Wordwork|play

Atheist Ads in Toronto

I went to Toronto last weekend with one of my brothers and my partner in search of the much anticipated, much covered and strangely controversial atheist ads.

We knew from the official Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign website that, beginning February 23rd, 2009, atheist ads would be running in the subway system. We did not know, however, that they would appear only inside subway cars, not on subway station walls. Nor did we know how few ads there would be.

We spent a fair bit of time in the subway system looking into numerous cars and, though we rode only in three cars, we saw only one ad in one of those cars. Many commercial ads appear two, three, or more times in a single car, but this may well be budget-related. However, given how much opposition there has been to these ads -- Halifax, NS, Ottawa and London, ON, Kelowna, Vancouver, and Victoria, BC refused to run them -- it should perhaps not be surprising that their presence, where not blocked entirely, would be minimal. 

What I like about the ad is that it initiates a much overdue conversation and acknowledges, as publicly as the many religious ads plastered around our public places, that the diversity of our cities and our country includes not only adherents to the various world religions, but also those who do not adhere to any religion at all. A sign (or gesture) of open-mindedness in our society is the inclusion of people from other cultural and religious backgrounds in private and public debates and discussions. Atheists are rarely thus included. It seems we have to interject somehow to make ourselves heard. We have to step boldly and uninvited onto the stage.

What I don't like so much about the ad is the last half of the second sentence -- its meaning is simply not clear enough and hence easily misunderstood. But back to that in a bit. 'There's probably no God' is, to my mind, a very mild statement. I would gladly have supported a more strongly worded statement to the effect that the existence of God is highly improbable. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian household, the first half of the second sentence, 'now stop worrying', makes complete sense. I worried almost constantly as a child, internally praying on and off throughout my days asking for forgiveness in case I had unknowingly done or thought something sinful. And the world could end any second, so I had to be ready at all times. I had terrible nightmares of devils with glowing red eyes converging on my crib because I had forgotten to say my bedtime prayer. But back to the last half of the second sentence, 'and enjoy your life'. Without any elaboration or explanation, it sounds hedonistic. It can easily be misinterpreted to mean that we need not be concerned about leading decent lives, about being good human beings, and that without God we may do whatever we wish and be absolved of responsibility.

I don't think the framers of the atheist ad advocate or meant to recommend a life of pure pleasure-seeking devoid of  responsibility, but it is too open to just that misinterpretation. The ad, pictured at left, which my partner and I happily discovered at the Queen's Park subway station, is much more to the point. The contention of many, perhaps most, theists is that human goodness derives from, is supported by, and can only manifest in the light of faith in god. This ad, posted by Humanist Canada, responds to that contention simply and without equivocation or ambiguity: "YOU CAN BE GOOD WITHOUT GOD".

While both ads represent a positive step onto the public stage for atheists, secular humanists and freethinkers, I simply cannot find any fault with the latter ad. The message is so clear, concise, non-confrontational and non-provocative. We can indeed be good without god. It means we have to think a great deal more, question our assumptions, come together to study, analyze, discuss and debate human behaviour and our place in the world and universe. It also requires openness and hard work, as life is colourful and complex and we cannot rely on any tradition, book, or institution to decide for us how to be good. But the rewards of letting go of faith and simple answers to embrace independent thought and engage the complexity of life are great and many. I think it's time we grew up as a species and learned to stand on our own feet, so to speak, to make good use of that wonderful tool in our heads and learn to be good because we want to be, not because we fear punishment in an imagined hell or desire the rewards of an imagined paradise.

Anti-Arab Bias in Dictionary Definitions

Though not much has happened on Wordwork|play for a few months, it has not been abandoned. It has merely been left to lie fallow for a while. I have continued to read, watch, think, and yes, cook, but I haven't done much writing. There is still more change afoot at my day job, and I'm moving to Hamilton at the end of June, but the change is now more measured and controlled. I think I'm almost ready to resume more regular writing here.

As for watching and thinking, my partner and I watched the 1997 biopic Wilde recently, a fascinating and ultimately frustrating biographical story in which two terms, used quite casually, got me thinking again about anti-Arab bias in dictionary definitions. On a few occasions, the dialogue contained the terms arab and street arab, terms with which neither of us were familiar, though negative connotations were clear.

A few days later, indeed within the same week, I came across this article from the Jordan Times about Merriam-Webster's decision to drop entries considered offensive to Arabs and Muslims. The terms at the center of the protest to Merriam-Webster, by Zarka University president Ishak Ahmad Farhan and the Professional Associations Council president Wael Saqqa, were anti-Semitism and arab. They would like to see the entries for these terms changed and/or dropped from the next edition.

