Category Archives: Philosophy

by | October 22, 2012 · 9:44 pm

My Atheism, my Islam

By Arianna Khan

It’s a strange position to hold, claiming both atheism and Islam in one breath. Atheist due to my lack of belief in a deity, Muslim due to my upbringing, my education and my home life. I still read the Qur’an and make every endeavour to learn more about the religion I’ve given up on – I even still fast when Ramadan comes around and greet other Muslims with my salams.

Perhaps it is these dichotomies and tensions that shouldn’t be able to be reconciled that have resolved in me and created the person writing this now.

And yet it is this strange position that I’m in that caused such a furious anger within me not long ago. I was sat in a lecture hall at university, awaiting a talk about Sharia law and human rights, with an audience made up of other Muslims and non-Muslims alike. A Muslim man walked in, camera phone held up high, videoing all those present and went on to threaten the lives of everyone present if there were any words spoken against the prophet Mohammad (pbuh).

I sat in stunned silence, at first not taking in the full effect of his words, not taking him seriously. Purely because the way I was brought up, my Islam, taught by my family and by myself, told me that such actions are not only an infringement of human rights but completely un-Islamic. It was an Islam I did not recognise.

Once the words settled in, the police called by the organisers and the talk subsequently cancelled, the anger settled in – and then the nausea of fear and fury. Many in the society made their way to the local pub, I joined them, but I was still reeling from what had happened, trying to process the anger this young man had demonstrated towards his fellow Muslims, his fellow human beings. My own thoughts went back to all the times I had been treated with fear and prejudice because of my own background and lost religion that I freely expressed to those who asked. A horrific realisation struck me: all those words, punches and glances of fear were due to people like the one who threatened us. It almost felt that he was trying to justify the generalisation that was put against us. He is the embodiment of why we, as Muslims, even ex-Muslims, or as simply being from the subcontinent, can be victim of abuse from those who generalise us in this way.

But it wasn’t only fear and anger I walked away with that night – hope pursued soon afterwards. I overheard the many of those there from the Islamic society of the university apologising repeatedly for the interruption, voicing concerns similar to my own, of how this wasn’t representative of Islam, and that person wasn’t the voice of the society. The man who had threatened us was one of the few, not the voice of the many.

One of the group of Muslims there spoke up saying that perhaps we could hold our own debate, peacefully and simply talk amongst ourselves, civil, opposing perhaps, but respectful. And waiting outside to leave for a much-needed drink, I spoke to another Muslim, president of his Islamic society, a sect separate to that of the larger Islamic Society, who seemed to understand my strange position and appeared to be just as distraught by the situation as the rest of us.

Perhaps the night ended with death threats, with fear and anger, with a questioning of what makes community and society. It was still this ending that reminded me of something bigger than that one event. No matter how angry that one small group of people, that one tiny part of British muslims today may be, they can never stop that feeling of solidarity between us as humans regardless of religious beliefs or lack there of.

They can never hide the brighter light of those who support the freedom of expression and recognise something deeper than simply the beliefs that someone holds and sees in them a fellow person – a respected and loved human being.

Arianna Khan was born in Australia, bred a Pakistani and is a Londoner at heart. She’s an English literature and film student with an love for travel, books and a good argument

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by | October 10, 2012 · 6:04 pm

Fancy a hug? Get a jacket it to do it for you!

By Kirstin Fairnie

I’ll be the first to admit I’m quite a needy person, but even I am freaked out by the “Like-a-Hug” vest. I’m also a little bit disappointed that it’ll be back to the drawing board for my submission to the British Invention Show: I’ve been discussing the gap in the market that the ‘Like-A-Hug’ tries to fill for years with friends and family who live far away.

This is not just a padded gilet, it’s a Melissa Kit Chow padded gilet. Which means it’s interactive. Yes, that’s right – scarily, interactive clothes have happened. And no, this is not a costume for an upcoming Hollywood version of “1984″. Here’s how it works: you walk around wearing one of these fairly unflattering vests, ensuring of course that you are connected to some form of device at all times (this seems to be a standard requirement for most of us ‘young people’, which, I can tell you, is quite a pressure); whenever (or perhaps if ever) somebody likes something on your Facebook page, the vest inflates to make you feel like you’re getting a hug from that person.

Aside from the fact that it would be disconcerting to walk past someone whose jacket inflated spontaneously (although it would probably be great news for all those glossy magazines that make a mint out of publishing photos of celebs who have supposedly got a podgier tummy than they did last week), I can sort of see why this is a good idea – leaving a comment on Facebook is just not the same as being in the room with your friend, so any step towards teletransportation is a step forward. But frankly (and sorry to go all serious and philosophical about an art project) I think it proves we’re becoming increasingly insecure and needy.

Social media means that we never have to feel like we’re alone. We can be physically alone, yet engaged in virtual conversation with as many friends as are online, so we kid ourselves into thinking that we’re not really alone. The constant contact this allows us seems to be making us less able to cope with normal levels of solitude. I don’t even know what a normal level of solitude is anymore: if I spend any time alone I worry constantly that the rest of the world is having a massive party without me. Which they probably are, come to think of it.

