tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/enlightenment-9893/articles
Enlightenment – The Conversation
2024-03-19T12:25:00Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207471
2024-03-19T12:25:00Z
2024-03-19T12:25:00Z
What the Buddhist text Therigatha teaches about women’s enlightenment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582247/original/file-20240315-30-zf0ojy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C8%2C2939%2C1529&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tibetan Buddhist nuns offering prayers in Kathmandu.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/female-tibetan-buddhist-monks-offer-prayers-as-a-part-of-an-news-photo/1552145729?adppopup=true">Prakash/Mathema /AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Images of Buddha’s enlightenment often portray him <a href="https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1986.70">sitting alone under the bodhi tree</a>, his body emaciated from fasting. Some depictions show the Buddha’s right hand pointing down, asking the earth goddess to bear witness to his enlightenment.</p>
<p>Demonic armies or dangerous temptresses can be shown on both sides of the Buddha, <a href="https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1971.18">demonstrating his fortitude</a> in the face of violent threats and seduction. In some images, he may also be flanked by two male disciples while <a href="https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1935.146">expounding his teachings</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A headless statue of an emaciated person, revealing the ribcage, tendons and veins, with human figures at its base." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582235/original/file-20240315-28-xnpmro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A third- to fifth-century statue of a fasting Buddha from the Kushan period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/buddha-bodhi-tree.html?sortBy=relevant">Samuel Eilenberg Collection, Ex Coll.: Columbia University, Purchase, Rogers, Dodge, Harris Brisbane Dick and Fletcher Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1987</a></span>
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<p>What is missing, however, from these images are Buddhist women. What does enlightenment look like for them?</p>
<p>I’m <a href="https://case.academia.edu/JueLiang">a scholar of women and gender in Buddhism</a>, and one of the key questions driving my research is the unique ways in which enlightenment is experienced in a female body. This led me to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Theragatha-Therigatha">Therigatha</a>, a collection of poems written in the Pāli language by female disciples of the Buddha. </p>
<p>Part of the <a href="https://palitextsociety.org/">Theravada Buddhist canon</a>,
this collection reveals an intimate picture of enlightenment that is deeply embodied, does not necessarily require the renunciation of domestic life and is supported by a community of sisterhood. </p>
<h2>Embodied enlightenment</h2>
<p>The term “theri” means “female elders,” while “gatha” refers to the genre of songs or verses. These poems, compiled not long after the Buddha’s passing, are the oldest evidence of women’s religious experiences in Buddhism. Many of these female authors were disciples of the Buddha. </p>
<p>Their writings reveal a version of enlightenment that is not occupied by the usual image of a solitary meditating monk. Instead of seeking liberation from life and death through monastic discipline or meditation, enlightenment is experienced in the mind as well as in the body. It is found not just in remote hermitages but also in domestic spaces. </p>
<p>Moreover, the path to liberation for women is usually communal. Nuns learn from and with each other, as they become free from the human condition of suffering, one of Buddhism’s <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-four-noble-truths/">Four Noble Truths</a>.</p>
<p>Consider the following verses from the Therigatha. The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674427730">nun Uttama says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>For seven days I sat in one position, legs crossed,<br>
Given over to joy and happiness.<br>
On the eighth day I stretched out my feet,<br>
After splitting open the mass of mental darkness.</blockquote>
<p>Uttama may have meditated just like the Buddha, but in the end, she stretched out her feet – a movement of ease and freedom and a gesture of release from the hardship she endured.</p>
<p>Contrary to other Buddhist teachings that view the body as <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3633534.html">an undesirable container</a> punctured by several openings that constantly leaked foul and revolting substances, here in the Therigatha, the body is present, even prominent, in the enlightened experience of Uttama.</p>
<p>In the Therigatha, the Buddha instructs the nuns repeatedly to take care of the body. Instead of <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674427730">letting it become a vehicle for death</a>, they should cherish the human body they possess and make it a vehicle for liberation. </p>
<p>Another poem by Ambapali, a royal courtesan turned Buddhist nun, expresses a similar sentiment. Ambapali observes the changes in her body in detail: She remarks how her once glossy, black hair that was perfumed with flowers is now like jute; her eyes, once brilliant like jewels, have lost their luster; her neck, hands, arms, thighs and feet, which were all once beautiful, also bear witness to old age and impermanence. </p>
<p>Instead of being disgusted by these changes, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674427730">her reflection</a> focuses on the teaching of impermanence: “It’s just as the Buddha, the speaker of truth, said, nothing different than that.” </p>
<p>Here, the body is not viewed as only the enemy but a vehicle necessary for human liberation. </p>
<h2>Finding liberation at home</h2>
<p>The setting of poems in the Therigatha also frequently highlights domestic spaces women occupy. In one, Punna, a servant girl of low caste, taught a high-caste Brahmin <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674427730">a lesson on karma</a>. While doing her morning chores of fetching water, she saw a priest performing his bathing purification ritual in ice-cold water. She questioned the efficacy of this ritual, and told him that liberation comes from the Buddha’s teaching, not by tormenting one’s body. </p>
<p>In another, Patachara, who was once the wife of a wealthy man but turned to renunciation after the untimely death of her children, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674427730">relates the following</a>:</p>
<blockquote>First I looked at the bed, then I sat on the couch<br>
I used a needle to pull out the lamp’s wick.<br>
Just as the lamp went out, my mind was free.</blockquote>
<p>While the nuns followed a monastic path of abandoning domestic life, it was the bondage of servitude, not the daily experience of living, that they left behind. For Patachara, there was no need for a bodhi tree; her mind was set free from suffering and entered enlightenment right in her hut after the mundane act of putting out her lamp. </p>
<h2>Becoming enlightened, together</h2>
<p>Nuns learned from not only the Buddha but from other nuns as well. They were encouraged to care for and support each other. In fact, the phrase “she seemed like someone I could trust” shows up multiple times in the Therigatha, when the nuns recalled how they started on the path in the first place. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674427730">A nameless nun</a> writes:</p>
<blockquote>With no peace in my heart, dripping with sexual desire,<br>
I entered the monastery, wailing, my arms outstretched.<br>
I approached the nun,<br>
She seemed like someone I could trust.<br>
She taught me the dhamma<br>
About what makes a person<br>
About the senses and their objects<br>
And about the basic elements that make up everything.</blockquote>
<p>The community of fellow practitioners in Buddhism is called the sangha. It is one of the Three Jewels, the other two being the teacher, the Buddha, and his teaching, the “dhamma.” Anyone who wishes to become a Buddhist will vow to take refuge <a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-three-jewels/">in the Three Jewels</a>, which support Buddhist practice. These are the teacher, the teaching and the community. In the case of this nameless nun – and many others – the Buddhist path is paved not only by the Buddha and his teachings but also by a community of trust and shared aspiration.</p>
<p>The poems in the Therigatha are a reminder that enlightenment does not always have to be a long trek in the woods but can happen right within one’s humble abode. For some, it could simply mean the joy of finding community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jue Liang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Therigatha, a collection of poems written in Pāli by Buddhist nuns, reveals that women’s enlightenment may not necessarily require renunciation of domestic life.
Jue Liang, Assistant Professor of Religion, Case Western Reserve University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225844
2024-03-15T17:34:45Z
2024-03-15T17:34:45Z
This 18th-century shell collection, saved from a skip, tells a story of empire, explorers and women’s equality
<p>In the 1980s, a shell collection that included specimens from Captain Cook’s final voyage was accidentally thrown into a skip and believed lost forever. But much to the joy of scientists, last week it was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/12/shells-from-captain-cooks-final-voyage-saved-from-skip">rediscovered safe and sound</a> and donated to English Heritage.</p>
<p>Her name might not have made the headlines, but the woman who originally collected the shells, Bridget Atkinson (1732-1814), made a significant contribution to natural history in the 18th century. </p>
<p>Atkinson was one of many women interested in shells at this time. It was a pursuit that drew in both aristocratic and middle class enthusiasts. Among them were famous collectors, such as the philosopher and poet <a href="https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/publications/browse/9780300192230">Margaret Cavendish</a> and cousins Jane and Mary Parminter, the elite owners of the shell-encrusted house <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/nov/16/feminist-eccentric-home-devon">A la Ronde, in Exmouth</a>. </p>
<p>Collecting shells was a common past time in Enlightenment Britain. This was a period in which elite women were becoming <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xZFNEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=women+and+science+eighteenth+century&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=women%20and%20science%20eighteenth%20century&f=false">increasingly interested in the sciences</a>, and they pursued its disciplines with wild enthusiasm. </p>
<p>This is demonstrated in the popularity of books such as <a href="https://maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-francesco-algarotti-s-newtonianism-for-the-ladies#:%7E:text=The%20book%20consists%20of%20a,Naples%20on%20the%20title%20page.">Newtonianism for Ladies</a> by Francesco Algarotti. Published in 1737, the book was a bestseller and reprinted many times as the 18th century progressed. </p>
<p>Botany and natural history were deemed particularly appropriate vehicles for women’s intellectual curiosity. Women engaged in these practices were encouraged to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=I1LzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=women+and+science+eighteenth+century&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=women%20and%20science%20eighteenth%20century&f=false">collect specimens, create displays and study related literature</a>, often written by female authors. </p>
<p>As a result, the early 19th century saw the publication of various natural history books written by women, such as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k0YyAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Conchologist’s Companion</a> by Mary Roberts (1824), a series of letters on the properties of various types of shell.</p>
<h2>Atkinson’s collection</h2>
<p>While Atkinson wasn’t unusual as a woman collecting shells, the extent of her acquisitions sets them apart from many other collections of the period. She acquired as many as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/12/shells-from-captain-cooks-final-voyage-saved-from-skip">1,200 shells</a> throughout her lifetime, with many sourced from far-flung regions across the globe. </p>
<p>Atkinson was from a wealthy and genteel, but not aristocratic, family, and as a result, she is not as well known as other shell collectors of the time. Nevertheless, her collection includes a number of important specimens of endangered and protected species. Many were amassed from her connection to George Dixon, an armourer on <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/chesters-roman-fort-and-museum-hadrians-wall/history/bridget-atkinsons-shells/">Captain Cook’s third and final world voyage</a>. </p>
<p>While her surviving correspondence shows her to be a less-than-perfect writer, Atikinson’s expertise in natural history led to her becoming the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2013/jan/22/heritage-heritage#:%7E:text=Bridget%20Atkinson%20was%20the%20society%27s,was%20the%20first%20woman%20elected.">first female honorary member</a> of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1813. Women were still deemed ineligible for full membership until 1877.</p>
<p>Atkinson’s collection does not simply reflect the scientific interests of a curious individual. A study of their acquisition reveals a broad, even global, system at play. A number of her shells were gifted to Atkinson through the networks of the British empire.</p>
<p>Several members of Atkinson’s family were employed in imperial roles. Her son and brother-in-law were both a part of the mercantile colonising forces of the East India Company, and the latter even owned sugar plantations in Jamaica. This means the Atkinson family were direct beneficiaries of the enslavement of Black men and women in the Caribbean. </p>
<p>Atkinson used these connections to her advantage, writing to her relatives living abroad to ask for shells and even imploring family friends to do the same. In 1796, her friend Mary Yates wrote to her son John, who then lived in Virginia to pass on Atkinson’s request for <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/chesters-roman-fort-and-museum-hadrians-wall/history/bridget-atkinsons-shells/">“snail shells picked off the ground …the larger the better”</a>. </p>
<p>Conveyed through the very routes and mechanics of the British empire, Atkinson’s collections are indivisible from the wider history of colonialism. This is something that future displays of the shells will inevitably have to address.</p>
<h2>The history of Atkinson’s collection</h2>
<p>Despite their obvious significance today, Atkinson’s shells have not always been treated with reverence. The collection was passed down through various generations of the Atkinson family before eventually being acquired by Newcastle University in the 1930s (then known as King’s College). It was in this time that the shells were lost.</p>
<p>Having been discarded into a skip, an eagle-eyed marine zoologist named John Buchanan rescued them from obscurity. Going through his belongings after his death, his family discovered the collection and donated it to English Heritage. </p>
<p>This is not an unusual story. Viewed as trifling interests and trivial pursuits, a lack of interest in women’s collections of shells, both ornamental and scientific, has led to many examples being lost over the centuries. </p>
<p>The great sale of Margaret Cavendish’s collection in 1786 is a typical example. Her shells and corals from Britain, Italy and the Indian Ocean were all placed all for sale, alongside those collected for decorative purposes. Like Atkinson’s collection, <a href="https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/publications/browse/9780300192230">Cavendish’s shells included specimens from Cook’s travels</a>. But even this important association did not save them from being scattered widely.</p>
<p>As Atkinson’s shells reveal, the collection of these beautiful natural objects crossed continents, told vivid histories of imperialism and established women’s vital role in the development of natural history as a discipline. Their <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/search-news/bridget-atkinsons-shell-collection-goes-on-display-at-chesters-roman-fort-hadrians-wall/">forthcoming display</a> at Chester’s Roman Fort and Museum will ensure that they continue to tell these stories long into the future. </p>
<hr>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Freya Gowrley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Collecting shells was a common past time in Enlightenment Britain, when elite women were becoming increasingly interested in science.
Freya Gowrley, Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/201179
2023-09-25T20:06:59Z
2023-09-25T20:06:59Z
Explainer: the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is profoundly contemporary
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548194/original/file-20230914-21-58a3d9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C161%2C3988%2C2826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1753).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Jacques_Rousseau_(painted_portrait).jpg">Public domain</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By any reckoning, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is one of the most influential Western philosophers in history. No account of the modern era – not just modern thought – could ignore him. Few courses in political or social theory would think to omit him. </p>
<p>It is therefore worth coming to grips with his thought and its legacy. But like any major thinker, there are risks in summaries – some of which give us clues about Rousseau himself.</p>
<p>Although he is known as a social and political philosopher, Rousseau’s creative output does not resemble that of a contemporary “theorist”. He was not only a writer of treatises, but fiction, autobiographical works (such as <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3913/3913-h/3913-h.htm">Confessions</a> and <a href="https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks19/1900981h.html">Reveries of a Solitary Walker</a>) and musical compositions, including seven operas, some of which were notable enough to be acknowledged by composers like Gluck and Mozart. </p>
<p>But there is another, stranger difficulty in summarising Rousseau’s thought. It is not that his work is alien and distant to us, as might be the case with certain other thinkers. It is that his ideas reflect many of our own deepest commitments and patterns of thought. They are as close to us as the clichés heard on reality television shows and the bromides on offer in certain kinds of self-help books. They are the common coin of much political rhetoric. </p>
<p>It has been my experience in teaching philosophy and social theory over many years that where Plato can come across as unbearably strange, Descartes as either glib or insane, large parts of Rousseau will often strike students as mere common sense. </p>
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<p>Rousseau’s epistolary novel, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/J/bo44894180.html">Julie, or the New Héloïse</a> (1761), reads clunkily these days. For most modern readers, its story of a doomed love affair between an aristocrat and her tutor is too mawkish, sentimental and melodramatic. </p>
<p>Yet its themes are profoundly contemporary. It suggests that authenticity should take precedence over what is expected of us by convention, that the dictates of tradition only make sense if they gel with our “inner truths” – with who we feel ourselves to be as individuals. These are now conventional tropes, but they were only emerging at the time Rousseau was writing. </p>
<h2>Natural or artificial</h2>
<p>To say the novel struck a chord would be to seriously understate matters. Julie was likely the biggest-selling novel of the 18th century. People were so moved by it that they wrote to Rousseau en masse. A vast number of correspondents were women proposing marriage. </p>
<p>Others, as the historian Robert Darnton has pointed out, were merely overwhelmed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The novel drove J.-F. Bastide to his bed and nearly drove him mad, or so he believed, while it produced the opposite effect on Daniel Roguin, who sobbed so violently that he cured himself of a severe cold. The baron de La Sarraz declared that the only way to read the book was behind locked doors, so that one could weep at one’s ease, without being interrupted by the servants. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rousseau had shot to fame a decade earlier, after winning an essay competition advertised in the literary magazine <em>Mercure de France</em>. Held by the Academy of Dijon, the competition asked entrants to write an essay in response to the question: “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?”</p>
<p>Put another way, the question asked: does moral progress go hand in hand with progress in the arts and sciences?</p>
<p>The question was posed at a time when the answer seemed obvious. The mood of the period was one of extraordinary optimism about human progress. Figures such as Diderot, Voltaire and Montesquieu shared a belief that the world had reached the age of Enlightenment and that future development was unlimited. As such, the expected answer was: “Yes, of course!” </p>
<p>Rousseau instead answered: “No, not at all – quite the opposite.” He argued that progress in the arts and sciences had actually led us away from moral progress, and he offered philosophical and historical reasons to think this true. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545425/original/file-20230829-21-8099nf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jean-Jacques Rousseau – François Guérin (c.1760)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Portrait_of_Jean-Jacques_Rousseau%27_by_Fran%C3%A7ois_Gu%C3%A9rin.jpg">Public domain</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Part of his method was to introduce and sharpen a distinction that has become integral to the thought of all subsequent eras. Where much philosophical discussion had been centred around the distinction between the “natural” and the “supernatural”, Rousseau opposed the natural to the <em>artificial</em>.</p>
<p>He argued that what we ordinarily think of as civilisational progress creates – and then aims to satisfy – new and artificial vices, serving our vanity and not our natural needs. For example, where the “natural man” (<em>homme naturel</em>) gets thirsty and needs water, the “artificial” man (<em>homme artificiel</em>) thinks he needs “designer water” curated by a “water sommelier” and served on a silver tray. </p>
<p>Rousseau thought no good argument could be made that the rural Swiss or Native Americans possessed less virtue or happiness than the most civilised Europeans. In fact, he proposed there were many good reasons to think they were greater in both. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-voltaires-candide-a-darkly-satirical-tale-of-human-folly-in-times-of-crisis-157131">Guide to the Classics: Voltaire’s Candide — a darkly satirical tale of human folly in times of crisis</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Society and inequality</h2>
<p>Developing these ideas, in 1754, Rousseau wrote his <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125494/5019_Rousseau_Discourse_on_the_Origin_of_Inequality.pdf">Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men</a>. In it, he attempted a thought experiment which imagined what humans may have been like in a “pre-civilisational” state. </p>
<p>Rousseau was aware that this act of imagination was speculative and he could not be sure of its results. But his focus was not historical: he wanted to see if he could, hypothetically, strip away the accretions of civilisation to see what a human being was in its most basic mode. </p>
<p>Humans, he thought, were fundamentally solitary creatures, most at home alone or in small groups. He suggested that “natural man” would come together with others sometimes, but would soon part ways, so issues like envy or resentment would rarely arise. </p>
<p>For Rousseau, natural inequalities would have no serious consequences in the state of nature. For instance, if you spent time with someone who was stronger than you, intimidated you, bossed you around and stole your food, you would simply wait until they were asleep and leave.</p>
<p>Rousseau hypothesised that some historical tragedy, perhaps a natural catastrophe, had prompted human beings to create “societies”. That particular form of social organisation proved permanent, pushing away all other modes of being, other natural forms of human sociality.</p>
<p>When people formed societies they acquired certain comforts, but created a host of problems. Rousseau claimed that everyone was born free and equal, but societies imposed a sense of ownership over resources and divisions of labour, which caused conflict and social injustice. He held that inequality was artificial. And yet once inequalities arose, arbitrary power maintained them and artificial man naturalised them, making them seem like reflections of nature. </p>
<p>Our artificial needs thus became the centre of our lives. We gradually required not just shelter but the best house on the block, not just food but cuisine. Such an existence has bred mutual alienation between people. Only in the bustling metropolitan streets of Paris or London would a person simply step over someone who is destitute. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/criticism-of-western-civilisation-isnt-new-it-was-part-of-the-enlightenment-104567">Criticism of Western Civilisation isn't new, it was part of the Enlightenment</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Education and politics</h2>
<p>What was the solution to this sorry state of affairs? For Rousseau, there were two main remedies to the debasement of our nature. The first was the institution of a new kind of education; the second was reorienting politics towards a new moral foundation. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/rousseau-emile-or-education">Émile, or On Education</a> (1862), Rousseau wrote a treatise on education in the form of a bildungsroman – the first and likely the last of its kind. He sought to outline the conditions of a good education, which he thought should be based on lived experience and the development of individual character, not rote learning, mechanical memorisation, or even the reading of books. (He makes a lone exception for Robinson Crusoe, which he did think students should read.) </p>
<p>As for moral education, young people should learn about the consequences of their actions. What would be the punishment for a child breaking a window? They should be made to sleep in a cold room.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545465/original/file-20230830-27-tt126.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The second means by which Rousseau thought we could rediscover natural man was through the social contract, in which people would voluntarily cede some of their freedom to a sovereign power who expressed the “general will”. This general will is the sole source of the state’s sovereign authority. </p>
<p>This is a paradigmatic form of democratic theory, but Rousseau did not see it as merely this. He thought that this particular mode of government might help to make citizens moral, to move them beyond mere self-seeking. For Rousseau, the social contract entails the idea that one can only pursue one’s own happiness by pursuing everyone else’s. In this sense, government would function the way a cooperative corporation might: individual efforts lead to everyone’s gain; selfishness produces gains for nobody, including the self-seeker.</p>
<p>Rousseau’s ideas were a significant departure from the political and social theories that were popular at the time. His emphasis on the value of individual freedom and equality, and the government’s duty in preserving these principles, contributed to many developments – theoretical and practical – in the modern world. </p>
<p>The French and American Revolutions and the advancement of modern political philosophy were significantly influenced by his work. In his most significant works, he demolished the notion that monarchies were divinely appointed. He proposed the revolutionary idea that the people alone have the true right to govern. These ideas helped to end the centuries-old relationship between church, crown and country. They laid the groundwork for classic republicanism: a system of mixed governance based on the principles of civil society and citizenship.</p>
<p>Rousseau’s terminology has oriented discussions of morality, self-development and politics from the 18th century to the counterculture of the 1960s, the New Age movement of the 1980s, and beyond. We see traces – and sometimes more – of Rousseau in the celebration of the simple and the “primitive” (including the racist legacies of such misconstrued faint praise).</p>
<p>His legacy also continues in those currents of thought which see culture as decadent, and which see the solution to this in getting in touch with nature, our own inner natures, and in following our own paths. He has some claim to be the inspiration of parts of “child-centred education”, of what became known in some circles as “progressivism”. Without Rousseau, it is hard to imagine the existence of Steiner and Montessori Schools.</p>
<h2>Deism and human nature</h2>
<p>While it is true Rousseau was – in his early career at least – a celebrity intellectual, he was also the target of much criticism, and even persecution.</p>
<p>He was a close friend of many atheist philosophers, but a fierce critic of them. He was, equally, a trenchant critic of revealed religions. The God of revealed religion was a God of vengeance, intolerance and petty vice, revealed to some and not others merely by virtue of an accident of birth. Rousseau thought no God worthy of the name would reveal itself in such outrageous and contradictory ways. </p>
<p>The term “deism” has come to refer to a kind of impersonal, detached creator, but Rousseau’s deist God was nothing of the sort. According to Rousseau, we know what we know of God from Nature and Reason alone. Thus religion itself had become, like many civilisational developments, one of the great corruptors of humanity.</p>
<p>Rousseau was ridiculed by atheists for his religious views and by orthodox Christians for his critique of revealed religion, but the views he espoused have become a standard “secular” creed, perpetuated by people who claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” </p>
<p>Many have questioned Rousseau’s conception of human nature, thinking it wrong or overly idealistic – or at least very partial. What evidence is there, critics ask, for the idea that humans are good creatures perverted by society? From where does this idea of “natural man” derive?</p>
<p>In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogues:_Rousseau,_Judge_of_Jean-Jacques">Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques</a> (1776), Rousseau addresses this question directly, and in typically Rousseauian fashion: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>whence could the painter and apologist of human nature have taken his model, if not from his own heart? He has described this nature just as he felt it within himself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much in his philosophy hangs on this verdict. It reads as a peculiarly pallid justification of his method, but it is an honest one – and an admission which could be said of many theories and theorists. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547978/original/file-20230913-25-1hkx7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>We often read academic works as though they were written objectively, yet we know they often spring from the subjective preoccupations of their authors. Anyone who has read enough evolutionary psychology, for instance, will come to suspect the deeply personal – indeed, sometimes almost voyeuristic – nature of what is claimed to be universal. </p>
<p>In an era where the relation between person and theorist – or person and artist – is the subject of fascination, even obsession, Rousseau’s life scandalises us. This self-declared lover of peace and goodwill seemed to engineer most of his relationships to devolve into catastrophe; the man who argued even for the barbarity of the wet-nurse entrusted five of his own children to orphanages. Rousseau is one of the richest illustrations of the liberal who loves humanity, but is much less certain about humans. </p>
<p>At a time when the <em>ad hominem</em> is not seen so much as a fallacy but the <em>sine qua non</em> of intellectual lucidity, what are we to do not just with Rousseau, but with our own Rousseauism? The tension he felt between the outer and the inner is our fate too. The world we live in is in many ways his, as much as we would sometimes like this not to be the case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Fleming does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The ideas of Rousseau reflect many of our own deepest commitments and patterns of thought.