While I would never suggest the dropping of entries from a dictionary or thesaurus, and indeed find it of the utmost importance that they be retained, I do believe that, as with other offensive and racist terms, the entries need to be clear about the fact that they are offensive and reference the context out of which they arose. Leaving them as they are serves not only to perpetuate negative racial stereotypes, but leads the reader to believe that these negative images are still held by the editors and publishers.   

So I did some investigating. My 2003, 2nd Edition Oxford Dictionary of English does not list the lowercase arab on its own, but does list street Arab as "noun archaic a raggedly dressed homeless child wandering the streets." The online Webster Dictionary lists Arab as "n. 1. One of a swarthy race occupying Arabia, and numerous in Syria, Northern Africa, etc.," and as a subcategory, "Street Arab a homeless vagabond in the streets of a city, particularly and (sic) outcast boy or girl." YourDictionary has, as definition 5 under Arab, "a waif left to roam the streets; street Arab." It lists street Arab separately as well. In my cursory search, only the Free Dictionary mentioned, in its definition, that it was 'sometimes offensive'.

The definition of anti-Semitism is another example. Semite is defined, in the Oxford Dictionary, as "noun a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs." It is followed by an etymological reference to "Sem 'Shem', son of Noah in the Bible, from whom these people were traditionally supposed to be descended." Semitic is defined as "adjective 1 relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family. 2 relating to the peoples who speak these languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic."

The prefix anti-, as most of us know, stands for against, or opposed to. But put it in front of Semitic and it doesn't simply mean opposed to or against Semites. As pointed out in the aforementioned article, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, defines anti-Semitism as: “opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel.” What of the anti-Arab sentiment in which a great deal of the Western media and Hollywood blockbusters are soaked? Is this almost fashionable opposition to Arabs and Muslims, a people clearly defined as Semitic, not then anti-Semitism? It clearly is. But not according to our dictionaries.

I checked the definitions for a number of other offensive and racist terms -- Chink, gook, Jap, Kraut, nigger, and wop -- in my Oxford English dictionary and found all of them prefaced with 'informal, offensive' or some such acknowledgment. I think it's time the editors and publishers of modern English dictionaries did the same for terms offensive to Arabs. Leave the terms and definitions in the dictionaries, but at the very least be clear about the fact that they are offensive. And why not include a little historical context? Check arab and anti-Semitism at the Online Etymological Dictionary. There we find that the offensive definition of arab has to do with a settled people's bias against nomadic peoples. As for anti-Semitism, it is acknowledged that, though most commonly used to mean anti-Jewish, the term is not restricted to such use. It even suggests that "[t]hose who object to the inaccuracy of the term might try H. Adler's Judaeophobia (1882)." Why not use anti-Semitism as a general term for 'theories, actions, or policies' that are against Semites in general, and use more restrictive terms with reference to a specific Semitic people, i.e. Judaeophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Jewish, anti-Arab, anti-Assyrian, and so on?

NOD: The Archimedes Codex

Newtonian science was sober-minded; Archimedes' science was not. Archimedes was famous for hoaxes, enigmas, and circuitous routes. These were not some external features of his writings; they characterized his scientific personality. Science is not--mathematics is not--dry and impersonal. It is where one's imagination is allowed to roam freely.

NOD: The Archimedes Codex

This selection is purely incidental to the subject of the book, but given my recent interest in the letter, this caught my attention. The letter is something you will see me going back to from time to time. I somehow feel we're really losing something in switching from letters to e-mails.

E-mails are short on ritual. There is no walk to the mailbox, no looking at the stamp, no slicing the envelope, no guessing the handwriting. They just pop up unbidden on your computer screen while you are engrossed in your daily business. Some of them, like little electronic terrorists, can blow your mind and change your life.

NOD: The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist

My review of Something About the Blues should be submitted sometime tonight and published within a couple of days.

I am already well into the next, utterly fascinating, book--The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist.

Here's a NOD from its preface (I keep reading, lately, about the crusaders, in The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War; The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In; Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics; and now here):

In April 1204, Christian soldiers on a mission to liberate Jerusalem stopped short of their goal and sacked Constantinople, the richest city in Europe. . . . . The looted city had many more books than people. It was the first time Constantinople had fallen in the 874 years since Constantine the Great, Emperor of Rome founded it in AD 330. . . . [T]he city held the literary treasures of the ancient world as its inheritance. Among the treasures were treatises by the greatest mathematician of the ancient world and one of the greatest thinkers who had ever lived. He approximated the value of pi, he developed the theory of centers of gravity, and he made steps toward the development of the calculus 1,800 years before Newton and Leibniz. His name was Archimedes.

