Some while ago, with reference to Orwell’s essay on “Politics and the English language”, I addressed the language of the internet, an issue that stubbornly refuses to go away. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to consider afresh what’s happening to English prose in cyberspace.

To paraphrase Orwell, the English of the world wide web – loose, informal, and distressingly dyspeptic – is not really the kind people want to read in a book, a magazine, or even a newspaper. But there’s an assumption that that, because it’s part of the all-conquering internet, we cannot do a thing about it. Twenty-first century civilisation has been transformed in a way without precedent since the invention of moveable type. English prose, so one argument runs, must adapt to the new lexicon with all its grammatical violations and banality. Language is normative; it has – some will say – no choice. The violence the internet does to the English language is simply the cost of doing business in the digital age.

From this, any struggle against the abuse and impoverishment of English online (notably, in blogs and emails) becomes what Orwell called “a sentimental archaism”. Behind this belief lies the recognition that language is a natural growth and not an instrument we can police for better self-expression. To argue differently is to line up behind Jonathan Swift and the prescriptivists (see Swift’s essay “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue”).

If you refer to “Politics and the English Language” (a famous essay actually commissioned for in-house consumption by Orwell’s boss, the Observer editor David Astor) you will find that I have basically adapted his more general concerns about language to the machinations of cyberspace and the ebb and flow of language on the internet.

And why not? First, he puts it very well. Second, among Orwell’s heirs (the writers, bloggers and journalists of today), there’s still a subconscious, half-admitted anxiety about what’s happening to English prose in the unpoliced cyber-wilderness. This, too, is a recurrent theme with deep roots. As long ago as 1946, Orwell said that English was “in a bad way”. Look it up: the examples he cited are both amusingly archaic, but also appropriately gruesome.

Sixty-something years on, in 2013, quite a lot of people would probably concede a similar anxiety: or at least some mild dismay at the overall crassness of English prose in the age of global communications.

Orwell’s polemical reach runs out, appropriately, soon after the 1980s. Then, the biggest paradigm shift since Gutenberg and Caxton took us into uncharted waters, on which we are now, very slowly, orienting ourselves. Until very recently, we were so lost (and at sea) in the fog of digital transformation that very few were willing to get to grips with the problem of online literary standards. Or, to put it another way, we became so exhilarated by the freedom of the new media that we weren’t willing to grapple with the responsibilities that came with liberation.

Not any more. Those first, heady days are done. It’s time for a new covenant. Yes, it’s one that can take inspiration from Orwell’s celebrated polemic. It’s also good to set his call to arms next to the practices of online English prose because, among the guardians of contemporary culture (cyber and otherwise), the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four remains a talisman. Those who assert the “democratic” and “free” qualities of the worldwide web would probably cite his famous essay with approval in any discussion of English usage today.

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Filed under: english grammar, English language Tagged: "George Orwell's Critique of Internet English" by Robert McCrum, "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell, 21st century civilisation, a sentimental archaism, abuse and impoverishment of English online, banality, Benjamin Chew, Benjamin Chew blog, Benjamin Chew Hongjie, Benjamin Chew Hongjie Blog, Chew Hongjie, Chew Hongjie Blog, cost of doing business in the digital age, crassness, cyberspace, David Astor, English grammar, English Language, English prose, English prose in the age of global communications, English usage, George Orwell, grammatical violations, Jonathan Swift, language on the Internet, liberation, online literary standards, Robert McCrum, self-expression, Sparrows and Sandcastles, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Benjamin Chew, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Chew Hong Jie, the digital age, The Guardian, The Guardian UK, the Internet, the new lexicon, the new media, the prescriptivists, the world wide web ]]> http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/george-orwells-critique-of-internet-english/feed/ 0 chewhongjie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/dan-dennetts-seven-tools-for-thinking/ http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/dan-dennetts-seven-tools-for-thinking/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 01:37:34 +0000 Zhou (Chew) Hong Jie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/?p=4680 ]]> by Daniel Dennett

Use Your Mistakes

We have all heard the forlorn refrain: “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!” This phrase has come to stand for the rueful reflection of an idiot, a sign of stupidity, but in fact we should appreciate it as a pillar of wisdom. Any being, any agent, who can truly say: “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!” is standing on the threshold of brilliance. We human beings pride ourselves on our intelligence, and one of its hallmarks is that we can remember our previous thinking and reflect on it – on how it seemed, on why it was tempting in the first place and then about what went wrong.

I know of no evidence to suggest that any other species on the planet can actually think this thought. If they could, they would be almost as smart as we are. So when you make a mistake, you should learn to take a deep breath, grit your teeth and then examine your own recollections of the mistake as ruthlessly and as dispassionately as you can manage. It’s not easy. The natural human reaction to making a mistake is embarrassment and anger (we are never angrier than when we are angry at ourselves) and you have to work hard to overcome these emotional reactions.

Try to acquire the weird practice of savouring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you and go on to the next big opportunity. But that is not enough: you should actively seek out opportunities just so you can then recover from them.

In science, you make your mistakes in public. You show them off so that everybody can learn from them. This way, you get the benefit of everybody else’s experience, and not just your own idiosyncratic path through the space of mistakes. (Physicist Wolfgang Pauli famously expressed his contempt for the work of a colleague as “not even wrong”. A clear falsehood shared with critics is better than vague mush.)

This, by the way, is another reason why we humans are so much smarter than every other species. It is not so much that our brains are bigger or more powerful, or even that we have the knack of reflecting on our own past errors, but that we share the benefits our individual brains have won by their individual histories of trial and error.

I am amazed at how many really smart people don’t understand that you can make big mistakes in public and emerge none the worse for it. I know distinguished researchers who will go to preposterous lengths to avoid having to acknowledge that they were wrong about something. Actually, people love it when somebody admits to making a mistake. All kinds of people love pointing out mistakes.

Generous-spirited people appreciate your giving them the opportunity to help, and acknowledging it when they succeed in helping you; mean-spirited people enjoy showing you up. Let them! Either way we all win.

Respect Your Opponent

Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticising the views of an opponent? If there are obvious contradictions in the opponent’s case, then you should point them out, forcefully. If there are somewhat hidden contradictions, you should carefully expose them to view – and then dump on them. But the search for hidden contradictions often crosses the line into nitpicking, sea-lawyering and outright parody. The thrill of the chase and the conviction that your opponent has to be harbouring a confusion somewhere encourages uncharitable interpretation, which gives you an easy target to attack.

But such easy targets are typically irrelevant to the real issues at stake and simply waste everybody’s time and patience, even if they give amusement to your supporters. The best antidote I know for this tendency to caricature one’s opponent is a list of rules promulgated many years ago by social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport.

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1. Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

One immediate effect of following these rules is that your targets will be a receptive audience for your criticism: you have already shown that you understand their positions as well as they do, and have demonstrated good judgment (you agree with them on some important matters and have even been persuaded by something they said). Following Rapoport’s rules is always, for me, something of a struggle…

The “Surely” Klaxon

When you’re reading or skimming argumentative essays, especially by philosophers, here is a quick trick that may save you much time and effort, especially in this age of simple searching by computer: look for “surely” in the document and check each occurrence. Not always, not even most of the time, but often the word “surely” is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument.

Why? Because it marks the very edge of what the author is actually sure about and hopes readers will also be sure about. (If the author were really sure all the readers would agree, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning.) Being at the edge, the author has had to make a judgment call about whether or not to attempt to demonstrate the point at issue, or provide evidence for it, and – because life is short – has decided in favour of bald assertion, with the presumably well-grounded anticipation of agreement. Just the sort of place to find an ill-examined “truism” that isn’t true!

