Something Quite Interesting about Stephen Fry

England is infected. The World Health Organisation are not working on a vaccine.  Doctors have not been alerted. Yet the infection has spread to a large proportion of the population. Why no action? Ironically, because the host feels no obvious, short-term symptoms and seldom seek treatment. Instead, this disabling condition is passed on from generation to generation, leaving the infected with a overwhelming sense of well-being, contentment and, in the worst cases, smugness.  It's a mutated strain of nostalgia and charm. I have called it Stephen Fry's Palsy.

No one embodies the two qualities better than 'national treasure' Stephen Fry. If nostalgia is the English disease, then charm is its hot toddy. Like Stephen, they are a form of collective Prozac to the more challenging truths of English culture. In a blog written before the general election Fry argued that in

'ideological wars...the first casualties are consideration, mutual respect, sense, proportion', he went on to exhort his readers to, 'vote with your heart, vote with your head, vote with your gut – no one’s else. I just hope you have courage, style and charm enough not to hate me for what I am about to say, for I assure you I will not hate you if you say the exact opposite.'

Charming isn't it? But, for me, it is the sort of charm that smacks of entitlement. The sort of charm that can only come from the confidence that you can't really lose. He doesn't say who he votes for, but his innate conservatism, with a small 'c', is evident in the fact that he regarded the last election as an ideological war. Did I miss a titanic clash of ideas between Brown, Clegg and Cameron?

Gilbert and Sullivan

Like Stephen Fry, despite their tweedy, deeply unglamorous image, nostalgia and charm have managed to ingratiate themselves into the English psyche creating an unconscious and unquestioning faith in our national mythology. They sound like a Gilbert and Sullivan refrain: they remind us that we are English, our ways have stood the test of time, we don't change anything. "He IS an Englishman!"

Fry sits comfortably in this world. He may be an IT geek and compulsive Twitterer, but his heart remains firmly planted in an England where the social order is assured, 'I am a sentimentalist, and sentimentalists will hunt for any excuse to maintain the harmless fripperies of the status quo.' Tally ho! Time and again he supports the symbols of privilege and why shouldn't he? He explains that he was raised in an environment where every child he knew went away to school. Public school, Cambridge and the BBC, it's hardly surprising that he dismisses the social inequalities inherent in our society as 'insignificant blemishes.'

As an intellectual I would hope he could bring more insight to the debate than an acceptance based on 'expectation' and 'custom'. Is this G K Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead'. The trouble with tradition is that it has a habit of not changing. Is that Fry S J's idea of progress? Wring out the charming eloquence and we are left with something utterly nostalgic and reactionary. QI is a metaphor for Fry's world view, we aren't expected to dig too deep and the result is completely irrelevant. The winner is always Stephen Fry.

Oscar Wilde

He protests that his conservatism is tempered by 'criminal tendencies, my homosexuality, my Jewishness and the loathing of the bourgeoisie, the conventional and the respectable that these seem to have inculcated in me.' Fry believes he is a rebel. I'm not convinced his great hero, Oscar Wilde, would have agreed. Wilde believed 'progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.' Taking drugs and being gay do not make you a rebel, not in England in the last 30 years. Despite his brief brush with the law, Fry has simply towed the line. He might very well be on the eccentric fringe but he is very much part of the Establishment,

The depths of his rebellion are reflected in his podcast on Beauty of the Soul - he argues that aesthetics could play a valuable part in enhancing our lives.  He makes a forceful argument and, as you would expect, the piece is witty, engaging and beautifully argued, but ultimately, it is an elitist dead-end. No wonder he loathes the bourgeoisie with their drab wallpaper. My favourite story about Wilde appears in Richard Ellmann's brilliant biography and describes how Wilde not only fought off four undergraduates sent by the JCR to wreck his rooms, but he then invited 'spectators to sample one of his would-be persecutor's wine and spirits.' Can you imagine Fry having the courage to 'assert his individualism' in this way?

