The last mention that Dawkins received on this blog – an incidental mention in an entry about something else – was, in my eyes, at least, a favourable one. I would have been happy never to mention Dawkins again. I don't actually go out of my way to find out stuff about him or anything; he just seems to be everywhere I turn at the moment. For instance, I was recently sent the three clips of the Bill Maher show that are posted in this entry, the second of which features a satellite-link interview with the man himself. Unfortunately, I have to say that, of all the material in the three clips, the appearance of Dawkins was, for me, a real low point.
Bill Maher asks Dawkins why he thinks his book, The God Delusion has become such a phenomenon. Dawkins's reply is:
I think people are getting a little bit fed up with other people thrusting their imaginary friends down their throat.
I've said this before, maybe it depends on what circles you move in, but there's absolutely no one thrusting imaginary friends down my throat. There are plenty of tools like Dawkins, though, telling me that I'm an idiot if I don't think exactly the same way they do, and become an atheist. Now, the thing is, I know this programme is a kind of comedy comment show, but elsewhere, even when it's humorous, the observation and comment on the show seems to be pretty sharp. Here, by contrast, the sharpest it gets is mention of 'imaginary friends' and 'talking snakes'. Is this really the level of Dawkins's critique of religion (and Bill Maher loses a few points in my estimation here, too, but he is American)? I honestly can't understand why anyone would think this guy has anything new or cutting edge to say on the subject. The observation here is neither particularly sharp nor particularly funny. It's the same, tired old line about, "What, believe in some old bloke with a big white beard sitting on a cloud?" Maybe I really am underestimating the number of people in the world who actually do believe in an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud, or in a talking snake in the Garden of Eden, and underestimating the level of their power and influence in the world, but if such beliefs are not beyond the playground level of mental development (and I don't mean that in a good way), then neither is Dawkins's criticism here. There's a line from Nietzsche that goes: "Whomever goes to fight monsters should take care not to become a monster himself. And when you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you." I basically feel that this is what has already happened to Dawkins. He has become as shallow and literal in his analysis as the fundamentalists he has chosen for his enemy. God help me, therefore, if I stare too long into the shallow abyss of Richard Dawkins.
He then goes on to repeat what he's said before, in different words, about his agnosticism (which to him is immediately atheism) with regard to 'fairies' and 'pink unicorns'. Again, really cutting edge stuff. Why not mention the tooth fairy and Father Christmas while you're at it? Anyway, I like fairies. I like pink unicorns. In theory. It might depend on the individual fairy or pink unicorn, of course. I don't know what on Earth Dawkins has got against these very lovely creatures. I'd certainly rather spend my time with them than with a boring old git like him. Perhaps you think that it's not the point whether you like these things or not. No, Dawkins is, through these unimaginative conjurations of the imagination, trying to evoke the 'common sense' assumption that they don't exist. He is trying to plug into your common sense, your assumptions, and make them his own, therefore leading you to hear everything he says simply as one of your own 'common sense' assumptions. This has nothing to do with thinking or wanting you to think. It's a method of browbeating you into agreement. "If you don't think like me," his message goes, "you might as well believe in fairies and pink unicorns. And you wouldn't want that, because that would be really doolally pip." So he raises the cudgel of fear. Do you dare defy the Dawkins and be a weirdo? Well, I would much prefer that to being Richard Dawkins.
Here's a poem by Kaneko Misuzu that I translated some years back:
Things not Seen
What happened while you slept?
Pale pink petals fell
As rain in heaps on your bed.
You opened your eyes and they vanished.
Nobody ever saw them,
But who can say it's a lie?
What happened when you blinked?
Pegasus spread his white wings,
And faster than a white-feathered arrow
Disappeared into the blue.
Nobody ever saw it,
But who can say it's a lie?
Who is more imaginative? Kaneko Misuzu, or Dawkins? Who more intelligent? Who more fun to be with? My answer, to all of those questions, based on the evidence, would be Misuzu.
Another quote from Dawkins, referring to his book, The God Delusion:
If this book works as I intend, readers who open it will be atheist when they put it down.
Dawkins even, apparently, has a section on his website called 'Converts Corner'. He is looking for converts. What a cunt. Sorry, Dawkins, but your book has not had the desired effect on me. It has had almost the opposite effect. I have more sympathy with religion after reading your writing on the subject and hearing you talk about it than before.
You know, I very often feel like maybe I'm being unreasonable with the things I say on my blog, or going too far or something, and I like to try and re-evaluate things, and I was softening towards Dawkins and thinking I'd probably been a complete prick, and then I'm confronted with something like this and I think, "Christ, perhaps I'm not as wrong as I always assume myself to be." But the thing is, I don't want to be right, anyway. I just want to be able to be myself, some doolally pip fairy-lover, or whatever. Please, by all means, think I'm wrong about everything. It would probably even take a lot of pressure off me if you did. Unlike Dawkins, I'm not looking for converts.
