A minor skirmish has broken out in Bloglandia between the left purists and the “netroots”. The opening salvo was fired by our good friend Max Sawicky, with this bit:

The “Internet Left” is a mostly brainless vacuum cleaner of donations for the Democratic Party.

Congratulations are first due to Max: in a world that lives on and for catchy one-liners, he can justifiably claim to have moved us farther, with this clever aphorism, irrespective of its validity. Second, is it just me, is Max looking pretty slick in that picture (for contrast see the wiser gent on Crooks and Liars)?

The “purists” are the old guard, the textbook leftists, the big thinkers who understand the systemic rot, the root cause dudes who will fix the problem not the symptoms. The “netroots” are a gaggle of bloggers who gained popularity and prominence after the 2004 Dean debacle. Some are just wide-ranging commentators (much as we here at PB are, albeit with a readership that is non-trivial) but for our exercise we can limit the group to a couple of biggies: DailyKos, the mothership of the movement, and MyDD one of whose writers (Matt Stoller) figures in the very first sentences of Max’s assault on the virtual roots.

What is Max’s beef against the young Turks? I am guessing he is unhappy with their apparent attitude that they have the whole leftist enterprise covered (from activism to theory). Instead old Max finds that they are ill-read if at all (and extends that point to suggest that they have little coherent theoretical understanding and analysis of their positions and the things they, or rather the Left, should work against or for), and they are not very left at that (as attested by the unbridled enthusiasm for Democrats — which seems to exceed that of a Democratic convention speaker, Al Sharpton, who memorably quipped: we want to see how far this donkey can take us — and election politics and activism). Further evidence is not hard to come by, ranging from Kos’ attitude towards marches and the activists involved (”boring”, “obsolete”) to Duncan Black on Chomsky (Google it. I refuse to link to random blather!). The “netroots” wants the old Left (the 60s left in particular?) out of their way in a hurry, but as Max outlines, what is the alternative they offer to the many facets of old style organising and activism?

The purists, usually from the Church of Marx, have nothing but disdain for party politics, electoral victories, crackpot realism. It’s all ephemeral, these meagre and meaningless victories … a mistaken identification of the roots with the trees and the trees for the forest. The Democratic Party is the buffer, a parasite that lives off the malcontent of the left, bleeding away its anger while offering no real progress. The destruction of the DP is the first step towards the inevitable and necessary confrontation with the real powers that keep us down! Even the extended discussion of elections, potential candidates and results, is not mere waste of time but a dangerous distraction (aided by the “netroots” which offer the fora and gravitas for such chatter).

Theoretical analysis and such elaborate arias can also be seen as a luxury of those who can afford them. Every bit of change can mean something significant for someone else — the return of Democrats might return funding to medical services in poor nations, alleviate conditions in Iraq (the 2006 GOP electoral humiliation, in itself, has generated a significant number of defections into the camp that questions the Iraqi strategy), a bit more safety for immigrants at risk of landing in Guantanamo, increase in minimum wage, and so on. If a coherent argument is available to demonstrate that these incremental steps have a net negative effect (and a large one at that), I am yet to hear it put forth without resort to magic language.

Another little matter nags: I do not vote on MyDD straw-polls because I believe I am furthering the grand leftist agenda, but because I have nothing better to do. The problem lies in the mistaken idea that the purists and the “netroots” are battling over scarce eyeballs and limited time. I can eyeball both of them and still have enough time to write this silly blog. My problem is not too little time but too little opportunity.

And on that question of opportunity, I return to consider Max’s original point regarding the “Internet Left”, and his own conclusion:

The real Internet left is the Internet of leftists who use the Internet.

Sometime in 1990 or 1991 I was introduced to the term “user”. It seemed an elegantly apt way to describe those who were interested in consumption and not participation (elegant because “user” is also the term to designate a non-technical human using a computer). These were the sort of people who made posts to newsgroups or mailing lists with the preface: please respond to me at my email address, since I do not read this list. I bring this up for a reason. Max is wrong. The real Internet Left is not the leftists who use the net, but the people who contribute to making it what it is. If you need a name, that name would be Richard Stallman. Behind all this noise that they enable is a dedicated community of developers, documenters, testers, bug reporters, and volunteers for all kinds of other roles, who work using the simple philosophy of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. The best unsolicited advice that I can offer anyone that faces the problem I bring up above, of the lack of opportunity, is to forget about theoretical frameworks or blog activism, but rather get involved in this thriving actual community (that is by the way, among other things, enabling communities in the so-called Third World), which exists despite (and perhaps because of) the disimissal of it as a serious and important force and phenomenon. Forget the Marxist thesis and the Technorati rank, or rather along with that, write some code, help out with answering questions, get your hands dirty.