Answer Rhetorical Questions

Just as you should keep a sharp eye out for “surely”, you should develop a sensitivity for rhetorical questions in any argument or polemic. Why? Because, like the use of “surely”, they represent an author’s eagerness to take a short cut. A rhetorical question has a question mark at the end, but it is not meant to be answered. That is, the author doesn’t bother waiting for you to answer since the answer is so obvious that you’d be embarrassed to say it!

Here is a good habit to develop: whenever you see a rhetorical question, try – silently, to yourself – to give it an unobvious answer. If you find a good one, surprise your interlocutor by answering the question. I remember a Peanuts cartoon from years ago that nicely illustrates the tactic. Charlie Brown had just asked, rhetorically: “Who’s to say what is right and wrong here?” and Lucy responded, in the next panel: “I will.”

Employ Occam’s Razor

Attributed to William of Ockham (or Ooccam), a 14th-century English logician and philosopher, this thinking tool is actually a much older rule of thumb. A Latin name for it is lex parsimoniae, the law of parsimony. It is usually put into English as the maxim “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity”.

The idea is straightforward: don’t concoct a complicated, extravagant theory if you’ve got a simpler one (containing fewer ingredients, fewer entities) that handles the phenomenon just as well. If exposure to extremely cold air can account for all the symptoms of frostbite, don’t postulate unobserved “snow germs” or “Arctic microbes”. Kepler’s laws explain the orbits of the planets; we have no need to hypothesise pilots guiding the planets from control panels hidden under the surface. This much is uncontroversial, but extensions of the principle have not always met with agreement.

One of the least impressive attempts to apply Occam’s razor to a gnarly problem is the claim (and provoked counterclaims) that postulating a God as creator of the universe is simpler, more parsimonious, than the alternatives. How could postulating something supernatural and incomprehensible be parsimonious? It strikes me as the height of extravagance, but perhaps there are clever ways of rebutting that suggestion.

I don’t want to argue about it; Occam’s razor is, after all, just a rule of thumb, a frequently useful suggestion. The prospect of turning it into a metaphysical principle or fundamental requirement of rationality that could bear the weight of proving or disproving the existence of God in one fell swoop is simply ludicrous. It would be like trying to disprove a theorem of quantum mechanics by showing that it contradicted the axiom “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

Don’t Waste Your Time on Rubbish

Sturgeon’s law is usually expressed thus: 90% of everything is crap. So 90% of experiments in molecular biology, 90% of poetry, 90% of philosophy books, 90% of peer-reviewed articles in mathematics – and so forth – is crap. Is that true? Well, maybe it’s an exaggeration, but let’s agree that there is a lot of mediocre work done in every field. (Some curmudgeons say it’s more like 99%, but let’s not get into that game.)

A good moral to draw from this observation is that when you want to criticise a field, a genre, a discipline, an art form …don’t waste your time and ours hooting at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone. This advice is often ignored by ideologues intent on destroying the reputation of analytic philosophy, sociology, cultural anthropology, macroeconomics, plastic surgery, improvisational theatre, television sitcoms, philosophical theology, massage therapy, you name it.

Let’s stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship examples extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs. Notice that this is closely related to Rapoport’s rules: unless you are a comedian whose main purpose is to make people laugh at ludicrous buffoonery, spare us the caricature.

Beware of Deepities

A deepity (a term coined by the daughter of my late friend, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum) is a proposition that seems both important and true – and profound – but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading, it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading, it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That’s a deepity.

Here is an example (better sit down: this is heavy stuff): Love is just a word.

Oh wow! Cosmic. Mind-blowing, right? Wrong. On one reading, it is manifestly false. I’m not sure what love is – maybe an emotion or emotional attachment, maybe an interpersonal relationship, maybe the highest state a human mind can achieve – but we all know it isn’t a word. You can’t find love in the dictionary!

We can bring out the other reading by availing ourselves of a convention philosophers care mightily about: when we talk about a word, we put it in quotation marks, thus: “love” is just a word. “Cheeseburger” is just a word. “Word” is just a word. But this isn’t fair, you say. Whoever said that love is just a word meant something else, surely. No doubt, but they didn’t say it.

Not all deepities are quite so easily analysed. Richard Dawkins recently alerted me to a fine deepity by Rowan Williams, the then archbishop of Canterbury, who described his faith as “a silent waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark”.

I leave the analysis of this as an exercise for you.

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Filed under: Good Books, philosophy Tagged: "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking" by Daniel Dennett, a clear falsehood shared with critics is better than vague mush, analytic philosophy, Anatol Rapoport, argumentative essays, Benjamin Chew, Benjamin Chew blog, brains, Chew Hongjie, Chew Hongjie Blog, contradiction, Criticism, cultural anthropology, Daniel Dennett, deepities, do not multiply entities beyond necessity, Good Books, human beings, ideologues, intelligence, macroeconomics, make your mistakes in public, mistakes, Occam's Razor, philosophical theology, philosophy, pillar of wisdom, plastic surgery, profound, reflecting on past errors, Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams, rubbish, science, sociology, Sparrows and Sandcastles, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Benjamin Chew, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Chew Hong Jie, The Guardian, The Guardian UK, truism, uncharitable interpretation, use your mistakes, William of Ockham, wisdom, Wolfgang Pauli ]]> http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/dan-dennetts-seven-tools-for-thinking/feed/ 1 chewhongjie intuition pumps http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/ac-grayling-on-humanism/ http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/ac-grayling-on-humanism/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 23:49:28 +0000 Zhou (Chew) Hong Jie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/?p=4672 ]]> by AC Grayling

The current quarrel between religious and non-religious outlooks is another chapter in a story whose previous main incidents are to be found in the mid-nineteenth century and the early seventeenth century, in connection respectively with Darwin’s discoveries in biology and the rise of natural science. Both are moments in the slow but bloody retreat of religion; so too is what is happening now. For despite all appearances, we are witnessing not the renaissance but the decline of religion.

Here I wish to comment on something that, in the current climate of debate, has been mainly overlooked: the fact that those who are not religious have available to them a rich ethical outlook, all the richer indeed for being the result of reflection as opposed to convention, whose roots lie in classical antiquity when the great tradition of ethical thought in Western philosophy began.

For convenience I use the term “humanists” to denote those whose ethical outlook is non-religiously based, premised on humanity’s best efforts to understand its own nature and circumstances.

Consider what humanists aspire to be as ethical agents. They wish always to respect their fellow human beings, to like them, to honour their strivings and to sympathise with them. They wish to begin every encounter, every relationship, with this attitude, for they keep in mind Emerson’s remark that we must give others what we give a painting; namely the advantage of a good light. Most of their fellow human beings merit this, and respond likewise. Some forfeit it by what they wilfully do. But in all cases the humanists’ approach rests on the idea that what shapes people is the complex of facts about the interaction between human nature’s biological underpinnings and each individual’s social and historical circumstances.

Understanding these things – through the arts and literature, through history and philosophy, through the magnificent endeavour of science, through attentive personal experience and reflection, through close relationships, through the conversation of humankind which all this adds up to – is the great essential for humanists in their quest to live good and achieving lives, to do good to others in the process, and to join with their fellows in building just and decent societies where all can have an opportunity to flourish – and where kindness and mutuality is the prevailing note of ethical interaction.

