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You Are Watching Big Brother September 8, 2009

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Academic Writing, Miscellaneous Waffle, Philosophical Debate, Social Theory, Television.
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In the novel 1984 George Orwell hypothesises a future in which a monolithic authority figure – ‘Big Brother’ – monitors the actions and thoughts of individuals, persecuting those who do not comply with a prearranged form of acceptability. Some claim that Orwell’s vision has turned out to be alarmingly accurate, with a plethora of CCTV cameras recording our movements as soon as we step outside the house, personal information being bought and sold by countless corporations, and ID cards on the horizon. Every move we make in terms of consumer activity is recorded, each purchase contributing to a database of statistics designed to inform future commercial ventures. Any data collected can be collated by law enforcement agencies as evidence to prosecute an individual accused of committing a crime. In this way, these methods inevitably remind us of Orwell’s monitored state. However, within the home it is a different story. Although we are monitored to an extent in terms of television viewing figures and internet logs, the extant ‘Big Brother’ of our society works in much subtler ways than those employed by Orwell’s state. In the novel, each room is furnished with a large screen in one wall, which as well as pumping out suitable commercial and political messages, works two-way to feed back the image of the individual to Big Brother. Like our CCTV, individuals are video-monitored in their homes. The screens in our homes work differently, but, I would argue, achieve much the same effect. Our screens are not two-way; they do not record an image of us to feed back (unless we want them to – we possess access to webcams, video cameras, &c.) to a central authority seeking to persecute us. Primarily, our screens are designed to provide us with images of the world, rather than the other way around. So are we free from our modern day Big Brother when we watch our screens at home? I would venture a no; we are not free. But Big Brother as we have previously thought of him – as an external, monolithic, authoritative entity – ceases to exist at this point, and key to his disappearance is the type of images we choose to watch on our screens.
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I find myself increasingly frustrated by television networks which appear to be rapidly withdrawing all forms of informed, intelligent and impartial documentary programmes and replacing them with what I will call ‘pulpdocs’, which constitute a kind of airport novel for the viewer. Rather than programming which is genuinely factual and well-researched, we are offered a limp selection of watered-down popular science shows telling us which gadget we should buy next, moody, voyeuristic accounts of serial killers, Nazism and over-exposed historical figures, and endless revelations of ‘real life’ where we are forced to watch various hapless, uninteresting members of the public learn how to balance their diets, bank accounts and book shelves. On top of this comes the ever-expanding soap opera epidemic, where sensationalist plotlines and depressing character archetypes are recycled in an apparently infinite pantomime of banality. These scenarios are made all the worse by the network’s commercial imperative to produce as many shows from as little material as possible, resulting in twelve-episode serials, the contents of which could have been easily and less irritatingly communicated in about an hour. But setting aside all the mundane personalities, regurgitated facts and overly dramatic music, it is at the heart of these shows that we locate the source of monitoring – our Big Brother. Central to the ethos of these shows is the idea that they are not telling us something factual about the world, as a traditional documentary would try to do, but rather they are telling us something about ourselves. They are telling us what it means to be human, to be British or American, to be male or female, to be black or white, but, most crucially, how to function in society. These shows depend on the assumption that a human individual has an economic and social value, and that he/she must perform their role according to the rules of society as laid down by Big Brother, which in this sense functions as an abstract construct signifying the broad ensemble of government, collective identity, capitalist ideals and any other factor determining human worth.
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I recently watched a show on BBC 3 entitled Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum, which presented me with a small group of youngsters who, apparently, were unable to function as human beings. As the title suggests, these individuals (aged between 17 and 25) were ‘under’ educated (both academically and in terms of ‘the university of life’) and entirely reliant on their parents both economically and emotionally. They were put in a house together and left to fend for themselves for the course of the series, lasting six episodes. Each episode we were treated to some snippets of how embarrassingly incapable they were of using a washing machine, cooking an edible meal and cleaning a toilet, interspersed with the documentation of a gruelling task in which they were expected to demonstrate some degree of capability, adaptability and a willingness to ‘reform’. These tasks usually comprised the immersion of the kids in a ‘work scenario’ – for instance, the first task demanded they work a twelve hour shift in a hotel. The whole show was narrated by comedian Robert Webb (who must have been short of cash), whose distinctively satirical voice encouraged us to laugh at these poor kids as they were put through a series of humiliating and demoralising challenges. The humour, however, was not allowed to undermine the vitally important moments when, at last, and to the accompaniment of some soul-stirring music, the kids began to resemble ‘normal human beings’, their parents weeping with pride at how well they’d done.
