Atheism as Dogmatism
March 9, 2014 § 7 Comments
Frankly, I don’t care about people’s religious beliefs or lack thereof. We should be free to choose to believe or not believe, and we should be free to practice our beliefs however see fit, so long as we do not cause harm to others. I have never been particularly religious, when I was younger, I flirted with Catholicism (the religion I was born into) and various brands of Protestantism, been attracted to Sufi Islam, and explored Buddhism. Then I realised Buddhism isn’t really a religion so much as a guide to what the Buddha calls the good life. I have also tried out atheism, deism, and everything in between. I seem to have settled into some nether world where I’m irreligious, in the sense that I’m indifferent.
But. I also teach history, and I’ve taught far more sections of Western and World History in my career than I care to count. And, as I go over the various calamities that have befallen humans over the past 3,000-4,000 years in various corners of the world, I have come to realise the initial point of religion. It is to help people make sense of the Terror of History. Bad things happen all the time, and, as the Buddha noted, all existence is suffering. Every religion and systems of belief I have come across from the Babylonians to China, Japan, Africa, Europe, and the Americas has attempted to offer comfort against this suffering and terror.
At the core, I think all religions are beautiful in their attempts to make sense of the chaos, to give people hope. And, of course, I recognise that every religion has also been perverted to bring pain and suffering and misery to others.
But that’s to be expected. I read once that the difference between liberals and conservatives (in today’s usage of those two terms) is a basic belief in human nature. Conservatives generally believe in the good of humanity, liberals are not so optimistic. Hence, conservatives tend to believe in less regulation and restrictions on individual liberty, under the assumption that we’ll sort it out. Liberals, on the other hand, believe we need regulations to ensure basic decency, otherwise we’ll destroy ourselves. In this sense, it turns out I am a liberal. I believe human beings are capable of beauty, but also of atrocity. It’s hard to conclude otherwise as a historian, I’m afraid.
A few years back, I was subbing for a colleague who was teaching a course on the History of Science & Technology. The students were clearly divided. On the left of the room were the atheists, on the right were the religious. I kid you not, they were split down the middle like this, like we were standing in the National Assembly in Paris in 1791. Their arguments were exactly what you’d expect from young minds finding their way: aggressive, scoffing, and yet, careful not to go too far in arguing with their friends to the point of insulting them. I posited to the atheists that they were just as dogmatic as their religious classmates, that atheism, in that sense, was no different than religion. The religious students got this argument right away, whereas the atheists were offended and argued that there is no dogma to atheism, therefore it cannot be religion. End of discussion. I tried again, the right side of the room argued the point with the left side of the room. But the atheists would not see it. The fact that they were dogmatic in their disbelief in God was lost on them.
Yesterday, on Twitter, I somehow got into a discussion about religion, atheism, and all the fun stuff that goes along with that. Twitter, of course, is not really the ideal forum for complex ideas, nonetheless, I and my two interlocutors were managing to be intelligent, rational adults, exchanging our views. But then another person who I suppose follows one of the people I was conversing with joined in. The joys of Twitter, in all their worst ways. Her basic line of argument is that all religion is evil and causes bad things to happen. Full stop. Then she started insulting.
I find this approach just as boring as those who wish to evangelicise their religious beliefs. And I see this belief as just as dogmatic, and even fundamentalist, as any religious evangelical. This woman stated point blank that religious people are wrong and that she is right. Clearly, in her view, anyone who disagreed with her is a fool. I find it ironic that some atheists have become as ossified in their beliefs as those they attack for “silly superstitions” (to quote from a tweet I saw last week on the issue). And as much as some religious folk are contemptuous of those who don’t believe, this brand of atheism is as contemptuous as those who do believe, or those who express some interest in avoiding categorical statements about religion. And I can’t help but feel that’s rather depressing.
On PK Subban and Controversy
February 27, 2014 § 8 Comments
Watching the Canadian Men’s Olympic Hockey team at Sochi, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that there is no way that PK Subban is the 8th best defenceman in the country. He’s the reigning Norris Trophy winner, an offensive threat, a hitter of big hits, a puck carrier, and he’s a rock solid defenceman. In short, Subban’s skill set seemed to fit exactly with what Canada needed, especially in the preliminary round when it was having problems moving the puck. And while Subban makes mistakes, so, too, do Drew Doughty and Duncan Keith, Canada’s golden boys of defencemen. And surely, Subban was a better choice to play than Dan Hamhuis or Jay Bouwmeester, at the very least? But, no, not in the eyes of the coaches. And, really, at the end of it all, what’s to quibble with? Subban handled his demotion with grace, and Canada won the gold medal going away, making it two in a row for the men, and landing their first medal on the big ice of the European game.
