Last month, journalist Chris Hedges appeared on /Point of Inquiry/ to attack Sam Harris et al. It’s a truly impressive gob of stupidity. All of the following quotes were taken from the first 12 minutes.
*Fundamentalism as a mindset:*
It’s how they define themselves, and the world view that they adopt, and the system that they place it in, which, you know, along with the Christian Right, entails a fundamentalist mindset.
The phrase “fundamentalist mindset” gets hammered several more times throughout the interview. The problem? This just isn’t want “fundamentalist” means. The term derives from “the fundamentals,” statements issued c. 1900 of the fundamentals of orthodox Christianity, which were believed to be under attack by their proponents. The most important of these was belief in Biblical inerrancy. Because many people think these beliefs (mainly inerrancy, also end-times beliefs) are crazy, fundamentalism got a bad name. Whether it deserves a bad name is a matter of debate; I come down on the “fundamentalism is crazy” side of that divide.
Though fundamentalism was originally defined in a Christian context, it’s reasonable enough to extend it to other systems where analogous beliefs exist (i.e. Islam and inerrancy of the Koran). But where the hell does “fundamentalism is a mindset” come from? I can only think of one thing: it’s a way for apologists for fundamentalism to distract attention away from the question of whether fundamentalism makes any sense, and pain those who criticize fundamentalism for straightforward reasons (i.e. inerrancy is crazy) as no different than their targets, even though the differences are pretty obvious.
It is elevating ourselves to a higher moral plane, and relegating others to positions of moral inferiority.[Quote a bit later:] It is the elevation of us, it is the adoption of our particular and narrow values as universal values which must be accepted by everyone else, and if they don’t accept it then they must be silenced or eradicated.
As far as I can tell here, Hedges is taking for granted the crudest, dumbest form of moral relativism available: there are no moral absolutes, and we absolutely morally must be respectful of that. The position is so obviously self-defeating it’s hard to believe anyone could hold it, but I can’t think of any other interpretation of what Hedges is saying. I can’t help but feel that there has to be a less-dumb version of moral relativism out there, somewhere, which is why this section is headed relativism 1.0: if someone brings a more intelligent version of moral relativism to my attention, I want to be able to take account of it. (Note: I am already aware of the idea of moral nihilism, which, while involving a rejection of morality, doesn’t try to be annoyingly moralistic at the same time.)
Think of what Hedges is really saying when he says you can’t elevate yourselves above other people. This means that you have no right to think yourself more moral than someone who believes in killing women if they try to exercise any sexual autonomy from men who think it their right to control them, killing gays if they they happen to be gay, cutting up the genitals of little girls, and killing anyone who dares present these beliefs in a mildly negative light. Of course, Hedges can’t come right out and say this is what he’s advocating, so we get the next two pieces of nonsense…
It is an embrace of catastrophic, even apocalyptic violence, as a cleansing agent to remove human impediments towards, if not a perfected world, a world made more perfect. Sam Harris, in his book /The End of Faith/ asks us to consider carrying out a nuclear first strike on the Arab world.
Reality check: nowhere does Sam Harris declare violence is a great cleansing agent. Nowhere does Christopher Hitchens declare violence a great cleansing agent. It should be even more obvious that Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett don’t take this view.
As for the nuking Muslims thing? Harris brings it up, to immediately say it would be an absolutely reprehensible thing to do. The thrust of the overall passage is that religion could land us in a situation where there are no good options.
In short, Hedges is committing the fallacy popularly known as making a straw-man attack, and known to philosophers under it’s technical name, making stuff up. (For bonus points: in the quote under “moral relativism,” notice how Hedges equates thinking some moral views are better than others with thinking those who hold hasty views must be exterminated.)
I would substitute the word “intensity” for “racist.”
Most of what I have to say on this bogus racism accusation I’ve already said before. It is interesting to note that Hedges would probably consider my last target on this, Larry / The Barefoot Bum, a racist because as a general matter Larry isn’t a fan of Islam. Also, if Sam Harris is a racist, why is he campaigning to defend the speaking and writing career of a black woman?
Unlike them I do accept plurality, I do understand that there is no absolute truth, I grasp that there are other ways of being, believing, and thinking, that are just as legitimate as our own, maybe even in some cases more legitimate…
Let’s see Mr. Hedges, is this view the truth? Of course it’s not, it’s even more clearly self-defeating than his views on morality.
That’s all for now, folks. Of course, there’s plenty more stupidity out there to dissect, but that’s all for now.
Am I the only one who thinks his comments on ethics and on truth sound a lot like Rorty?
Yeah. Someday I’ll ready Rorty for just that reason. Not that Rorty’s name lends all that much credibility to the view–plenty of professional philosophers are just flabbergasted that another philosopher would say the things he’s said.
Granted. But, it might account for where Hedges got the ideas from. After all, for a time, Rorty was extremely popular. His name still gets invoked by guys who came up through philosophy in the late ’70′s/early 80′s. In my experience, it’s those who came after that period who find Rorty hard to take seriously.
The thing about that interview which really irritated me was how he equivocated as to whether human beings have made any moral progress. First he says that we’ve made none and then, when Grothe gives an example, Hedges would say, “Yeah, but it we can go backwards.”
if someone brings a more intelligent version of moral relativism to my attention, I want to be able to take account of it.
Are you aware of moral non-cognitivism, which in brief holds that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same? So if I see you beating up an innocent man for fun, and I intervene to stop you, I do so not because I am in the absolute right and you in the absolute wrong, but because I am acting according to what I find moral, and my morals don’t give a damn about the fact that you’re doing just the same.
Yup, am aware of it, though didn’t give it much thought in writing this post–in the context of popular discourse, it seems to obscure to be what any Hedges-style lefties have in mind when they talk about morality. (Though if you do know of any instances where noncognitivism seems to be influencing public discourse, those would be interesting to see.)