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Throughout the show I found myself sympathising on a number of occasions with the kids, who were, understandably I would insist, reluctant to enter into a world which valued them solely by their economic potential and offered a future of hard, unsatisfying work with little pay until they reached retirement age some five decades later. While the show – cheering and congratulating itself as each kid in turn admitted tearfully to the camera that they would go out and look for a job as soon as they left the house -  persuaded us that the contestants had finally come to understand their proper place in society, I could not help but feel that in relinquishing their lazy lifestyles the kids had become the manifestation of the doomed resistance to capitalism nurtured by the left. In the show, as in life, we are presented with two options: we are either lazy or we work. This is not to say that the left relishes laziness, but more that the criteria we are given to define our social roles are artificially restricted to these two categories by prevailing right-wing views. The sole justification for the solid tide of aggression, repulsion and ridicule directed towards the lazy kids by their parents, the narrator and, subsequently, the complicit viewer, is the premise that everyone works. The show openly admits that this work is frequently exhausting, thankless, degrading, disgusting and menial, but that is okay, apparently, because everyone experiences this. As most people put themselves through this upheaval (and most people have to because they don’t have rich parents to support them), it is unfair on the population as a whole if the privileged minority refuse to get their hands dirty.  While I would agree with this in a hypothetical sense, I can contest it in two ways. First, the kids in this show were presented to be ‘the problem’, but they are clearly not. Regardless of how many lazy teenagers we rehabilitate into the workplace, a privileged few will always remain exempt from the treadmill offered to the rest of us. The show makes us look at society and declare, ‘everyone works’, but it skillfully ignores the fact that in the upper echelons of society very few people work, and those that do enjoy creative, satisfying jobs that, relatively speaking, can barely be referred to as ‘labour’ at all. No show will ever be able to convince me that lazy teenagers ought to work for the good of society until we live in a society where everyone works for the good of society. Second, I am yet to be convinced that the capitalist system of work/consume is the best way to structure a society. We work more than we need to and consume more than we need to; the only reason we do this is because we are convinced that it is necessary, but the bodies profiting from this system are not ourselves, but the corporations – Big Brother himself. Shows like Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum are designed to emotionally blackmail us into conforming to the status quo, encouraging us to believe that if we rebel against it we are letting the side down. In actuality, these shows are simply lessons in complacency, and in complying with the system we are becoming dupes, drones: we are no longer in a position to question the system within which we now function.
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So I come back to the title of this post. In Orwell’s novel, Big Brother watches you. The authoritative state has eyes and ears everywhere and monitors your movements externally. But in reality today, Big Brother as an external monitoring entity has limited capabilities. Instead, we are subject to screens in our homes which invite us to watch countless vapid pulpdocs, such as Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum, which generate an internal Big Brother in the form of our individual conscience. Once the show has persuaded us of our duty, it is our own personal sense of guilt which forces us to fulfill it. Big Brother no longer watches us on a screen, we create him within ourselves: we are our own Big Brothers. The trend in televisual programming which moves away from traditional documentaries and towards pulpdocs and soap operas (which function in much the same way by clearly identifying good guys and bad guys who concord with the demands of society) is in keeping with the nanny-state mentality we fester in today. We no longer know what we are supposed to be, so we need a TV show to tell us. Moreover, we are no longer offered programmes which attempt to present a (pseudo)objective analysis of something which is genuinely interesting, but instead we are inundated with recurring fractal images of ourselves performing our own tasks. We take a break from these tasks only to sit down in front of the TV to watch total strangers repeating our movements. We are in some way validated by this process, and proceed to repeat, and watch, and repeat, and watch, ad infinitum. The state no longer has to monitor us because we have become self-monitoring, lured by some false consciousness into believing that we are doing the right thing, and that the opinion of the programme-makers is trustworthy. We are conveniently able to forget that the programme itself has been made by someone who most likely does not conform to the image of ourselves presented by the programme. In other words, the programme-maker is a member of the privileged elite whose job is creative and satisfying, rather than mundane and degrading. Subsequently, the class divide is enforced and perpetuated. The sightscreen behind which the elite is concealed in this instance is a television screen which works like a mirror, reflecting back an image of ourselves. Any subversive individual appearing on the screen is treated as alien, as Other, and is forced to reform until they, bildungsromanesque, blossom into fully-functioning adults. In this way we are able to look at ourselves and say, ‘yes, I do this, I measure up to this set of criteria, therefore I am a good, complete person’, and are never once forced to question the validity of those criteria. This suits both the state (political) Big Brother and the commercial (capital) Big Brother (although these are arguably one and the same), as we continue to work and consume, perpetuating the system. Shows like Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum suggest that if we all stopped working and consuming we’d all go to hell in a handcart, and maybe this is true. But I am unprepared to swallow this hypothesis when it is presented to me in such an idiotic, heavy-handed manner, and when it is clearly one designed to discourage and foreclose revolution, contestation and dialogue.
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Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespearean drama offers us subversion only in a form which can be contained and reformed – never is it pure and successful. I would argue that today’s television programming functions in much the same way – although I would like to qualify that this is the only time I will ever compare modern television to Shakespearean drama. We are shown subversive elements – lazy teenagers, for example – but they are not applauded or encouraged to go on behaving in this way. When they are forced to reform we celebrate, commenting on how much they have improved, relishing the functional, useful, commodified life they now have before them. In presenting us with the subversive element tamed, the mirror image of ourselves as functional entities is reasserted, and its inherent economic and social imperatives are reinforced and reproduced. We go back to our daily tasks secure in the knowledge that we are conforming to society’s golden image: the image of ourselves conforming. And, as the narrator of the pulpdoc condescendingly pats his subjects on the back, we can pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. In this way, every time we switch on the TV and watch one of these programmes (anything from pulpdocs to reality shows, to soap operas, to talk shows) we are watching Big Brother; we are watching Big Brother showing us an image of ourselves conforming, to which we must conform, and as such we remove the need for monitoring entirely by becoming our own regulating, admonishing force, substantiated by the mirror that is the television screen.

