oppressed.

The problem is that organizations and individuals who have been able to talk the right talk in this regard have often walked a very different walk. There may even, as seems to be the case with Mao Zedong, be a transition from a good start to a truly disastrous finish.

Nevertheless, it is a lesson of history that intellectual and cultural brilliance is by no means a guarantee that the individual will possess an accurate moral compass, or pay any attention to it even if they do.

It should also, however, be an encouragement to the rest of us, who do not possess such brilliance, not to be intimidated into silence. Sometimes it is possible to wonder whether, given the mental abilities of those who lend their support to one dubious-looking cause or another, the Emperor for whom they are cheering really is wearing the fantastic outfit they describe, rather than being as stark-naked as the objective evidence suggests.

Reading through the ‘broadsheet’ media today, the Western intellectual opponents of the West, for example, seem to be overwhelming both in their numbers and in their evident learning. “Surely,” we find ourselves thinking, “they must be onto something.” And so we go on listening to the argument that the real threat to human flourishing today comes not from the radicalization of Muslims or the growing brute economic power of China, but from America, or from our own history.

It is said by clever people, and it is said well — so who are you, or who am I, to contradict it?

At times like this it is good to remember that clever, erudite people have been notoriously wrong about such things in the past. They really have done the same for mass murderers and political sociopaths. And sometimes what we need is common sense, not intellectual brilliance.

The title for this post comes from the Dire Straits song, Ride Across the River. There is another Dire Straits line I am fond of quoting as an antidote to the modern mindset, which comes from Industrial Disease: “Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”

Of course, it is possible that they are both wrong, but certainly during the 1990s it became possible to scandalize quite intelligent people with the first suggestion: “Who are we to say who is wrong?” became the typical response, even when it was self-evidently true that someone was.

But it is this same moral certainty about the uncertainty of our moral judgement that allows perfectly sane commentators and journalists to condemn ‘Islamophobia’, for example, without ever coming down hard against Islam, or to judge the West by ‘Western’ standards whilst excusing the otherwise unpardonable when it is part of a non-Western ‘culture’.

There is, however, a third Dire Straits line, again from Industrial Disease, that comes to mind at this point: “Philosophy is useless, theology is worse.” When the intellect fails us practically, then only the truly practical person can help us. The wise person in such circumstances may well not be the clever one. They will just be the one who can accurately see and declare what is going on.

John Richardson

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Lest we forget - 'Cultural Amnesia' and the future of our culture

I am just in the process of reading a book I would rank alongside Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence for its breadth of scope and value to the reader. At the same time, it is wonderfully well written. Yet it ought also to carry something of a health warning for the average person, who will probably feel, as I do on almost every page, humiliated by their own comparative lack of knowledge.

The book to which I am referring is Clive James’s Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of my Time. Basically a collection of short essays, James has taken a character, usually (though not exclusively) from the twentieth century whom he feels has made a significant contribution to our culture, and more or less written about them.

Sometimes there is a great deal ‘less’ than ‘more’. The book is not ‘an introduction to’ whomever, but rather almost a ‘stream of consciousness’ reaction to or reminiscence about them which sometimes veers off in unpredictable, but fascinating, directions. The discussion of Richard Burton’s haircut in Where Eagles Dare is a particularly good example, occurring as it does in the essay on the Viennese physician and writer, Arthur Schnitzler.

At times I have found myself simply embarrassed by my ignorance. Last night I began reading about Einstein, but couldn’t match the picture of the balding ‘bank managerial’ figure at the beginning with the usual ‘mad hair’ image one associates with the name. Then I realized it was actually Alfred, his cousin and music critic, not Albert the scientist, about whom I was reading.

There followed a wonderful piece (mostly about Schubert as it happens), but all the way through I couldn’t help thinking, “How have I lived so long and not known there was an Alfred Einstein?”

Many of us will know James as a TV pundit and, perhaps, writer — not least of the autobiographical Unreliable Memoirs. Those who do will be aware that he can be very funny indeed — something like a cross between Jeremy Clarkson and Ian Hislop, though the sardonic Australian style sometimes calls for small doses.

There is a laugh-out-loud line, for example, in Unreliable Memoirs about the visiting ‘dunny man’ — like dustmen, only for the outside toilets typical of pre-war Australian homes — who tripped over the boy James’s bicycle left lying in the alleyway, thus spilling the contents of the said dunny. “The amazing thing,” wrote James (as I recall), “Was how almost none of it missed him.”

The same wit carries over into Cultural Amnesia. James can be eloquently amusing at astonishing length in the way that Rowan Williams is astonishingly lengthy but baffling.

Yet there is much more here than amusement. There is an intensity about the writing, shot through, I felt, with that melancholy which comes with age — the realization that not only must ‘all this’ pass but so, too, must one’s own accumulated awareness. The ‘amnesia’ of the title is, I think, not that we forget so much we have read or experienced, but that entire cultures forget because the only repository of ‘remembering’ is our own fragile and finite selves.

There is also a constant reminder of the dreadfulness of the last century. So many of James’s subjects were victims of — but sometimes participants in — Nazi or Soviet persecution: Einstein (of course), but also virtually every other Jewish or Russian character (and there are many) in the entire book, plus several others:

The whole of modern Polish literature ... might have had an utterly different layout if some Nazi thug ... had not put a bullet through the head of Bruno Schulz ... (187)

The overall impression is of a century which, perhaps more than any in human history, sought to create its own ‘cultural amnesia’ by the deliberate and systematic elimination of the bearers of that culture. Hitler and Stalin between them have far and away the most references in the index, simply because they ruined or terminated the lives of so many of the others in the book. Close third is Jean-Paul Sartre who, as James writes, “looms in the corner of this book like a genius with the evil eye”:

For the book’s author, Sartre is a devil’s advocate to be despised more than the devil, because the advocate was smarter. (669)

You get the idea. Perhaps most painful of all is the essay on Sophie Scholl (1921-1943), about whom, James writes, “there are few facts to record, because she did not live long.” The reason for this is that in 1942 she joined, with her brother Hans, the White Rose resistance group, and was (along with him and their fellow ‘conspirators’) subsequently guillotined by the Nazis:

The chief executioner later testified that he had never seen anyone die so bravely as Sophie Scholl. Not a whimper of fear, not a sigh of regret for the beautiful life she might have led. She just glanced up at the steel, put her head down, and she was gone. Is that you? No, and it isn’t me either. (709)

Don’t worry. It isn’t all gloom, but there is, by my reckoning, a sense of frustration — that this book on ‘amnesia’ is James’s way of saying to the rest of us, “Remember! Remember!” That, and perhaps, “Take and read!”

