This year at university, I picked a module called “Ethics and International Relations in the Middle East”. As you might imagine, I find almost every word in the title fascinating.
I’m a bit concerned about it though, as I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to end up offending someone. I’m not talking about the normal, manageable offence you can cause, such as when you insult the honour of someone’s mother: “I got your mum a Christmas present, but it arrived x months late” (where x is 9 minus the number of months until Christmas… this burn doesn’twork during the first quarter of the year, though).
I mean the hysterical and irrational religious offence that theists will cry about when they can’t justify their arguments (“I got your God a Christmas present, but he couldn’t recieve it as he wasn’t home during delivery hours, because he doesn’t exist”).
I’m thinking it will turn out this way because some of the people on my course have hideous opinions.
As it was early days, today the lecturer was throwing out ethical dilemmas, such as “should the UN have intervened in Rwanda?”, “should the UN intervene in Iran to stop the persecution of homosexuals?”, trying to illustrate in a roundabout way how difficult it is to defend human rights.
It turns out that a sizeable number of people on my course don’t think that oppressing women is bad because of cultural reasons. In other words “they have a different culture to us, so we should respect the differences”.
This is obviously stupid. ‘Respecting’ the acts of other cultures and treating them as equals does not make them equally valid. That sort of incorrect reasoning leads to statements like “religion is equally as valid as science”. Imagine in a parallel universe if Nazi Germany (yeah, Godwin’s Law) was discovered deep inside the middle of the Amazon rainforest – would we let the newly discovered humans, who have developed a completely different moral discourse, social hierarchy (etc) to us keep their gas chambers? And let them continue committing genocide because it is an adorably quaint “tradition”? Perhaps the History Channel would still be full of documentaries on the Nazis, but would be narrated by David Attenborough instead of Laurence Olivier, and would be an anthropological series instead?
I can’t quite understand how anyone can support conditions like they are in Saudi Arabia, where women are treated like shit (you may have to register to read that link, but its worth it, as its a bloody good, yet horrifying, read), are alright.
James does a massive philosophical U-turn
I’ve added this sub-heading to highlight the fact that my opinions have changed. So I can be proud of this and point it out, rather than have the imaginary attack-dog press in my head hound me out for being a hypocrite. Just over a year ago now, I wrote about moral relativism. I claimed that it was cool, whereas later evidence proves that it is in fact lame.
The implication is, of course, that there are no moral absolutes. Which, as it turns out, is bollocks. There are fixed moral absolutes that are true, regardless of context or religion and so on. Like “no killing please” is a moral that’s fairly independent of any religion, and can be derived independently of religion (I won’t go into deriving morals, that’s for a proper writer to do). This change in opinion is why I can be aghast and people suggesting a relativistic answer and save face.
Unless my rejection of relativism is in fact proof that morals are relative, as mine have, er, changed?
I heard the most hideous radio show last night, and it was one of the most genuinely sickening pieces of radio I’ve ever heard – the only way it could have been made worse is if Sara Cox’s horrific voice was involved, and Steve Harley had been using it as a platform to drop into conversation the times he met “The Fabs” or “Zep“.
On a number of commercial stations, there’s a programme called “Late Night Love“, where presenter Graham Torrington encourages vulnerable listeners to phone in and share their most deeply personal emotional and psychological problems with the country.
Its what you’d expect: women ringing in and talking about men who have cheated on them, that sort of thing. What makes it unsettling is that Torrington is pushing these people for details on their relationship problems, and they’ll invariable end up breaking down into tears whilst live on the phone, on the radio – all in the name of entertainment.
And don’t be mistaken – Torrington isn’t a qualified doctor, psychologist, relationship councillor or whatever, he’s a radio presenter who has built his career using the misery of other people. Its completely a venture to provide entertainment as demonstrated by his Sunday night show – which is apparently a compilation of the “best bits” (his words) of the week before. I’m not sure how you can pick “best bits” out of a programme like this. I mean, do you go for the woman with two kids who’s husband’s had an affair that has torn her family apart… or what about the poor bloke who’s girlfriend turned out to be married? Does he sit there in the edit suite going “use the second one… it was brilliant! A bloke crying on the radio is much harder to get than a woman!”
