If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a fan of Richard Dawkins. I adore his scientific literature; I rage at the myriad slanderous attacks thrown at him; I swoon over his intellectual courage; and I admire his sheer level of attainment and his devotion to a life in search of truth and genuine meaning. However, though I usually have little sympathy for the accusation, based on his ‘God Delusion’ book, that he’s an incompetent (amateur) philosopher – I feel I must acknowledge that his standard certainly drops in his essay: ‘Atheists for Jesus’.
It’s not the fundamental sentiment that I think is in error. Dawkins’ essential point is that, out of a selfish and amoral naturally selected set of sentient beings, some (i.e. humans) have gained the ability to act unselfishly in a way that is genuinely not in service to their genes, and moreover – a subset of them (the ‘super nice’ in his phraseology) – do so to such an extent that they rightly warrant the title of ‘saint’ (or ‘sucker’ some might say). Jesus, according to Dawkins, is a rather prominent example of a ‘super nice’ being. He states that:
“What was interesting and remarkable about Jesus was not the obvious fact that he believed in the God of his Jewish religion, but that he rebelled against many aspects of Yahweh’s vengeful nastiness. At least in the teachings that are attributed to him, he publicly advocated niceness and was one of the first to do so. To those steeped in the Sharia-like cruelties of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to those brought up to fear the vindictive, Ayatollah-like God of Abraham and Isaac, a charismatic young preacher who advocated generous forgiveness must have seemed radical to the point of subversion.”
It’s not here that I disagree with Dawkins. By the standards of his time and place, assuming the accounts of his more charitable actions are true, Jesus would rightly be counted among the ‘super nice’. Dawkins then moves on to his second point – the apparent cruelty of natural selection – and the necessity of an ultimately selfish attitude (from a gene’s eye view) in order to survive in a primitive brutish wild world. Though he acknowledges that there are evolutionary pathways to reciprocal altruism and certain degrees of social cohesion, he points out that these can’t be pushed to the level of the ‘super nice’. In brief, there are no means by which acting in a ‘super nice’ fashion could ultimately be functioning in an evolutionarily selfish capacity – from a brutish, natural selection based, point of view: to be ‘super nice’ is to be of lesser fitness:
“Human super niceness is a perversion of Darwinism because, in a wild population, it would be removed by natural selection …from a Darwinian point of view, human super niceness is just plain dumb.”
This is, of course, all true. If a wolf were to ‘attempt’ a ‘super nice’ strategy, it would certainly put him at a disadvantage against his peers. If, for example, he spent his time distributing food among the starving woodland creatures; or protecting them from attack, while receiving nothing in return, he would surely fall behind his brothers and sisters who spent their own time hunting and conserving energy. Where Dawkins goes wrong, I think, is in his deduction from these two facts – that to be ‘super nice’ is irrational.
Dawkins is a smart man. He’s a supporter of the Great Ape Project[1]; he acknowledges the moral necessity to be vegetarian[2]; he utterly opposes the ridiculous notion that if God is dead, everything is permitted (i.e. if we merely evolved, we’re ethically free to live as brutes) – in brief, he’s not the kind of man to easily fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy: that what is natural is therefore necessarily right – that what is is what ought to be. As such, I’m sure Dawkins’ use of the word ‘irrational’ is more for effect than an actual reflection of his genuine thinking. Nevertheless, it is a damaging word to use, even purely for impact. The notion that the morally just, the ‘super nice’, are inherently irrational renders the position unattractive to those who wish to live a rational life. Indeed, it runs counter to Dawkins’ own warnings about the severe danger of believing on faith. It’s almost as if he has adjusted his entire thesis from “believe reasonably, not faithfully” to “don’t believe bad things faithfully, but go right ahead for nice beliefs”. Indeed, this worrying notion is supported by his subsequent discussion of how religions, like the advertising industry, manage to propagate memes virally – and how this might be augmented in service of spreading ‘super niceness’. Having for so long stuck to a fine philosophical challenge against the irrationality and immorality of faith, Dawkins seems to undermine himself by seemingly legitimising it when it comes to nice beliefs he’s in favour of. What’s the obvious problem here? Why not downgrade our criticism of religion from a challenge to its faith-based fundamentals to a mere quibble with the details of its negative claims? Well, because the religious and we have different definitions of what is a nice belief and what isn’t. If it’s ok to believe things faithfully when those things are nice, then what possible counter has Dawkins got to the religious belief that a newly fertilised human egg deserves the same rights as a full grown; sentient; sapient man? Certainly in the religious mind this is a nice belief: they’re protecting someone’s immortal soul for God’s sake! (Literally). Can Dawkins bring them down with accusations of irrationality? No, because he’s claimed that his own faith based ‘nice’ belief (in being ‘super nice’) is irrational. Can he suggest that the pro-life attitude of the religious believer is not really nice? On what grounds? Why is their faith not legitimate while his is? It’s not enough to say faith is ok when you’re believing nice things. If faith is the wrong way of coming to beliefs in one case, it’s the wrong way of coming to beliefs in all cases.