And this is where the book sits so well, and so tellingly, alongside Barzun’s even more monumental work (this is not a small book!).

At the end of From Dawn to Decadence, Barzun imagines a Western world which somehow rediscovers a culture. Yet there seems to be no actual prospect of this happening. The terrible awareness that grows whilst reading Cultural Amnesia is that virtually everyone in it is dead: Miles Davis, Frederico Fellini, Franz Kafka, Marcell Proust and so on. There are perhaps three dozen essays, but the index contains hundreds of names, mostly from the past.

The world today is vastly less threatening to the typical Westerner than it was for most of the twentieth century. Even the threat of terrorism must be balanced against the equal unpredictable, but vastly more probable, ravages of diseases which, a mere century ago, could carry one off in an afternoon.

Yet what has happened to the culture? There is a great section in James’s essay on Duke Ellington which, to my mind, sums it all up:

The aesthetic component was standard for all the arts in the twentieth century: one after another they tried to move beyond mere enjoyment as a criterion, a move which put a premium on technique, turned technique into subject matter, and eventually made professional expertise a requirement not just for participation but even for appreciation. (In architecture, the turning point came with Le Corbusier: laymen who questioned his plans for rebuilding Paris by destroying it were told by other architects that they were incompetent to assess his genius.) (192)

‘Culture’ today is for the experts. ‘Mass culture’ is ever more empty of either meaning or ambition. Meanwhile, our universities have become ‘degree factories’ whose controlling ethos is increasingly their observable contribution to the economy.

Who is creating a cultural ‘stir’ today? Or who is providing any inspiration about the present or the future either in the arts or society?

By the time this century is over — and it is already well under way — we may wonder what the equivalent of Cultural Amnesia will have to say.

John Richardson
30 April 2011

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Vice is nice ...

... used to be the first line of a ‘joke’ saying around in the ‘60s, which finished “but ’cest (as in incest) is best”. It wasn’t very funny then, but it may well have been prescient.

In this week’s edition of the Church of England Newspaper, there is an article about an ‘offending poster’ displayed outside the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds advertising the opening of John Ford’s 17th century play ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore next month.

The poster (shown above courtesy of Cranmer’s blog where he has already posted on this subject) shows, oddly enough, not an incestuous brother and sister as in the play, but a ‘pieta’ of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

The link may seem obscure, but according to Ian Brown, the artistic director of the Playhouse, “The religious faith of the characters is integral and we felt it was important this was reflected in the image to promote the production.”

‘Tis pity, some might be thinking at this point, the main characters were not Muslims. What fun might have been had devising a suitable poster along the same lines. Since no offence was intended (according to the Playhouse) no offence presumably should have been taken.

Rather smartly, however, the image has now been replaced by a banner stating, “Judge the Play, Not the poster,” thereby managing a declaration of innocence and a reverse accusation of guilt in one fell swoop. Nevertheless, little flyers and smaller ‘inoffensive’ posters are still available around the city, where doubtless they will raise nothing more than a wry smile on the faces of the public.

All this is, of course, just the usual ‘flim flammery’ from an art world which constantly uses shock to attract an audience, whilst simultaneously huffing and puffing when people finally act offended. (The contradiction, of course, being that if it did not offend it would not shock and the whole edifice would crumble.)

Indeed, one could argue that the poster has achieved its purpose — the shock has registered, the objections have been raised and so has the profile of the play. Job done!

Nevertheless, it is in the final paragraph of the CEN article that the real problem lies:

The 1633 play by John Ford is seen as being many years ahead of its time, featuring at its heart an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister.

In what sense, might we ask, was the play ‘ahead of its time’?

Clearly Ford felt he could write it when he did, and others felt they could perform it.

So what is the ‘time’ of which it was ‘ahead’?

My worry is that the ‘time’ in question is actually one where the whole notion of incest is becoming at least discussable, if not yet acceptable.

But once a secular society has accepted the notion that there is neither one ‘definitive’ sexuality, nor one definitive form of relationship within which it should be expressed, the brakes must truly be off.

“Not so long ago,” writes one of the world’s leading ethicists, “any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, at best, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion.”

But as the writer goes on to argue, once our taboos begin to be revealed for nothing more than that — the hangover of religious superstition and an inflated view of our own biological significance — the queue of relationships looking for social legitimacy begins to wind around the block.

John Richardson
29 April 2011

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U-571, female detectives, it’s all the same

When the film U-571, depicting the American capture during World War 2 of a submarine carrying an Enigma cypher machine, hit the cinema screens, I was one of those who greeted it with derision.

Those who know a bit about the War will be aware that the first Enigma machines were actually captured by the Poles before hostilities broke out between Germany and Britain. Then, in 1941, another machine was captured from a U-boat, but by the British destroyer HMS Bulldog.

One argument for this rewriting of history went that the film would not otherwise have been economically viable in the US. According to an article on Wikipedia, the screenwriter David Ayer pretty much confessed to this later:

It was a distortion ... a mercenary decision ... to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience.

Well, stupid him, I thought, and stupid Americans for not being able to stomach anything other than a world re-coloured to suit their own view of what ought to have been ‘reality’.

But then it turns out American producers and scriptwriters aren’t the only ones whose fictional world has to shelter their audiences from reality, for apparently BBC One controller Danny Cohen has said he plans to limit the number of male detectives in the channel’s dramas.

“Detectives and crime is the real staple of quite a lot of BBC,” he said, but added, “I felt that we risked having too many male detectives.” Hence, in particular, the series ‘Zen’, starring Rufus Sewell, apparently had to go.

Now the question that has to be asked is, “Too many for what?”

Amongst male detectives, reference was made to Sherlock, Luther, Wallander and Inspector George Gently. Personally I’m only familiar with the first and the third, but I must admit the one thing that never crossed my mind whilst watching either was, “Shame he’s a bloke.”

Nor, oddly enough, did I find myself thinking, “Given all the female crime-fighters one sees in daily life, isn’t this a bit unrealistic?”

So whence the drive to change what appears on our TV screens? Whatever it turns out to be, I’ll guarantee that tucked away in it somewhere you’ll find an ‘ought’ — “There ‘ought’ to be more fictional detectives on television who are women because ...”

