Truth
The Effortless Inferiority of Howard Jacobson
Abstract
Never mind that you are right. Never mind that you have science and reason on your side. Something else there is that humans crave…[…presumably lies] Dispenser of vacuity, Howard Jacobson
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, 27 January 2006
The Conflict of Reason and Opinion
You cannot beat a good argumentum ad hominem now, can you? A hack called Howard (Eric) Jacobson thinks the biologist, Richard Dawkins is “unimaginative” (UK Independent 26 Jan 2006). Even worse, he has “no vocabulary, no sympathy, no comprehension of metaphor, no wit”, and he looks “soulless and forlorn amid the wonders of nature”. It is a shocking personal indictment of one of the best scientists of the modern age. One has to wonder what qualifications the author of these sentiments brings to be able to state them so boldly. After all, it implies that their author has no such deficiencies. Indeed, he must himself enjoy all of the qualities Dawkins lacks in trumps, otherwise, at best it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. So what qualifications does Jacobson bring to show he can justifiably make these criticisms of a well respected scholar and human being?
Well Jacobson professes to be a novelist, though he has written some unimportant works of criticism too. He earned his bread and butter, though, initially by writing about what happened last night on TV, and more recently by writing an “opinion” column in the UK Indy. 30 million people in the UK watch television, and probably a million of them could write interestingly about what they saw. As for opinions, everybody allegedly has them, but editors like to employ particular hacks to write something that will annoy some of their readers. The reason for this perverse desire, is to get letters sent in by “Outraged” of Islington or “Exasperated” of Esher. Those published will be strongly of the editorial line and so will uphold it! Besides that, they will fill a half a page, defraying the huge fees payed to the celebrity hack. For these talentless hacks are paid large fees for being as perverse as they can be.
The readership of the Independent are mainly liberals and the thoughtful middle classes. A few weeks earlier, Dawkins had written a column in the Indy based on his two TV programmes criticising religion. The tolerant readership of the paper will have received this well, even those disagreeing, no doubt, accepting the piece as a serious and valid criticism of religion, broadly justified in small compass by the evidence presented—Dawkins, as a scientist, properly emphasising evidence as against “belief”. After all, “belief” is accepting something as true with no evidence. It is no different from “opinion” except that it is an opinion everyone in a particular religion has to accept with no evidence for it except the assurances of professional religionists and other believers. “Belief” is merely a “sacred opinion”, but is no less an opinion for being regarded by believers as being somehow sacred.
Jacobson Un-self-adorned
Evidently, Jacobson is a man of opinions, the most obvious of which is his opinion about himself. He is a man who mistakes his ego for his genius. He thinks a novelist is more imaginative than a scientist, but his novels are little more than puffed out autobiographies with little in the way of plot or characterization except for the hero who is himself, and he is acutely conscious in his novels of his own inadequacy. His heroes are failures. Plainly, he tries to compensate for his realization of this by exaggerating his own genius, preferably at the expense of someone who is a lot smarter in all departments. It is a common ploy, yet is often used by dunces who are psychologically unaware of their true self.
The high spot of Jacobson’s life was studying under F R Leavis at Cambridge. Thereafter his career went downhill. Hoping to make the best of a bad world, Jacobson wote about failure, in a pastiche of Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, as only a former plasterer and polytechnic lecturer could. Jacobson might think he is being self-critical and even modest in his risable heroes like the Sefton Goldberg of his first story, with the delusion he is effortlessly superior. He cannot see that he is writing autobiography, not irony, but part of his lack of self-perception is that he thinks he is witty, unlike Dawkins. Even with the advantages of being a Jewish boy in the world of publishing and entertainment, he could not succeed, except in the pallid way of his fictional heroes. That makes him more of a failure even than he thinks, but his illusion of superiority and that alone lets him rant unselfcritically about a much worthier man.
Who is Worthy?
