[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Emitt Evan Baker

What is it that you like about Harris in particular? I think his work on religion is so one dimensional and without a grasp of human history or ensoulment that I find him a total waste of time. He seems to be just the opposite side of the same coin as the literalist rigid orthodoxies that he opposes. Maybe you can lay out what you find useful. And what exactly is the center's suggestion for mass extinction, crushing economic disparities, and the other threats we face. Let's hear the centers prescriptions and how they differ from a politic of excepting the benefits of exploitation and inequality but pretending to be outside of the engine of the process. [emphasis mine]

Emitt, Good Lord. PM me, so I can give you my email address. Sorry for the condescending tone, but this paragraph is rife with what is wrong about the new left.

I would also recommend, again, since you seem to have no interest in poetry, this site:

https://talkfreethought.org/forum.php

Look me up. Same username, same Toda-Madonna avatar. I spent most of my time there in the philosophy forums, teaching basic philosophy to university graduates and scientists, who are notoriously ignorant of philosophy. Have a good time!

[Emitt Evan Baker]

Originally Posted by William A. Baurle

Emitt, Good Lord. PM me, so I can give you my email address. Sorry for the condescending tone, but this paragraph is rife with what is wrong about the new left.

I would also recommend, again, since you seem to have no interest in poetry, this site:

https://talkfreethought.org/forum.php

Look me up. Same username, same Toda-Madonna avatar. I spent most of my time there in the philosophy forums, teaching basic philosophy to university graduates and scientists, who are notoriously ignorant of philosophy. Have a good time!

I write and publish under a pen name, William. I am not work shopping stuff just now. I am not looking for a teacher of your particular style at the present moment Bill. Before handing out maps, ask yourself if someone is interested in your hometown. I am not. I visted it once though, on way through. I am more Weimar gang than Spinoza but even so I don't recognize the Baruch in your bluster. Sorry, Bud. We just don't agree. But maybe stop trying to decide who should post in response to you and where they should do it. Kitchens and heat and all that.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

Hey Mark. I have just been informed that we are going to the beach. Which is way sweeter than blathering about Harris et al. So maybe I can just say a few things and you can feel free to respond as you will.

For starters, let me breeze through a couple of the outliers.

On Hirsi Ali: Suffering doesn't instantly make someone the ideal political prescriber for solutions, especially as the politics get closer to the epicenter of that suffering. I personally know women who have suffered as much as Ali but take a very different tack, vehemently so. So what is the calculus for the heirarchy here? Who has the most right, by merit of their pain, to decide which ideology can be adopted/co-opted? The one with the most pints of blood lost? Of course not. We are still stuck engaging with the ideas and the outcomes themselves. The ideas Ali empowered and the outcomes of the neo-conservative approach to the Middle East were disasterous. This has little to do with her worth as a person or her moral strength, two realities that I don't claim to have any thing to say about in detail. I don't remember what I said to you in the past but I can almost guarantee that it was simply refusing to allow Hirsi Ali's very real suffering to legitimize a terrible approach to the region simply because her personal history makes that approach attractive to her.
That said, the Left I come from doesn't play nice with Islamic theologies that are full of repression and violence. Some Islams are garbage. I haven't heard the history of the Left pushing Ali into the arms of the right as you seem to describe. Interesting but not surprising. When I was active in the Iraqi scene, I usually ended up fighting with the so-called Left as much as, if not more than, the "opposition". What did Camus say, when it comes to my mother or the Revolution, I will defend my mother. Loose paraphrase, from his writings on Algiers, I think.

My mention of the environment in relation to Harris is that I find Harris to be an apologist for the neoliberal State which in its mass and inertia is that which most inhibits the world from waking up to the ecological disaster now approaching. Ecological disaster being a shorthand for this sort of business: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...annotated.html

In dismissing Harris I was more referring to exactly what you mention. His reduction of religion to delusion is sort of the center piece of his schtick, no? That he is opened (by his own need for meaning) to words like spirituality is telling but not a logical outcome of his own arguments as much as the tiding in of a universe brimming with beings, stories, and musics more likely to have invented the brain stem than vice versa.