Fill in the gap and you’ll learn a lot about modern society and culture.

Fiction is, of course, just that. It is not real-life, and it has always involved the projection of the hopes and aspirations of the author. Yet we must never underestimate the power of fiction to move us as if it were reality. Indeed, there have been works of fiction which have had a seminal influence on society — think Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Grapes of Wrath.

This is why, personally, I think the Puritan suspicion of the theatre had something going for it. Our easy acceptance of the deluge of popular fiction on our televisions, particularly the ‘soaps’, may be a reflection, as much as anything else, of our blindness to its effects, rather than our robustness regarding its impact.

Indeed, there is no doubt whatsoever (and there is probably a book out there to prove) that the popular media have been used quite deliberately to reshape popular culture. What the ‘fictionalizers’ deem acceptable is thus at least as important as what their audiences find palatable.

I was inclined to pity an American audience that could only cope with ‘historic’ events which featured themselves. But it is not just Americans who demand a parallel universe for their contemplation. Our own producers and writers also insist creating worlds in their own image.

Back in the ‘70s (I’m tempted to say, when Greenbelt was evangelical) there was talk of raising up a generation of Christian artists and writers to influence society. At the time there was also a big debate about whether art should be ‘for art’s sake’ or to convey a ‘message’. I was then, and still am, a fan of the former. Nevertheless, it is clear that there are powerful figures in our modern media who have no compunction at all about operating on the basis of the latter.

Perhaps it is time we woke up to the fact.

John Richardson

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Were families happier in the past?

This is a rebuttal of Happy Families? - a document that concludes, amongst other things,

# The 'permissive'1960s were not the decisive break with long-established norms of marital stability and sexual propriety that is often thought.*
# There was a change in the late 1960s from some of the norms of the post-Second World War period, but that was the historically unusual period, with high rates of relatively long-lasting marriages.
# High rates of unmarried cohabitation of men and women bringing up children prevailed over many centuries, mainly due to the difficulty of obtaining a divorce before 1969.

Professor Rebecca Probert and Dr Samantha Callan offer a different view:

Conclusion
In expressing serious concern about the evidential basis for the claims in Happy families?, it is not our intention to suggest that all marriages in the past were happy and long-lasting, nor that there were no examples of successful and stable cohabiting relationships. But the quality of family life should be distinguished from its form: the fact that a number of marriages were brutal and fleeting should not obscure the centrality of marriage to family life in previous decades.Whilemany Victorianmarriages were short-lived because of the untimely death of one of the spouses, this does not mean that the experiences of the survivors were in any way comparable to those undergoing a divorce today. Similarly, while one can of course find examples from all historical periods of couples who lived together outside marriage, it does not follow that cohabitation was remotely as common in the past as it is today. In the preface to Happy families?, it is implied that those who make public policy are ignorant of the historical context, this report being presented as ‘bring[ing] to bear the skills of the humanities on questions of public policy.’67 It is of course vital that those working in the humanities contribute to debates on public policy by providing accurate and unbiased accounts of the past. But a failure to do this, as we have seen in Happy families?, jeopardises the integrity of the field and is likely to lead to ill-informed public policy.

Download as pdf here.

* Speaking as someone alive at the time, I can only say, "Oh yes they were."

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Why 'Piss Christ' was crap art

When I read that Andre Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ had been destroyed, allegedly by Christian protesters, I must admit to feeling a frisson of satisfaction that those who live by the sword do occasionally get their comeuppance the same way.

For decades it seems that one of the key elements of art generally, and visual art in particular, has been to shock. It is surely therefore a testimony to the success of an artwork, in these terms, to provoke its own destruction. That ‘Piss Christ’ finally achieved such an accolade arguably moves Serrano into the ‘Premier League’ of this particular genre.

Whilst reading the reactions to this event, however, I was struck by two particular things. One was those who attacked those who had destroyed the work as ‘vandals’. Surely they should have been welcomed as a necessary part of the whole artistic ‘event’. How can a work of art which sets out to make a statement be regarded as successful if no-one reacts? And how can the shocking be shocking unless people are — well, shocked?

The other was a comment about the ‘beauty’ of the work itself — the delicate light and colour of the photo of a crucifix.

At this point, however, I was reminded of a visit I made to the Tate Modern a few years ago which finally brought home to me the hollowness of much contemporary art.

I should say, incidentally, that I grew up in a home where modern art was freely available and readily embraced. My parents subscribed to The Studio magazine, and I loved to browse through the back numbers we kept in a vast cupboard halfway up the stairs.

As I traipsed around the galleries, however, I became aware of first a pattern, then a change, in what I was doing. At first I looked at the artwork, then at the label on the wall. Reading the labels told me what the work was ‘about’ — not just the title, which itself could be quite enlightening, but the thought behind the painting, sculpture or installation.

After a while, however, I found I was reading the label first, then looking at the artwork.

Finally, I realized that I actually didn’t need to look at the artwork at all — I could read the label and be just as well-informed, indeed sometimes more so. On the other hand, without the label, I would say that most of the time I entirely missed the point.

And so we come to Immersion (Piss Christ). This, we are told (by The Guardian), was part of a series of such images intended by Serrano as “a criticism of the ‘billion-dollar Christ-for-profit industry’ and a ‘condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Christ for their own ignoble ends”.

To which I can only reply, “Oh no it isn’t.” Look at it. It is a blurry yellow picture of a crucifix.

There is no discernible hint of ‘billion-dollar industries’ or ‘ignoble ends’ in the work itself. Its all on the label.

And in fact it is the label which ‘makes’ the art ‘work’, for without the word ‘piss’ (and who can tell it is piss without the label?), you just have a blurry picture of a crucifix. The picture, in fact, is not shocking. The ‘shock’ and the ‘message’ are entirely in the label.

By contrast, and almost at random, let us consider Michelangelo’s ‘David’. Actually, given the conspicuously uncircumcised nature of the subject, the label is probably useful here as well — at least if we are supposed to think it is the biblical King David. But who cares? It is just a fantastic sculpture. You don’t want to go up to a label and peer at it in order to ‘get’ what it is about. You just want to look — that, and ask everyone else in the room to shut the hell up.

One day, as an experiment, someone should try just removing all the labels from the Tate Modern and insisting that any new works should also be presented and displayed without labels.

I wonder how the artists would react?

“So Mr Serrano, it’s a crucifix.”

“Yes, but you have to understand, it’s not just a crucifix, it’s ...”