Book Review: Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics, by William Bonner and Lila Rajiva

(Published Dec. 31, 2007 in BC Magazine)

Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets is a serious and hilarious guide to surviving the public spectacle in finance and politics.

Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva team up, in Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics, to peel the layers of glittering wool from our eyes so that we may see the world of politics and financial markets for what they are. They show us the poor players upon the stage, to paraphrase Macbeth for a moment, as they strut and fret their hour upon the stage, telling tales full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. And what a show it is! Cocks, with their long bright tail feathers, strutting down the runway. Big-horned deer duking it out on stage. That's what it all comes down to, the authors observe. In the end,

it's all sex and lies. Everything: Romance. Cars. Jobs. The debt bubble. The real estate bubble. The trade deficit bubble. The American Empire. They are useful only as evidence of conspicuous consumption; they wink to the opposite sex that the animal is fit for procreation and game for a little hanky-panky. If he can carry around all that extra baggage and still survive, he must be tough.

Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets is a tragi-comedy, full of sharp observations, delivered with equally sharp wit. This book's dark and disturbing revelations could leave one depressed and disillusioned, were it not so damn funny.

But Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets isn't merely about sitting back in our seats to laugh at the poor saps on stage. They aren't blaming the actors either. Well, not entirely. Most of them are otherwise intelligent, responsible, rational individuals who have simply been caught up in the public spectacle and the irrationality of mass mentality. So along with the sharp observations and disturbing revelations are some pointers for the thinking individual--individual is key--to use the knowledge gleaned from the show to avoid getting caught up in the public spectacle and maybe even make some money to secure his or her future.

Bill Bonner is the founder and president of Agora Inc., a consumer newsletter and book publishing company and is the creator of The Daily Reckoning, a contrarian financial newsletter delivered via e-mail. Bonner has also written, with Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of An Epic Financial Crisis and Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century.

Lila Rajiva is a contributing writer and editor at Agora, and her work can also be found at Lew Rockwell, Counterpunch, Money Week, Dissident Voice, Himal South Asian, and Rational Review, among others. She is the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media, and blogs at the Mind-Body Politic.

The first chapter, "Do-Gooders Gone Bad," is perhaps the lightest, but its opening paragraph hints at the central problem with which the book is concerned, whether in politics or in finance, and its dark humour sets the tone for the rest of the book.

It is a shame that the world improvers don't set off some signal before they go bad, like a fire alarm that is running out of juice. Maybe some adjustment could be made. Instead, the most successful of them--such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler--actually gain market share as they get worse. Their delusions are self-reinforcing, like the delusions of a stock market bubble; the higher the prices go, the more people come to believe they make sense.

Bonner and Rajiva don't put much stock in do-gooders and world improvers, nor in the over-bloated and fickle financial markets.

But how can you talk about figures like Mussolini and Hitler, some people may rightly ask, and crack jokes? The answer, I suspect, is that humour is a useful distancing tool. They are not making light of the suffering caused by these figures, but they think about things most people prefer not to. In the context of the inevitable and very devastating U.S. housing bust on the horizon they remark that they make it their business "to think about precisely what most people can't bear thinking about." And to think about these things to understand why they happen again and again and again, and why the masses inevitably get caught up in the momentum no matter how nasty things get, one must "get close enough to see how things work--like a prairie dog peering into a hay bailer--but not so close that you get caught up in it yourself."

The authors cover a lot of ground in Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets. They discuss modern world-improvers-cum-dictators like Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Empires intent on improving the world--Greek, Arab, Assyrian, Frankish, British and now American. Terrorism in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries created in large part by European Crusaders who decided to "bring the blessings of Christian governance to the desert tribes" to terrorism today inspired by America's attempt at bringing 'freedom and democracy' to the Muslim world. They cover mass hysteria and paranoia from the witch hunts in the late Middle Ages to the McMartin Satanic child abuse trials across America in the 1980s. They discuss the players in the financial world, from incompetent and grossly overpaid CEOs, to multinational corporations sucking the land dry in far-off countries, to advocates of globalization and the flat earth, to the IMF, World Bank, and the Federal Reserve, as well as the debt, real estate, and trade deficit bubbles. And then, of course, there is the role of propaganda and the media, from Germany to Britain to China and once again to America.

"So many humbugs, dear reader, and so little time," the authors remark at one point. And as for all the efforts of world improvement, they have this to say: "[t]he negative consequences at the end of an effort at world improvement are roughly equal and opposite to the positive aspirations at the beginning." The problem is that otherwise reasonable, intelligent individuals, be they "[i]mperialists, anti-imperialists, capitalists, communists--as soon as they get a grand scheme into their heads, a pet project for world improvement, they all seem to end up in the same place--bungling, botching, and butchering." If you "put them at the head of a country or an army, then they are off on some fool mission--bringing civilization to the barbarians, making the world safe for democracy, or ushering in the proletarian revolution."