I apologize for not having the time to watch the link yet. I have seen plenty of Sam's work on the Middle East politics to back up my inclination to suspect his being a waste of time. Just his exchange with Chomsky alone in the last years should underline is role as more of cheer leader for the staus quo than a serious thinker about solutions for the needs of the individuals in the region.

As side issue, the only problem with the solution/approaches being suggested by my "Left" regarding the ecological threat are that they aren't being tried, where as the status quo/trust the technology will arrive in time majority of the West is a "solution" that embraces the problem. The examples are so numerous that I would find it hard to believe you couldn't write them yourself if you tried though admittedly with each year that passes the another window closes. That there will be huge losses is now unavoidable.

The discussion on the nature of religion, truth, and mindsets liek Harris is more complex than I have the time for. I get head aches from computer screens lately. And the beach. Maybe you can respond to something here and it will open up the best place to continue the back and forth. My original post was vague. My dislike of Harris is old and broad and, by now, diffused across many subjects. Ha!

[Emitt Evan Baker]

One addition. I see you asked about whether I thought Harris' attack on fundamentalisms was a bad thing. I think his approach is an unhelpful one. I am not a monotheist but I do thing there are many Islams and many Christianities, some of which are much more rich and subtle than Harris' critique can handle. Truth is carried in story. I think the wonder-filled storytellers, especially of the old stories are the only hope we have (Martin Shaw). I think Harris is a story killer.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

This evolution can only take place through civilized discourse and, of course, the literal dying of an old breed of thought. Youth will win out. Modernity takes precedence.

I didn't see your response here. But this statement above seems ridiculous. It seems to be exalting in tossing babies with each epochs bath water. This purging of what has descended from our past rather than doing the much more complicated art of discerning between silver and dross is lazy and costly.

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. Walter Benjamin

As for whether my dismissal of Harris tells you more about me or him probaly depends on why I dismiss him. It sounds like the things you value in his speeches aren't the parts that are very particular to his work but rather the more commonplace truisms that naturally coexist in hundreds of voices. But I still am not quite clear a what you find in him here. I will try to get to the link.

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Emitt.

You have a knack of conflating things that bear very little relation to each other, in a kind of 'blink-and-you'll-miss-it' way, that's quite astonishing. In discussing Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you say 'The ideas Ali empowered and the outcomes of the neo-conservative approach to the Middle East were disasterous'. As I said before, sometimes your assertions are so vague it's hard to untangle them, but you seem to be implying that Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'ideas' that she somehow 'empowered' had influence over the US decision to go to war in Iraq, or at least that there's some causal link. Is that right? If so, that's ridiculous. Or is that not what you meant? As I say, it's hard to tell. Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled from Somalia, became a Dutch politician, renounced her religion (for which she is now under penalty of death) and became a vocal critic of the brand of Islam that she personally experienced, particularly with regards to its treatment of women, based on her own experiences and has spent most of her working life since campaigning for the rights of women in Islamic societies. I can find nothing on google about her views on the Iraq War or military intervention in general. Her views on Islam seem confined to matters of society and theology: that it could do with reform, that it needs a modernising force. These don't seem unreasonable or controversial views in my opinion. These views have nothing to do with neo-conservative v leftist ideologies. They are not mutually exclusive of legitimate criticism of Western/US foreign policy in the Middle East. They are simply someone from inside a religion asking reasonable questions about the acceptability in the 21st century of practices like honour killings, enforced illiteracy, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, the theologically-endorsed 'veiling' of women (the attempts of some Western feminists, Muslim or otherwise, to 'reclaim' the hijab and even the niqab and burqa as a symbol of 'empowerment' seem particularly ridiculous). Here's her Wikipedia page for anyone who hasn't heard of her. Wiki seems as objective a source as any we have right now. She's not perfect, but then who is?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali

Yes, as you rightly point out, there are 'many Islams', but this fact shouldn't make anyone squeamish about calling out one of them (not by any means a anomalous representation) for the abhorrent barbarism it clearly is.