“Thank you, Mr Serrano, but to us, it’s a picture of a crucifix. Very nice. Have you got anything else? OK, a Madonna and Child, and is that a little Satan in that picture? Tell you what, we’ll give you a ring.”

John Richardson
20 April 2011

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Christian foster carers - still cause for concern

[UPDATE 4th March: this has now been posted on Ruth Gledhill's 'Articles of Faith' blog where it is available free.]

 Following widespread misreporting that a Christian couple had been ‘banned’ from becoming foster carers (provoking an inevitably mistaken outcry), we now have an opposite (and equally mistaken) reaction from those who are saying there is really nothing here to get excited about.

The couple concerned, Owen and Eunice Johns, had gone to court over the unwillingness of Derby City Council to grant them approval as foster carers — a rôle they had previously undertaken during the 1990s — due to their own views on homosexuality and a change in the Council’s formal standards reflecting new legislation on sexual equality.

The Johns’ views are explicitly based in their Christian beliefs. Even so, the first clarification they sought from the court carefully avoided mentioning their specific faith, referring instead to “Persons who adhere to a traditional code of sexual ethics”. It was any and all of these, they argued, who “should not be considered unsuitable to be foster carers for this reason alone.”

They also sought assurances that foster carers could be regular churchgoers (another question raised by the City Council) and that the particular views of foster carers on homosexuality ought only to be considered in the case of a specific child, rather than more generally.

Derby City Council, meanwhile, counter-claimed that, “A fostering service provider may be [originally they stated “would be”, but changed this in the course of the action] acting lawfully if it decides not [sic, to] approve a prospective foster carer who evinces antipathy, objection to, or disapproval of, homosexuality and same-sex relationships and an inability to respect, value and demonstrate positive attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex relationships.”

These were the issues on which both sides agreed to seek “declaratory relief” — (in layman’s terms, ‘a court ruling that one or the other was basically right’).

In the event, the judges refused to do this, which means it is now up to the Council to consider the Johns’ case further and come to a decision. However, they also refused to grant the Johns’ permission to apply for a judicial review and in doing so, clearly took the side of the Council over the issue of the criteria they could apply to foster carers.

Moreover, in reaching this decision, they laid great emphasis on the cases of Islington London Borough Council v Ladele and McFarlane v Relate Avon Limited. It was the latter case in which Lord Justice Laws was so dismissive of the interventions of Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Laws’s words are extensively quoted in the present ruling.

Thus it is quite clear that a legal precedent in these matters has been established, and is now being followed by the courts, which comes down to this: if a body acts against a Christian in a way that it could lawfully act against anyone else, this is not a case of direct religious discrimination.

Now at first blush this might seem reasonable. The legal criteria would be the outward behaviour common to all, not the inward motivation specific to the individual. Indeed, the ruling (rather ostentatiously, given the context) denied “seeking to open windows into people’s souls”, emphasizing,

The local authority is entitled to explore the extent to which prospective foster carers’ beliefs may affect their behaviour, their treatment of a child being fostered by them.

But then, as we have seen, the Johns themselves did not seek to make this first matter an exclusively religious issue, which might seem to support the judges’ ruling in this respect.

The problem is, as the Council’s counter claim demonstrates, the only position that will be legally tolerated in this particular instance is one which expresses no “objection to”, but only “positive attitudes” towards, homosexuality and same-sex relationships. The range of behaviour and treatment that will be tolerated is thus apparently strictly limited.

This, therefore, is rather like the individual whose ‘balanced personality’ consists of having a chip on both shoulders. The equality of application is not necessarily a justification for the outcome. However, as the law currently stands, it would seem that the first anxiety expressed by the Johns is justified.

In a recent article in The Times, Emma Satyamurti identifies as a key question whether the Johns had a right to manifest their beliefs in the context of fostering a child. The initial answer would appear to be ‘no’. Adhering to the view that sexual union outside lifelong heterosexual marriage is morally undesirable is (because of its negative connotations regarding homosexuality) indeed sufficient grounds for the Council to discriminate against an application to become a foster carer.

Nevertheless, there was an interesting claim put forward by the Council that they had approved other foster carers who were, in their words, “very committed Christians who hold to orthodox beliefs and devout Muslims who are similarly committed to their religion”, yet who were apparently “able to value diversity notwithstanding their strongly held religious beliefs.”

No evidence was actually offered in court as to what this entailed, but one might wonder whether they offered the approaches of these couples to the Johns as ‘worked examples’ of how they might be able to comply with the Council’s standards.

Is it acceptable, for example, for these couples, if asked, to express their own “orthodox beliefs” to the children in their care? In that case, what the Council means by ‘evincing antipathy’ is not necessarily what might be assumed.

On the other hand, of course, if such carers are actually required to operate a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, then we are indeed in a position where only one view may legitimately be expressed in this context, which for the Johns and those like them comes to the same thing as discrimination.

However, this only deals with direct discrimination. The ruling also touched on the question of indirect discrimination. If one’s faith required one to adopt and express the views held by the Johns, is not this an example of indirect religious discrimination and therefore contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights?

Here, the quoted words of Lord Justice Laws are decisive:

... in various contexts the law allows indirect discrimination where, in a carefully controlled legislative setting, it can be shown to have justifiable effects. (Para 53)

In the present case, the judges ruled that there was not even indirect discrimination. Nevertheless, they added this caveat:

However, on the assumption that such a requirement or requirements [of the Council] are indirectly discriminatory, it is clear ... that compliance with anti-discrimination legislation ... will amount to justification ... [of indirect discrimination].

The problem is that what Article 9 of the European Convention gives with one hand (paragraph 1), it takes away with the other (paragraph 2), declaring firmly that it is for the state to decided what is,

... in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

And as we are seeing, issues of ‘personal rights’ legally trump issues of ‘public morals’.

Any suggestion that there is, after all, nothing for Christians to worry about here, is thus misplaced. Satyamurti, for example, is technically correct when she says that “was no direct discrimination against [the Johns] on the basis of religious belief”, but that is only because the same discrimination would have applied to everyone holding their views on traditional morality. Whether one is hung for stealing a lamb rather than a sheep because one prefers one’s meat tender, the actual hanging comes to the same thing.