So is it irrational to be ‘super nice’ (which given a proper definition appears to be to live a morally just and considerate life; and to maintain the effort to do so wherever humanly possible – something few people can genuinely claim)? Well – the entire assumption in favour of that claim is the notion that what is evolutionarily beneficial in a state of nature[3], is what is rational – and whatever isn’t is irrational. Or at the very least – any behaviour that doesn’t serve to ultimately benefit the evolutionary fitness of your genes – is irrational behaviour. This, of course, includes ‘super niceness’. But why would one think that? The rationality or irrationality of behaviour is contingent on its intended goal. If my goal is to get fit, running everyday is rational behaviour – it would only become irrational if running everyday was counter to my end of ‘getting fit’, or was counter to another goal of equal or higher importance to me. In the same way, if my goal is to commit suicide, it’s rational for me to ingest tablets that will commit fatal damage to my body’s ability to function. Perhaps the claim then would be that in order for an end (rather than a means) to be rational, it must ultimately conform to genetic selfishness. If so – again, why? Simply because behaviour up to this point has been dictated as such, doesn’t mean that it should be so, from a rational or moral perspective. It’s not ordained from on high – and logic doesn’t dictate it. Indeed, even nature never intended it, so to speak, in its utterly non-teleological state. It simply is (or was) the case before we developed the ability to cognitively take on ends that ran counter to it. The mere fact that we couldn’t do this before has no bearing on whether or not we’re rational – or right – to do so now[4].
So can we rationally live morally, nicely, even ‘super nicely’ – even though it would lower our survival fitness to do so in a state of nature – and even though others inevitably will refuse to do so? Yes we can. How? Because we, and we alone[5], are capable of setting our own ends. Ends that run counter to our own survival, or our reproductive ability. We can do this because we can reason, not despite it. It’s my rational ability to infer your; or your baby son’s; or the wretched slaughterhouse pig’s suffering, from my own – coupled with my knowledge of my own desire to not suffer – along with the end that where preventable none should suffer unnecessarily, which comes out of my evolved sense of empathy – that leads me to behave in such a way that would prevent your suffering, even at the cost of my own.
To give a non-moral example, there is Dawkins own case:
“The most transparently un-Darwinian misfiring is contraception, which divorces sexual pleasure from its natural function of gene-propagation.”
However, it’s not the contraception that’s a misfiring – it’s the sexual pleasure. The ‘error’ is not one’s use of contraception, which is rational behaviour in service of the end of avoiding pregnancy and the heavy requirements that go along with it – an end one is perfectly rationally capable of holding despite its contradiction of inferred evolutionary ‘function’. If anything could even come close to being called ‘mistaken’ or ‘irrational’, it’s one’s body’s automatic reward of pleasure for doing something that’s evolutionarily unfit – however even this becomes patently nonsensical when we remember that nature (and your body with it for that matter) is intention-less, as are genes, and that neither are tied up with logic. Is it irrational to exploit this natural ‘mistake’? No – at least no more irrational than it is to exploit the functioning of one’s colour perception to distinguish between notebooks when that functionality were originally ‘intended’ for picking out fruits; or to exploits one’s ability to do sums in order to study calculus despite the fact that that capacity may have spawned from a need to track offspring. Even if love is partially just an exploitation of emotions originally intended to get us shagging – that alone doesn’t entail its irrationality.