Subban attracts attention and controversy wherever he goes. A lot of it is racially charged, and a lot of it comes from people who should know better (which is everyone, frankly, this is the 21st century, not the early 19th). Subban is many things that many hockey fans do not like: flamboyant, exuberant, and incredibly skilled. As a result, aside from legitimate criticism, Subban attracts a lot of racist attention. Let me be very clear: criticising Subban’s play for mistakes or boneheaded plays is not racism. But a lot of the static around Subban is race-based.
When Subban broke into the NHL back in 2009, a lot of the media discussion was about controlling Subban’s exuberance, about toning him down. Oddly, when Maxime Lapierre played for the Habs, he was an energy player, who was always on the edge, running his mouth on the ice, irritating opponents, trying to goad them into penalties. Sometimes he crossed the line. But there were rarely discussions about the need to control or reign in Lapierre. Unlike Lapierre, Subban can make an entire building of fans rise to their feet with a rush up the ice, the kind of thing we Habs fans haven’t seen since the glory days of Guy Lafleur, frankly.
And yet, Subban has been called out by nearly everyone in the hockey establishment for his allegedly cocky attitude, from Don Cherry to Mike Richards, and everyone in between, including a few coaches of the Club du Hockey Canadien.
And criticisms are continually made about his play. That he takes too many penalties. That he gives away the puck too often. And so on. Oddly, the Habs other young defencemen are not subject to this kind of criticism. It’s a given that defencemen take a long time to mature and they will make errors on the way. And young players, especially, will be overly exuberant at times. But they’re given leeway Subban is not, at least in the media and amongst some fans.
And yet, Subban’s penalty minutes are not egregious. And, as far as his alleged poor defensive play, that’s just patently false, as this advanced stats discourse shows. It even shows that Subban can more than carry his weight in relation to the rest of the dmen on the Olympic team.
I won’t even get into Darren Pang’s rather unfortunate mistake of referring to Subban not doing something the “white way,” as opposed to the “right way” (it was a slip of the tongue, he apologised immediately, but, we all know what Freud says of slips of the tongue).
Racism, especially in Canada, works insidiously. There are certainly still loud mouth racists out there, but aside from the occasional offensive tweet or comment board post, that is not the discourse around Subban. I could also point out that Winnipeg Jets forward Evander Kane is similarly targeted by the media for his alleged bad behaviour. Kane is also black. No, rather than outright racism, this works in a more callous manner, it creeps along, and we find Subban (and Kane) critiqued for behaving in a certain way when other, white Canadian players, are not. We find the play of Subban (and Kane) under the microscope for alleged inefficiencies when others are not. We see the the character of Subban (and Kane) under question, when white players’ characters are not.
Case in point. After the 2011-12 season, Ottawa Senators defenceman Eric Karlsson won the Norris Trophy as the best dman in the NHL. There were protests that Karlsson was a one-dimensional player, he was a defensive liability, etc. That the likes of Doughty, Keith, Shea Weber deserved to win. But the outcry died down pretty quickly when advanced stats showed that Karlsson is actually a pretty good defenceman. And by the time the 2013 season finally began after an epic lockout, the controversy was over. But here we are now, at the tail end of February, Subban won the Norris in June last year, and the controversy lives on. Tell me that racism doesn’t play a role here.
The criticism directed at Subban is not of the ilk directed at other superstars, rather, it is unrelenting and often unfair and baseless. It’s very hard not to come to the conclusion that PK Subban is resented by many in the hockey world (fans, media, players, coaches, managers) for something as simple as the colour of his skin. And that, to me, is just stupid.
