outsidein

• Sharia good, religious dress bad?

  November 19, 2009 @ 11:13 pm | by Bryan

  This story is hilarious! Talk about money making the world go around!

  The French are unapologetic about not having much time for that silly concept that others call multiculturalism. If you’re an immigrant who is granted the privilege of living in France, they by golly you will assimilate. And they’re pretty consistent. While the British liked to keep a safe distance from their colonial subjects once upon a time, the French bandied around the concept of assimilation. Not only where they on a mission to plunder and enlighten like their British counterparts, the French were also determined to create mini Frenchmen and women in distant lands.

  True to this insistence on assimilation, France has been particularly hostile to the idea of religious dress in public. This hostility, stems in part, from fears that one day the country may be overrun by cultures that are distinctly non-French, and with catastrophic results - like the imposition of Sharia law. With one exception … money.

  Islam, like the other monotheistic religions, frowns upon the idea that greed is good. Sharia law institutionalises the belief that exploitative money-lending is bad. So much so, there are investment products know as sharia-compliant assets. Unsurprisingly, these are doing really well in the current economic climate. Also unsurprisingly, like most countries today, France would be more than happy to host and facilitate profitable enterprise. So guess what assimilationist France decided to do?

  That’s right, the country has made room for enough sharia to be introduced into its own law in a bid to secure ‘Muslim money’. I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Cash is universal. A multicultural law that facilitates the inflow of cultureless cash is harmless. A veil in a public university on the other hand, is a completely different story. That could lead to Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’, couldn’t it?

  So the moral of the story is introduce bits of sharia, but whatever you do, don’t allow the ‘exotic’ religious dress? Wow.

  Comments (9)

• Prostitution

  November 18, 2009 @ 1:46 pm | by Bryan

  Ordinarily, prostitution isn’t a subject I’d give very much thought. But lately, it seems that wherever I go, there’s a radio interview, newspaper article, or some other form of discussion on the subject. Worse, the prevailing consensus seems to be that it’s not that big a deal, it’s a great way to fund an education, and since it comes down to (ideally) a transaction between two consenting adults, what’s the problem?

  Maybe it’s a natural consequence of pluralism. If you live in a plural society and have qualms about dominating, or imposing your views and values on others, you have one of two choices. You can engage in a messy process of trying to reach some consensus with groups as diverse as ultra-conservative religious types, to ultra-liberal modern day hippies. Or, you can just decide that unless the majority’s absolute basic, minimum values are transgressed (eg the right to and protection of private property), everyone can basically do whatever they want. And in an age in which morbid voyeurism is accepted - no, encouraged and supported by advertising revenue - is it really surprising that celebrity prostitution is the fad of the day? What’s more, what has reality TV taught us if not the lesson that if celebrities can do it, the rest of us can jolly well give the same thing a bash - be that singing, dancing, just being on tv … and who knows, maybe even having sex for money.

  This is where I get stuck - or where the railway track that is my thinking in this area comes to an abrupt stop. On one hand, I am a weak cultural relativist. I really think that to a large degree, morality is culturally worked out and that what ultimately defines imperialism is the imposition of one’s thinking on another. I think groups should have the right to deliberate internally and articulate their own values how they see fit. I also think that individual rights must sometimes give way to the rights of the collective. But what happens when the collective is as radically heterogenous as today’s European state? Is it possible to have a large deliberative process that could legitimately come up with a set of moral values we could all live with, that go beyond, “Don’t judge me, I won’t judge you, and we’ll all do whatever we like?”

  In Iran, you can come to some consensus on morality based on religion. In Malawi, based on culture. In the US, on the myth of the ‘founding fathers’, who even those of non-European descent invoke. Here?

  Does my support of pluralism, and my insistence on a form of relativism, deny me the right to call for the continued criminalisation of prostitution? Does my position grant me enough room to object to certain things on the grounds of ‘values’?