Charm and nostalgia are the enemies of progress. It would be so easy for England's story of imperial achievement, industrial innovation and the salvation of Europe to sound like the ramblings of a particularly egotistical candidate in The Apprentice - or, god forbid, like an Italian. The genius of our national mythology is the roll-call of understated heroes. They create the impression it was all an exercise in benevolent self-sacrifice and democratic progress. Don't be mistaken for a moment. Every small concession to the rights of the general population and even more so in the colonies was the result of a hard fought struggle. In the last 30 years Fry's Palsy has taken hold. We have basked in the cozy and reassuring glow of our 'constitutional' superiority whilst many of the political concessions, that our ancestors fought so hard for, have disappeared.

Far from being a 'democracy of the dead' it is a democracy for the privileged few and Stephen Fry is one of their weapons.

The English disease.

England is infected. The World Health Organisation are not working on a vaccine.  Doctors have not been alerted. Yet the infection has spread to a large proportion of the population. Why no action? Ironically, because the host feels no obvious, short-term symptoms and seldom seek treatment. Instead, this disabling condition is passed on from generation to generation, leaving the infected with a overwhelming sense of well-being, contentment and, in the worst cases, smugness.  It's a mutated strain of nostalgia and charm. I have called it Stephen Fry's Palsy.

No one embodies the two qualities better than 'national treasure' Stephen Fry. If nostalgia is the English disease, then charm is its hot toddy. Like Stephen, they are a form of collective Prozac to the more challenging truths of English culture. In a blog written before the general election Fry argued that in

'ideological wars...the first casualties are consideration, mutual respect, sense, proportion', he went on to exhort his readers to, 'vote with your heart, vote with your head, vote with your gut – no one’s else. I just hope you have courage, style and charm enough not to hate me for what I am about to say, for I assure you I will not hate you if you say the exact opposite.'

Charming isn't it? But, for me, it is the sort of charm that smacks of entitlement. The sort of charm that can only come from the confidence that you can't really lose. He doesn't say who he votes for, but his innate conservatism, with a small 'c', is evident in the fact that he regarded the last election as an ideological war. Did I miss a titanic clash of ideas between Brown, Clegg and Cameron?

Gilbert and Sullivan

Like Stephen Fry, despite their tweedy, deeply unglamorous image, nostalgia and charm have managed to ingratiate themselves into the English psyche creating an unconscious and unquestioning faith in our national mythology. They sound like a Gilbert and Sullivan refrain: they remind us that we are English, our ways have stood the test of time, we don't change anything. "He IS an Englishman!"

Fry sits comfortably in this world. He may be an IT geek and compulsive Twitterer, but his heart remains firmly planted in an England where the social order is assured, 'I am a sentimentalist, and sentimentalists will hunt for any excuse to maintain the harmless fripperies of the status quo.' Tally ho! Time and again he supports the symbols of privilege and why shouldn't he? He explains that he was raised in an environment where every child he knew went away to school. Public school, Cambridge and the BBC, it's hardly surprising that he dismisses the social inequalities inherent in our society as 'insignificant blemishes.'

As an intellectual I would hope he could bring more insight to the debate than an acceptance based on 'expectation' and 'custom'. Is this G K Chesterton's 'democracy of the dead'. The trouble with tradition is that it has a habit of not changing. Is that Fry S J's idea of progress? Wring out the charming eloquence and we are left with something utterly nostalgic and reactionary. QI is a metaphor for Fry's world view, we aren't expected to dig too deep and the result is completely irrelevant. The winner is always Stephen Fry.