He regularly offers advice to callers – which strikes me as dangerous more than anything. A four minute chat on the radio isn’t enough time to understand people’s problems – but this doesn’t seem to dissuade Graham, who will offer his unqualified words of wisdom (“Leave him!”).
You’ve got to be pretty desperate if you’re phoning up the radio for help – surely there are hundreds of better placed people to offer guidance?
It’s the exploitative aspect that bothers me most. It sounds like Graham wants his victims to cry – he no doubt thinks it makes him out as a pioneer of unmissable real-life water-cooler discussion radio. It doesn’t. A man who reduces people to tears by dragging up their past in public is a cunt.
I’m really annoyed that there’s not going to be an election. Not because I want to exercise my democratic right, or because it now means that Gordon Brown, who I was warming to, has had his first (obvious) fuck-up (Simon Howard explains succinctly here), but because I was really looking forward to having an election night party.
I had a grand plan. I’d somehow acquire a projector as a massive TV, I’d buy some Pringles and party hats, and then I’d get my friends to come round and cheer with me every time the Tories lose a seat. It’d have been brilliant – we could have all wore the colours of the team we support. But, alas, Brown is a massive chicken – roughly about the size of Big Bird from Sesame Street.
Presumably someone’s already invented drinking games to play whilst watching the election programme too.
So by not calling an election, and ruling one out for the next couple of years, Gordon Brown has annoyed me. I’d lament by saying “he’s lost my vote!”, but unfortunately, there’s not actually going to be an election.
I’ve been trying to console myself by thinking through why democracy doesn’t work – if I can lose faith in the political system then the lack of election won’t bother me so much. I pondered the electoral system and considered the democratic deficit, tyranny of the majority, and the lack of representation for minority interests.
Not being able to find any answers to these big questions myself, and not wanting to turn to God (he wouldn’t like my atheism), I decided to text into one of the ridiculous channels on Sky where you can chat to the vacuous presenter, and ask her what she thought of proportional representation:
(Skip to about 46 seconds if you don’t want any exposition or context – I’m ‘3161′)
Disclosure: I was sent these albums for free by the PR people. Hooray!
Monkey Fist – Between The Lines (Released December 3rd)
Monkey Fist are a bit metal, a bit hardcore perhaps – y’know the sort of thing, its loud and shouty and old people don’t get it. Between The Lines is apparently their first album. And it’s really good. The press release says that they’re influenced by Pantera, Iron Maiden and the Deftones among others – you can tell.
Bizarrely enough, it appears that they’re named after a type of nautical knot. As such, it’d be moderately witty of me to describe their music as “knot bad!” – but I won’t, just in case any knot enthusiasts are reading and decide to take me to task for deriding their knot. If you read my remarks literally (“knot [is] bad”), you might get a false impression of my opinion- the pictures on Wikipedia make it look like a genuinely decent knot. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
Back to Monkey Fist. I particularly like the title track and I Wrote This Song For You. In the latter there’s an excellent breakdown in the song about two thirds of the way through where only a guitar and the vocalist continue. I’m not very good at describing this, but suffice to say “it sounded good in my ears”.
Sick in the Mind is a good song too.
As is tradition in my appauling musical reviews, I should point out I’ve no idea what the messages behind their songs are. Presumably its the regular death, killing, burning, shouting stuff.
I like Monkey Fist.
32-A (Released December 3rd)
32-A are releasing a new self-titled EP, and they appear to have adopted the strategy of naming themselves so they appear at the front of CD racks in shops. Unless any other band have a name that is a number less than 32, of course. They do metal and do it pretty well – although they sound a bit more over-produced than, say, Monkey Fist, because they have samples.
The best thing about the band are their rock-star names. The press release lists the band members with their real names in brackets: Dead Dave (Dave Moore), Davey Roxx (Dave Snell), Johnny Sounds (John Fairgrieve), Marc Mills (Marc Mills), and Justis (Justin Whitney). I think I’d probably give myself a cool new name if my name was Dave Snell too.
Their EP is pretty good though.