Olympic Geography
February 19, 2014 § Leave a comment
I have seen a fair amount of Olympic critiques from the American left in the past week or so, or, well, since the Olympics began. And aside from what you’d expect, about Russia’s horrendous human rights records, Putin’s disgusting homophobia, another trend has been criticising the Winter Olympics as essentially a party for wealthy northern nations. Comparisons are made between the Winter and Summer Olympics and where athletes are from, and the size of the delegations and the like. Aside from large northern sporting nations (the US, Russia), the geographic distribution of competing nations in the Summer Olympics is necessarily much larger than for the winter variety. Of course, the Summer Olympics is also a much larger event than the winter variety.
But I have a fundamental problem with this critique. The Sochi Winter Olympics medal standings right now is topped by the Netherlands and the USA, followed by Russia, Norway, and Canada. In Vancouver in 2010, the standings went: United States, Canada, Germany, Norway, and Austria. In contrast, in London in 2012, the standings went like this: United States, China, Britain, Russia, South Korea. Four years earlier in Beijing: United States, China, Russia, Britain, Australia.
In both winter and summer Olympics, the medal standings are dominated by the USA and Russia (with the exception of Vancouver 2010). The other nations in the top five vary. In the winter, it is the Dutch, Norwegians, Canadians, Germans, Swiss, and Austrians. In the summer, the other nations are: China, Britain, South Korea, and Australia. All are wealthy northern nations, depending on how you want to classify China and Russia, who are at the very least at the BRICS level of emerging economic powerhouses. There are no poor nations from the Global South. In other words, both summer and winter Olympics are dominated by wealthy northern nations (ok, Australia’s in the South, but you get the point).
Of course, there is still the simple fact that there are athletes from the Global South in the Summer Olympics, and not the Winter Olympics (aside from token representation, such as Jamaican bobsledders and the three Indians in Sochi). But this is also simply a reflection of geography. Winter sports are played in cold, northern nations. And the alpine sporting disciplines that feature at the Olympics tend not to be TV ratings champions outside of Olympic years. In other words, of course the Norwegians are going to ski and skate and the Jamaicans are going to play soccer and do track.
So what to make of this American leftist critique of the Winter Olympics? From what I’ve read, it seems this is simply a case of “We Are the World,” and it’s more an American critique of American chauvinism at the Olympics. Yet, those who make this critique are wonderfully un-self aware that they are just as chauvinistic as the chauvinism they are criticising. Ain’t life grand?
Hip Hop as Public History?
February 11, 2014 § Leave a comment
Last week, the National Council on Public History (NCPH) asked on Facebook if the Facebook movies, celebrations of FB’s 10th anniversary, was public history. Um, no. They are no more public history than those wordle things were a few years back, images and video clips chosen by an algorithm programme designed to grab what in people’s timelines was most liked, most viewed, etc. In other words, it was rather random.
But, this got me thinking about curation, narrative, and how it is we decide what is and what is not public history. And this went on as I listened to Young Fathers, an Edinburgh, Scotland hop hop band comprised of three men of Nigerian, Liberian, and Scots heritage. Their music is a complex mixture of trip-hop, hip hop, with hints of indie rock. But the music is also full of African and American beats and melodies.
Hip hop, as everyone knows, is a music form that developed in the Bronx in New York City in the late 70s, it is an African American music form that has been globalised. It has also been adapted wherever it has gone; at its core, hip hop is poetry, set to a beat. Echoes of hip hop can be heard soundtracking everything from suburban teenagers’ lives to the Arab Spring to the struggle for equality on the part of Canadian aboriginals.
I’m a big fan of UK hip hop, I like the Caribbean and African influences on the music. Artists such as Roots Manuva, Speech Debelle, and cLOUDDEAD have long incorporated these influences into their music.
So, as I was listening to Young Fathers whilst pondering public history, I was rather struck by the idea of hip hop, at least in this particular case, as public history. Young Fathers have appropriated an American music form (one member lived in the US as a child), and then remixed it with a UK-based urban sound, and added African beats and melodies, to go with the occasional American gospel vocal. In short, these artists have curated their roots into their music, and presented it back to their audience. It’s the same thing Roots Manuva has been doing for the past decade-and-a-half with his Jamaican roots.
What, of course, makes Young Fathers and Roots Manuva different than the Facebook algorithms is that the music of these artists is carefully constructed and curated, they are drawing on their roots and background to present a narrative of their experiences in urban subcultures (whether by dint of music, skin colour, or ethnic heritage). So, in that sense, I would submit that this is a form of public history.