Oscar Wilde

He protests that his conservatism is tempered by 'criminal tendencies, my homosexuality, my Jewishness and the loathing of the bourgeoisie, the conventional and the respectable that these seem to have inculcated in me.' Fry believes he is a rebel. I'm not convinced his great hero, Oscar Wilde, would have agreed. Wilde believed 'progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.' Taking drugs and being gay do not make you a rebel, not in England in the last 30 years. Despite his brief brush with the law, Fry has simply towed the line. He might very well be on the eccentric fringe but he is very much part of the Establishment,

The depths of his rebellion are reflected in his podcast on Beauty of the Soul - he argues that aesthetics could play a valuable part in enhancing our lives.  He makes a forceful argument and, as you would expect, the piece is witty, engaging and beautifully argued, but ultimately, it is an elitist dead-end. No wonder he loathes the bourgeoisie with their drab wallpaper. My favourite story about Wilde appears in Richard Ellmann's brilliant biography and describes how Wilde not only fought off four undergraduates sent by the JCR to wreck his rooms, but he then invited 'spectators to sample one of his would-be persecutor's wine and spirits.' Can you imagine Fry having the courage to 'assert his individualism' in this way?

Charm and nostalgia are the enemies of progress. It would be so easy for England's story of imperial achievement, industrial innovation and the salvation of Europe to sound like the ramblings of a particularly egotistical candidate in The Apprentice - or, god forbid, like an Italian. The genius of our national mythology is the roll-call of understated heroes. They create the impression it was all an exercise in benevolent self-sacrifice and democratic progress. Don't be mistaken for a moment. Every small concession to the rights of the general population and even more so in the colonies was the result of a hard fought struggle. In the last 30 years Fry's Palsy has taken hold. We have basked in the cozy and reassuring glow of our 'constitutional' superiority whilst many of the political concessions, that our ancestors fought so hard for, have disappeared.

Far from being a 'democracy of the dead' it is a democracy for the privileged few and Stephen Fry is one of their weapons.

Student riots and the social contract

  
  

"But you promised a night of Wagner."



Once again the students are revolting. Within an hour of MPs voting for the increase in tuition fees violence erupted across central London spreading through Whitehall and as far as Oxford Street. Despite being criticised after the November 10 violence at Conservative HQ, the police were once again initially caught off-guard by the 30,000 protesters. Windows were smashed at various government buildings, Churchill's statue was vandalised and Prince Charles the and Duchess of Camila were attacked whilst driving to the Royal Variety Performance.

Order was finally restored during the night when the students were 'kettled' onto Westminster bridge were finally allowed to leave at 11.30pm. There were only 26 arrests, one of which was for being drunk, which suggests the actual extent of the violence was not as bad as the images suggest or that the police completely lost control. Superintendent Julia Pendry said denied the police had lost control and stated, "There was no intelligence to suggest we were going to have rampaging people." Really?

 

So apart from the emergence of 'kettled' into the police lexicon and a few broken windows we are left with many column inches condemning the students. However, in a world of political apathy, isn't it astonishing to see young people, a generation raised in a 'post-ideological' and post-Thatcher world, out on the streets protesting. With only 21 Liberal Democrat MPs standing by their pledge to vote against tuition fee increases the measure was passed relatively comfortably. The students have been let down by the democratic system. In these circumstances what options are there for protest in a democracy?

It is a question that has exercised the minds of philosophers for thousands of years. Socrates concluded that it was never right to defy the state just as a child should not disobey its parents. He also argued that by staying voluntarily in a state you committed to obey the rules of that state. The relationship was contractual. However, he also argued that an individual should have a greater commitment to truth and morality than 'state' laws. In effect, individuals did not simply have a right but a duty to protest against laws that went against these principles, this conflict would ultimately cost him his life.

Liberal philosophers from the 17th Century have made the social contract a central tenet of their work in considering the individual's relationship with the state. Thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. What emerged from their work was the idea that the law should be an expression of the 'common-good' and, where that is the case, the individual has a duty to uphold it. 

Their conclusions have attracted much criticism. In the USA, Lysander Spooner  a 19th century lawyer and staunch supporter of a right of contract between individuals, argued that a supposed social contract cannot be used to justify governmental actions such as taxation, because government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter into such a contract. As a result, he maintains that such an agreement is not voluntary and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate contract at all.

