There is a common charge leveled against moderns, especially scientists and their ilk, by the Inklings and often repeated with glee by their fans and acolytes today. I was reminded of this yet again when catching up on the Mythgard Academy lectures on The Book of Lost Tales, Part I (See Week 7). The accusation is that modern people are commonly afflicted with chronological snobbery, the flawed condition of believing that “intellectually, humanity languished for countless generations in the most childish errors on all sorts of crucial subjects, until it was redeemed by some simple scientific dictum of the last century” (Barfield). I don’t dispute that this phenomenon exists nor that it should not be criticized when found. However, the concept as formulated and regurgitated is ironically chronologically snobbish itself. Allow me to explain.

First, it fails to engage its opponents in a charitable manner by willfully overlooking the distinction between “childish errors” and legitimate ignorance. Some (most?) people accused of this crime are not trying to call pre-modern people stupid. Rather, they are simply acknowledging that those people were ignorant of relevant information. Sometimes the information was out of their ability to acquire due to lack of technology, locale, etc. Obviously we can’t hold those factors against them. However, in other cases they certainly could have found the information and failed to do so because of their false premises. The latter case is a legitimate intellectual failing and we are justified in criticizing them for it.

Second, it fails to condemn inverse snobberies that the Inklings flirt with. By applying the same criteria in reverse we can also determine that thinking pre-moderns are great just because they are old is an equal sin. So too is thinking modernity is crap just because it is new. I would be just as uncharitable to accuse the Inklings of loving everything old and hating everything modern without qualification, but if you can’t see where I’m coming from on this point then I think you might need to see an opthamologist. Suffice it to say, the proverbial knife cuts both ways.

Third, it fails to recognize how pervasive this “inverse chronological snobbery” is in modern society. Nothing demonstrates this better than the popularity of so-called alternative medicine. Modern people love to believe stuff that absolutely is childish error precisely because it is traditional. (By the way, Owen Barfield was into some pretty wacky ideas in this vein.)

Allow me to offer a more controversial example: revealed religion. Appeals to antiquity as a basis for their truth claims are a mainstay from time immemorial (ha, I crack me up!). As Paine puts it in The Age of Reason:

[T]he thing so revealed […] is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells;

Antiquity is a common criterion offered by proponents of revealed religions. Why did early Christians debate the canonicity of Revelation? Why do non-Mormon Christians reject the Book of Mormon? Antiquity is a factor.

Furthermore, pre-moderns themselves loved appeals to antiquity. The older the better, as far as they were concerned. And this bias undoubtably did cause them needlessly to “languish for countless generations”–Galenic medicine anyone?! How is this not chronological snobbery?!

If pre-modern peoples were just as intelligent as moderns (and they certainly were), then they should be held to the same standards of intellectual rigor that we expect of moderns, given the information, technology, and methodology that was available at the time. While moderns should not assume they are superior to pre-moderns unduly, we ignore the cases where modernity is demonstrably less wrong at our peril. Furthermore, moderns who have the benefit of better information, technologies, etc. and yet adhere to outmoded ideas are rightly criticized. This is especially true for ideas that are intractably irrefutable in an objective sense, but have become increasingly unlikely in a subjective sense. It is this type of modern who fails most intellectually and I humbly submit to you that the Inklings’ flanks are exposed on this front.

The latest target of faux outrage is this video depicting “street harassment.” A woman walks the streets of NYC for 10 hours and records the unsolicited attention of the men she passes. It claims “100+ incidents of verbal street harassment” occurred over that time (a rate of one every six minutes). I believe the video shows only a subset (I didn’t count) and presumably the most egregious ones at that.

One can question how representative this is or where to draw the line on what qualifies as “harassment” versus general “asshole-ry,” but for the most part the criticism I’ve seen has argued against points this group does not appear to be making. These critics are intellectually lazy.

For starters, the video is almost entirely focused on raising awareness. It simply depicts what happened. It makes no blanket statements about all men being harassers nor does it claim men enjoy street “privileges,” as this Funny or Die parody does.

While humorous, the above parody (and plenty of not-funny critiques that mirror its sentiment) doesn’t actually address the substantive point of the video. Unless you deny that this is a legitimate issue for women (and I don’t think any honest man could), quibbling about the amplitude is misguided. There are plenty of relatively rare occurrences that are worth pointing out and calling bullshit on–and I don’t even buy that it is rare. (Note that I have to say this during a time when the chatter about Ebola in the US is incessant.)

Would a rigorous experiment have made a male-centered control video? Yes. If you think the depiction is not a gender-specific phenomenon, then by all means prove it with a real male-centered version. I’m eager to see the count of catcalls aimed at men.

The video does not call for new legislation as far as I can tell. In fact, the sponsoring website, Hollaback!, focuses very heavily on personal action over vague political statements. They encourage being vocal about your disapproval of this behavior, primarily through an app where you can document things as they happen.