  Comments (21)

• A thought

  November 16, 2009 @ 1:26 pm | by Bryan

  Describing the process by which changes in social definitions of equality lead to conflict, Michael Walzer wrote the following:

  Some group of men and women - class, caste, strata, estate, alliance, or social formation - comes to enjoy a monopoly or a near monopoly of some dominant good; or, a coalition of groups comes to enjoy, and so on. This dominant good is more or less systematically converted into all sorts of other things - opportunities, powers, and reputations. So wealth is seized by the strong, honor by the wellborn, office by the well educated. Perhaps the ideology that justifies the seizure is widely believed to be true. But resentment and resistance are (almost) as pervasive as belief. There are always some people, and after a time there are a great many, who think the seizure is not justice but usurpation. The ruling group does not possess, or does not uniquely possess, the qualities it claims; the conversion process violates the common understanding of the goods at stake. Social conflict is intermittent, or it is endemic; at some point, counterclaims are put forward - Walzer, M. 1983, Spheres of Justice.

  This idea casts an interesting light on the conflict in today’s Ireland (over who should shoulder what proportion of the burden of economic recovery), don’t you think?

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• Why pretend?

  November 11, 2009 @ 11:46 pm | by Bryan

  The last post, Serfs and aristocrats, has got me wondering if there’s a real commitment out there to global solidarity that exists beyond the confines of a few small organisations and the odd home here and there. There’s definitely a formal commitment to the idea that we are all people, and as such, we care about each others’ lot. But in practice, is it any more real than the idea a Father Christmas or Santa who gives presents to good kids and lumps of coal to naughty ones?

  Today, Limerick’s mayor suggested that EU citizens in Ireland who are made redundant and are unable to find employment within 3 months should be deported. Councillor Kevin Kiely’s suggestion has already been widely condemned, but I’m not so sure it can just be dismissed as the foolishness of a bigot or the myopia of a man with a particularly selective view of the world. When all is said and done, self-interest seems to trump warm, fuzzy notions of solidarity and our shared humanity.

  Attitudes towards global poverty, unemployed non-Irish Europeans, the poor (even during the years of plenty) and the distribution of the burdens of the recession all point to a commitment to the individual regardless of the cost to the collective. Maybe the early social contract theorists were right. Maybe people, by nature, tend towards a state of war and the majority only put up with the idea of a collective, or society, for expediency’s sake.

  If that’s the case, then why the pretence? Why entertain the idea that we really do care about the hardships endured by others? If I’ve got things completely wrong, then how come there’s so much evidence to the contrary?

  Comments (19)

• Serfs and aristocrats

  November 10, 2009 @ 1:38 pm | by Bryan

  

  At the launch of From The Republic of Conscience in the National Library last night were Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International’s Irish section, former president Mary Robinson, and poet Seamus Heaney.
  Photograph: Aidan Crawley.

  Former President Mary Robinson is reported to have said that

  …the question of overseas aid was “no longer a them and us” question. “If you add it to climate there’s an interconnection . . . We’re going to be all in this together because we need to reduce the emissions across the world. It’s a really interconnected future until 2050. The future of the poorest is also our children’s and our grandchildren’s future.”

  I wonder how many people believe that. I know I’m not completely sold.

  Is there an interconnection? Absolutely. People in places like Ireland and the United States aren’t just concerned about the emissions from China’s factories out of concern for Chinese workers. The effects of climate change aren’t limited to the source of the human activity responsible for the causal environmental damage. That said, isn’t it curious that while most of us would rather the Chinese didn’t do anything that jeopardises our future, we’re still very happy with the fact that we have access to cheap manufactured goods? The world may be interconnected in some ways, but I suspect that the future of the poorest will be as removed from that of the wealthy as is currently the case.