Do we really need to have a physical sign that shows somebody else values us? As a child I always half-wished I could read people’s minds so I knew whether or not they liked me. The “Like-A-Hug” vest comes close to this, but has the added bonus of allowing the wearer to parade smugly in front of everyone else proclaiming in fully inflated glory that somebody likes them. It seems it isn’t enough to feel internally satisfied – we know have to share even our relationships with the rest of the world. I always used to end up deciding that actually I wouldn’t like to be able to read people’s minds, since then you’d have to know if they didn’t like you. Similarly, walking down a street where everyone else but you is inflated would be a humiliating experience. Social hierarchies could easily be organised around who was inflated most often.

Science fiction is somewhat obsessed with the idea that in the future we will no longer have any human contact, thus ensuring we always operate at 100% efficiency and have no distracting friends to limit our output. If we all wore ‘Like-A-Hug’ vests, this nightmare could become a reality. We could save time on real human contact by sending virtual hugs. Perhaps Melissa Kit Chow should talk to geneticists about developing a pair of trousers that allow immaculate conceptions to occur daily via the internet.

Now, I like to multi-task as much as the next person, but I don’t think relationships should be viewed as organised affairs that can fit conveniently into my timetable thanks to labour saving technologies like Facebook. The reaction to the McNulty report at least gives some hope: there was outcry at the report’s suggestion that Britain’s rail system could operate more efficiently if hundreds of staffed ticket offices were replaced by machines. Representatives of the industry had to issue public reassurances that there would still be some humans in train stations.

It seems that at the grass-roots level we do still value our fellow Man, despite managerial attempts to persuade us otherwise. French steelworkers protesting against their boss’ plans to close the factory they work in should take comfort from the knowledge that outside consultancy firms, we’re all rooting for humans rather than machines.

Kirstin Fairnie is a 2nd year student at Oxford from Orkney who makes bloody good bread

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by | October 8, 2012 · 9:01 pm

Too much tolerance is dubious

By Lukas Panayi

Picture a modern western society. You have a multitude of people, all from different cultural backgrounds, leading different lifestyles, sharing the same rights and freedoms. Everyone is the architect of their own future, everyone has the freedom to showcase and act upon his or her views and beliefs. There are no apparent dogma that dictate how you go about living your life. Apart from a very deceptive one: the dogma of tolerance. Whatever you do, you must be tolerant.

Tolerance has become a keyword in every kind of social or political interaction. When we think of a textbook liberal political agenda, there is no term featured as often as the word “tolerance”. It has taken the form of an ideology and, as many would have us think, the only socially acceptable one. Before one so much as utters an opinion, it first has to undergo a very strict “tolerance filtering”. “Am I offending someone’s beliefs, someone’s set of ideas, am I being intolerant?” In fact, in some social circles, accusing someone of being intolerant is among the worsts non-vulgar insults I can think of.

So what exactly is it that bothers me with the term tolerance? First off, it has to do with the definition of the word. Tolerating basically means living with something that bothers you in the first place. Not liking something or disagreeing with it is a necessary premise for coming to tolerate it. Tolerating something is preceded by disliking, disapproving or not understanding it.

Let’s say I’m sitting in a bus and a baby starts crying and I am obviously annoyed by this. I’m also aware of the fact that there’s no one to blame for the crying baby. Furthermore, there’s not really anything I can do about it and at the end of the day it’s not even such a big deal. So I tolerate it. In such a situation, tolerance is not only justified – it’s a social necessity.

However, to revert to tolerance as a form of dealing with more important social or political problems or issues is, if you think about, ludicrous to say the least. Imagine speaking about tolerance in the context of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Essentially, it’d be like saying “we know y’all don’t like ‘em, just keep quiet and try and live with them”. In this case tolerance is the equivalent of quiescent racism.

How often have you heard someone say “I have nothing against gay people, as long as they keep away from me” or “as long as they don’t do what they do in public”? This form of tolerance – comprising both of people tolerating gay people in this way, as well as other people tolerating these views on gay people – may not be as dangerous as openly discriminating gay people, but it’s nevertheless present. So, instead of it being played down, it should be discussed and dealt with on a multilateral level. In the end, these opinions might prove to be based on prejudice, lack of education and may very well be overcome on a societal level.

The implications that accompany the term “tolerance” go beyond semantics. As I mentioned earlier, tolerating something implies that you decide to live with it, even though you don’t agree with it. Consequently, adopting tolerance as a political strategy or “dogma” essentially translates into political indifference. You obviously have a problem with a certain political or social phenomenon but you can’t be bothered to do something about it. You simply ignore it and hope you won’t be confronted by it.

In that sense, being tolerant can be viewed as a very selective and restrictive way of perceiving reality. Besides, it works as a mental mechanism, which enables you to sit and do nothing, ignore social problems and still feel good about yourself. After all, you’re being tolerant. In one way or another, tolerance is the new opium.

Thus, if tolerance is treated as an ideology, it actually causes us to ignore the underlying causes of social phenomenons. You simply try to ignore their unpleasant manifestations and secretly hope they won’t affect you. In many cases, this has become our primary strategy for dealing with these kinds of problems. Slavoj Zizek, a philosopher and cultural critic argues that many of today’s social problems are perceived as problems of intolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation or injustice, which is, in fact, what they are.

Now, what are the dangers in adopting the notion of tolerance when dealing with political and social matters? When thinking in terms of creating a better society, if one relies on tolerance as a means of preserving peace – a very opiated peace at that – one easily falls into the trap of ignoring certain harmful social habits, as opposed to trying to understand the nature of the problem, identifying their underlying cause and trying to fight it.