What is there to criticize about that if you ascribe to libertarian ideas of freedom? These women are free to state their case, they are free to take video, and they are appealing to effect a change in behavior through the direct actions of individuals. Plenty of male libertarians would love this idea if it was documenting problems with the police state, such as inappropriate traffic stops and the like. How is this any different?

“But what’s to be done?!” The conversation eventually comes down to this with a well-meaning critic. Hollaback addresses this very clearly if they would have taken five minutes to look instead of rushing to half-ass, knee-jerk critique. Do they ask you to vote Democrat? Read The Feminine Mystique? remind hetero- white men of their privilege? No, they ask you to be a better bystander. THE HORROR! THE HUBRIS!

Tom Woods discussed Aquinas on his show yesterday, specifically Aquinas’ approach to the argument of a prime mover. Now, I am no expert in Aquinas or the scholarship on his thought so I have no idea how accurately Woods explains it, but I have some issues with the argument as presented. (By the way, I agree with his comments about being an informed and thoughtful critic though. Granted, it is hard to be suitably informed about everything and many things worth criticizing are not worth being informed about. Consider this a good faith attempt, if you’ll pardon the pun.) You may want to listen to the show (link above) as this is going to get rather complicated.

Woods is very insistent that critics of Aquinas are misunderstanding his argument. Woods emphatically asserts that Aquinas’ argument does not apply temporally. That is, Aquinas’ point is not that all causes are traced back to God, who was the first cause (in time), but rather that Aquinas is making a non-temporal claim about “potentialities and actualities” in the current moment. Critical to this distinction is the notion of “accidentally ordered series” and “essentially ordered series.” I’m not going to repeat all the fleshing out of these terms here. If you don’t know what those are, listen to his show.

Anyway, there seems to me to be some serious problems in this distinction. According to Woods, an essentially ordered series is one in which all the parts of the chain occur simultaneously such that the later actualities in the chain are entirely dependent on the first actuality. Aquinas’ example is a person pushing a rock with a stick–take away the person and the stick doesn’t act alone. God is supposedly one such actuality.

My first problem is that this is not an example of non-temporality. These things do not happen simultaneously. To think they do is simply an error of scale–we can’t perceive time with such precision to observe it with our eyes, but if we could zoom in (or out) sufficiently we would see this is true. As we know from relativity, space and time are the same thing so any actuality that occurs in space must necessarily occur in time–any ordered series must be temporal. Therefore, Aquinas’ argument absolutely does entail the claim that all causes can ultimately be traced back in time to God, the first cause of creation. The existence of a non-temporal series has not been shown. (For contrast, the moment of the creation of space-time could result from an accidentally ordered series–google multiverse.)

We know the fastest any information can travel is the speed of light. Consider that some starlight we can see in the sky now is from stars that have already died. If we could scale out far enough, it would look like the starlight had no prime mover since the star is now gone. In other words, it would look just like an accidentally ordered series. Since all series in our universe must be temporal (if the series is not temporal then it is not in our universe and therefore irrelevant), the existence of an essentially ordered series does not imply the eternal nature of the first actualizer of the series. (Also note that inferring the former existence of a source star is not the same as inferring an “essential” prime mover.)

Now consider Woods’ example of an accidentally ordered series: that of sons and fathers–whether a son becomes a father does not depend on the grand-father. This claim is merely obfuscated by complexity. In fact, it is entirely possible that the choice to have kids is entirely dependent on prior actualities and that it only seems accidental because of the sheer number of actualities involved. It is possible that, like temporality, complexity can make a series appear one way when it is the other.

I should note that we have also observed the reverse case–accidentally ordered series that look like essentially ordered ones. I’m speaking, of course, about activity at the level of quantum mechanics. At that scale, any given actuality appears accidental–it is only the aggregate of many, many quantum effects that make things appear essentially ordered at the scale we perceive.

So, what can we say at this point? Well, it seems the distinction of Aquinas (one of the better arguments in support of theism) is “actually” meaningless. There appears to be no way to distinguish between the two. If the universe is accidentally ordered, then God need not exist. If the universe is essentially ordered, then God still may not exist (and free will might be an illusion). I suppose there is also the possibility that the universe is partially essential actualities and accidental ones, but to claim this is to give up the notion that God is omnipotent since he would have no control over the accidentally ordered series. That would not bode well for theologies that really exist in the world (vs. theoretical ones theists imagine for argument’s sake) and so I dismiss it without further comment.

We conclude then that God might or might not exist. There is no real knowledge to be found here. The only appropriate response to this long chain of reasoning is skeptical agnosticism. Color me unimpressed. Atheists, deists, and agnostics can now shake hands and go their separate ways–their views are all equivalent at this level of discourse. Other kinds of theists however cannot. They’ve decided to inject complexity where it is not necessary and assume the burden of explaining it since there are all sorts of phenomena that appear accidental upon the closest inspection we are capable of making but in their view would be deeply, profoundly intended. There is nothing here on which to build such hubris.