But for exactly the same reason that justified the universal direct discrimination, indirect discrimination would in any case be allowed, even on the grounds of religious belief. Thus the ruling states that

... Article 9 only provides a “qualified” right to manifest religious belief and ... interferences in the sphere of employment and analogous spheres are readily found to be justified [...]. (102)

Somewhat controversially, the ruling adds that,

This will be particularly so where a person in whose care a child is placed wishes to manifest a belief that is inimical to the interests of children [...].

At least on the face of it, this would seem to imply that strict adherence to traditional sexual morality might be just such a belief!

Thus the claim by the Christian blogger, Peter Ould, that ‘Christians with Traditional Moral Views can still be Foster Parents’ is, unfortunately, somewhat premature. Strictly speaking, the issue has yet to be decided. Derby City Council was reduced to saying that they may be acting lawfully in discriminating against people expressing anything other than positive views on homosexuality and same-sex relationships, and that may still be challenged.

As it stands, however, the law would certainly uphold any ‘ban’ they did impose on the grounds to which they have appealed, provided it applied equally to all, and would certainly not allow a claimed exception on the basis of religious belief.

In what ought to be doom and gloom for orthodox Christians, however, there is one chink of light. In their own deliberations, Derby City Council had generously acknowledged that this was not just a matter of Christian beliefs since, “there are homophobic people that are non-Christian” (para 11). Taking a different view, however, the Johns had sought a ruling that it should actually be unlawful for a public authority to use this description of people like themselves.

Oddly enough it is Lord Justice Laws who comes to the rescue, for in his response to Lord Carey, he also stated the following:

The judges have never, so far as I know, sought to equate the condemnation by some Christians of homosexuality on religious grounds with homophobia, or to regard that position as disreputable, nor have they likened Christians to bigots. (53)

This would seem to suggest that, at least in this regard, the Johns’ claim ought to have been upheld. According to Laws, the Christian condemnation of homosexuality ought not to be called ‘homophobic’, neither is the position disreputable, nor are its adherents bigots. Perhaps Derby Council (and others!) could take note of this, at least.

John P Richardson
3 March 2011

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Should Christians be allowed to keep children?

Update: The full ruling can be read here.


Apparently, according to the High Court, Christians who are not willing to commend homosexual acts ought not to be given other people's children to foster.

If this is what was said, and if it is a valid judgement, is it therefore right that Christians should nevertheless be allowed to keep their own natural children, if they similarly will not commend homosexual acts to them?

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Alcohol and social policy: "But when I'm with you I can't control myself"

Few people in our society are alcoholics, but many drink too much, as is evidenced in our town centres at weekends. And this is taking an undoubted toll on both drinkers and society. Indeed, according to reports in today’s news media, we face something of a crisis: “deaths from all alcohol-related causes — including cancers and road accidents — could claim the lives of 250,000 people in England and Wales over the coming two decades.”

And the costs involved include not only premature deaths and medical treatment of the sick, but clogged A& E units, damage to families, injuries to police and ambulance crews, lost working hours, and so on.

Clearly we have a problem. So what is to be done?

The answer being proposed by those raising the alarm is that the government should intervene. In particular, prices of alcohol should be raised. Thus the BBC reports a Department of Health spokeswoman saying,

The government has wasted no time in taking tough action to tackle problem drinking, including plans to stop supermarkets selling below-cost alcohol and working to introduce a tougher licensing regime.

And she adds that the government was taking “a bold new approach” to public health.

Frankly, in the area of politics nothing fills me with greater alarm than the news that any government is taking ‘bold new approaches’ on anything. The phrase ‘Fools rush in’ is usually the one that springs to mind.

However, it seems to me there is a deeper issue here, which is the assumption that this is basically a problem for the government to tackle through legislation.

Frankly, this is treating people like idiots, or like children.

Now of course people can behave like idiots, especially when they’ve been drinking. There is an old saying attributed to the Irish: “One drink, fine. Two drinks, plenty. Three drinks, nowhere near enough.” But it is perfectly possible for most people — alcoholics excepted — to identify the transition between that second and third drink and decide to stop.

In my student days I was rather fond of a tipple at weekends, which often left me with a hangover on Sunday mornings. One such morning, I remember walking across the student canteen with my lunch on my tray and feeling very queasy, when I thought to myself, “This is stupid. I don’t like feeling like this. I’m going to stop.” So I did. It wasn’t a great moral decision — just a realization that there were better things in life than spending a lot of money to feel ill the next day.

Here is Martin Luther making a similar point in a sermon:

God does not forbid you to drink, as do the Turks [Muslims]; he permits you to drink wine and beer: he does not make a law of it. But do not make a pig of yourself; remain a human being. If you are a human being, then keep your human self-control. (LW 51:296)

Luther’s appeal is not to the law (whether of God or Islam) but to human dignity. And to make such an appeal is itself to treat people in a dignified way.

The society that says, “There must be a law” at this (or similar) points, is already treating people as basically incapable — whether they are incapable through sin or through lack of self-control.

It says a lot for us, that in these early years of the twenty-first century, this is what some of our brightest and best assume must be the case when it comes to alcohol.

John Richardson

BTW, for those who may have missed it, the headline is a reference to The Troggs 1960s hit, "I can't control myself" (lyrics here, but watch out for pop-up ad). The wonderful thing about this particular single is that it refers to a time when self-control might have been thought necessary in a boy-girl relationship.

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The Cornwall B&B case: a funeral oration for Christian Britain

Back in ad 2000, Callum Brown wrote a book called The Death of Christian Britain. Yesterday, Judge Andrew Rutherford delivered the funeral oration. It begins with these telling, and I think remarkable, words:

In 1882 Her Majesty Queen Victoria opened a new court building. It is in the Strand just at the entrance to the City of London. It was built to house the superior courts of this land with the exception of the House of Lords. No one who enters can fail to be struck by the similarity of the Great Hall with the interior of those gothic cathedrals with which this kingdom is so richly endowed. But if, before entering, you gaze upon the façade of the building you will notice 4 statues.

There you will find King Alfred who made such a notable contribution to Saxon England by codifying the laws of his day. You will find Moses to whom was given the ten commandments and to whom, by tradition, is ascribed authorship of the first 5 books of the Bible in which you will find in great detail the laws governing the children of Israel. Also there on the façade is King Solomon whose wisdom has become a legend and who displayed outstanding qualities as a judge when sitting in the Family Division in the only reported case of which we have details. And the 4th statue is that of Jesus Christ who, I imagine, needs no introduction to those involved in this case.

Why are those statues there? Perhaps there were many reasons for them but I venture to suggest that one was to emphasise the Judaeo-Christian roots from which the common law of England was derived.