Chris Fleming, Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204756
2023-05-22T20:05:48Z
2023-05-22T20:05:48Z
Stan Grant’s new book asks: how do we live with the weight of our history?
<p>This month, journalist and public intellectual Stan Grant published his fifth book, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460764022/the-queen-is-dead/">The Queen is Dead</a>. And last week, he abruptly stepped away from his career in the public realm, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-19/stan-grant-media-target-racist-abuse-coronation-coverage-enough/102368652">citing</a> toxic racism enabled by social media, and betrayal on the part of his employer, the ABC. </p>
<p>“I was invited to contribute to the ABC’s coverage as part of a discussion about the legacy of the monarchy. I pointed out that the crown represents the invasion and theft of our land,” <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-19/stan-grant-media-target-racist-abuse-coronation-coverage-enough/102368652">he wrote</a> last Friday. “I repeatedly said that these truths are spoken with love for the Australia we have never been.” And yet, “I have seen people in the media lie and distort my words. They have tried to depict me as hate filled”. </p>
<p>Grant has worked as a journalist in Australia for more than three decades: first on commercial current affairs – and until this week, as a main anchor at the ABC, where he was an international affairs analyst and the host of the panel discussion show Q+A. The former role reflects his global work, reporting from conflict zones with esteemed international broadcasters such as CNN. His second book, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460751985/talking-to-my-country/">Talking to my Country</a>, won the Walkley Book Award in 2016.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Queen is Dead – Stan Grant (HarperCollins)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In this new book, Grant yearns for a way to comprehend the forces, ideas and history that led to this cultural moment we inhabit. The book, which opens with him grappling with the monarchy and its legacy, is revealing in terms of his decision to step back from public life.</p>
<p>Released to coincide with <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronation-arrests-how-the-new-public-order-law-disrupted-protesters-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-205328">the coronation</a> of the new English monarch, Charles III, The Queen is Dead seethes with rage and loathing – hatred even – at the ideas that have informed the logic and structure of modernity. </p>
<p>Grant’s work examines the ideas that explain the West and modernity – and his own place as an Indigenous person of this land, from Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and Dharawal country. That is: his work explores both who he is in the world and the ideas that tell the story of the modern world. He finds the latter unable to account for him.</p>
<p>“This week, I have been reminded what it is to come from the other side of history,” he writes in the book’s opening pages. “History itself that is written as a hymn to whiteness […] written by the victors and often written in blood.”</p>
<p>He asks “how do we live with the weight of this history?” And he explains the questions that have dominated his thinking: what is <a href="https://theconversation.com/whiteness-is-an-invented-concept-that-has-been-used-as-a-tool-of-oppression-183387">whiteness</a>, and what is it to live with catastrophe?</p>
<h2>The death of the white queen</h2>
<p>In his account, his rage is informed by the observation that the weight of this history was largely unexplored on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s death last September. The death of the white queen is the touchpoint always returned to in this work – and the release of the book coincides with the apparently seamless transition to her heir, now King Charles III. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527406/original/file-20230522-29-dcc0ot.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In the lead-up to the coronation, “long live the king” echoed across the United Kingdom. Its long tentacles reached across the globe where this old empire once ruled, robbing and ruining much that it encountered. The death of the queen and the succession of her heir occurred with ritual and ceremony. </p>
<p>Small tweaks acknowledged the changing world – but for the most part, this coronation occurred without revolution or bloodshed, without condemnation – and without contest of the British monarchs’ role in history and the world they continue to dominate, in one way or another. </p>
<p>Grant argues the end of the 70-year rule of Queen Elizabeth II should mark a turning point: a global reckoning with the race-based order that undergirds empire and colonialism. Whereas the earlier century confidently pronounced the project of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-yindyamarra-how-we-can-bring-respect-to-australian-democracy-192164">democracy</a> and liberalism complete, it seems time has marched on. </p>
<p>History has not “ended”, as Francis Fukuyama <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyamas-controversial-idea-explained-193225">declared</a> in 1989 (claiming liberal democracies had been proved the unsurpassable ideal). Instead, history has entered a ferocious era of uncertainty and volatility. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-history-francis-fukuyamas-controversial-idea-explained-193225">The End of History: Francis Fukuyama's controversial idea explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Grant reminds us that people of colour now dominate the globe. Race, <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-is-real-race-is-not-a-philosophers-perspective-82504">as we now know</a>, is a flexible and slippery made-up idea, changing opportunistically to include and exclude groups, to dominate and possess. </p>
<p>Grant examines this with great impact as he considers the lived experience of his white grandmother, who was shunned when living with a black man, shared his conditions of poverty with pluck and defiance, then resumed a place in white society without him. </p>
<p>And writing of his mother, the other Elizabeth, Grant elaborates the complexity of identity not confined to the colour of skin, but forged from belonging to people and kinship networks, and to place – which condemns the pseudoscience of <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/speeches/power-identity-naming-oneself-reclaiming-community-2011">blood quantum</a> that informed the state’s control of Aboriginal lives. This suspect race science has proved enduring.</p>
<p>Grant’s account of the death of the monarch is a genuine engagement with the history of ideas to contemplate the reality of our 21st-century present.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527467/original/file-20230522-27-ts8u8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grant argues the end of the queen’s 70-year rule should mark ‘a global reckoning with the race-based order that undergirds empire and colonialism’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yui Mok/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-is-real-race-is-not-a-philosophers-perspective-82504">Racism is real, race is not: a philosopher's perspective</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Liberalism and democracy = tyranny and terror</h2>
<p>In several essays now, Grant has engaged with the ideas of mostly Western philosophers and several conservative thinkers to explain the crisis of liberalism and democracy. Grant argues that, like other -isms, liberalism and democracy have descended into tyranny and terror. </p>
<p>The new world order, dominated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-stan-grant-on-how-tyrants-use-the-language-of-germ-warfare-and-covid-has-enabled-them-204183">China</a> and people of colour, is in dramatic contrast to the continued rule of the white queen and her descendants.</p>
<p>In this, perhaps more than his other books and essays, Grant moves between big ideas in history – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/criticism-of-western-civilisation-isnt-new-it-was-part-of-the-enlightenment-104567">Enlightenment</a>, modernity and democracy – to consider himself, his identity, and his own lived experience of injustice, where race is an undeniable organising feature. </p>
<p>In this story he explains himself, as an Indigenous person, “an outsider, in the middle”; “an exile, living in exile, struggling with belonging”; living with the “very real threat of erasure”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-yindyamarra-how-we-can-bring-respect-to-australian-democracy-192164">The power of yindyamarra: how we can bring respect to Australian democracy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Love, friendships, family, Country</h2>
<p>In the final section of the book, Grant’s focus switches to the theme of “love”, and to friendships, family and Country. He speculates that his focus on these things is perhaps a mark of age. </p>
<p>Now, he accounts for the things in life that are truly valuable – and this includes deep affection for the joy that emanates from Aboriginal families. Being home on his Country, paddling the river, he finds quiet and peace. </p>
<p>The death of the monarch of the British Empire, who ruled for 70 years, should speak to the history of empire and colonial legacy and all its curses – especially in settler colonial Australia. Yet her passing – which coincides with seismic change in the global economic order with China’s ascendance and the decline of the United States and the UK, the global cultural order and the racial order – has been largely unexamined in public discourse in Australia. </p>
<p>The history of colonisation and of ideas that have debated ways to comprehend the past have been a feature of Grant’s intellectual exploration, including on the death of the queen. As he details in his new book, the reaction from some quarters to this conversation has exposed him to unrelenting and racist attack. </p>
<p>In this work and in others, exploration of the world of ideas to understand the past and future sits alongside accounts of the everyday; of the always place-based realities of Aboriginal accounts of self. </p>
<p>The material deprivations and indignities, the closely held humility that comes with poverty and powerlessness - shared socks, a house carelessly demolished, burials tragically abandoned – are countered by another reality: the intimacy of most Aboriginal lives, characterised by deep love, affection, laughter and belonging. These place-based, “small” stories Grant shares sit alongside the bigger themes of modern history, such as democracy and freedom. </p>
<p>In this latest work, Grant details his sense of “betrayal” at the discussion he sought about the monarch’s passing and the discussion that was actually had, the history of ideas and his own place in this. </p>
<p>And now, of course, he has announced his intention to exit the public stage. Racism, we are reminded, is an enduring feature of the modern world – a world yet to allow space for an unbowing, Wiradjuri-Kamilaroi-Dharawal public intellectual.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heidi Norman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Stan Grant’s new book, The Queen is Dead, is revealing in terms of his decision to step down from public life. ‘I have been reminded what it is to come from the other side of history,’ he writes.
Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200205
2023-05-04T12:10:11Z
2023-05-04T12:10:11Z
Vagrant, machine or pioneer? How we think about a roving eagle offers insights into human attitudes toward nature
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523517/original/file-20230430-2790-u17iy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C20%2C3484%2C1943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The roaming Steller's sea eagle in Georgetown, Maine, Jan. 1, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/2mV4kjv">Dominic Sherony/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://ebird.org/species/stseag">Steller’s sea eagle</a> is one of the largest and most aggressive raptors in the world. With an 8-foot wingspan and striking white markings, these birds tower over their bald eagle cousins. </p>
<p>Steller’s are sublime, but they aren’t beautiful in the way people often sentimentalize animals. Most adult Steller’s survived by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29774180">beating their weaker sibling to death</a> in the nest within weeks of birth and were rewarded for their aggression by nurturing parents. No wonder they can <a href="https://www.nhbs.com/stellers-sea-eagle-book">fight off brown bears</a> and hunt on the sea ice of the Russian Arctic. </p>
<p>Since mid-2020, one individual Steller’s sea eagle has drawn <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/science/stellers-sea-eagle.html">national media attention</a> because of the <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/inside-amazing-cross-continent-saga-stellers-sea-eagle">vast distances</a> it has traveled – from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula to Alaska, then to Texas, eastern Canada, New England, and most recently, a <a href="https://media.ebird.org/catalog?taxonCode=stseag&regionCode=CA-NL&mediaType=photo">reported sighting on May 2, 2023 in Newfoundland</a> – and the extreme lengths to which <a href="https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/once-in-a-lifetime-birders-flock-to-see-extremely-rare-stellers-sea-eagle-georgetown-maine-russia-bird-wildlife-maine/97-7c82e9af-fcce-427c-9aee-863672a92dc7#">birders are going to glimpse it</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1622676468626034704"}"></div></p>
<p>Biologists have learned remarkable things about migratory birds’ <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691224886/vagrancy-in-birds">navigational skills</a> and how they can malfunction because of weather or illness. But these discoveries cannot answer the questions that most interest me. Can a bird travel for curiosity or pleasure, and not just for necessity or instinct? And if it can, how would we know it? </p>
<p>This last question is important, because it’s possible that humans are oblivious to the agency of the nonhuman world around us. In my view, anomalies like this Steller’s can open brief windows beyond our <a href="https://www.britannica.com/search?query=anthropocentrism">anthropocentrism</a>. </p>
<p>I research <a href="https://www.bu.edu/english/profile/adriana-craciun/">environmental humanities and the social dimensions of science</a>, and these questions are currently at the heart of these fields. I believe the extraordinary voyage of this raptor invites us to ask pressing questions about epistemology – how science knows what it knows. It also reveals hidden assumptions on which we rely when we presume that humans alone have the capacity to act for reasons that biology or environment cannot entirely explain. </p>
<h2>The language of vagrancy and belonging</h2>
<p>When migratory birds like this sea eagle appear outside their typical range, ornithologists call them “vagrants.” The scientific language of belonging draws on a shared cultural vocabulary for both human and nonhuman beings. Terms like vagrant, native, invasive, migrant and colonist all emerge from <a href="https://www.academia.edu/462808/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Biotic_Nativeness_A_Historical_Perspective">centuries of political discourses</a> describing which persons belong where. </p>
<p>Vagrancy laws <a href="https://www.londonlives.org/static/Vagrancy.jsp">punished the itinerant poor</a> beginning in Elizabethan times, scapegoating “vagabonds” for spreading disease, disorder and idleness. In the 19th-century U.S., a new wave of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rfsq2g">vagrancy laws</a> targeted freed Black Americans and then migrant laborers from southeastern Europe. The latter were known as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793916636094">birds of passage</a>,” the original term for migratory birds. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a woman with children, surrounded by police on a snowy street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523310/original/file-20230427-14-ch4yn6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In ‘What is Called Vagrancy’ (1854), Belgian artist Alfred Stevens depicts police leading a mother and her ragged children to prison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is_Called_Vagrancy#/media/File:Alfred_Stevens_What_is_Called_Vagrancy.jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An 18th-century naturalist studying bird migration, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1746.0078">Mark Catesby</a>, described what modern ornithologists call exploratory migratory behavior by comparing the birds to his contemporaries: “Analogous to the lucrative searches of man through distant regions, birds take distant flights in quest of food, or what else is agreeable to their nature.” </p>
<p>Writing in the age of exploration and colonization, Catesby simultaneously humanized birds’ inquisitive flights and naturalized Europeans’ exploration and colonization. Today, scientists and birders do the same thing. We describe birds’ anomalous movements through the dominant paradigms of our time: <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691224886/vagrancy-in-birds">instinct, mechanized responses to environmental cues and genetics</a>.</p>
<h2>Birds as machines</h2>
<p>I turned to two bird biologists to ask whether this Steller’s could be traveling for reasons of volition, not just instinct or necessity. In response, both ornithologists used the same word to describe the birds they study and admire: machines. </p>
<p>Ultimately, it seems, no matter how far you fly, there is no escaping the “hard-wired” mechanism that confines the nonhuman world in most experts’ view. As biologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/e-o-wilsons-lifelong-passion-for-ants-helped-him-teach-humans-about-how-to-live-sustainably-with-nature-150045">E.O. Wilson</a> summarized, “All animals, while capable of some degree of specialized learning, are <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/191841/consilience-by-edward-o-wilson/">instinct driven, guided by simple cues</a> from the environment that trigger complex behavior patterns.”</p>
<p>But reducing nonhuman animals to machines lacking agency ignores the surprising history of machines. Historian of science <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo21519800.html">Jessica Riskin</a> argues that the tradition of seeing all biological life – humans included – as clocklike machines includes an overlooked dimension in which “machine-like meant forceful, restless, purposeful, sentient, perceptive.” Machines were seen by some scientists from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Enlightenment-European-history">Enlightenment period</a> as lifelike: self-organizing, unpredictable and restless mechanisms driven by a vital inner agency. </p>
<p>Machines have always been more than just machines. This “contradiction … at the heart of modern science” – the restless vitality of mere “machines” – is precisely what this eagle’s singular behavior manifests for us. As a fugitive from the confines of our knowledge, this raptor is as much a machine as you or I, and just as capable of surprising.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CwOhnQqQ2f0?wmode=transparent&start=52" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Historian Jessica Riskin discusses centuries of debate about whether living things have agency and can transform themselves.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Birds as persons</h2>
<p>Although scientists have traditionally reduced many aspects of animal life to biological mechanisms, new research is challenging this perspective. Recent studies show that animals exhibit <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253222039/queer-ecologies/">remarkable ranges of sexual expression</a> as well as <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/five-surprising-animals-play">playing</a> and <a href="https://news.uchicago.edu/do-animals-dream-david-m-pena-guzman">dreaming</a> behaviors. These findings are driving exciting investigations into animals’ inner lives and their capacity for joy and spontaneity. </p>
<p>However, even when researchers study individual bird personality as a possible explanation for why “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691224886/vagrancy-in-birds">bold and aggressive bird individuals</a>” are more prone to vagrancy than shy individuals, they reduce personality to particular genes. </p>
<p>By suggesting that the wide-ranging sea eagle may be willfully exploring, some might say I am anthropomorphizing her. But the problem of anthropomorphism is culturally and historically specific. Not all cultures do it, or do it in the same way. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C0%2C4267%2C2853&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large black and white raptor soars over a snowy field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C0%2C4267%2C2853&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523299/original/file-20230427-299-vnsrxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Steller’s sea eagle near Sapporo, Japan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/2458L7V">Sascha Wenninger/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast to Western cultures, many Indigenous peoples – along with <a href="https://theconversation.com/animism-recognizes-how-animals-places-and-plants-have-power-over-humans-and-its-finding-renewed-interest-around-the-world-181389">believers in animism</a> – live in a world shared with diverse persons, only some of them human. In these cultures, anthropomorphism is not an issue: All living organisms like plants and animals – and even <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/braiding-sweetgrass-excerpt/">nonliving ones, like glaciers or mountains</a> – may be considered as animate persons – subjects and agents that merit ethical consideration, not merely objects to be cared for or used. A global “<a href="https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/04/22/rights-of-nature-lawsuits/">rights of nature</a>” movement is gaining ground as a legal strategy rooted in such Indigenous ideas of relating to nonhuman persons.</p>
<p>In the Steller’s sea eagle’s home of <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/31825">Kamchatka and the Amur estuary</a>, myths abound of giant eagles that carry off whales and hunters. Before Christian conversion three centuries ago, people there described the creator of the world, and of humans, as a raven called Kutkkh, a powerful being across the North Pacific to be feared and respected – a person to be reckoned with.</p>
<h2>Symbol or anomaly?</h2>
<p>The roaming sea eagle’s initial journey from Alaska to Texas in March 2021 followed a record-breaking southward plunge of Arctic air in February 2021. This deadly event sent temperatures <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-texas-electricity-system-produced-low-cost-power-but-left-residents-out-in-the-cold-155527">plummeting below freezing in Texas</a> and U.S. Sen. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/ted-cruz-cancun-power-outage/">Ted Cruz fleeing to Cancún</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Image of the globe showing a cold air mass spilling south from the Arctic." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523314/original/file-20230427-18-n2e3x3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A potent arctic weather system chilled much of the U.S. in February 2021. Many scientists believe climate change contributes to such events by altering atmospheric circulation patterns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/147000/147941/northamerica_geos5_2021046_lrg.png">NASA Earth Observatory</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Arctic is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/arctic-report-card-2022-the-arctic-is-getting-rainier-and-seasons-are-shifting-with-broad-disturbances-for-people-ecosystems-and-wildlife-196254">fastest-warming zone on Earth</a>. Only <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330925199_Masterov_V_B_Romanov_M_S_Sale_R_G_2018_Steller's_Sea_Eagle_Snowfinch_Publishing_Coberley_UK">some 6,000 Steller’s remain</a>, because of climate change and human disturbance – especially <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-sakhalin-1-near-full-oil-output-after-exxon-exit-source-2023-01-09/">Russian oil production around Sakhalin</a>. The extraordinary movements of Arctic air and of this singular eagle bring the distant consequences of climate change far south, into the Texas oilfields.</p>
<p>Scientists now think that vagrants may be playing an important role as “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.06.006">first responders” to environmental changes</a>, and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.06.006">vanguards” of range shifts</a>. This shift from vagrant to vanguard may be a radical and welcome change. But it also highlights the tenacious power of anthropocentrism in always seeing animals as human analogs. </p>
<h2>Beyond categories</h2>
<p>For the past two winters, I have trekked to Maine hoping to spot the roving Steller’s. In February 2023 I ended up on the same frozen bridge on Maine’s Back River as in 2022, along with my teenage son and dozens of birders from across the continent. </p>
<p>One birder who had flown from Minnesota to see the eagle – and, like me, never did – offered to nail a nickel to the bridge as a reward for the first of us to spot the elusive prey. He was referring to a scene in Herman Melville’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm">Moby-Dick</a>” in which Ahab nails a gold doubloon to the mast as a promised reward for being first to spot the white whale. </p>
<p>In the scene, each crew member reads the symbols on the coin in a highly subjective way. As Ahab says, “every man but mirrors back his own mysterious self”: The act of interpreting an image or animal is deeply subjective. This theme is central to “Moby-Dick” and is why the book inspires more <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/the-endless-depths-of-i-moby-dick-i-symbolism/278861/">symbolic readings</a> than perhaps any other novel.</p>
<p>Philosophers <a href="https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf">Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari</a> read the white whale as a provocation to see beyond dualistic categories and symbols. They see the whale as “The Anomaly” – a dangerous flight from normative categories like normal/abnormal, human/nonhuman. Like this sea eagle, Moby-Dick “is neither an individual nor a genus; he is the borderline.” He resists the very possibility of categorization, not merely the categories themselves. </p>
<p>To embody “a phenomenon of bordering” in this way is to test and hopefully evade the powers of symbol-making animals like ourselves. Keeping the mind open to this Steller’s sea eagle as an anomaly in this sense is freeing for eagles and other persons, including humans. I believe this rare bird’s fugitive journey offers an even rarer glimpse of the mysterious intentions of animals as individuals, traveling at the borderline of our imaginations and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adriana Craciun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A Steller’s sea eagle, native to the Asian Arctic, has traveled across North America since 2021. A scholar questions whether the bird is lost – and how well humans really understand animals’ actions.