A random list of efforts that you could involve yourself in today, directly related to what you are doing now:

• WordPress — open source blogging software and service
• Mozilla — open source web browser and email software with ad/spam blocking
• GNU — extensive suite of tools from the Free Software Foundation

New York Times reports on a scientific forum at the Salk Institute titled “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival”, consisting of the usual suspects such as Weinberg and Dawkins repeating their angry young scientist polemics, described aptly by one of the conference speakers:

A Free-for-All on Science and Religion - New York Times

[…]

By the third day, the arguments had become so heated that Dr. Konner was reminded of “a den of vipers.”

“With a few notable exceptions,” he said, “the viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”

His response to Mr. Harris and Dr. Dawkins was scathing. “I think that you and Richard are remarkably apt mirror images of the extremists on the other side,” he said, “and that you generate more fear and hatred of science.”

[…]

I wonder how it is that we (assuming there are at least a few non-scientistic atheists other than me) permit someone like Dawkins to presume to speak for us or the general position of atheism. Perhaps it is a good thing that a majority (if true) of scientists want to now make this an all out war (I assume they are now comfortable enough in their self-sufficiency to take this step). It may be a good thing since it forces the general population to have to choose some position and path, not necessarily religion or scientism.

[ Link ]

[via BoingBoing]

The Dead Sea Scrolls it seems contain specifications for construction of latrines:

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Toilet evidence links Dead Sea Scrolls to sect

[…]

The Essenes are one of the few ancient groups whose toiletry practices were documented. The first century Jewish historian Josephus noted that members of the group normally went outside the city and dug a hole, where they buried their waste.

Two of the Dead Sea Scrolls note that the latrines should be situated northwest of the settlement, at a distance of 1,000 to 3,000 cubits — about 450 to 1,350 yards — and out of sight of the settlement.

Tabor and Joe Zias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert on ancient latrines, went to the site and took samples.

Zias sent samples to anthropologist Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue of the CNRS Laboratory for Anthropology in Marseilles, France, who found preserved eggs and other remnants of roundworms, tapeworms and pinworms, all human intestinal parasites.

Samples from the surrounding areas contained no parasites. Had the waste been dumped on the surface, as is the practice of Bedouins in the area, the parasites quickly would have been killed by sunlight. Buried, they could persist for a year or longer, infecting anyone who walked through the soil.

The situation was made worse by the Essenes having to pass through an immersion cistern, or Miqvot, before returning to the settlement. The water would have served as a major breeding ground for the parasites.

“The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group I have ever studied in over 30 years,” Zias said. Fewer than 6 percent of the men buried there survived to age 40, he said. In contrast, cemeteries from the same period excavated at Jericho show that half the males lived beyond age 40.

What impressed me about this bit of news was that the Bedouins will probably have a hard time explaining the reasons behind their practices, but even back at the relevant time, the Essenes probably had elaborate and sophisticated explanations for the superiority of their system as compared to the illiterate practices of the nomads.

My point? There are parallels to this sort of thing in the patronising dismissal of “primitivism” by the scientistic, but often, the lack of an explanation no more disqualifies a practice than the presence of an elaborate, detailed and systematic explanation (in itself) underwrites another.

[ Link ]

Two things, in my opinion, define the post-socialist, post-communal turn (1980 onwards) more than others: 1) Competition and 2) Reductionism. They are the result of an unholy combination of scientism and capitalism (hyper-individualism). The former (hyper-competition) pits us against each other relentlessly, both by pushing to the extremes the effects of success and failure, and emphasising competition over co-operation in theoretical frameworks (social darwinism and so on). Reductionism and scientism disfavour holistic approaches and understanding, limiting knowledge (and the action arising from it) to the immediately quantifiable. The following bit of news is a small demonstration of the pitfalls of such an approach:

Childhood ends earlier as parents pressure children, says survey | Guardian

[…]

[A] report released from the Institute for Public Policy Research supported the notion that pushing children too hard at a young age can backfire.

Academic results themselves do not ensure a higher income, and too much focus on them can inhibit social development and confidence, it said.

With apologies for the editorialising ;-).

[ Link ]

I have mentioned earlier the downplaying of the open source movement within the more orthodox segments of the western left. James Boyle writes in the Financial Times about this close-mindedness bias (he is speaking about the general population):

A closed mind about an open world
By James Boyle

Over the past 15 years, a group of scholars has finally persuaded economists to believe something non-economists find obvious: “behavioural economics” shows that people do not act as economic theory predicts.