I realise some of this makes me seem like a 'right wing' voice, because, well, these are exactly the sort of things said, often in bad faith, by some voices on the right wing. I refute that entirely. I marched against the Iraq War in 2003 in Manchester; I've voted for the Labour Party (British equivalent of the Democrats I suppose) in every election since I was 18 (apart from twice: once when I voted Green and once when I spoiled my ballot paper); I give a £15 monthly direct-debit to Greenpeace; I always give money to homeless people when I'm drunk then realise I don't have enough for the bus home. I'm being flippant now. I realise you're not accusing me of being right-wing, or 'Islamophobic' or anything else of that nature, but somehow one feels the need to make these things clear when criticising the ideology of Islam (because that, along with all organised religions, is all it is. An ideology. A way of not having to really think. And this one seems particularly adept at 'encouraging' its adherents to not really think). I was brought up as a Catholic, I went to Lourdes on school-organised trip as a 15 year old as part of the 'North West Catholic Youth Group', wearing a t-shirt bearing that legend, pushing old ladies and disabled people in wheelchairs down cobbled streets to the Holy Waters. I know about religious nonsense. Luckily, my brand of nonsense was relatively innocuous. I offer no solutions about these things, but an honest conversation is always a good start, isn't it? You mentioned Camus and quoted/paraphrased him as saying something like 'if it's a choice between my mother and the revolution, I'll save my mother'. I have two daughters. My distaste for the inherent misogyny of Abrahamic religions (and yes, Islam in particular at this moment in history) is a feminist, and personal, one. By which I really mean a humanist one, given that women are half of humanity. I find it quite easy to unapologetically reconcile this with my liberal political views.

I came to all these conclusions long before I had heard of Sam Harris. Sam Harris is just one voice out of thousands in our over-populated, cultural landscape. Don't get the idea I'm some kind of 'fan-boy' (can't believe I just used that word) for him. He's not a genius, he's not a poet or a particularly original thinker. He's an engaging writer and clearly a intelligent man. Looking at his podcast feed, he doesn't seem that fixated on religion to me. Other people are fixated on his views on religion, that's certainly true. His last half dozen interviews have been about 'Being a better person', Trump (definitely not a fan), 'surveillance Capitalism', artificial intelligence, the European migrant crisis, and meditation. He doesn't come across to me as someone who has a 'shtick'.

Here's Harris' refutation from his website of some of the criticisms, like yours, he's faced. Again, he's not perfect. But he's a legitimate voice.

https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/...to-controversy

To call him, in worrying tones, a 'story killer' is ludicrous hyperbole, though I suppose it might go down well in a room full of poets. He's one little voice, one with a very logic-based pragmatic view of the world, among millions of voices. You have very little faith in the power of myth if you are genuinely worried about this. Just look at the metrical forum on this site: the myths of the Ancient Greeks are still providing people in their 20s with inspiration (too much if you ask me). The difference is if I tell someone that their poem about the myth of Sisyphus bored me to tears and the Greeks were full of shit, they won't find out where I live, yell 'Zeus is great' and attempt to decapitate me with a machete. 'Stories' won't die. Myth and metaphor and the yearning for meaning and traditions and the search for the transcendent and the numinous can all, and always will, exist without the literal translation of those myths into sometimes harmful or murderous actions.

Anyway. Probably made myself very unpopular here. Oh well.

Enjoy the beach.

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by William A. Baurle

Hey, I'm one of the nicest, gentlest people here.

My 16 year record should show that.

If you were able somehow, to see who wrote these two phrases more often than anyone else, from 2001 until the present day:

I'm sorry
I apologize

I bet 3 dollars that it would be me.

That may be true, William, but it would be more believable if you didn't keep telling us, and if your replies to anyone who disagrees with you were less contemptuous.

[Mark McDonnell]

Oh, yawn, Brian. How petty.

Firstly, there's obviously a degree of self-deprecating humour in the statement you just quoted. Bill must know he's been been out of order recently, but forgive me, was it only me who found it hilarious when he called literally everyone 'fucking cowards and poetasters'? I mean, was anyone genuinely offended?