Adriana Craciun, Professor of English and Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Chair of Humanities, Boston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198463
2023-01-30T19:22:57Z
2023-01-30T19:22:57Z
Unlike with academics and reporters, you can’t check when ChatGPT’s telling the truth
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506273/original/file-20230125-18-6yb4mn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C5736%2C3790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Being able to verify how information is produced is important, especially for academics and journalists.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/unlike-with-academics-and-reporters--you-can-t-check-when-chatgpt-s-telling-the-truth" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Of all the reactions elicited by ChatGPT, the chatbot from the American for-profit company OpenAI that produces grammatically correct responses to natural-language queries, few have matched those of educators and academics.</p>
<p>Academic publishers have moved <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jan/26/science-journals-ban-listing-of-chatgpt-as-co-author-on-papers">to ban ChatGPT from being listed as a co-author and issue strict guidelines outlining the conditions under which it may be used</a>. Leading universities and schools around the world, from France’s renowned <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/top-french-university-bans-use-chatgpt-prevent-plagiarism-2023-01-27/">Sciences Po</a> to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/10/universities-to-return-to-pen-and-paper-exams-after-students-caught-using-ai-to-write-essays">many Australian universities</a>, have banned its use. </p>
<p>These bans are not merely the actions of academics who are worried they won’t be able to catch cheaters. This is not just about catching students who copied a source without attribution. Rather, the severity of these actions reflects a question, one that is not getting enough attention in the endless coverage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot: Why should we trust anything that it outputs?</p>
<p>This is a vitally important question, as ChatGPT and programs like it can easily be used, with or without acknowledgement, in the information sources that comprise the foundation of our society, especially academia and the news media.</p>
<p>Based on my work on the <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003008309">political</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14540-8">economy</a> of <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442666221/copyfight/">knowledge governance</a>, academic bans on ChatGPT’s use are a proportionate reaction to the threat ChatGPT poses to our entire information ecosystem. Journalists and academics should be wary of using ChatGPT. </p>
<p>Based on its output, ChatGPT might seem like just another information source or tool. However, in reality, ChatGPT — or, rather the means by which ChatGPT produces its output — is <a href="https://www.cigionline.org/articles/chatgpt-strikes-at-the-heart-of-the-scientific-world-view/">a dagger aimed directly at their very credibility as authoritative sources of knowledge</a>. It should not be taken lightly.</p>
<h2>Trust and information</h2>
<p>Think about why we see some information sources or types of knowledge as more trusted than others. Since <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Enlightenment-European-history">the European Enlightenment</a>, we’ve tended to equate scientific knowledge with knowledge in general. </p>
<p>Science is more than laboratory research: it’s a way of thinking that prioritizes empirically based evidence and the pursuit of transparent methods regarding evidence collection and evaluation. And it tends to be the gold standard by which all knowledge is judged.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-and-the-future-of-work-5-experts-on-what-chatgpt-dall-e-and-other-ai-tools-mean-for-artists-and-knowledge-workers-196783">AI and the future of work: 5 experts on what ChatGPT, DALL-E and other AI tools mean for artists and knowledge workers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For example, journalists have credibility because they investigate information, cite sources and provide evidence. Even though sometimes the reporting may contain errors or omissions, that doesn’t change the profession’s authority.</p>
<p>The same goes for opinion editorial writers, especially academics and other experts because they — we — draw our authority from our status as experts in a subject. Expertise involves a command of the sources that are recognized as comprising legitimate knowledge in our fields. </p>
<p>Most op-eds aren’t citation-heavy, but responsible academics will be able to point you to the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/states-and-markets-9781474236935/">thinkers</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.7.2017.0176">the work</a> <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12390/the-social-construction-of-reality-by-peter-l-berger/">they’re</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v12i2.4776">drawing</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878">on</a>. And those sources themselves are built on verifiable sources that a reader should be able to verify for themselves.</p>
<h2>Truth and outputs</h2>
<p>Because human writers and ChatGPT seem to be producing the same output — sentences and paragraphs — it’s understandable that some people may mistakenly confer this scientifically sourced authority onto ChatGPT’s output. </p>
<p>That both ChatGPT and reporters produce sentences is where the similarity ends. What’s most important — the source of authority — is not <em>what</em> they produce, but <em>how</em> they produce it.</p>
<p>ChatGPT doesn’t produce sentences in the same way a reporter does. ChatGPT, and other machine-learning, large language models, may seem sophisticated, but they’re basically just complex autocomplete machines. Only instead of suggesting the next word in an email, they produce the most statistically likely words in much longer packages. </p>
<p>These programs repackage others’ work as if it were something new. It does not “understand” what it produces. </p>
<p>The justification for these outputs can never be truth. Its truth is the truth of the correlation, that the word “sentence” should always complete the phrase “We finish each other’s …” because it is the most common occurrence, not because it is expressing anything that has been observed.</p>
<p>Because ChatGPT’s truth is only a statistical truth, output produced by this program cannot ever be trusted in the same way that we can trust a reporter or an academic’s output. It cannot be verified because it has been constructed to create output in a different way than what we usually think of as being “scientific.” </p>
<p>You can’t check ChatGPT’s sources because the source is the statistical fact that most of the time, a set of words tend to follow each other.</p>
<p>No matter how coherent ChatGPT’s output may seem, simply publishing what it produces is still the equivalent of letting autocomplete run wild. It’s an irresponsible practice because it pretends that these statistical tricks are equivalent to well-sourced and verified knowledge.</p>
<p>Similarly, academics and others who incorporate ChatGPT into their workflow run the existential risk of kicking the entire edifice of scientific knowledge out from underneath themselves. </p>
<p>Because ChatGPT’s output is correlation-based, how does the writer know that it is accurate? Did they verify it against actual sources, or does the output simply conform to their personal prejudices? And if they’re experts in their field, why are they using ChatGPT in the first place?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man gives a lecture while reading from two laptop screens" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506942/original/file-20230129-36877-sutezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Academics have authority on their subject of expertise because there exists a scientific and evidence-based method to verify their work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Knowledge production and verification</h2>
<p>The point is that ChatGPT’s processes give us no way to verify its truthfulness. In contrast, that reporters and academics have a scientific, evidence-based method of producing knowledge serves to validate their work, even if the results might go against our preconceived notions.</p>
<p>The problem is especially acute for academics, given our central role in creating knowledge. Relying on ChatGPT to write even part of a column means they’re no longer relying on the scientific authority embedded in verified sources. </p>
<p>Instead, by resorting to statistically generated text, they are effectively making an argument from authority. Such actions also mislead the reader, because the reader can’t distinguish between text by an author and an AI.</p>
<p>ChatGPT may produce seemingly legible knowledge, as if by magic. But we would be well advised not to mistake its output for actual, scientific knowledge. One should never confuse coherence with understanding.</p>
<p>ChatGPT promises easy access to new and existing knowledge, but it is a poisoned chalice. Readers, academics and reporters beware.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198463/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blayne Haggart receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).</span></em></p>
ChatGPT is a sophisticated AI program that generates text from vast databases. But it doesn’t understand the information it produces, which also can’t be verified through scientific means.
Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brock University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184162
2022-06-27T19:51:30Z
2022-06-27T19:51:30Z
Light: Works from the Tate’s Collection honours the body and its sensations – this is art which is meant to be felt
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470201/original/file-20220622-15-rm7mnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C3570%2C2392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Raemar, Blue, 1969, Tate: Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, partial purchase and partial gift of Doris J. Lockhart 2013. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© James Turrell. Photo: Chen Hao</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Light: Works from The Tate’s Collection, ACMI</em></p>
<p>The first room of <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/light-works-from-tates-collection-exhibition/">Light: Works from The Tate’s Collection</a> at Melbourne’s ACMI, begins, cannily, at the end of the Enlightenment – the period of the 17th and 18th centuries characterised by the emergence of the scientific method and the decline of the power of religious thinking. </p>
<p>Beginning in the 18th century and winding up with work from the 21st, it is a show of some 70 works that surveys the many ways light has been important to artists as both the material and content of their work.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-ideas-of-kant-121881">Explainer: the ideas of Kant</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Light and the birth of abstract painting</h2>
<p>Not surprisingly in an exhibition by Britain’s Tate, J.M.W. Turner is front and centre in this first room. </p>
<p>Turner is commonly associated with his contemporary John Constable, as he is here. </p>
<p>Constable applied himself scientifically to the recording of atmospheric effects. But there is really nothing like Turner’s swirling, highly textured, and downright experimental work of the second half of his career. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470480/original/file-20220623-51616-g76syn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harwich Lighthouse, exhibited 1820, John Constable, Tate: Presented by Miss Isabel Constable as the gift of Maria Louisa, Isabel and Lionel Bicknell Constable 1888.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Turner’s later work can be abstract to the point where we must rely on the title to tell us what we are looking at – as is the case with Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis from 1843 (yes, that’s all one title!). </p>
<p>Turner points the way to the shift in the late 19th and 20th centuries away from naturalistic representation as a key value in art. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470193/original/file-20220622-12-1iy4wo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Mallord William Turner, Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis, exhibited 1843.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Britain</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the exhibition travels forward in time through its various galleries, it is a delight to find the mid-century abstract photography of György Kepes and Luigi Veronesi. </p>
<p>So often the history of art leaves out the attempts by many 20th century artists to use film and photography for ends other than naturalistic renderings of the world as we see it. </p>
<p>Seated among these works is a Yayoi Kusama sculpture, The Passing Winter (2005), sitting at the centre of the exhibition. </p>
<h2>Seriously dotty</h2>
<p>With her iconic and cartoony bobbed hair and polka dot fetish, Kusama is occasionally overlooked as Instagram eye candy and grandmother of east Asian cute. </p>
<p>In reality, she has been a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/sep/23/yayoi-kusama-infinity-film-victoria-miro-exhibition">deeply serious artist</a> since her emergence in 1960s New York. Her installations can be quite intense, disorientating experiences. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470195/original/file-20220622-11-rplx6f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Passing Winter, 2005, Yayoi Kusama. Tate: Purchased with funds provided by the Asia - Pacific Acquisitions Committee 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Yayoi Kusama. Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stereotypically Japanese, Kusama’s craft is exacting in terms of the experiences she creates, and this work is no exception. Using a complex set of mirrors and portals, the work by turns fractures, refracts and reflects the room around it.</p>
<p>As you play with the various portals it offers, the work feels so very precise in its ability to surround you with shimmering dots or echoes of our own circularly vignetted face. </p>
<p>Transported into the world of Kusama’s unique psyche, while remaining at a safely bell-roped distance, I couldn’t help but smile. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-selfie-to-infinity-yayoi-kusamas-amazing-technicoloured-dreamscape-87076">From selfie to infinity: Yayoi Kusama’s amazing technicoloured dreamscape</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>More circles</h2>
<p>As you approach the end of the exhibition, there is a room dedicated to Tacita Dean’s 16mm film installation, Disappearance at Sea (1996). </p>
<p>In an echo of Turner’s seascapes, Dean creates a deceptively simple, circular portrait of a lighthouse. Like Kusama, all is circles: day to night the lighthouse lamp rotates gravely as the giant film loop chases its own tail. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470198/original/file-20220622-23-53my8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Disappearance at Sea, 1996, Tacita Dean. Tate: Purchased 1998.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tacita Dean, courtesy Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris. Photo: Tate.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We have all become accustomed to 4K televisions. We now realise just how orange TV makeup is. Our eyes have also become retrospectively more sensitive to the lack of resolution in earlier formats like DVD and the humble VHS tape. This technological advance made this work feel entirely different now to when I first viewed it in 2001. </p>
<p>The grainy 16mm film, ticking through the intricate looping film projector, foregrounds the ephemerality of light through its precarious physicality. </p>
<p>None of the glassy imperviousness of the digital image, we were looking at a fragile remnant from another time, like the Constables and Turners.</p>
<h2>Art as phenomena</h2>
<p>This show offers a respite from contemporary art dominated by social concerns. </p>
<p>Even as an insider, I feel contemporary art is, at times, theoretically and politically overburdened. </p>
<p>This comes on the back <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-64644-2_8">of a suspicion of aesthetics</a> among many contemporary practitioners and academics (by aesthetics I mean the realm of the sensory, intuitive and prelingual). That’s fine: contemporary art is a broad church, and if art can help with society’s ills, there’s certainly plenty of work to do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470199/original/file-20220622-3417-p3n7uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stardust particle, 2014, Olafur Eliasson, Tate: Presented by the artist in honour of Sir Nicholas Serota 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Jens Ziehe</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this is something different, an exhibition which privileges the body and its sensations. </p>
<p>Curated as they are here, these works are presented not to be read for meaning but to be experienced as phenomena (yes, yes, good art can do both). </p>
<p>There is plenty of representational, narrative content amongst what is on show: people and places, moments from myth, imagination and history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470482/original/file-20220623-51933-930myg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nataraja, 1993, Bridget Riley. Tate: Purchased 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Bridget Riley 2022. All rights reserved. Photo: Tate</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, for me, this is a show to be felt: floating in front of James Turrell’s Raemar, Blue (1969), sitting surrounded by the circling sparkles of Olafur Eliasson’s Stardust Particle (2014), being hypnotised by Bridget Riley’s Nataraja (1993), or considering the clouds that overshadow Constable’s bucolic (ok, admittedly a little saccharine) scenes.</p>
<p><em>Light: Works from The Tate’s Collection is at ACMI until November 13.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/james-turrell-a-mythic-artist-in-the-contemporary-constellation-35040">James Turrell, a mythic artist in the contemporary constellation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Redfern has previously had work funded by local, state and federal government bodies. </span></em></p>
From J.M.W. Turner to Yayoi Kusama, this exhibition explores 200 years of art about light.
Dominic Redfern, Associate Professor, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173325
2022-01-27T04:48:25Z
2022-01-27T04:48:25Z
Hearts, cells and mud: how biology helps humans re-imagine our cities in vexed times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442878/original/file-20220127-24-or529g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3733%2C2262&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Biological metaphors for the city abound in daily use. You may live close to an “arterial” road or in the “heart” of a metropolis. You may work in one of the city’s “nerve centres” or exercise in a park described as the city’s “lungs”.</p>
<p>The ready use of such metaphors indicates an underlying naturalism in our thinking about the city. Naturalism is a belief that a single theory unites natural and social systems.</p>
<p>Historically, this way of thinking has helped us grapple with the complex urban predicaments. Today, as the world’s cities face new problems, fresh urban visions are needed again. </p>
<p>The effects of climate change, such as extreme heat, pose a direct challenge to cities. What’s more, climate change is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220304851">prompting people</a> to move to cities from rural areas, which puts pressure of urban infrastructure. So let’s look at how biological ideas are useful for building cities that can withstand these challenges.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Drawing of the city as a body" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=2075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=2075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436625/original/file-20211209-15-1dvxgep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=2075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Fortified Man’ – a 15th century city concept by Francesco Di Giorgio Martini.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Turin Biblioteca Reale.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The city as a body</h2>
<p>During the 17th and 18th centuries, understanding of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21781247/">blood circulation</a> and other bodily functions crystallised. This knowledge could be fed into an Enlightenment vision in which urban components mirrored the functions of different body parts.</p>
<p>The image to the right shows the urban vision of Italian military engineer Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501). </p>
<p>He believed cities should be planned with the centre of government located at the “head” – the most noble part of the body. From an elevated position – metaphorically and sometimes physically – governments could both be protected, and surveil the rest of the city-body. </p>
<p>According to di Giorgio Martini’s <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Ars-et-Ingenium-The-Embodiment-of-Imagination-in-Francesco-di-Giorgio/Riahi/p/book/9781138229341">thinking</a>, a temple should be located at the city’s “heart” to guide its spirit. And piazza should be located at the “stomach”, guiding the city’s instinct and mixing the populace. </p>
<p>Countless medieval and renaissance cities include a citadel on a hill. But this type of city thinking <a href="https://www.archdaily.com/411878/ad-classics-ville-radieuse-le-corbusier">culminated</a> in the 20th century when the French-Swiss urban planner known as Le Corbusier conceived of a city with a decision-making “head”, separate from the residential and the industrial “bowels”. </p>
<p>This inspired new capitals such as Brasilia (Brazil), and Chandigarh (a state capital in northern India).</p>
<p>Historically, planners have also been inspired by understanding of a single organ. As shown in the image below, architect <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Rousseau_(1716-1797)">Pierre Rousseau</a> designed the French city of Nantes with a centre that functioned as a “heart” and pumped goods and individuals through it.</p>
<p>But such biological and scientific thinking could also reinforce social divides.</p>
<p>During the 17th-century plagues in <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300196344/florence-under-siege">Florence</a> and Rome, for example, the poor were considered lowly organs that attracted and even bred disease. As a result, they were locked down in hospitals away from the city – a move medical experts at the time likened to surgical removal of a weak part of the body.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Drawing of the city centre as a heart" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436623/original/file-20211209-141979-97i0s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rousseau Pierre’s 1760 plan for the city of Nantes with a heart at the centre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Archives municipales de Nantes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cells of the city</h2>
<p>The scientific discovery of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_theory">the cell</a> later produced a range of urban analogies in 20th century. </p>
<p>The below diagram shows the vision of upstate New York drawn by community planner <a href="https://archive.org/details/Planningth_00_Suss">Henry Wright in 1926</a>. He envisaged a “tissue” of urban development which fed off clusters of recreational woodland, encouraging wholesome activity and good living for the suburbs’ residents. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Drawing of a city comprised of cells" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436622/original/file-20211209-141979-aoatfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Wright was inspired by the idea of the city comprised of ‘cells’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Report of the State of New York Commission of Housing and Regional Planning (1926)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen, healthy communities were analogous to healthy cells. But this thinking had a flip side.</p>
<p>Saarinen <a href="https://seymakcan.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/arch222-presentation-c59feyma-akcan-section-1-eliel-saarinen.pdf">believed</a> slum areas in cities could be treated similarly to cancers – effectively “excised” by <a href="http://jultika.oulu.fi/files/isbn9789526208626.pdf">moving them</a> out of the city centre to “revitalise” the urban centre. The poor and racial minorities bore the brunt of this thinking.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/up-on-a-roof-why-new-zealands-move-towards-greater-urban-density-should-see-a-rooftop-revolution-172226">Up on a roof: why New Zealand's move towards greater urban density should see a rooftop revolution</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>New urban naturalism</h2>
<p>In a 2017 book, influential physicist <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Scale/rXS0CwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=scale+geoffrey+west&printsec=frontcover">Geoffrey West</a> proposes that hidden laws govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to our cities.</p>
<p>Such thinking shows how naturalism in city planning remains relevant in the 21st century. </p>
<p>For further examples, we need look only to the concept of the “<a href="https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/what-is-a-smart-city">smart city</a>”, in which a city’s performance in areas such as public transport flows and energy use is carefully monitored. This data can be used to make the city more “intelligent” – improving government services and citizen welfare, and producing indices such as <a href="https://www.walkscore.com/">walkscores</a> and <a href="https://auo.org.au/portal/metadata/urban-liveability-index/">liveability</a>. </p>
<p>Contemporary Belgian architect Luc Schuiten takes the concept of a living city to its logical extreme in his design for a “<a href="https://www-vegetalcity-net.translate.goog/en/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc">vegetative city</a>”.</p>
<p>According to Schuiten, cities should be built not of materials but of products of a viable local ecosystem. This might mean first growing a native tree then constructing a building around it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="artist's image of trees growing on buildings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436617/original/file-20211209-159504-qsmr6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schuiten proposed the idea of a ‘vegetative city’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schuiten’s idea reflects ancient approaches in cities such the Yemen city of Sana'a, where high rise buildings are made from <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20211004-yemens-ancient-soaring-skyscraper-cities">mud brick</a> – a sustainable material suitable for the city’s hot climate. Schuiten takes this further, removing the agency of builders and giving it over to plants.</p>
<p>Naturalistic thinking provides us with a powerful set of visions for the <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-3977-7">good city of the future</a>. But just as the naturalism of the 17th century was double-edged, so it is now. </p>
<p>For example, the rise of the smart city promises a great deal for citizens but delivers even more for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6z2S1Y1IgQ">big tech and corporations</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/smart-city-or-not-now-you-can-see-how-yours-compares-130881">Smart city or not? Now you can see how yours compares</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>And as with any application of science, naturalistic thinking in contemporary cities must ensure marginalised and disadvantaged groups are protected and supported. </p>
<p>COVID-19 provides another reason to apply a more naturalistic approach to urban planning. Perhaps seeing the city as a living organism would have left authorities better placed to deal with the pandemic’s spread through urban centres. </p>
<p>And among the general population, a more naturalistic understanding of our urbanised selves may have meant decisions by governments and chief medical officers were easier to accept. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Marco Amati is the author of the recent book <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-3977-7">The City and Superorganism: a history of naturalism in urban planning</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173325/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marco Amati has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council, Horticulture Innovation and the Commonwealth Government through the National Environmental Science Program </span></em></p>
Naturalistic thinking has long helped humanity grapple with complex urban predicaments. What role can it play today?