So what do I suggest as an alternative? For one thing, think. Use your reason: “Am I being intolerant of cultural rites, or is the utter discrimination of women in conservative Islamic societies just plain wrong?” “Am I not respectful towards the Spanish culture, or is torturing and killing a bull cruel and primitive?”

Furthermore, articulate and express your opinions. Don’t hide them behind the veil of tolerance. Don’t tolerate what your reason conceives as intolerable. It might nowadays seem like such a hassle, but you might find, that occasionally using your intellect to form opinions, express them and even fight for them, might take society a step or two further.

Lukas Panayi is Not So Reviews’ Philosophy Editor

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by | September 29, 2012 · 6:51 pm

Who will win the shock race?

By Kirstin Fairnie

Okay, my gut reaction to the Fox News faux pas was ‘Ooh, that would’ve been crazy to watch!’ Yes, I know: it’s disgusting. Even I am appalled at my voyeurism. But like I say, that was only my gut reaction. A little voice in my head casually mentioned the idea, that’s all. And hey, I’m cool with that, since my moral turbo-charger fully passed its MOT and I didn’t actually entertain the idea for any considerable length of time. But it was there – just saying before I start so you don’t think I’m getting on my high horse later on.

It’s normal to want to be let in on the secret that the whole media is in on. It’s a classic high-school scenario: nobody wants to be the only one who hasn’t seen the latest episode of “Gossip Girl”. But whether or not it’s normal doesn’t really matter, but perhaps it’s something you should really keep to yourself on a first date. Similarly, it might be normal to have a mild interest in the video of a real-life car chase Starsky and Hutch style, but it really is sick to watch it again and again. No wait: it’s COMPLETELY WEIRD and dysfunctional to seek it out to watch on replay. If you’re bored, BBC iPlayer have enough episodes of the “Great British Bake Off” to keep you going until the end of time.

Even the name of the websites that have put the video up for all their baying fans reek of voyeurism: gawker.com? Who actually wants to advertise that fact about themselves? Sorry to go all OED for a second, but for QI the definition of gawking is staring “openly and stupidly”.

The fact that car chases are a regular feature of American TV is a bit depressing. I spend a lot of time trying to tell worthy types that they shouldn’t make blanket statements about Americans and their culture. But come on! It does sound like a caricature. “Oh yah, Americans are all really fat and lazy and they just eat McDonalds all day and watch car chases and get wildly over emotional about everything.”

It’s so puerile: who watches a live car chase? Luckily, I don’t have to make a blanket statement about Americans, but I can make one about ‘us’ just for good measure: we’re so unbelievably childish and nebby. Ban Ki Moon was prank-called for a TV show. What? Ban Ki Moon?! Why? That’s disrespectful and more importantly a giant waste of everyone’s time: the prank caller knows it’s all a sham, poor old Ban Ki finds this out pretty soon and 3 Africans die in the time he’s wasting  on the phone when he could be chatting up Bono, the TV production company are probably pretty gutted that they’ve been reduced to churning out such drivel to please their audience.

The media are still ogling Megan and her family, even though now she’s been found and the job’s technically over. I don’t believe that she was the first girl to run off with a guy her parents disapprove of (and, judging from the CCTV pictures, they do have a point), but her USP is that she’s under 16. Newsrooms across the world shout: this is a real scandal. The real reason the media got so involved in the case is that they just want a gossip. They’re not actually bothered about whether she’s okay, they just want a juicy story. What makes that worse is that we all know that the story will sell.

Gossip, like being nosy, is a natural, normal part of our slightly unattractive human nature. But do we really want our culture subsumed by it? I’m not somebody who sneers at low culture – I’m a philistine and proud. But unless we stop indulging in exploitative E4 documentaries with ridiculous titles like ‘Unicorn Boy’ or reality TV shows that will only really be interesting in 100 years’ time as a representation of 21st century life, we might lose all sense of what entertainment really is.

Kirstin Fairnie is a 2nd year student at Oxford from Orkney and who makes bloody good bread

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by | August 29, 2012 · 7:07 pm

We’re looking for an Assistant Editor!

The web’s most quietly subversive cultural commentary website Not So Reviews is looking for an Assistant Editor to join its editorial team.

Working closely with the Editor and Deputy editor, your responsibilities will be sourcing content from potential and existing columnists, proofreading and approving articles, managing and expanding NSR’s social media presence, and contributing an article or two.

This is an unpaid position but all in all the position is very part-time, requiring about an hour of work a day and perfect for those looking for further experience in the field of journalism and to be involved in an up and coming publication.

Necessary requirements:

- Reliability

- Some experience with journalism

- Some experience in proofreading

- A passion for writing and culture

- The ability to work as a member of a team

- Proficiency in WordPress

Send us your CV and a little note detailing your experience and what you’d like to get out of the position by the 20th of September.

Send all applications (and questions) to not.so.reviews@gmail.com

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by | August 14, 2012 · 4:50 pm

A little chat about abortion

By Petros Fessas

Military service is a surreal experience. What else could you get from putting hundreds of testosterone-pumped young males from every background imaginable together for months on end? The combinations of ideologies and mindsets that collide are unpredictable and innumerable – they served to pop the bubble in which I used to live: a place where youth was by definition liberal and skeptical of social conventions.