Happiness is… A Cigar Called Hamlet? December 16, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Culture, Film, Philosophical Debate.
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I read an essay today entitled “Happiness and Cypher’s Choice: Is Ignorance Bliss?” by one Charles L. Griswold, Jr., from the book The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, ed. William Irwin (Illinois: Carus, 2002). In this essay Griswold (don’t get me started on the name, by the way) attempts to unravel the philosophical implications of Cypher’s decision to return to the Matrix and forget “reality” in the 1999 film The Matrix. For those of you who have been living in a bunker for the last ten years and do not know what happens in this film, I quote Wikipedia:

The film describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix, a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Upon learning this, computer programmer “Neo” is drawn into a rebellion against the machines. The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures; philosophical and religious ideas; and homages to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action cinema, Spaghetti Westerns, and Japanese animation.

Cypher is a character who, having been liberated from the Matrix for some years, decides he would rather live in ignorance and luxury within the illusion of the Matrix than maintain the somewhat uncomfortable and dangerous lifestyle of life outside. Griswold’s essay quotes the film:

AGENT SMITH: Do we have a deal, Mr Reagan?

CYPHER: You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.

AGENT SMITH: Then we have a deal?

CYPHER: I don’t want to remember nothing. Nothing. You understand? And I want to be rich. You know, someone important, like an actor. (p. 131)

Griswold goes on to explain “why Cypher is wrong, and why Neo is right in making his choice in favour of wakefulness” (p. 132) and in doing so attempts to define the concept we call “happiness”. I have a number of problems with this essay. Firstly, I’m not entirely sure Cypher is wrong in his decision. The film paints him as a spineless, selfish idiot and because of this we automatically assume that he is one of the bad guys and therefore his decision is wrong. But what we fail to realise is that Cypher is an everyman. We are all generally spineless, selfish and idiotic and I think the majority of us would rather live in ignorance than run around battling giant floating robo-squid and Hugo Weaving on speed. It would take an exceptional human being to do what Neo does, particularly when he returns to the Matrix and offers to sacrifice his life for a friend’s. This is the stuff movie heroes are made of, not ordinary people, which is why movie heroes are so appealing and why it almost always escapes our attention that the villains in movies are generally just normal people who only appear super evil in contrast to the amazing piety of their heroic counterparts. But this is an aside. Suffice it to say, we oughtn’t write off Cypher’s decision simply because he is a “bad guy”, because his decision, although selfish and in no way for the greater good, is still a logical decision.

Griswold would disagree. According to Griswold, Cypher “embodies the question mark about the relationship between contentment (the purely subjective sense of well-being) and happiness (which is supposed to be tied to a knowledge of reality)” (p. 132). He provides an example to demonstrate the difference between contentment and happiness:

Suppose you habitually drank too much moonshine and then regretted it the next morning [this is an example I can wholeheartedly identify with, by the way]. Suppose you went on like that for years. While high, you were content; in the cold light of sobriety, as you contemplate your bloodshot eyes and pudgy face in the morning’s mirror, you realise that you are terribly unhappy, and that the contentment you found in the bottle was a flight from the underlying deficiency of your life. It was a flight into ignorance and forgetfulness. It seems to me that in one form or another this sort of experience is common, and reveals several important truths, one of which is that one cannot be happy if one harbours a well-grounded standing of dissatisfaction with oneself, with how one really is. And that suggests that to be happy one must have the sort of desires one would want; in reflecting on myself, I must affirm that I am basically ordered in such a way as I would want to be, if I am to count myself happy. (p. 133)

I have a number of problems with this passage. Firstly, the contentment one acquires when drinking isn’t so much a chemically created one (alcohol is in fact a depressant and in many cases makes me more unhappy than I was before). In other words, it isn’t the alcohol itself that makes one happy. The happiness (or contentment, if we simply must make the distinction) comes from the act of self destruction. There is something massively exhilarating and liberating about the entropic act of drinking to excess, of obliterating one’s brain and memory. It’s the perfect private anarchy, a rebellion against society and oneself, and, although hugely unsustainable, provides a sense of euphoria otherwise lacking in the “real” world. Secondly, if it were possible to sustain this euphoria, carry on being drunk the whole time, why the hell not? If reality is the only thing that bursts the bubble, so to speak, makes us realise what dreadful wastes-of-space we have become, then surely denying reality will avoid this come-down and enable the successful maintenance of the euphoric state? Is this not, essentially, what Cypher achieves? He is very specific about not wanting to remember anything about the real world – by making this assertion is he not drinking the eternal drink, removing the “morning’s mirror”, taking out of the equation completely the reality of himself and his own expectations of himself? How can we be unhappy in a false world that makes us happy if we have no knowledge of the real world that will make us sad?

Another example: Why does the Chief kill McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? McMurphy has been lobotomised, his faculty for dissatisfaction and unrest removed completely. He has no scope for unhappiness now, and yet the Chief judges his life no longer worth living. Why is this? Is it truly because he believes it to be in McMurphy’s best interests, or is it more because he himself is unable to live with the idea of happiness existing on the other side of brain death? If happiness lies in lobotomy, then how can a functioning brain ever be happy? Is this perhaps why the Chief smothers McMurphy to death? For McMurphy, the questions of life and death and happiness and sadness are no longer ones he needs to worry about. If he can no longer be unhappy, why end his life? How can anything be in his best interests if he no longer has any interests? It is the Chief’s own sense of horror at McMurphy’s new mindless state that leads him to the act, not any sense of altruistic obligation towards his fellow inmate. The Chief cannot live in a world where lobotomy is a man’s best shot at happiness. And who can blame him? But he is left on the outside, in the real world, excluded from the comforting illusion of the lobotomy, or the Matrix, in a place where he must deal with the realities that make him unhappy. McMurphy, like Cypher, is as happy as he needs to be. Without any sense of reality, there is scope for endless happiness.

Griswold talks about the unstable nature of happiness induced by illusion: “they are unstable; self-delusion tends to be evanescent and destroyed by daily reality” (p. 134). But surely all happiness is unstable, not just that produced by an illusion? Later, he writes, “the enemy of happiness is anxiety” (p. 135). If this is true, then happiness will always be transient and brief. Happiness itself produces anxiety: “How long will this happiness last? When will it end? How will I cope when it does?” As such, happiness is self-destructive, for the anxieties it produces will inherently result in its demise. Happiness really is a cigar called Hamlet. The happiness will only last however long it takes to smoke the cigar. Afterwards one is left with conflicting feelings of guilt (at having indulged) and dissatisfaction (at wanting to indulge again) and loss (at having reached the end of the happiness quota). Even if one were to light another Hamlet, the happiness it induced would be outweighed by the knowledge of the happiness’s mortality. But if it were possible to smoke a cigar without the knowledge of this mortality, there would be true happiness in this illusion. And if it were possible to smoke an endless cigar, there would be no need for the illusion at all.