Thoreau

In response the American writer, Henry David Thoreau, developed a theory of 'civil disobedience' arguing that justice is superior to the laws enacted by the government. According Thoreau, where a law flouts justice an individual has a duty to disobey the unjust law whilst demonstrating his belief in law by accepting the consequence of disobedience. Thoreau spent time in jail rather than submit to unjust laws upholding slavery and for refusing to pay a tax to pay for a  war against Mexico.


The work of John Rawls has emerged out of this debate. He has been called the most influential philosopher of the last 50 years and his work formed the basis for the new South African consitution. In his 1971 book 'A Theory of Justice' Rawls argues that 'Civil disobedience is by its nature an act responding to injustices internal to a given society, appealing to the public's conception of justice.' Civil disobedience can, therefore, be justified if the following three conditions are all met:

1. If the injustice is substantial and clear, especially one that obstructs the path to removing other injustices (e.g., poll taxes and other burdens on the right to vote). This certainly includes serious infringements of the principle of liberty and blatant violations of the principle of fair equality of opportunity.
2. If the normal appeals to the political majority have already been made in good faith and have failed. Civil disobedience is a last resort. disobedience is by its nature an act responding to injustices internal to a given society, appealing to the public's conception of justice. 
3. If there are not too many other minority groups with similarly valid claims. The just constitution would be eroded if too many groups exercised the choice of civil disobedience. The resolution of this situation is a political alliance of these multiple minorities to form a working majority coalition.

It's an irony of our democratic system that protest is somehow seen as subversive. Professor Brian Martin in 'Philosophy and Social Action' argues that 'protest' is considered suspect because protest reflects action from groups who do not have direct access to the mechanisms of power. He observes that Governments are very good at diffusing opposition through promoting 'acceptable protest': lobbying, letter writing and a controlled public debate through the media. We have seen how ineffective these forms of protest are, remember the anti-war campaign and its peaceful march?  He concludes that 'direct action' and confrontation is the only way protest effectively because it circumvents the official but ineffective channels.

As Woody Allen points out in Annie Hall, sometimes a devastatingly satirical article in 'Dissentry'* is just not enough. *(Commentary and Dissent merged). It is easy to forget that most of the rights that we value today, contrary to British mythology, were won through the bravery of individuals to fight injustice. The threat of widespread civil disobedience was a massive force for change. What was more successful, the anti-war protests or the Poll Tax campaign? Perhaps rioting is not just a right - it is a duty.

Rioting - right or duty?

"But you promised a night of Wagner."

Once again the students are revolting. Within an hour of MPs voting for the increase in tuition fees violence erupted across central London spreading through Whitehall and as far as Oxford Street. Despite being criticised after the November 10 violence at Conservative HQ, the police were once again initially caught off-guard by the 30,000 protesters. Windows were smashed at various government buildings, Churchill's statue was vandalised and Prince Charles the and Duchess of Camila were attacked whilst driving to the Royal Variety Performance.

Order was finally restored during the night when the students were 'kettled' onto Westminster bridge were finally allowed to leave at 11.30pm. There were only 26 arrests, one of which was for being drunk, which suggests the actual extent of the violence was not as bad as the images suggest or that the police completely lost control. Superintendent Julia Pendry said denied the police had lost control and stated, "There was no intelligence to suggest we were going to have rampaging people." Really?

 

So apart from the emergence of 'kettled' into the police lexicon and a few broken windows we are left with many column inches condemning the students. However, in a world of political apathy, isn't it astonishing to see young people, a generation raised in a 'post-ideological' and post-Thatcher world, out on the streets protesting. With only 21 Liberal Democrat MPs standing by their pledge to vote against tuition fee increases the measure was passed relatively comfortably. The students have been let down by the democratic system. In these circumstances what options are there for protest in a democracy?