And this is for the sake of this life, in this world, where we suffer and find joy, where we can help one another, and where we need one another’s help: the help of the living human hand and heart. A great deal of that help has to be targeted at the other side of what the human heart is – the unkind, angry, hostile, selfish, cruel side; the superstitious, tendentious, intellectually captive, ignorant side – to defeat or mitigate it, to ameliorate the consequences of its promptings, to teach it to be different; and never with lies and bribes.

Humanists distinguish between individuals and the wide variety of belief systems they variously adhere to. Some belief systems (astrology, feng shui, crystal healing, animism…the list is long) they combat robustly because they have falsehoods as premises – many indeed are inanities – and even more, because too often belief in some of those falsehoods serves as a prompt to murder. Humanists contest them as they would contest any falsehood. But with the exception of the individuals who promote these systems when they should know better, humanism is not against the majority who subscribe to them, for it recognises they were brought up in them as children, or turn to them out of need, or adhere to them hopefully.

These are fellow human beings, and humanists profoundly wish them well; which means that they wish them to be free, to think for themselves, to see the world through clear eyes. If only, says the humanist, they would have a better knowledge of history! If only they understood what their own leaders think of the simple version of the faiths they adhere to, substituting sophistry in its place. For whereas the ordinary believer has a somewhat misty notion of a father-cum-policeman-cum Father Christmas-cum-magician personal deity, their theologians deploy a polysyllabic, labyrinthine, intricate, sophisticated, complexified approach, that some go so far as to claim that god does not have to exist to be believed in. The standard basis of religious belief – subjective certainty – is hard enough to contest, being nonrational at source, but this is beyond orbit. It is hard to know which is worse: the theologians who are serious about what they say in these respects, and those who know it for a game.

In contrast to the certainties of faith, a humanist has a humbler conception of the nature and current extent of knowledge. All the enquiries that human intelligence conducts into enlarging knowledge makes progress always at the expense of generating new questions. Having the intellectual courage to live with this open-endedness and uncertainty, trusting reason and experiment to gain us increments of understanding, having the integrity to base one’s theories on rigorous and testable foundations, and being committed to changing one’s mind when shown to be wrong, are the marks of honest minds. In the past humanity was eager to clutch at legends, superstitions and leaps of credulity, to attain quick and simple closure on all they did not know or understand, to make it seem to themselves they did know and understand. Humanism recognises this historical fact about the old myths, and sympathises with the needs that drive people in that direction. It points out to such that what feeds their hearts and minds – love, beauty, music, sunshine on the sea, the sound of rain on leaves, the company of friends, the satisfaction that comes from successful effort – is more than the imaginary can ever give them, and that they should learn to re-describe these things – the real things of this world – as what gives life the poetry of its significance.

For that is what humanism is: to repeat and insist on the value of things human. Its desire to learn from the past, its exhortation to courage in the present and its espousal of hope for the future, are about real things, real people, real human need and possibility, and the fate of the fragile world we share. It is about human life; it requires no belief in an afterlife. It is about this world; it requires no belief in another world. It requires no commands from divinities, no promises of reward or threats of punishment, no myths and rituals, either to make sense of things or to serve as a prompt to the ethical life. It requires only open eyes, sympathy and the kindness it prompts, and reason.

Taken from AC Grayling’s Against All Gods, published by Oberon Books

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Several decades ago, political activists on the religious right began to put together an “ideology machine”. Home schooling was a big part of the plan. The idea was to breed and “train up” an army of culture warriors. We now are faced with the consequences of their actions, some of which are quite disturbing.

According to the Department of Education, the home schooling student population doubled in between 1999 and 2007, to 1.5 million students, and there is reason to think the growth has continued. Though families opt to home school for many different reasons, a large part of the growth has come from Christian fundamentalist sects. Children in that first wave are now old enough to talk about their experiences. In many cases, what they have to say is quite alarming.

When he was growing up in California, Ryan Lee Stollar was a stellar home schooling student. His oratory skills at got him invited to home schooling conferences around the country, where he debated public policy and spread the word about the “virtues” of an authentically Christian home school education.

Now 28, looking back on his childhood, it all seems like a delusion. As Stollar explains:

“The Christian home school subculture isn’t a children-first movement. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ideology-first movement. There is a massive, well-oiled machine of ideology that is churning out soldiers for the culture war. Home schooling is both the breeding ground – literally, when you consider the Quiverfull concept – and the training ground for this machinery. I say this as someone who was raised in that world.”

Too frequently, Stollar says, the consequences of putting ideology over children include anxiety, depression, distrust of authority, and issues around sexuality. This is evident from the testimonials that appear on Home schoolers Anonymous, the website that Stollar established, along with several partners.

Stollar’s own home schooling experience started off well. But over time, as his family became immersed in the world of Christian home schooling, his “education” became less straightforward and more ideological. “I particularly remember my science curriculum,” he says. “We used It Couldn’t Just Happen, which wasn’t really a science textbook. It was really just an apologetics textbook which taught students cliché refutations of evolutionism.”

Many parents start off home schooling with the intention of inculcating their children in a mainstream form of Christianity. However, as many HA bloggers report, it is easy to get sucked into the vortex of fundamentalist home schooling because extremists have cornered the market – running the conventions, publishing the curricula, setting up the blogs.

As HA blogger Julie Ann Smith, a Washington state mother of seven, says:

“If you are the average Christian home schooler with no agenda, and you have the choice between attending a secular home schooling convention and a Christian one, chances are you’ll choose the Christian convention. But they only allow certain speakers who follow their agenda. So you have no clue. What you don’t realize is that they are being run by Christian Reconstructionists.”

Smith is referring to the Calvinist movement, founded by Rousas John Rushdoony, that advocates a Christian takeover of the political system in order to “purify” the nation and cleanse it of the sin of secularism. Rushdoony taught that public schools – “statist education,” in his words – promote chaos, primitivism, and “a vast disintegration into the void”. He advocated home schooling as a way to rear a generation that could carry out the mission of retaking the nation for Christ.

Much of fundamentalist home schooling is driven by deeply sexist and patriarchal ideology. The Quiverfull movement teaches that women need to submit to their husbands and have as many babies as they possibly can. The effects of these ideas on children are devastating, as a glance at HA’s blogs show.

“The story of being home schooled was a story of being told to sit down and shut up. ‘An ideal woman is quiet and submissive,’ I was told time and time again,” writes Phoebe. “The silence and submission I was pushed into was ultimately a place of loneliness, bitterness and almost crippling insecurity.”

The fundamentalist home schooling world also advocates an extraordinarily authoritarian view of the parental role. Corporal punishment is frequently encouraged. The effects are, again, often quite devastating. “People who experienced authoritarian parents tend to turn into adults with poor boundaries,” writes one pseudonymous HA blogger. “It’s an extremely unsatisfying and unsustainable way to live.”

In America, we often take for granted that parents have an absolute right to decide how their children will be educated, but this leads us to overlook the fact that children have rights, too, and that we as a modern society are obligated to make sure that they get an education. Families should be allowed to pursue sensible homeschooling options, but current arrangements have allowed some families to replace education with fundamentalist indoctrination.

As the appearance of HA reminds us, the damage done by this kind of false education falls not just on our society as a whole, but on the children who are pumped through the ideology machine. They are the traumatized veterans of our culture wars. We should listen to their stories, and support them as they find their way forward.