The Re-Writing of History: The Second Battle of Ypres
February 7, 2014 § 1 Comment
Ypres was a hotspot in the First World War. No fewer than five major battles took place around this Flemish town between 1914 and 1918. During the Second Battle of Ypres, fought in April-May 1915, the Germans wafted a cloud of chlorine gas at the Allied troops across No Man’s Land. The other side was occupied by Moroccan and Algerian troops, flanked by Canadians. In other words, the main targets were French African colonial troops. The Germans didn’t dare set the gas towards Europeans.
The Moroccans and Algerians died on the spot and/or broke ranks and ran. This left a massive gap, 4 miles long, in the Allied lines, which the Germans were rather hesitant to rush into, for obvious reasons. That meant the 13th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force was left to counter the German attack, on its own. It was reinforced by the 10th Battalion of the 2nd Canadian Brigade, as well as the 16th Battalion of the 3rd Canadian Brigade the next day. It’s worth noting that the Canadians became the first colonials to defeat a major European power at Ypres.
In short, the Allied lines when the Germans used chlorine gas on them were manned by colonial troops: Moroccans and Algerians who took the brunt of the gas, and then Canadians who also got hit with gas, but to a lesser extent (they urinated on handkerchiefs and then put them to their faces to survive the attack).
This is the version I was taught in school and university in Canada. And it was also the version I saw in pop culture, films, literature, history books, at least until recently. In the past year or two, this story has been simplified: French and British troops were gassed by the Germans. And while that is technically true, it is massively mis-leading.
In the case of Canada, our national mythology says that our country came to age on the battlefields of the First World War. It led to Canada demanding and gaining the ear of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George with the creation of the Imperial War Council (along with the other Dominions). And Canada (as well as the other Dominions) were seated at the Versailles conference. Eventually, in 1931, Canada (and the other Dominions) gained control of their own foreign affairs in 1931 with the passing of the Statute of Westminster. And, as I argue myself in my own forthcoming book, The House of the Irish: History & Memory in Griffintown, Montreal, 1900-2013, Canadians were consciously fighting for their own nation, they fought in their own army, the Canadian Expeditionary Force. And even if the CEF was appended to the British Expeditionary Force, Canada was coming of age as a nation of its own right. So, to state that the British and French were the victims of the German gas attack is disingenuous. And yet, there it is in our culture, everywhere from writers who should know better to Downton Abbey.
Imagine my surprise, then, to be reading a quick review of Graeme Kent’s new book, On The Run: Deserters Through the Ages, (which has yet to be published in North America) in The Times Literary Supplement, that states that the gas attack “fell four square on the French and to a lesser extent on the Canadian First Division.” I quickly flipped to the back to see who the reviewer, Nathan M. Greenfield, was. A Canadian military historian. So that sort of doesn’t count. And, there is also the fact that while Greenfield did wave the Canadian flag, he also denied the Moroccan and Algerian troops their due.
The Civil War and the Atlanta Flames
February 5, 2014 § Leave a comment
Atlanta Flames goalie, Daniel Bouchard, c. 1977
Last week, I was watching the Calgary Flames play, I can’t remember who they were playing; I watch a lot of hockey. I’ve never liked the Flames. They were arch rivals of the Vancouver Canucks in the 1980s and, as much as I have never cheered for the Canucks (who wore the ugliest uniforms in NHL history in that era), I never cheered for their rivals either (Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, Calgary), with the exception of the Los Angeles Kings. The Flames also committed the venial sin of defeating the Montréal Canadiens for the Stanley Cup in 1989 (to this day, the last time two Canadian teams played for Lord Stanley of Preston’s mug).
Vancouver Canucks road uniforms, 1978-84
The Calgary Flames came into existence in 1980, when the Atlanta Flames packed up shop and moved to the much smaller Canadian city (in a wonderful twist of fate, Atlanta’s next chance at an NHL team, the Thrashers, packed up and moved the much smaller Canadian city of Winnipeg in 2011, where they became the Jets, Version 2.0, the original Jets having moved to Phoenix in 1996, becoming the Coyotes).
When I was a kid, the Atlanta Flames were this team that no one ever thought about. The only real time they entered my consciousness was in 1977 or 1978, when my parents were considering moving from Montréal to Atlanta. We moved to Toronto instead. But, due to the snow storm that hit Atlanta last week and the fact that it was in the news, I was thinking about the old Atlanta Flames whilst watching the Calgary Flames.