I have found that to survive through this carnival of absurdity, it is best to wear an imaginary Dali mustache and constantly remind myself: “Surrealismo!” This is exactly what I did a few weeks ago when I witnessed a most unusual dialogue.

For the purpose of communicating the sense of astonishment I felt, I will describe the two protagonists. Mr. A is a slightly effeminate young man with a childish naïvety and a big mouth to match. He is also insanely rich. Opposite is Mr. B: he is a matter-of-fact kind of guy with a very strict Christian Orthodox upbringing from his rural family. When it is his job to wake us up, he chooses to do so with the accompaniment of byzantine hymns recorded on his mobile phone. Yes.

So, here goes:

A: “This friend of mine just can’t be bothered with contraception. She’s had an abortion six, maybe seven times! They even paid her once to film the ripping up of the baby and use it for a documentary!”

B: “You’re disgusting – you do know that for the church, it would be less of a sin to give birth to a baby, give it a proper christening and then kill it.”

Oh goodness.

It was one of those simultaneously comical and horrifying experiences that take your ideas and beliefs, just as you thought they were about to take some kind of form, and give them a great shake. I am almost ashamed to admit that I live in a world where this conversation has taken place.

I have, for my sanity’s sake, attempted to perform an autopsy on that chat. First things first: our pleasant chap Mr. A seems to be friends with a loyal skipper of sex-ed classes. Still, that’s within the sphere of perceivable reality: I could have very easily imagined that there are people in this world that “just can’t be bothered” with avoiding STDs and unwanted pregnancies. I also could have imagined that within that group of people, there is a small subset that is pro-abortion in the most irresponsible of ways, using it as a morning-after pill, and insensitive to the mental pictures associated with the expression “ripping up the baby”. I am also assuming that the gynaecologist this young lady is seeing has made clear the possible effects of unprotected sex and of repeatedly resorting to termination, but has proceeded to the act because it is allowed.

So, I can claim that I have come to terms with what I heard from Monsieur A.

What remains mind-numbing though, is what my darling B had to say. For clarification, I do not believe that B – or anyone else – actually has the murder of a newborn as a possible plan when life throws an unwanted pregnancy at him. Nevertheless, it is true that he considers abortion to be a graver sin than the killing of an infant after it has been baptized. This is disturbing on its own.

The idea is based upon the Christian mythology that unbaptized souls, like, supposedly, those of aborted embrya, are not worthy of heaven: they linger in limbo for all eternity. Christianity also preaches the unquestionable and immeasurable sanctity of life from the moment of conception as its main argument against abortion, which it considers to be murder. But if an act of murder weighs more than another, doesn’t the sanctity of life stop being immeasurable and become adjustable and specific to circumstance? The whole argument is shattered. The vague institution of the sanctity of life is the reason why some people refuse to use science to take control of their lives and proceed with undesired pregnancies.

Personally, I like to approach the issue of abortion as a battle between maternal and fetal autonomy. The line at which the latter is perceived to value more than the former is technology-dependent: it is the point after which the fetus can be viably sustained using the best medical means available. This point is currently at around 24 weeks of gestation but is expected to shift as science advances. As is within the nature of the medical profession, the line drawn at 24 weeks is not clear-cut but is only taken as such to allow for a law: it is the duration of pregnancy after which, within statistical variation, more of the newborns will survive than die if delivered.

This position, of course, I’d apply only to abortions where the infant is unwanted due to the mother’s psychological concerns and not because of physical health issues, for example in the case of prenatal screening diagnosing a serious genetic condition in the fetus, in which case other parameters enter the discussion.

The idea brought forward by B has an additional underlying logic to it: since abortion equals murder, then all a mother has to do instead of terminating is to give birth to a child and give it its christening before she kills it to save its soul. Hopefully, in the process will come the realization that so strong is the bond that she’s formed with the infant, that she is unable to take its life. It is a priest’s way of asking: “Why terminate a pregnancy whose fruit will give such joy and love?” Needless to say, this ignores the basic reason that the notion of family planning ever developed (limited resources) and reduces it to something that can reasonably be ignored based on the “joys of child-bearing”.

“Surrealismo” it is. In the end, this whole reaction to that extraordinary conversation might just be the hysteria of the cultural shock, of coming into contact with people with whom you share so little in terms of beliefs that you can reasonably wonder whether you are both habitants of the same planet.

Petros Fessas is currently serving in the Cyprus National Guard for another year and will read medicine at Cambridge after that

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by | August 12, 2012 · 2:27 pm

Hold Your Liquor

By Robert Hainault

I recline on the sofa, my brogue-clad feet just visible beyond my computer screen, a glass of late-bottled port, glossy as black lacquer, at my right hand. The mirror hanging on the overmantle presents me with a perfect vision of the political Right: snobbish, carefree (even hedonistic), self-satisfied and yet somehow self-hating at the same time. Even, right about now, self-pitying. It’s an unpleasant image.

I can see why people might jump to conclusions. Surely no-one who takes such care over a necktie can be ‘one of us’. And it’s true. I’m not one of you. I’m a conservative and conservatives are always somewhat apart from the rest of the world; they move among their own. It is why so many of us are so goddamn dissociated from reality; we live in a world of complete abstraction. Of honour, and decency, and old-fashioned values. Things that do not tremble in the face of such trivialities as evidence and human suffering. We hate change, we hate to be told that we’re wrong, and we proselytise with abandon. Conservatism is, really, a sickness. And like most diseases the pathogens want to spread.