(source)

There are quite a number of home schooling families in Singapore too, of which the majority are indeed evangelical-fundamentalist christians.

Nutjobs, many of them.

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Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of thousands with our industrial killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. We murder thousands more from the skies over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen with our pilotless drones. We murder each other with reckless abandon. And, as if we were not drenched in enough human blood, we murder prisoners—most of them poor people of color who have been locked up for more than a decade. The United States believes in regeneration through violence. We have carried out blood baths on foreign soil and on our own land for generations in the vain quest of a better world. And the worse it gets, the deeper our empire sinks under the weight of its own decay and depravity, the more we kill.

There are parts of the nation where the electorate, or at least the white electorate, routinely and knowingly puts murderers into political office. Murder is a sign of strength. Murder is a symbol of resolve. Murder means law and order. Murder keeps us safe. Strap the criminal into the gurney. Plunge the needles into veins. Haul away the corpse. It is our Christian duty. God Bless America! And one of the next on the list to be murdered in Florida—a state that has decided, under its new and cynically named “Timely Justice Act,” that it needs to accelerate its execution rate—is William Van Poyck. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. June 12 at Florida State Prison. He is a writer who has spent years exposing the cruelty of our system of mass incarceration. On June 12, if Gov. Rick Scott has his way, Van Poyck will write no more. And that is exactly how our political class of murderers wants it.

“Only God can judge,” Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the Timely Justice Act in the Florida House of Representatives, said during the debate. “But we sure can set up the meeting.”

Van Poyck, 58, knows what is coming. He has seen it many times before. He chronicles existence on death row in his blog, posted by his sister, Lisa Van Poyck, at deathrowdiary.blogspot.com, where there is a petition to Gov. Scott asking for a reprieve.

“I wasn’t really surprised when they showed up at my cell door with the chains and shackles,” he wrote his sister May 3. “For the last month or so I’ve had a strong premonition that my warrant was about to be signed, but that wasn’t something I wanted to share with you.”

“Sis, you know I’m a straight shooter, I’m not into sugar coating things, so I don’t want you to have any illusions about this,” he wrote. “I do not expect any delays or stays. This is it. In 40 days these folks will take me into the room next door and kill me.”

“After 40+ years of living in cages I am ready to leave this dead end existence and move on,” he concluded. “I leave with many regrets over the people I have hurt, and those I’ve disappointed, and over a life squandered away. My spirit will fly away hugging all the life lessons learned over 58 years on Schoolhouse Earth and with an implacable determination not to repeat these mistakes the next time around.”

Van Poyck, before the signing of his death warrant and his abrupt transfer to a cell next to the execution chamber, was one of the few inside the system to doggedly bear witness to the abuse and murder of prisoners on death row.

“Robert Waterhouse was scheduled for execution at 6:00pm this evening,” Van Poyck wrote to his sister in 2012. “In accordance with the established execution protocol he was strapped to the gurney and the needles were inserted into each arm about 45 minutes prior to his appointed time. Just before 6:00, however, he received a 45-minute stay which morphed into an almost 3-hour endurance test as he remained on the gurney as the seconds, minutes and then hours slid by at an excruciatingly slow pace, waiting for someone to tell him if hope was at hand, if he would live or die. Just before 9:00 he received his answer, the plungers were depressed, the syringes emptied and he was summarily killed.”

“Here on the row we can discern the approximate time of death when we see the old white Cadillac hearse trundle in through the back sally port gate to pick up the body, the same familiar 1960s era hearse I’ve watched for almost 40 years, coming in to retrieve the bodies of murdered prisoners, which used to happen on a regular basis back when I was in open population,” he went on. “I’ve seen a lot of guys, both friends and foes, carted off in that old hearse. Anyway, pause for a moment to imagine being on that gurney for over three hours, the needles in your arms. You’ve already come to terms with your imminent death, you are reconciled with the reality that this is it, this is how you will die, that there will be no reprieve. Then, at the last moment, a cruel trick, you’re given that slim hope, which you instinctively grasp. Some court, somewhere, has given you a temporary stay. You stare at the ceiling while the clock on the wall ticks away. You are totally alone, not a friendly soul in sight, surrounded by grim-faced men who are determined to kill you. Your heart pounds, your body feels electrified and every second seems like an eternity as a Kaleidoscope of wild thoughts crash around franticly in your compressed mind. After 3 hours you are drained, exhausted, terrorized, and then the phone on the wall rings and you’re told it’s time to die. To me this is cruel and unusual punishment by any definition.”

Van Poyck was convicted in the death of a corrections officer in 1987, although he insists he did not pull the trigger. But even if he did, it does not justify murder in the name of justice. Do we rape rapists? Do we sexually abuse pedophiles? Do we beat violent offenders? Do we strike hit-and-run drivers with a moving vehicle? And what if Van Poyck is telling the truth? What if he did not kill the corrections guard? He would not be the first inmate on death row to die for a murder he or she did not commit, especially in Florida. The state has sentenced more people to death than any other in recent decades. It has executed 75 since the death penalty was reinstated in Florida in the 1970s. There have been 24 death row inmates in Florida exonerated—one exoneration for every three executions. Not only might we kill the innocent, we have killed the innocent, as sadly illustrated by contemporary DNA tests that have cleared some of those who were put to death.

“When I heard from Bill’s lawyer about the warrant I lost it,” Van Poyck’s sister told me as she was driving Sunday from Richmond, Va., where she lives, to Bradford County, Fla., to see her brother. “I was on my lunch break. I broke down sobbing and crying. Gov. Scott signed warrants for prisoners who had committed heinous crimes, people who murdered children or serial killers. I thought Bill was safe for a long time. I still have visions of him walking out of there. And now he is in the death watch cell.”

“While he did commit a crime in trying to break a friend out of a prison transport van where his accomplice, Frank Valdes, shot and killed one of the guards, Bill never intended for anyone to get hurt, much less killed,” Lisa said. “I feel that 26 years on death row with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head has been punishment enough for the crime he did commit. I have received so many letters from people saying that his writings, especially his autobiography ‘A Checkered Past,’ have changed their lives. He is not the man he once was. He underwent a profound spiritual conversion. He is a beautiful soul. He deserves [to live].”

In “A Checkered Past” Van Poyck describes his troubled boyhood, including the death of his mother from carbon monoxide poisoning when he was a year old. His father, who worked for Eastern Airlines and had lost a leg in World War II, turned the children over to a series of housekeepers, most of whom were neglectful or abusive. By 11 Van Poyck was in a juvenile home, along with Lisa, who was 12, and a brother, Jeffrey, who was 18. By 17 Van Poyck was in prison for an armed robbery. And then in 1987 he and Valdes attempted to free a friend from a prison transport van in downtown West Palm Beach. A corrections guard was fatally shot, apparently by Valdes, who a dozen years later died after eight prison guards beat him in his cell. Van Poyck’s brother, who is ill with lung cancer, has been in prison since 1992 for a series of bank robberies in Southern California.

Van Poyck has written two novels, “The Third Pillar of Wisdom” and “Quietus.” One of his short stories, “The Investigation,” will be included in an anthology of prison writing edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

“I started working with Bill [Van Poyck] in 2007 in the PEN prison writing program,” said Elea Carey, a short-story author based in San Francisco who was his writing instructor for two years. “There is a sense of isolation in his writing, as if he grew up alone in nature. He defined his experience without anyone around to help him understand it. He often appears as if he was dropped into a foreign land. His sensitivity to others, his compassion, his awareness and his empathy grew with his writing. He moved from his aloneness to grappling with the basics of human relationships.”