  There’s a fascinating dichotomy in the realm of global interconnectedness. On one hand, there are the areas in which everyone seems happy to be related. Climate change is a perfect example. The human rights arena an even better one. Climate change is a no-brainer because simple self-interest dictates that I should care about something that could have disastrous consequences for me, regardless of who is doing it. Human rights are more complicated. Provided that countries like Ireland don’t have to accommodate plane loads of refugees, and that export markets aren’t significantly affected, it’s hard to see how self-interest could possible be the driving force behind a concern for the rights of women in Benin.

  Then there is the other side of the coin. If there really is this interconnectedness, what are my responsibilities? If climate change really is a shared challenge; if it is primarily the product of human industrial and commercial activity; if the benefits of that activity predominantly accrue to one group of people and the burdens to another - surely some sort of redistribution and overall commitment to getting by on less is required? But take note, no OECD country has decided to redistribute wealth to the ‘bottom billion’ by implementing a drastic national tax (ideally a tax that would also drastically reduce consumption so that those in poor countries could increase theirs without threatening the environment). Similarly, with human rights, if we value them that much, if we think that poor women in Benin are due the inalienable rights enjoyed by those in liberal Western democracies, then why is it virtually impossible for those same women to get access into an OECD country? And it’s not the illiberal state of Benin that denies them this access, but the liberal, human rights-championing OECD democracies.

  The future of the poorest is also our children’s and our grandchildren’s future.

  No it’s not. Not so long ago I heard a political scientist refer to the ordinary citizens of rich nations as the aristocrats of the world. He was right. The world is still very much a ‘them’ and ‘us’ place. The definitions determining who constitutes ‘them’ and ‘us’ may be more fluid today than in past, but the future of the serf is still likely to be serfdom. That of the aristocrat, provided the established order of things doesn’t change, will likely be aristocracy.

  Comments (10)

• Why are we marching?

  November 6, 2009 @ 4:40 pm | by Bryan

  

  Clockwise from top left, the routes and starting times of the protest marches in Galway, Dublin and Cork.

  I’m not sure how I feel about today’s planned marches. I’m a huge supporter of deliberative forms of governance. I also strongly believe in the right of people to protest and publicly register their collective sense of anger. But I have little time for meaningless gestures, and I fear today’s protests fall into that category.

  About 15 years ago Zimbabwe was a flawed, but generally prosperous country that looked like it had a bright future. Somewhere along the line, several big issues came up which polarised the nation. Instead of engaging in a deliberative process, both sides adopted a confrontational approach. National challenges were cast as consequences of the incompetence or callousness of one side or the other, leading to further polarisation and more aggressive confrontation. Fast foreward 15 years, and what was once a prosperous country now resembles a frail invalid who may never return to her previous state of health.

  People have all sorts of ideas about what went wrong in Zimbabwe, some of which have more merit than others. Whatever the other reasons, had the main protagonists actually engaged with each other, had they not gone down the easy road of confrontation but had tried to work things out, the country would, at the very least, be far healthier than it is today.

  That’s Zimbabwe. What has that to do with demonstrations across Ireland? I think the same principles apply. Why are people protesting? If you were to give the gathering in Dublin or Galway a magic wand, or better still the authority of the cabinet, what would they do with the power? Are these protests simply an expression of anger, or is there a substantive underlying demand? I’m all for simple displays of anger, but then what? Do the protesters want a general election to be held in order to elect new leadership? Is the fall of the present government the aim? Do they support a specific set of economic policy recommendations? If so, have all the consequences been thought out and debated?

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the protesters and organisers are the bad guys, or that the cabinet are the unappreciated good guys, any more than I think Zimbabwe’s government had an open door policy 15 years ago. But shouting across the room at the person who is ignoring you probably isn’t going to get them to take a serious look at your recommendations. In fact, the more time and energy are invested into shouting and ignoring, the less that goes towards thought, deliberation and problem solving.