Now that they've been asked to think about it… they realise that they've been atheists all along.
What Dawkins says from this point onwards applies to me in reverse. For ages I didn't realise it was okay not to be an atheist. I thought somehow it wasn't respectable.
It is okay, though. It's okay.
Justin Isis writes:
In America, religion really is big. I mean, even just last year, I was with an American girl in Tokyo who refused to enter a Shinto shrine because she thought Jesus would be offended. And this religiosity is tied up with a certain political and cultural outlook. In England people might not be getting imaginary friends rammed down tbeir throat, but in a small town in the U.S. it’s pretty different. I just say this because I grew up in an area where Christianity was no joking matter and saw various people get born again, completely changing their personality and friends (usually, they became a lot more humorless). Or in a Southeast Asian country, if you try doing something creatively that treats Islam in a less than respectful fashion, you’ll get taken out pretty quickly. That said though, I think it just makes Dawkins’ position all the more ludicrous, since I’m sure he’s never had any firsthand experience with this sort of thing. I doubt he takes much shit from fundamentalists in his job as an Oxford science lecturer or whatever. If you look at someone like Marilyn Manson, given his background, I can understand why he picks the fights he does. But I think Dawkins is just being an asshole and picking a fight pretty far removed from home. I’d tell him to try going to Saudi Arabia or Iran or Afghanistan and try to fight religion there. I’m sure he’d find more than enough people to go up against rather than playing it safe in the liberal West. I’ll always have sympathy for people who have been legitimately fucked over by monotheism, but Dawkins really is just the atheist counterpart of the kind of fundamentalist he claims to hate. Which is…really pretty strange, when you think about it.
Yes, there’s nothing I’d disagree with there. My only worry is that, if Dawkins has turned into the atheist fundamentalist, that I am turning into the anti-Dawkins fundamentalist, and that the chain will thus carry on forever to enslave us. Like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m99ybtk4QNsLast time I was in America I did have a strong sense that people generally were taking things far too seriously. I wonder if that’s related to religion or something.
Incidentally, I found Christopher Hitchens much more personable when he was on the Bill Maher show, although I did glaze over a bit at the usual spiel.
“In America, religion really is big. I mean, even just last year, I was with an American girl in Tokyo who refused to enter a Shinto shrine because she thought Jesus would be offended.”Just felt like adding something about this. When I was in Taiwan, I’d gone for some reason to some part of Taipei that was out of my way. Can’t for the life of me remember why. Anyway, an American guy very helpfully showed me the way back to the train station (he was going that way), and was going to get on the train before mine. His parting shot to me was a remark about how there were so many barbarians on the island who needed to be converted to Chritianity. That, to me, was a greater culture shock than anything I’d encountered in the indigenous culture. I hate missionaries.I just wanted to say, though, that my reference to Bill Maher being American was really about this point. Unlike Dawkins, he probably has good reason to be entrenched in this battle, because it’s America. I realised my off-hand comment there about him being American could have been taken as a gratuituous put-down, and that people would probably think I was just being a cunt, but I couldn’t be bothered to explain at that time. I just thought, “Well, they do anyway, because I am.”I’m not sure how worried I should be that people will wilfully misinterpret what I’ve said and take me to be some kind of religionist. I mean, there are some people, I’m sure, who would only be satisified if I mouthed all of Dawkins’s sentiments on cue, but I don’t want to give them that satisfaction. I’ve gone right off the guy. And all this… “If you’re not with us you’re against us” kind of stuff. I hate that. Okay, I’m against you.But just to make it sparklingly clear, in case anyone out there is going to try and misunderstand me – You don’t need religion. You don’t need the church. You don’t need a guru. You don’t need Richard Dawkins.Also, I’ll state something else obvious. It should be plain that I’m not looking for converts, because – apart from anything else – I’ve got nothing to convert people to. What am I going to try and force them to ‘believe’ in? My wavering moods and caprices? Richard Dawkins does have something to convert people to, and that simple fact speaks volumes. Of course, he’ll deny till the end of his days that he’s religious, but he’s a damn sight more religious in his attitudes than I am, and that’s why I called him a cunt. Very immature of me, I’m sure. Anyway, it’s clear that he’s never going to develop or change his mind about anything. Ideally, of course, a group of specially trained gibbons should break softly into my bedroom window and stab me to death with curare-tipped compasses tonight in a humane intervention, which I would welcome, because I’m wrong about all of the above.