However, this is not a vindication of folk wisdom over the pointy-heads. The deviations from “rational behaviour” were not the wonderful cornucopia of humanist motivations you might imagine. There were patterns. We were risk-averse when it came to losses – likely to overestimate chances of loss and underestimate chances of gain, for example. We rely on heuristics to frame problems but cling to them even when they are contradicted by the facts. Some of these patterns are endearing; the supposedly “irrational” concerns for equality that persist in all but Republicans and the economically trained, for example. But most were simply the mapping of cognitive bias. We can take advantage of those biases, as those who sell us expensive and irrational warranties on consumer goods do. Or we can correct for them, like a pilot who is trained to rely on his instruments rather than his faulty perceptions when flying in heavy cloud.

Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production.

[…]

On many left lists, in the West in particular, if you talk about the unsustainability of current human population and consumption, you are often labelled a "neo-Malthusean" and further, an enemy of the common folks and an advocate of population control of the worst kind. A popular modern version of this debate is the Simon-Ehrlich wager, between conservative economist Simon and eco-activistic (and in that sense leftist) biologist Ehrlich; the twist being that it is the conservative who argues against any dangers posed by human population. For the record, Ehrlich lost that wager handily.

Ehrlich offered a newer list of criteria that Simon found unnacceptable (see link above). What is interesting about the new list is that Ehrlich finally starts thinking outside the [human] consumption trap (and the rephrasing of the issue as one of the effects of human consumption).

Recently, biologist Eric Pianka, at the University of Texas, has been in hot water over his own doomsday predictions about disease and death among human populations. I do not know the background of this guy and his affiliations. However, the following note from his website is an excellent argument of why human arrogance and ignorance, in this context, are morally repugnant.

What nobody wants to hear, but everyone needs to know
Eric R. Pianka

I have two grandchildren and I want them to inherit a stable Earth. But I fear for them. Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. We are behaving like bacteria growing on an agar plate, flourishing until natural limits are reached or until another microbe colonizes and takes over, using them as their resource. In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don't want to hear it.

Population crashes caused by disease have happened many times in the past. In the 1330s bubonic plague killed one third of the people in Europe's crowded cities. Smallpox and measles decimated Native Americans when Europeans transported them to the new world. HIV is a relatively new disease wreaking havoc in Africa and Asia. Another population crash is inevitable, but the next one will probably be world-wide.

People think unrealistically because they have lost touch with the natural world. Many people today do not really know where and how our food is produced, and on what our life support systems are based. As we continue paving over natural habitats, many think that we can disrupt and despoil the environment indefinitely. We have already taken half of this planet's land surface. Per capita shares of all the things that really matter (air, food, soil, and water) are continuously falling. Our economic system is based on the principle of a chain letter: growth, growth, and more growth. Such runaway growth only expands a bubble that cannot be sustained in a finite world. We are running out of virtually everything from oil, food and land to clean air and water.

Some politicians, economists, and corporations want us to believe that technology will come to our rescue. But we have a false sense of security if we think that science can respond quickly enough to minimize threats from emerging diseases. Microbes have such short lifecycles that they can evolve exceedingly fast, much faster than we can respond to them. Many bacteria have evolved resistance to most antibiotics, and viruses are resistant to just about anything. Defense always lags behind offense. So far, modern humans have just been lucky. A reactive approach to problems isn't enough, we also need to be proactive and anticipate problems before they become too severe to keep them from getting out of control.Many people believe that Earth and all its resources exist solely for human benefit and consumption, this is anthropocentrism. We should allow the millions of other denizens of this Earth some space to live — they evolved here just as we did and have a right to this planet, too.

I do not bear any ill will toward humanity. However, I am convinced that the world WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us. Simply stopping the destruction of rainforests would help mediate some current planetary ills, including the release of previously unknown pathogens. The ancient Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" comes to mind — we are living in one of the most interesting times humans have ever experienced. For example, consider the manifold effects of global warming. We need to make a transition to a sustainable world. If we don't, nature is going to do it for us in ways of her own choosing. By definition, these ways will not be ours and they won't be much fun. Think about that.

While he may be temporarily (or even entirely) wrong on the predictions about disease, he is (IMHO) absolutely right on human crowding out of other species, human faith on technology, and in particular our attitude towards the world and how we "consume" it. It is fashionable today (within the left) to dismiss this sort of thing as "new age" sentimentality or "primitivism". The argument deserves more respect.