Back to The Matrix, and why Cypher is supposedly wrong and Neo right. I wonder if Griswold would be so eager to pronounce Neo’s decision to embrace the real world as correct if he hadn’t got the girl at the end. Neo and Trinity end the film on a high, drunk, I might argue, on love – an intoxication that, for them, obscures the reality of the pretty crappy new world they find themselves in. How is this so different from the intoxication Cypher achieves through the Matrix? Both Neo and Cypher cling to their little islands of happiness amid a tsunami of reality, and the fact that Neo’s source of happiness (Trinity) exists in “reality” does not mean that his happiness is any less of an illusion than Cypher’s. In fact, his happiness is more unstable, more transitory than that achieved by Cypher. As long as the Matrix exists, Cypher’s cigar is endless. But amid the constant dangers of the “real world”, Neo’s happiness is ever in jeopardy. There are pitfalls of betrayal, mistrust, and death at every corner, and Trinity’s death in the final film of the trilogy underpins this: Neo’s happiness is mortal, just as his love is mortal. Without it he is nothing but a martyr saving a world that does not want to be saved, saving a world of Cyphers. What’s the point? Neo was seduced, in more ways than one, by “reality”, only to find that the reality was full of more temporary illusions, and that, ultimately, in the absence of illusion there is a profound vacuum of meaning.

The Matrix was created for a purpose: to keep people happy while they performed their necessary (if gruesome) function within the “real” world of the machines. It is a form of slavery, but one that is not apparent. If there is no knowledge of the justification for unhappiness, why should there be unhappiness? Moreover, what is there for us beyond the Matrix? Even with a successful revolution, the overthrow of the machines, the liberation of mankind, what would we achieve? Surely we would simply recreate the world the Matrix had simulated? There would be no difference between the real world and the simulation we had just destroyed. There would literally be no difference. There is no difference between experiencing a real reality and believing we are experiencing a real reality. Reality is purely subjective.

So, some kind of conclusion. I’ve skimmed over Griswold’s arguments and left out a lot of interesting things he has to say about Platonic parallels, so to give him his due, he isn’t entirely talking rubbish. But, with reference to the passage quoted above, I have my disputes. If I could choose between a reality determined to make me unhappy (which, it seems, is its wont) and an illusion full of juicy and delicious steak, I’d choose the steak every time. As long as I was unaware of the discrepancy between realities, how could I be any worse off? The only moment at which I would be aware is that brief moment of decision: the blue pill or the red pill? But already I have forgotten which pill is which.

On Charity November 25, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Philosophical Debate.
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I saw an episode of The Wright Stuff several years ago that got me sufficiently yipping with rage to almost ring in and chew some ears off. The topic of discussion was: “Why do we give more money to animal charities than to human charities?” The show had collated some statistics that apparently proved that we, as a nation, do in fact give more money to animal charities than to human ones. The specific statistics used to demonstrate this were roughly as follows (I can’t recall the exact figures and can’t find any record of them): We give more money per year to animal charities than we do to children’s charities.

Naturally, the British public rang in and expressed their disgust at this philanthropic trend. We should look after our own, they said. This is immoral, they said. This response suggests that those ringing in believe we should value human life above animal life – forgetting for a moment that humans are animals, of course, and I’ll come back to this later. It also suggests (which was the reason I wanted to ring in) that the callers were unable to understand statistics correctly. Comparing animal charities (for the purpose of this essay “animal” refers to “non-human”) with children’s charities is not an adequately correlative study. If we were to compare puppy charities with children’s charities, then perhaps we would come to a quite different conclusion. I would imagine that the amount of money donated to children’s charities far outweighs that donated to puppy charities. Children -> puppies is a correlative comparison. Children -> all animals is not. So, before we even begin to debate the ethics of the situation, The Wright Stuff had blatantly buggered up their entire argument. Of course, the reason they chose this particular set of statistics was to elicit compassion and outrage in the British public. Children! Everyone loves kids, right? (apparently). We have to look after the children: they are vulnerable and important. By putting children beside this vast unidentifiable toothy mass that is animals the collators of these statistics obviously intended to invoke empathy for the children and alienate the animals. It was a blatant misuse of statistics with the view of condemning the apparently inhumane masses and giving certain callers (and the host) the chance to behave in a superior and righteous manner – and they knew they would get away with it because the vast majority of the British public will believe what it is told without question. But this is water under the bridge now, the show has long since been boxed away in the Channel 5 archives hopefully never to be seen again.

Today, recalling my anger, I decided to see if there were any more recent studies being conducted in this area. I found the following article: Does one abused woman = 100 abused puppies? written by Allison Schrager for moreintelligentlife.com. In this article, Schrager writes, “America has 3,800 animal shelters, but only 1,500 for battered women”. Again, a comparison that is clearly non-correlative, and although she redeems herself a little by going on to compare abused women with abused puppies, she fails to redress the bias created by her initial assertion. How can we compare animal shelters with battered women shelters? Battered women make up a fraction of the total human population in need of aid. “Animals” equals the entire non-human population that may or may not require aid. The fact that Schrager refers to “battered” women without specifying the manner in which the animals may or may not be abused creates the sense that the women are more in need of help than the animals. This kind of sensationalist rhetoric immediately invites outrage and piousness in the same way that The Wright Stuff’s skewed statistics did: we read this and are outraged before we have the chance to realise that what we are reading is not only a distorted version of the facts, but a version specifically designed to elicit this response in us.