Perhaps our altruistic sentiments – our ability to empathise – have selfish gene origins. No: they definitely do – there’s no question about it. However having awoken to sapience: to the ability to reason to the full extent of the word; to consider far into the future; to divorce our considerations from our immediate desire to survive and reproduce, there is no more shame, and no more irrationality, in our use of those altruistic functions in rational application to our own post-state of nature ends, than there is in using any of our evolved features and functions, to do anything. We alone – with our unique capabilities – are able to choose to acknowledge ethical requirements, and to live a moral life. Of all known species, humans alone have the freedom to choose to be ‘super nice’ – and to reiterate: this is so because of our rationality, not despite it. We don’t have to resort to faith in order to coerce or manipulate people into living an ultimately irrational lifestyle – we can instead, as we should with all things, turn to reason in order to persuade people to fulfil their own human potential.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_project#Great_Ape_Project_.28book.29
[2] http://www.pointofinquiry.org/richard_dawkins_science_and_the_new_atheism/
[3] The state of a non-human animal, seemingly incapable of genuine rational reflection and ethical consideration, driven predominantly or wholly by impulse and emotionality (which itself is driven ultimately by genes).
[4] I.e. Now that we do have the cognitive ability to reason in light of foresight, and take account of considerations beside our own immediate survival and reproduction.
[5] …At least in scale.







Christmas Thinkings
25/11/2009 in 2. World/News Commentary, a. Game commentary | Tags: BBFC, Call of Duty, christ, Christmas, COD, COD: MW2, controversy, crime, downloading, ethics, file sharing, Filesharing, game, illegal, internet, jesus, Modern Warfare 2, online, Peter Mandelson, terrorism, theft, thoughts, xmas, yuletide | Leave a comment
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here and so, as you’d expect, I have a backlog of things that desperately need saying. Who knows what’d happen if I weren’t to write them all down here – I have a few ideas… but I won’t trouble you with them since I am going to write – now. Right now. Write here, right now. Ignore that and keep reading.
Did you really think illegal downloading wasn’t a crime? You didn’t? You know it’s stealing, right? Then why the rage, old chum?
Are you a filthy thieving downloading piece of scum? If so, Peter Mandelson is after you. Mandy hopes to push through a plan that would see the web connections of Internet pirates disconnected – a move that has met quite considerable condemnation from the young and tech. savvy members of the British populace (you know: the ones who do most of the downloading). Here I don’t wish to focus on whether or not Mandelson’s plan is practical; nor whether it could even be properly applied without risking punishment to those who have genuinely done no wrong (having had their internet connections high-jacked, for example). No – what confuses me in this case is the genuine outrage, shown by those who participate in the illegal filesharing practice, to this decision. Their condemnation isn’t directed at the unworkable nature of Mandelson’s plan; nor at any other factor related to implementation. Rather, they’re disgust is aimed squarely at the suggestion, the mere idea, that those who steal intellectual property via the Internet should be punished for their legally acknowledged crimes. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not myself condemning filesharing here (and neither am I supporting it). Like an adolescent, zit-covered David Cameron attempting to smoke a poorly constructed spliff, I must confess to having partaken in the practice in my early teenage years. It was a given to fourteen-year-olds in those Napster days – and then it was just music, with each megabyte taking at least a minute to download. Now films; TV series; games; software; and even operating systems can be downloaded in but a small number of hours. And many, many, many people are doing it. “Good luck to them” you might say, “it doesn’t affect the multimillion pound music / film / games industry anyway” you might rhetorically continue. I’m not entirely sure you’re right, but fair enough. As crimes go, downloading ‘Fight For This Love’ by Cheryl Cole is nothing major (well, the filesharing part isn’t), but come now: certainly it is still a crime. Whatever you think of the people who own the data you’re stealing – however rich they are – and however little your theft will affect them, you are still undeniably committing a crime: the crime of theft. You can’t legitimise stealing a millionaire’s doormat by pointing out that he’s rich and can easily afford the loss. The shoplifter’s excuse that the supermarket won’t suffer, and that it accounts for the existence of thieves, goes no way towards morally or legally legitimising their actions. And don’t pretend that your filesharing is in anyway justifiable on a kind of Robin Hood-esque basis – I’d wager that you could afford whatever you’re stealing – and if you can’t, I’d certainly doubt that you strictly needed it. As I said, I’m not here to rain moral condemnation down on anybody. I’ve benefited from the filesharing of others. I’ve taken part in it years ago. And I don’t particularly think worse of those who I know still do it. But it is crime. It is theft. And, like a shoplifter, surely the response to being caught out must be to put one’s hands up and say “fair enough” – not to bleat on about how evil Peter Mandelson is for trying to uphold our country’s laws. Few pickpockets have arrived at the police station only to erupt into a fuming tirade over how despicable it is to restrict their freedom to pick pockets – even if they stuck exclusively to the superrich.
‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’. Yeah, it glorifies terrorism you know. Yeah seriously… No, it does! …No it doesn’t you impetuous pawn.
The largest ever entertainment release – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – is now available, and is being enjoyed by countless millions of gamers the world over, some responsible; some stupid; some clever; some mature; some hopelessly childish; some (due to awful parenting) actually children; some PhD students; some secondary school dropouts, and so on and so forth. Why is this game in particular important? Well – because it features one of the most controversial sections of a videogame to date (so controversial in fact that the game asks you if you want to skip it before you even start playing). For those who are interested in seeing more or less exactly what happens in the game, watch the video below (but note the spoiler):
The scene has the player, along with three or four non-playable characters, casually enter an airport in Moscow and open fire on the unarmed civilians there-in. The civilians flee, the player’s character and the others continue to fire. Security guards are easily cut down, as are people trying to help injured others to their feet. Wounded people try to crawl away only to be shot in the back, and by the end of the level the player leaves the airport with a bloodbath in his wake. The context is that the player’s character is a member of an elite military task force, who goes undercover in a terrorist organisation in order to bring down their highly dangerous leader. In order to stay undercover, he’s forced to take part in the airport massacre – and, like him, you the player must actually be there pulling the trigger – there’s no escape from liability in the form of a cutscene, you actively take part in the entire section of the game – every murdered civilian falls as a result of you genuinely opting to pull the trigger with your crosshairs aimed squarely at their backs. Controversial enough for you? Predictably, both sides have gone to war, competing to see who can provide the more painfully inane argument. On the anti-COD (Call of Duty) side, we have suggestions that the game is excessively violent; glorifies terrorism and killing; and might influence others to behave in the way the game portrays, while the pro-CODers spout the usual ‘it’s just a game’; ‘it’s not real’; and ‘you don’t have to play it if you don’t like it’ rubbish. Let’s be clear – in the form of the preceding arguments, both sides are wrong. With regard to the anti-CODers – the game is not excessively violent. To be excessively violent would be to include violence that was inaccurate to the realities of the situation (i.e. war and terrorism). The game doesn’t do this, and is certainly less gory (and bloody) than a number of other, far less controversial, titles currently available. It categorically does not glorify war or terrorism – war itself is presented as chaotic and terrifying, and the terrorism scene is one of the most uncomfortable and troubling portrayals that I’ve ever come across, in any form of artistic media, succeeding dramatically where many other games have tried and failed. It positively didn’t promote the idea that acting as the character does in the game might be ‘fun’ or ‘cool’; and no more glorified callous murder than did Schindler’s List. The pro-CODers are just as wrong. The fact COD:MW2 is a game, and not real, does not thereby earn it a free-reign to portray just about anything it wants. There is a reason the BBFC exists, and it’s not simply to calm the constantly raging tempers of the Daily Mail reading masses. It is certainly possible that COD could have portrayed the terrorism scene unacceptably. If the game had suggested that terrorism were a good thing – or if it had made mocking reference to a real life murder – or if it had screwed up in any number of other possible ways, the BBFC would have been well within their rights to condemn it. A game in which you play a jolly paedophile who has to search out and abuse children in exchange for points to spend on your computer rig would not be acceptable – despite the fact that ‘it would be a game’ and ‘it wouldn’t be real’. The same applies to the suggestion that you don’t have to play it if you don’t want to. This idiot excuse comes out of modern relativism, and the idea that rightness and wrongness apply no further than one’s own personal feelings. The idea is that if COD:MW2 is wrong ‘for you’, then there is nothing necessarily compelling you to play it. However, you have no right to assume it’s wrong ‘for other people’, who themselves are free to play so long as they don’t force you to watch. Again, this is utter nonsense – if Infinity Ward (the game’s developers) had done wrong, I’d be just as correct to condemn them, despite not having fallen victim to their crime, as I would to be to condemn a murderer, despite not having suffered his. Moral condemnation can still be applied by those who aren’t directly affected – hence the existence of our (or any) legal system. So who’s right? Well – ultimately, it’s the pro-CODers, though not due to any of the previously mentioned ‘arguments’. The game’s terrorist scene is handled maturely and frankly, and is a complete success in its goal of leaving the player feeling awkward; uncomfortable; and utterly disgusted (at their own actions, not at the game’s inclusion of the level). Contrary to (one of my heroes) Charlie Brooker’s suggestion, I felt the interactivity of the scene was completely justified, managing to create an atmosphere and sensation that just would not have been possible via a cutscene portrayed utterly outside of the player’s control (as has been the case with a number of games featuring ‘moral choices’). If there’s a negative point to be made it’s that the rest of the game’s campaign fails to be anywhere near as absorbing, and the plot as a whole struggles to be engrossing or involving, which is a shame given that the fundamental ideas are very good. Thus, the terrorist scene sort of just pops-up, not particularly in context, and not captivating in the sense of it bringing you any deeper into the plot – but that’s not a condemnation of its highly successful content; just as a bad war film wouldn’t, in its struggling storytelling, thereby delegitimise its inclusion of battle footage. COD:MW2’s terrorist scene is legitimate, justified in its inclusion and interactivity, rightly available (to adults) in the UK, and utterly horrible all the same.
