Know Yes Know

Dawkins, Hitchens and Atheism

2009-10-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

The following is part of a correspondence with CFRB radio host John Moore regarding his interview with author Richard Dawkins, Sept 30.

Hello John.
I have great admiration for the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. My only problem is this notion that they are doing something incredibly important and daring by using their lofty intellects to draw conclusions about religion that have been drawn many times before, and which most of us in fact figured out for ourselves sometime before the end of high school. Do we really need Richard Dawkins to tell us Moses probably didn't part the Red Sea and that talking snakes in magical gardens don't really exist? Has Christopher Hitchen's enlightened anyone by pointing out that virgins don't give birth and that people don't generally rise from the dead?

I was of the understanding that religious belief has been on a steady and precipitous decline in the West for decades.....yet the way these guys are strutting around, parading their earth-shattering "insights" to the masses, one would think that we live in a time of widespread, intransigent, Biblical literalism.
The Biblical literalists don't think so! So why do the atheists?

Regards,

Michael Harris

Part 2:

Thanks John. All very fair points. I have never heard that stat about the number of people who dispute proven science such as Darwinian evolution to be approaching half the population. Yikes.
If you would indulge me briefly, I would just add that Dawkins and Hitchens use their rational/modern vantage point to give pre-rational/pre-modern spirituality yet another justly deserved thrashing. But would you not agree that ultimately this is an exercise in shooting fish in a barrel? I mean, it's a pretty easy target. By contrast, I would find it fascinating if intellectual celebrities of their stature were to seriously take on the possibility of a post-rational spiritually....an evolutionary development that transcends yet includes the previous developments of pre-modern, modern and post modern.
Sam Harris, incidentally, did in fact touch on this at the end of his book The End Of Faith. I found that very refreshing and felt it distinguished him from the comparatively calcified atheism represented by Dawkins and Hitchens that tends to throw the spiritual baby out with the mythic bathwater.

As you say, we should welcome and commend such prominent and well equipped warriors as Dawkins and Hitchens in the battle against those who would champion the dominance of a first century, middle eastern mythology over the modern scientific method. But I cannot help but feel that the only people they are really reaching are those who already share their perspective. Even though I acknowledge their gallantry in taking up the fight nonetheless, they still are not adding anything particularly new to a debate that has persisted since the Enlightenment. And the dynamic continues to be framed in the exact same predictable way: the absoluteness of Christian/ Judaic/ Islamic orthodoxy versus the absoluteness of scientific-materialistic orthodoxy. To me, this simply reinforces our lazy cultural assumption that there are no other ways to conceive of these profound subjects.

But to be honest, I enjoy making lazy assumptions as much as the next guy - so what the hell am I whining about?

All the best,

Michael Harris

Response to Feminism Revisited; National Post, Sept.29

2009-10-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

The following is part of a correspondence with Michael Coren in response to his column "Feminism Revisited" in the National Post, September 29.

I read your column in Tuesday's National Post concerning Erin Pizzey's apparent dramatic re-assessment of feminist orthodoxy with great interest. I immediately thought of the work of Warren Farrell and his book "Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?" Farrell was a prominent and celebrated figure in the feminist movement during the 70's in America who, like Pizzey, became a strong critic of the feminist agenda.
As the only man in the US to be elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, and as the author of the decidedly pro-feminist book "The Liberated Man", Farrell found himself in high demand on the lecture circuit.
However, he describes that when he began including the male perspective into his addresses, the applause and invitations to speaking engagements quickly dried up. He says, "I did two articles that were accepted for Modern Maturity, one of the largest circulation magazines in the US. After the articles were accepted, edited and paid for, one feminist researcher objected to them and got Modern Maturity to drop both articles. And regarding the places like the New York Times in which I had published every single thing I had written when I was a feminist, since I have questioned feminism nothing I have written has been published. When I was doing the Donahue Show as a feminist, I was on seven times. I was on once where I deviated from the feminist position and I was never invited back."
Farrell asserts that "Men don't oppress women any more than women oppress men. The whole concept of men and women oppressing each other is ridiculous. That's a fabrication of the feminist movement. What is true is that both sexes have roles that can legitimately be considered oppressive, but those roles are not roles designed by men or women, they were designed by biological necessity and the necessity of survival. Survival was the oppressor. And in order to survive, you didn't teach people to focus on rights, you taught them to focus on responsibilities, you taught them to focus on obligations, which is why our grandparents listening to this discussion would be disgusted with us. And you have a nation of victims rather than a nation of entrepreneurs because you're focused on competing to be a better victim.
The biology of women in a survival-focused world was the child raising and that left the social role of men to raising the money to support the biological role of women. And it's not been until industrialized societies had enough income to help society progress from what I call a Stage 1, which is survival-focused to Stage 2, which is focused on the balance between survival and self-fulfilment, that we could produce people who were able to focus on what rights and opportunities they had.
But men did not have it all figured out and have a system of rules designed to oppress women. You could make a case that women taught men to play the role of chauffeur in life, that women sat in the back seat as mother and told us in the front seat in the uniforms to drive and we figured out the best way to get there without asking directions and the woman just fired us if we didn't do it right and continued to employ us if we did it right. You could make a case that women addicted men to their sexuality and then withdrew their sexuality until we provided them with a source of income. You could make a case that women figured out a way of brainwashing boys to earn money that the women spend to have better homes while we live out in the mines and construction sites and kill ourselves. You could do that but that would also be an incorrect masculinization and demonization of the female role. The truth is that neither sex had power. Both sexes had roles. Rather than raise children, men's role was to raise money. When you have a role, you have an obligation, you don't have power. Power is the ability to control your own life."