Schrager’s main impotus for writing the article seems to be an attack on the bourgeoisie who claim that the abuse of women (or the abuse of children, as she later goes on to mention) is something that doesn’t happen in their neighbourhood and therefore their money is better spent helping out that poor little puppy cruelly neglected by the rich family who bought it for their spoiled daughter last Christmas. This aspect of Schrager’s argument has a deal of merit, attempting to highlight the fact that women and children are abused in all facets of society, behind the rich doors as well as the poor ones. It also criticises the mindset that believes we should only help those near to us, those we see during our day-to-day lives, and screw anyone who lives more than fifty miles away from our pretty little cul-de-sac.

Schrager goes on to provide possible explanations for this tendency to give more to animal charities than to battered women charities, undermining her hitherto admirable argument with those bizarre comparisons again. Although her article is considerably less blunt and moronic than that episode of The Wright Stuff, Schrager still insists that her sparse scattering of statistics adequately justifies a self-righteous outburst and the encouragement of a shake-up in our global philanthropic preferences. She writes, “If we value people more than animals can we ever justify giving to an animal-welfare charity?” It is a vital question, but one she completely fails to address. The question she perhaps ought to be asking is, “Do we value people more than animals?” or even, “Should we value people more than animals?” In the arena of charity-based debate, these questions appear to have gone as neglected as the Christmas puppy.

Firstly, I would like to point out again, and with more vigour, that humans are animals. The division between humanity and the so-called “animal kingdom” has been made based on the size and complexity of our brains. We are, apparently, capable of thinking and perceiving things at a higher level than our non-human cousins. But the brain variation throughout the animal kingdom is clearly on a sliding scale. A mouse is more complex than a beetle, a pig more complex than a mouse, and so on. So are our superbrains simply the next notch up on that sliding scale? If so, why do we consider ourselves so different from the beetles and mice and pigs below us? Is it exactly that, that we perceive them as below us, in a qualitative sense? In which case, would it be safe to argue that a human being with “learning difficulties” is also below the rest of us, and therefore not as valuable as us, not as worthy of our help, not the same thing as us? Of course not. This kind of statement would be greeted with pitchforks and torches, and rightly so. My point is that this division based on brain size and quality seems not only unfair but inconsistent. Humans are above all else biological organisms. For all our clever gadgets and philosophies we are still restricted by those same biological needs as those of a beetle or a mouse or a pig. So why do we consider ourselves so different? It’s a difficult question to answer. At some point humanity drifted away from its natural origins and began perceiving itself differently – perhaps simply began perceiving itself. Subsequently its perceptions of the world and the rest of the world’s inhabitants also changed, and as a result this discrepancy between humans and animals has arisen. My argument would be that there is no need for this discrepancy. There is no value in comparing “human” charities with “animal” charities, because we are all animals. The word “animal” has had a stigma attached to it in age-old discourse and now when used it automatically carries with it connotations of baseness and savagery. But I would argue (although drifting off topic a little) that a human is just as capable of baseness and savagery as any other animal, perhaps more so. After all, the concepts “baseness” and “savagery” are entirely human inventions.

Ultimately, it is necessary to look at the bigger picture. The outrage incited by The Wright Stuff and Schrager’s article seems instinctive, forgetting for a moment the distorted manner in which their arguments were presented. We are naturally outraged at learning this information. It makes us feel ashamed. Why? We are naturally and biologically determined to care for our own species, our own community, our own family (the members of our monkeysphere) above Others – this is an evolutionary necessity. And yet, if we claim to have moved beyond evolution, beyond nature, then is it not also necessary that we leave this primitive mindset behind? Thanks to our “big brains” (as Kurt Vonnegut would call them) we are now able to go beyond this “I, me, mine” instinct and see how our actions and behaviour affect the rest of the world. We are the self-appointed guardians of this planet, it is therefore our responsibility to care for it as best we can. We have wrought all manner of catastrophe upon the ecological system; extinctions, mass destruction of habitat, global warming (assuming we believe what we are told), and so on. We are the cause of those suffering puppies. Surely it is only right that we try to redress the balance and right our wrongs? We, as biological organisms, are dependant upon this planet and its delicate ecosystem to survive. As such, I would argue that giving money to animal charities is synonymous with giving to human charities. Perhaps the results are less immediately obvious, less local in their manifestation, but if we have any hope of surviving until the meteor hits we can’t just turn our backs on the world. We are told we must look after our own. But, by our own efforts, we own everything here. This whole thing is our own. Without it, we’re totally screwed.

Critical Review: Jean Baudrillard November 13, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Academic Writing, Philosophical Debate, Social Theory.
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Critical Review:

‘The Murder of the Real’ from The Vital Illusion, by Jean Baudrillard

The ‘Murder of the Real’,[1] Baudrillard informs us, is a process of extermination that goes beyond Nietzsche’s symbolic demise of God into a realm both ‘more literal and more metaphorical’.[2] This initial statement sets the tone for the rest of the chapter, which becomes an exercise in contradiction and paradox, continuously disproving itself in ever more complex spirals of logic.