  I don’t understand - maybe it;s just human nature. People, in both their private and public spheres, don’t like to address things directly. We’re broke, and resources that are there are distributed unevenly. Rather than debating how those resources should be distributed, how benefits and burdens should be shared, and what distributional outcomes political, economic, social and legal process should lead to, we fight over specific cases like NAMA, or Brendan Drumm’s pay. NAMA was a bad idea, Drumm shouldn’t have got that bonus, but both are inconsequential when compared to the need to deliberatively establish a national vision, and a plan by which to get there.

  If I could pass one law, it might be that every high school student be made to watch Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and then to write an essay entitled On the futility of Buggin’ Out.

  Comments (16)

• Of crucifixes and rights

  November 4, 2009 @ 1:24 pm | by Bryan

  The European Court of Human Rights has decided that having crucifixes up all over the place in Italian schools denies some people their rights. In the Court’s words, “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions.”

  Hmmmm…… Where to begin? This verdict makes a strong case for cultural relativism.

  Very broadly speaking, human rights can be viewed in two ways. Universalists believe that rights are universal standards that should apply to all people, in all settings, regardless of the cultural context. Cultural relativists, while not necessarily denying the existence of absolute moral standards (or acknowledging them in some cases), believe that those standards are socially and culturally construed, so that the fundamental rights in one place will not necessarily be the same as those in another.

  So take the issue of religious pluralism, a value I hold to. If you sit on the bench of the European Court of Human Rights you probably believe that the right to choose one’s own religion, or none at all, is a fundamental human right that trumps even the Italians’ proclivity for putting up crucifixes all over the place. If you’re Ayatollah Khamenei on the other hand, while you may also find crucifixes on classroom walls objectionable, it’s probably not because of a shared belief with a judge on the European Human Rights Court. I’m guessing the Supreme Leader, and many ordinary Iranians, would have a view on religious freedom that would make many universalist vomit. The thing is, I would identify myself as a weak relativist.

  Do I really want to align myself with Ayatollah Khamenei? Not if I can help it. But if we really hold to the right to self-determination, that has to include the right for people in other cultural contexts to consensually uphold values we disagree with. While this particular case may be more about the interpretation of rights rather than what the fundamental rights are themselves, it still highlights the merit of the cultural relativist argument. Italy should be able to work out its own value system based on the prevailing culture as well we the history of the country - ideally through a mass deliberative process. If when all is said and done the Italians still want t have crucifixes in schools, so be it.

  The idea of a court in Strasbourg interpreting the foundational values and their application in Italy is troubling. It’s not quite as troubling as the insistence that the whole world’s foundational values be based on a document that was put together by a handful of people in 1948. But it’s troubling all the same.

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• Halloween in Belfast

  November 2, 2009 @ 2:13 pm | by Bryan

  

  A fire juggling stiltwalker in the Colours Street Theatre Halloween parade in Galway city centre, October 31st. Photo:Joe O’Shaughnessy.

  Halloween in Belfast was for me, a night full of contradictions.

  According to Wikipedia (yes yes, I know it’s not the most reliable source of knowledge), Halloween is the offspring of pagan and Christian traditions. On the Christian side of the family, Halloween falls on the eve of All Saints Day, on which Christians in heaven are remembered. The next day in the Catholic calendar is All Souls Day, when the focus is on those still waiting to enter. On the pagan side, it is linked to Samhain, a Celtic festival that marked the end of the harvest; the end of the lighter half of the year and the beginning of the darker half.

  I find that history strangely comforting because looking around on Saturday night, I was struck by how many opposing things I thought I saw lying side-by-side. The first was the idea of dressing up as all sorts of spooky things in a country whose two main communities identify themselves as Catholic and Protestant. Maybe it’s because folks there actually believe in things like witchcraft and evil spirits, but you’d be hard pressed to find members of the African Christian community dressed as Beetlejuice. The two things, Beetlejuice and Christianity, are thought to be diametrically opposed.