As short introductions to a religion written by one of its believers go, this one is pretty good. Esack lays out various views of the Qur’an and Islam more generally, not just the one he favors. Of course, he’s not entirely objective and doesn’t claim to be. In fact, he readily admits the opposite and asserts further that everyone brings their own biases to a text. As such, fundamentalists and non-muslim scholars and critics all receive jabs from Esack one way or another.

That said, I think he is overly critical of scholars who study the Qur’an from a non-confessional, literary perspective. He begins by dubbing them “voyeurs” in the introduction and at every point they are discussed in a negative light. But at least he engages with them in a serious and respectful manner, which is more than one can say for the Muslim world in general. (The vast majority of Muslims are presumably reasonable, peaceful people but they are not a political or religious force that matters, sadly.)

Case in point, while he does vaguely state that sex with women slaves and other bullshit might not be a great thing regardless of Qur’anic endorsement, he does not take the next step to openly condemn Muslims who use these passages to justify their repression of women, etc. Presumably because some of those folks are not above killing his ass. However, he’s more than willing to talk about how misguided scholars can be with their insistence on actual literary evidence. Several such scholars publish under a pseudonym precisely because they fear violence. Does Esack acknowledge this fact? No. (See Christoph Luxenberg and Ibn Warraq.) Compare this state of affairs with secular scholars of Jewish and Christian traditions. Saying that “this approach [..] has not been welcomed [by Muslims]” (p. 9) has got to be the understatement of the decade.

But like I said, given that stating the wrong opinions can get you killed for apostasy, I can’t really fault the guy too much for hedging. At least I know where to look for the real scholarship now.

It is also fascinating to look at theological battles in which you don’t buy either side. You realize how dumb theology is as a mode of inquiry. Argue about the theological subtleties of the “begotten not created” nature of the Qur’an until the cows come home and it doesn’t become any less pointless an argument in my eyes. You’re all wrong; it’s just a book written by fallible humans, just like the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Bhagavad Gita, Moby-Dick, US Constitution, or anything else I could name. (Of the above, Moby-Dick is most likely to be divinely inspired as far as I’m concerned.)

Note: This was extracted from a Facebook conversation with several college friends.

Honestly, I didn’t initially weigh in because I realize how atrophied my musical tastes have become and I weep for my old-fogie-ness! :-) I haven’t given the past decade a fair hearing. Do I think James is right in the assessment that the 90s had higher musical highs than that of the following decades? Yes. While there was plenty of crap grunge, the best of the modern era (dominated by indies) are largely throwbacks to 90s innovations. There is no post-90s equivalent to grunge–a significant shift in music style that resonates with an entire generation of people and influences all of pop music for years to come.

On 90s bands mentioned: First, as one who wore out his copy of Sixteen Stone back in the day, I have to say Bush has not aged well. Nostalgically fun to listen to now, but they are terrible: entirely derivative and lyrically incoherent. However, I always considered Live to be a forgettable 90s act, but Throwing Copper holds up very well. Rage Against the Machine is just clumsy, politically-stunted Beastie Boys. Pass. I saw a Chris Cornell solo show last year, and while I loved it I can’t help but admit that he too has devolved into yuppy nostalgic self-love. It was sad. The great bands of the 90s (in terms of their popularity & influence at the time and lasting impact on musical culture) are, in my opinion:

• Nirvana
• Pearl Jam
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Beastie Boys
• Dave Matthews Band
• REM
• Nine Inch Nails
• Radiohead

The best modern music I’ve found is hiding in niches that still cater to one or both of the following old-school ideas:

1. the album as a unified piece of art, or
2. the primacy of live performance.

Some post-90s stuff I’d call great (but not height-of-the-90s great) pretty much fall into #1. I agree on Mumford & Son, Iron & Wine, The Killers. I’d contest the implied Vampire Weekend denigration–their first album is very good and has something to say musically which is more than you can say about most bands. I’d add Death Cab For Cutie, The Format (Dog Problems), Okkervil River (The Stage Names), Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes. All good stuff, but great? No. To be great you have to dominate and none of this does that. Today’s good stuff carries on a line of tradition from one of the aforementioned great 90s bands.

So if we’re stuck in a lull of good-but-not-great music, what do I think the next great revival in pop music will look like? I think it will be an overthrow of the current hyper-self-aware irony that pervades everything. Rock music in the 80s became so excessively self-aware that it crumbled under the weight of its own hair. Grunge reset that with a return to genuine expression. Now, those tropes that resonated in the 90s are overused to the point of self-parody (cough Nickelback cough). Pop music now resembes the poetry of the early 1900s–“moderns” like Ezra Pound & Gertrude Stein, et al. They did this really obscure or ironic stuff (mostly garbage) that ultimately led to a big fat dead end. It was the Beats like Kerouac, Burroughs, and Gingsberg that revitalized poetic expression by striving for genuine honest expression rather than navel-gazing.