In the chapter’s opening paragraphs, Baudrillard describes the ‘Murder of the Real’ as a process of complete destruction, a crime in which there is no criminal, no victim and no body. ‘The Corps(e) of the Real… is nowhere to be found’,[3] we are told; Reality has vanished entirely, leaving not even a fossil or a footprint to indicate that it was ever here. In its stead is the hyperreal,[4] a world where the pursuit of a perfect Reality, and an immediacy of information, has resulted only in the creation of a simulation of reality, an artificial model of perfection that has replaced the original, flawed Reality. Without a sense of negativity, of alienation and difference, Reality as an objective concept disappears completely. Baudrillard later goes on to posit that Reality can only exist if Illusion is also allowed to exist, in much the same way that goodness can only exist in the company of evil. Therefore, in pursuing a perfect reality, a reality free from illusion, we manage to rid ourselves of the Illusion and Reality both. By calling up this notion of binary oppositions, Baudrillard insists upon the paradoxical nature of our universe, a universe where one thing can only exist in the presence of its opposite, and in doing so raises the status of the negative opposite term by emphasising its importance in relation to the positive. The Illusion is ‘vital’,[5] Baudrillard writes, it is ‘our chance at life’.[6] With this in place, Baudrillard highlights the unstable nature of knowledge, language and truth. ‘We cannot trust in traditional values’,[7] and if we accept the necessity of Illusion we must be wary of Illusion appearing wherever we look. He tells us, ‘truth no longer affords a solution’,[8] and ‘we must grant… the radical uncertainty of events’.[9] Keeping this in mind, it is impossible to read this chapter without some level of scepticism, for, if Baudrillard himself states that ‘nothing is either true or false’[10] then no reader can be expected to unquestioningly swallow his assertions.

He writes, ‘the most difficult thing is to renounce truth… to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent… side of thought’,[11] a statement that substantiates itself sublimely, so overtly lacking any trace of enigma or ambivalence. But if this renunciation of truth is, as Baudrillard argues, essential, the very unconditional nature of his argument destroys for the complicit reader any hope of remaining ambivalent. In short, if we believe what Baudrillard tells us, we ought not to believe what he tells us.

Faced with such a circular argument, we are asked to feel sympathy for the author’s doomed plight of attempting to represent and communicate an idea in a world where true representation and communication are impossible. In a sense, the beauty of Baudrillard’s theories lies in their inherent irony, but this same irony has the potential to result in what is already a set of abstract and esoteric arguments becoming yet more abstract and esoteric.

‘Language itself’, he writes, ‘never signifies what it means’,[12] and yet he chooses to articulate his argument using this very same language. He is fully conscious of the paradox, but, recalling his assertions that for Reality to exist there must also be Illusion, we realise that this paradox is not unwelcome. Baudrillard succeeds in embracing Illusion and thus rescues Reality – but in doing so turns his own claims into an illusion.

This contradictory narrative epitomises its own argument: if Reality exists in Illusion, and language can both betray and deliver us, there is no sense in denying the inevitability of paradox. We are faced with a choice between a hyperreality that threatens to destroy us, and a paradox that promises to confuse us. Either we are obliterated by truth (for ‘absolute truth is another name for death’[13]), or we live on in an endlessly perpetuating enigma.[14]


Bibliography

Barry, Peter, Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)

Baudrillard, Jean, ‘The Murder of the Real’ in The Vital Illusion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 61-83

Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981)

[1] Baudrillard, Jean, ‘The Murder of the Real’ in The Vital Illusion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 61 (N.B. All subsequent quotations from the same text)

[2]p. 61

[3]p. 61

[4]p. 77

[5]p. 72

[6]p. 71

[7]p. 67

[8]p. 68

[9]p. 68

[10]p. 62

[11]p. 68

[12]p. 70

[13]p. 72

[14]p. 83

My neighbours September 22, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Miscellaneous Waffle.
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I’ve been spending a lot of time (rather too much time) clicking on the little arrow that allows you to browse randomly through WordPress blogs in the hope of finding some like-minded souls to interact with in some intelligent manner. So far I’ve found a grand total of two blogs that I think are worth reading (plus one about organic lifestyles which is always nice). The vast majority of blogs it seems are all about the bringing of religiosity to the fuzzywuzzies, or folks airing their intimate laundry to all and sundry, or obscure business and community blogs that are completely inaccessible to anyone from the outside world. This is all very boring. I want to read people’s informed opinions about stuff. I want lively debates and intellectual discussions. I don’t want to read about other people’s kids or their lifelong battle with Satan or their family holiday in Greece. Come on, people! Show me some intellectual worth before I despair completely of the world.

Suspension of disbelief, continued September 18, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Culture.
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So, my previous points are obviously correct because they have been brought up in today’s edition of Dinosaur Comics. Don’t forget to hover your mouse over the comic and click the “comments” link to reveal the secret messages.

(“Comments” secret message appears in the subject line of the email. Isn’t that just dandy?)

I’m sorry, I had no idea September 13, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Culture, Miscellaneous Waffle, Music.
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Just a brief one. How awesome was Humphrey Lyttelton! I didn’t realise. I mean, I knew he was awesome, obviously, from I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, but the jazz was all before my time or outside of my sphere of knowledge. Did you also know that he did a track with Radiohead? Thanks to the BBC4 documentary and coverage of his last live music performance, my sphere has now been sufficiently broadened. Watch this stuff and this, and you too will learn. Thanks, BBC iPlayer!

Thanks, Humph.

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave September 13, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Culture, Literature, Philosophical Debate, Theology.
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The title of this post paraphrases the introduction to Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, a book about the end of the world, religion, truth, lies and misrepresentation. The novel features a made-up religion called “Bokononism” which parodies the religious life. The mantra “live by the harmless truths that make you brave” appears at first a noble one, and something I’m sure pretty much all of us, religious or not, employ at some stage in our lives. For example, when you know you’re in terrible debt and the tax man is going to come for your knee caps any day now, you will probably spend a long time telling yourself that it’ll all work out and somehow everything will be alright. This is a nice thought. It is comforting. It dulls that nasty sicky feeling in the pit of your stomach and helps you get to sleep at night. But it doesn’t solve the problem. You are in denial. And everyone has their denial grace period but, eventually, we all have to face up to our own responsibilities. The same goes for religion. Believing in god is just another way of absolving ourselves of responsibility. It makes us feel warm and cosy because there is an all-powerful benevolent being watching over us and, if we truly love him, he won’t let anything bad happen to us. This is a nice way to live your life, sure, but as soon as a real disaster strikes, what do you do? Hope and pray that god delivers you from your imminent demise? Or actually get up and do something productive about it?