First of all, there was a dance club, and it was ours, and we used to meet there on the weekends to have a drink, a chat, a dance and so on. We’d been doing this a few thousand years when some cunt comes along and starts charging us money to get into our own club, and he calls that religion. Don’t know where this cunt’s come from, but he’s sort of grim-looking, grey, likes heavy weaponry and filling in forms. Soon he invites his mates round, and we can hardly get in the club at all ourselves. Don’t know who his mates are, but they all look the same to me. One of them calls himself Dawkins. They don’t look like they’re having much fun in there now. All they seem to do is argue. Cunts. Wish they’d let us have our club back.
Justin Isis writes:
“His parting shot to me was a remark about how there were so many barbarians on the island who needed to be converted to Christianity.”Yeah, the heathen Chinese, right? I mean, what is this, the 16th century? Serious, why do these people even go overseas? I remember seeing Mormons bothering people on the street in Kichijoji and just wanting to punch them in the face. You can’t get away from it, you really can’t.
“Serious, why do these people even go overseas?”I don’t want to single out Americans in particular (the British abroad are notoriously obnoxious in perhaps slightly different, though similar ways, too), but…I’m kind of reminded of Momus’ review of Lost in Translation. I haven’t seen the film yet, so can’t comment on the film myself. Some of the things he said seem relevant, though. Let’s see..http://imomus.com/lutheranletter.htmlIn one scene, Murray and Scarlett are in a Japanese restaurant, facing the chef, who doesn’t speak English. Murray quips that Scarlett’s sore toe would probably be a delicacy to some customer here. When the non English-speaking chef fails to crack a grin, Murray demands ‘Why the straight face?’
I squirmed. Does Murray’s charisma have to come at the expense of someone else all the time? (Let’s not even talk about the portrayal of the prostitute or the commercial director.) In a hospital scene, an old lady asks Murray why he took this long trip to Japan. Murray responds again by playing to the gallery, miming her as if she were doing a ludicrous choreographed song. He’s the odd one out, the foreigner, and yet he’s treating those around him as if they were foreigners. This is bad manners and bad traveller etiquette. It prompts the question, is it possible to be American and foreign? I suspect the answer is ‘No’, at least if one is in an American film, wherever it may be set.Bad manners and bad traveller etiquette. That’s right. There are some Americans who simply seem incapable of grasping that they are guests in someone else’s country, that the world doesn’t belong to them. I’ve seen this kind of thing myself. An occasion comes to mind when I was sitting on a train in Japan with a Japanese friend. There was some American businessman directly opposite us with some Japanese businessmen, and he was saying to them stuff like: “Yeah, and we’ll replace all that ridiculous, crappy computer system you have in your office. Hello. Can you even speak English?”I was furious. “Can you speak Japanese, you ignorant cunt?” I thought to myself. Obviously, he couldn’t.Anyway, I turned to my friend and pointed to this bloke and said, “Wanker! He doesn’t speak English either.”
“But just to make it sparklingly clear, in case anyone out there is going to try and misunderstand me – You don’t need religion. You don’t need the church. You don’t need a guru. You don’t need Richard Dawkins.”This has been bothering me. I’ll explain why. I should have added at the end, something like, “And you don’t need me to tell you this, and I’m sure you already know this/don’t care anyway.” It bothers me because, for the sake of removing ambiguity, I have been patronising. The interesting thing is, this gives me a taste of what it is like to be Dawkins. He does this kind of shit all the time. And on a much larger scale. How can he not see how patronising he is being, and how stupid that makes him? How can he cope with being so patronising? The thing is, I think he doesn’t comprehend ambiguity, does he? But I love ambiguity. That’s my natural element. And that’s one reason why I’m so uncomfortable with an unambiguous statement made to pre-emptively stall ideas that I might be such-and-such a thing. Well, I suppose I might be. But then again, I might not. Who knows? Unlike Dawkins, unlike his fundamentalist enemy-twins, I’m happier in a world where people don’t have firm labels like ‘atheist’, ‘Christian’, etcetera, or where those labels are not taken so seriously. It’s specifically the labels and those who try to enforce those labels (like Dawkins) that we don’t need.
