Living in an age of extremism
The news is still changing after the dreadful Norway attack which BBC is now reporting has left over 80 dead, mostly the young students and the Labour rally on an Island outside Oslo. Increasingly it would appear that this is a far right extremist attack, by someone known to have anti Islamic and anti multicultural views. It is perhaps closer to Oklahoma than the 9/11 Militant Islamist.
The last decade of the 20th century and the early stage of the 21st have been marked by extremist acts of terror which show that we as a species have lost none of our propensity to produce individuals who take innocent human lives to make political points. The terror which has struck at the heart of Norway, and which has struck in such a devastating way, the politically interested youth is a late manifestation of this. It shows the callous and curious tendency for extremist groups of contrasting political opinions, such as right wing fascists and Islamist militants, to borrow strategies for one another. The use of a mass bombing in a city centre has echoes of the IRA bomb in Manchester and Oklahoma. But the use of a double attack is something seen by Islamist extremists and mass shootings echo the Islamist attack on a hotel in Mumbai.
It is not only in the tactics that such extremists share, but also the total disregard to the dignity of the human person in the pursuit of a political statement. Yet the expression of concern for the dignity of the human person is the fundamental political and ethical responsibility – the concern for the other, rather than the sole interest of the self. Militant extremist attacks cloak themselves in some greater common task, some sophisticate communal movement, but this obscures a radical individualism that totalises self interest and the self orientated view of the world. It is an act of utter selfishness, that feeds an overblown sense of self importance and significance; a grotesque murder dressed as a political statement to be lapped up by a global media.
FIFA
FIFA is having difficulty with it’s ethics. It would appear that the billion dollar industry that is world football, is not as transparent, honest and moral as it ought to be and perhaps things like the decision making process that chose the lucky recipient of the world cup, may not have been done ‘on the level’. While FIFA struggles to keep it’s closed operation from spilling over into the clear light of day, and Mr Blatter calls out ‘problem, what problem’, the upstanding bastions of truth and justice, Sony and Coca-cola, have decided that they might not want to appear to be associated with corruption at the heart of the world’s favorite sport. Let’s hope we can rely on market forces to clean up the shadier side of … well, market forces.
Ratko Mladic:
Ratko Mladic is a wanted war criminal who has been on the run for 16 years, accused of overseeing genocide, the killing of thousands of Muslim men and boys in concentration camps, and the oversight of systematic rape of Bosnian Muslim women. These killings and crimes against humanity, were carried out within Europe, within a couple of hours flight from UK airports. Finally, after living in hiding for many years, justice has caught up with him. For years it seems that he was protected but at last it seems as though there is a chance that his many many victims will see him tried for what he is accused of. Today is a good day.
Should Christian ethics focus on convergence and correlation or on distinctively Christian features?
There has been a great deal of interest in the development of common ethical approaches that transcend distinctive philosophical and theological boundaries. Karen Armstrong has argued about the importance of the Golden Rule as it is something that crosses many boundaries, and is found in many religious traditions from Confucius onwards. There is the work of the Charter of Compassionate uniting different believers around that concept. Some look to universal human rights as providing a common framework, with concepts of dignity and equality at their heart. The Earth Charter presents another of these movements.
But religious traditions do offer distinctive ethical perspectives that can define the religious outlook. In Christianity the love of neighbor is also the love of enemy. What is more it is a sacrificial love, the love that Jesus showed humanity. ‘Lover one another – as I have loved you’ . The concept of self sacrificial love is distinctive and binds the ethical conduct of Christians to the revelation of Christ and the crucifixion. Being Christian in ethical terms entails living a Christ- like life. The ethic of reciprocity is superseded by an ethic of self sacrifice. This does not mean that reciprocity is not there, but that a greater ethical pricniple is also pointed to.
For many Christians, this has inspired them to take particular and sometimes unpopular and uncompromising ethical positions – pacifism for some. It means a willingness to face martyrdom. Self sacrifice is an ultimate ethical act, demonstrated by the primary school teacher in Dunblane, when she stood in front of her young pupils as the gunman began to fire. The actions of some on the Titanic who made sure the women and children had priority seating on the few lifeboats meant they themselves would not survive.
Of course many people, of many different religious backgrounds have given their lives for others. The difficult question is whether, in searching for a common ethic, some of the most important and distinctive elements of religious ethical traditions may be lost. What is the balance that a Christian should strike between seeking to engage the ethical discourse of the common community, and seeking to give a distinctive justification for moral action.
The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris
Reviewers are talking about Sam Harris’ new book, The Moral Landscape, available from Amazon. Harris’ first book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason attacked religion ( see my discussion of it here) but in this book he is preposing science as a source for ethics. This sounds like Harris might be a naturalist, but he doesn’t think morality is directly measurable in that way, but rather that morality is linked to wellbeing and wellbeing can be grounded in measurable things. He discusses it in Radio 4s Start the Week, available here. It’s on my reading list.
The Killing of Osama Bin Laden
A friend of mine wrote this on her wall today,
”I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are many who are celebrating in America today after the successful killing of Bin Laden, by US Navy special forces who found and killed him in a large mansion complex north of Islamabad, by order of President Obama. Who is right – King or Obama?