To get at an answer for why this happens, the authors turn to the work of the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. Dunbar has studied the human animal, as also other primates like monkeys, chimpanzees, and baboons, and has come to the conclusion that there is a "maximum number of people and things with which the human brain can cope effectively." Though humans are very social animals, being in possession of a well-developed neocortex to deal with complex reasoning, we really have the capacity to effectively deal with only about 150 people. Dunbar has studied 21 different hunter-gatherer cultures and found the average number of people in their villages to be 148.4. And groups in modern societies seem to have picked up on this as well, from communal groups like the Hutterites to cohesive fighting units in militaries from the classical Roman army to the modern army company.

This is one of the most interesting parts of the book, and crucial to the central argument. "Human beings, according to the sociobiologists, cannot understand much more than the things about which they are concerned for their daily existence." Yet in our modern society individuals are put in positions in which they are asked to plan for millions of people and deal with dollar figures in the billions and even trillions. Dealing with all manner of things outside of their immediate circle, people are liable to accept inadequate or wrong explanations. "The human brain," the authors argue, "is just not big enough for the big world. In order to think, people are forced to start simplifying and eliminating a lot of detail. They have to abstract ... theorize ... generalize." And that's how mob mentality begins. And the problem with the mob, with crowds, is that "[t]hey can only feel and act. They can't think, because they have no set of facts solid enough on which to build." And at that point, the authors warn, "[s]logans replace reason. And the private world of right and wrong has been replaced by the public spectacle, which knows no moral authority beyond its own desires."

Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets returns again and again to the public spectacle. The thinking individual, whether engaged in politics or finances, must avoid being caught up in it. The last two chapters of the book attempt to help the thinking individual steer clear of the public spectacle. Reading closely, there are some very helpful tips. The most important lesson, of course, is that independent thought will get you much further than following the masses, believing everything you read in the newspapers, or even looking for specific investment advice to follow in this book.

Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets is a great read for the independent thinker with a well-developed, and perhaps somewhat morbid, sense of humour. Readers looking for easy answers without being willing to work hard and think independently will likely get little or nothing out of it. And readers without the sense of humour to sit back and laugh at the public spectacle as it unfolds, and as it is reported in the media, will likely be offended and put the book down. The sharp wit and dark humour, as much as some of us may enjoy it, is perhaps the greatest potential drawback of this book. For readers who are willing to think independently, but don't share the sense of humour, a more serious approach might be necessary. For the rest of us, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets is a serious and hilarious guide to surviving the public spectacle in finance and politics.

See also:

NOD: Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

There are so many good nuggets in Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets that it's hard to choose just a few. I will post one more here, and then, within a few days, my review should be published and posted here.

. . . Iraq is full of potential terrorists with grudges. Had the Anglo-Americans bothered to look before they leaped, they would have seen a country that is a mix of tribes, clans, families, and religious groups--all of whom take it as an inherited obligation to avenge any wrong done to any of their own group by any member of any other group going back five generations. We cannot kill terrorists as fast as the State Department can create them, say some. . . . . Still, every great empire--from the Assyrians to the Mongols to the British--has taken Baghdad. America has to do it, too. It is the imperial script and America is right on cue.

NOD: Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

On the American Empire.

... by the twenty-first century, the United States had already reached an advanced stage of empire--and an aging empire needs a little more than banal reality. It needs delusion to keep it going. It desperately needs an enemy to justify defense budgets and military meddling. What else can you expect? Americans need to believe that they are confronted by a vast army of terrorists ready to "destroy our civilization."

NOD: Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

Is America sliding towards fascism? A look at some disturbing things happening with the media.

Here is an MIT security studies maven, writing in a column in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, that the new U.S. strategy of paying Iraqi journalists to place stories favorable to the U.S. in the media is perfectly kosher. A reporter, says Michael Schrage, should be helping the military along, not just chattering about it.

... 'Securing positive coverage for our troops in Iraq can be as important to their safety as 'up-armoring' vehicles and providing state-of-the-art body armor. The failure to wage war is a failure to command.'

Ah--the media war. Until now we thought the war meant those cluster bombs going off in Baghdad. But we realize we were mistaken. It must be the blood that got us confused! The real war, we now see, is on the front pages. Take cover!

NOD: Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets

There was a time when respectable marriages were based on more serious concerns--money, property, position, and so forth. . . . But in the Western world, arranged marriages have given way to deranged ones. People are expected to fall in love with each other--that is, they are expected to take leave of their senses, and while in this addled state, they are not only allowed, but encouraged, to sign a contract that is meant to last a lifetime.