The real question we must ask is: is there such a thing as a harmless untruth?

Scientist and notorious atheist Richard Dawkins suggests (as much as he merely suggests anything) that religion in particular is a harmful untruth. It causes division, prejudice, violence and war, on a scale only challenged by race (which is frequently coupled with religion). Religion, he argues, is a form of delusion, a kind of mental hiccup (he carefully avoids the term “disease”) that has consumed the minds of countless individuals the world over. Now, I won’t pretend to have followed Dawkins’ career very closely, but from seeing his interview with William Crawley on this week’s edition of William Crawley Meets… I got the impression that a lot of Dawkins’ arguments are of a similar, repetitive theme. After all, how many different ways are there to denounce the existence of god? On top of this, a lot of his arguments make a deal of sense, and it doesn’t take an involved study to recognise this. I have some issues with Dawkins, though. He bandies around the words “right” and “wrong” all too lightly, frequently undermining his points with his own arguments. Centuries ago, he says, people believed the earth was flat. They were wrong. And yet, with all his acknowledgment of past wrongs, it is a long time before Crawley can get him to admit that he, too, may be wrong.

The truth of the matter is, unless “god” or a suitable alternative sets the record straight, there is absolutely no way to answer the religious question. There is, I believe, suitable scientific evidence to rule out a great many religious hypotheses (evolution vs creation, for example), but the actual question of god is impossible to answer.

Atheism is, I would argue, a leap of faith in itself. In categorically disbelieving something, you are as closed-minded as those who choose to categorically believe. While you seek truth in scientific arenas, you are as blind to the spiritual possibilities as creationalists are to Darwinism. Atheism may be itself a harmful untruth.

I am not here to say that atheists are wrong or believers are wrong. I consider myself agnostic, which I would argue is the only non-faith-based stance and therefore the most scientific. I build my beliefs on solid evidence and scientific facts, but until those facts can completely, categorically and without question prove the non-existence of “god” or any other pan-dimensional entity, I will not discount the possibility that such an entity exists. As long as there is possibility, I will concede that possibility. I’m not taking a leap of faith in any direction.

So, I’m sitting on the fence, as is my wont, but I would suggest that the fence is just as justified a position as any other. From the top of the fence I can see all the way to the horizon.

Organised religion is a foolhardy venture, considering the naturally volatile disposition of man. Such follies will inevitably lead to conflict. As Dawkins argued to Crawley, religion is a primary source of fundamentalism, violence, martyrdom and war. Crawley countered back that, were religion removed from the equation, some other excuse to be crappy to each other would arise. As long as society is segregated, discrimination will occur. The only way to combat this is with racial purity and communism, and we know what dark routes those take us down. There will inevitably be something for people to fight in the name of, but acknowledging this doesn’t excuse complacency. A totally peaceful civilisation may be in the realms of science fiction, but that doesn’t give us the excuse to stop trying.

If “god” or relevant substitute exists, I can’t imagine it would be happy to learn of all the death, pain and suffering that has occurred in its name. It’s one thing to stand up for what you believe, but surely there comes a time when you should just hold up your hands and say, “I believe this; you believe that – neither of us will change our minds – let’s just deal with it.” The only thing all this crusading and vilifying achieves is a bloody mark on the records and a sizeable department in the historical library. It will never, ever solve anything. Organised religion is the process of trying to capture all the world’s oceans in a thimble and then arguing with everyone else whose thimble holds the most water. The water is still there, guys, in the ocean, and there’s absolutely no way you’ll ever capture it all. If there is an omnipotent entity watching over us, I would gamble that it is way beyond our puny three-dimensional comprehension, and acting in its name to decry, abuse and murder other people is pretty near one of the stupidest ideas I can think of.

Religion is good when used properly: as something that temporarily distracts us from the terrifying realities of our existence; as a way of being nice and neighbourly; to promote charity and community work; to better ourselves and moderate our consciences and moral values. I have nothing against those who champion religion for these purposes. But it’s pointless if we only use it to benefit those who happen to follow the same faith as us. Charity and community ought to transcend such petty boundaries. Also, it’s perfectly possible for atheists to be charitable and generous, and as a general rule atheism isn’t something people tend to kill for. But belief or disbelief shouldn’t define our characters. We should be nice to each other no matter what. If we really want to better ourselves we need to put religious differences aside and look at the bigger picture. Not one of us knows who is right and who is wrong, or even if there is a right and a wrong. We are all labouring under the same shadow of ignorance, all fishing for the same salmon of doubt.

If there is a god waiting for us on the other side, I hope he’s the kind of god who appreciates the quality of our moral consciences, our attitudes towards others, and a respect for other people’s opinions. If he isn’t that kind of god, well, I don’t think I particularly want to meet him.

The difference between suspending disbelief and legitimising rubbish September 12, 2008

Posted by Professor Fantastic in Culture, Film, Literature.
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I seem to find myself having this discussion/argument (mostly argument, as it seems impossible to have a discussion with some people) almost constantly on the IMDb message boards and I think it’s time I made a lasting testament to this all important rule of fiction.