“People die every day,” Carey said when we spoke by phone. “I lost my dad in January. I am not afraid of death. I don’t think Bill is afraid of death. I am not shocked that Gov. Scott did this. But I want to do everything possible to stop this from happening. We are asleep as a society. We too do not know what it means to be fully human. This asleepness was once part of Bill’s life. He was asleep, in this way, when he carried out his crimes and committed the wrongs he knows he did. But this unconsciousness is not limited to people like Bill—it is part of all who think it is OK to do this kind of harm to other human beings. I want my government to be above murder.”

Van Poyck has an eye for detail, a terse, laconic writing style and a deep compassion for those trapped in the system. He explores the daily degradation of prison life, a Stygian world where some 50,000 people are held in solitary confinement in supermax prisons or special detention units and where hopelessness and despair threaten to overwhelm those inside.

“Yesterday the prison was locked down all day for the standard ‘mock execution’, the practice run which occurs a week prior to the actual premeditated killing,” he wrote to his sister in February 2012. “For the mock execution they lock down the joint, bring in an array of big wigs, and go through a dry run to make sure the death machine is in working order, everyone on their toes. The big wigs are just voyeurs, here to vicariously kill someone while allowing themselves the bare moral cover of not actually pushing the knife between the ribs. Their minions do the actual dirty deed while they can go home with technically clean hands. These mock executions are as depressing as the real thing, in the sense that it’s dispiriting to watch an entire organization (a prison, with all its constituent parts) so seriously dedicate their time and energies to practice killing a fellow human being, as if this is a good and natural thing to do. It takes some peculiar mental (not to mention moral) gymnastics to justify this to oneself, but we humans have proven ourselves immensely adept at self-delusion and hypocrisy, especially when we bring religion into the equation. We are really, really good at killing others in the name of God. We are a strange species, aren’t we? To those who argue that the death penalty isn’t killing (or murder, which is merely a legal definition) because it is all done ‘according to the law’, I’d remind them that the Nazis did everything they did ‘according to the law’. The Nazis, for all their terrible deeds, were sticklers for following the law; they found their refuge in the law, meticulously following the letter of the law before they enslaved and/or executed their victims. ‘We were just following the law’ is a lame excuse when you are the one writing the laws in the first instance. …”

In prisons, he writes, time merges into a long, seamless monotony broken up by periodic and often explosive acts of tragedy and violence—an execution or death, a stabbing with a “shank,” beatings by the guards, mental breakdowns, rape and suicide.

“The search team came and tore up my cell last week,” he wrote in January 2012. “It was a surgical strike (they came for me alone) and I was later told that ‘someone’ wrote a snitch kite on me claiming (falsely) I had a weapon in my cell. I’m fairly certain it was someone trying to get a DR (disciplinary report) dismissed by dropping a dime on me on the hope they’d shake me down and find something, any kind of contraband, and the rat would then get credit for it. But I had no contraband so the snitch struck out. If the administration had any integrity they’d write the rat a DR for ‘lying to staff.’ I spent several hours putting my cell back in order; it looked like a hurricane came through, all my property scattered everywhere. This is the kind of bullshit you have to put up with in prison; it’s the nature of the beast. Hell, it happens on the streets, too, though. Informants are master manipulators and the police routinely play their game even though they know the rats often fabricate stories and evidence to their own ends. …”

He wrote earlier this year about the rapid decline of another prisoner, Tom, who “just 4 months ago had a hale and hardy soul and “now [is] a mere envelope of cancer-gnawed flesh and bones.” He “was removed from his cell by wheelchair, too weak to offer anything but meager protest, and transferred to the one place he dreaded going to, our notoriously filthy, blood spattered clinic holding cell, consigned to die in pain-soaked isolation. The image of him, barely able to croak a few words, weakly waving goodbye to me, his sunken, lingering eyes reflecting his recognition that he was going to his death, will forever be imprinted on my memory.”

“I confess that it is tiring to be surrounded by so much death—the dead and yet-to-be-dead—these past two decades, a struggle not [to] be drenched in negativity, with precious little to mitigate my disappointments,” he wrote. “Each day requires an act of will to wake up and set myself with a purpose, to believe this mortal life is more than just a play of shadows in a shadow box. …”

“My old pal Tom died on Friday, Feb 8th at 4:10 pm, alone in the clinic isolation cell at UCI,” he wrote to his sister a little later. “I hate that he died alone, locked in a tiny cell with no property (no radio, TV or anything to occupy his mind) and nobody to converse with, just laying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, waiting for his final escape. His loved ones, who were able to travel from Texas and North Carolina to visit him for three hours just two days before he passed away wrote and told me that he was very weak and gaunt, could not keep down any food or liquids, but was lucid enough for a meaningful visit, though just barely so. Although I know his death was inevitable and imminent, I’m surprised at how much it has affected me. I’ve seen an awful lot of death during my many years in prison (way too much death, in all its myriad variations), including some friends, but Tom’s has knocked the wind out of me. I still catch myself starting to call over to him when I read something interesting or see something on TV that would pique his interest, and I sometimes swear I hear his voice calling me. A part of me is happy for him because I know he’s finally free, but I can’t lie; I really miss him.”

(source)

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Filed under: contemporary affairs Tagged: "A Checkered Past" by William van Poyck, "Murder is Our National Sport" by Chris Hedges, "Quietus" by William Van Poyck, "The Third Pillar of Wisdom" by William Van Poyck, 26 years on death row, a better world, a cruel trick, a life squandered away, abuse and murder of prisoners on death row, Afghanistan, armed robbery, bank robberies, beatings by the guards, Benjamin Chew, Benjamin Chew blog, blood baths, carbon monoxide poisoning, cell, Chew Hongjie, Chew Hongjie Blog, Chris Hedges, clinic isolation cell, Contemporary affairs, crime, crime and punishment, current affairs, dead end existence, Death, death and dying, death of a corrections officer, death row, death warrant, death watch cell, deathrowdiary.blogspot.com, did not pull the trigger, downtown West Palm Beach, drones, Eastern Airlines, established execution protocol, Florida, Florida House of Representatives, Florida State Prison, Frank Valdes, God bless America, Governor Rick Scott, hopelessness, in the name of justice, industrial killing machines, Irag, Joyce Carol Oates, juvenile home, killing machines, law and order, lethal injection, Lisa van Poyck, lung cancer, many years in prison, mass incarceration, Matt Gaetz, mental breakdowns, mock execution, murder, murder is a sign of strength, murder is a symbol of resolve, murder means law and order, national sport, North Carolina, on death row, our Christian duty, Pakistan, PEN prison writing program, people of color, pilotless drones, prison, prison life, prisoners, punishment, rape, reckless abandon, regeneration, Robert Waterhouse, San Francisco, scheduled to die by lethal injection, solitary confinement, Somalia, Southern California, Sparrows and Sandcastles, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Benjamin Chew, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Chew Hong Jie, suicide, Texas, the electorate, the execution chamber, the innocent, the United States, the United States believes in regeneration through violence, Timely Justice Act, to be fully human, Truthdig.com, U.S. current affairs, U.S. news, violence, we have killed the innocent, we murder prisoners, West Palm Beach, William Van Poyck, world news, World War II, writings by Chris Hedges, Yemen ]]> http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/murder-is-our-national-sport/feed/ 0 chewhongjie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/horror-story-from-pensacola-christian-college/ http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/horror-story-from-pensacola-christian-college/#comments Sat, 11 May 2013 02:41:23 +0000 Zhou (Chew) Hong Jie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/?p=4662 ]]> by “Darrell”

Pensacola Christian College loves to talk about its high standards and the way it strives for excellence. What they don’t highlight so much is that excellence is a blood sport that often puts students at risk. It seems that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some legs.