It is a question that has exercised the minds of philosophers for thousands of years. Socrates concluded that it was never right to defy the state just as a child should not disobey its parents. He also argued that by staying voluntarily in a state you committed to obey the rules of that state. The relationship was contractual. However, he also argued that an individual should have a greater commitment to truth and morality than 'state' laws. In effect, individuals did not simply have a right but a duty to protest against laws that went against these principles, this conflict would ultimately cost him his life.

Liberal philosophers from the 17th Century have made the social contract a central tenet of their work in considering the individual's relationship with the state. Thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. What emerged from their work was the idea that the law should be an expression of the 'common-good' and, where that is the case, the individual has a duty to uphold it. 

Their conclusions have attracted much criticism. In the USA, Lysander Spooner  a 19th century lawyer and staunch supporter of a right of contract between individuals, argued that a supposed social contract cannot be used to justify governmental actions such as taxation, because government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter into such a contract. As a result, he maintains that such an agreement is not voluntary and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate contract at all.

Thoreau

In response the American writer, Henry David Thoreau, developed a theory of 'civil disobedience' arguing that justice is superior to the laws enacted by the government. According Thoreau, where a law flouts justice an individual has a duty to disobey the unjust law whilst demonstrating his belief in law by accepting the consequence of disobedience. Thoreau spent time in jail rather than submit to unjust laws upholding slavery and for refusing to pay a tax to pay for a  war against Mexico.

The work of John Rawls has emerged out of this debate. He has been called the most influential philosopher of the last 50 years and his work formed the basis for the new South African consitution. In his 1971 book 'A Theory of Justice' Rawls argues that 'Civil disobedience is by its nature an act responding to injustices internal to a given society, appealing to the public's conception of justice.' Civil disobedience can, therefore, be justified if the following three conditions are all met:

1. If the injustice is substantial and clear, especially one that obstructs the path to removing other injustices (e.g., poll taxes and other burdens on the right to vote). This certainly includes serious infringements of the principle of liberty and blatant violations of the principle of fair equality of opportunity.
2. If the normal appeals to the political majority have already been made in good faith and have failed. Civil disobedience is a last resort. disobedience is by its nature an act responding to injustices internal to a given society, appealing to the public's conception of justice. 
3. If there are not too many other minority groups with similarly valid claims. The just constitution would be eroded if too many groups exercised the choice of civil disobedience. The resolution of this situation is a political alliance of these multiple minorities to form a working majority coalition.

It's an irony of our democratic system that protest is somehow seen as subversive. Professor Brian Martin in 'Philosophy and Social Action' argues that 'protest' is considered suspect because protest reflects action from groups who do not have direct access to the mechanisms of power. He observes that Governments are very good at diffusing opposition through promoting 'acceptable protest': lobbying, letter writing and a controlled public debate through the media. We have seen how ineffective these forms of protest are, remember the anti-war campaign and its peaceful march?  He concludes that 'direct action' and confrontation is the only way protest effectively because it circumvents the official but ineffective channels.

As Woody Allen points out in Annie Hall, sometimes a devastatingly satirical article in 'Dissentry'* is just not enough. *(Commentary and Dissent merged). It is easy to forget that most of the rights that we value today, contrary to British mythology, were won through the bravery of individuals to fight injustice. The threat of widespread civil disobedience was a massive force for change. What was more successful, the anti-war protests or the Poll Tax campaign? Perhaps rioting is not just a right - it is a duty.

Can television get better than this?

An impressive figure stands in the corner of an artful early 1960s office. We only see his back, a featureless silhouette interrupted by just a hint of a humanising white shirt collar. He surveys the room. Pondering. Is it his office? Will he stay? Almost immediately the commanding figure is reduced as the camera pulls back. We are the second person in the room, a silent witness, observing the man, now smaller, exposed and more vulnerable in the middle of the office.

Opposite us a Scandinavian desk archly provides a note of solidity in an otherwise intangible room. Vague decor merges, through windows barred by blinds, with the monotonous grey sky to envelope a glimpse of pastel skyscrapers. What sort of cell is this? How can it hold him? Nothing but the desk and the man has substance.  