Consider Ann Coulter, a terminal case if ever there was one. A woman who seems outrageously funny in print but whose lustre vanishes completely when you hear her speak and you realise that she actually believes everything she says. “I don’t really like to think of it as a murder,” she says to some dizzy, demonstrably delighted interviewer on Fox. “It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester … I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don’t want to impose my moral values on others.” She is talking, of course, about the killing of Kansas doctor George Tiller in 2009 and there’s something very sinister in it, isn’t there? Something about her taking that much time to do the math. It has the ring of irony. That is her great skill: to sound ironic when she is deadly serious.

The late stages of conservatism always sound like that, when the malignancy has finally eaten through that last bit of brain and killed off all hope of reason. It came for Mrs Thatcher as she clung by her teeth to the vision of the England she had yet to forge. It came for Churchill when he ordered the bombing of Dresden, when the women and children burned.

Libertarianism might be thought of as an antidote to the disease, the state limited in its reach so that the conservatives will never be able to wield too much influence over our daily lives. There is a focus on economic policy, a pragmatism that permits ideas of open borders, sexual equality and civil rights into the right-wing fold. Libertarianism may even force the conservatism into remission, like it did with Bill Buckley.

People often think that I am a Libertarian; noun. Actually, I’m libertarian; adjective. It is libertarianism, not Libertarianism that is the antidote to malignant conservatism. Big L Libertarianism is an ideology that has little use for people like me. It is too fond of hugging the immigrant, loving the queer, rolling out a human carpet for the boots of foreign troops. The big L has its own metastases. At its most basic it is the fusion of right-wing economic policy with social liberalism and pacifism. At its most cancerous it causes reasonable people to say we should never have involved ourselves in World War Two.

Let me state my position quite clearly: I believe the power of the state should be limited, but I’m not a social liberal. Because I do not think the state should have any say in the legality of gay marriage does not mean I’m for it, nor does it mean I should have to be for it. I don’t think it is up to the state to decide what I can or cannot put into my body, but that doesn’t mean I cannot think of the cocaine trade as immoral, nor those who take it as complicit in a bloody business of bondage and death. I do not think the state should have the power to execute the most barbaric criminals, but that does not mean I think they deserve to carry on living.

My politics are mixed like a dry martini: libertarianism lines the glass, but conservatism fills it. The vermouth gives the gin added flavour and subtlety, offsets it, makes it more palatable. The libertarianism makes the conservatism more sane, makes the conservative mind more sanitary. Libertarianism is essential to the hygiene of conservative thought: without it, the conservative government destroys itself, cripples its people, hinders freedom.

But Libertarianism, like vermouth, tastes crude and unpleasant when drunk on its own. It tastes too much of vermouth. No sane person really believes that unhindered immigration is worth the economic prosperity. Not when those immigrants bring with them daughters and razor blades, or Qur’ans and bombs. Take the first example. According to the UK Home Office “it is estimated that up to 24,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk of female genital mutilation”. Despite this practise being illegal in England since 1985 there has never been a single prosecution.

Nor is pacifism noble when the guns of foreign dictators are turned on helpless children. It is not right or just to promote the withering of the state until it is too weak and feeble to turn against such bloody tyranny. Voluntary association can provide admirable aid to the poor within and without our borders. What can charity do for the oppressed of the world but pick up the dead from the streets to be burnt and wash the blood into the rivers?

And yet, for this article people will say I’m hateful. That I hate homosexuals and think our culture drowns under a sea of brown skin. But recognising that gay culture has flaws, that immigration has a downside, is not tantamount to joining the black shirts. And to say that it is is nothing more than a ploy by those who are pro-everything leftie to make anyone who disagrees sound like a crank.

But it is possible to criticise without disdain: my guts do not twist with hatred about things I don’t like or of which I don’t approve. Neither do I like gay culture, nor do I hate gay people. Neither do I like laissez-faire immigration, nor do I hate foreigners. In short, my martini is mixed just right. I’m sure some of you will disagree, but perhaps you just need to learn to hold your liquor?

Robert Hainault is a columnist for Not So Reviews

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by | August 11, 2012 · 6:38 pm

Democracy and its discontents

By Mark Warburton

Alexander Payne’s body of work – comedy-drama of the dark, existential kind – exudes an unwavering pessimism that few directors dare convey (the rabid misanthropy of Todd Solondz’s oeuvre serves as a bleak exception). Payne’s “Election” raises the stakes: its raison d’être is a cynical attack on democracy – the jewel of the Fukuyamian-Hegelian liberal state.

“Election”‘s key scenes involve the student ‘campaign trail’ at Carver High School. Chris Klein (popular yet clueless jock) and Reese Witherspoon (proto-Hilary Clinton) spout the usual platitudes real-life politicians do during democratic contestations. In response to the standard pledges (pledges that rhetorically use the foundational ‘values’ of the democratic system: ‘freedom’, ‘ unity’, and ‘fairness’), Tammy Metzler, the anarchistic sister of Chris Klein’s character, rallies against the idea that the newly elected student body will provide any positive change.

Tammy stands as a potential candidate – but only to dismantle the democratic system she hates. For a brief moment at Carver High, she shakes the foundations of democracy by raising doubts in the minds of her fellow pupils. Criticising democracy can lead to the kind of defensive reaction the religious have when told their god/s may not exist. Reforms to the system, and fuzzy idealism regarding pure democracy, is the closest democracy gets to mainstream criticism.