In an NYT Op-Ed piece, Matthew Pearl talks about the recent Larry Summers eviction at Harvard and ties it to larger historical developments. He starts out normally enough:

How the Liberal Arts Got That Way - New York Times
By MATTHEW PEARL

BEFORE Lawrence Summers announced his resignation as president of Harvard on Tuesday, the last upheaval of equal magnitude at the university was 140 years ago. That older drama was perhaps the most consequential episode in the history of American higher education; one that not only created the institution where a Larry Summers could flourish as a graduate student and professor, but oddly also laid the seeds of his presidential breakdown.

Except there is already a hint of the paradox that is about to be manufactured. And that hint is in the insertion of the word ‘oddly’. Which permits Pearl to (after outlining the emancipating liberalism of Harvard’s history) go on to:

In a long-gestating paradox, however, the very changes that freed Eliot to renovate Harvard with a more independent and egalitarian framework also did in Larry Summers by leaving Harvard presidents without an identifiable constituency or a body to which, in the end, he may be said to answer. The president could no longer concentrate on pleasing the finite body of individuals who approved and could censure him. From Eliot’s term onward, each president had to be acutely aware of negotiating between competing and in many cases incompatible demands from the various factions — the administrative governing boards, the faculty, the students, the alumni, the donors and those holding the federal purse strings.

What are the changes Pearl is alluding to (that freed Eliot)? He lists a whole lot in the passages leading up to this one. Student resistance is one. Advances in the sciences is another. Yet another is a law shaking up the Board of Overseers. Let us assume it is all of the above changes that “freed” Eliot, as president, to “usher in large-scale reforms”. Now these same changes, Pearl seems to claim, led to Summers being answerable to all and hence not in possession of the freedom for large-scale reform that Eliot enjoyed. This, I guess, is the paradox.

Except it rests on the question of what the changes were and whether they provided freedom for Eliot to perform arbitrary large-scale reform, or more reasonably, gave him the backing to carry out meaningful reforms? In other words, the “tide of liberalism” empowered Eliot to carry out the very changes that the liberalism rightfully demanded. The case of Summers is quite the opposite, for he was not attempting to create a “renaissance of the liberal arts” but to shout them down into a submissive role (to himself and to his pet notions). His actions were to push back against the “tide of liberalism” and towards more traditional notions, and it is no paradox that he was done in by his regressive actions, which were repulsed by the progressive changes that empowered Eliot.

The laments of the various reductionists in Biology (EP, Sociobiology, Cognitivei science, etc) by appeal to the injustice of suppression of radical new ideas by the establishment is a parody of real anti-establishment ideas that faced persecution. Not only are these ideas anything but radical (one does not need to look as high as Harvard presidents to find negative speculation on the abilities of women), they are no different (in their reasoning) from the twisted usage of the Bush crowd of notions such as whistle-blowing (which they use to defend their man Libby’s leaking of a CIA operative) or supporting the troops.

Pearl reveals his own axe shortly thereafter, in the article:

The Harvard experience had long ago been liberated from politics in its most concrete attachment — that tie to the Massachusetts Legislature — but it has been politicized in a different way, subjected to the realm of public politics and opinion.

Aha! Public politics and opinion we learn is what did old Larry in. Not surprisingly, Pearl seems to employ the same twist of logic I outlined above, for the truth is that Larry’s politics and opinion is what did him in.

Rigour is often confused with toughness and it is only a short leap from there to machismo. We are urged to accept various theories not on the basis of rigourous proof or reasoned argument, but through what is the equivalent of “deal with it”. The left, forever afraid of being seen wussy, is often first to turn on its own with calls for accepting the “reality”, with the palliative that the “is” does not hinder the “ought”. Hence we have the scientistic attacks on postmodern philosophy, the examples from previous entries on neo-darwinism, the claims of dearly departed Larry Summers of Harvard about the innate disabilities of women, and so on down the road that leads to Joe Leiberman’s [what should not be] dismaying abandonment of his party.

In that category lies the repeated need to see human beings as a predatory and carnivorous species. Glorious male hunters showed us the way, and such anomalies as feminism or vegetarianism are sentimental niceties… never mind the inconclusive, or better, nuanced reality presented by actual data. These tough images need sustenance and that comes in the form of macho rhetoric and selective analysis and presentation of the data: when is the last time you saw a lion cub die in a nature show, except of course the rare segment where they are killed by the even more macho alpha male lion, despite the fact that a whole lot of them die within the first six months of life? On the other hand, there is no dearth of footage of fawns getting slaughtered by the predator of the moment? One must not get sentimental about baby Bambi!

