Social Critics

"Remembrance Day should therefore also be about war’s causes: ugly faiths, intolerance, lust for power and revenge, mutual hatreds prompted by historical accidents or differences of colour, custom or culture."

"The claim is that educating moral sensibility through imagination has a general tendency, not a universal effect."

"Emancipation is always at risk from the usual sources—demagogues, civil and international war, the tenure that superstitions have over the human imagination—so there are no guarantees that progress will continue."

"Symbols have the unfortunate power to acquire the importance of what they symbolise."

"The media no longer hesitate to whip up lurid anxieties in order to increase sales, in the process undermining social confidence and multiplying fears."

"And then, to sink the roots of this fear deep, the church introduces the idea of evil and the devil to children, for it knows that if it can cut early psychological scars it has a better chance of holding on to the minds thus wounded. All religions are anxious to proselytise the young. Society seems not to see either the absurdity or the danger in the fact that pupils in one school are taught, as truths of history, that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and that Jesus is the son of God, in another that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and Jesus is not the son of God but that Mohammed received the definitive divine revelation, in a third that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and that neither Jesus nor Mohammed is of any significance besides Guru Dev—and in a fourth that the Normans conquered England in 1066 and all three of Jesus, Mohammed and Guru Dev are false distractions, attention to whom is likely to provoke God’s jealous wrath. Yet in schools all over the country these antipathetic “truths” are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth. This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves."

"Tarot is not properly speaking, a divinatory practice, but a complex card game, invented in the fifteenth century, which somewhat like bridge, turns on capturing tricks."

"They beautifully illustrate the recipe for nonsense, which is: take something strange-looking, whose meaning is now forgotten, and liberally stir in imagination and superstition. In this respect the divinatory tarot is a paradigm of all superstitions and wonderfully illustrates humanity’s clever, ingenious, and intricate capacity for folly."

"Moral panics occur because the increased availability of information about what happens in our society is not matched by a public capacity to reflect upon and make sense of it. Western societies might be advanced in many ways, but if the standard of debates set by the popular media is anything to go by, their populations are woefully bad at engaging sensibly with new and evolving moral demands. This last remark is not meant to imply that there are, say, too few religious education lessons in schools. Far from it: religion is part of the problem, not the solution. And moral education is not best done by haranguing people, especially the young. On both counts standard views about moral education need rethinking. Religion is worse than an irrelevant as regards the inculcation of morality, for the following reasons: in an individualistic society, where personal wealth is the chief if not the sole measure of achievement, a morality that enjoins you to give your all to the poor that says it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to enter heaven, and preaches selflessness towards one’s neighbor and complete obedience to a deity—such a morality, wholly opposed to the norms and practices not just accepted but extolled in our society, has little to offer. Most people ignore the contrast between such views and the universal instruction to go forth and multiply one’s income and possessions; and obey the latter. And when religious fundamentalists add a preparedness to incarcerate women, mutilate genitals, amputate hands, murder, bomb, and terrorise—all in the name of faith—then religious morality becomes not just irrelevant but dangerous. With such examples and contrasts, it has less than nothing to offer proper moral debate."

"Aristotle’s thought is that to live well and flourishingly, a person needs to be educated—which means: informed, and able to think. He is of course right."

"Prudery expresses itself most forcibly as censorship."

"The growth of civilisation is measured by refinements of living and increasing distance from the immediacies of survival."

"New and challenging moral dilemmas are always likely to arise, so we need to try to make ourselves the kind of people who can respond thoughtfully."

"Worst of all, symbols sometimes live on in their own right when what they symbolise has long been forgotten."

"Of all the questions we can ask ourselves the most important is: how is one best to live?"

"A civilized society is one which never ceases having a discussion with itself about what human life should best be."

"We can therefore all demand apologies from one another for mankind’s turpitude. But it is better worth remembering that we poison the present by our self-imposed slavery to unforgivingness over offences of the past—and that this explains almost all conflicts, from Northern Ireland via the Balkans to Kashmir. That is a form of slavery which we desperately need to abolish too."

"People not only live by symbols, but die by them, as wars of religion and nationalism attest."

"Four kinds of answer are standardly given to the question why religion exists. One is that it provides explanations—of the origin of the universe, of the way it works, of the apparently inexplicable things that happen in it, and of why it includes evil and suffering. Another is that religion provides comfort, giving hope of life after death, providing reassurance in a hostile world, and a means (by supplication, propitiation, and the practice of one or another form of prescribed behaviour) to get a better deal in it. A third is that it makes for social order, in promoting morality and social cohesion. And a fourth is that it rests on the natural ignorance, stupidity, superstitiousness and gullibility of mankind."

