Oct. 30 Fredericton Again

Returned to Fredericton to give a paper at ARPA (Atlantic Region Philosopher's Conference)entitled "Free Speech and the Infamous Cartoons". I'll add this on to the end of this diary.
At the reading of the paper the most interesting point of the discussion concerned the use in Islamic cultures of the concept of 'insult' and 'honor'. One questioner asked what point there was in insulting him by showing the cartoons. The reply was that this concept of insult needs to be abandoned if we are to have a viable democracy: we must be able to discuss things closest to our hearts, we need to be able to discuss our fears, and humor just is our way of breaking the ice about something which we fear. Humor is a useful precursor to serious discussion.

Here, in any case, is the paper I read - it needs some editing but I don't have time at the moment to pretty it up.



Free Speech and Those Infamous Cartoons. Peter March ’06 Fredericton.

Now, all the traditional arguments for free speech are ineffective, in my view. I will argue that free speech is one of the things which is fundamental to our political system so it can’t be justified and it is a big mistake to try to justify it. The point of our system is to provide a number of things and free speech just is one of them.

Of course, because the system also intends to provide truth, peace, prosperity, security etc. we are sorely tempted to spill ink showing how each of these contributes to the others but, the truth of the matter is simple. All of them are deeply, profoundly desired in their own right and none of them need supporting arguments. Maybe we could get richer is we suppressed free speech, maybe, but that’s not what we want. Thank you very much but we just don’t want a rich, closed society, we we really want is a rich open society, and sometimes we have to compromise a bit.

And when I say ‘desired’ I don’t mean that these are things which are morally good, all I mean is that so many of us mortals, the crowd, just do want them that we have the power to insist on them, and we won’t give them up. Heck, we’ll fight for free speech.

Mill argues that free speech has its uses and is crucial for a democracy as the only way of guaranteeing that truth will out. Well, I would reply that that’s nice but we’d want free speech even just for the joy of some good old gossip, a nice argument, words of love, religious talk, etc. Not much truth there. I don’t want to deny that free speech is somehow entangled with the search for the best solutions to political problems, I just think it all goes a hell of a lot deeper. We want it for it’s own sake. We revel in, bleed for freedom: we suffocate without chatter, and there it is. I’m sure the love of truth feeds our desire and ability to speak, but that does not justify our love of truth.

Enough already: we want free speech and that’s that. Fundamental.

On the other side you could list off the terrible problems ‘created’ by free speech. Yes indeed you could. Well, despite those problems we want it unless our life is at stake - as in times of war. At such times then, if our life is at stake, then maybe, for a while, we’ll shut up, or be shut up. But a life in the long run without free speech, no, we’ll fight for it if the long run kicks in. We won’t go without a fight on this one.

“So is it more important than life?” No, life is one of the things we desperately want too. We mustn’t get into the ‘prioritizing’ game. To explain the obvious: sometimes our most basic desires clash. If we can’t have both in the face of a Hitler, then, yes, we’ll have to risk a punch up. That just proves how much we value free-speech. Because if we ourselves can’t have life and free speech then we settle for the second best, that is, making bloody sure our kids do get both! - even though it might cost us our lives. We gamble everything in the hope of our kids getting the good life, a life in which they will enjoy both life and freedom. Our own life we think, is a worthy price.

Would I sacrifice free-speech for life? Of course, that’s what we do when we gird ourselves for war. My free speech is well sacrificed if it secures a good life for my children and yours. Don’t play priorities with fundamental values. We fight for the whole lot collectively. We fight for a way of life.

Now I’ll cut to the chase.


“What about other people’s feelings? Would you run rough-shod over their feelings?” Yes. Can I justify that? Yes. You see, Feelings aren’t FUNDAMENTAL and you can check that. We don’t offer our lives to spare your feelings, or even the feelings of our kids. We think that would be ‘silly’ We can’t think why we would ever choose to die to spare feelings. ‘Ornery, maybe, but give us credit, we can also be charming.

Will we sacrifice feelings to defend life and liberty? Yes we will and that tells you everything. What’s fundamental? What you are willing to die for! Are you willing to die to spare someone’s feelings? NO. So free speech trumps feelings.

This tells us that feelings have to be sacrificed all the time for more important things. Feeling aren’t even near being fundamental, not if you know us..

“Would you ride rough-shod over the self-respect of others, undermine their self-image, devalue their religion, etc. just so you get your vaunted free speech?” Ask me later.

This first. We are a social animal, yes we are. So, yes, we care for the well-being of others. Especially our kids, kids in general, and especially the weak. And you had better prioritize those because if you don’t you don’t understand us.

And I want my kids alive and free to speak their minds. So, I’m sorry, freedom it is - even if someone has adopted a religion or a way of life which my words do thus so deeply offend.

“But humiliation is worse than death!” (See the Qu’ran) Wrong. You can’t get over death.

“Surely humiliation is worse than you having to keep silent, having to be sensitive, having to respect others’ feelings. Surely your silence is a small price to pay for someone’s being able to feel respected.”