Justin Isis writes:
I didn’t think Lost in Translation was especially bad, or even racist as some people made out. I do think it played Japan for laughs, but then they could have done the same thing with any country. I think I just accepted that the characters were much less interested in their surroundings than in their own (pretty stupid) personal problems.I mean, as with Momus, from my perspective I’d rather the film actually concentrated on Japan and gave the Japanese characters humanity, but I think that was beyond the scope of what Coppola was trying to do. And Momus is right in that the characters are fairly typical of what the average American response to the country (or ANY ‘foreign’ country) is.I think I just take it for granted pretty much that American films can categorically not have serious (i.e., HUMAN) Asian characters, unless they’re martial artists. A Hollywood film which treats Japanese (or any other) Asian characters as everyday human beings with understandable emotions is anathema. Which, to use my refrain recently, is…pretty fucking strange. I’m sure in 100 years the popular and well known films of this era will seem as bizarre and racist as something like ‘Birth of a Nation’ seems to us now. Okay…I’m going to go into pure sociological mode now…and say this:The key “blindspot” in the American mindset is the inability to conceive any “foreign” element in a way that *doesn’t somehow relate it back to America*. What I mean is this: if there are Asian characters in a movie, they’ll be Asian-American *and constantly aware of it*; this will be the defining trait of their character. This is why you can say things like “The Asian kid” in relation to a Hollywood movie archetype, and everyone will automatically know what you’re talking about. But as for something like normal daily life in an Asian country…this is inconceivable in terms of a Hollywood movie.The concept of, for example, modern Mongolian characters being in a McDonald’s and going about their daily lives without thinking about America or having any anxiety about America is something that could never occur in an American film. There would have to be some connection relating it back to America. I don’t know why but America has an incredibly strong aversion to seriously considering, or even realizing the existence of, everyday life in modernized non-American countries. The American conception of 90% of ‘foreign’ countries is still based on ridiculously antiquated stereotypes (the Dutch wearing clogs and having dykes, Chinese being martial artists, etc). This is reflected in films; also see 90% of travel documentaries which always focus on ‘traditional’ ways of life like yak-herders in Mongolia instead of young urban Mongolians. You see this also in novels, look at something like Arthur Golden’s ‘Memoirs of a Geisha.’ These novels may superficially use all Asian characters, but they’re set in the past, or there’s some kind of white intermediary character, or both (like in Ellis Avery’s novel ‘The Teahouse Fire’.) In ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, there’s a part where the main character, an elderly geisha, says something like:”Walking down the city streets now, I can’t recognize this busy modern city. It seems very different from when I was a young geisha and blah blah blah shit about beauty of idealized past, etc.”The thing is, this actually reflects the mindset of Arthur Golden, to the extent that I doubt he has much interest in modern Japanese life. I can’t see him or writers like him wanting to write a novel about everyday life in Japan now. The only thing that interests him is the past, which since it no longer exists, can be safely exoticized, drawing attention away from things which would otherwise require deeper scrutiny, such as America’s role in helping to create the modernity he wants to ignore.Manic Street Preachers; “The past is so beautiful…the future like a corpse in snow!”As for why any of this is so, I don’t really know. I feel like I have some idea, like it has something to do with not wanting to face up to certain things America has done historically. I feel like it’s more complicated than just xenophobia. Maybe it isn’t fundamentally different from Victorian orientalism, though, although I feel like it is, in a way.
I’m very happy with the way the subject is changing here, but unfortunately I don’t know if I have anything intelligent to say about it (not that I ever do have anything intelligent to say about anything).Needless to say, I’m not much of a fan of Hollywood films, on the whole. There is a strange parochialism to be observed in American culture, I think, and probably in the English-speaking world generally. Actually, I’ve been thinking of doing a post about this whole American thing (it seems to be popping up on my blog a lot recently for some reason), but now I’ve said that, I probably won’t. I was, earlier today, toying with the idea of writing a blog entry under the title ‘Your words, our bombs’, which is a specimen of grafitti I saw written in a toilet in a pizza place in Nagano, presumably by an American, under some ‘anti-American’ graffiti. I suppose that, what I was basically going to lead up to in my projected entry is that, America is on the way out as a world power. And I think it’s down to arrogance and the bad management that comes from arrogance. I generally find accusations of ‘anti-Americanism’ feeble, it has to be said. I mean, that’s just a way of saying that you’re not allowed to criticise. Why not?As you know, I have been to America. More than once, in fact. I can’t remember the first time. The second time was… a bit blah. The third time was intensely interesting. People, on the whole, were very nice (though I was informed that Americans are not as friendly as they used to be), but I did have the feeling that, although I am in many ways straight-jacketed by repression and neurotic complexes, that I was a free spirit walking among prisoners. It was a peculiar sensation. I don’t think it applies to all areas of life. I just felt a little bit like someone visiting a prison, who knows that he can leave at any time.I haven’t analysed that feeling much. I kind of feel that maybe it’s tied in with things like American patriotism. I was surprised by the amount of flags around, for instance. And maybe this ties in, too, with the fundamental problem, which you’ve touched upon, of simply not being able to grasp that there’s more to the world than America. I think you can see this in American politics, where any cause that benefits America is by definition a good cause. And this, I suppose, is similar to the mind set of fundamentalists, who are also ‘right by definition’. Of course, those causes (the invasion of Iraq, for instance), don’t really benefit America at all. They benefit a small elite who are screwing over the rest of America bigtime.Anyway, sorry if that’s all incoherent. I’m feeling a bit groggy. I think I need a walk and some fresh air.