It was early in my Junior year when the girl who I would later marry collapsed in her dorm room in terrible pain, unable to even stand. Her room mates carried her to bed, hopeful that she’d feel better in the morning. The next day they contacted the on-campus clinic and were informed that their only option was  painful trek across campus to be seen by the nurse in order to get permission to stay in her room instead of attending classes. (It only takes missing six unauthorized classes to get expelled at that bastion of education so just staying in her room and hoping for the best wasn’t an option.)

Even though her room mates asked for help, explaining that Cassie was unable to sit up in the wheelchair the clinic told them to use all they were told is “That’s all we have. You’ll just have to manage.”  A slow trip down to the lobby with her propped in the wheelchair revealed even more bad news: there was no wheelchair access to the dorm. The only option was a small wooden ramp still propped up for students who were moving in heavy luggage at the start of the semester that hadn’t yet been removed. As carefully as they could, they attempted to navigate down to the sidewalk but the chair slipped, dumping Cassie onto the ground. Students, these rules are here for your protection.

After several hours of waiting in the clinic under the ever-suspicious eyes of the staff who’s main job is apparently to discourage people from skipping class, an ambulance showed up to take her to the nearby hospital where she was misdiagnosed with a pinched nerve. A representative from the dean’s office went with her and talked to the doctors on her behalf without any kind of written HIPAA authorization. She was then summarily given pain killers and whisked back to campus to her fifth floor room in Dixon tower to recuperate.

The horror didn’t end there. One night during her convalescence there was a fire drill.  Cassie was still on the 5th floor of the dorm, even though the Residence Manager and the Dean’s office knew that she could barely walk let alone descend and re-climb stairs. Her  room mates were literally forced to carry her. Of course PCC isn’t known for really caring much about fire safety anyway. For years the rule has remained on the books that all female students must be in “proper” attire before they leave their rooms for a fire drill. If you happen to be sleeping in pajama pants, you must take the time to put on a skirt before you try to escape the flames. If you should perish then at least you’ll know you died for the cause of not tempting the fire fighters to lust after you.

“If you happen to be sleeping in pajama pants, you must take the time to put on a skirt before you try to escape the flames. If you should perish then at least you’ll know you died for the cause of not tempting the fire fighters to lust after you.”

Finally, after trying to tough it out and even trying to go back to class, my future wife had taken all she could bear. She told the dean’s office that she was leaving and they cut up her ID card, the final act of withdrawing from the college. However, since Pensacola airport is far from a major hub, her flight home was to leave at 7:00 a.m., meaning she would need to leave the college by 6:00, well before the gates opened. A good friend of ours petitioned the dean’s office to let him drive Cassie to the airport and help her with her bags. He was twenty-three years old and therefore was allowed to go off-campus with non-student girls — of which my wife was now one.  The dean’s office refused his request to help.

Rather than risk the college’s precious testimony by having a Christian guy help his injured friend to the airport, Cassie was instead forced to take a cab driven by a total stranger who left her on the airport curb without a way to carry her luggage. The college must keep up its appearances no matter what the risk to you. You don’t matter. They do.

After a few weeks of being home my wife received a letter from the college. It should have been a note of apology or a letter expressing regret at how badly they had managed her entire situation. Instead it was a bill for the remaining weeks of the semester since she had crossed the six-week threshold by a few days.  Apparently the only thing even more important than appearances at PCC is getting paid.

Keep the rules. Raise the standard. Strive for excellence. If you’re too broken in body or spirit to manage that then we simply don’t want your kind around here. How can a place that both holds and demonstrates such beliefs be Christian?

(source)

This is fundamentalist christianity with steroids…

*******

I should have guessed that if Michael Gove was going to reply to one of my Guardian Letters from a Curious Parent, he wouldn’t engage with what I actually wrote. Expert though he is in linguistics, he seems to find it difficult attending to detail. He claims that I criticised the new grammar test because there is “no such thing as correct grammar”. No, I criticised it because a) it was brought in without any evidence that it would help children write better, b) that Year 6 is too early to tackle grammar in any useful way, c) the kind of grammar being tested was resulting in it being taught out of context of real speaking, writing and reading, d) questions about grammar are not simply a matter of “right and wrong”.

From a purely theoretical standpoint however, I do think that there is no such thing as one single correct grammar. Here’s my argument:

1. All language has grammar, otherwise it wouldn’t be language. Grammar is what gives words sense. We produce language in strings of words, and the means by which they stick together and make sense is grammar. This applies to all language, all dialects – not one particular way of speaking and writing. So grammar is not a matter of being correct or not. It’s a way of describing how all language works. All linguists believe there is grammar, but linguists do not all agree on grammatical terms or categories. Pretending that there is only one correct way to describe language is confusing and untrue.

2. I think we have to assume that Gove is using the phrase “correct grammar” to mean “the grammar of Standard English”.

3. Standard English is a form of writing that has developed, has changed and is still changing. There is not one correct form of Standard English, and to tell children that there is would be to tell them an untruth. To take one simple example, we can write in modern Standard English: “Do you have any wool?” “Have you got any wool?” “Have you any wool?” All three are acceptable forms of Standard English.

4. If there were one “correct grammar”, we wouldn’t be able to explain how and why grammar changes. So, the method by which we ask questions in English changed in the era before Shakespeare. If you listen to journalists and politicians, you’ll hear and read that they show a growing tendency to discuss a plural subject, eg “drugs” or “teenage mothers”, and follow it with a singular verb. It’s as if people have started to give themselves permission to turn these plurals into a title or a topic. What was “incorrect” is becoming “correct”. In other words, the term “correctness” doesn’t help us understand language.

5. Gove thinks that the Guardian’s style guide is evidence that there is a “correct grammar”. He has forgotten that different publishing houses have different style guides. One will demand “alright”, another “all right”. One will demand “can not” and never “cannot” or “can’t”, while others will accept all three. By the way, some members of the elite that Michael Gove mentions didn’t go to university or study grammar. When they want to write in Standard English they hire people to do it for them.

6. A problem that arises from talking about “correct grammar” is that it suggests that all other ways of speaking or writing are incorrect. This consigns the majority to being in error. Gove might be happy with that way of viewing humanity, but I’m not.

7. The immediate consequence of the grammar test introduced into Year 6 is that teachers are buying textbooks that are full of ungrammatical nonsense. Single words separated from sentences are being described as nouns and verbs. Words are only nouns or verbs when they are being used in real language. The word “black” has been frequently used as an adjective, noun or verb, but it is only its use that tells us which. “Up” is only a preposition when it’s used as one. If I “up” my work rate, it won’t be.

8. Michael Gove wants to position me as someone who is against schools teaching grammar. No, I am someone who thinks that the place for grammar teaching is the secondary school, college and university, and that it should be taught on the basis of the evidence that someone like Professor Debra Myhill has produced. In fact, I am so keen on grammar, I have written a mini-course in grammar and put it up on my blog where it is free for all to read and download.