Marco Amati, Associate Professor of International Planning, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/161323
2021-06-09T12:39:04Z
2021-06-09T12:39:04Z
Lack of burial space is changing age-old funeral practices, and in Japan ‘tree burials’ are gaining in popularity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405135/original/file-20210608-121132-4wsiw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C44%2C4925%2C3173&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many of the tombs in Japan are elaborately decorated. Nearby visitors can buy flowers, buckets. brooms and other gardening tools to tidy up the graves.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/yanaka-cemetery-the-vast-cemetery-surrounding-tennoji-news-photo/595023564?adppopup=true">John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the global population continues to grow, space for putting the dead to rest is at a premium. In the U.S., some of the biggest cities <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bisnow/2017/11/03/urban-cemeteries-running-out-of-space-as-baby-boomers-enter-twilight-years/?sh=731b6cf9579c">are already short on burial land</a>, and so are many other nations around the world.</p>
<p>At the same time, many nations are transforming funerary rituals, changing the way cemeteries operate and even destroying historic cemeteries to reclaim land for the living. In Singapore, for example, the government has forcibly demolished family tombs in favor of columbariums, structures that can hold the urns of the cremated. Grave spaces in the city-state can be used only for a term of <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=28087">15 years</a>, after which the remains are cremated and the space is used for another burial.</p>
<p>In Hong Kong, gravesites are among the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/23/dead-pricey-hong-kong-burial-plots-now-more-expensive-than-living-space">most expensive real estate</a> per square foot and the government has enlisted pop stars and other celebrities to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/216158">promote cremation over physical burial</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar who studies Buddhist funerary rituals and narratives <a href="https://faculty.txstate.edu/profile/1922200">about the afterlife</a>, what interests me are the innovative responses in some Buddhist majority nations and the tensions that result as environmental needs clash with religious beliefs. </p>
<h2>Practice of tree burial</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/03/20/archives/land-shortage-alters-old-japanese-burial-practices-wave-of-the.html">As early as the 1970s</a>, public officials in Japan were concerned about a lack of adequate burial space in urban areas. They offered a variety of novel solutions, from cemeteries in distant resort towns where families could organize a vacation around a visit for traditional graveside rituals, to chartered bus trips to rural areas to bury loved ones. Beginning in 1990, the Grave-Free Promotion Society, a volunteer social organization, publicly advocated for the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30234479">scattering of human ashes</a>. </p>
<p>Since 1999, the Shōunji temple in northern Japan has attempted to offer a more innovative solution to this crisis through Jumokusō, or “tree burials.” In these burials, families place cremated remains in the ground and a tree is planted over the ashes to mark the gravesite. </p>
<p>The Shōunji parent temple opened a smaller temple site known as Chishōin in an area where there was already a small woodland. Here, in a small park, free from the large, stone markers of traditional Japanese grave sites, Buddhist priests <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+the+Anthropology+of+Death-p-9781119222293">perform annual rituals</a> for the deceased. Families are also still able to visit loved ones and perform their own religious rituals at the site – unlike the scattering of cremated remains promoted by the Grave-Free Promotion Society, which leaves the family without the specific ritual space required for traditional Confucian and Buddhist rituals. </p>
<p>While many families electing for tree burials do not explicitly identify as Buddhist or associate with <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320297098_An_Anthropological_Study_of_a_Japanese_Tree_Burial_Environment_Kinship_and_Death">a Buddhist temple</a>, the practice reflects Japanese Buddhism’s larger interest in environmental responsibility. Perhaps influenced by Shinto beliefs about gods living in the natural world, Japanese Buddhism has historically been unique among Buddhist traditions for its focus on the environmental world. </p>
<p>Whereas the earliest Indian Buddhist thought framed plants as nonsentient and, therefore, outside of the cycle of reincarnation, Japanese Buddhism frames flora as a living component of the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Japanese_Buddhism.html?id=elcqAAAAYAAJ">cycle of reincarnation</a> and, therefore, necessary to protect. </p>
<p>As a result, Japanese Buddhist institutions today often frame the challenge of humanity’s impact on the environment as a specifically <a href="https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v7i3.334">religious concern</a>. The head of the Shōunji temple has described tree burials as part of a uniquely Buddhist commitment to preserving <a href="https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v7i3.334">the natural environment</a>.</p>
<h2>Social transformations</h2>
<p>The idea of tree burials has proven so popular in Japan that other temples and public cemeteries have mimicked the model, some providing burial spaces under individual trees and others spaces in a columbarium that surrounds a single tree.</p>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.co.jp/citations?user=vJOBvpQAAAAJ&hl=en">Sébastian Penmellen Boret</a> writes in his 2016 book that these tree burials <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Japanese-Tree-Burial-Ecology-Kinship-and-the-Culture-of-Death/Boret/p/book/9781138200333">reflect larger transformations in Japanese society</a>. After World War II, Buddhism’s influence on Japanese society declined as hundreds of new religious movements flourished. Additionally, an increasing trend toward urbanization undermined the ties that had traditionally existed between families and the local temples, which housed and cared for their ancestral gravesites. </p>
<p>Tree burials also cost significantly less than <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+the+Anthropology+of+Death-p-9781119222293.">traditional funerary practices</a>, which is an important consideration for many Japanese people struggling to support multiple generations. <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/268083/countries-with-the-lowest-fertility-rates/">The birth rate in Japan is one of the lowest in the world</a>, so children often struggle without siblings to support ailing and deceased parents and grandparents. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cemetery at the Kiyomizu-dera Buddhist temple in eastern Kyoto, in Japan." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405185/original/file-20210608-21-d8bj82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Traditionally, ties existed between families and the local temples, which housed and cared for their ancestral gravesites.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cemetery-at-the-kiyomizu-dera-buddhist-temple-in-eastern-news-photo/683399574?adppopup=true">Yuri Smityuk\TASS via Getty Image</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Concern over traditional ceremonies</h2>
<p>This move has not been without controversy. Religious and cultural communities across East Asia maintain that a physical space is necessary to visit the deceased for various afterlife rituals. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/confucianism-a-very-short-introduction-9780195398915?cc=us&lang=en&">Confucian traditions</a> maintain that it is the responsibility of the child to care for their deceased parents, grandparents and other ancestors through ritual offerings of food and other items. </p>
<p>During the festival of Obon, typically held in the middle of August, Japanese Buddhists will visit family graves and make food and drink offerings for their ancestors, as they believe the deceased visit the human world during this period. These offerings for ancestors are repeated biannually at the spring and fall equinoxes, called “ohigan.” </p>
<p>Additionally, some Buddhist temples have expressed concern that tree burials are irrevocably undermining their social and economic ties to local communities. Since the institution of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2385001">Danka system</a> in the 17th-century, Japanese Buddhist temples have traditionally held a monopoly on ancestral burial sites. They performed a variety of gravesite services for families to ensure their loved one has a good rebirth in return for annual donations.</p>
<h2>American funeral traditions</h2>
<p>Tree burials still remain a minority practice in Japan, but there is evidence they are quickly <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/22/national/for-baby-boomers-return-to-nature-emerges-as-alternative-burial-option/">growing in popularity</a>. Japanese tree burials, however, mirror trends happening in burial practices in the United States.</p>
<p>Whereas in the past, grave slots were thought of as being in perpetuity, now most cemeteries offer burial leases for a <a href="https://www.burialplanning.com/resources/how-long-do-you-own-a-cemetery-plot#:%7E:text=This%20is%20usually%20after%20several,the%20plot%20will%20be%20reused.">maximum period of 100 years</a>, with shorter leases both common and encouraged. As represented by the pioneering work of mortician <a href="http://caitlindoughty.com/">Caitlin Doughty</a> and others, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393351903">consumers are turning an increasingly doubtful eye</a> to the accouterments of the traditional American funeral, including the public viewing of an embalmed body, a casket communicative of social status and a large stone marking one’s grave. </p>
<p>Part of this undoubtedly reflects sociological data indicating the <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx">decline of traditional religious institutions</a> and a rise at the same time in alternative spiritualities. However, above all, such efforts toward new forms of burial represent the fundamental versatility of religious rituals and spiritual practices as they transform to address emerging environmental and social factors. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Mikles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In a Japanese tree burial, cremated remains are placed in the ground and a tree is planted over the ashes to mark the gravesite. Environmental responsibility is part of Buddhism.
Natasha Mikles, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Religious Studies, Texas State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131539
2020-07-21T12:06:38Z
2020-07-21T12:06:38Z
How Taiwanese death rituals have adapted for families living in the US
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348415/original/file-20200720-17-3wkngo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C12%2C988%2C657&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Priests in Taiwan perform a ritual for the souls of the dead.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/head-taoist-priest-mr-lai-and-fellow-priests-perform-a-news-photo/158684153?adppopup=true">Alberto Buzzola/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Taiwanese people living in the United States face a dilemma when loved ones die. Many families worry that they might not be able to carry out <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Edmgildow/documents/GildowDouglas05.FleshBodies.pdf">proper rituals</a> in their new homeland.</p>
<p>As a biracial <a href="https://www.boisestate.edu/anthropology/about-2/faculty-and-staff-2/pei-lin-yu/">Taiwanese-American archaeologist</a> living in Idaho and studying in Taiwan, I am discovering the many faces of Taiwan’s blended cultural heritage drawn from the mix of peoples that have inhabited the island over millennia.</p>
<p>Indigenous tribes have lived on the island for 6,000 years, <a href="https://www.apc.gov.tw/portal/docList.html?CID=200161A7D09A7FEC">practicing their diverse ancient traditions</a> into the modern day. Chinese sailor-farmers <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/Wills%2017c.pdf">arrived during the Ming Dynasty 350 years ago</a>. The Japanese won a naval battle with China and <a href="http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Taiwan/sub5_1a/entry-3796.html">governed Taiwan as a colony</a> from 1895 to 1945. Today, Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, albeit with <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/taiwans-status-geopolitical-absurdity/593371/">contested sovereign status</a>. Peoples from every corner of the planet visit, work and live in Taiwan. </p>
<p>Language, religion and food from all these traditions can be encountered in the cities and villages of Taiwan today. Multiple beliefs and customs also contribute to the rituals <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279372584_Modern_Life_and_Traditional_Death_Tradition_and_Modernization_of_Funeral_Rites_in_Taiwan">Taiwanese people conduct</a> to send family members into the afterlife.</p>
<h2>Death rituals</h2>
<p>Taiwan’s death rituals offer a bridge with the afterlife that stems from multiple spiritual sources. <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Edmgildow/documents/GildowDouglas05.FleshBodies.pdf">Buddhists, who make up 35% of Taiwan’s population, believe in multiple lives</a>. Through faith and devotion to Buddha and the accumulation of good deeds a person can be freed from the cycle of reincarnation <a href="https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=20,29,35,45&post=25234">to achieve nirvana</a> or a state of perfect enlightenment. </p>
<p>This belief is <a href="https://taiwancorner.org/?p=1985">fused with elements</a> of the island’s other belief systems including Taoism, Indigenous spirituality and Christianity. Together, they form death customs that showcase Taiwan’s multiculturalism. </p>
<p>In the streets of Taiwan’s metropolises and villages alike, temples, churches and wooden ancestor carvings invite one to contemplate eternity while the odors of nearby food vendors – such as stinky tofu, a local delicacy – tempt people to pause and enjoy earthly delights afterward. </p>
<p>The rituals associated with passing from this life include cemetery burial or <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Edmgildow/documents/GildowDouglas05.FleshBodies.pdf">traditional cremation practices</a>. The dead are cremated and placed in special urns in Buddhist temples.</p>
<p>Another rite involves burning of what are known as “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/009770048701300301?journalCode=mcxa">hell bank notes</a>.” These are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/189307.pdf?casa_token=5Dt0wZjH8_kAAAAA:fbaIxoRpsHKFZ2WT9HbTU0VDScpS8iAOvy-gWCGxcTxwqawCYRZFtVEmhVTtwBk5Q1JS2UGY1cZxUvcjvfCDCInJIOncI9t2MShpDVCm98VMJoZnQWY">specially printed non-legal tender bills</a> that may range from US$10,000 to several billions. </p>
<p>On one side of these notes is an image of the Jade Emperor, the presiding monarch of heaven in Taoism. These bills can be obtained in any temple or even 7-Eleven in Taiwan. The belief is that the spirits of ancestor might return to complain if not given sufficient spending money for the afterlife. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348417/original/file-20200720-29-c6dq3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A hell bank note.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">P. Yu</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Adapting in America</h2>
<p>My Indigenous great-great-grandmother married a Chinese man and her great-grandson – my father – grew up speaking a typical blend of languages for the 1950s: the local dialect, Hokkien, as well as Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin. Arriving in the U.S. at the age of 23 to study electrical engineering, my father mastered English quickly, married my Euro-American mother, and raised a family in the American West.</p>
<p>Taiwanese people living in America often cannot participate in the rites of mourning and passage conducted back home because they do not have time or money, or recently, pandemic related travel restrictions. So Taiwanese Americans adapt to – and sometimes, accept the loss of – these traditions.</p>
<p>When my Taiwanese grandmother, whom we affectionately called Amah, passed away in 1987, my father was unable to return home for the Buddhist ritual organized by his family. Instead, he adapted the “<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/274b/db6e25730d0f019696193b66c1e8cf7ee9fe.pdf">Tou Qi</a>,” pronounced “tow chee” – usually conducted on the seventh day after death.</p>
<p>In this ritual, it is believed that the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marco_Lazzarotti3/publication/279372584_Modern_Life_and_Traditional_Death_Tradition_and_Modernization_of_Funeral_Rites_in_Taiwan/links/5592522708ae1e1f9bb02be2.pdf">spirit of the recently deceased revisits</a> the family for one final farewell. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348421/original/file-20200720-18366-1t0khq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buddhist funeral ritual for my Amah in Taichung, on the island’s west side.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">X. F. Yu.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My father adapted the ritual to a modern U.S. suburban home: He filled our dining room with <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279372584_Modern_Life_and_Traditional_Death_Tradition_and_Modernization_of_Funeral_Rites_in_Taiwan">fruits and cakes</a>, as my Amah was a strict Buddhist vegetarian and enjoyed eating cakes. He put pots of golden chrysanthemums on the table and incense whose smoke is believed to carry one’s thoughts and feelings to the gods.</p>
<p>He then opened every door, window and drawer in our house, as well as car doors, and the tool shed to ensure that our grandmother’s spirit could visit and enjoy the food with us for the last time. He then settled in for an all-night vigil.</p>
<p>After helping Dad with preparations, I returned to my small apartment across town, placed flowers and fruit and a candle on the kitchen table, opened the windows and doors and sat through long dark hours of my own small vigil. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348419/original/file-20200720-92332-g3jhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From left: my mother, my little sister, my Amah, and myself c. 1973.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">J. Yu</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I reflected upon the memory of my grandmother: a petite woman who raised six children during World War II by hiding in the mountains and teaching them to forage for snails, rats and wild yams. Her children survived, got educated, and traveled the world. Her American grandchildren learned how to stir fry in her battle-scarred wok, lugged all the way to the U.S. in a suitcase, and peeked curiously as she performed Buddhist prayers each morning in front of the smiling deity. </p>
<p>My vigil ended with the rising of the sun: the candle burnt out, the flowers drooped, and the <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Edmgildow/documents/GildowDouglas05.FleshBodies.pdf">fragrance of the incense faded</a>. My grandmother, whose name in translation is “Fairy Spirit,” had eaten her fill, and said her goodbyes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131539/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pei-Lin Yu has received funding from Fulbright Taiwan's Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. </span></em></p>
Taiwan’s death rituals come from multiple spiritual sources. A Taiwanese-American scholar explains what changes for those who make their home in the US.
Pei-Lin Yu, Associate Professor, Boise State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137895
2020-05-19T05:28:16Z
2020-05-19T05:28:16Z
Before epidemiologists began modelling disease, it was the job of astrologers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335919/original/file-20200519-83393-pbb25a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C16%2C2144%2C3269&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women, representing nature, argue the influence of the zodiac with scholars in this undated 17th century engraving. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ze65gc7m">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The internet is awash with comparisons between life during COVID-19 and life during the Bubonic plague. The two have many similarities, from the spread of misinformation and the tracking of mortality figures, to the ubiquity of the question “when will it end?”</p>
<p>But there are, of course, crucial differences between the two. Today, when looking for information on the incidence, distribution, and likely outcome of the pandemic, we turn to epidemiologists and infectious disease models. During the Bubonic plague, people turned to astrologers.</p>
<p>Exploring the role played by astrologers in past epidemics reminds us that although astrology has been debunked, it was integral to the development of medicine and public health.</p>
<h2>The flu, written in the stars</h2>
<p>Before <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24649/">germ theory</a>, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Scientific-Revolution">Scientific Revolution</a> and then the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/enlightenment">Age of Enlightenment</a>, it was common for medical practitioners to use astrological techniques in their everyday practice.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335910/original/file-20200519-83352-5kahon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre woodcut (1523-25).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holbein_Danse_Macabre_27.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Compared to the simplistic horoscopes in today’s magazines, premodern astrology was a complex field based on detailed astronomical calculations. Astrologers were respected health authorities who were <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030107789">taught at the finest universities throughout Europe</a>, and hired to treat princes and dukes.</p>
<p>Astrology provided physicians with a naturalistic explanation for the onset and course of disease. They believed the movements of the celestial bodies, in relation to each other and the signs of the Zodiac, governed events on earth. Horoscopes mapped the heavens, allowing physicians to draw conclusions about the onset, severity, and duration of illness.</p>
<p>The impact of astrology on the history of medicine can still be seen today. The term “influenza” was derived from the idea that respiratory disease was a product of the influence of the stars.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/altered-mind-this-morning-hehe-just-blame-the-planets-1235">Altered mind this morning? Hehe, just blame the planets</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Public health and plague</h2>
<p>Astrologers were seen as important authorities for the health of communities as well as individuals. They offered public health advice in annual <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=AppsDAKOW3QC&lpg=PA7&dq=astrology%20almanacs%20and%20plague&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false">almanacs</a>, which were some of the most widely read literature in the premodern world.</p>
<p>Almanacs provided readers with tables for astrological events for the coming year, as well as advice on farming, political events, and the weather.</p>
<p>The publications were also important disseminators of medical knowledge. They explained basic medical principles and suggested remedies. They made prognostications about national health, using astrology to predict when an influx of venereal disease or plague was likely to arise.</p>
<p>These public health predictions were often based on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/books/chapters/the-fated-sky.html">astrological theory of conjunctions</a>. According to this theory, when certain planets seem to approach each other in the sky from our perspective on earth, great socio-cultural events are bound to occur.</p>
<p>When Bubonic plague hit France in 1348, the King asked the physicians at the University of Paris to account for its origins. Their answer was that the plague was caused by a <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/Readings/Horrox.htm">conjunction of Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-medieval-writers-struggled-to-make-sense-of-the-black-death-134114">How medieval writers struggled to make sense of the Black Death</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Predictions from above</h2>
<p>Astrological accounts of plague remained popular into the 17th century. In this period, astrology was increasingly attacked as superstitious, so some astrologers tried to set their field on a more scientific grounding.</p>
<p>In an effort to make astrology more scientific, the <a href="https://www.sciencesource.com/archive/John-Gadbury--English-Astrologer-SS2551280.html">English astrologer John Gadbury</a> produced one of the earliest epidemiological studies of disease.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/London_s_deliverance_predicted.html?id=LT7WrQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">London’s Deliverance Predicted</a> (1655), Gadbury claimed his contemporaries couldn’t explain when plagues would arrive, or how long they’d last. </p>
<p>Gadbury proposed that if planets caused plagues, then planets also stopped plagues. Studying astrological events would therefore allow one to predict the course of an epidemic.</p>
<p>He gathered data from the previous four great London plagues (in 1593, 1603, 1625, and 1636), scouring the Bills of Mortality for weekly plague death rates, and compiling <a href="http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A42/A42850.html">A Table shewing the Increase and Abatement of the Plague</a>. Gadbury also used planetary tables to locate the planets’ positions throughout the epidemics. He then compared his data sets, looking for correlations.</p>
<p>Gadbury found a correlation between intensity of plague and the positions of Mars and Venus. Plague deaths increased sharply in July 1593, at which point Mars had moved into an astrologically significant position. Deaths then abated in September, when Venus’s position became more significant. Gadbury concluded that the movement of “the fiery Planet Mars” was the origin of pestilence and the “cause of its raging”, while the influence of the “friendly” Venus helped abate it.</p>
<p>Gadbury then applied his findings to the pestilence plaguing London at the time. He was able to correlate the beginnings of the plague in late 1664 and its growing intensity in June 1665 with recent astrological events.</p>
<p>He predicted the upcoming movement of Venus in August would see a fall in plague deaths. Then the movement of Mars in September would make the plague deadlier, but the movements of Venus in October, November, and December would halt the death rate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/335911/original/file-20200519-83363-us3gqv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The black death in London, circa 1665. Creator unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lord_haue_mercy_on_London.jpg">The black death in London</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Looking for patterns</h2>
<p>Unfortunately for Gadbury, plague deaths increased dramatically in August. However, he was right in predicting a peak in September followed by a steep decrease at the end of the year. If Gadbury had accounted for other correlates – such as the coming of winter – his study might have been received more favourably.</p>
<p>The medical advice in Gadbury’s book certainly doesn’t stand up today. He argued the plague was not contagious, and that isolating at home only caused more deaths. Yet his attempt to find correlations with fluctuating mortality rates offers an early example of what we now call epidemiology.</p>
<p>While we may discredit Gadbury’s astrological assumptions, examples such as this illustrate the important role astrology played in the history of medicine, paving the way for naturalist explanations of infectious disease.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Pfeffer has received funding from the Royal Society of London. </span></em></p>
Fun fact: the term ‘influenza’ comes from the premodern belief stars influenced disease. Before epidemiologists, there were astrologers.