The religiousity of modern democracy was addressed by the sagacious old prophet, Nietzsche: “the democratic movement is Christianity’s heir”. He was not wrong. ‘The rule of the people’, might as well read: the meek to inherit the earth. Furthermore, the obsession with equality and the equalising symbolism of the vote itself shows that democracy’s genealogy is a Christian-socialist one. Democracy, then, is not politically neutral. Its religious foundations (qua political system) and collectivist pretensions affect power-relations within society and culture. This left-humanism acts as a defensive dam; a bureaucratic leash to the anti-humanistic waves of capital’s creative destruction.

Democracy’s core ideal, that all matters are up for public deliberation, excites the humanist, yet it only encourages the state to expand. No individual liberty is untouchable. It should be clear, by now, then, that economic (or even social) freedom does not sleep well with democracy. If freedom leads to democracy – at first away from totalitarianism – democracy ends up assaulting freedom by the development of a strangulating statism.

Robert Michel’s “Iron Law of Oligarchy” pointed to democracy’s totalitarian potential . The humanistic, egalitarian goals that the system is founded upon – and promised in the long-term – are flattened by oligarchic, quasi-totalitarian structures. Democracy’s naive goal of minimising hierarchy failed. On the contrary, democracy legitimising the moral right of one set of elites over another, just solidifies the ‘sanctity’ of the system.

What of the political parties in a democratic state? They continue to generate a fantasy of choice. They are wholly ceremonial, drip fed into the public consciousness; melodramatic spectacles courtesy of the entertainment network. Whether Klein’s bumbling jock is elected, or Wetherspoon’s mannequin of egoism, it matters little; genuinely practical ideas, pragmatic approaches are swamped by special interest groups and lobbyists. Inertia and indecision are hallmarks of a lumbering, bureaucratic civil service that delays local, on-the-ground action. The every-man who cynically snorts ‘they’re all the same’ is closer to the truth than he realises.

It should be noted that a secondary narrative has contributed to the homogenising way in which the political parties of, say, the UK (especially post-Thatcher), have increasingly converged upon a neoliberal, centre-right economic attitude that is at odds with democracy. The ongoings ensuing tension between economic freedom (capital) and democracy (humanism) is the political fulcrum of our times.

Democracy’s ‘truth’ is buffered by (furtive) social controls that are normalised by higher educational institutions, media channels and non-governmental organisations . What Foucault calls ‘regimes of truth’. Internalised social controls dominate the individual more than ever. The intensification of surveillance and the naturalisation of neoliberal metaphysics compliment the ideological influence democracy has on individuals. We are left to self-regulate, consult with others, and constantly reassess appraisals and reforms everywhere. From the corporation, to the experience of remnant culture.

Mencius Moldbug, a neo-reactionary of some repute, calls the democratic power structure the ‘Cathedral’. This isn’t another conspiracy theory of the right. Agency takes the back seat to structure, with the strongest undercurrents in contemporary, political culture winning out: Historical meme(-ory);The Enlightenment; Christian piety; and its slave morality. These elements of our cultural and intellectual heritage deepen the guilt of the past, and cultivate a democratic system that is both headless and generative.

Democracy is a bitter pill to swallow; but what, then, is the alternative? Obviously voting for fringe political parties reinforces the logic of democracy. Is it even possible to destroy something so deeply entwined in our political culture? The emphasis of ultra-right economical utopia/dystopias i.e. anarcho-capitalism, libertarianism, may lead us to a technocratic state, or Skynet, something utterly un/in human. Perhaps they are as much pipe dreams as left-anarchism and neo-marxism. The destruction of the ‘human security system’ i.e. humanism and democracy, may very well belong in a post/trans human world. Until then, man’s political nature will dominate itself – the prevalence of social control and hierarchies are realities that even the dreamiest leftist must concede.

Perhaps the capitalist authoritarianism of Hong Kong and Singapore is a glimpse of the future – a premonition of the kind of city-state that, when cyber-capital is left (almost) to its own devices, rhizomes into cities that remind us of “Bladerunner”.

Mark Warburton is Not So Reviews’ philosophy columnist

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by | August 6, 2012 · 3:02 pm

No one should have to walk the green mile

By Naomi Upton

In the novel “The Green Mile”, Stephen King tells the tale of John Coffey, a 6’8 black man falsely charged for the rape and murder of two young white girls. In reality, we would like to think this man would be released after his false conviction. Yet the setting King uses is inspired by the Louisiana State Penitentiary; a setting in which the ‘guilty’, alongside the falsely accused, are put to a horrific death for their ‘crimes’ through execution in the electric chair.

I lost many of hours of sleep devouring this book. The stark and painful reality of the monotonous process echoed throughout the whole novel – with the day-to-day events of the supervisors at death row, or “The Green Mile”, being overshadowed by the haunting presence of “Old Sparky” and the painful fates of the inmates.

I cried buckets.