A great deal has however happened since King Alfred and his Saxon laws, and even more has changed since Moses, King Solomon and Jesus Christ walked upon this earth. Those Judaeo-Christian principles, standards and beliefs which were accepted as normal in times past are no longer so accepted.

We live in interesting times.

Incidentally, his comment about Solomon and ‘the Family Division’ may be a better joke than he intended, but the fact that he knew the reference, and assumed his readers and hearers might actually ‘get it’, simply shows, as he acknowledges, how much things have changed in his lifetime. I have no doubt that almost no one under the age of fifty would know what he meant without looking it up.

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"I want it all, and I want it now" - cultural decline and the demand for gratfication

A couple of days ago, I posted a piece on the differences one woman identified between Chinese and ‘Western’ approaches to parenting. I didn’t realize at the time that the woman concerned had just written a book on the entire subject, nor did I know that there is a phenomenon called the Tiger Mother.

“How did I miss this?” you may ask. The answer is that the original article caught my eye because of a number of other concerns.

The first, and most pressing, is a conviction that the hegemony of the West is over. Europe and North America, in particular, have had their day and by the end of this century will simply be ‘bit players’ on a very different global stage.

That, I think, is an unremarkable suggestion, but the reason for it I myself would advance is that the ‘NATO’ culture is exhausted. The book to read is Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, where one can see how the astonishingly vibrant culture of medieval Europe finally gave way to dullness and indifference somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century. We have reached almost the end of a long trail, and are witnessing the passing of the old culture and the advent of the new.

That is life — cultures come and cultures go. But my second concern lies with the influences on, and from, this exhaustion. What human qualities are fed by, and feed into, our present Western culture? And that is where parenting comes into the picture.

One of the great challenges of being human is the delay of gratification. That is to say, we set aside an immediate pleasure (whether it be of doing one thing or stopping doing another) for the sake of a future pleasure, either of enjoying the same thing later or of enjoying something else even more.

Indeed, I would suggest that a conscious delay of gratification is one of the defining qualities of being human. Experiments with animals show that the greater the reward, the more strongly reinforced tends to be the behaviour that elicits that reward. (Combine this with frequent but irregular supply of the reward and the behaviour can become compulsive.)

Because we have an animal nature, the same is also broadly true of us. Why else does sex have such a powerful effect on the way we behave, especially when we are younger? However, human beings can also, by nature, step back from the action-gratification cycle. We can reflect on it, and rationalize about it, and therefore we can actually make choices as to how and, importantly, when we are gratified.

Thus an adult may choose not to eat sweets (delaying the gratifying experience) in order to achieve, later on, the pleasure of weight-loss. Or they may choose not to buy something they would quite like now in order to save up for something else they really want in the future.

Such observations are commonplace, but the underlying attitude depends on two fundamental considerations. The first is a conviction that there will be a future point at which such delayed gratification can finally be enjoyed. The second is that the future gratification will be, in some way, greater than the immediately available gratification.

To the extent to which these considerations are weakened, however, delayed gratification will tend to give way to immediate gratification. If I knew that I would die tomorrow, I would certainly not be abstaining from chocolate today.

This is the presumption behind the ‘Bucket List’ phenomenon. There are things to do ‘before you die’ precisely because you are going to die and then you will not be able to do them. The same, however, can be applied within our individual lifespan. There are things you can do when you are young which you will not be able to do when you are old, and so on.

Of course there is a balance to be struck between delay and gratification. Without eventual gratification, there would be nothing to provide motivation for the delay. On the other hand, if the possibility of gratification seems too remote, or if the immediate gratification seems too desirable, then again delay will lose its attraction.

The point, though, is that the interplay between gratification and delay is both influenced by, and has influence on, a given cultural group, whether that be, to give just a few examples, a family, a tribe, a community, a team or a nation.

Thus Amy Chua’s ‘Tiger Mother’ approaches the question of music practice or homework on the principle, first of all, that not doing these things is itself a ‘gratification’ which must be delayed. Why she thinks this doubtless has much to do with her own enculturation — how she was brought up and what she learned about motherhood — but the effect is obvious: her children now excel at these things which required so much effort and, indeed, caused so many tears.

The contrast with a family where the immediate gratification of not doing homework or music practice takes priority will be obvious. The children will, doubtless, be happy with their immediate lot, but in general they will not advance academically or artistically as far as the children of the ‘Tiger Mother’ household.

Which, then, is better? The answer depends on your views on a number of issues. The most obvious would be parental discipline, the application of which is itself a form of delayed gratification. Who wants to spend hours making children do their homework when we could all sit and watch the TV?

Another obvious issue would be one’s view of later attainment in life. If you want academic or artistic success, the foundations are best laid in childhood. But is this worth the actual price at the time? Who really cares whether you get good piano grades? What does it matter in the final analysis?

But there is also the basic question of what it means to be human. Is, for example, the person who enjoys — who indeed can play — Mozart a better human being than one who cannot share that enjoyment, someone whose musical development goes no further than, say, the ‘top twenty’? If the answer is ‘yes’, then delayed gratification is not just a means to material ends but a key to human development.

And if we find these examples from academia or the arts too culturally biased in themselves, consider the area of sport, where again great achievement demands great sacrifice. This is masked, of course, by the fact that sport, especially in its early stages, involves ‘play’. Nevertheless, to progress is intensely demanding.

Indeed, it is worth asking, again, whether a culture which emphasizes practice and discipline at an early stage will not produce more able athletes than one which relies on self-motivation and the emergence of the odd ‘genius’.

There is no doubt in my mind that a culture of delayed gratification is not only conducive towards, but essential for, developing both greatness in our achievements and fullness in our humanity.*

What has happened in the West, however, is the shrinking of our perspective regarding the extent to which gratification can and should be delayed. Not least, of course, this is affected by the decline of religious faith. In one sense delayed gratification is of the essence of faith — especially (though not exclusively) the Christian faith. Thus the believer is willing to delay gratification even of sexual desires if this is seen as conducive to a greater gratification that lies beyond this world.

But there are other ‘horizons’ which have contracted, whilst the immediate ‘moment’ has extended its demands.

To give one example, I remember reading the complaint of a football coach that the skills of young players were defective because the emphasis on Saturday mornings in the park was all on winning. What he pointed out was that to be able to improve some skills you had to try something you couldn’t do. Thus you had to accept ‘suffering’ your own incompetence at kicking with your weak foot if you were to emerge on the other side as a different kind of player. The ethos of the football-playing culture, however, meant that neither coaches nor players were prepared to live with short-term deprivation of success and admiration for the sake of the long-term future of either the player or the game.