Michelle Pfeffer, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130618
2020-04-27T20:06:21Z
2020-04-27T20:06:21Z
Joseph Banks: traveller, botanist and agent of the British Empire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311991/original/file-20200127-81352-nq14ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C624%2C773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joseph Banks portrait by Joshua Reynolds (circa 1771-1773).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sir Joseph Banks is justly celebrated as a “naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.” His role as an expedition scientist on Captain Cook’s first voyage set a benchmark for rigour, and helped to lift him to election as president of the Royal Society in 1778. From that position, he directed and encouraged multinational scientific endeavours for more than four decades. Less well-known is how he used that science to pursue imperial power.</p>
<p>The role of science in the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/">Age of Enlightenment</a>” has sometimes been imagined as a bubble of purity, where the hunt for new knowledge outweighed all other considerations. It is certainly true that warring European powers granted safe passage for elite scientific correspondence, and sometimes for individual scholars, or whole expeditions. But the context for this was a consensus on the value of scientific discovery for the pursuit of imperial aggrandisement.</p>
<p>Banks was a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/joseph-banks">hereditary member of the English establishment</a>. Born in 1743, his father and grandfather had been members of parliament and he inherited extensive Lincolnshire estates at an early age. He blended formal education with self-funded studies, and by his mid-20s, was already a member of the Royal Society, undertaking an expedition to the north-eastern shores of Canada, where he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UcIXkyf55fMC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=joseph+banks+auk&source=bl&ots=3SsEWirQDR&sig=ACfU3U2d8mZUVKGn-dqvqKj_JHZyyIcNvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPm66O5KPnAhUOiFwKHf3TA_wQ6AEwD3oECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=joseph%20banks%20auk&f=false">identified the Great Auk</a> for science.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>Great Southern Continent</h2>
<p>Cook’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/the-voyages-of-captain-james-cook/articles/the-first-voyage-of-james-cook">first voyage</a> was ostensibly to observe the “<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/28may_cook">transit of Venus</a>” across the face of the sun in 1769: thus forming part of a multinational scientific effort to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/29/transit-venus-measuring-heavens">map the size of the solar system</a>. But a deeper goal had already been voiced. </p>
<p>The first person the Royal Society suggested to command the voyage was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20633371">Alexander Dalrymple</a>, an eminent Scottish geographer and vocal proponent of the theory that a “Great Southern Continent” awaited discovery. He saw this as an opportunity equivalent to the discovery of the Americas, so great, as he wrote in his 1770/71 volume <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/1142150/an-historical-collection-of-the-several-voyages-and-discoveries-in-the-south">An Historical collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean</a>, that even: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dalrymple, however, demanded a full naval captain’s commission, which the Admiralty would not grant to a man who was not a professional seaman. James Cook had the necessary background, and was content with lieutenant’s rank. Cook’s voyage, of course, disproved the theory of a great Terra Australis, while at the same time mapping the outlines of New Zealand and eastern Australia. Banks (who had paid out of his own pocket for eight other scientists and servants to accompany him) both diligently completed his core botanical duties, and returned with clear views on how British imperial power could be enhanced through Cook’s discoveries.</p>
<p>Banks firmly advocated the strategic use of colonisation, vigorously promoting the use of “Botany Bay” as a penal colony. He sought to have interloping American trading vessels excluded from New South Wales “with severity”, but was not averse to other nations setting up settlements elsewhere in Australia, because there was a “moral certainty” that such territories would fall “into our hands in time of war”.</p>
<h2>The Bounty</h2>
<p>Banks was also the guiding light behind the most notorious episode of attempted ecological imperialism in the 1780s: the voyage of the Bounty, which set sail from the south coast of England in 1787, bound for what its crew saw as the very furthest reaches of the world. Banks had personally overseen its refitting, including the transformation of its captain’s cabin into a greenhouse, where hundreds of breadfruit seedlings were to be nurtured.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The much-maligned William Bligh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Huey (1814), National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ship’s captain, William Bligh – who was only 35, not the grizzled veteran sometimes depicted – had been sailing-master on Cook’s fatal third voyage, and had come under Banks’ subsequent patronage. His mission failed dramatically, not least because of the huge pressure its goals put him under, and the Bounty was lost to Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers in April 1789. Bligh redeemed his naval reputation with a voyage of more than 3,600 nautical miles to safety in an open boat. Only two years later, he led a second voyage of two ships, which did bring breadfruit from Tahiti all the way to the Caribbean. The Royal Society <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41376303?seq=1">awarded him a gold medal</a>.</p>
<p>Breadfruit never became a self-sustaining food crop for Britain’s brutalised plantation slaves, which had been the grim objective at the heart of these voyages. But this was just one small part of Banks’ vision of imperial botany. He took <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/dcd33da0-0e69-11e4-a1ae-00144feabdc0">a leading role</a> in establishing the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew as a centre for the systematic study of the world’s plants. He helped promote a network of such centres, from Calcutta to St Vincent in the Caribbean, and the exchange of species between them.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to Bligh’s departure, Banks had expounded in a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qfa3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=joseph+banks+letter+to+Sir+George+Yonge+Mangosteens,+Jacks,+Durians&source=bl&ots=TV13znCp2t&sig=ACfU3U0EAXu116tnGjbEqy-Rt4e2mv2ADg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-zYnlhrnnAhWF8XMBHczVBn0Q6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=cajir&f=false">letter</a> on the benefits of transplantation. From his own previous voyages, he noted the potential value of New Zealand flax for rope-making, and the “Mangosteens, Jacks, Durians” that might be brought westwards from Malaya (now Malaysia). One letter listed more than 30 products of both hemispheres that might be profitably transplanted, from the “lichee” to Basmati rice, “Naugharbussee bamboo” – superior, he noted, to Philippine bamboos already brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish – and what he called the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_-5rQMHKLi8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Cajir+Gautch&source=bl&ots=STojOEHP1V&sig=ACfU3U3iYCyB9c-NieLokciw6uWympgIRg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6gNOM3KPnAhUIT8AKHX1wB38Q6AEwAHoECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Cajir%20Gautch&f=false">Cajir Gautch</a>”, a palm whose sap made an alcoholic drink.</p>
<p>Banks closed this letter by noting how happy and eager he was to take forward such plans “so highly fraught with disinterested benevolence” as they were. His correspondent, however, was His Majesty’s secretary for war <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30223">Sir George Yonge</a>. Sir Joseph Banks, like so many leading lights of his generation, drew no distinction between the advancement of humanity and the interests of the British Empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Andress does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For celebrated botanist Joseph Banks, his voyage with James Cook was more about extending imperial power than simply discovery.
David Andress, Professor of Modern History, University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136321
2020-04-27T12:12:08Z
2020-04-27T12:12:08Z
Welcome to your sensory revolution, thanks to the pandemic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330391/original/file-20200424-163062-1amz996.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">No smell, no touch: People line up in Prague, Czech Republic, to get tested for the coronavirus. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-line-up-to-get-tested-for-the-coronavirus-in-prague-news-photo/1210703825?adppopup=true">Getty/Gabriel Kuchta</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The way we see, hear, taste, touch and smell may never be the same again.</p>
<p>Courtesy of COVID-19, we are undergoing a sensory revolution. All of the senses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic – not because the senses themselves have changed, but because the context and environment in which we sense has been profoundly altered.</p>
<p>Sensory historians <a href="https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/smith_m_mark.php">like myself</a>, who study the ways in which people in the past used their senses to understand and navigate their worlds, find that sensory shifts and perceptions tended to happen very slowly, measured in decades and centuries, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/sensory-history-9781845204150/">not in mere weeks and months</a>.</p>
<p>The shift that is happening now is unprecedented.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jwClyd2lHWo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Emptiness is the symbol of life in the time of coronavirus.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sensory hierarchy</h2>
<p>The very idea that there are only five distinct senses took ages to mature, gaining credence in the Enlightenment. This period not only discounted erstwhile senses – such as the sense of “intuition” – but arranged the five senses into a distinctive hierarchy.</p>
<p>The Age of Reason empowered the eye as the sense of truth; seeing was believing, said most thinkers in the 1700s. Sight was followed by hearing, understood as more refined than the so-called lower or proximate senses. Those are smell, taste and touch, senses that had once been held in high esteem in the ancient and medieval worlds, but which lost their currency and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/sensory-history-9781845204150/">became more associated with the animal senses</a>.</p>
<p>These changes took time. Seeing was believing by about 1800, but it had taken centuries for the original iteration of the phrase, “seeing is believing, but feeling’s the truth,” to lose its tactile component.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330397/original/file-20200424-163058-ezgub5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sight, sound and smell of traffic have disappeared from New York City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-view-looking-east-down-an-empty-street-amid-the-news-photo/1220494566?adppopup=true">Getty/Alexi Rosenfeld</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sensing changes</h2>
<p>With the sensory hierarchy intact, the 19th century ushered in some profound and long-term changes in how people used and understood their senses.</p>
<p>Olfaction offers a good example. Western noses became more refined, more sensitive and more alert to noxious smells. Rank and fetid smells gave way to a world that valued pleasant and deodorized smells. Washing and bathing became more popular, as did the use of perfumes and scents. Noses that could detect the difference were applauded. This olfactory <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Foul_and_the_Fragrant/LI1M4sLcvPAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=alain+corbin+fould+and+the+fragrant&printsec=frontcover">evolution in smells and habits of smelling took about a century</a>. </p>
<p>Now think of the sensory changes that have taken place in just a matter of months.</p>
<h2>New sights, louder sounds</h2>
<p>Once-trusty eyes betray us in the face of an invisible enemy. Seeing is no longer believing. Those who appear perfectly healthy <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/13/831883560/can-a-coronavirus-patient-who-isnt-showing-symptoms-infect-others">may be unknowing disease transmitters</a>.</p>
<p>But if the cause of COVID-19 is invisible, its effects are emphatically not. Desolate city streets are new sights; the absence of airplane contrails strikes many as almost primordial; masks render <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwClyd2lHWo">once-familiar faces unrecognizable</a>. </p>
<p>Soundscapes have changed, as have habits of listening. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/how-silent-spreaders-make-coronavirus-hard-to-beat-quicktake">Coronavirus spreaders are sometimes described as “silent.</a>” Many urban dwellers hear less traffic and formerly smothered sounds – <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/coronavirus/hopeful-birdsong-foreboding-sirens-a-pandemic-in-sound/2265854/">such as birdsong</a> – now can be heard. </p>
<p>The world is in some ways a much quieter place. Seismic sensors are picking up activity that used to be drowned out <a href="https://gizmodo.com/seismometers-worldwide-detect-decrease-in-human-activit-1842526497">by the activity of cities</a>. None of these sounds is new, but the effects of COVID-19 have reconfigured habits of listening and thresholds of hearing. Human voices are louder because there are <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/coronavirus-birdsong-seems-louder-and-the-ravens-are-more-relaxed-1.4231725">no whispers at six feet</a>.</p>
<p>The sense of smell has been hit hard. To breathe, after all, is to smell – if you can. Anosmia – the loss of the sense of smell – <a href="https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/04/17/how-viruses-like-the-coronavirus-can-steal-our-sense-of-smell/">is an early sign of infection</a>. </p>
<p>Even if we keep our sense of smell, we now pause before inhaling, lest we <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/lost-sense-of-smell-may-be-peculiar-clue-to-coronavirus-infection/articleshow/74767666.cms">breathe in an enemy we cannot see</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330399/original/file-20200424-163110-gh3c20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Food tastes different if you can’t eat it until you get it home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/woman-wearing-gloves-and-a-scarf-can-be-seen-in-the-news-photo/1219591346?adppopup=true">Getty/Alexi Rosenfeld</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Taste is no longer as easily sated, and palates are rearranged. Restaurants still cater, but in takeout fashion and with less variety. Hot food once served in the restaurant is colder and less palatable after it’s transported to the more distant dining room table. Clammy hamburgers on soggy buns served with limp french fries, anyone? Grocery stores now ration once taken-for-granted staples, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/food-rationing-is-new-reality-for-buyers-once-spoiled-for-choice">notably eggs, milk and meat</a>.</p>
<p>Touch is the obvious sensory casualty in all of this. Centuries of handshaking habits have evaporated; high fives are gone. Outside of families, hugs, kisses and nuzzles have <a href="https://www.allure.com/story/covid-19-skin-hunger-lack-of-touch">all been lost with the fear of infection</a>.</p>
<h2>No guide</h2>
<p>In sensory terms, there has been nothing like this. </p>
<p>Even the violence done to the senses by wars, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes is <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-smell-of-battle-the-taste-of-siege-9780190658526?lang=en&cc=us;%20https://books.google.com/books/about/Camille_1969.html?id=CBcRmQEACAAJ">modest in scale and scope compared to this sensory revolution</a>. </p>
<p>Possible legacies, short-term or long, are hard to fathom. Beyond the deaths, the long-term effects of this pandemic will likely be in words and culture, not eternal lockdowns. Sensory and rhetorical turns of phrases will change. The results will not be even. Thanks to virtual communication, “See ya” and “I hear ya” should remain stable, but “staying in touch” and “getting a grip” could go the way of the sensory dinosaur.</p>
<p>But if normalcy eludes us? </p>
<p>A whole new world of sensory engagement will emerge, and it could be terrifying. Our soundscape could be civil strife, punctuated with the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235307/Riots-break-suburbs-Paris-amid-anger-French-police-heavy-handedness-lockdown.html">smell of tear gas</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/south-africa-police-rubber-bullets-shoppers-covid-19-lockdown">resounding sting of rubber bullets on flesh</a>.</p>
<p>There is no sensory past that can guide us here. It is a genuine revolution of the senses. And it stinks.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
All of the senses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, not because the senses have changed, but because the world has, writes a sensory historian.
Mark M. Smith, Carolina Distinguished Professor of History, University of South Carolina
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/135910
2020-04-17T12:10:34Z
2020-04-17T12:10:34Z
What’s lost when we’re too afraid to touch the world around us?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327759/original/file-20200414-117578-p28xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C9%2C3290%2C2158&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We touch, therefore we know.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/24077861-royalty-free-image/87516258?adppopup=true">Jupiterimages/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During one of my daily walks with my toddler, when we passed his favorite playground, I noticed a new sign warning that the coronavirus survives on all kinds of surfaces and that we should no longer use the playground. Since then, I’ve taken great pains to prevent him from touching things. </p>
<p>This hasn’t been easy. He loves to squeeze bike racks and graze tree trunks, jostle bushes and knock on picnic tables. He likes to run his fingers against bars around a swimming pool and pet the chickens at the neighborhood coop. </p>
<p>Whenever I bat his hand away or try to distract him from potentially absorbing these dreaded, invisible germs, I wonder: What’s being lost? How can he possibly indulge his curiosity and learn about the world without his sense of touch? </p>
<p>I find myself thinking about <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/">Johann Gottfried Herder</a>, an 18th-century German philosopher who published a treatise on the sense of touch in 1778. </p>
<p>“Go into a nursery and see how the young child who is constantly gathering experience reaches out, grasping, lifting, weighing, touching and measuring things,” <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3614360.html">he wrote</a>. In doing so, the child acquires “the most primary and necessary concepts, such as body, shape, size, space and distance.” </p>
<p>During the European Enlightenment, sight was considered by many to be the most important sense because it could perceive light, and light also symbolized scientific fact and philosophical truth. However, some thinkers, such as Herder and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/diderot/">Denis Diderot</a>, questioned sight’s predominance. Herder <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3614360.html">writes that</a> “sight reveals merely shapes, but touch alone reveals bodies: that everything that has form is known only through the sense of touch and that sight reveals only … surfaces exposed to light.” </p>
<p>To Herder, our knowledge of the world – our relentless curiosity – is fundamentally transmitted and satiated through our skin. Herder argues that blind people are, in fact, privileged; they’re able to explore via touch without distraction and are “able to develop concepts of the properties of bodies that are far more complete than those acquired by the sighted.” </p>
<p>For Herder, touch was the only way to understand the form of things and grasp the shape of bodies. Herder changes René Descartes’ statement “I think, therefore I am” and claims: We touch, therefore we know. We touch, therefore we are. </p>
<p>Herder was onto something. Centuries later, neuroscientists like David Linden have been able to map out the power of touch – the first sense, he notes in his book
“<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Touch.html?id=S8QcBAAAQBAJ">Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind</a>,” to develop in utero.</p>
<p>Linden writes that our skin is a social organ that cultivates cooperation, improves health and enhances development. He points to <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-22093-017">research</a> showing that celebratory hugging among professional basketball players improves team performance, that premature babies <a href="https://doi.org/10.12968/hmed.2012.73.5.278">are more likely to survive</a> if they’re regularly held by their parents instead of being kept solely in incubators and that children severely deprived of touch <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Touch.html?id=S8QcBAAAQBAJ">end up with more developmental problems</a>.</p>
<p>During this period of social distancing, what sort of void has been created? In our social lives, touches are often subtle and brief – a quick handshake or hug. Yet it seems as though these brief encounters contribute mightily to our emotional well-being.</p>
<p>As a professor, I know it’s been a huge advantage to have digital technology that enables remote learning. But my students are missing out on the little touches, intentional or accidental, from their friends and classmates, whether it’s in the classroom, in dining halls or in their dorms.</p>
<p>Perhaps not surprisingly, touch plays a bigger role in some cultures than in others. Psychologist Sidney Jourard <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1966.tb00978.x">observed the behavior</a> of Puerto Ricans in a San Juan coffee shop and found that they touched one another an average of 180 times per hour. I wonder how they’re handling social distancing. Residents of Gainesville, Florida, are probably having an easier time; Jourard found they only touched twice per hour in a coffee shop.</p>
<p>Social distancing is crucial. But I’m already pining for the day when we can all engage with the world unimpeded, touching without anxiety or hesitation.</p>
<p>We’re more impoverished without it.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chunjie Zhang receives research funding from the University of California, Davis. </span></em></p>
With dreaded, invisible germs lurking on surfaces and in people, our surroundings are seen as a minefield – and we end up dulling one of our most valuable senses.
Chunjie Zhang, Associate Professor of German, University of California, Davis
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/133379
2020-03-11T14:23:10Z
2020-03-11T14:23:10Z
Spinoza and ‘no platforming’: Enlightenment thinker would have seen it as motivated by ambition rather than fear
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319889/original/file-20200311-116255-1xyj5ud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C1376%2C1230&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Baruch Spinoza, one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unknown artist via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent “no-platforming” of social historian <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-51737206">Selina Todd</a> and former Conservative MP <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-51768634">Amber Rudd</a> has reignited the debate about protecting free speech in universities. Both had their invited lectures cancelled at the last minute on the grounds of previous public statements with which the organisers disagreed. </p>
<p>Many people <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/08/censoring-dangerous-ideas-is-itself-dangerous-no-platforming-prevent">have interpreted</a> these acts as hostile behaviour aimed at silencing certain views. But is this primarily about free speech?</p>
<p>The debate about no-platforming and “cancel culture” has largely revolved around free speech and the question of whether it is ever right to deny it. The <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/amber-rudd-oxford-university-event-cancelled-students-no-platforming-free-speech-gavin-williamson-a9381091.html">suggestion is</a> that those who cancel such events want to deny the freedom of speech of individuals who they take to be objectionable. </p>
<p>Most of us surely agree that freedom of speech should sometimes be secondary to considerations of the harm caused by certain forms of speech – so the question is about what kinds of harm offer a legitimate reason to deny someone a public platform. Since people perceive harm in many different ways, this question is particularly difficult to resolve.</p>
<p>But perhaps the organisers who cancelled these events were not motivated by the desire to deny freedom of speech at all. Todd and Rudd are prominent people in positions of authority – so cancelling their events, while causing a public splash, is unlikely to dent their freedom to speak on these or other issues at other times and in different forums. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-arguments-to-help-decide-whether-to-cancel-someone-and-their-work-128411">Two arguments to help decide whether to 'cancel' someone and their work</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But these acts have a significant effect on others, who may feel unable to speak on certain issues from fear of similar treatment. Perhaps the no-platformers cancelled Todd and Rudd, not because they wanted to deny them their freedom to speak, but because they didn’t want to listen to them. Perhaps they were motivated not by a rational consideration of potential harm, but by an emotion: the desire not to listen to something with which they disagree.</p>
<h2>Ambitious mind</h2>
<p>The 17th-century Dutch philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/">Baruch Spinoza</a> has a name for this emotion: ambition. Nowadays we think of ambition as the desire to succeed in one’s career. But in the 17th century, ambition was recognised to be a far more pernicious – and far more political – emotion. As Spinoza wrote in his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ethics-by-Spinoza">Ethics (1677)</a>, ambition is the desire that everyone should feel the way I do: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Each of us strives, so far as he can, that everyone should love what he loves, and hate what he hates… Each of us, by his nature, wants the others to live according to his temperament; when all alike want this, they are alike an obstacle to one another. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spinoza sees the emotions, or “passions”, as naturally arising from our interactions with one another and the world. We strive to do things that make us feel joy – an increase in our power to exist and flourish – and we strive to avoid things that make us feel sad or cause a decrease in our power.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319890/original/file-20200311-116291-1lmmgiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Handwritten manuscript of ‘Ethica’ by Baruch de Spinoza.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Biblioteca Vaticana</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We naturally desire and love what we believe others desire and love. It is therefore natural that we want others to love what we do and think what we think. For if others admire and approve of our actions and feelings, then we will feel a greater pleasure – with a concomitant increase of power – in ourselves. </p>
<p>Ambition is not simply wanting to feel esteemed – it is wanting others to love and hate exactly what we love and hate. It is the desire to cause others to think and feel exactly as we do. It is the desire to “avert from ourselves” those who cannot be convinced to do so – for those dissenters diminish our sense of self-worth.</p>
<h2>Disagreement a threat</h2>
<p>Spinoza would have recognised the desire not to listen to dissenting views as a species of ambition. Disagreement is perceived not as a reasoned difference of views, but as a threat: something that causes sadness and a diminishing of one’s power – something to be avoided at all costs.</p>
<p>Somebody who feels differently threatens our sense of the worthiness of our own feelings, causing a type of sadness. Spinoza stresses that we strive to “destroy” whatever we imagine will lead to sadness. Thus ambition leads to a desire to change people’s views, often through hostile, exclusionary, destructive behaviours. </p>
<p>Not only that, but someone in the grip of ambition is likely to be immune to rational argument. Spinoza argues that passions are obstructive to good thinking: reason – on its own – has little power to shift a passion that has a strong hold on us. </p>
<p>Most of us have had negative experiences on social media with people who disagree with us on politically charged questions. Instead of engaging with our arguments, they point out that we are immoral or unfeeling for holding a different view. Really, what our opponents find intolerable is our failure to feel the same about the issue as they do. </p>
<p>Refusing to hear an argument and seeking to silence it is a mild form of no-platforming, motivated not by the desire to quash free speech, but by ambition. Our failure to share in the political feelings of others leads them to experience a loss of power, and they respond by attacking the cause of the loss. Ambition makes rational debate impossible, even when our freedom to speak remains perfectly intact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Lord has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for her work on Spinoza.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Douglas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It’s not a case of being afraid of different ideas, more that some people want everyone to think as they do.