9. It’s bizarre of Michael Gove to accuse me of hindering the acquisition of Standard English. Surely I don’t need to point out that very young children all over the country, many of whom speak local dialects or languages other than English, hear, read and sing We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which is written in Standard English. Many linguists say that the acquisition of Standard English is enhanced by pleasurable learning of poems and songs. What’s more, I have spent thousands of hours in schools in the last 40 years doing writing workshops with children engaging in discussions with them about what kinds of language is appropriate for a particular piece of writing.

10. I think there is one certain way to make life harder for children to acquire Standard English: creating tests that fail hundreds of thousands of children. This is Michael Gove’s contribution to 10- and 11-year-olds’ linguistic skills.

(source)

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Filed under: education, english grammar, English language Tagged: "correctness" doesn't help us understand language, "Michael Gove and Correct Grammar" by Michael Rosen, acceptable forms of Standard English, all language has grammar, Benjamin Chew, Benjamin Chew blog, Chew Hongjie, Chew Hongjie Blog, Correct Grammar, Correct Grammar, Debra Myhill, education, English Education, English grammar, English Language, Grammar, grammar of standard English, grammar teaching, grammar test, Guardian Letters from a Curious Parent, linguistics, Michael Gove, Michael Rosen, new grammar test, pleasurable learning of poems and songs, questions about grammar are not simply a matter of right and wrong, reading, real reading, real speaking, real writing, Sparrows and Sandcastles, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Benjamin Chew, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Chew Hong Jie, speaking, standard English, taught out of context, teaching English grammar, The Guardian, The Guardian UK, the place for grammar teaching is the secondary school, there is no such thing as grammar, there is no such thing as one single correct grammar, writing, writings by Michael Rosen, Year 6 ]]> http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/michael-gove-and-correct-grammar/feed/ 0 chewhongjie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/embarrassing-partisanship/ http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/embarrassing-partisanship/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 00:51:46 +0000 Zhou (Chew) Hong Jie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/?p=4654 ]]>  

“People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.

All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.

Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.”

- Terry Goodkind

Well-meaning Singaporean MP Zainudin Nordin posts the above on his Facebook page, only to receive Al-Qaeda-style outrage from many illiterate Singaporean Facebookers who may have failed basic English comprehension in their school days. Obsessed with sex, they ripped the portion about gang rape and gang-banged it out of context. The zombies on Yahoo News Singapore limp along with the ovine crowd to rape the text to death.

I am embarrassed for my dotty countrymen.

It seems that many feign indignation and anger for the sake of it because Nordin belongs to the ruling regime. For once I wonder if having bird-brained populist leaders – think opposition – instead of the academic crème de la crème - think PAP - is a good thing.

First, one does not take a sentence or segment out of its literary context and expect to interpret its meaning accurately. There are three paragraphs to the Goodkind quotation. It does not take an Edwin Thumboo to know that the key to understanding the Goodkind words is the penultimate sentence. One interprets the gang rape motif in that light. And the thrust of the entire message is the final sentence. What Goodkind is trying to say is that democracy must relate to individual human rights. Full stop.

Second, because of the last two sentences, one realises Goodkind defines democracy in its lexical form. Demos – people and Kratos – power. In other words, the “rule of the people”. Mob rule. It is fallacious to define terms that way as meanings of words are known through their contemporary usage in society and culture as well as the fields of study in which they might be the jargon. In this case one has to define and explain democracy in the context of political philosophy. Democracy has many variations, and even in its most liberal strand it is not simplistically the rule of the masses.

Third, it is irrational to crucify Goodkind for using the word democracy fallaciously. He uses it that way to emphasise and elucidate a point. And Goodkind’s point is individual freedom, individual rights. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that what the political opposition in Singapore wants? To have MP Nordin to quote Goodkind is to interpret his sympathies and good intentions on the matter.

Fourth and last, it is therefore embarrassingly and shamefully lowbrow and pea-brained for the Facebooking and Yahoo News-ing Singaporeans to shout blasphemy over this one quotation which Nordin happens to post.

Please. This sort of partisan fanaticism does no good to the cause of championing human and civil rights in Singapore. It reminds me so much of Yankee politics.

Duh.

*******

Pauline Lan Xin Mei

Without mentioning the Sinophone culture, bimbotic vanimal Pauline Lan is one reason among many I spurn Taiwanese television. I would have left Lan and her rabble of vainpots to their neanderthal mumblings about skin-shallow bourgeois piffle if not for her less-than-tasteful pontifications about the Singaporean woman (and man).

Pauline Lan in Singapore

According to AsiaOne Showbiz, Lan was in Singapore some two weeks ago to promote its version of her Taiwanese “variety” programme on physical beauty, Lady First.

Lady First Singapore

Its riotous popularity speaks a lot about Taiwanese women and their preoccupations. I do not wish to reiterate this cerebral nightmare of a sexist culture which baptises women deeper into the bovine dung of Barbie objectification.

Lan rates the Singaporean woman a three out of ten for dress sense. Her pea brain can’t seem to think beyond the skin-shallow surface. Why aren’t women here making an effort to look pretty? Why no make-up? Why slippers? It is not the way to live if a woman cannot accept herself and is so insecure about her face she has to use fake eyelashes to “enlarge” her eyes and Nippon-paint her face before she exits her house every single time. It is not the way to live if she cannot free herself from the self-imposed fear of sinning against the imaginary fashion gods of TV world.

Really. Must women look pretty all the time? Must men dress well every time? Even during brief trips to the pasar malam? Why not flip flops? It is not an excuse Singapore has a very humid and temperamental weather. Sartorial trends are just not our priority.

Vainpots galore

My common tee-shirt-and-jeans sense tells me if the face I see everyday is a mask, fraudulent and void of the real and the genuine, I may suffer a heart attack when I finally witness the ogre beneath the layers of lies and deception. It is not healthy for the relationship. It is also schizophrenic for the woman.

I gaze and ogle at Darling everyday. Without the make-up and the fireworks. I enjoy the organic eroticism of inhaling her non-perfumed mustiness and caressing the tenderness of the body which has gifted me three lovely children. She looks radiant au naturale. Why does a family outing to the mall or the cinema require Darling to plaster her face? Why does she have to look bimbotic (see above image), if not as a middle-class hooker, every time we stroll along Orchard Road?

The fact is, when Darling does Barbie herself, for some bourgeois Ritz event, it becomes a visual bonus, an unexpected delight. Our sartorial sense fit the occasion, the situation. We do not feel good about ourselves because we “look good” to others. I sure feel good about myself without cosplaying James Bond or some K-pop pussy. I am myself. I don’t pretend to be another. I can hold my own with both the hawker and the statesman, the worker and the CEO. With a tee and bermudas, mind you.

And my favourite pair of sandals.