Above all, there is the overarching question of what a culture as a whole sees as its collective ‘rationale’. And here is a key question for the West: “Why are we here? What is our purpose in handing on the gift of life itself from one generation to another, and how should we encourage our children to live in the short-term in order to achieve these longer-term goals?”

These are surely fundamental questions. And I am not saying that the ‘Tiger Mother’ has a good answer. On the contrary, I have no doubt that many such parents living in the West are simply running on the momentum of their cultural inheritance, without yet realizing the tank is dry. But we who are more embedded in Western culture are confronted with the questions more starkly precisely because we are no longer able to maintain the trajectory generated by that faith in the future or sense of duty towards family and country which motivated our grandparents.

If, in the end, there is really nothing much for the individual to look forward to, then the delay of gratification will become increasingly pointless. The result will be an unwillingness to struggle or strive in the present. Instead, carpe diem will come to mean ‘seize the pleasures of the day’. As Queen put it, “I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now.” Or as it says in the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures, “Let us eat and drink ... for tomorrow we die.”

John P Richardson
13 January 2011

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* "Carol Dweck from Stanford University in the US, has demonstrated that students who understand intelligence is malleable rather than fixed are much more intellectually ambitious and successful.

The same dynamic applies to talent. This explains why today's top runners, swimmers, bicyclists, chess players, violinists and on and on, are so much more skilful than in previous generations.

All of these abilities are dependent on a slow, incremental process which various micro-cultures have figured out how to improve." See here.

Stupidity and murder - where's the justice?

I have no embarrassment in declaring myself one of those who thinks that our judicial system exacerbates many of our social problems by being ‘soft’ on criminals. (I seem to remember, incidentally, that CS Lewis once wrote an essay, which must have been about sixty years ago, lamenting the same thing after some boys were apprehended for vandalizing his shed.)

You might think, then, I would be rejoicing that Edward Woollard, the 18-year old student who threw a fire extinguisher off the roof of 30 Millbank during the tuition fees protests last year, had received a jail sentence of two years and eight months.

On the contrary, I think it simply illustrates (and exacerbates) the problem. For in the same edition of the Daily Mail in which we can read about Woollard’s situation, we also see that Learco Chindamo, the man convicted of murdering headteacher Philip Lawrence, may have to serve an extra two years in jail over an alleged mugging he committed shortly after his release.

Now of course Chindamo may be entirely innocent in this instance. That is not the point that concerns me and will doubtless concern others. Rather it is the difficulty many of us outside the system have in making sense of the policy involved in such sentencing.

To begin with, Chindamo, was given what was described as a “life sentence” for a murder which the judge at the time described as “futile and un- provoked”. (Readers may recall that Lawrence stepped in to protect another boy being attacked by Chindamo and others.)

The first difficulty, then, is with this term “life sentence”. This is not simply a false expression, it is disingenuous, for it gives the impression of doing something that is not the case. ‘Life’ for a teenager does not consist of ‘the next fourteen years’ — indeed that doesn’t really begin to apply until you hit your sixties, and yet ‘life’ sentences continue to be given out to people considerably younger than myself.

Indeed, I suspect some research would show that the term “life sentence” is a hangover from the debate about abolishing the death penalty, when it was used as a justifying argument in favour of abolition: those who previously would have been executed would instead receive a “life sentence”. Now we know this is not true, we should surely drop the pretence.

Secondly, however, one cannot help comparing 14 years for murder with almost 3 years for throwing a fire extinguisher off a roof.

And here I would want to come to Mr Woollard’s defence. Of course what he did was wrong — and not just the throwing of the fire extinguisher, but the invasion of the building in the first place. However, it would appear to have been an act of monumental stupidity, not viciousness. Yes, people could have been killed, but they were not. Had they been, it would have been different, but that is surely to the point.

Most importantly of all, however, I would refer to the words of the judge who handed out the sentence:

... the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way that an offence of this seriousness will not be tolerated.

I could not agree more with the first part of this sentence. But I cannot see that a stupid act which might have killed someone equates mathematically to one fifth of the culpability of killing one person in the process of carrying out a gang attack on another — which is roughly the proportionality of the sentences in these two cases.

As a layman in these matters, I nevertheless feel that either Mr Chindamo has been treated too leniently or Mr Woollard too harshly. Either way, my confidence in the judicial system to remedy the problems of our society remains low.

John R Richardson
12 January 2011

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Will parenting decide the ascent of China and the decline of the West?

Back in October 2009, I posted some speculative concerns about the decline of the West and the corresponding ascent of Eastern cultures in general and China in particular. Amongst other things, I wrote,

My real worry is that the Western world will be surpassed by the East not only economically but culturally. And the danger here, I believe, would come from an intellectual decline of the West, manifesting itself through a decline in cultural vitality and scientific endeavour.

I was therefore interested to come across a provocative article in the Wall Street Journal, titled, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

Here is a sample (though you need to read the whole if you are to get the true picture):

Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough. That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

Now I’m certainly not saying I agree with every word. Indeed, I think many children know what it is to be forced to study or practice something not only that they dislike but which never results in any sense of achievement — just of relief when they’re allowed to stop!

It is also reasonable to ask whether achieving top grades or practical excellence is worth the angst the article admits that this involves. Nevertheless, the underlying premise is that this is not about what the child wants, but rather what the adults know is best:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.

And I cannot help thinking that a culture which approaches the nurture of its young on that basis will rapidly overtake one where what the child wants, and the limits the child sets, are key determinants of what the child is able to achieve.

In short, those who give up when things get difficult are surely liable to be overtaken at every level by those who persevere despite the desire to give up. It is, of course, much more pleasant to take things easy. The question, though, is whether we can afford to.

John Richardson
10 January 2011

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Another day, another reason to dislike WikiLeaks

Listening to Radio 4’s Sunday programme this morning, there was an interview with Andrew Brown from the Guardian in which he said something like this: that the reason the WikiLeaks cables were so useful was that, unlike journalists, they could disclose their sources, because those who sent them assumed that they were speaking confidentially — “But of course, they were not.”

Now this was interesting, coming as it did from a journalist. I don’t think Andrew was saying he wished he could be as frank about his sources. Rather, the point seemed to be, isn’t it great when we can do what judges and politicians often wish they could do, namely find out who is behind a story or comment.