I may be slow on the uptake, but the reason why the Atlanta NHL team was called the Flames was a Civil War reference. After Atlanta fell to the Union Army under General William Tecumseh Sherman in July 1864, Sherman, a vindictive sort, ordered the civilian population out, and then proceeded to sack the city old school, by burning it (though he was persuaded to save the city’s churches by Fr. Thomas O’Reilly of the Church of the Immaculate Conception). The city was devastated.
The ruins of the Atlanta rail roundhouse, July 1864
Calgary Flames star Kent Nilsson, c. 1984
When Atlanta was awarded an NHL expansion franchise for the 1972-3 season, Tom Cousins, the owner, chose the name to commemorate the burning of Atlanta. When the Flames relocated to Calgary eight years later, Nelson Skalbania, the new owner, decided to keep the name, thinking it a fitting name for an oil town. The uniforms remained the same, except that the flaming A was replaced by a flaming C.
Niall Ferguson Almost Gets It Right
February 3, 2014 § 4 Comments
Niall Ferguson likes attention. There’s no other way to explain his public pronouncements. Like when he predicted there’d be blood on the streets of major Western cities in response to the 2008 global economic meltdown. Or when he said John Maynard Keynes was a bad economist because he was gay. Or when he attacked Gandhi in his Civilization: The West and the Rest. Then there’s that book in general, with its incredibly lame attempt to be hip, as Ferguson talked about the West developing “killer apps” that allowed it to dominate the rest of the world. This idea was so bad it detracted from what was actually a decent argument. Ugh. So when I saw that Ferguson had opined to the BBB’s History magazine that Britain should never have entered the First World War in 1914, I was already in mid-eye roll when I realised that Ferguson was actually onto something here.
The BBC article is behind a paywall, but when Ferguson speaks, the media listens and The Guardian published a quick account. Basically, Ferguson says that Britain made “the biggest error in modern history” by entering the war in 1914. He says that Britain could’ve let the Germans, French, and Russians slug it out on the continent, and then dealt with a victorious Germany at a later date, on its own terms. He also notes that had Germany defeated the Russians and French, it would have had the same problems Napoléon had a century earlier, in terms of governing an unruly empire and being behind a British sea blockage. In 1914, Britain was simply not ready for war, especially a land war.
And then he looks at the long-term cost for Britain of the war. It nearly bankrupted the nation, Britain was saddled with debt after 1918. It ultimately cost the British their empire and their status as a major world power (as it also did to France).
There is something to be said for his argument here, but, as usual with a polemicist, he overshoots his mark, taking a claim that might actually be something and then wrapping it up with ridiculousness, like what he did with the unfortunate Civilization. At its core, the Great War was calamitous for Britain, there’s no two ways about that. But Ferguson doesn’t take into account the human cost of the war. An entire generation of young men was destroyed by the war. The costs of that lost generation are immense, in terms of politics, economy, and culture. It also meant a decline in birth rates, so the lost generation had a long-term effect of Britain.
Ferguson does talk about the cost of the war economically, the massive debt the country accumulated, and the fact that this ended up costing Britain its empire. This is where I think Ferguson gets his hackles up, given that he’s the last great defender of the force of civilisation that the British Empire was.
As historians, we are supposed to enjoy the benefit of hindsight, to be able to see the bigger picture that, say, Sir Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister in 1914, could not. But we still need to take into account the view from White Hall in August 1914. From Asquith’s point-of-view, Britain was bound by treaty to protect its Allies. Britain was also militarily prepared for war (a point Ferguson dismisses), even if it was the wrong kind of war it anticipated.
Recently, I read a review of three books on the start of the First World War in the Times Literary Supplement. There will be a lot of that this year, since its the centenary of the start of the war. One of the books was written by a journalist, and one with a particular axe to grind, and was full of broad, sweeping statements about the war, the British generals, and politicians. The reviewer took issue with this approach as being ahistorical and anti-intellectual. And while I wouldn’t go that far with Ferguson’s argument, it’s on that route. At least at this point. I hope a book will emerge from this thought, as it would certainly be worth the read.
Matthew Barlow 