Indignation continues about some atheists wondering about possible connections between the more combative style of atheism and the reason[s] Craig Hicks lost his temper. (I don’t know he lost his temper, but I’m assuming he did since he turned himself in to the police so quickly. That seems incompatible with murdering in cold blood, because why would you do that? If he’d done it in cold blood, planning it in advance, he would have known the next step was turning himself in – so he would have cold-bloodedly decided not to do it at all. Turning himself in implies regret, in other words, which implies bad impulse control, i.e. loss of temper.)
I sort of get the indignation, because atheists are a demonized group anyway (as are Muslims, oh the ironies), and because the mainstream media are all too ready to bash us without our help.
But, at the same time, I have learned way more thoroughly than I ever wanted to, over the past 3.5 years, that movement atheism has lots of room for mean shits, and mean shits flourish there. And then, I like to write waspishly myself, and if you put a heavy hand on my shoulder and demanded that I explain to you where the boundary is between “waspish” and “mean shits” I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Or, I don’t know, I guess I would, but it would take a lot of hemming and hawing and we’d both be bored to death before I succeeded in really explaining.
Maybe the real point is that this isn’t an atheist problem but a mean shit problem – much like the proudly racist “football fans” on the Paris metro, perhaps – and that atheism gives mean shits an exciting new base from which to share their mean shit skills.
The mean shittery is prior, and the atheism is a medium for expressing it, perhaps.
I don’t have a conclusion. It’s not as if I want waspishness to cease; I absolutely don’t. But…there’s Jon Stewart and Kate Smurthwaite and the like on the one hand, and there’s everyone else on the other. There’s talent, and there’s the absence of talent. People who are waspish or mean shits without talent…well they’re just mean shits, aren’t they.
Well, atheism (and skepticism generally) gives one something to feel smugly superior to all the sheeple, doesn’t it? Same as being a born again Christian allows one to feel smugly superior to all those sinners, or Jewish to all the goyim, or Muslim to all the kaffirs, or…..
Not that the consequence is inevitable — there are lots, maybe most, members of those groups, who don’t go there. But if one’s temperament happens to have a tendency to smug superiority, or mean shitness, well, now you’ve got a perfect excuse, right? And raising your label to the level of an Identity (which religions have always been, and Atheism has more recently become in some circles) makes it a tribal flag to wave, and now it’s virtuous Us vs. evil Them.
Even the most harsh, aggressive forms of atheism are hardly ever associated with actual violence (followers of non-theistic totalitarian ideologies with their own anti-empirical cultish dogmas are an obvious historical exception, but Hicks doesn’t seem like the type to have a Stalin poster over his bed or anything).
I have a hard time seeing his actions as a spontaneous tantrum over some annoyance with the neighbors, though. Three precise headshots aren’t the usual result of that kind of mindless rage.
It seems to me that he (not his stated philosophy of life but his deeper personality and character) couldn’t separate his justifiable major issues with Islam in the abstract and Islamists in particular from his feelings toward ordinary Muslim individuals and he chose to make a public statement about all this with his gun.
That he didn’t go on the run mainly suggests to me that he has the intelligence to understand the hopelessness of life as a fugitive without false papers and access to money. But who knows. The whole case is weird.
At the danger of speculation, I think I have some idea of what was going on in this case.
Like most atheists, he felt anger and disgust at the actions of the Islamists of ISIL and Al-Quaeda and that ilk. And because we have evolved monkey-brains, he succumbed to that very human temptation to think in terms of groups rather than individuals. Normally, it probably wouldn’t have come out this way. But because his neighbor-dispute conflated with his group-hate, it became something worse than the sum of its parts.
Maybe if they hadn’t been Muslim, he would’ve just gotten the gun and waved it around angrily–Fnord knows there’s plenty of that sort of thing in neighbor battles across the country. But, because they were Muslims, his anger flared higher, faster and hotter than it would’ve otherwise. (In a lesser confrontation, this often will manifest in the angry person reaching for discriminatory slurs. The principle is the same–since you’ve already committed to a level of hostility, you go for the most ‘effective’ attack in your arsenal.) It isn’t willful bigotry, exactly–but it both draws upon and feeds into societal bigotry.
I think the difference between “waspish” criticism and just being “mean shits” is easier to articulate than you suggest, Ophelia. What you’re talking about is rooted in this commonly recognized tension: Thoughtful people believe and say, for good reasons, that hostility and contempt aimed at PEOPLE is bad. However, some IDEAS are clearly deserving of hostility and contempt, and nothing but. The difficulty arises because it’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to keep the hostility and contempt for the bad ideas entirely separate from the people, because it’s the people who embrace the contemptible ideas.
But which comes first, and why, does matter. Criticizing people for having bad ideas is perfectly reasonable and respects their fundamental humanity; in effect, such criticism asks others to be better people by chiding them for ideas which are bad but *which they can change*. Recognizing someone’s humanity means, ultimately, recognizing their autonomy and consequently their responsibility: You have this belief, advocate this position, and take these actions — and I argue that they are horrible beliefs and positions and actions, and that such beliefs and behaviors make you a bad person. My criticism respects your humanity by holding you accountable for your choices, and is consistent with encouraging you to make better choices and thereby become a better person.