No, in a democracy speech is free with very rare exceptions. Therefore everyone in a democracy must develop a thick skin and the ability to defend their ideas and reputation. My silence would only weaken other's ability to live in a democracy. You get a thick skin, courage, by weathering criticism. It's doable.

Ask me now. Would I ride rough-shod over whatever psychological states you care to mention? Yes. And my guess is I hold trumps: I’ve spoken for the crowd.

Well, this crowd, my crowd. Those who follow the Koran at least (there may be others) have something in their holy book which says that ‘oppression’ is worse than death. Translate as ‘Losing your honor is worse than death.’ The message is clear: go out and slay your oppressors (those who would rob you of honour).

What does this mean? The sense that one has lost one’s ‘honor’ is now best understood as a psychological state and they will kill even their own to protect ‘honor’ – think of the honour killings of sisters. So that crowd really does ‘respect’ certain feelings (those associated with ‘honor’) and that crowd really does often care more for their feelings than for (Earthly) life. Well, at least their men do. But not us, and it’s a difference which matters.

I would argue even more firmly that if you make psychological states fundamental then you’d better prepare to see your young people dying. The mechanism is not far to seek. Feelings are hurt all over the place in complex societies, people are being really hurt all the time, so if you make hurt feelings a matter of honour and honour a matter of life and death, then you’ve just made feelings a pretext for killing. Consider how often feelings are hurt, and then prepare for the corresponding level of violence.

The Middle East is a culture suffused with honor codes (read ‘sensitive feelings’ associated with the male ego) and it is no wonder they therefore have deeply violent societies. I think that societies which condone the killing of pregnant unwed daughters by burning them and who give as the only reason for such burnings ‘family honor’, I think it fair to say of such societies that they are deeply violent. They are deeply violent because they make feelings (usually male ego feelings) a matter of life and death.

This then is the heart of the matter when it comes to freedom of speech in the case before us: shall we limit my speech according as it hurts feelings? To do so, I suggest, is to desire a particularly violent society.

Again, the reasoning is this. Freedom of speech is a fundamental value in our social arrangements, to limit it by reference to feelings is to raise feelings on a par with fundamental values. Now, fundamental values are things for which we are willing to give up our life, and this means lives will then be lost in the defense of feelings.

Making feelings a fundamental value is therefore a tragic error.

But it is an understandable error because it is natural to think WRONGLY that respecting each other’s feelings will produce a gentler society, a more accommodating one, one in which people are respected and treated as persons. This is the mistake of the 'sensitivity' gang.

How can this intuition be wrong, one asks? Well, it comes down to who holds the power. If the power holders are men, if they are the superior and privileged members of society – as is recommended by the Koran (and in other religious texts of various religions) - then we must expect that in a toss up between the feelings of men and those of women and children, the men will have their feelings protected. That much is clear, surely. Second, if the dominant group is men and they don’t value women highly, and if the men are the part of their life when they seems designed to go to war and kill, then, when their feelings are hurt we can expect them to go about killing whomever they perceive as having harmed their honor. The result is killing. The result of valuing feelings highly is killing over feelings – typically, of course, women and young people.

Another way to put it is this. The intuition that it is better to respect each other’s feelings even at the cost of free speech is dependent upon the intuition that other people’s powers are equal – when evidently they are not, particularly if we are talking about North African and Middle Eastern cultures. In cultures where men are strongly dominant their feelings take precedence and the result is a disaster for women and children.

Finally, of course, in any culture, even a culture where powers have evolved to some kind of equilibrium, it is a reality that the taking of positions on ‘sensitive topics’ (topics about which we are called upon to be sensitive) is bound to engender anger. It must therefore be very clear that this anger can not be allowed to convert into action since anger driven action is very likely to disturb the peace. This, in effect, is to take the view that free-speech on sensitive issues must be protected – protected from those who would ban it in the defense of feelings. The alternative is that we avoid the discussion of sensitive issues all together.

End

Diary Oct. 19

A quarter of the Tour has passed - four universities done - and the first lesson has sunk in to my thick skull. It is this:

People who come from societies permeated with religion come to associate values, principles, and morality with religion. Religion, for them is where values originate. When they enter a country (like ours) and discover that it is secular they then naturally slide into the belief that this country, because it has no religion , has no values, principles, morality - that people here do not care for the higher things in life.

Muslims I talk to often think of Canadians as being only interested in cars, houses, sex and status. They slide easily into thinking this because in finding that there is no visible religion here, they jump to the conclusion that Cnadians have no values, no principles, have no morality, no concern for the higher things in life. It is tempting for such people from 'religious societies' to see our secular lives as low, meaningless, lost, wasted.

So the first job must be to try to explain to them that values can come from sources other than religion. A simple and familiar lesson in the philosophy of value.

In truth we have family values, we value our children, parents and grandparents. We value family life and we value our communities. We accept collective responsibility for the poor, the sick, the unemployed. We value peace, education, we value those whom we love, have come to love. What else is on the list? Surely we value, we need, a meaningful life which for us means having a useful role to play in our family and community. We value art, self-expression, on and on. And we have political values: equality of women and men, rule of law, etc.. These values come from the Renaissance (pre-Christian), the Great Revolutions (in England, France), the Reform movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Are any of these values distinctly Christian? I'd like to hear about that because, frankly, at the moment, I doubt it. Muslims and Hindus both emphasize charity, forgiving, etc. so the case has to be made, if there is a case to make.