Innocent John Coffey’s death was a particularly harrowing event, but I surprised myself when I found myself in absolute floods of tears at the death of Eduard Delacroix. Delacroix is portrayed as a guilty, insane mass murderer. While we warm to him throughout the novel, we cannot forget his crime. He is a killer. Yet my mind couldn’t eradicate the thought: this is so wrong, and yet this happened. In real life, not just in books. It still happens. I wasn’t ‘sad’ because he had been killed. I was angry. Angry because real people are forced to wait and watch the clock and greet death at a specific time. Real people are derogatorily forced to lie with their arms strapped to a table as an audience of vitriolic spectators watch as they die. Like an animal being put down. The novel haunted me for a while because, for some reason, my mind was not at all happy with the concept. I personally feel no one else’s should be either.

The death penalty, or capital punishment, is currently actively practiced by 58 countries. Most societies in the world have a history of the practice. Today, it is generally reserved for crimes of murder, yet some countries use it as a consequence of drug trafficking, rape, adultery and crimes against religion. There is a gruesome history of methods: the guillotine, strangulation, gas chambers and stoning are just some of the processes that have been abolished for the more ‘humane’ lethal injection. This year, it is estimated that just under 19,000 people worldwide are already awaiting the death penalty. 63% of surveyed Canadians believe the death penalty is sometimes appropriate. There is clearly still support.

George Bush once said, “I don’t think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other peoples’ lives.” This idea of ‘deterrence’ and ‘protection’ is key in the arguments that support the practice. By taking these people off the planet, innocent people are protected. By observing and being aware of this act, society is more likely to behave in a moral way to avoid this consequence. It seems logical I suppose.

In response to Mr Bush, by executing people we save lives do we? Wow – perfect sense. There is a concept called imprisonment, widely practiced across the globe, by which dangerous people are removed from society. No death. No suffering. No danger to the public. Prison allows time for retribution and forms of redemption whilst discouraging acts of immorality. In the famous 1924 case of Nathan Leopold, a convicted murderer spared from the death penalty, he used his time to help in the education of the other inmates and worked as an x-ray technician in the prison hospital. He helped society. His death on the other hand would have no beneficial consequence. The expense of imprisonment is also often perceived to be an argument. To house so many guilty people costs: food, healthcare, security, general wellbeing. But can we really compromise life for money?

Life cannot be compromised. It is the key basis of society – it is society. It is the only thing we own and to have it taken away by another is not right. Yes, many of those who are put to death have killed another. Maybe several people. Yet it is a ridiculous case of hypocrisy to oppose an idea and endorse it simultaneously. We gain nothing but a bittersweet revenge that should not be promoted for fear of the idea of death being trivialised.

We may think that if someone were to murder someone we love, we would like to see them suffer the same fate. Capital punishment is a painful, horrific procedure. Life imprisonment, whilst emotionally difficult, produces no physical pain, no hypocrisy, and could be viewed as perhaps a better form of retribution. Living with your actions seems a lot worse. In death we cannot consider, we cannot regret and more importantly, we cannot learn. We are only human. We can learn from our mistakes. Whilst there are boundaries on the term ‘second chance’, without it we are left with blood on our hands we cannot wash off. Blood that could not have been spilled and a situation that could be geared to better the being it once belonged to.

What about mistakes too? In “The Green Mile”, John Coffey was falsely accused and still put to death. Timothy Evans, who was falsely accused of killing his baby daughter when it was in fact his fellow tenant, was put to death in 1950 in the UK. Derek Bentley, a mentally challenged man from the UK, was put to death in 1953 for the murder of a police man, when it was in fact someone else who fired the gun. Should those responsible for the mistake be put to death too? What we can learn from this is that death is not a small matter; it cannot be deleted or undone if we change our minds. It is final. A consequence with such finality attached should not be used when mistakes can be so easily made.

So, if we allow capital punishment in certain countries, what does that mean for the rest of the world? This ‘culture’ of death has no beneficial moral implications. It leads to the attitude that death is the only answer to those who have done wrong. It leads to the view that society has no capacity to forgive or allow its members to learn and would much rather dispose of these seemingly emotionless burdens to society. No, crimes should not be committed and the people who commit them should be punished. But punishment should have purpose. I cannot find a purpose in death.

I recently watched a Channel 4 documentary written and directed by Werner Herzog, which explored the lives of death row inmates. They spoke tenderly of their families. In their eyes you could see how sorry they were. They were truly angry at their actions. These people are as real as the fear of death they all possessed. They’re not images on a screen or printed letters that make up a name on a page. At the end of each episode, the screen fades to black and if those who were interviewed had been executed between the making of the documentary and its running, their name and date of death were shown. One cannot help but feel the sense of loss.

Humans have no right to play at a game they should have no real control over. It is no justice to hypocritically carry out what we should be discouraging in the process. We need to learn to allow forgiveness and allow punishment in its proper form. Justice that is just. No payback. No revenge. No opportunity for mistakes. We can’t risk the most precious thing in life; we cannot risk life itself. So we should pity those we wait for their end point. We should feel lucky to live in a country where such injustice is forbidden and only hope that one day society can allow proper justice to be a universal concept of learning through life, not death.

Because, as in the final line of Stephen King’s novel: “We each owe a death, there are no exceptions… but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.”

Naomi Upton is currently studying A levels and hopes to study English Literature at University. She is a proud feminist and philosophy fanatic

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by | August 2, 2012 · 11:26 am

No Donnie, these men are Nihilists

By Mark Warburton

To say that Snake Plissken – the protagonist of John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” – fits the disgruntled anti-hero mould, is an understatement of epic proportions. Snake is an obsidian symbol of jarring nihilism; neo-crust and black metal have nothing on him. Every grimace, every sardonic retort, oozes the kind of rugged obstinacy needed when facing Nietzsche’s abyss. Snake says little, scanning the shadows, eye patch on, ready to take people out. His solitary eye remains free of spirit, hollow – a steely blue iris lining up a deadeye shot.