Is Dawkins worthier, then? Jacobson, in what can only be considered as psychological projection, speaks of “the sorry blankness of his imagination”. Dawkins is a leading evolutionary scientist, originally a practising scientist, then an author of books of outstanding original contributions to evolutionary ideas, and latterly as an author of popular works defending evolution, in his role of a professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford. In short, Dawkins has had the academic success that Sefton Goldberg thought should have been his, and evidently his creator as well! Jacobson is plainly jealous. Is there any more objective way of comparing the two. Well Dawkins gets about two million hits from a Google search whereas Jacobson gets a little over half a million. Anyone can read a novel, but many people, like Jacobson himself, evidently, can get nothing out of even a popular scientific book. That is another way in which the two can be compared. Dawkins could write a competent novel, if he were required to do so, but could Jacobson write any sort of science book at all? Not unless a scientist told him what to write. Jacobson might win a game of ping-pong, but is it something to base one’s sense of superiority on? Maybe when you are desperate.
Sutherland is, of course, not talking logic particularly. He is giving his opinion. That is his job. It is what these hedonistic students are encouraged to do. One of Germaine Greer’s self-confessed ambitions at university was to lose her virginity, though it is hard for a dull drudge to understand why a university education is necessary for it. She goes on to say that “a truly incompetent teacher can be of more value than a good one”. She is too intelligent to extend this to a new law of incompetent teaching, one hopes, anyway, but who can deny that such a teacher “can be” indeed—for good, clever students like herself, but what about the rest? In these days of approaching universal tertiary education, university types are no longer particularly intelligent on the whole, and so are much more in need of spoon-feeding than they were.
Greer admits “lectures from the point of view of a student of the humanities is a waste of time”. Few teachers will doubt that lectures of the type described by Greer and Sutherland—nothing more than readings of ancient notes—are all but useless, and people of our age will have experienced old dodderers, and some young ones, spouting on monotonously for an hour with no chance to question or plead for clarity. Yet the truth is that lectures had a purpose in science—to inculcate the discoveries of science as the foundation of further knowledge. Humanities students on the other hand are meant to contradict everything that the lecturer thinks, because what they are taught is merely an opinion, and the aim of this sort of teaching is to get the students to value their own opinions over the teacher’s, however outlandish it might be. That is how they end up writing opinion columns as newspaper hacks, practically worthless but lucrative as it is. Germaine Greer knows full well that her opinions do not matter, and so she has changed them from book to book, flowing with the tide to keep the ackers flowing in. All she had to be was controversial, so what better than writing a book refuting what she had previously written.
As she says, “students were supposed to be critical listeners—the worst thing you could do was parrot your lecturer’s view”. A view is no more than an opinion, and so Greer is right in this, but some subjects such as science and law are not just opinions. That is what hacks cannot seem to get. It is too hard for their kaleidoscopic way of thinking—shove it in, shake it up and spew it out! It is no wonder they prefer Derrida to Dawkins, arbitrary deconstruction to tried and tested construction. So when Greer says “lectures have no place in a system based on critical study”, she is discounting any critical study that is built on a foundation of already acquired knowledge. Critical thinking is more important in science and law than in the humanities because they have consequences for us, but they also have a large knowledge base that simply cannot be ignored in favour of watching Friends or reciting Eliot through a megaphone.
Of course, in the modern world, there are better ways of teaching than lectures, even if lectures (mere recitation of notes) was ever better than lessons (explanation and interaction). Greer thinks that kids do not “go to university to sit at the feet of their elders and betters”. Is it an observation or a recommendation? Either way, they should! A university education offers more than that, true enough, but that is one of the reasons young people should want to have it. Dawkins is a better hero for the young than any tabloid celebrity.
A dull drudge swotting away all the time ought not to recognize what these true intellectuals describe as university life, but it is quite familiar to us. We too sat until dawn arguing, drinking wine, and losing our virginities too, if we still had them. It takes egotists with nothing better to do to see it as interesting enough to write novels about, or even newspaper articles. No one denies we need entertainers but it shows society’s twisted values that they often get vastly bigger rewards than those who study and work hard to make society more comfortable and enjoyable.
