Visiting Old Friends Can Bring New Insight

This post might start out looking like an aside, but I will tie it into the blog topics.  Just thought a little background might help place it in context.

We [my entire family] love to read!  You would realize that if you ever visited my home and saw the 4 overstuffed bookcases in our dining room (my wife's office), the three others (also overstuffed) in my basement, and the three (not quite overstuffed) in my basement office.  If you wander through the house you will see books tucked and piled up in all sorts of places.  No, we aren't one pile away from an episode of Hoarders . . . well everywhere except my office.  In addition to the several thousand actual books, My daughter and I several hundred e-books from Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and generic sources between us.  Needless to say my family certainly loves reading.

One of my friends finds it strange that I not only like reading, but re-reading.  He is an avid reader as well, but uses the local library much, much more than any bookstore.  He finds it hard to believe that I re-read books, especially fiction.

To me, re-reading a book is like visiting an old friend.  For example, I have read 'The Lord of the Rings' so many times I had to replace my original paperback copies with hardbacks and I think I am getting close to replacing those due several decades of wear and tear.  They were the only books that accompanied me on my one-year assignment to the Republic of Korea (of course, I came home with a suitcase full of new friends).  I love re-reading books.

Yes, this is leading up to something related to the main topics of this blog.

Recently, I re-read 'Friday' by Robert Heinlein.  It's a classic originally published in the early 1980's.  What I enjoy about visiting old friends is that I frequently see something I hadn't seen before or see something in a very different light than when I last read it.  The reason is simple, I am not the same person I was in 1982 when I first read Friday.  I'm also not the same person at any point in the past when I re-read the book.  Here is a quote from a very brief point in the book, a small part of a conversation between two characters:

" “. . .Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named…but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
“Really?”
“Pfui, I should have forced you to dig it out for yourself; then you would know it. This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength.” " (Friday: Robert A. Heinlein, 1982)

At the time I simply took this as nothing more than a plot device.  One of those things presented by the author as a foregone conclusion that moves the story along.  I really didn't give it much thought.  Even in the years since and the multiple times I re-read the book, this passage didn't strike me as significant.  It's been several years and the other evening I picked it up and this passage struck me!  Look at the things going on today!  Tell me it doesn't ring with you as well?

Personal rudeness has become the norm.  People who aren't part of your group are ignored or looked down upon.  People are often inconsiderate about major and minor matters.  For example, I do not believe there is a war on Christmas!  When someone wishes me a Happy Hanukkah or a Merry Kwanzaa, I simply take it in the spirit it was intended and thank them.  I have been watching more and more people go ballistic over a simple Merry Christmas.  Or the server who called everyone "Honey!" out of decades of habit -- nearly got struck in a restaurant when a patron objected in an almost violent manner.  These are such minor things, but too many people expand them into reasons to be insulted and even fight.

Then they like to band together with other like-minded people, using those others to reinforce their own prejudices.  It's not just the conservatives, although they do come to mind pretty easily.  But many other groups are doing the exact same thing.  

As I've said before, when it comes to religion I do believe you have the right to believe what you wish, but I expect the same courtesy for my beliefs -- or lack of them.  I feel that way in many things.  If you want to hang a Confederate Flag out your window, be my guest, but not only do you not have to right to demand I hang one out of my window, if I hang a different flag I expect you to not whine about it.  That's freedom to me!

But we don't have that freedom today.  People take exception of anything and everything that doesn't align with their own belief set and expect the rest of the people around them to not only accept their beliefs, but adopt them.  And when they don't, out come the lawyers sniffing blood.  What happen to mannerly disagreements or acceptance of our differences?  

That's why the passage from 'Friday' hit me so hard today.  I was struck by what's been happening politically today.  Not just here in the US with a certain hamster-haired serial liar and misogynist, but with every day people around the world.  The divisiveness between nearly every group, the intolerance of any viewpoint other than their own, and the absolute certainty in the righteousness of that viewpoint has become the norm rather than the exception.

To often they cling to those beliefs, convincing themselves that their belief set is the only thing saving them from an uncertain future.  But . . . are we a sick or dying culture?  Of course, you have to think about just what is American culture?

To examine this, here is the last part of a speech by a character in the HBO show 'The Newsroom'.  I'll link to the video at the end of this post.  But I want you to look at this first:

"We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore." (Will McAvoy, The Newsroom)

Listed in that speech are many of the things we have often self-identified as the things that make us Americans, I underlined a few.  But do they still hold true?  I hate to look at it like this, but the reality is we don't live up to those ideals any more.  Instead of celebrating our diversity and the strength and perspective it brought us, now we fracture America on those, and many other, lines.  We huddle together within those differences and build an illusion that by clinging to those differences we are the stronger.  The challenges of the past could not, would not, be met by today's Americans.  I think the question is not meeting the challenges of the of the past, but can we really meet the challenges of the future?

