Courting Disaster

A war rages between Religion and Science, between atheism and theism, and between your team and the other lot. And who is left to mourn: uncertainty, truth, agreeable disagreement, or minding one's own business see how they've fallen. Like a battle between Communists and Fascists : you don't want to pick a side , and not picking a side could be the riskiest choice by far. Much as Kwasi Kwarteng must have felt when asked by the ill fated Liz Truss to become her chancellor, you want to help, but you don't know if you can and almost anyone else might make things worse.

Do you feel that truth, whatever it may be, has wandered off, over the rainbow while acidic rain falls all around everything once solid fizzes insubstantially? I think I can help, first come in out of these corrosive elements to admire the simple markings on a sports hall floor, where red, black, white, green, blue, and yellow lines these could help us understand how we've managed to get into such a pickle.

So how does this pallet of colours of lines help? see here, markings for both football / soccer and tennis. On one court, a particular action could be a foul, while in the other, that's meaningless. Similarly, consider the term "evil." on the court of theism , that's something like a foul or off side in football/soccer, a clear violation of the code, it is vital if you want to play that game seriously. Sure if you want a kickabout in a field , off side isn't a thing, just as you may play poker with match sticks. Though when shit gets real you need real rules.

Now, watch what happens on the materialist's court. Here, 'evil' isn't just meaningless - it is not even wrong. In materialism, actions (at least they have those!) aren't 'evil' or 'good', in the same way that actions aren't 'blue' or 'green'. It's as if you're playing tennis and someone shouts 'Offside!'

Want to play dirty? don't tell them what the game is until they've lost

So with the courts squarely before our minds eye - lets observe the unsportsmanlike conduct of so called intellectuals ancient and modern. The game of certain intellectuals since time immemorial is to win at tennis while your opponent is set up for football. That is, don't engage with your opponents' arguments on terms at which you might lose, but instead ensure they lose by rules they aren't aware of.

Consider these quotes. Can you hear them calling game, set, and match in a game of cricket, or bowling off-breaks in tennis?

"All the notions of sin, of good and evil, of virtue and vice, of praise and blame, must vanish when we discover their incompatibility with the necessary mechanism to which all beings are subjected." - Baron d'Holbach

This quote sidesteps moral arguments entirely by reframing the debate in mechanistic terms.

Perhaps less obvious:

".... by the 1960s it was clear that the great socialist experiments were failing nastily so put yourself in the shoes of a smart more or less open to the evidence socialist and you're confronted with all this data how do you react?" - Professor Stephen Hicks

Why is this an off-break in tennis? Because to a socialist who holds that history is inevitably destined for communism, data isn't what a socialist seeks to confirm theories. Professor Hicks might wish they did, I might wish they did, but like wishing that Americans played 5-day test match cricket, though a wonderful vision, it is just that—a vision.

"We do not believe in an eternal morality, and we expose the falseness of all fables about morality" - Vladimir Lenin

You and I ought to call such thinking evil, but when you consider that Lenin thought Marx some sort of prophet, and Marx modelled himself on Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, selecting the quotation "Everything that exists deserves to perish" (Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust), as his favourite you get a sense of the problem.

"All the things we value in society don't mean much in fiction"- Martin Amis

In some courts, words gain or lose meaning between games. A point in football and a point in basketball have more or less the same meaning - at least they would agree that more is better. At other times, there's blank incomprehension. This is not the limit to unsportsmanlike behavior; we must consider situations akin to fixing the match or, if you prefer, bringing a gun to a knife fight.

Want to win really dirty? - play in another dimension or rob the bank before it is built.

Time, and with it reality, are experienced exquisitely differently in different games. Take tennis, where the match continues until 3 or 5 sets are played, which can make the ending almost anticlimactic. Whereas in basketball, the ticking clock ensures that all the drama erupts in the final moments.

Now consider the game characterised by the clamour to respond to The Climate Crisis and contrast that with what is played on an almost identical courts: longterm environmental campaigning. These seem to run on different clocks, at different speeds, with contrasting senses of urgency governing their strategy. From each perspective, the climate activist's ticking clock makes the long-term environmental campaigner seem like a denier, while the long-term environmental campaigner assumes the climate activist uninterested in anything beyond the drama of the next stunt. Just as communists think everyone not like them a fascist and vice versa.