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Filed under: contemporary affairs, popular culture Tagged: "Lady First", "the cinema", a hooker, a sexist culture, AsiaOne, AsiaOne News, AsiaOne Showbiz, au naturale, Barbie, Benjamin Chew, Benjamin Chew blog, bimbotic, bimbotic vanimal, cerebral nightmare, Chew Hongjie, Chew Hongjie Blog, Contemporary affairs, culture, current affairs, darling, dress sense, fake eyelashes, family outing to the cinema, family outing to the mall, I spurn Taiwanese television, James Bond, K-pop pussy, Lan Xin Mei, less than tasteful pontifications about the Singaporean woman, looking pretty, lowbrow, lowbrow fare from Taiwan, make-up, making efforts to look pretty, man, middle-class hooker, my favourite pair of sandals, neanderthal mumblings, not a priority, objectification, Orchard Road, organic eroticism, Pauline Lan, Pauline Lan in Singapore, Pauline Lan rates Singaporean women three out of ten, Pauline Lan rates the Singaporean woman a three out of ten for dress sense, Pauline Lan Xin Mei, Popular Culture, rabble of vainpots, riotous popularity, sandals, sartorial sense, sartorial trends, she looks radiant au naturale, Singapore, Singapore culture, singapore current affairs, Singapore pop culture, Singapore Popular Culture, Singaporean men, Singaporean woman, Singaporean women, Singaporean women and their dress sense, Sinophone, Sinophone culture, skin-shallow bourgeois piffle, Sparrows and Sandcastles, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Benjamin Chew, Sparrows and Sandcastles blog by Chew Hong Jie, stroll along Orchard Road, Taiwan, Taiwanese television, Taiwanese variety programme, tee and bermudas, the CEO, the hawker, the mall, the Singaporean man, the Singaporean woman, the Statesman, the worker, three lovely children, three out of ten, vainpot, vainpots, women ]]> http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/lowbrow-fare-from-taiwan/feed/ 0 chewhongjie vainpot vainpot conference vainpot show singapore vainpot galore http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/the-corrosion-of-reason/ http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/the-corrosion-of-reason/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 00:38:51 +0000 Zhou (Chew) Hong Jie http://sparrowsandsandcastles.wordpress.com/?p=4644 ]]> by AC Grayling

An opinion panel research survey conducted in July 2006 found more than 30 per cent of UK university students believe in creationism or intelligent design. This raw detail is gasp-inducing enough in its own right, as indication of the effect of the fairy tales that once served humankind as its primitive science and technology in its intellectual infancy, and continue to assert a grip on too many. But it is even more troubling as a symptom of a wider corrosion, the spread of a more virulent cancer of unreason, which is affecting not just the mental culture of our own country but the fate of the world itself. If that last phrase seems hyperbolic, read on.

Take the local concern first, and ask what is signified by the 30 per cent statistic at issue. From the day the government of John Major allowed polytechnics to redescribe themselves as universities, and his and successive governments set a target of getting 50 per cent of school leavers into higher education, but without the huge investment of resources at all levels that would make this viable, it was inevitable that standards required for entrance to degree level courses would fall. And so it has dramatically proved. At the same time standards in public examinations at secondary school level have also fallen, by some measures a long way. The official line, of course, is the latter at least is not true: but such is the way with official lines.

The combined result is that a significant proportion of university entrants today are noticeably different from their average forerunners of a generation ago: measurably less literate, less numerate, less broadly knowledgeable, and sometimes less reflective. At the same time education has been infected by postmodern relativism and the less desirable effects of political correctness, whose combined effect is to encourage teachers to accept, and even promote as valid alternatives, the various superstitions and antique belief systems constituting the multiplicity of different and generally competing religions represented in our multicultural society. This has gone so far that our taxes are now arrogated to support faith-based schooling, which means the ghettoisation of intellectually defenceless children into a variety of competing superstitions, despite the stark evidence, all the way from Northern Ireland to the madrasahs of Pakistan, of what this does for the welfare of humankind.

The key to the weakening of intellectual rigour that all this represents is enquiry is no longer premised on the requirement that belief must be proportional to carefully gathered and assessed evidence. The fact that faith is enough to legitimate anything from superstition to mass murder is not one whit troubling to people of faith themselves, most of whom disagree with the faith of most other people of faith (thus: a christian does not accept Islam, and vice versa; so a christian’s claim to be certain, by faith, that his is the only true religion is rejected, on grounds of faith, by the Muslim; and so on, to the point of mutual assassination); which shows the non-rational mindset underlying religious belief, an essentially infantile attitude of acceptance of fairy stories, has not been affected by the best education can offer in the way of challenging and maturing minds to think for themselves.

Example: ask a christian why the ancient story of a deity impregnating a mortal woman who then gives birth to a heroic figure whose deeds earn him a place in heaven, is false as applied to Zeus and his many paramours (the mothers of such as Hercules, the Heavenly Twins, etc.), but true as applied to god, Mary and Jesus. Indeed ask him what is the significance of the fact this tale is older than Greek mythology, and commonplace in Middle Eastern mythologies generally. Why are they myths, whereas what is related in the New Testament is not? Do not expect a rational reply; an appeal to faith will be enough, because with faith anything goes.

Here is why the claim that the resurgence of nonrational superstitious belief is a danger to the world. Fundamentalism in the major religions can be and too often is politically infantilising, and in its typical radicalised forms provide utter certainty of being in the right, immunises against tolerance and pluralism, justifies the most atrocious behaviour to the apostate and the infidel, is blind to the appeals of justice let alone mercy or reason, and is intrinsically fascistic and monolithic. One does not have to look far to find shining examples of this pretty picture in today’s world, whether in the Middle East or the U.S. Bible Belt. The rest of the world is caught between these two appalling instances of basically the same phenomenon, so it is perhaps no surprise, though no less regrettable, that the infection should spread from both directions.

More regrettable though, is the fact that the civilised quarters of the world are not taking seriously the connection between the world’s current problems and failure to uphold intellectual rigour in education, and not demanding religious belief be a private and personal matter for indulgence only in the home, accepting it in the public sphere only on an equal footing with other interest groups such as trade unions and voluntary organisations such as the Rotary Club. This is the most a religion merits being treated as, as the following proves: if I and a few others claim to constitute a religious group based on belief in the divinity of garden gnomes, should I be entitled to public money for a school in which children can be brought up in this faith, together with a bishop’s seat in Parliament perhaps? Why would this be laughed out of court when belief of essentially the same intellectual value, say, christianity, is accorded all such amenities and more?

I remind those who seek to counter with the tired old canard that Stalinism and Nazism are proof secular arrangements are worse than religious ones, that fundamentalist religion is the same in its operation and effects as Stalinism and Nazism for the reason these latter are at base the same thing as religions, viz. monolithic ideologies. Religion is a man-made device, not least of oppression and control, whose techniques and structures were adopted by Stalinism and Nazism, the monolithic salvation faiths of modernity, as the best teachers they could wish for. When any of these imprisoning ideologies are on the back foot and/or in the minority, they present sweet faces to those they wish to seduce: the kiss of friendship in the parish church, the summer camp for young communists in the 1930s. But give them the levers of power and they are the Taliban, the Inquisition, the Stasi.

Give them AK47s and Semtex, and some of the fanatics among them become airline bombers, mass murderers of ordinary people and for the most contemptible reasons.

How far are the 30 per cent of students who believe in creationism from airline bombers? A very long way of course; the latter are a psychopathic minority only. But the point to register and take seriously is that there is nevertheless a connecting thread, which is belief in antique superstitions and the nonrational basis of the putative values they represent, values which can lead in the extreme to mass murder, as the chilling jingle reminds us: “faith is what I die for, dogma is what I kill for”.

As part of the strategy for countering the pernicious effects faith and dogma can produce, we need to return religious commitment to the private sphere, stop the folly of promoting superstitions and religious segregation in education, demand standards of intellectual rigour be upheld at all educational levels, and find major ways of reversing the current trend of falling enrolment in science courses. The alternative is a return to the Dark Ages, the tips of whose shadows are coldly falling upon us even now.

Taken from AC Grayling’s Against All Gods, published by Oberon Books.

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