Not heading down the road we appear to be on.  Every time we denigrate other Americans, or any other people, we go further along the road that our past selves would have not taken.  Did we make mistakes in the past, most certainly.  But we were on the way to resolving many of those.  Not instantly, but as we recognized them, we were trying to addressing them.  But today labels are used to further divide us and prevent any forward motion on real issues.  The labels become the issue.  Every time I hear a conservative cry 'snowflake' it further drives a wedge between people and instead of dealing with the issues that have caused division, we tend to slap a label on it and try and ignore it.  "The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one." You can't solve a issue by just labeling it.

We are certainly no longer the culture we once were, the culture we like to convince ourselves we still are -- but we are not.  As a whole we have lost sight of the ideals that started this country.  Partisanship has become the norm, cooperation and acceptance is the exception rather than the rule.  That needs to change!

I repeat -- That Needs To Change!

Here is the whole of what has been often described as the best 3 minutes on television:

Whats Wrong with This Picture -- A Review of a Review of a Book We Haven't Read Yet?

Talk about knee-jerk reactions.  Here is a review of a book the Discovery Institute (DI) has not yet seen . . . huh?  Actually it's a review of a review of a book the DI has not yet seen.  Here's their post, "Early Review of A.N. Wilson’s Anti-Darwin Biography Could Have Been Predicted".  No byline for this one, wonder why?

The review they are reviewing is here: "‘Radical’ new biography of Darwin is unreliable and inaccurate".  Without a doubt it's a scathing review of a biography of Charles Darwin called "Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker", by A.N. Wilson.  Since I haven't read it either, this is a commentary on the DI's review of the review -- it is not a review of the review of the review of the book the DI hasn't read yet.

Here's what I see.  The DI does not like Charles Darwin.  You know many the reasons why.  They blame Darwin for pretty much every bad thing that has ever happened, especially racism, Hitler, the decline in church attendance . . . an endless list.  So therefore, anything that bashes Darwin has to be a good thing in their very narrow minds.  So the question is how to publicize something that says nasty things about Darwin.  That's the knee jerk reaction I was talking about, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong about Darwin, it's a bash at him, so it deserves to be publicized.

The review (the real one, not the DI's review of the review) went through a number of claims made by A.N Wilson.  In a nutshell John van Wyhe said the book is wildy off the mark from anything Charles Darwin did or said. van Wyhe concludes with:

"The book claims to be a “radical reappraisal of one of the great Victorians, a book which isn’t afraid to challenge the Darwinian orthodoxy”. The result is one of the most unreliable, inaccurate and tendentious anti-Darwin books of recent times."

Let me repeat "unreliable", "inaccurate", and "tendentious".  That's pretty scathing!  A review like that would normally put me off paying much attention, especially when the review is published in a reputable source like "New Scientist".  No, New Scientist isn't perfect, for example their 2009 cover saying "Darwin was Wrong!" while the article didn't say that, only that Darwin was wrong on some details, but right in the overall concept.  But it does have a much more positive reputation than anything put out by  . . . say . . . the Discovery Institute.

So, back the original question, how do they publicize this bashing of Darwin?  First step, attack the reviewer with an accusation:

John van Wyhe is a Darwinian partisan

Which may or may not be true.  But it doesn't matter to the DI.  Of course it matters not if any criticism of Wilson's book is based on something other than partisanship, right?

Since van Wyhe contradicted many of the things Wilson claimed in his book, they have to call him names and try and make it sound as if the only reason van Wyhe would say nice things about Darwin is because he's a partisan, so his defense is only what's expected.

A question, who would you contact to write a review about a person?  I guess the DI would want to contact someone who knew nothing about the subject themselves so they could offer an objective opinion, right?  That's crap!  Here's who New Scientist contacted about a review:

"John van Wyhe is a historian of science, with a focus on Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, at the National University of Singapore. He holds some academic and research positions, ranging from founder and director of The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, Scientific Associate, The Natural History Museum (London), a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Member of the British Society for the History of Science. He has given more than 50 public lectures on Darwin in more than a dozen countries. He lectures and broadcasts on Darwin, evolution, science and religion and the history of science around world. He also wrote The Darwin Experience, a biographical book about Charles Darwin." (Wikipedia: John van Wyhe)

They contacted an expert on the subject.  A historian, someone knowledgeable.  Doesn't that make sense?

Just for comparison, just who is A.N. Wilson?

"Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views." (Wikipedia: Andrew Norman Wilson)

Look a little closer, "known for his critical biographies", just the sort of author you want to make that your reviewer knows the subject at hand!  According to that Wikipedia page, he's been accused of inaccuracies in his biographies before.  So why might the DI want to attack the reviewer?

You may or may not remember this post from a few years back, "Why would the Discovery Institute call it 'Censorship' ", and I said:

"The DI are masters at Public Relations and Marketing. Anyone who says something negative about the DI or Intelligent Design is automatically a target. Do you remember little gem from 2006: "Canadian Quilters Attack Intelligent Design" from Evolution 'News' and Views and "“ID is a Myth” Quilt Wins National Contest" from Uncommon Descent. Yes, a quilter . . . a quilter did a quilt that made fun of Intelligent Design . . . and she is suddenly part of a cabal of Canadian Quilters who are attacking ID. See my point? They can't even allow someone to make a little fun of their pet version of Creationism without trying to gain some PR mileage out of it. A humorous quilt is suddenly an attack!"