Watching Friends might prepare someone to be a TV soap opera scriptwriter, as it did for two of Germaine Greer’s students, but leaving them to watch TV as long as they wish in their own living rooms would save the education authorities a lot of money, not just in the maintenance of the wastrel students but their supposed tutors too. Chemistry departments have been closed in droves while idlers take the easy options, so the export of trivial soap operas and reality shows had better be able to provide for the future world devoid of anyone who knows anything useful. The critical ear of this dull drudge, when forced to watch TV soap operas, tells me that these soap operas do not even get regional dialects right, even though they are often set in the regions. Dialect is an excuse for them writing unspeakble English. Isn’t it what they studied?
Mary Warnock, the philosopher, was not afraid to admit she too was a “dull drudge”, working conscientiously because she saw it as a good way to get through her exams. She thinks that if students go to university just to “learn about life” then they should not bother. You learn about life by being in it, but you go to university to learn about the subject they have chosen from those the faculty offers. Quite so! And in these days of near universal tertiary education, the preponderance of ordinary, unexceptional people at university necessitates even higher standards of formal teaching. What was once all right for people of above average intelligence is no longer suitable for a university population with an IQ of 100, whether budding scientists or budding hacks!
The reason why students of the humanities take such a strong stand against scientists is that they know full well that their own scholarship is largely empty rhetoric with no proper knowledge base at its foundation. They know their scribblings are largely of no consequence, indeed often meaningless. It is why they end up writing novels or newspaper columns—amusements quickly wrapping fish and chips, unread or forgotten as soon as they have been read, except, of course, for the readers who become incensed, and write a letter to the editor, or chatter about it over dinner. Their best work is utterly disposable. Science is quite different. It has provided all the information that is useful for us in our modern lives. It is a large knowledge base that has to be mastered before any useful novel contributions to it can be made. Science courses are therefore hard, and so are avoided by those who are lazy and opportunist. But the lazy opportunists know it, and have to try to prove their putative superiority in the only way they can—by taking a high-falutin tone in their pronouncements.
Jacobson snarls his “opinion” of the intellectual nullity of Dawkins’ arguments…
…what you cannot scientifically prove cannot be…
He thereby exposes his fragile comprehension. Sitting at the feet of F R Leavis did not teach him that science does not prove anything. What it does is what these critics do not need to do, and cannot do anyway, and that is test their opinions. Science is not just opinion. It is tested opinion, and the criterion of truth it uses is reality. The only criterion hacks have is unreality, called by them novelty, and the only way they can find it is by getting increasingly extreme, until they end up as fascists. Jacobson exemplifies the air-heads who attack the sound methodological basis of our luxurious lives while defending as worthy of merit those absurdly held opinions called faith that divide humanity so murderously. To do it he has to shoot the messenger because he has no arguments.
Nullity and Blankness
Quite why the statement “only religion makes good men do evil things” is a symptom of nullity of argument and blankness of imagination is explained by a conspicuous blankness of imagination and nullity of argument, but then opinions need no justification. Dawkins presented evidence to justify his views and used reason to explain them. Religions claim to foster the quality of goodness, yet the whole of human history is littered with the cadavers of religious warfare. “Good” men and women all too often have no doubt that other men and women of some other religion or sect, objectively equally “good”, are wicked. The only criterion of “goodness” is that they actually live “good” lives, and left to themselves “good” people would indeed live “good” lives. The one thing that inspires these people into acting wickedly is their religious “belief” that by so doing they are doing “good”. Dawkins’ point seems entirely valid.
Jacobson, as a Jew, is, or should be, more aware of it than most since he has seen it from both sides. Half a century ago, European Christians thought they were doing good by murdering Jews as “untermenchen”. Now, Israeli Jews treat Moslem Arabs—inconveniently living where they want to live—as “untermenchen” too. They, therefore, feel justified in driving them from their homes and hounding them mercilessly using superior weaponry, sheltering under the wing of the US, and sobbing hot tears when their victims retaliate in the only way they have. Jews lived amicably with Moslems for centuries until the Jews declared that God had given them the land the Palestinians had lived in for centuries. It is their “belief”, an opinion sacred enough to justify mistreating millions of innocents, and murdering some. They decided to snatch the Palestinians’ homeland. Now, for the Palestinians to want it back is wicked. All of this perfectly illustrates Dawkins point, but Jacobson refuses to see it. Who is the unimaginative dumkopf?