"When the Bible was the only book people knew, they naturally thought it embodied all that is true; but when their reading expanded, and with it the world, and a sense of other times, other voices, other possibilities and points of view, that authority could not last."

"In one collective form of insanity, whole populations of people rise from sleep at about the same time each day, move in great herds to locations at some distance from their home territory, perform repetitive manoeuvers there, return home when evening falls, slump in front of a flickering coloured light, and after a while fall asleep again. They repeat the process day after day for decades. The disease is called “normal life”, and variations from it are regarded as eccentric; if the variations are marked enough they are even called “madness” and “delusion”. This thought is intended to show that what counts as abnormal is a relative matter."

"Ideas are the cogs of history—and too often the barricades that stand in its way."

"There are many ways that reviewing can be dishonest. Here is one illustration, drawn from no less a personnage than the self-appointed doyen of the literature dons, Terry Eagleton. A standard rhetorical device in discursive literature has the form “some say X, but I say Y.” The author might not disagree with X, but thinks Y is the more important point. A scurrilous reviewer can systematically misrepresent the author by saying, “the author says X” and omitting the author’s rider “Y”. This is one of Eagleton’s techniques of choice (chapter and verse can be abundantly supplied). Of course, this might not be intentional on Eagleton’s part; he might merely be stupid or lazy. But since it is better to doubt this, we have to conclude instead that he is guilty of wilful misrepresentation. It is alarming to think that such are the ethics of criticism he teaches his students at Manchester University."

"[Academic criticism] is not concerned with taste, but with technique; not with the common readers’ response to books and their connection with life as lived, but with specialist academic interest in methods and classifications, schools and “-isms”, unconscious influences, supposed hidden meanings, patriarchal oppressions, deconstruction of texts, and multiple readings."

"And sometimes Bloom is thunderously wrong—which is itself valuable, because he thereby ignites explosions of disagreement that prompt thought; and anyone who makes us think does us a service."

"Confusion is the beginning of wisdom."

"Among the striking ideas that everywhere blossom in Bloom is his view that Shakespeare’s imaginative resources “transcend those of Yahweh, Jesus and Allah”, and provide a grander alternative vision of human nature. He is right. He says that genuinely intelligent people do not think ideologically; right again."

"The one thing that is more dangerous than true ignorance is the illusion of understanding."

"But in vitriolic conflicts there is neither appropriateness nor proportion, so the arguments of history and justice become lost in vengeance."

"The recent discovery that humans have only twice as many genes as fruitflies has tipped the balance in the nature-nurture debate back to nurture. On this evidence it is our culture, history and belief-systems which make us what we are. We look at the rest of nature and see carnivores killing to eat, but we do not see zebras forming armies to wage war on gnus. It is only humans, with their congenital vice of inventing differences of politics and faith, who murder one another because they disagree. And what makes the tragedy more poignant is that the less secure their grounds for belief, the more anxious and violent their adherence to it—and the greater their readiness to kill and die in its defence."

"If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer, meningitis, millions of spontaneous abortions every day, mass killings of people in floods and earthquakes—and too great a mountain of other natural evils to list besides."

"The ease with which birds and beasts, men, women and children, can now be shot into sudden oblivion is breathtaking. If the murderer had nothing but his hands, he could kill only a few on a single outing, if lucky. But a victim might fight back, and win. What a limitation, a frustration, for the poor murderer. But with a Kalashnikov – joy! – all such frustration vanishes. In a few seconds dozens of human beings can be left twitching and bleeding on the ground, their possibilities, hopes, loves and endeavours abruptly and arbitrarily obliterated, their families drowned in shock and grief. How satisfying for the murderous of mind; how fulfilling; and all thanks to those who make and sell guns."

"Anger is the chief emotion driving the deadly reciprocity of reprisal and revenge which has engulfed the recent history of the Middle East. The other dominating emotions of that tragedy—grief and terror—would bring the violence to an end without it. But anger, bitter and implacable when the only response it gets is anger returned, feeds on its reflection until it becomes insanity."

"None of the major faiths is bloodless; history reeks with the gore of their wars and persecutions, all the more disgusting a spectacle for being, in essence, as simple as this: A kills B because B does not agree with A that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. People should be left to believe what they like, so long as they harm no one else. Apart from normal expectations of politeness, it is not however clear why people should require their personal beliefs to be treated with special sensitivity by others, to the point that if others fail to tip-toe respectfully around them they will start throwing bombs. From a secular point of view, religious beliefs are at best absurd and at worse dangerous, and the amount of free play they are given in the public domain is a menace. Believed-in fairies should be kept at home as an entirely private matter, and their votaries encouraged to cease taking themselves so seriously that, when irritated by those who differ, they resort to Kalashnikovs. Apart from anything else, such reactions speak little confidence in their own violently-held certainties."