 Anything that can be construed as an attack on ID is immediately counter-attacked back in a fit of defensiveness.  I also spoke about their knee-jerkisms a number of times, like "More 'Knee-Jerkiness' from the Discovery Institute, Emphasis on Jerkiness" and described their reactions like this:

• "First, if you say something nice about Intelligent Design (ID), the DI falls all over itself to say nice things about you.  It doesn't seem to matter if what you say is pretty well meaningless, even if the bias of the author is well known -- case-in-point the recent posts (here and here) based on a new book by Tom Bethell.  
• The other knee-jerk reaction is it you say anything that can be construed as negative about ID, they immediately jump on their keyboards and denounce you, usually claiming you didn't explain ID correctly and that you aren't fairly representing the official position of the DI.  case-in-point today's post: "In the Public Interest? ProPublica Misrepresents Intelligent Design and Discovery Institute Policy"

So, this is a pretty normal tactic of the DI, a knee-jerk reaction without giving any real thought to what they are going to say.  I mean how else do you consider an attack on Canadian Quilters?  Their immediate and first reaction is one of being defensive.

Which can explain a lot.  You see there are a number of mechanisms we use when we get defensive.  Denial, rationalization, and others.  The one I am most interested in right now is 'projection'.  What the DI is doing is using this to claim that van Wyhe is protecting Darwin because he's a partisan.  They pretty well ignore most of his critique, focusing on the one area it touches on their marketing.  But the reality is who is being partisan here?  The DI is the one attacking van Wyhe, not because his critique is invalid, but because he dared provide a scathing review of someone who can be perceived an ally of the DI.  They accuse van Wyhe of partisanship, yet it looks more like they are the ones acting as a partisan.

If van Wyhe's critiques are based on fact, then the one being a partisan, or maybe calling them an anti-Darwin partisan, is the DI.  If his critique is based on conjecture and opinion, then the DI might have a point.  Read the review itself and tell me what you think.

Little casey luskin, when he was with the DI, once actually posted

"The moral of this story is this: Whether the case ultimately wins or loses in court, don’t speak out publicly on a case until you know the facts. " (source)

If this was truly one of the guiding principles of the DI, they would never had reviewed this review until they could conduct their own review of the book itself, but they can't do that yet because:

"We haven’t yet seen a copy of A.N. Wilson’s forthcoming anti-Darwin book"

Which is reasonable, to a point. It also means they have no way of knowing if van Wyhe review is valid or not.  Actually that's not true, they could check out all the examples van Wyhe wrote about, but that would take too much effort.  So they simply write a meaningless disclaimer.  They also said this:

"Wilson’s competence or incompetence on Darwin remains to be seen with our own eyes."

While this sounds reasonable too, I see it as another disclaimer, a way of avoiding any real responsibility for what they write.  If Wilson's biography is found to be crap, then they can point to this line and claim innocence.  In the meantime, did they address any of the examples from van Wyhe's review and refute any of them?  No, they did not.  Let's discuss:

1. Did the DI examine van Wyhe's description of how Wilson defined Darwin's theories?  No, they love to create their own straw-men and then demolish them, so maybe they feel Wilson is a kindred spirit.
2. Did the DI look at Wilson's use of 'conflict' as an evolutionary mechanism and how that contrasted with what Darwin actually wrote?  No, but then they love the mischaracterization of 'survival of the fittest' themselves.
3. Did they address Wilson's apparent confusing between Darwin's theories and Lamarck's?  In a dismissive sort of way, but that doesn't detract from the apparent delight they had trying to dismiss, or at least diminish the review.
4. Did they address the material obviously copied from at a source who is notoriously anti-Darwin?  Why bother with facts, right?
5. Did they address any other other identified factual errors?  They acknowledge that the errors might make the book "problematic", but never check into the things themselves.

No, they did none of this.  What they did do was grab onto one of the things that they have been pushing themselves, Darwin's supposed connection to Hitler, which has been debunked time and time again.  Not that debunking their ideas has ever stopped them from pushing them.

The DI ends with this:

"The key is exactly what does Wilson say and how does he say it. We know well by now to be cautious of Darwin’s defenders. They are often cagey and misleading. So at this point, who knows?"

Darwin's defenders are cagey and misleading?  So, instead of being cautious about a biography from someone known to play fast and loose with the facts --they are being cautious of a historian of science; the founder and director of The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, Scientific Associate, The Natural History Museum (London); a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Member of the British Society for the History of Science.  Why is that?  Guess which one aligns with the goals and tactics of the DI itself?

As you can see, it's not van Wyhe who can be seen as not being objective.  If the DI was being objective, even in the slightest, they would have waited for their own review once they could actually examine Wilson's own words.  But they can't let any bashing of Darwin pass unnoticed, even if it's nonsense.  Besides, if they wait and discovery that van Wyhe is right in his critique, does anyone think that would appear in any of their posts?  Of course not, they would then see reviewing this review as a missed opportunity.

So now let me ask you a question, who is playing at partisanship?