Criticizing people for who they are — attacking their character and identity rather than their beliefs and actions, especially when the attack is on a part of their identity that is not chosen or subject to change (gender identity, able-bodiedness, race, etc.) — does not show the same respect for humanity. Generally speaking, such criticism places ideas in a secondary role: Instead of saying that you are bad because and only to the extent that you have bad ideas and engage in bad behavior, such criticism declares that only a person who is fundamentally bad would embrace such a bad idea or behave in such a way. Such criticism bears no element of encouraging or recognizing the possibility of change in it, and shows no respect for the humanity of the one criticized.
Thus, what separates a sharp and witty critic like Jon Stewart from some asshole who thinks he’s witty but is actually just a mean shit — Rush Limbaugh is a paradigm case — is the recognition of a fellow human’s humanity even when one thinks that fellow human is being a complete shit and has horrible beliefs that motivate horrible behavior. For example, Stewart will criticize Faux News broadcasters by eviscerating their bad ideas and actions — their hypocrisy, self-contradiction, blatant denial of reality, systematic deceit of the public, lack of journalistic integrity, and so on. But his criticism consistently puts the priority on the ideas: you are bad people because you have and promote bad ideas, and by implication you would be better people if you had and promoted better ideas. For the perfect counter example, Rush Limbaugh’s criticism of Sandra Fluke for testifying about the mandate for insurance to fund birth control under the Affordable Care Act was to label her a slut and generally belittle her with every misogynist insult he could spit into his microphone: He offered no real criticism of the ideas Fluke advocated, and he dismissed the idea of birth control subsidies as so obviously wrong-headed that they are something only a bad person would ever argue for in the first place — a filthy slut like Fluke.
Now, those are extreme opposite ends of a spectrum for illustrative purposes, but I think the underlying distinction is basically right: We can and should criticize people for bad ideas and bad behavior, and that can and should be uncompromising and even cutting when necessary, but such criticism is ultimately respectful of the humanity of others because it implies that they can become better people through embracing better ideas and behaviors. But attacking people for their identity rather than their ideas — especially for elements of their identity that they cannot change or choose — or suggesting in any way that their ideas spring from or should be judged according to their identity rather than the other way around, is fundamentally dehumanizing because it denies the very possibility of choice and improvement.
thephilosophicalprimate:
I grant that (absolutist) thoughtful people might believe and say that.
(I don’t say that)
For me, “respect for humanity” is a vague abstraction with mystical overtones; I prefer to think in terms of people and groupings of people, and it is those whom I can respect or not.
Also, I don’t know how to determine someone’s character and identity other than from their beliefs and actions, and I think that neither do you.
(“Hate the sin, love the sinner”?)
So now you appeal to pragmatism rather than to idealism.
(heh)
I get that done to me all the time, yet I don’t feel dehumanized thereby, whatever your opinion — which I note went directly from “Generally speaking, such criticism places ideas in a secondary role” to “[…] is fundamentally dehumanizing because it denies the very possibility of choice and improvement”.
Bah.
It’s not an “atheist” problem. It is, at most, a problem for SOME kinds of atheist, but those are the kind that people like you have already been attacking and disowning for years anyway. So if there’s any explaining or disowning or condemning you need to do, anyone who’s been paying attention knows you’ve done it all already.
Have you been following any of the morons who are trying to pin Hicks’ actions on PZ? Is any of that based on ANYTHING PZ actually said?
No, I haven’t seen that.
It seems that John Morales beat me to the punch, but let me make his point clear by expanding on it.
@thephilosophicalprimate
I just realized this now, but the distinction is bullcrap. In practice it’s quite muddled. For one, it’s muddled because of standard difficulties in communication. However, I think there’s a bigger problem:
I am an individual. I am different from you because I hold different beliefs (and values) than you. (There’s more to a person’s identity, but this approximation is good enough for now.) I identify myself according to my beliefs, and the actions which flow from those beliefs. I take pride in myself in terms of those beliefs and actions. This is true for most people. Most people’s self identity is in terms of their beliefs and consequent actions. Thus, when one attacks core beliefs of another person, there is no other way to see it except as a personal attack. I think it’s impossible to fully separate attacks on persons from attacks on beliefs for this reason.
Perhaps what you meant is that we should be careful that attacks on beliefs are not misconstrued as assertions that individuals are worthless, or irredeemable, or “fundamentally bad”, etc. That is an important consideration. Let me expand on some of the related problems which I do take seriously.
I never want to inspire actual violence when I condemn beliefs. Avoiding this possibility is hard, because of standard communication problems, because of our “monkey brains”, as someone up-thread described it well, and other reasons.
I also never want the condemnation of belief, and the related condemnation of the group of people who hold that belief, to spill over onto other related people groups. I never want my condemnations of Catholics to spill over onto the Irish. I never want my condemnations of Shia and Sunni Muslims to spill over onto Arabs, Persians, etc.
I don’t want to dehumanize anyone either. I do these criticisms to try to make the world a better place, including the religious. Ideally, I want religion to go away, but my end goal is to make the world better for everyone, and that does include religious people. (It includes criminals too. it includes everyone.)
Avoiding these problems is hard, and I do take these problems seriously. However, I don’t think that these problems are sufficient to avoid talking about the problems of bad beliefs in straightforward, honest, clear terms. I do try to add on pertinent disclaimers. I need to start doing that more often, as a matter of reflex.