Belief in Child Sacrifice
Jacobson then criticises Dawkins for his reading of the incident in the Jewish scriptures when Abraham believed he had to sacrifice his son Isaac to the Hebrew God. As Jacobson says, and no one doubts, it is a civilizing myth showing to Jews that they should not sacrifice their children to God, evidently a ritual they had practised until then. For their “belief” that God liked children to be sacrificed to him, the early Jews had also been killing innocents. An untested and pointless belief had obliged “good” people to kill their children unnecessaruily for countless years. So good people had been doing something wicked, something they would never have considered had they not thought it proper to do for their religious “belief”.
The myth was a basis for not continuing the practice, and, if God takes the credit for the reform, He must also take the responsibility for the original wickedness. So, those who hold the view that God exists and commands such things must accept that God had commanded it, and that is why these poor people had been killing their own children, until He told them otherwise. Such a god is scarcely a good one. There is, of course, no evidence at all for a god, or that the book of rules and their justificatory tales called the Jewish scriptures have anything to do with any god. Human beings set the rules in the name of God but the gullible faithful believe without any positive confirmation that they are so sacred they must kill to protect them. That is Dawkins’ warning and the clear meaning of the evidence, except to self-elevated literary types.
Jacobson blusters on about the opinions of “biblical commentators, the devout of three faiths, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, poets and novelists”, as if any of it meant a hill of beans in the context of people having to accept lies as truth and to kill for it, as religion and sectarian strife has constantly proved through recorded fact. We can accept that the story at this juncture depicts Abraham as a pious man wanting to do only what he thought God wished. It turns out that Abraham was somehow mistaken about what he thought God wished. God did not want Abraham or anyone else to sacrifice children to Him.
How then had the devout “believer”, Abraham come to the “belief” that God did want him to murder his son? Someone had told him it was so, and he had accepted it with no evidence! For Jacobson, it is quite all right that this sort of thing happened and continues to happen because it keeps a load of poets, novelists, devout people, and so on, happy, while he remains apparently oblivious or indifferent to the horror it produces in practice. If it keeps him and his ilk employed, then it is all right. The Almighty Ego has spoken. It is so! Dawkins’ failure to make a suitable allowance for this is “not very scientific”. Jacobson expects us to believe he knows what is scientific and what is not, though we are left wondering whether he can distinguish a Forelock from a Foreskin.
The Almighty Ego
The Almighty Ego now intrudes openly while it digresses into memories of the remarkable things it has done in the past such as making a TV documentary about Judas, the archetypal perfidious Jew in the Christian gospel story. The hugely imaginative brain of our hero did not evidently come up with the thesis of this program, that was the scholarly librarian Hyam Maccoby, but the Ego was gratified that the Vatican has re-evaluated its opinion of the role of Judas in the Christian tale as a consequence! Judas is not historical! That is all right then. The deaths of millions of Jews at the hands of Christians was worth it for Jacobson to be able to change the Vatican’s mind leaving everything goodness and light! Never mind that a fictional story about a fictional man led to millions of innocent deaths in God’s name. The unimaginative Dawkins is wrong to observe upon it critically. That must be left to the critical genius to do.
Let Jacobson speak to some Christians, and he will find that they are so attached to their fiction of Judas that they still believe it to be true, despite the wondrous perception and humourous TV presentation of the Burgeoning Ego. Christians believe it because they are encouraged by other Christians to believe it, and for no objective reason, just as Jews believe their own scriptures that God led them by violence into the “Promised Land” that then was the home of native people—and latterly was again—though the biblical story is transparently mythical. Israeli Jews will not cease to believe it. It suits them to justify cruelly dispossessing of their home those who lived in Palestine—as it happens, people of a different faith, and therefore automatically wicked! All of it supports Dawkins’ argument.