Secondly, Bill seems to respond in a perfectly gentlemanly way to those who disagree with him (which is most people) most of the time. In fact, often he'll say things to the effect of 'thanks for that link, I hadn't considered that'. Which is rare. And then, presumably, he has a drink or three. Let's have a plurality of voices and stop behaving like children.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

Well, I could reply that you have a habit of failing to see obvious connections but that would be to follow you into an unnecessary rudeness. The debate about Ali isn't new. Stuff like this has been popping up for years:

http://www.alternet.org/media/anti-i...test-deception

I post that link not to say I have verified Max's claims but only because I five second search can pull up dozens of dissent regarding Ali and the use her argument from authority was put to over the years. From personal experience on the ground in Iraq and here at home afterwards I can remember many, many times when her stories where used to justify the American actions in Iraq as that mess was unfolding. She knew what use her testimony was being put to and didn't really seem to have much problem with it. It left a suspicion in me about her that I keep to this day and I am sure that is what prompted my original comment whenever i made it. You brought it up. I tried to unpack it a bit. Its not conflation. The use that her testimonies were put to crossed into propaganda of the State. If you missed it years ago I can't help you with that. I watched it. Again, if I wasn't clear, I am objecting to the project that her words are put to. Same as Harris. He is an Islamophobic mouthpiece that I simply don't think does the work he should on the region. Here is a bookmark from last year that I kept from last year on Harris:

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/07/my_s...ech_hypocrisy/

Or go read Chomsky's email string with him. He really doesn't get it.
And no this isn't some Leftist blind to the nature of some Islams or afraid to speak about them. The folks I trust most on this issue are friends in Rojava. Actually killing members of ISIS and losing lives to them as well. They don't mince words when it comes to vile strains of Islam. They also find Harris and people like him to be clueless concerning what is actually unfolding on the front lines.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali

Yes, as you rightly point out, there are 'many Islams', but this fact shouldn't make anyone squeamish about calling out one of them (not by any means a anomalous representation) for the abhorrent barbarism it clearly is.

Dude, stop giving me your Leftist creds. I don't think anything about you except that maybe you aren't following what I am saying well. Could be my fault. I actually don't care who you vote for. It seems obvious that you want to be on the side of decency. I just think you are missing something here.

Let me help you out here. I find certain Islams to be disgusting. And that is while being up close and personal with it in 3D. I hear you on religious ideology. But you prolly aren't very susceptible to that anymore. the ideologies that are more likely to form a blindspot for you are materialist. I would suggest being more vigilant in watching for those blindspots than the ones that affect people that are very different from you. Ducks in a barrel are tempting but where is the sport?

I doubt very seriously that your daughters are in danger from Islamic ideology relative to the danger that daughters of Muslims in the middle east are put in by ideas that increase the Otherness of their societies and cheerleading for military action/response as well as just the general suggestion by the new atheists that the religious mind is more susceptible to violence and thus more threatening. The question is what sort of understanding and interconnectedness will make all daughters safer and what sort of discourse will only lead to more violence. I am fairly certain that Harris is not helpful on that account

I think you are wrong about what sort a person Harris is. But, like you, I don't find him that important. His name is tied to a materialist hubris that I find especially annoying, thus my original post. It is not ludicrous hyperbole, Mark. It is in fact a very robust materialism. It is in fact a constant conflation of myth with lie. I would suggest looking into Bernardo Kastrup's critique of Harris on that score. I can't remember where I saw it. I will dig it up.

Your argument seems to be he isn't a real threat. Yeah. He isn't. His ideas just suck and I reserve the right to respond with passion to anyone who takes himself so seriously that he can write books and schedule debates around these ideas. If you don't think his ideas about the Middle East are dangerous, you are not paying attention. Sorry.

Stories do die, Mark. We have forgotten so many of them. The purge of the Witch for one example probably erased untold amounts of passed down wisdom. See Federici's Caliban and the Witch. Sorry to hear about your unpopularity...here....with who? What?


Sorry you find so much conflation and vaguery. Huge subjects. Trying. Busy.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

BTW, I am interested in these "arguments" but don't really need to focus on Harris. I would be happy just hashing it out under our own names and ideas. Either way. Feel free to just pick one of the forks to respond to. The whole thing is pretty scattershot as an email thread. Though I don't find it hard to see the web of it.