The sense of unease was further increased when the word ‘gossip’ was used — whether by Andrew or the interviewer I can’t right now recall. In effect, the point was made, we are listening to gossip.

So, broken confidences and gossip are the essence of the journalistic use of WikiLeaks material.

Though I listened on to find out how the interview ended — and also because, with church coming up, I didn’t want to fall back to sleep — I once again felt uncomfortable about how we are all being drawn in to something which has a worrying agenda and operates on a principle which ought to require a high level of moral justification.

Earlier in the week, I read an online article in the Sydney Morning Herald describing a meeting between the journalist Philip Dorling and Julian Assange himself. You can read the article here, but Dorling describes how it took,

Six months of emails, clandestine meetings and confidential exchanges ... before arrangements for a visit to Britain were locked in.

And, ironically, he adds,

WikiLeaks takes security very seriously, and it is right to do so.

So, is it WikiLeaks conspiracy ‘good’, government conspiracy ‘bad’?

This is a serious question, given the apparent basis of WikiLeaks in the principle that good governance can only come about through degrading the ability of governments to  ‘conspire’ through secure communications.

I have no doubt that bad conspiracies happen in governments. But that has always been true of all governments. There are bad conspiracies amongst political activists of all kinds. (Indeed, a useful debate for the future might be ‘Is politics a force for good in the world?’ I’d like to hear Christopher Hitchens on that one.)

The fact is, WikiLeaks is a ‘conspiracy’ in its own terms, at the head of which is a ‘man with a mission’. And we have all become players in the game.

Unless, of course, we choose to turn off the radio.

John Richardson
12 December 2010

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The WikiLeaks Conspiracy - another journalist 'gets it'

Yesterday I posted a link to an Australian article which I think understands (from Julian Assange's own writings) just exactly what WikiLeaks is aiming to, which is not what most Western media commentators evidently think it is trying to do.

Given the power the kind of people who actively support WikiLeaks not only possess but are evidently prepared to use to interfere with the internet, and therefore with all of our lives, it is surely vital that we become aware of what exactly are the issues here, so that a proper engagement can take place.

Here is an extract from another journalist, this time in Canada, who 'gets it' about WikiLeaks:

[...] WikiLeaks is a worldwide network of individuals who share a common ethic and a common cause -- a conspiracy, if you will. As Northwestern University philosophy professor Peter Ludlow argues, WikiLeaks "is the product of decades of collaborative work by people engaged in applying computer hacking to political causes."

This means that "were Assange to be eliminated today, WikiLeaks would doubtless continue." Indeed, as Assange's own discussion highlights, a conspiracy will survive even if a high value target like Assange is eliminated. And further, "even if WikiLeaks were somehow to be eliminated, new sites would emerge to replace it."

This suggests that, just as the attention paid to individual leaks is misplaced, so too is the attention paid to Assange.

WikiLeaks isn't about one man any more than it's about one leak. And trying to neutralize WikiLeaks by neutralizing one man, or one leak, is like trying to cripple a centipede by breaking one of its legs. Read more

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Wikileaks: What is the real motivation?

As I understand it, the ostensible justification of Wikileaks is ‘whistleblowing’ — the revealing of wrongdoing that has been kept secret or covered up.

This is important, because in normal circumstances the breaking of confidences can be considered immoral. Today I received an e-mail (ironically) from the Guardian newspaper group. At the bottom, it contained what is becoming a standard ‘disclaimer’:

This e-mail and all attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the named recipient, please notify the sender and delete the e-mail and all attachments immediately. Do not disclose the contents to another person. You may not use the information for any purpose, or store, or copy, it in any way.

Given the actual content of the e-mail, this does seem slightly over the top. Moreover, I generally find myself wondering whether someone I’ve never met who sends me an e-mail I have not requested can place me under such a moral obligation — particularly if they’ve sent it to me by accident.

Nevertheless, I take the attitude that I can interpret the rider as, in effect, a personal request, as if the person at the other end were saying to me, “Look, if we’ve messed this up, please don’t go blabbing it everywhere, and if this is meant for you, please treat this communication as being between the two of us.”

The decision to reveal the contents of the e-mail would therefore be a decision to decline such a request, which puts it, in the end, at the level of other, inter-personal, moral decisions.

However, there are indeed occasions where information one receives ought to be made known to others, even against the wishes of those to who originally divulged it. Sometimes this will be to ‘proper authorities’, but certainly in some circumstances the only obvious route is a general divulgence of this information to the general public. Suitable scenarios are relatively easy to construct.

In the case of what Wikileaks itself is calling ‘Cablegate’, not only the operators of the site, but sections of the Western media have clearly felt that something about the behaviour of the US government has justified just such a general release of information.

And this confidence clearly rests on a presumption of moral fault in what the e-mails reveal. Julian Assange himself is reported as saying that if what some of the e-mails suggest is in fact true, then the newly-elected President of the United States ought to resign — something which would put him in the same category as Richard Nixon, which is scarcely where the world believed him to be just a couple of years ago.

This is why, however, serious questions must be asked following the release of e-mails which detail the nature and location of facilities considered vital to the security of the United States.

In particular, we may ask whether it is a moral fault for a government to compile such a list or to identify such facilities so as to inform its own policies.

If the answer is yes, then of course the release of this information by Wikileaks is just another example of moral ‘whistleblowing’ in an immoral political world.

Yet it is hard to see how the question could be answered in the affirmative. Indeed, it was interesting watching the lawyer for Mr Assange, Mark Stevens, answering questions about this on the ITV lunchtime news. Mr Stevens’s response was that the US government had been given the option to comment on the list and declined to do so, therefore it was appropriate to release the information into the public domain.

His body-language, however, was that of someone who knew he was talking rubbish. As a lawyer, his livelihood depends on being able to spot a non sequitur, and clearly this is one.

If I said to someone, “I have information about how much you get paid, would you like to comment?”, the answer “No,” is not a justification in itself for me telling the world. There may, of course, be other justifications, but these would depend on factors other than simply a refusal to comment.

Up to this point, the ‘Cablegate’ episode, including the involvement of some of the Western media, has relied on the general justification that immoral actions have been concealed and should be brought to universal public attention.

If part of the intention of this is to generate a debate, then it seems fair also to debate whether that is the real motivation, given the nature of what is being revealed.

John Richardson
6 December 2010

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