That we have values other than materialism, sex and power is obvious to me but is not likely to be even plausible to those who have only ever lived with religious values. In these people's experience, values come from religion. To people from religious cultures, we are value barren. To them our 'secular' society is a society without values. For them subtract religion and you subtract values.

I think we can show them that this is bad math. Secular society, we have to show them, is not the same as a society without values. How to make this case, now that's the next question.

This will be the new thrust of my presentations in Montreal in the next weeks.

Next week I'm heading off again for Fredericton (to give a paper on Free Speech) and then, after that, it's points West.

Diary Oct. 16 University of New Brunswick

In Fredericton, at the University of New Brunswick:

Discussion at UNB: Many in the audience seemed particularly interested in the history of religion in the West. I had the sense that, as is the case with our own students, this history is not familiar stuff to the Muslims in attendance. In particular, in the long conversation after the presentation, it became clear to me that they were not familiar with the fact that Christianity has been repressed in the West - since about the 14th Century, I argued. They seemed interested in the fact that our society is consciously secular: that we consciously chose the separation of Church and State, a judiciary free from religious influence, education free of religious involvement, science free from any religious constraints. I think it made a difference for them that we are deliberately secular and are not so just by indifference or moral laziness.

It seems to me that this history has great significance for new arrivals in Canada and even for those whose home communities, though Canadian, do not understand the painful birth and the painful development of secular society and hence may not fully understand how Canada came to be the way she is.

What I'm hearing is that Canada presents herself as a 'Godless' society to many and that by giving a history of Canadian secular society we can dispel some of the negative perceptions triggered by this impression.

The history shows new and prospective citizens that we struggled to achieve a secular form of life and that we do have values consistent with this choice. Because without the knowledge and understanding of our secularism, Canada does tend to present herself as motivated only by base values - greed, unrestrained sexuality, materialism. Understanding secular values such as collective responsibility for the weak, peace and good order, rule of law, etc. one begins to address the terrible sense which many Muslims have of Canada as a moral wasteland.

I see this as offering an important opportunity to build a bridge between (Canadian) secularism and Islamic philosophy and theology.

Business: Expenses were: under fifty for the room, fifty dollars of gas and 45 for the printing and distribution of posters. We tried 'voluntary contributions' and made 45 from an audience of thirty to forty. Ah, also must include the insurance which was not asked for in this case, 150! So, costs are still coming down. Room in residence was 48 dollars.

The session at UNB passed as quietly as did all the previous but with a much higher attendance of Muslims - perhaps eight or ten were present, despite Ramadan. They encouraged me to come back and I will in two weeks time. I asked if they would take me to their mosque and to try to arrange for me to make a presentation there.

At the University of New brunswick I made a presentation similar to that given in Newfoundland but encountered none of the requests for security costs from the Administration. The auditorium charge was under fifty dollars and there seems to be no further charges for security.

The Philosophy department was most welcoming and took me to dinner. I have to thank Dr. Robert Larmer (Chair) for his kind support.

Peter

Diary Oct. 9

This evening I sent the following comment to the Glove and Mail. The Globe published an editorial arguing that there could not be free speech if we are not allowed to hurt other people's feelings. Along the way the editorial described the way threats from Muslims has had the effect of stifiling free speech critical of Islam. My own view is that one simply has to face down those threats and continue speaking as free people. If the fear of Islam does succeed in stifling free speech that will also have been our fault, we shall have lacked courage. Here's the text sent to the Globe:

" Here's a not so subtle way of stifling comment on the issues relating to Ilam and Democracy. When I spoke recently at Saint Mary's University they, the University, forced me to pay $ 901 for 'security' for the two hour session. Dalhousie charged me half as much to make the same presentation on Islam And Democracy. After flying to Newfoundland, Memorial University tried to charge me an additional $ 400 for security on the eve of the lecture otherwise, they said, I could "take my show off campus". This demand came one day before my presentation and after they had been offered the text of my presentation and after the two previous presentations had passed without incident.
That's how the Universities stifle free-speech and enforce political correctness. Was my presentation incendiary? It can be read at http://islamanddemocracy.org .
I am going to make similar presentations across the country at 15 universities and I hope to prove that in Canada one really can speak freely about the issues surrounding Islam, even speak critically of Islam and calling for specific reforms.

Diary Oct. 6 Muhammed Cartoon in the Globe And Mail!

Muhammed Cartoons in the Globe And Mail?

There is was, surrounded by an opinion piece, a Muhammed cartoon in the Globe and Mail! Yes, on the Op. Ed. page, today, a cartoon of Muhammed spilling paint over the words "Freedom of Speech" and waving his little scimitar. Well, it looked as much like Muhammed as any of the Muhammeds in the notorious cartoons ...

But in any case it was O.K., of course, because the opinion piece was written by an Oxford don ( no mere Canadian), and his stylish endorsement made all the difference.

Well, my friends, first the Pope, now the Editor of the Globe and Mail!

Freedom of speech just busting out everywhere.