After failing a bank robbery, Snake, a decorated Special Forces army hero, is forced into a 24 hour rescue mission to save the president. Either Snake finds his man in Manhattan Island – now a tribal prison zone – or he dies by exploding implants. Snake takes his chances. Whatever he valued before the bungled robbery is gone, survival is all that matters. “I don’t give a fuck about your war, or your president”, pretty much sums up his disposition.

Is there a thinker in the grand old history of ideas that reflects such nihilistic defiance? Yes, the little known 19th century German philosopher, Max Stirner. Stirner was a product of tumultuous change in a fragmented Germany. He belonged to the Hippel’s wine bar intellectual circle – constantly locking horns with a certain Karl Marx. Stirner was unlike the Christian apologists who predicted nihilism as a cultural and/or spiritual disease (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky). Instead, he embraced the nihilistic mindset Snake takes to Manhattan.

Manhattan confirms Stirner’s cynicism regarding, well, pretty much everything: God, the state, morality, law, democracy, capitalism. None of these things are thriving. Not just because of the ubiquity of crime, but because the (illusory) embodiment of these ideas are inculcated over time in an aleatory manner. Manhattan is a fledgling ‘community’, free from the strictures of civilization; it remains tribalistic, with small enclaves struggling for political relevance. Over time, germinal differences will be pushed and pulled in a network of power relations, eventually shaping specific ideologies.

Stirner was the first person to attack the contingency of all ‘sacred’ truths, leaving him little space for constructive thought. He did flirt with a transient, individual anarchism, advocating a ‘union of egoists’: fleeting relations between people who escape the confines of ideology. Snake fits the mould of an individual anarchist of the Stirnite variety. He creates temporary allegiances with some of the denizens in Manhattan – when it suits. Snake is certainly anti-statist too. When the president gives him a full pardon at the end of the film, his disdain for the state’s indifference toward individuals is juxtaposed with the president’s concern for his next set of media appointments.

Although Stirner was consigned to the dust heap of history, the problem of meaning and values persists in the secular world. Since man became self-consciousness, the void has been close to his heart. Petter Wessel Zapffe, the idiosyncratic mountaineer, called the need to have concrete belief in shared ideas as ‘anchoring’. Similarly, people ‘isolate’ themselves from the contingency of values, refusing to acknowledge the abyss. The strategy most relevant to contemporary society listed by Zapffe, was ‘distraction’. Hyper-modernity, with its relentless attack on critical thought and attention spans is distraction par excellence.

A digression: most anchors are of a religious (Christian) sentiment and lineage; subsumed into humanist values. In the eyes of modern man, he fell from grace. The post-enlightenment, western man supplants theological certainties with scientific theories. Human nature is altruistic and moral! Evolution hardwires us to be nice! Ignoring the power of faith, science is eternally trapped in playing catch up with the God-of-the-gaps.

The leftist, secular obsession with the Christian sanctity for human life leads to a harmful utilitarianism, weighing heavy on poor old Gaia. If our old pal Nietzsche was right about anything, it was the need to reconsider values after the hangover of 19th century nihilism. Unfortunately,good and evil remains in vogue. Pragmatic, life-affirming values are neglected: human’s breed-like-vermin, prolonging life in fear of death, keeping ill people alive regardless of their situation.

What of social engineering and eugenics? It is a thankless task – inhuman forces, cultural memes, and the contingency of man’s (d)evolution rein – comically caricatured by the caprice of Homer’s Gods. We’re on a durable yet destructible dingy in indifferent seas. Whether the expanses of new lands lie beyond the horizon, or the jagged rocks of a ship’s grave awaits us, only time will tell.

What can we take from Snake, Stirner et al? Stirner’s position is limited – clearly Snake takes an individualist stance. He’s a non-committed Libertarian, wary of a police state that wears the vestiges of a consecrated constitution:

Snake Plissken: Got a smoke?

Malloy: The United States is a non-smoking nation! No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no women – unless you’re married – no foul language, no red meat!

Snake Plissken: Land of the free…

Both men appear resigned to wallow in the void. Let’s leave them be.

It is Ernst Junger (a war hero of two world wars and prolific literary giant who passed away at the tender age of 102) that rose above shoulder-shrugging nihilism. Combining Stirner’s cynicism and Nietsche’s will-to-power, Junger wrote Eumeswil, a spiritual guide on how to combat nihilism and ideology: play the game of life, regardless of the Stirnite ‘spooks’ that fill the day-to-day. Junger found spiritual sustenance in everything he threw himself into. Even the horrors of the first half of the 20th century developed in him an aesthetic for violence, and an existential lucidity that flirted with, but was not reducible to, nihilism. Zapffe’s final (and superior) strategy for warding off the abyss was ‘sublimation’. Junger’s confrontation with nothingness and social constructs is exemplary of such a strategy. Like a blacksmith who smelts and upgrades weapons, he stoically fashioned an eclectic tapestry of creative endeavours, resistant to the caveats of the human condition.

Mark Warburton is Not So Reviews’ philosophy columnist

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