Beth Lord, Professor of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen
Alexander Douglas, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of St Andrews
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131876
2020-02-20T12:18:09Z
2020-02-20T12:18:09Z
Why Trump’s post-impeachment actions are about vengeance, not retribution
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316259/original/file-20200219-10991-160q9rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=61%2C115%2C2509%2C1484&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Trump fired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for testifying in his impeachment trial. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Vindman/b62383f4da5e4192a08ea73ce861416b/1/0">AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the end of his Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump has carried out a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-brings-in-loyalists-and-attacks-enemies-as-post-impeachment-drama-escalates/2020/02/13/f88afb58-4e7f-11ea-bf44-f5043eb3918a_story.html">concerted campaign</a> against <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/26/trump-tweet-adam-schiff/4581430002/">his Democratic political opponents</a> as well as <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/07/donald-trump-pressure-impeachment-witness-alexander-vindman-111997">members of his administration</a> who cooperated with them. </p>
<p>A White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-109/">statement</a> released immediately after the president’s acquittal seemed to foretell this campaign when it ominously asked, “Will there be no retribution?” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-ousts-vindman-and-sondland-punishing-key-impeachment-witnesses-in-post-acquittal-campaign-of-retribution/2020/02/07/dafbdb90-49be-11ea-bdbf-1dfb23249293_story.html">Reporters</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/02/12/kth-trump-retribution-impeachment-trial-cooper-vpx.cnn">commentators</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/8/21129189/trump-dismissal-vindman-fire-sondland-democrats-outrage">Democratic politicians</a> have all been using the language of retribution to describe Trump’s post-impeachment actions. </p>
<p>On Feb. 8 Adam Schiff, one of the House of Representatives’ impeachment managers, said, “President Trump is exacting his retribution, removing those who complied with subpoenas, came forward and testified about his misconduct.” </p>
<p>I am a scholar who <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691102610/when-the-state-kills">studies the meaning of retribution and its role in punishment</a>. and such descriptions do not seem quite right to me. President Trump’s actions are vengeful, to be sure, but they are not truly retributive. </p>
<h2>What is retribution?</h2>
<p>Many contemporary philosophers distinguish retribution from revenge and argue that retribution is the only <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1487&context=law_faculty_scholarship">legitimate basis of punishment</a>. </p>
<p>To take one example, political philosopher <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/24/us/robert-nozick-harvard-political-philosopher-dies-at-63.html">Robert Nozick</a> explains the essential features of retribution and the way it differs from revenge in his 1983 book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674664791">Philosophical Explanations</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316229/original/file-20200219-11023-co8egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Retribution is not revenge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hand-writing-revenge-marker-concept-background-565315588">dizain/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>In his view, retribution is a response to a “wrong,” while revenge “may be done for an injury or harm or slight and need not be for a wrong.” </p>
<p>The wrong to which Nozick refers, like the murder of an innocent person, always involves an unjust or immoral action. </p>
<p>Without such injustice or immorality, injuries, harms or slights cannot be called wrongs. The impeachment testimony of members of his administration might have injured the president, but injuries, harms or slights do not provide the basis for genuinely retributive punishment. </p>
<p>Nozick additionally notes that while retribution “sets an internal limit to the amount of punishment, according to the seriousness of the wrong … revenge internally need set no limit to what is inflicted.” </p>
<p>Others, such as the legal theorist <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-life-of-h-l-a-hart-9780199202775?cc=us&lang=en&">H.L.A Hart</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/punishment-and-responsibility-9780199534784?cc=us&lang=en&">concur</a> that retributive punishment must be proportional to the wrong committed. In their view, retribution is inextricably bound up with <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Doing_Deserving.html?id=EEl4KgAACAAJ">the desire to do justice</a>. </p>
<p>Retribution also must be done <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2026803?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">impersonally and rationally</a> with a guiding concern to give offenders what they deserve. </p>
<p>Revenge, in contrast, is personal, passionate and often excessive. Because of these qualities, vengeance, as Nozick puts it, “involves a particular tone, pleasure, in the suffering of another…” Likewise, political theorist <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1992/9/18/judith-shklar-professor-and-noted-theorist/">Judith Shklar</a> <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300045994/faces-injustice">contends</a> that revenge is “uniquely subjective, not measurable, and probably an unquenchable urge of the provoked heart.” She too argues that “it is the very opposite of justice.” </p>
<p>In a study published in 2008, psychologist Kevin Carlsmith and his colleagues <a href="http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7Etdw/carlsmith.wilson.gilbert.jpsp.2008.pdf">tried to explain</a> the excessive quality of revenge. They found that the pleasure in the suffering of another, about which Nozick writes, is ephemeral, leading to recurring efforts to derive satisfaction by ratcheting up the pain inflicted or making others suffer. </p>
<h2>The history of retribution theories</h2>
<p>Efforts to distinguish retribution from revenge can be traced back to <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-retributive/">Greek philosophers</a>. Over time retribution became more popular, moving from a position of doubt among the ancients to full embrace by the end of the 18th century. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27798516.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4d049a600df56301bb6e2b6d3f203e7c">Socrates</a> treated retribution as “ignoble and irrational: It piles harm upon harm without accomplishing anything good.” Plato <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/14154/Ladikos_Plato%27s%282005%29.pdf?sequence=">thought</a> retribution was too primitive a motive to justify punishment. Aristotle, in contrast, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=IjZfoRd9s8kC&pg=PA322&lpg=PA322&dq=greeks+on+retribution+aristotle&source=bl&ots=wmbyrdr-h4&sig=ACfU3U3Y71_JJJd1YbvMrSIJ-0gKx3HFVQ&hl=en&ppis=_c&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7iIGui9znAhXZlXIEHecECUYQ6AEwC3oECA0QAQ#v=onepage&q=greeks%20on%20retribution%20aristotle&f=false">saw a place for it in a just society</a>.</p>
<p>Just before the dawn of the Enlightenment, thinkers also embraced retribution as a form of justice that would civilize and tame the human quest for vengeance. </p>
<p>The English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, writing in 1625, <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/3/1/4.html">argued</a> that “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.” Bacon <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ncsUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=Francis+Bacon+retribution&source=bl&ots=nmmgH7WVij&sig=ACfU3U3B0T04MOFQY2rKaeATKGkhcwOHkQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjT3LiN09PnAhXStVkKHTb5D-QQ6AEwEHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=retribution&f=false">associated retribution with divine justice</a> and extolled its “magnificence.” </p>
<p>Eighteenth-century philosophers Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel are well known for their embrace of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ajj/article-abstract/39/1/97/120928">retributive punishment and their critiques of vengeance</a>. </p>
<p>“Only the Law of retribution,” Kant <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Metaphysical_Elements_of_Justice.html?id=OhNR-xIkSVoC">wrote</a>, “can determine exactly the kind and degree of punishment; it must be well understood, however, that this determination must be made in the chambers of a court of justice and not in your private judgment.” </p>
<h2>Trump’s revenge</h2>
<p>Distinguishing retribution from revenge helps clarify Trump’s post-impeachment actions, such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/07/803904417/lt-col-alexander-vindman-escorted-out-of-the-white-house-his-lawyer-says">abruptly ending the National Security Council</a> assignment of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/us/politics/alexander-vindman-gordon-sondland-fired.html">recalling</a> European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316219/original/file-20200219-10995-1b9db8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Since his impeachment acquittal, President Trump has been punishing many of those he perceives as foes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Senate-Georgia/c85a5c066206478fa6eef94545e1bb6b/5/0">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span>
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<p>Trump is striking out at his perceived enemies because of their <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/06/donald-trump-loyalty-staff-217227">disloyalty to him</a>, not because they did anything unjust or immoral. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-trump-administrations-war-on-the-government-is-an-autocratic-attempt">condemn Trump’s kind of politics</a> and bemoan the damage it does. But calling his actions retributive is not accurate. From my perspective, they are simply vengeful and should be described as such. </p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Trump’s firing of witnesses who testified during his impeachment trial has been described as ‘retribution.’ But these actions are actually revenge, a political scientist says.
Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/121410
2019-08-11T12:19:09Z
2019-08-11T12:19:09Z
Can ‘progress studies’ contribute to knowledge? History suggests caution
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287213/original/file-20190807-144888-1ex2xka.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5607%2C3715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Proposing 'progress studies' as a new academic field of study ignores history.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to tech entrepreneur Patrick Collison and economist Tyler Cowen, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/">academia needs a new discipline called “progress studies.”</a> But their proposal overlooks two crucial facts: human progress has been an object of study for centuries, and innovators ignorant of that scholarship have had devastating effects on the planet and society.</p>
<p>When Collison and Cowen write that “progress itself is understudied,” historians balk. Progress has been a backbone of historical narratives; its <a href="https://archive.org/details/ideaprogressani00burygoog/page/n5">origins, consequences and limits have been objects of historical analysis for generations</a>. </p>
<p>We should be wary about Collison and Cowen’s advice to study the “successful” and train the “brilliant” in order to speed up “progress.” Neither recent nor more distant history suggests that these terms have neutral definitions. To the contrary, they have often been excuses for colonial expropriation and social exclusion, and sometimes alibis for democratic and environmental catastrophe.</p>
<p>Our apprehension about progress studies derives from our scholarship in the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/william-petty-9780199547890">history</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/dialogue-canadian-philosophical-review-revue-canadienne-de-philosophie/article/heidegger-and-galileos-slippery-slope/7F24CD12A1C91EF6400A82047C5AB15D">philosophy of science</a>, and in particular in the history of scientific, colonial and social engineering projects in the era of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment — arguably, the period that gave us our modern idea of progress in the first place.</p>
<p>If the Enlightenment initiated modern progress (a debatable but <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317051/enlightenment-now-by-steven-pinker/9780143111382/">popular view</a>), it also spread the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300046717/idea-progress-eighteenth-century-britain">gospel of history as progress</a> from less to more advanced <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/ferguson-an-essay-on-the-history-of-civil-society">societies</a>, <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1">economies</a> and <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/condorcet-outlines-of-an-historical-view-of-the-progress-of-the-human-mind">ideas</a>. </p>
<p>Even earlier, the conditions and causes of what Francis Bacon called “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-texts/francis-bacon-new-organon">human progress and empowerment</a>” were established subjects of interdisciplinary study. At the turn of the 17th century, the Italian jurist and antiquarian Guido Pancirolli published an influential history of ancient and modern knowledge and invention. Originally published in Italian in 1612, it was translated into <a href="https://archive.org/details/guidonispancirol00panc/page/n4">Latin</a>, French and <a href="https://archive.org/details/historymanymemo00pancgoog">English</a>. Pancirolli’s work — as historian of science <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316273227">Vera Keller</a> has shown — made history a tool of innovation at the outset of the scientific revolution. </p>
<p>Pancirolli was not alone. In 1668, Royal Society Fellow <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Glanvill">Joseph Glanvill</a> published <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A42822.0001.001/1:2?rgn=div1;view=fulltext"><em>Plus Ultra</em></a>, promising to trace “the progress and advancement of knowledge” from Aristotle to “the most remarkable late improvements of practical, useful learning,” so as “to encourage philosophical endeavours.” Proposing to fly through “mere comprehension” of progress to “the deeper goal of speeding it up,” Collison and Cowen <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/">add little to Glanvill’s pitch</a>.</p>
<h2>What is progress?</h2>
<p>Historians of economy, society, science and technology such as <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300189513/enlightened-economy">Joel Mokyr</a>, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393349795">Joyce Appleby</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/scientific-culture-and-the-making-of-the-industrial-west-9780195082203">Margaret Jacob</a> and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-invention-of-improvement-9780199645916">Paul Slack</a> have given ample space to the makings of modern progress, along with related ideas Collison and Cowen echo: discovery, invention, improvement, transformation. </p>
<p>Works on the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230507081">Scientific Revolution</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/117.4.999">Enlightenment</a> and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/6823.html">Industrial Revolution</a> are replete with explorations of what Collison and Cowen call the “distribution of progress” and its causes. Indeed, accounting for “the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural and organizational advancement” that distinguishes “first-world” or “developed” societies has been a central question of the social sciences since their formation over a century ago.</p>
<p>Scholarship also underlines the <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4398">complexities of progress</a> and <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-state">the underside</a> of “successful people, organizations, institutions, policies and cultures,” problems that progress studies defines out of existence. Progress towards what? Success for whom? By what measure? At what cost? </p>
<p>Studies of scientific and technological projects highlight the mixed results of past disruptions. Eric Ash’s <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/draining-fens">work on fen drainage</a> in 17th century England reveals the destruction technology wrought on local environments and ways of life. Anya Zilberstein shows that 18th century colonization fostered positive views of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-temperate-empire-9780190206598">anthropogenic climate change</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316273227">Keller</a> and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/taming-capitalism-before-its-triumph-9780198739173">Koji Yamamoto</a> have probed the tensions between private and public interest that progress constantly involved. </p>
<p>Such research tells us that “progress” is a situated and often interested claim about human efforts, not a natural good or a divine gift. It needs critical assessment, not headlong zeal.</p>
<h2>Progress at what cost?</h2>
<p>Still today, the zeal continues apace, bringing with it unintended effects and attendant remorse. In a trend that Audrey Watters terms “<a href="http://audreywatters.com/2018/02/16/the-regret-industry">the regret industry</a>,” tech leaders who leapt before they looked are lining up to confess the harmful consequences of their innovations. A disposition among tech entrepreneurs to act first and do their homework later (if at all) has spawned countless start-ups, but it has also caused destruction and harm.</p>
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<p>Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 2018 testimony before the U.S. Congress in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal drew the public’s attention to the social media platform’s complicity in mining its users’ data without their consent. By that time, at least six high profile Facebook execs, developers and investors had already <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/26/8930765/tech-apologies-former-facebook-google-twitter-employees-list">left the company and issued public regrets for the company’s devastating effects on elections, privacy and media</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/reading-zuckerbergs-face-what-3-key-expressions-from-his-testimony-reveal-94783">Reading Zuckerberg’s face: What 3 key expressions from his testimony reveal</a>
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<p>Since then, Facebook has <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/%7Egentzkow/research/fake-news-trends.pdf">with some success</a> worked to reduce the spread of so-called “fake news.” However, it remains a host and accelerant <a href="https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/internet/fake-news-conspiracy-theories-journalism-research/">for misinformation</a>, and the misinformation previously spread on the site continues to have lasting effects on journalism and democratic institutions.</p>
<p>Facebook is not the only site that has had devastating effects on society. Twitter’s ease of use has led to the rise of troll farms that spread not only political misinformation, but also <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-twitter-trolls-stoke-anti-immigrant-lies-ahead-of-canadian-election-119144?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2bOPUoEMS3hDO7rc36ZYFUwkjvk516zHWnfbWleqhmZTr_80ZbsKJO1Q0#Echobox=1564004579">white supremacy and Islamophobia</a>. Former Google design ethicist <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/25/18515981/google-tristan-harris-attention-economy-silicon-valley">Tristan Harris</a> has criticized companies like Google and YouTube for earning a fortune in what he calls the “attention economy” — the monetization of human attention through algorithms that lure users to conspiracy theories and clickbait, and addictive technology designed to keep us constantly scrolling.</p>
<h2>Climate change</h2>
<p>While we have focused here on social and political harms, tech innovation both directly and indirectly contributes to what is arguably humanity’s most serious existential threat, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/pacific-islands-climate-crisis-2639602416.html">the climate crisis</a>. It is worth remembering that this particular crisis has its <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-clarify-starting-point-for-human-caused-climate-change">origins in the Industrial Revolution</a>. </p>
<p>Social media indirectly contributes to climate change by <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/68/4/281/4644513">fostering climate misinformation</a>. Moreover, by weakening democratic institutions, it aids in <a href="https://theconversation.com/whatsapp-skewed-brazilian-election-proving-social-medias-danger-to-democracy-106476">the election of candidates</a> supported by climate change deniers. More than this, though, information technology directly contributes to climate change through <a href="https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30177-6">the massive energy demands</a> of the internet and the devices that we use to access it. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/">Collison and Cowen rightly note</a> that “areas of study have expanded greatly since the early European universities were formed,” with older disciplines spawning new disciplines and subfields, and “many subsequent transformative discoveries.” But when they urge that progress studies could “concoct policies and prescriptions… that increase the efficacy, productivity and innovative capacity of human organizations,” Collison and Cowen forget that university teaching and research requires not only innovation but due caution.</p>
<p>Universities’ core mission is scholarship in the service of society. The evolution of university disciplines should emerge not from self-styled “progress engineers” but from research and teaching that balances optimism and curiosity with critical thinking and responsible engagement of perspectives from across the disciplines.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A recent article in The Atlantic called for a “new science of progress” - this is dangerous and ignores the academic study of the history of human development.
Shannon Dea, Professor of Philosophy, University of Waterloo
Ted McCormick, Associate Professor of History, Concordia University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113535
2019-04-01T10:39:42Z
2019-04-01T10:39:42Z
Atheism has been part of many Asian traditions for millennia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266396/original/file-20190328-139361-138qhpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Atheism is not a modern concept.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/girlwithaonetrackmind/3173619607/in/photolist-5QrCxr-b99RYc-dzn5Ya-9mhNr5-2zFsMg-2zL2gL-EraLNe-5JNCym-b99RQn-P4q1TV-2a9wvFJ-dzhPs7-b99VVk-2zKYYb-oDmTxt-dzcoD8-wNC1m6-6BybB9-78Kjna-6eQxYq-6YuuAL-9aL4yR-9GKE1N-4oRkki-2zFjWF-dzcojt-2zL3Hf-5ZsmRb-b99V5k-9mhNAy-4SRy7J-2zKFhd-9meHLB-2zL2Vw-b99SPZ-b99Vdr-6MjSJ2-VRAKdS-6kcugT-dzcnYn-7UYXxY-6HpDPw-5Q6JuR-2duf5t7-iBsyL9-fh8rUx-2acPKBU-9WVZ2d-3FGtWy-2cYhJZP">Zoe Margolis</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A group of atheists and secularists recently gathered in Southern California to talk about social and political issues. This was the first of three summits planned by the <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/03/08/atheist-summits-aim-to-find-community-and-power-in-networking-nonbelievers/">Secular Coalition for America</a>, an advocacy group based in Washington D.C.</p>
<p>To many, atheism – the lack of belief in a personal god or gods - may appear an entirely modern concept. After all, it would seem that it is religious traditions that have dominated the world since the beginning of recorded history. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://religiousstudies.missouri.edu/people/cohen-0">scholar of Asian religions</a>, however, I’m often struck by the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism - the view that it is impossible to know whether a god exists - in ancient Asian texts. Atheistic traditions have <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1397540.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af6c9ea961dc75c255f56d74051b49118">played a significant part in Asian cultures</a> for millennia. </p>
<h2>Atheism in Buddhism, Jainism</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266397/original/file-20190328-139364-1ya0kot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buddhists do not believe in a creator God.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/in2photos/6657417203/in/photolist-b9i1ce-boZ2fj-2wdufD-Ta9PM-miFWtp-7VBJxS-62hFvB-5H8HUd-5sZM6n-39GKqJ-5H4rdP-5BTpt3-kkPwj-F2LFi-ooAKm-5yn3-2xjEZd-7dWZr5-6hyasC-naTuwk-7FndNQ-FcyqR-7dMBd-3F16mL-3nNs4-5Wv5tQ-9TVLbj-DJSbQ4-cH2f81-miHnAf-2EAkRM-6MZME7-wfkaB-7sS7HB-C6DFM-nskQHV-2WMqz-o8vG8S-pfc2n2-DGy4Xq-a2pjd-E7RmH-pZwEmF-49XPos-M3xr3C-7wTSyv-nzfH88-Jn1Kf-U4Y6ao-aBqHKw">Keith Cuddeback</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Buddhism is a tradition focused on spiritual liberation, it is <a href="http://www.unm.edu/%7Erhayes/atheism.pdf">not a theistic religion</a>. </p>
<p>The Buddha himself rejected the idea of a creator god, and Buddhist philosophers have even argued that belief in an eternal god is nothing but a distraction for humans seeking enlightenment.</p>
<p>While Buddhism does not argue that gods don’t exist, gods are seen as completely irrelevant to those who strive for enlightenment. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266399/original/file-20190328-139380-nnmdx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jains do not believe in a divine creator.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gandalfsgallery/8372961076/in/photolist-dKTBBS-azhVTL-dEVaLe-BDMrJW-cBpQGJ-qWE1Ft-8ra5BK-2fdDjYa-9vTYvt-pYZ8HK-qTtyZS-azg7c6-pFkvwv-9wUW3N-ePUnZV-7EoSok-9r1jNR-QWoErF-4wKzCn-kJX2b7-5akqfK-SSTaxg-QRviPV-rmEcd7-Y5GZm3-JWYYh4-pZNFEN-DYhKQo-azi2pd-azjbzs-az9VHt-qEmtc4-siFBvB-ePVb7t-Dmuony-3wvcxe-aFkFez-aFkFUa-2bpfdL6-26PAhUE-2KoV9N-eam2p5-hBAetG-21PEE5b-Cr2Nv-WNsg85-GBw7Gh-Y4bPx5-cJKbum-S2RLJG">Gandalf's Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A similar form of functional atheism can also be found in the ancient Asian religion of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=oEATAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA186&dq=jain+atheism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiX3IeR4v_gAhVB-6wKHTV1CiEQ6AEIUDAH#v=onepage&q=jain%20atheism&f=false">Jainism</a>, a tradition that emphasizes non-violence toward all living beings, non-attachment to worldly possessions and ascetic practice. While Jains believe in an eternal soul or jiva, that can be reborn, they do not believe in a divine creator. </p>
<p>According to Jainism, the universe is eternal, and while gods may exist, they too must be reborn, just like humans are. The gods play no role in spiritual liberation and enlightenment; humans must find their own path to enlightenment with the help of wise human teachers. </p>
<h2>Other atheistic philosophies</h2>
<p>Around the same time when Buddhism and Jainism arose in the sixth century B.C., there was also an explicitly atheist school of thought in India called the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Charvaka_philosophy.html?id=ATw1AAAAIAAJ">Carvaka</a> school. Although none of their original texts have survived, Buddhist and Hindu authors describe the Carvakas as firm atheists who believed that nothing existed beyond the material world.</p>
<p>To the Carvakas, there was no life after death, no soul apart from the body, no gods and no world other than this one. </p>
<p>Another school of thought, <a href="https://books.google.com.np/books?id=BiGQzc5lRGYC">Ajivika</a>, which flourished around the same time, similarly argued that gods didn’t exist, although its followers did believe in a soul and in rebirth. </p>
<p>The Ajivikas claimed that the fate of the soul was determined by fate alone, and not by a god, or even by free will. The Ajivikas taught that everything was made up of atoms, but that these atoms were moving and combining with each other in predestined ways. </p>
<p>Like the Carvaka school, the Ajivika school is today only known from texts composed by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It is therefore difficult to determine exactly what the Ajivikas themselves thought. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BiGQzc5lRGYC&pg=PA224&dq=ajivika+no+good+or+evil&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj6trwyqXhAhUIDq0KHTUzAjsQ6AEIQzAE#v=onepage&q=ajivika%20no%20good%20or%20evil&f=false">Buddhist texts</a>, the Ajivikas argued that there was no distinction between good and evil and there was no such thing as sin. The school may have existed around the same time as early Buddhism, in the fifth century B.C. </p>
<h2>Atheism in Hinduism</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266400/original/file-20190328-139352-1fxh9d0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are many gods in Hinduism, but there are also atheistic beliefs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/129038687@N07/15951040995/in/photolist-qixfLc-qSvHhZ-27cvqT6-7GRa1R-7HFw1q-9GGV9p-5KQfn2-5KQg3R-5NtGxg-TCLwL1-vktRi-2abXXer-SDaAYy-SDjswV-78C8gX-hZXqA6-o42yw5-hZWKxY-9f6oBR-qimC7B-qitfKf-97GLgR-634LZ4-638CpL-5GkdL7-2VwWMJ-7kADDo-hZX3kq-9gByRE-2SnjVu-hbDUQb-28ha3bk-81CsTQ-m46a97-qfFNK5-SnVEBd-9f6oVr-hZXgvH-5NxY1S-RmPfsf-Zma4r5-RHAaBJ-5NxYmu-5Ps484-hZWw4z-RDu43A-i527mb-hZWPJJ-hZXvck-4BMkGd">Religious Studies Unisa</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the Hindu tradition of India embraces the belief in many gods and goddesses – 330 million of them, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=kaxOBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">according to some sources</a> – there are also atheistic strands of thought found within Hinduism. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Encyclopedia_of_Indian_Philosophies.html?id=bqr_AwAAQBAJ">Samkhya school</a> of Hindu philosophy is one such example. It believes that humans can achieve liberation for themselves by freeing their own spirit from the realm of matter. </p>
<p>Another example is the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Introduction_to_the_Purva_Mimamsa.html?id=UoIRAAAAMAAJ">Mimamsa school</a>. This school also rejects the idea of a creator God. The Mimamsa philosopher Kumarila said that if a god had created the world by himself in the beginning, how could anyone else possibly confirm it? Kumarila further argued that if a merciful god had created the world, it could not have been as full of suffering as it is. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://scroll.in/article/753475/people-without-religion-have-risen-in-census-2011-but-atheists-have-nothing-to-cheer-about">2011 census</a>, there were approximately 2.9 million atheists in India. Atheism is still a significant cultural force in India, as well as in other Asian countries influenced by Indian religions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Signe Cohen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It might appear to many that atheism is a modern idea. However, in parts of Asia, particularly in India, atheism has been part of beliefs for thousands of years.