"This brings into focus a startling fact: that the practice of contemporary reviewing, whether fiction or non-fiction, owes nothing to self-styled “critical theorists”, those succubi of English Literature departments whose jargonings are read (if they are read at all) only by one another, and who have contributed nothing to the wider world since they hijacked the academic study of literature from its original Quiller-Couchian purpose: which was to educate, liberate, and civilise. The reason is that the professionalisation of the academy has diverted its form of criticism away from engagement with life."

"Most moralists, and certainly all those of a religious persuasion, think that pupils should be “taught values” at school, not mainly so that they can apply them in thinking about the implications of science, history and other subjects, but to make them behave in ways that they (the moralists) find acceptable. But the point of equipping people to think about ethics is not to impose some partisan set of principles upon them, but to develop their powers of reflection, and to inform them of possibilities and options so that they can think for themselves."

"Thus justice is not equality but equity; as Aristotle says, “Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally, and unequals are treated equally.”"

"On the best view, justice is fairness."

"Politicians react to terrorism by limiting liberties….Zealots, most especially religious zealots, hate the liberality of liberal society; their terrorism aims to destroy it. To start putting handcuffs on ourselves is to achieve their goals for them."

"“The first principle of a civilised state,” said Walter Lippmann, “is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.”"

"Sceptics and idlers think that their one vote will make no difference either way. They are wrong—wrong both in practice: some elections turn on mere handfuls of votes, as witness Al Gore’s fate in Florida—and in principle: for every refusal to vote is an act of self-disenfranchisement in which a citizen, betraying the endeavours of history, demotes himself into a serf."

"Power’s tendency to corrupt is a function of the work it does in liberating man’s worse characteristics."

"Tolerance is not only a key feature of liberalism, but—familiarly—its paradox too. Liberalism’s tolerance leaves the democracy of ideas to decide which among opposing viewpoints will prevail. The risk is the death of liberty itself, because those who live by hard and uncompromising views in political, moral and religious respects always, if given half a chance, silence liberals because liberalism, by its nature, threatens the hegemony they seek to impose."

"It often enough goes too far, conjuring mountains from molehills (or from nothing), but excess is better than deficit in this instance, because unless the press were absolutely vigilant, the politicians would use their time-honoured methods—cover-up, sleight of hand, rationalisation—to get away with things. They would think themselves foolish not to. In consequence, consumers of the media have to exercise their own watchfulness. They have to exercise judgement concerning whether the media are offering a good story or a good point."

"One can judge between candidates by remembering Georges Pompidou’s remark that a statesman is a politician who puts himself at his country’s service, whereas a politician is a statesman who puts the country at his own service—or that of a group or class, usually his own."

"At the time of writing there are, by one measure, more slaves in the world than at any time in history: 27 million people all told, in forced labour camps, debt bondage, the sex industry, professional beggary, domestic servitude, and work—work without pay and under threat of violence, which is the definition of slavery—in agriculture, mining and factories. A very large proportion of them are children, many of whom are commercially trafficked…. Those who are enslaved by history—who dwell on past wrongs, who keep ancient conflicts and quarrels alive, who even seek reparations for the wrongs suffered by their ancestors—would do the world a greater service by turning their attention to present-day slavery instead. A concerted effort might open the gates of China’s forced labour camps, free the Haitian sugar-plantation slaves, rescue the child prostitutes of Southeast Asia, and end the chattel slavery in Mauritania and the Sudan where slave markets still exist and where you can buy six children for one Kalashnikov."

"Credulity, insecurity and desire form a potent combination in the human psyche. Together they make us eager to believe any nonsense if it purports to yield a glimpse of the future, or offers even the slenderest hope of success in love or fortune. On this rests the livelihood of many tricksters and charlatans—the crystal-ball gazers, palmists, astrologers, and readers of tarot cards."

"Folly tends to predominate over wisdom because it is usually easier to understand and more convenient (or exciting) to believe; but a little reflection usually sifts one from the other."

"It is the technique of the baboon to try to get its way by violence."

"These amazingly recent achievements were built on dead bodies. For centuries ordinary people struggled against absolute monarchs, rich aristocrats, princely bishops, colonisers, landowners and industrial magnates for a say in the running of their own lives. They did it on barricades, in demonstrations charged by saber-wielding mounted cavalry, in sit-ins crushed by tanks. These people are dishonored by stay-at-homes on polling day."