Once in a while, a bit of different analysis or data makes it into the mainstream, challenging the macho stories, and I confess it amuses me greatly to be able to forward or quote them:

BBC NEWS | Predators ‘drove human evolution’:
Predators ‘drove human evolution’
By Paul Rincon

The popular view of our ancient ancestors as hunters who conquered all in their way is wrong, researchers have told a major US science conference.

Instead, they argue, early humans were on the menu for predatory beasts.

This may have driven humans to evolve increased levels of co-operation, according to their theory.

Despite humankind’s considerable capacity for war and violence, we are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.

James Rilling, at Emory University in Atlanta, US, has been using brain imaging techniques to investigate the biological mechanisms behind co-operation.

He has imaged the brains of people playing a game under experimental conditions that involved choosing between co-operation and non-co-operation.

From the parts of the brain that were activated during the game, he found that mutual co-operation is rewarding; people reacted negatively when partners did not co-operate.

Dr Rilling also discovered that his subjects seemed to have enhanced memory for those people that did not reciprocate in the experiment.

[…]

There is a certain vulnerability, of over-reaching, in acts of triumphalism that robs the agent of his well-deserved preening (we saw some of that in the fall of Bush (at least in popularity) in short order after proclamations of a ‘mandate’). There was a time when Selfish Gene theorists and other reductionists were somewhat of establishment outsiders and also not favourable with the public. EP and Sociobiology proponents fought hard to reach their current Amazon.com sales rank (Edward Wilson had to endure water being poured on him by indignant students, for instance), and with their most outspoken critic now safely in his grave, it is only natural and deserving that they enjoy the limelight to knock off a few mighty tomes of overarching wisdom.

But as the Eastwood character said in ‘Unforgiven’, it does seem to be not about deserving, at least over at the NYT Book Review, where old Dennett, all around AI and Neo-Darwinism groupie, gets a spanking in a review of his own take on Religion (following Edward Wilson’s attempt at it a few years ago). Read on (and click through) for an entertaining review that almost redeems TNR.

But before I let you proceed to the review, i have to say that I am quite tickled by the reviewer’s identification of scientism and materialism as the force behind some of these lines of thought. I am tickled because I have sitting in the drafts (for this blog) a festering rant about the American Left that ties into some of this stuff. It is particularly funny, to me, that Wieseltier (the reviewer) says:

Dennett’s book is also a document of the intellectual havoc of our infamous polarization, with its widespread and deeply damaging assumption that the most extreme statement of an idea is its most genuine statement. Dennett lives in a world in which you must believe in the grossest biologism or in the grossest theism, in a purely naturalistic understanding of religion or in intelligent design, in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in 19th-century England or in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in the sky.

Funny because I was thinking of some parts of the left and their own omniscient white man with a long beard… ;-). But that is another blog post…

The God Genome

‘Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,’ by Daniel C. Dennett
Review by LEON WIESELTIER
Published: February 19, 2006

THE question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett’s book. “Breaking the Spell” is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.

The orthodoxies of evolutionary psychology are all here, its tiresome way of roaming widely but never leaving its house, its legendary curiosity that somehow always discovers the same thing. The excited materialism of American society — I refer not to the American creed of shopping, according to which a person’s qualities may be known by a person’s brands, but more ominously to the adoption by American culture of biological, economic and technological ways of describing the purposes of human existence — abounds in Dennett’s usefully uninhibited pages. And Dennett’s book is also a document of the intellectual havoc of our infamous polarization, with its widespread and deeply damaging assumption that the most extreme statement of an idea is its most genuine statement. Dennett lives in a world in which you must believe in the grossest biologism or in the grossest theism, in a purely naturalistic understanding of religion or in intelligent design, in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in 19th-century England or in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in the sky.

In his own opinion, Dennett is a hero. He is in the business of emancipation, and he reveres himself for it. “By asking for an accounting of the pros and cons of religion, I risk getting poked in the nose or worse,” he declares, “and yet I persist.” Giordano Bruno, with tenure at Tufts! He wonders whether religious people “will have the intellectual honesty and courage to read this book through.” If you disagree with what Dennett says, it is because you fear what he says. Any opposition to his scientistic deflation of religion he triumphantly dismisses as “protectionism.” But people who share Dennett’s view of the world he calls “brights.” Brights are not only intellectually better, they are also ethically better. Did you know that “brights have the lowest divorce rate in the United States, and born-again Christians the highest”? Dennett’s own “sacred values” are “democracy, justice, life, love and truth.” This rigs things nicely. If you refuse his “impeccably hardheaded and rational ontology,” then your sacred values must be tyranny, injustice, death, hatred and falsehood. Dennett is the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name; and in a new era of American obscurantism, this is not helpful.

[…]

What’s up with the dudes with big white beards, anyway?