Signe Cohen, Associate Professor and Department Chair, University of Missouri-Columbia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105720
2018-10-30T21:57:04Z
2018-10-30T21:57:04Z
Hello magic and witchcraft, goodbye Enlightenment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242826/original/file-20181029-76396-1supnl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C50%2C1845%2C2153&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An old Canadian law which outlaws magic fraud is about to be eliminated. This print by William Hogarth, 'Credulity Superstition and Fanaticism,' from 1762 epitomizes the Enlightenment view that witchcraft and religious fanaticism go hand in hand.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Hogarth/1762</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4874731/why-ontario-police-have-charged-a-fortune-teller-under-an-antiquated-witchcraft-law-1.4874734?fbclid=IwAR2RfoGqKmvWl6bl5OX3QLxlM_Wpnm96_JzzLUF-G66eGAbJR66d2RNg-wA">a Canadian woman was charged with pretending to practise witchcraft</a> under a <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-365.html">law</a> on the verge of disappearing from the Canadian Criminal Code. She had attempted to extort considerable sums of money from vulnerable clients. </p>
<p>On the surface, this law looks like the last vestiges of the period of the witch trials: that the Canadian law still implicitly believes in witchcraft. In fact, the reality is quite different. The law is a sign of the Canadian inheritance of the Enlightenment project. This was an <a href="https://theconversation.com/criticism-of-western-civilisation-isnt-new-it-was-part-of-the-enlightenment-104567">18th-century movement</a> that attempted to eradicate superstition — and the grave miscarriages of injustice of the witch trials that arose from such superstition. </p>
<p>The story goes back to the 16th century.</p>
<h2>Attempts to control magic</h2>
<p>Magic was not against the law in <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tt-1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=witchcraft+act+1542&source=bl&ots=CJ_z4I5ifL&sig=jb-baM9Nv0odp0dNhf77lvWfZzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiosvlh63eAhWGKXwKHb6jBzQ4FBDoATAAegQIARAB#v=onepage&q=witchcraft%20act%201542&f=false">England until 1542 when Henry VIII made magic a capital offence</a>. Despite being commonly referred to as the “Witchcraft Act,” Henry’s law was overwhelmingly concerned with other kinds of magic practitioners, in particular <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Popular_Magic_Cunning_folk_in_English_Hi.html?id=Upi6BwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">cunning folk</a> (“folks healers”) and treasure hunters who were usually male. It gave little attention to witchcraft, which in England was typically understood to be a female pursuit and connected to <em>maleficium</em> (doing harm to others). </p>
<p>No one was ever prosecuted under Henry’s Act and it was <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/overview/witchcraft/">repealed by his son, Edward VI, in 1547</a>. </p>
<p>Before 1542, in the rare cases when magic practitioners were prosecuted, they were tried in the Church courts. The Church could never impose the death penalty, only public penance. This was the situation again after 1547 until 1563, when Elizabeth I once again made magic an offence. </p>
<p>Like her father’s legislation, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tt-1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=witchcraft+act+1542&source=bl&ots=CJ_z4I5ifL&sig=jb-baM9Nv0odp0dNhf77lvWfZzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiosvlh63eAhWGKXwKHb6jBzQ4FBDoATAAegQIARAB#v=onepage&q=witchcraft%20act%201542&f=false">Elizabeth’s Act focused on a variety of real magic practitioners and not primarily on witches</a>. But Elizabeth’s Act was never used against its primary targets. Instead it was used in the sporadic witch trials that occurred between it and the second half of the 17th century, when they petered out. </p>
<p>Her act was strengthened by <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tt-1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=witchcraft+act+1542&source=bl&ots=CJ_z4I5ifL&sig=jb-baM9Nv0odp0dNhf77lvWfZzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiosvlh63eAhWGKXwKHb6jBzQ4FBDoATAAegQIARAB#v=onepage&q=witchcraft%20act%201542&f=false">James I in 1604,</a> who believed in witchcraft and gave more explicit attention to witches. Ironically and sadly, almost none of the women and men accused of witchcraft were actual magic practitioners.</p>
<h2>Downgrading magic to fraud</h2>
<p>By the time these draconian acts were repealed in 1736, there had been no attempts to try witches for 19 years and no execution for more than 50 years. So the repeal was essentially legal house-cleaning. </p>
<p>The act that replaced them formed the foundation of Section 365 of the Criminal Code, the Canadian law now about to be repealed. The 1736 law was driven by Enlightenment sentiments that regarded all magic as false; it downgraded magic to a form of fraud. </p>
<p>This is why the Canadian law prohibits <em>pretending</em> to practise magic rather than magic itself, as the early acts had done. But why make a specific law on magic? Then as now, <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-380.html">conventional fraud legislation</a> was more than adequate to cover cases of magical fraud. </p>
<p>The answer is that the legislators regarded magic as a special case, not for legal reasons, but for ideological ones. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, they rejected belief in magic as a superstitious feature of a passing world view. Magic was associated with religious fanaticism that was considered distasteful to sober, modern thinkers. </p>
<p>In fact, they reasoned, tragedies like the witch trials would never have taken place without such belief in magic. For this reason, belief in magic needed to be stamped out by laws like Section 365. </p>
<p>In short, Section 365 is not a remnant of the old laws that held that witchcraft was real. It’s purpose is to <em>attack</em> superstition and the mistaken beliefs that gave rise to the witch trials. </p>
<p>But none of these laws, the old or the new, seem to have been effective in stamping out magic.</p>
<h2>The early laws did not stamp out magic</h2>
<p>Those accused of witchcraft were almost always completely innocent of magic practices. </p>
<p>In most cases, real magic practitioners were left alone because their community used them, liked them and wanted them around. In the few cases where magicians found their way into court it was mostly because they were believed to have committed fraud, treason, or some other form of social disruption. </p>
<p>The reasons such legislation didn’t work is that people liked their own personal magicians, fortune-tellers or folk healers. There was no general will in the population to prosecute practitioners unless they were patently predatory and disruptive. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A model of a 19th-century cunning woman in her house, at the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle in England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other words, those pre-modern laws to stamp out magic entirely missed their target and didn’t work at all.</p>
<h2>Section 365 did not stamp out magic either</h2>
<p>Just like in the pre-modern period, the recent uses of the Canadian law have only targeted grievous and patent cases of fraud, while most magic practitioners have gone about their business entirely without interference. </p>
<p>Fraud (in this case, magical fraud) <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-380.html">has to involve the loss of money or something of value</a>. </p>
<p>If all magic and fortune-telling is “pretend,” or false, as Section 365 assumes, then newspapers that contain astrological horoscopes, bookstores that sell books on practising magic, local and online psychics, card and palm readers, occult shops, crystal stores and anyone offering an online course on practical magic are all technically magical fraud. </p>
<p>Even Wiccans and other organized groups of modern magic practitioners might fall under the definition of fraud if their members made any financial contributions to their organizations. </p>
<p>In the end, it will be a popular move to do away with a law that most people assume to be last remnant of the laws that made the witch trials possible. In fact, it’s the last remnant of the Enlightenment efforts to combat superstition through law. </p>
<p>Future historians may look back on this moment as a tacit admission by our legislators that, after hundreds years of trying, the supporters of the Enlightenment project have not managed to stamp out magic. The laws inspired by the Enlightenment, along with the broader campaign against magic and superstition, have been a futile exercise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Klaassen has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
An antiquated Canadian law against magic and witchcraft is about to be repealed. A close look at its history reveals that it is far less superstitious than it appears.
Frank Klaassen, Associate Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104567
2018-10-18T04:21:21Z
2018-10-18T04:21:21Z
Criticism of Western Civilisation isn’t new, it was part of the Enlightenment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239703/original/file-20181008-72121-1w46ux4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jean-Baptiste Belley, Deputy of Saint-Domingue and French National Convention member (1793-97) with a bust of Abbé Raynal.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The duelling sides in today’s cultural wars about “Western civilization” are united in one thing, at least - each is inclined to gloss over the extent to which “Western civilisation” has always been deeply complex and divided. </p>
<p>The fact that leading conservatives like Edmund Burke or Joseph de Maistre, as well as revolutionaries like Karl Marx or Rosa Luxembourg, all belong to “Western civilization” ought by itself to give the protagonists pause.</p>
<p>But take the 18th century <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/groups/21">enlightenment</a>, for example, since it is a period of Western history central to these debates. In ways that might have surprised <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire">Voltaire</a> and his friends, today the Right is laying claim to “the enlightenment”, for its advocacy of freedoms of speech and religion, and as a distinguishing marker of “the West”, against the rest. Parts of the Left want to denounce “the enlightenment”, for its supposed naive faith in reason and support for European imperialism.</p>
<p>So, does the thought and writing of this extraordinary cultural period actually fit either mould? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anu-stood-up-for-academic-freedom-in-rejecting-western-civilisation-degree-99189">ANU stood up for academic freedom in rejecting Western Civilisation degree</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Well, consider a now-little-known work first published in Paris in 1770, entitled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_des_deux_Indes">The Philosophical and Political History of the Establishments and Commerce of Europeans in the Two Indies</a> (or History of Two Indies for short). </p>
<p>Commissioned and coauthored by an Abbé, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Thomas_Fran%C3%A7ois_Raynal">Guillaume-Thomas de Raynal</a>, with notable help from leading enlightenment <em>philosophes</em>, the book was central to the enlightenment on any reckoning. In the decades after it was released, it was reprinted some 30 times in France and North America. </p>
<p>Despite everything we might expect today, the book represents one of history’s most forthright attacks on European colonisation, inspiring <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture">François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture</a>, leader of the 1791-1804 Haitian revolt which overthrew French colonial rule.</p>
<p>“Among enlightenment publications none … had a greater effect on both sides of the Atlantic and the rest of the world,” writes leading scholar, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/democratic-enlightenment-9780199668090?cc=us&lang=en&">Jonathan Israel</a>.</p>
<p>In a famous passage, written by <a href="https://philosophynow.org/issues/120/Denis_Diderot_1713-1784">Denis Diderot</a>, the History of Two Indies calls for a
“<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3UXQs0uO0VMC&pg=PA565&lpg=PA565&dq=raynal+black+spartacus&source=bl&ots=ULdx7S0YGc&sig=iciIGJhSI63btzlfAwJPrxWCyts&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiN4d3b8vfdAhXBfd4KHQCKB-cQ6AEwCXoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=raynal%20black%20spartacus&f=false">Black Spartacus</a>” to cast out the colonisers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Where is he, this great man that nature owes its offended, oppressed and tormented children? … There is no doubt that he will appear, he will show himself, and he will raise the sacred flag of liberty … The Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the French, the Dutch, all their tyrants will fall prey to arms and flames … The old world will join the new world in applause. The name of the hero who will have re-established human rights will be blessed and memorials glorifying him will be erected everywhere.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After Diderot finished ghostwriting its 1780 edition, <em>History of the Two Indies</em> is unflinching in its attacks on the slave trade, and the greed, arrogance and violence colonisation has unleashed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Settlements have been formed and subverted; ruins have been heaped on ruins; countries that were well peopled have become deserted… It seems as if from one region to another prosperity has been pursued by an evil genius that speaks our several languages, and which diffuses the same disasters in all parts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are laws of fair dealing that apply to all peoples, irrespective of colour or creed, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7669.html">The History of Two Indies argues</a>. If a territory is unoccupied, it may be occupied. If it is partly occupied, the unoccupied parts may be peaceably occupied, with the consent of the previous inhabitants. If the territory is occupied, the newcomer must ask and submit to the hospitality of the hosts, who can also refuse it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697">'Western civilisation'? History teaching has moved on, and so should those who champion it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Beyond this, there is an inalienable right to resistance, grounded in a common human nature. In the remarkable words of the Tahitian elder in Diderot’s 1772 <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppl%C3%A9ment_au_voyage_de_Bougainville">Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage</a></em>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are a free people; and now you have planted in our country the title deeds of our future slavery. You are neither god nor demon. Who are you then to make slaves? … ‘This country is ours.’ This country is yours? And why? Because you have set foot there? If a Tahitian landed one day on your shores, and scratched on one of your rocks or on the bark of one of your trees, ‘This country belongs to the people of Tahiti,’ what would you think? … the Tahitian you want to seize like a wild animal is your brother. You are both children of nature. What right do you have over him that he does not have over you?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is such moral reciprocity, blind to race or religion, that underlines the History of the Two Indies’ opposition to colonisation, and denunciation of European actions, nearly 200 years before the advent of post-colonialism and post-modernism. </p>
<p>“O Barbaric Europeans!” Diderot writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have not been dazzled by the splendour of your deeds. Their success has not obscured their injustice … if I cease for one moment to see you as so many flocks of cruel and ravenous vultures, with as little morality and conscience as those birds of prey, may this work and my memory … become objects of the utmost contempt and execration.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7669.html">Sankar Muthu</a> has commented, for the enlightenment <em>philosophes</em>, Western civilisation was not yet “fit for export”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-concept-of-western-civilisation-is-past-its-use-by-date-in-university-humanities-departments-87750">The concept of 'Western civilisation' is past its use-by date in university humanities departments</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But today, The History of Two Indies is hardly remembered at all — even as New Rights and Lefts debate opposing visions of Western civilisation, and throw around competing visions of “the enlightenment” that equally pass over Raynal’s work.</p>
<p>Perhaps history serves us better when it is able to <a href="https://archive.org/details/anhistoricaland01baylgoog/page/n8">contest</a>, not confirm our certainties. And that is one, unsettling message that the critical study of any lasting civilisation teaches us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe works for Deakin University,lecturing in philosophy.</span></em></p>
Some today declare that “Western civilisation” is something we should all be simply “for”. But the enlightenment, central to this civilisation, shows how things are rarely so simple.
Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100555
2018-07-26T10:36:59Z
2018-07-26T10:36:59Z
Why the rescued Thai soccer team has ordained as Buddhist novice monks
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229314/original/file-20180725-194152-9ixsjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the team who were rescued from a flooded cave prepare to be ordained to become Buddhist novices and monks.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After their <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-sacred-danger-of-thailands-caves-99638">dramatic rescue from Nang Non cave</a>, the Thai boys and their soccer coach have <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-cave-boys-monks-novices-monastery-rescue-football-team-a8461791.html">ordained as novice monks</a> for a period of nine days, as a part of paying respect to the Thai Navy SEAL, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/07/06/thai-cave-diver-dies-rivers-vpx.cnn">Saman Gunan</a>, who died during the efforts to save them. </p>
<p>Ordaining as a full monk – known as “bhikkhu” in Pali, the religious language of the Theravada Buddhism – is only available to men over 20. Only the coach has become a full monk. Eleven of the boys, excluding one who is a Christian, are instead ordained as novices, or “nen,” who undergo fewer restrictions. </p>
<p>This act of ordaining is not surprising. In Theravada Buddhist practice, ordaining to be a monk and donating the merit thus gained is one of the greatest honors that a person can give to another. </p>
<h2>Monasticism in Thai life</h2>
<p>Monks in Southeast Asia, with their saffron robes and shaven heads, are iconic. They can be seen on the roadside with alms bowls, accepting handfuls of rice from villagers in early morning processions, or gathered in the evenings chanting Pali scriptures in the Buddhist temples that lie at the heart of most Thai villages. In <a href="https://anthropology.princeton.edu/people/faculty/andrew-johnson">my own</a> <a href="https://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/ghosts-of-the-new-city-spirits-urbanity-and-the-ruins-of-progress-in-chiang-mai/">research</a>, I spent hours talking with monks – from abbots of major temples to those who had been ordained for a short period. </p>
<p>I also met monks engaged in “magical” activities such as healing, to those who saw their role as scholars. My first impression, like that of many travelers, was of a group of men seeking enlightenment through isolation from the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227891/original/file-20180716-44097-wasrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Meditating Buddhist monks in Thailand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, this isolation is at the core of <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Theravada+Buddhism%3A+Continuity%2C+Diversity%2C+and+Identity-p-9781405189064">Buddhist teachings</a>. For Buddhists, worldly desires lead to suffering. Therefore, cessation of desires can lead to happiness and eventually enlightenment. </p>
<p>But monks are not a homogeneous group. Buddhists join the monkhood – the “sangha” - for many different reasons, only some of which are related to achieving transcendence and enlightenment. While some may choose to remain monks for their entire lives, most Buddhists ordain for a limited period. Thai Buddhists with whom I’ve worked have ordained for a few months during childhood, for the length of the rainy season, or even just for a day before undertaking a dangerous journey or following the death of a parent. </p>
<p>Buddhism, as it is practiced in Thailand, addresses many worldly needs. It takes into consideration the lives of people who are not necessarily ready to renounce the world quite yet. </p>
<h2>Monastic education</h2>
<p>Before the advent of government-run schools in the late 19th century, the Buddhist temple was the key institution for the education of young boys in Thailand. Boys as young as 5 <a href="http://admin.cambridge.org/ck/academic/subjects/anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology/buddhism-and-spirit-cults-north-east-thailand">entered the temple to learn to read and write</a>, and to study the basics of Buddhism.</p>
<p>When Theravada came to Southeast Asia from India in <a href="https://cseas.yale.edu/harry-jindrich-benda">the second millennium A.D.</a>, replacing local versions of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, this religious focus on promoting education within the village was revolutionary, as it became a central part of village life.</p>
<p>Theravada was focused not on the trappings of kingship and rule, but on serving communities. The temple in the center of the village served as the school, fairgrounds, hostel and welfare office in addition to its role as a religious center. </p>
<p>Today, this role of educating Thai boys has largely been replaced by government-run schools. This transition has allowed for the education of girls. </p>
<p>But some Buddhist schools remain, especially in Thailand’s North, that keep a focus on mostly men’s religious education. They teach the local Northern Thai script (distinct from Central Thai and largely fallen out of use) in addition to the religious languages of Pali and Sanskrit. </p>
<h2>Karma and merit</h2>
<p>But education is not the only reason to seek to be ordained. </p>
<p>Most Thai men get ordained in order to make merit – known as “tham bun.” Devoting oneself to the study of the Buddha’s teachings, the dharma, is one of the most holy acts that one can do. Buddhists who get ordained are believed to acquire a great deal of bun, or merit.</p>
<p>For Buddhists, this life is but one in a cycle of deaths and rebirths, where the good deeds one does in the past determine where and in what form – human, animal, divine being – one is reborn. Eventually, over many lifetimes, enough knowledge and merit will allow for escape from this cycle and transcendence.</p>
<p>But as anthropologist <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40860364?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Lucien Hanks</a> described, in Thai religious system, <a href="http://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/ehrafe/citation.do?method=citation&forward=browseAuthorsFullContext&id=ao07-028">practitioners can donate and receive merit from others</a>. Normally, the recipient of the merit are parents. It is a way to thank them for their sacrifices. </p>
<p>The boys and their coach, however, are offering the merit they will make to Officer Saman, in order to ensure a better rebirth in his next life. </p>
<h2>The obligation of a gift</h2>
<p>Like many languages, Thai has certain concepts that do not translate well into English. One of these, “<a href="http://www.thai-language.com/id/134305#def2">krengjai</a>,” refers to the feeling of obligation toward someone who has given a gift too great to repay. It is a heavy feeling. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227894/original/file-20180716-44100-1qp7lk3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thais at a cleansing ceremony and memorial service for Saman Gunan, the Navy SEAL officer, who lost his life during the rescue operation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Vincent Thian</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For observers, it is easy to imagine the gratitude that the boys must feel to Officer Saman, but it is just as easy to overlook the sense of responsibility that must weigh on the boys as well. As the classic anthropological theorist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcel-Mauss">Marcel Mauss</a> <a href="http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/pers/mauss_marcel.htm">pointed out</a>, gifts come with obligations, and the sacrifice of a life is no different. </p>
<p>In this way, the boys become monks not to reflect upon their own fate or experience in the cave. Rather, they are doing this to repay Saman’s sacrifice with the greatest gift that they can offer.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rescued-thai-boys-are-considering-becoming-monks-heres-why-99992">first published</a> on July 17, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Alan Johnson receives funding from Princeton University. He is affiliated with the Association for Asian Studies and the American Anthropological Association. </span></em></p>
In Theravada Buddhism, ordaining to be a monk and donating the merit thus gained is one of the greatest honors that a person can give to another – in this case to the late Navy SEAL officer.