In So Far – Medicine For The Melancholic (Released November 19th)
In So Far are a bit different to the other two bands – they’re more punk. And the cardboard CD sleeve the CD was sent to me in was all printed up nicely with the logo on (a depressed cartoon woman crying into her knees, with headphones on, sitting against the silhouette of an evil tree with what looks like either a noose or a rope swing hanging from it.
I think they can afford such a fancy design because they’re sponsored by Jagermeister. Which, as it turns out, is something I’ve moaned about in the past.
They’re pretty good though – nothing too heavyweight, mind. They have lyrics like “I feel I know no-one, I know I feel nothing”, so its a bit frothy and emo (if “frothy” is allowed when describing music). Pleasant though. I like them.
Conclusions
I actually quite like these CDs. Does that make me a bad reviewer? If I ever want to be a Newsnight Review snob I better become a whole lot more critical, quickly.
The great thing about being at university is that you’re (hypothetically) surrounded by people who actually care about issues and politics and so on. This is reflected in the graffiti in the surrounding area:
Scrawled on to the above building are “No Trident”, “Free Palestine”, and perhaps the most revolutionary statement of all: “No Parking“.
“Does God exist?”, “Is time travel possible?”, “Can robots love?”. These are the sort of questions I’ve been considering this week, as I’ve been reading The Philosophy Gym by Stephen Law. It has made me realise how excellent philosophy is. It has empowered me with lots of philosophy buzzwords that I can drop into conversation to make me sound moderately well educated. Much like how businessmen will think you’re cool if you use phrases like “cross-platform content delivery” and “brand synergy”.
The first thing I like about philosophy is that is needlessly pedantic. If I were to ask a “big question”, such as “are the brain and the mind separate entities?” I can guarantee that there would be fifty other armchair philosophers like myself ready to pick up on all of the inherent logical flaws in the answer I give.
I imagine that arguing with a proper philosopher takes hours, as every philosophy question can be answered with another question: “What caused the Big Bang?” “Why does there have to be a causal explanation?” “Why do we assume that everything needs a cause – can’t some things just ‘happen’” “Isn’t assuming everything has a cause a case of inductive reasoning?”, and so on until one of the parties involved has an awful headache.
Presumably it must be a living hell for a philosopher to make even a simple decision, such as when out clothes shopping. Blue tie or red tie? How can one decide when everything is relative? And how can everyone else trust what a philosopher has to say? There’s no such thing as objective truth, so they could get away with telling you a pack of lies.
Irritating children are probably the best at being philosophers. I’ve distinct memories from my childhood of annoying my friends and elders by responding to everything said to me with the question “why?”
The best thing about philosophy though, is that despite being a serious area of academic study, it concerns itself with debating answers to questions where there are no discernible answers. I think its basically an excuse for workshy people to wear berets and talk endlessly…. and this is something I’d really like to be a part of. So here are ten philosophical questions of my own that I’m publicly posing to the philosophical community:
1) If we don’t know what conciousness is, how can we know what unconciousness is?
2) If global warming is ever proved not to exist (highly unlikely, but this is a philosophical question), can environmentalists be accused to being hypocrites for releasing a lot of hot air?
3) Considering the well documented psychological phenomenon of people subconsciously mimicking the gestures of others (eg: folding arms at the same time, etc), if a murder is carried out and someone else subconsciously copies it, who is responsible?
4) Does a mutual interest in the kerning of fonts bring people closer together or drive them further apart?
5) Considering that pirates in the olden days were horrible crooks and murderers, essentially terrorists, can humanity get away with celebrating pirates in films and on television?
6) Wasps. Why?
7) People who like horses are often said to look a bit horse-like. Does that mean they’re constantly miserable, what with the long face?
Why should we let Rubik’s Cubes create new problems for us to solve? Shouldn’t we tackle pre-existing ones first, like war and poverty, before worrying about the ordering if different coloured cubes?
9) Do battle re-enactors get self-concious if they turn up to an re-enactment to find someone else wearing the same outfit as they are?
10) Is it more ethical to put down contestants when they are evicted from the Big Brother house, rather than let them endure a slow, painful career death on an obscure satellite TV shopping channel?
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Why should we let Rubik’s Cubes create new problems for us to solve? Shouldn’t we tackle pre-existing ones first, like war and poverty, before worrying about the ordering if different coloured cubes?