Why is an activist….? how our “moral grammar” is fed?

Still thinking on my last post: I once out of a sense of idealism and desire for self-worth joined a fringe religious cult (all the while “proving” my grounds for doing so repeatedly and deeply); I went through the trauma of leaving that cult, flirted with more mainstream positions briefly, but could not be content with what I viewed as their shortcomings, and have moved on, again out of a sense of idealism perhaps, or I call it humanitarianism now, and desire for self-worth (to be a decent member of the human species) to become a political and social activist. I have dedicated my non-work time (even some of my work time) to working to bring in guest speakers to help better inform wider audiences of other perspectives, helping organize rallies and public information sessions, coordinating publicity for such events, writing on behalf of people like David Hicks, etc etc.

I think of those who switch from extreme right to extreme left positions and vv.

I think it highly plausible that I am simply living out my genetic makeup. And these experiences of mine and others persuade me of the idea that humans have evolved an inbuilt moral grammar, like Chomsky’s concept of a linguistic grammar. The grammar is the broader logic or way of thinking or values, while the specifics of how those broader concepts and value bases are applied will depend on cultural upbringing. Like all languages having a basic common innate “grammar” but the words and phrasings etc within that range will depend on the cultural influences.

Check out Moral Minds: The Evolution of Human Morality

Dissident activists and evolutionary psychology

I’m just raising the question in this first post but it’s a question that may have significant meaning for activist strategies, not to mention self-perceptions, perhaps even morale boosting. Having read Volker’s “Blind Trust” and similar works and various discussions of evolutionary psychology and human nature, I am almost resigned to accepting that the human condition has been shaped by evolution so that societies only work through majority inbuilt acceptance of and even naive trust in the status quo and resistance to those who would seek to change it for the better. Yet if such a condition were a total one for every member the society would be vulnerable to complete collapse from inflexibility in the face of challenges. Has evolution selected for most successful survival the breeding of a species where only a small minority are different enough to act as goads to at least pressure slight modifications on the broader collective from time to time?

review notes re Collision Course

There are two ways of reading John Norris’s ‘Collision Course: one can read it as a student of diplomacy and perhaps be soberly impressed with its contents; or one can read it as a complete outsider, as an Outsider in Albert Camus’ sense, as simply a fellow human who identifies with not only Americans but also Russians and Serbs, be totally depressed by the stark bullying of the stronger power that poses as “diplomacy”. Not only the bullying, but the willingness of the stronger power to quite knowingly risk full scale great power war and treat the slaughter of civilians as a “pressuring bargaining chip”. I suspect many Americans would be shocked to read a US diplomat having no discomfort with identifying openly with Chairman Mao’s dictum of “fight, fight, talk, talk”.

I have been wanting to finish a review of this book for weeks now and still have not had the chance to structure, cut down and complete my notes, especially the brief chapter by chapter contents. It shouldn’t be that hard. Maybe I want to achieve too much with it. But for anyone interested in the meantime here are my raw notes and quotations from the book:

The end of faith: religion, terror, and the future of reason / Sam Harris. (Norton, 2005) Review

This is a disturbing book principally for its ignorant tirade against Moslems. As an atheist myself I had hoped for something more rational and informative given the enormous popularity of this book in the U.S. but find Harris here is too often little more than a mega-mouthpiece for Western (read American?) ignorance of Moslems and the Moslem world outside the U.S. borders.

Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society / Ghassan Hage (Pluto Press, 2003) Review

This was the first book I read by an Australian Lebanese academic and I found its discussion of fundamentalism and suicide terrorism most informative. It opened my eyes to seeing how our own Australian nationalism can be seen by non-westerners as just as fundamentalist as any other kind:

International law and conventions

A little while ago I began to compile links to sites that give us the black and white of exactly what are the post 1945 supposedly universally agreed international laws and conventions, singling out the actual sources of texts that relate to the conduct of war and treatment of civilian populations in war. My idea was that it’s often useful to fall back on texts that supposedly represent all that our earlier generations fought and died for and challenge our current leaders to publicly justify why they support tearing them apart or simply ignoring them today. Again, make use of the link as you will — look in the margin here under Blogroll.

Facts about suicide terrorism

Earlier this year I wrote up a flyer for distribution at one of our public rallies. Thought I’d share it here — make use of it as you will: Facts about suicide terrorism

American theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century / Kevin Phillips (Viking, 2006). Review

If the details of the arguments of this work are not always persuasive the author nevertheless achieves his stated purpose: to demolish any illusion among his fellow Americans that the US is in any way “exceptional” in its place and role in the world. Rather, he argues that it is rapidly following in the wake of the demise of past imperial powers Spain, Holland and Britain. The extraordinary rise and influence of extremist religious tendencies; the financialization and extreme indebtedness of the economy as “real wealth production” is outsourced; and the inevitable decline and gradual replacement of the economy’s main fuel resource, are the three main streams that Phillips sees as once having broken their banks over previous leading imperial powers and that are now beginning to deluge the US.

Australia’s blackest sporting moments: the top 100 / Stephen Hagan. (Ngalga Warralu, 2006) Review

Caveat: I am one of 14 contributors to this book. Anti-caveat: I receive no remuneration whatever from this book!

Compiler and commentator academic and aboriginal activist Stephen Hagan is highly controversial, especially in his (and my) hometown Toowoomba which the Bulletin once reported was voted the most rednecked town in Australia. Toowoomba has been the centre of his years-old campaign to have the name “Nigger” removed from a local sporting stadium, a campaign that has taken him to the Australian High Court and even to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Hagan wrote of these experiences as part of his biography in “The N Word” which won a Deadly Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature at the Sydney Opera House in 2005. With this background one might expect this new book to be a list of the sins of the whites, but Hagan with engaging honesty confronts the racism found among both the blacks and whites on Australia’s iconic sporting fields.

Jonestown: the power and the myth of Alan Jones / Chris Masters. (Allen & Unwin, 2006) Review

This review is very difficult for me to write given my past student experience with Alan Jones. I’m too involved emotionally and know it’s not like my other reviews and other reviewers will surely give a more rounded view of the book. But here goes anyway — at least pending the time when I will have another look back on this review of mine and reshape it to give a more objective chapter by chapter overview of the contents, sources and presentations.