The self-assurance has gone. He's uneasy and we're uneasy for him. The music is a pulse. A potential threat like a discordant heart-monitor. Pressure. This is a man's world. No room for weakness or sentiment. Image is everything. The only personal touches in the room are the barely perceptible outlines of hard liquor bottles stacked on the table - like the ghosts of the men who have vacated the shadowy chairs. The bottles are an elegant testimony by the prosecution. Only the spinning fan shows signs of life.

Yet the cocktail chic has a seductive quality - the aspirational magazine style draws the man further into the room. He steps forward and places his briefcase on the floor. His silhouette is like an exclamation mark on a blank page. An assertion of individuality that breaks the tension. Sudden and catastrophic. Everything in the office is shattered and sucked into a sterile abyss while the man stands transfixed and helpless. The screen dissolves briefly into black only to reveal that the darkness is the man and he is falling.   

 

A man falling from a Manhattan skyscraper. 50 years of American history. A logical conclusion. His descent is witnessed by a wet dream of giant advertising hoardings promising every pleasure - but for him the price has been too high. He is not the only casualty. Fatherless children accuse the man with their smiles as he falls past the scarlet lips and fishnetted thigh that for once are untouchable and unmolested. The only thing he wants no one can sell. 

Dissolve to black again as we anticipate the impact, but no, there is one more twist. The camera pans out to reveal the man sitting nonchalantly in a chair, a cigarette in one hand and no doubt a whiskey in the other. Composed? Yes, but he stares into a grey void. What can he see? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo

Eric Idle and lessons from Afghanistan

Just how bad is the situation in Afghanistan? At home we are obviously very concerned with the mounting death toll of British troops - 346 so far and 1536 wounded. However, the announcement in November that NATO forces intend to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 means that President Hamid Karzai and his western allies are under mounting pressure to demonstrate that they have created a democratic framework with the strength to stand on its own.

For policy-makers looking for evidence, the publication of the BBC's and other news agencies annual survey on conditions in Afghanistan must be pretty painful reading. Carried out by the Afghan Centre for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research and published on 6th December, a sample of 1691 Afghans were asked 64 questions to provide a broad picture of developments and opinions within the country. Although news coverage focused on headlines such as 27% of people felt attacks against US or NATO troops were justified and only 23% supported continuing the fight against the Taliban, the survey provided a very confusing picture of the quality of life throughout Afghanistan.

Are things getting better for the average Afghan? 70% considered that the living conditions in their village were either good or very good, but, when asked about details of these conditions, two-thirds thought the economic situation was worse, 54% thought they were not properly protected from the Taliban and 41% did not have access to clean drinking water.

The majority (between 57% and 65%) of Afghans felt that the government and its institutions were doing a good job. 86% were in favour of the current government ruling the country with only 9% in favour of the Taliban, who 64% saw as the biggest danger facing the Afghanistan. However when the relationship with the government was examined it produced a rather depressing picture. 65% believed that government officials had any interest or authority to deal with a complaint. 91% felt that government or police corruption was a problem in their area and 87% thought it was a big problem within central government. 66% said that levels of corruption had either stayed the same or got worse in the last year. 
  
Two-thirds thought that the Taliban had either stayed as strong or grown stronger in the last year, and despite 63% believing the Taliban had not moderated their opinions since their fall in 2001, a massive 73% supported a negotiated settlement between them and the Karzai government. At the same time over 54% want the US troops to stay longer if the security situation continues to deteriorate. Despite these concerns 65% still believed that life a year from now would be better. Confusing isn't it?

Sorry for all the statistics but it's an interesting picture. Somehow the Afghans are managing to remain optimistic about the future in the face of terrible circumstances. It reminded me of some research I heard about last year. Researchers believe that human beings are naturally optimistic. The study from the University of Kansas was presented to the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco, found optimism to be universal and borderless. Data was collected from 150,000 adults across 140 countries and a remarkable 89% of individuals worldwide expect the next five years to be as good or better than their current life, and 95% individuals expected their life in five years to be as good or better than their life was five years ago.