Andrew Alan Johnson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96615
2018-05-30T22:56:30Z
2018-05-30T22:56:30Z
‘Enlightenment Now’ rationalizes the violence of empire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220225/original/file-20180523-88002-dxz3is.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this file photo, cognitive scientist and psychologist Steven Pinker addresses the Origins Symposium at Arizona State University on April 6, 2009 in Tempe, AZ.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Through an impressive array of data and visual metrics, Steven Pinker’s most recent book, <em>Enlightenment Now</em>, presents a fiercely optimistic portrait of the achievements of the human race. </p>
<p>Pinker uses stats and charts to show how, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/20208904/reviews/150812334">as one reviewer put it</a>: “Wars are fewer and less severe, homicides are down, racism is in decline, terrorism is a fading fad, democracy rules, communicable diseases and poverty are on their way out.” </p>
<p>Pinker claims that technocratic progress — based upon the ideals of the Enlightenment (science, reason and liberal humanism) — has made humans happier, healthier and less violent than ever before. </p>
<p>His brand of popular science, rooted in the superiority of mankind, seems to appeal to the masses. An experimental psychologist at Harvard University, Pinker has been included in lists like “100 Global Thinkers” by <em>Foreign Policy</em> and “The Top Most Influential People in the World Today” by <em>Time</em>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon">Recent critiques</a> have been made of Pinker’s latest work. However, few have explored Pinker’s implicit defence of empire and colonialism: the violent exploits in the name of Eurocentric understandings of “progress.” </p>
<p>I believe Pinker’s mechanical understanding of environmental problems in the age of climate change and massive species loss to be irresponsible. As a postdoctoral scholar of critical socio-ecological theory, I feel it is important to counter the data offered in <em>Enlightenment Now</em>, which aims to demonstrate how our world is less violent, less environmentally destructive and less poor than ever before. </p>
<p>We need to counter Pinker’s view with a broader understanding of what our relationship to nature and to each other has been within the context of Western “progress.” </p>
<h2>Rationalizing colonial violence in the name of “progress”</h2>
<p>Pinker implicitly rationalizes historical colonial violence and ecological destruction as invariable consequences of advancements towards greater emancipation as human beings.</p>
<p>Here, <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520242418">violence</a> should be understood as not only the intent to cause physical harm, but also the more structural intent to dominate others through control or force.</p>
<p>Pinker’s narrative of “progress” roughly reflects that of the European experience of development. This was one constructed on the exploitation of dark-skinned people, the destruction of Indigenous world views and the pillaging of natural and human resources in colonial territories. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">Colonialism was a disaster and the facts prove it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Rationalizing “progress” through a fundamental dependency on putting people to work as cheaply as possible and exploiting our natural environment cannot lead to greater emancipation for humanity. Yet Pinker’s techno-optimism, rooted in a humanity that is separate from the non-human world, ironically condones a future of unspeakable violence. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220333/original/file-20180524-117628-1erslwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It would be a future of still more arrogant humans believing that they deserve to isolate themselves from the physical realities of dependency on the non-human world. As long as there are “others” somewhere else who can do the dirty work, emancipation (for those who deserve it) can be achieved. </p>
<p>This is no different from what centuries of Eurocentric “progress” has come to mean. Yet according to Pinker, revisiting this tactic makes for a happier world.</p>
<p>Pinker writes: “Industrialization has been good for humanity…including making it easier to end slavery, emancipate women and educate children.”</p>
<p>According to this logic, enslaved Black people and oppressed women were simply awaiting emancipation by their masters of oppression.</p>
<p>In other words, violence could be conveniently minimized whenever it did not threaten the rational pursuit of profit and maintenance of a universal global geopolitical order. If the reduction of exploitation meant improving human rights, well, that was two birds with one stone.</p>
<h2>A universal approach erases people’s experiences</h2>
<p>Pinker equates ideas of development, progress, liberation or advancement with a universal essence. This universal approach makes it necessary to speak of all “other” lived experiences in reference to European goals, ideas, values and sensibilities.</p>
<p>For revolutionary philosopher and pan-Africanist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2014.981056?src=recsys&journalCode=rglo20">Frantz Fanon</a>, freedom means liberation from the racial, sexual and human-nature divisions that have been consciously and unconsciously crafted within Western modernity. </p>
<p>Yet the psychological and physical violence imparted by modernity’s divisive boundary-making between nature and humans, men and women and Black and white, requires us to defend our lived experiences. We must “show the data” to make our experiences valid. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-panther-villain-can-teach-us-about-revolutionary-history-93543">'Black Panther' villain can teach us about revolutionary history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In succumbing to this pressure to somehow prove that our lived experiences “count,” we end up feeding the very same Eurocentric and rationalizing thought patterns that we seek to escape from. Rather than asserting the autonomy of alternate forms of “progress,” we spend time making our voices legible to the colonizers.</p>
<p>Indeed, rationalizing “progress” has resulted in quite the opposite of liberation. </p>
<p>It has emerged instead as a brutal form of assimilation. Rationalizing “progress” consolidates and enhances ways to rule, to own, to possess, to control and to divide and classify the world in new ways. </p>
<p>Ironically, this often occurs in explicit defiance of the myriad ways people and nature continuously resist such attempts. </p>
<h2>History as snapshots</h2>
<p>Pinker looks at “progress” as a linear function of time, measured by a clock. For him, “progress” is nothing but a giant algorithm to <em>solve</em> as our models inevitably become more sophisticated with time. Every passing minute and hour is moving us away from misery and unhappiness so long as we continue to solve the equation. </p>
<p>From this view, experience becomes Instagram-able. Life is a series of accumulated snapshots mechanically put together in line with the ticking of the clock. The past becomes relegated to nostalgia, while the possibility of the future is denied and substituted as a competitive race to forever create, consume, accumulate and discard the waste.</p>
<p>Pinker claims in <em>Enlightenment Now</em>: “An average person of 1910, if he or she had entered a time machine and materialized today, would be borderline retarded by today’s standards.” </p>
<p>This assumes that society is x per cent more civilized and more technically capable of solving problems now than it was 10 minutes ago. </p>
<p>It also assumes that more economic activity reduces violence. </p>
<p>Such narrow assumptions lack qualitative significance and meaning.</p>
<p>If we accept Pinker’s techno-optimism for a better future, we must assume that all humans, environments and animals <em>should</em> and increasingly <em>do</em> act in mechanical unison. Understanding the human mind as mechanical means that if all living creatures were more robotic, there would be less violence. If both human nature and the non-human world could only be manipulated as puzzle pieces, life would improve and problems would be solved.</p>
<p>Such a view is much more about the ways humans can violently assert order and control over the world. It is less about any scientific or ethical validation of the merits of a particular form of emancipation. </p>
<p>As history has told us time and again, to conflate <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/18873/XTRwrkshp-250108.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">human exceptionalism</a> with increasing capacity for control is not only arrogant, but utterly dangerous. Human exceptionalism refers to the idea that human beings are superior to the rest of the living world. </p>
<h2>Decolonizing “progress”</h2>
<p>How then can a radical project of decolonization go beyond mechanical thinking and undo the historical rationalization of violence?</p>
<p>Decolonizing “progress” means that knowledge need not be translated, interpreted and assimilated into established Western modes of scholarship. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-taken-thousands-of-years-but-western-science-is-finally-catching-up-to-traditional-knowledge-90291">It's taken thousands of years, but Western science is finally catching up to Traditional Knowledge</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It means delinking and debunking the parameters and <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-taken-thousands-of-years-but-western-science-is-finally-catching-up-to-traditional-knowledge-90291">thought structures that define what counts as knowledge</a> and who has the capacity to contribute to knowledge creation. </p>
<p>It means no longer classifying societies as either “developed” or “developing,” according to comparisons with Eurocentric notions of “progress.” It means recognizing that under this view, development has meant (and continues to require) the exploitation of humans, the environment and animals through economic imperialism.</p>
<p>A de-escalation of violence is one where the borders, divisions and classifications that embody Western rational “progress” are no longer sufficient to explain what it means to be human.</p>
<p>As Hamid Dabashi, prof. of Iranian studies at Columbia University, and author of <em><a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo20498728.html">Can Non-Europeans Think?</a></em> writes:</p>
<p>“There is a direct and unmediated structural link between an empire…and the presumed universality of a thinker thinking in the bosom of that empire.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vijay Kolinjivadi is also affiliated with Groupe d'Action Révolutionnaire sud-Asiatique de Montréal / Montreal Alliance for South Asian Leftists and Allies (GARAM MASALA).
Garam Masala is a Montréal-based group who share progressive politics: anti-caste, anti-colonial, feminist, in support of Indigenous and adivasi self-determination, against all forms of oppression including sexism, homophobia ableism, and racism, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism; support for progressive secular social justice movements on the subcontinent, and here in North America. We also confront and challenge all forms of oppression that exist within South Asian diasporic communities. </span></em></p>
Steven Pinker’s latest work disturbingly casts aside the violent exploits and mechanistic logic of Eurocentric “progress.”
Vijay Kolinjivadi, Postdoctoral researcher, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97483
2018-05-30T13:35:14Z
2018-05-30T13:35:14Z
How the humble potato fuelled the rise of liberal capitalism – podcast
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220991/original/file-20180530-120499-1mm1yy0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/home">from www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s love for the potato is bound up with notions of the utilitarian value of a good diet and how a healthy citizenry is the engine room of a strong economy. And it all dates back to the 18th century. </p>
<p>This episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/podcasts/in-depth-out-loud">In Depth Out Loud</a>, a podcast narrating an in depth article from The Conversation, looks at the history of the Enlightenment thinkers who promoted the tuber as a way to build a healthy and productive society. It’s read by Laura Hood. </p>
<iframe src="https://player.acast.com/5e29c8205aa745a456af58c8/episodes/5e29c8365aa745a456af58cc?theme=default&cover=1&latest=1" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
<p>You can read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-humble-potato-fuelled-the-rise-of-liberal-capitalism-80767">text version of the article here</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>The music in this podcast is <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Music_for_Podcasts_4/Lee_Rosevere_-_Music_for_Podcasts_4_-_06_Night_Caves">Night Caves</a>, by Lee Rosevere from the Free Music Archive. A big thanks to City University London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios to record.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Earle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
An audio version of an in depth article about the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers who promoted the potato as a way to build a healthy and productive society.
Rebecca Earle, Professor of History, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90713
2018-01-30T15:10:14Z
2018-01-30T15:10:14Z
Achille Mbembe on how to restore the humanity stolen by racism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203978/original/file-20180130-107694-1wr3y5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>African philosopher, <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/achille-mbembe">Achille Mbembe</a>, has gained an enviable reputation as a scholar that challenges the tenets of modernity. Some aspects of modernity Mbembe is known to challenge are characterised by the move towards more capitalistic economies, an increase in social stratifications and the universalisation of Western European thought. From <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/on-private-indirect-government">“On Private Indirect Government”</a> (2000) to his recent book, <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/critique-of-black-reason/">“Critique of Black Reason”</a> (2017), his interest has always been on how the world can account for the construction and consequences of race and racism. </p>
<p>In “Critique of Black Reason” Mbembe challenges us to rethink the present with the view of charting a future that, according to Mbembe, will differ from the past and the present.</p>
<p>A key interest of the book is on how race and racism have played a role in how the modern world is organised. However much the world might have benefited from modernity, what is unavoidable is the integral role of race and racism in the construction of modernity. This is why for Mbembe it is of utmost importance that we examine this aspect of modernity as it continues to exclude subjects and create new and old victims that are “the wretched of the earth”. </p>
<p>He writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>race, operating over the past centuries as a fundamental category that is at once material and phantasmic, has been at the root of catastrophe, the cause of extraordinary psychic destruction and of innumerable crimes and massacres.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Mbembe, the construction of race emanates from the symbolic. It accounts for the ways in which subjects live and where they live. It explains the kinds of debates that prohibit – or allow them – to lead meaningful lives.</p>
<h2>Age of Reason</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203766/original/file-20180129-100923-ni4qyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of ‘Critique of Black Reason’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The book focuses more on how discourses of race and other differences emerged in the eighteenth century during what is popularly known as the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/enlightenment">Age of Reason</a> or the Enlightenment. </p>
<p>This was a period in which science, philosophy and other disciplines, and social debates, constructed differences between people.This was driven by two factors: material interests and an unwillingness to live with the unfamiliar. Mbembe’s book takes to task this idea of Enlightenment to show how it is responsible for the construction of race and racism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Black Man is the one (or the thing) that one sees when one sees nothing, when one understands nothing, and above all, when one wishes to understand nothing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This, for Mbembe, is not coincidental. This is because,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the term ‘Black’ was the product of a social and technological machine tightly linked to the emergence and globalisation of capitalism. It was invented to signify exclusion, brutalisation, and degradation, to point to a limit constantly conjured and abhorred. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Capitalism, from this perspective, is only possible because it’s exclusionary. For much of our contemporary history, this has been through the discourse of race.</p>
<h2>History of Africa</h2>
<p>Africa is the continent where most “black” people live. Mbembe’s book therefore looks into the history of Africa and how it has been used, and abused, as the antithesis of Western modernity. Since the West depends on the “rest” in order to construct itself, it is not surprising, Mbembe writes, that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when Africa comes up, correspondence between words, images, and the thing itself matters very little. It is not necessary for the name to correspond to the thing, or for the thing to respond to its name.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is because,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when one says the word ‘Africa’ one generally abdicates all responsibility.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And it is in this abdication of responsibility that Mbembe argues for a different way of being in the world, and of living with others that are different from oneself. </p>
<p>While, then, the word Africa might speak to a historical and present suffering, there is also something in the word, Mbembe writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>that judges the world and calls for reparation, restitution, and justice. Its spectral presence in the world can be understood only as part of a critique of race.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mbembe argues that while race and racism still play an important role in the present, it is also clear that there is a “Becoming Black of the world” that has to do with the numerous forms of exclusion and violence that haunt the contemporary.</p>
<p>For instance, Mbembe writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If yesterday’s drama of the subject was exploitation by capital, the tragedy of the multitude today is that they are unable to be exploited at all. They are abandoned subjects relegated to the role of a ‘superfluous humanity.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>To be hopeful</h2>
<p>How, then, does one continue to live, and to be hopeful, when it seems as though the history of the world is a history of depredation and cruelty? To answer this question, Mbembe turns to philosopher <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-fanon-continues-to-resonate-more-than-half-a-century-after-algerias-independence-43508">Frantz Fanon</a> (as he does in much of the book) and writes that one of the important lessons that he taught us is,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the idea that in every human subject there is something indomitable and fundamentally intangible that no domination - no matter what form it takes - can eliminate, contain, or suppress, at least not completely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is here that the possibility of a different future is possible.</p>
<p>This is because for Mbembe,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>until we have eliminated racism from our current lives and imagination, we will have to continue to struggle for the creation of a world beyond - race. But to achieve it, to sit down at a table to which everyone has been invited, we must undertake an exacting political and ethical critique of racism and of the ideologies of difference…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And that is precisely what this book does.</p>
<p>In bringing together thinkers us such as Fanon, <a href="http://science.jrank.org/pages/7919/Negritude.html">Aime Cesaire</a>, <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-philosophy-of-friedrich-nietzsche-explained-with-8-bit-video-games.html">Friedrich Nietzsche</a>, <a href="http://marcusgarvey.com/?p=225">Marcus Garvey</a>, <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.co.za/scholar?q=Michel+Foucault+philosophy&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmsfS49vzYAhXKAsAKHUSPAwoQgQMIJDAA">Michel Foucault</a> and many others, “Critique of Black Reason” is an impressive book. It offers readers insight into how the construction of race and racism underpins our understanding of modernity and therefore of the world we inhabit. </p>
<p>More than this though, it challenges readers to undo forms of exclusionary thinking that still haunt the ways we live. It is only in doing this, according to Mbembe, that we can,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>restore the humanity stolen from those who have historically been subjected to processes of abstraction and objectification. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Critique of Black Reason” is an illuminating and brilliant addition to Mbembe’s corpus. It is the kind of book, I suspect, that will become compulsory reading for undergraduate and graduate classes worldwide.</p>
<p><em>“Critique of Black Reason” is published by Wits University Press</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manosa Nthunya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
“Critique of Black Reason” offers readers insight into how the construction of race and racism underpins our understanding of modernity.
Manosa Nthunya, PhD Candidate, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86030
2017-11-07T03:26:06Z
2017-11-07T03:26:06Z
Does American culture shame too much – or not enough?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193255/original/file-20171103-1032-t081vl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/double-exposure-portrait-senior-man-covering-263964083?src=zCCE7XcSgsTYQB5w2xxyPg-1-26">tomertu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The word “shameless” <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-adviser-white-houses-weinstein-attacks-are-shameless">is being tossed around</a> an awful lot these days, which might speak to what many see as the country’s increasingly coarse, vitriolic political discourse. Perhaps, the thinking goes, American culture could use a dose of shame and humility.</p>
<p>But what about people harassed on social media, like Walter Palmer, the dentist who hunted and killed Cecil the lion? Sure, he might have exercised poor judgment. But was it poor enough that he deserved <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/08/walter-palmer-dentist-who-hunted-and-killed-cecil-the-lion-returns-to-work/?utm_term=.ee6a41fb054b">to have his wife and daughter not only shamed but threatened</a>? </p>
<p>As I point out in my recent book “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4M4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT12&dq=shame:+a+brief+history&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjroYmG-aLXAhUD0oMKHVavBkYQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">Shame: A Brief History</a>,” the use of shame in American society has a clear historical arc. </p>
<p>But the role played by this emotion – which people feel when they’ve violated group standards – has also been complicated by several recent changes to the country’s legal, political and media ecosystems.</p>
<p>These shifts raise questions about how this powerful but unpleasant emotion should be handled in contemporary America. </p>
<h2>A new, ‘enlightened’ direction</h2>
<p>Western societies, including the American colonies, once relied heavily on shame. There was a deep belief in the importance of conformity to community stability. There was also a dearth of other resources we rely on today – such as policing – to enforce order. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=667&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=667&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=667&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193262/original/file-20171103-1068-1a6pg6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The stocks were a common form of public shaming in colonial America.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/medieval-pillory-ancient-device-used-punishment-470410007?src=biYu5Lo0u4M52Wxqfha2_w-1-3">ermess</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colonial Americans felt little compunction in imposing shame-based punishments like public stocks, whose replicas now amuse camera-toting tourists in New England. There was even a word no longer in use – “<a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/shamefast?s=t">shamefast</a>” – that described people who were mindful about avoiding shameful situations.</p>
<p>All this began to change in the late-18th century, when the currents of the Enlightenment started to spread throughout Western culture, and public leaders began to reevaluate the importance of <a href="http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/udhr/preamble_section_1.html">human dignity</a>.</p>
<p>Shaming, Founding Father Benjamin Rush <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xtUKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq=%22is+universally+acknowledged+to+be+a+worse+punishment+than+death%22&source=bl&ots=aL0BN1o0aR&sig=VQDmYEsdnaTcvH3r-Vkhwb-tSM0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjL4q_91ZjXAhUn34MKHSk_Ca0Q6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=%22is%20universally%20acknowledged%20to%20be%20a%20worse%20punishment%20than%20death%22&f=false">wrote in 1787</a>, “is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death.” </p>
<p>Hyperbole aside, the actions of Americans started to reflect this new wisdom. Public stocks began to be abolished by law, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jX45DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT119&dq=%22massachusetts+abolished+whipping,+branding,+the+stock%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_45jZ45jXAhWkzIMKHRUqDMQQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=%22massachusetts%20abolished%20whipping%2C%20branding%2C%20the%20stock%22&f=false">beginning with Massachusetts in 1804</a>. Parents were advised to avoid shaming their kids, lest it damage their confidence. (The popular use of the word “self-esteem” traces back to as early as 1856.) </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193263/original/file-20171103-1020-ynfhsx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most dunce caps were outlawed in schools by the 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Contrast_a_child_that’s_good_with_one_who_hates_his_book_and_school.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course shame didn’t disappear; various people in positions of authority continued to deploy it, from boot camp drill sergeants to coaches of sports teams. Nonetheless, disapproval of shame-inducing tactics persisted. Schools gradually cleared out the most blatant practices (dunce caps, for example, were abandoned by the 1920s). All sorts of groups urged that people no longer be shamed for their sexual proclivities or their disabilities. A greater tolerance emerged that left people freer to accept treatment for psychological problems or to disclose their sexual identity. </p>
<p>In recent decades, psychology research <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Shame-and-Guilt/Tangney-Dearing/9781572309876/authors">has found</a> that feelings of shame can demoralize people or generate aggression because they make individuals feel bad about themselves. (This differentiates shame from guilt, which, because it focuses on a person’s acts rather than his or her character, can lead to apology and redress.)</p>
<p>Today, public scholars like social work researcher <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame/transcript">Brené Brown</a> continue to talk about these findings, urging those suffering from shame to throw the emotion aside and call their accusers to account – shaming the shamers, as it were.</p>
<h2>Shame’s revival</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40971965?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">The critical view of shaming</a> in Western culture is now entrenched: While the behavior persists, it’s often condemned, and a variety of institutional changes, from grade inflation to prison reform efforts, limit its impact. </p>
<p>And this continues to change our society in important ways, loosening a number of traditional constraints that, if violated, used to lead to public shaming. Unmarried middle-class women can now proudly bear children, while public listing of school grades is outlawed. </p>
<p>Recently, however, attitudes toward shaming have shifted, even as the chorus of disapproval continues. According to a Google Ngram search, references to shame in written texts – in decline in the United States since the mid-19th century – have, in recent decades, increased far more than in other English-speaking countries. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=214&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=214&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=214&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193456/original/file-20171106-1017-v4vfii.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frequency of Shame in American English, 1800-2008, Google Ngram Viewer.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The result, at least implicitly, is a new debate, and another divide in American culture. </p>
<p>By my reading, three sources account for the change. First, a number of conservative judges in the 1960s ruled that shaming was an appropriate punishment for certain crimes like drunken driving or petty theft. The stocks haven’t been reintroduced and many higher courts have disputed the new enthusiasm, but many criminals <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1289392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">have been required</a> to put shaming signs in their cars or to stand in a mall with a sign proclaiming their wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Second, the notorious culture wars in the United States have produced partisan camps eager to shame their opponents. Even liberals, probably hostile to shaming in principle, join the parade, as in the ubiquitous (and so far abortive) <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/2/1677200/-Shaming-Trump-s-voters-his-supporters-and-apologists-is-exactly-what-we-should-do">efforts to shame</a> our current president and his supporters. </p>
<p>Third, social media <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/living/feat-public-shaming-ronson/index.html">have unleashed a torrent of hatred</a>, with fat-shaming and accusations of sexual impropriety, hypocrisy and racism flooding social networks. The efforts can hound victims out of their jobs, force them to relocate – even drive some to suicide. </p>
<h2>Shame at a crossroads</h2>
<p>These shifts have created a dilemma: Are we shaming enough, or too much? </p>
<p>Some observers, whether they’re concerned about loose sexual behavior or the greed of global capitalists (one of whom <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/09/shame-sissies/">proclaimed</a> that “shame is for sissies”), can make a good case for a more robust restoration of community shaming. </p>
<p>It might not mean returning to stocks and dunce caps, but society could do a better job defining what deserves to be shamed, while also setting limits. <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Bowling-Alone/Robert-D-Putnam/9780743203043">As American community life has atrophied</a>, this ability seems to have weakened. We certainly seem to have lost the knack – available <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354067X04040929?journalCode=capa">in more shame-based societies</a> – of helping people recover from shame and become reintegrated into the community. </p>
<p>But what about protecting people against being forced to adhere to an unpleasant level of conformity? What about the cruelty and harshness of social media shaming, in which a misguided comment or mistake <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/10/16/dave-ratner-posed-for-photo-with-trump-now-facing-boycott/dvovCqgtAw1QF9wTxvlqVN/story.html">can end a career</a>?</p>
<p>Admittedly, the unruly contemporary history of American shame more readily suggests problems than solutions. The country has lost both the comfortable reliance on shame of its colonial ancestors and the confident resistance to it of humanitarian reformers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Stearns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
With levels of political discourse reaching new lows, some might say the country could use a dose of shame and humility. At the same time, social media have unleashed a torrent of online shaming.
Peter Stearns, University Professor of History, Provost Emeritus, George Mason University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.