David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
Eagleman was recently interviewed on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zzqy9#synopsis). In his new book ‘Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain’ he explores the brain and presents, in an accessible way if the reviews are to be believed, his case that decisions are made by the brain all the time and that we are usually not aware of the reasons for the decision.
“In a recent experiment, men were asked to rank how attractive they found photographs of different women’s faces. The photos were 8 x 10 inches, and showed women facing the camera, or turned in three-quarter profile. Unbeknownst to the men, in half the photos the women had their eyes dilated, and in the other half they did not. The men were consistently more attracted to the women with dilated eyes. Remarkably, the men had no insight into their decision making. None of them said, “I noticed her pupils were 2 millimeters larger in this photo than in the other one.” Instead, they simply felt more drawn toward some women than toward others, for reasons they couldn’t quite put a finger on.
But their choices weren’t accidental. In the largely inaccessible workings of the brain, somethingknew that a woman’s dilated eyes correlates with sexual excitement and readiness. Their brains knew this, but the men didn’t—at least not explicitly. Presumably, the men also didn’t know that their sense of beauty and attraction is deeply hard-wired, steered in the right direction by programs carved by millions of years of natural selection. When the men were choosing the most attractive woman, they didn’t know that the choice was not theirs, really, but instead the choice of successful programs that had been burned down deep into the brain’s circuitry over the course of millions of years and hundreds of thousands of generations.” (page 6)
Read more here: http://www.eagleman.com/incognito
For philosophers and politicians the question here is if our decisions are largely made by our brains, rather than ‘us’ (and by us we mean the conscious self) to what extent are they free and therefore to what extent can we be blamed for our choices, for example to commit crimes. Eagleman thinks this is the wrong question to think about. The right question is what to do with an individual who has done something, in the light of the brain that they have. He thinks that punishments should be individualised to the particular individual, rather than universalised. If human judgments are the result of the particular developments of the brain caused by decades of experience and inherited genes, the important thing to do is work out what needs to be done to that individual to prevent a repeat of the offence. It is simply not a question of moral responsibility which is something Eagleman finds mysterious and perhaps inaccessible. Eagleman is not a hard determinist in that he believes there is some space for free action, but it is a small space.
This leaves questions for religious systems that place a lot of importance on moral responsibility, such as those that consider ‘sin’ an important feature or karma. Eagleman’s work is based on neuroscience, not theology, but surely theology must respond to these new understandings of our brain operations?
You can buy the book here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1847679382/rsweb-21
Talk at Benenden School
Many thanks to the students of Benenden school for their hospitality and conversation this evening.
Religious Rights Violations| Reports for 2010
International Religious Freedom Report The International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the US Department of State. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/. Also available as a pdf here: http://www.uscirf.gov/images/annual%20report%202010.pdf
Persecuted and Forgotten Aid to the Church in Need have published their report on persecution against Christians. Free copies may be ordered from www.acnuk.org . Examples of persecution are reported from around the world including Asia Bibi on Death row in Pakistan for blasphemy, the murder of priests in Iraq, restrictions in China and bombings at Churches in Egypt.
Five Year Report: Intolerance against Christians in Europe compiled by the
1000 Cranes for Japan
Dear Reader
I attach a flier which has suggestions for how school children may respond to the Japan emergency. I taught in Japan for a year many years ago, in a county called Toyama, on the west coast of the central Honshu island. Tragically, a whole class of children from Toyama were killed when they were visiting Christchurch, New Zealand in the earthquake a few weeks ago. Of course this is now overshadowed by the scale of the greater disaster that has befallen Japan.
My year in Japan was part of a cultural project to bridge our countries and encourage friendship between our peoples, and at the end of it I made a commitment to be a friendly envoy for Toyama county and the people of Japan. In the light of the disasters that have befallen that people I, and my wife who also taught in Japan, have decided to try to encourage schools to do something.
The flier has a couple of suggestions, one of which is to encourage the act of making origami cranes, which is a tradition that every Japanese school child learns and participates in. It is linked with the story of Sadako Sasaki, the girl who wanted to make a thousand cranes as an act of peace after the dropping of the atomic bomb. In Japanese tradition a crane lived for a thousand years and it was said that if you made a thousand cranes your wish would come true. Sadako wished for a nuclear free world of peace. She died of leukemia, from the bomb, before she finished her task so her school friends finished it for her. Now every school in Japan participates in this act of peace in her memory and in the hope of peace.
I would like to inspire some schools in England to take up this tradition as an act of solidarity with the school children of Japan and in the hope of peace for them and for the world. If stories were to reach Japan of school children from across the seas making cranes for Japan then it might just give them a little hope.
If you feel you can help, click the link below
Many thanks for your time.
Response to Japan
Bob Bowie
Buy my Books
Welcome
Welcome to the home site of my text books for schools. I am available to come and speak to sixth forms or work with teachers, and do other consultancy for Government agencies, religious and publishing bodies.
Get Follow Me Buttons