  And then there were the fireworks. Have you ever thought you should be very afraid but then pretend to be unfazed because everyone around you is going about business as usual? That’s how the fireworks that I could hear but not see made me feel. The fact that there was the occasional siren in the background - not to mention police on foot patrol (in their bullet-proof vests) and standing besides vehicles that looked like they’d just returned from Basra Province - none of that helped. It was only made worse by the fact that no-one else took notice. Not only did they not take notice, they were happily lined up in their witch, ghost and Frankenstein costumes, patiently waiting to get into clubs.

  I suppose Halloween was odd for me because I kept seeing the wrong thing. When I looked at the guy dressed as a vampire, I saw the response his costume would have evoked in rural Zimbabwe, or the Vatican for that matter. The fireworks, the sirens, the police…

  My grandmother had some furniture ruined during Zimbabwe’s independence war. When I was young, I kept trying to get her to tell me what had happened and to talk about the past. She didn’t want to do that, she wanted to live in the present and focus on the future.

  I suppose a morbid fascination with the past is an outsiders prerogative. The owners of that past tend to prefer to leave it there.

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• Get rich, or die trying?

  October 29, 2009 @ 12:03 pm | by Bryan

  I had an interesting conversation in a Belfast classroom last night. A debate over which leads to a better society, individualism or something more communitarian, led to the question of national purpose.

  A self-identified Brit (who I think comes from somewhere in Northern Ireland) claimed that what separated the Britain of the past from other nations, like America or the Republic of Ireland, was that it used to have a sense of national purpose. A sense which, according to this individual, immigration has unfortunately undermined (I think that purpose was the expansion of empire, of which inward migration from acquired territories is a natural consequence, but that’s another debate).

  Do most nations have a sense of purpose? Is there a collective vision that the modern nation state subscribes to? Would that even be a good thing? In response to those questions, someone from Limerick claimed that Ireland did indeed have a collective purpose, he just couldn’t say exactly what that was.

  Another Irishman jumped in at that point. The nation’s collective purpose over the last few years, claimed Cillian, was, “Get rich, or die trying.”

  50-cent would have been proud.

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• Good news?

  October 28, 2009 @ 1:01 pm | by Bryan

  Today’s Irish Times poll asks the question, “Should cuts in social welfare be introduced in the forthcoming Budget?” Thus far, a surprising 62% believe that they should. Does that result reflect the socio-economic standing of the average Irish Times reader, online poll respondent, or the prevailing mood in the country?

  I’m surprised because I assume that few people in today’s job market are completely confident that they will have their current job this time next year; or that should they be made redundant, they will easily get alternative employment. That being the case, it seems reasonable to assume that even those who are currently employed are sympathetic to the plight of the jobless. Not only that, people who are currently employed could think of tax as a form of insurance against the loss of earnings that would follow future unemployment.

  So, if the employed are paying contributions towards the national safety net, and if there is a realistic chance that those same contributors will need that safety net in the not too distant future, why do 62% want to see a reduction in welfare benefits? Is there a national consensus on the desirability of income inequality? Does Ireland generally hold that the poor should be x% poorer than the person on the average industrial wage, so that if the average wage is falling, the income of a family on the dole should fall proportionately? I’m struggling to come up with rational explanations for the poll result. Surely in this economic environment hardly anyone believes that most people who are out of work find themselves in that position through idleness, do they? If it doesn’t serve the medium-term interests of the employed, and definitely not those of the unemployed, why do we want to see the dole payments reduced?

  A simple answer might be that we all agree that the payments are too high and the country can’t afford to maintain the social welfare budget. But that assumes (providing the poll reflects the national sentiment) that 62% of people in Ireland would voluntary opt for a smaller social welfare payment than is enjoyed today, should they be made redundant tomorrow. I doubt that’s the case.

  Maybe this poll is a cause for celebration. I can only assume it means that job security is much greater than I imagined. The only way that result makes sense to me is if the the bulk of that 62% doesn’t really think they’ll need to go on the dole tomorrow, or any time in the near future.

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