Though I personally find that he has a tendency to overplay his hand somewhat to make his point, he refutes commonly held "accepted truths" of feminism ( e.g. that men earn more money than women do for the same work; that women are more likely than men to be victims of violence; that men are more likely to commit spousal abuse than women; that women never have motivation to lie about rape etc.) with documented research and statistics.

The following is a link to a list of points from another book by Farrell called "The Myth Of Male Power."
http://www.warrenfarrell.org/TheBook/

2009-08-29T18:16:00.001-07:00

2009-08-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

2009-08-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

Response to Marni Soupcoff's article "Of females, feasts and famine"

2009-08-14T05:49:00.000-07:00

The following began as a submission to the "letters" page of the National Post in response to an observation made by Marni Soupcoff in an editorial. I forwarded this piece to Marni herself, who replied that she agreed with most of it and offered to post it on the Full Comment blog page on the Post's web site.
I have included the link to Marni's original editorial.

I was stunned to read in Marni Soupcoff's column "Of females, feasts and famine" (The National Post, Aug.8 2009) of the"feminist insistence that men create eating disorders by objectifying and judging women." Having known someone who has suffered with one of these disorders, I sincerely doubt that many of these women themselves would blame men for their condition. However, if this is an accurate reflection of contemporary feminist thought, then not only does it reveal how low into self-serving circular logic the feminist movement has sunk, it also begs a couple of crucial questions: What is it in women that makes them much more pre-disposed to developing eating disorders? And what is this pervasive yet inexcusable tendency of many women to divert responsibility for their own flaws and short-comings onto men?
We live in a culture where generalizations about male foibles are common place; where pointing them out for scorn or for humour is the social norm. Men are expected to have the maturity, character and moral fibre to look at themselves with uncompromising self-awareness and honesty and acknowledge their failings. Anything less subjects the offending male to un-contested ridicule and contempt.
Women by contrast, are encouraged by our culture to think of themselves as "goddesses;" to assume their gender's moral and spiritual superiority as a given; to resist any challenge to these self-serving assumptions and to reflexively privilege the perspective that comes to them most easily.
This is not equality, respect or acceptance - it's just patronizing. The big, unspoken secret is that men know it. Yes, there are those guilt ridden guys who have swallowed the cool-aid of collective male shame - the original sin of merely being born male. But outside of this subset of New-Age self-flagellators, several hundred thousand years of evolution has bred into men a "sixth-sense" for detecting falsehood and lack of authenticity in others. Whether skulking across the pre-historic savanna under threat from marauding sabre-tooth tigers; or facing attack from insurgents in Afghanistan, men have by necessity needed to know if the guy next to him in whom he has placed his trust is in fact who he has represented himself to be.
To put it crudely, evolution's gift to men is a built in B.S. detector.
The pre-feminist man was able to indulge in the self-certain righteousness of his exclusively male-centric universe. The post-feminist man, having fully integrated the female perspective and her critique of patriarchy, male aggression, sexual objectification etc.-cannot help but observe less than admirable characteristics common to women, but pretends he doesn't - either out of consideration, to avoid conflict, or simply out of fear of being attacked for applying the same awareness generating critique that has been applied to him.
We are left with the genders playing a massive game of denial; with men feeling it necessary to humour female self-righteousness, much the way an adult indulges a teenager's self- absorption out of recognition that teenage narcissism prevents true self-awareness.
This head in the sand state of affairs does nothing to advance the cause of women, the cause of men, mutual understanding between the genders, or society in general. Over the last 50 years, men have had to face the unpleasant truths of their own worst tendencies and take responsibility for them - stripped of the scapegoats of Eves, Jezebels, and Delilahs. Is it not time that women in general did the same?

Michael Jackson - But was his music any good?

2009-07-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

Listening to all of the commentary on Michael Jackson in the wake of his death, there is one aspect of his artistry that has not been honestly or thoroughly critiqued. Though his success, his dancing, and his showmanship are rightfully being hailed - aren't we giving his actual music a bit of an easy pass? At best, his songs are pleasant, well crafted, catchy, light-weight pop tunes - as good as any radio-friendly confection the music marketing machine has pumped out over the last thirty or so years. At his worst however, Jackson subjected his fans to some unbearably saccharine, self-indulgent, forgettable dreck - with the bulk of his output, as far as I can tell, falling into the latter category. This is why I feel that Jackson's appeal is ten thousand miles wide, but only about an inch deep.

Essentially, Michael Jackson is the phenomena being mourned around the world this month because of one recording - Thriller. And even that one album can be boiled down to three really good pop songs - Billy Jean, Beat It, and to a lesser extent, the title track Thriller (honestly, how many people are walking around this week humming the tune of "The Lady In My Life"?). Surely we judge the artistic merit of any artist based on the totality of his output - not merely the commercial success of a single recording - regardless of how impressive that commercial success may be.

Since his death, commentators and fans have been quick to associate Jackson with the timeless luminaries of popular music, such as Sinatra, Presley, and the Beatles. In terms of fame and success, Michael Jackson undoubtedly ranks with the best of them. As a performer, entertainer and for his contribution to dance, he's probably in a category all of his own.

But if we look solely at his music - how does his legacy really stack up?

In only eight years between 1962 and 1970, The Beatles released 12 full length studio albums as well as dozens of two sided "single" recordings that did not appear on albums. The Beatles are known equally for the irresistibly catchy pop tunes of their early career as they are for the depth and artistic sophistication of their mid and late career. They accomplished the almost impossible feat of near universal commercial appeal and sustained critical acclaim. Their relatively short recording career illustrates not only a prodigious output, but a progressive and continuous expansion of artistic development and validity. For all of the well deserved praise being heaped on Michael Jackson for his immense talent as a performer, a dancer, and his impact on popular culture, the merits of his music don't even come close to the towering accomplishment of the Beatles.

That being said, nobody ever paid to watch a Beatle dance.