First of all, let me provide the necessary context:

A user will post a message along the lines of: > I really enjoyed this movie, but I felt it was ruined slightly by the strange depiction of gravity aboard the Axiom <

In response, another user will post something like: > OMFG IT’S A MOVIE IT’S NOT REAL IF IT WERE EXACTLY LIKE REAL LIFE IT WOULD BE BORING WHY DON’T YOU GO AND DIE YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO IMAGINATION AND/OR SOUL <

Now, the problem here is, I would hope, obvious. The second poster has confused *fiction* with *nonsense* and wishes to defend his/her favourite movie to the point of moronic indecency. This kind of situation has led me to ponder deeply the way in which fantasy works in fiction. Fiction is inherently fantastical, no matter how ‘real to life’ its narrative may appear. Any film or book, unless it is an actual true story (*based* on a true story also implies a certain degree of fictionality among the facts), is a work of fiction. But, almost without exception, even the most fantastical worlds have a set of rules to which all characters, objects, landscapes and plotlines must adhere. Every fictional world has its own physics, if you like, a physics that, regardless of how much it may differ from ours, is *consistent* and *symbiotic* with itself and its surroundings.

So, taking the example from the movie Wall-E as above, I would argue that, regardless of the fact that the world of Wall-E is different from our own, the physical law of gravity within the film is sometimes represented in one way (e.g., like real gravity) and sometimes in another way (e.g., like some crazy bizarre version of gravity that makes fat people slide about for comic and/or dramatic effect). This physical rule is neither consistent nor symbiotic. The original poster’s gripe with the use of gravity is not that it is fantastical, but that it is only fantastical *some of the time*.

I would like to point out for legal purposes that the above example posts are entirely fictional, and the hypothetical ‘users’ not based on any real person(s), living or dead.

The actual second poster provided a few examples of films that demand a suspension of disbelief to (ineffectually) back up his/her point. Along the lines of: > Next you’ll be saying superman shouldn’t be able to fly, or a magical ring shouldn’t make people disappear <

These two examples are, clearly, completely unrelated to the original argument. In Superman and its multiple incarnations, Superman can always fly (unless struck down by kryptonite). Imagine a film in which Superman can fly sometimes, but other times, for no valid reason, he can’t get off the ground. The problem here wouldn’t be the fact that Superman can fly, it would be the fact that his flying abilities (or lack thereof) are inconsistent and inexplicable. Same goes for Lord of the Rings. The Ring *always* makes its wearer invisible. Not just sometimes, when it feels like it.

Many many many people all over the world are confusing suspension of disbelief with pure disbelief. Fans of movies will use the ‘duh, have you never heard of a little thing called *suspension of disbelief* before??1!1′ reflex whenever anyone dares to criticise their beloved film. The problem is that these people do not actually themselves understand the term ’suspension of disbelief’.

Dictionary.com defines suspension of disbelief as follows:

a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment.

It also cites the origin of the term with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Although the definition appears to suggest that we should throw all common sense out of the window in the name of a good laugh, I’m fairly sure that this attitude is not what SoD is really about.

Wikipedia’s article is more detailed, but talking much the same talk:

Suspension of disbelief or “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” is an aesthetic theory intended to characterize people’s relationships to art. It was coined by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817. It refers to the willingness of a person to accept as true the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible. It also refers to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. According to the theory, suspension of disbelief is a quid pro quo: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment.

The immortal encyclopaedia, however, goes on to say:

In the 1994 film Ed Wood, the main character, Ed Wood, played by Johnny Depp, uses the term in the dialogue. He is on the set of Grave Robbers from Outer Space, which was eventually released as Plan 9 from Outer Space. He is arguing with one of the producers who asks, “How ’bout that the policemen arrive in the daylight, but now it’s suddenly night?” to which Ed replies “What do you know? Haven’t you ever heard of ’suspension of disbelief’?”

It seems obvious that Burton is being ironic here, possibly satirising the popular confusion SoD encourages. Edward D. Wood, Jr is widely regarded as the worst film maker of all time. This comment cannot, surely, be a true surmise of the SoD tradition.

So what exactly do we mean by ’suspension of disbelief’?

The wikipedia article also mentions aestheticism, a concept popularised during the Modernist movement that celebrated beauty, youth, luxury and affluence. It did *not*, however, celebrate these things at the expense of a well written story or a well painted painting. Aestheticism is dependent upon the appreciation of an art that is both thoughtfully constructed, beautifully presented, and wholly perfect. All art, particularly literature, is fictional and fantastical, and therefore all art requires us to suspend, to some degree, our disbelief. Suspending your disbelief is quite simply the process of sitting down with a book and, on some level, acknowledging that what you are about to read is not *real life*. SoD is not an excuse to be slapdash with your details or careless with your characters. This would totally undermine its aesthetic origins. But, sadly, a great deal of poor writing now slips through customs thanks to the big sticker slapped on its suitcase that reads: NO NEED TO THINK – SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF FIELD IN OPERATION.

When Coleridge coined this phrase it was because he wanted people to appreciate Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner without them having to have previously visited Xanadu, or gone mad on a boat. It wasn’t just an excuse for him to mess around and write silly poems.

These days, however, the suspension of disbelief concept has allowed writers to skimp on details, skirt round gaping plot holes and generally make a mockery of their art. It has also armed people with the misconception that none of this matters. AND IT DOES. It matters terribly. Because the more we encourage rubbish art, the more rubbish art there will be. And because rubbish art is quicker to write, quicker to produce, cheaper to publicise and easier to consume, it will eventually kill off all the good new art much like the sad sad situation with the squirrels.

Suspension of disbelief is an art in itself. In order to write the perfect piece of fiction it is vital that the author and reader share a complicit understanding that the art isn’t real, but also, that there are still rules. These rules are important; without them, nothing would make any sense, and then where would we be? Stranded up an abstract creek with no paddle of reference, that’s where.

Post scriptum: I must make it clear that I *love* the film Wall-E, and do not by any stretch of the imagination consider it rubbish art. The gravity thing was a minor boob in an otherwise peerless piece of cinematography. But a boob nonetheless.