Oh dear! Jacobson unwittingly and repeatedly argues his position into the Dawkins camp. What to do? What to do? Simple! Use a common apologetic ploy. Just move the goalposts and pretend that Dawkins was arguing something else:
There you are professor Dawkins, even that which religions seem to have set in stone… is susceptible to change.
Religion has indeed “been the cause of innumerable injustices and deaths” but it can change. Thank you for the pearl of wisdom, professor Jacobson, but that was not the argument. Religions are always conservative institutions but no one doubts that they change, even if slowly and with the inevitable stench of death in the air. Evolution is about change and how it happens, but this effortlessly inferior clown pretends Dawkins is unaware of change. The truth is that, when change happens in religion, it produces another rift valley with reformers and traditionalists massed on either edge hurling insults and eventually arrows at each other. Each is a traitor to the “sacred opinions” of the other, each is an heretic to the other, and each is ready to incinerate the other in the name of God. Only bigots can fail to see the truth of Dawkins’ reasoning. Jacobson labours on, writing as if addressing Dawkins:
More flexible minds than yours go on bending themselves to interpreting scripture.
The sadly self-deluded egotist cannot get that every interpretation of scripture has two sides. For every supposedly flexible mind interpreting it in a novel way, there is an inflexible mind insisting on the traditional interpretation. Every progressive reform is resisted by by traditionalists, every call for a return to some putatively simpler and purer religion is resisted by those who like it as it is. All theological interpretations are arbitrary, but inspire “good” men to hatred and murder.
Know Yourself? Not Me!
Jacobson’s final shot is that the unimaginative evolutionist does not know his enemy. Atheists would not like to be characterized by reference to Stalin or Pol Pot. These are interesting choices of example because, together with Hitler, they are just the atheists who are chosen by religionists to represent secularism. What is more interesting is that both Hitler and Stalin were Christians not atheists at all. Hitler was a Catholic, brought up by a devoutly Catholic mother. He never ever renounced his faith, but rather always claimed to be renovating it:
I believe I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator—by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Stalin was so interested in his Christian beliefs that he began training as an orthodox priest. He never was ordained but, given that Ignatious Loyola thought that anyone who was a committed Christian by the age of seven would remain so throughout his life, the evidence is that both of these totalitarian dictators had Christian mentalities. Their murderous activities tend to confirm it in the light of Christian history. As for Pol Pot, who knows what his religion was? What we do know is that Cambodia was a stable, largely peaceful, Buddhist democracy until the leaders of the great Christian country of the west deliberately destabilized it, giving Pol Pot his opportunity to seize power and butcher anyone who opposed him. Communism might have been atheistic, but the religious and political experts of the time declared it to be a modern religion, and many of them went as far as to declare it a Christian heresy. So Pol Pot was a pawn in the internecine strife between Christian orthodoxy, and a Christian heresy. Literary parrots like Jacobson can sqawk about that.
Jacobson concludes that it is not religion but certainty that is the root of all evil. To be credible, then, he cannot be certain about this hypothesis, lest he be adding another brick to the evil edifice of certainty. Of course, there is no reason at all why any opinion should be certain, but opinions backed up by evidence and reason must be more certain than the empty musings of any religious minorities or opinion columnists. Science is the only proven method of formulating testable opinions (hypotheses) and then testing them. In any case, how does blaming murderous divisions in humanity on to certainty exonerate religions? It is religions that claim certainty. Religious professionals misinform their credulous lambs that they and they alone have the certain knowledge of God’s brain! Neither science nor secularism can “do certainty every bit as well as the religious” because there are no secular gods, so they do not have the desire or the authority to do it.
Not that we can expect poor Jacobson to understand. He freely admitted in his column that he lacks the milk of human kindness, and cannot get something as simple as that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. His idea of beauty is stamping with his iron heels on the ideas of superior minds. He is the sort of boy you met at school who deliberately splashed ink on the superior work of his betters, and in his retarded state of development has remained just as he always was.