Christmas time. Mistletoe and whine. I hope the adverts start in June next year.
It’s exactly a month until Christmas today – the day of the birth of our Lord. And what I want to write about here is how damned annoying it is that everyone’s forgotten about how it’s HIS day, and how we need to be honouring Him! Oh, and about the Jews… Not really… Christmas nowadays is nothing to do with Jesus, or Christianity, and that’s a very good thing. It has, quite naturally and without cultural intervention, evolved into a time that genuinely belongs to all people (or any that want it). Sure, there are the moaners: those who say it’s nought but a materialistic free-for-all – a time for retailers to exploit shoppers, and for children to exploit parents, and for DFS to exploit everybody – and there are those who whinge that “boo-hoo the adverts are on even earlier this year!” or that “Tesco’s are playing Christmas music, and it’s only October!” as if the sight of a Christmas tree on TV, or the sound of Noddy Holder’s horrible, horrible, voice exclaiming “it’s Christmas!” causes them internal bleeding, or something else worthy of such persistent complaint. Well to those people I say: “shut your faces you miserable bloody stupid gits” (and I’d encourage you to use the same phrase). Of course Christmas is utilised by shops trying to sell their wares; and of course children get overly covetous when they see an opportunity to get some toy they’ve been yearning for (since they saw the advert in October); and yes everybody (apart from tirelessly joyous w*nkers) loathes Christmas music – - But it’s no worse than JLS’ or Ndubz’ mindless Casio keyboard adapted ‘beats’, which were playing previously! And contrary to what the moaners suggest, the adverts aren’t on all THAT early – it’s not as if they’re so constant that we can’t even tell Christmas time apart, from, say, Easter (which starts in about February by the advert calendar, leaving January as a useful buffer for those of us who set our watches by commercial campaigns). Yes Christmas, as a retailing / self-serving / annoying / marketing time extends from late September to New Years, and yes, if you must, you can count that as a negative. But look too at the positives. Who, but the most jaded, or the most unfortunate (the former who have themselves to blame, the latter who obviously don’t), doesn’t have fond memories of at least a few of their Christmases? For whom has some Christmas not been a particularly special time – at some point in their pitiful little lives? I’m talking about the actual day here – when the children’s greed has done its job, and when the retailers are out of time, and when nobody goes to the shops to listen to awful Christmas music because they’re all closed. On Christmas day, December 25th itself, it is a truly happy and special occasion. This is so, for despite complaints, the massive build up does actually manage its purpose, and Christmas day is left feeling like a genuinely satisfying climactic event. Everyone feels a happy obligation to make an effort to enjoy the day rather than let it pass by unnoticed (apart from the most awful people on the planet). Children are happy, friends and family are united, work and daily life temporarily cease, and – if you do it right – peace and good will truly do extend to all men (…in your local vicinity, the war continues, despite yuletide). It’s nothing to do with Jesus (for most); and it’s nothing to do with the Winter solstice, as was the case in the Pagan festival the Christians initially commandeered; and indeed why should it be? What more beautiful a thing to have Christmas in its current carnation; as a time when families and friends unite to try and enjoy each other’s company, to make one another happy via generous gifts, to reflect on the year and the positives in life; than to worship a long dead carpenter (or builder, apparently carpenter’s a mistranslation). Stop complaining about Christmas – even if you do hate the adverts, or the music, or the lights, or the children’s happy laughter. There was a time when you were that six year old, looking forward to a day of toys; games; and grandma – and if you get over your melodramatic self-pity – you might just learn to enjoy it all over again.