Why are we optimistic? In a 1979 book "Optimism: The Biology of Hope" Lionel Tiger maintained that when early man left the forests and became hunters many of them suffered death and injury. He concluded that since humans tend to abandon tasks associated with negative consequences it was necessary for humans to develop a sense of optimism. This biological response was enhanced by the feelings of euphoria induced my endorphins in, what would generally be regarded, as negative situations.

So it seems that Eric Idle was on to something when he looked down from his cross and told us to  'Always look on the bright side of life.' Thank goodness that is the case. In the face of such terrible challenges a realist would have simply given up but despite all the evidence Afghans are managing to remain positive about their future. Realism is all very well but if you want to make things change for the better then optimism forms the bedrock of resilience. Thank goodness Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther king weren't just realistic thinkers.

I have a dream! Perhaps thingscanonlygetbetter.

Hitchens lands one for Saddam

Welcome to this week's guest blogger, 'eejit' - a voice of reason on the blog comment page - 'eejit' is not pulling any punches with his review of the titanic struggle between good vs evil from Canada (where else?).  

Not so much the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thriller in Manila, the atheistic hammer blow of Christopher Hitchens met God’s representative on earth, Tony Blair, in a heavyweight title fight at the , er, Roy Thompson Hall, sponsored by Canadian businessman Peter Munk.  Yes, the Peter Munk.  The Lurch in the Church? The Feeble up the Steeple?  At stake was God himself. Or herself. The braying masses demanded to know whether “Religion is a force for good in the world.”


It says something about the nightlife in Toronto that this yawn fest was selling tickets at $60 a shot, with touts asking $500. (What?.... Canadian dollars? ...Oh, right). But as students of this blog site know, nothing gets under the skin like a good religious debate.  What Munk has to do with it is anyone’s guess, as apparently he hasn’t taken holy orders, though he is thought to be descended from a munkey.  At this point of Advent, dear reader, you may feel inclined to agree with Wittgenstein and decide that of which you cannot know, you will remain silent.  But let us keep bu*gering on as Churchill would have said.


Hitchens will be well known to many as the Ayatollah of the New Atheist Mujahadeen, a cabal that includes Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, Steven Hawking and darling of the middle brow, Stephen Fry.  Blair needs no introduction, the rumours of his going down on his knees in front of, sorry, with George dubbya tell their own story and in between harvesting cheques for his various companies, Blair has founded a faith based foundation for world domination - PEACE, PEACE, PEACE, it’s peace ok?  


Reports suggest that the gloves weren't  completely off, with mutual respect and a subdued atmosphere.  Hitchens is undergoing treatment for oesophageal cancer and Blair’s conciliatory admission of doubts may have contributed to the mood.  Blair looked at the title of the debate with the eyes of the lawyer he is, arguing that religion,  despite the evil it causes, does some good, therefore it is a force for good. Hitchens gamely set out the case for the prosecution – rationalism, God as despot etc etc.  But it was not much better than going through the motions of a school debate.

The problem was in part the question; Blair’s answer would have cut little ice with theologians.  Do we hold God to a balance sheet?  This does not really begin to address the presence or absence of God, merely leading to the sort of answer the Spitting Image David Owen/Steele puppet might come up with – not no good or all good but something in between.


Let’s assume that none of the audience were fanatics (it was Canada) and that they respect the honestly held views of other intelligent people.  The question of whether there is a God does not seem to be the most important (there is or there isn’t, end of debate).  Nor do the religious members of audience believe in the literal truth of every word written in the religious text they choose.  We are therefore in the realms of the relative, the ambiguous, social, historical and political context.  A more interesting question would be does God care? Or put another way, do we believe in a God who intervenes?