People claim they want people who can think outside the bubble, but this is what happens when anyone tries: you get run over while you thought you were playing Scalextric , or like the monk at an army checkpoint. When asked "What religion are you?" and replying "Buddhist," the guard, puzzled, demanded to know "Are you a Catholic or Protestant Buddhist?" Or in the case of the climate crisis - consider a non-partisan fan who might imagine nuclear power 'ought' to be a solution. Though all agree it's risky, if the crisis is truly existential, couldn't we at least entertain the idea?

Ok smart guy, enough problems, I want solutions!

You may not like it, but it's the best I have to offer: simply play fair. Agree about the court you're playing on and stick to it. This would - at a stroke - stop the kind of arguments that contemporary intellectuals, grifty thinkers, and populist politicians use to bamboozle the public.

But there's more to it, and perhaps a sporting analogy can illuminate what's missing:

In tennis, a poor shot can sometimes win a point, and striving too hard can lead to poor performance. What yields the best results is playing your game well, achieving flow, being your own sternest critique and greatest fan and striving to do your best not seeking admiration. A child engaged in sports understands this intuitively; their focus is on improving for the next match, not just winning this one match at the cost of the overall game.

Many who count themselves as intellectuals, politicians, and thought leaders actively discourage such fair mindedness, they act like viruses only in spreading their notions as widely as possible, heedless to wider harm. They focus only on erasing other argument and doing so ideally automatically the better to spread their word far and all while actively blocking any talk of solutions, or things that might lead to solutions, continuity, well being, harm minimisation or principled behaviour.

A quick test of one's interlocutor - how much attention do they spend on enhancing the quality of the game? If you were missing your racket a reasonable player would lend you their spare, and they'd feel bad if it wasn't of decent quality. They'd ensure that the net was the right height, or suggest a court that was better shaded to everyones' advantage.

Argument should be conducted as anyone would play a game - that is so that more play is possible later. If you're opponent turns an ankle retiring hurt , while going for a ball you hit just right, it would simply be wrong to count this as a personal victory. When you win fairly, your opponent, if they're fair-minded, will have to admit you were the better player and they will most likely thank you for the game, as they have had an opportunity to improve. A child understands this; many of our public intellectuals and politicians, sadly, haven't a clue.

This approach applies to all our previous examples and much of what passes for contemporary debate and opinion:

Take for example what passes for the 'debate' about immigration, imagine how things would be different if there was focus on improving the quality of the discussion by sharing quality evidence, understanding the sensitivity of the issue, the difficulty of having to find the right words to compass what are hard thoughts, resist easy point scoring or labelling people as bigots or globalists or brain washed. Much the same in international conflicts, it is the lies that kill as surely as bullets, by focusing on truthful engagement, seeking out the means to continue the conversation over short-term propaganda victories will save lives. In all cases, the goal should be to elevate the discourse, not to win the current round.

The alternative to our broken courts of discourse is still what Gandhi called "ahimsa waged through Satyagraha" - war waged between those with a firm grip on the truth. But now we can see it in a new light: as a commitment to playing the long game, focusing on the process of truthful engagement rather than any single outcome. Continuing a fruitful conversation is worth infinitely more than the winning of any particular argument.

So obviously this has all been thought before and in Latin, the error is known as cogito elenchi. These are ideas that aren't exactly false and may pass for insightful, but upon inspection are placebo like in their argumentative effectiveness. In our sports court analogy they are like Ted Lasso trying to bring 'grid iron plays' to 'soccer', or using string theory to 'prove' homeopathy or Scientific Socialism - seems harmless till the crops fail, because a thousand years of farming knowledge was ignored as bourgeois and millions died of starvation.

Principles for fair play in the game of augmentation and avoid falling prey to cogito elenchi

1. Think of arguments as invitations to improve your thinking where you are under no obligation to accept. Whatever 'they' say - silence is not simply complicity.

2. Identify the arguments the matter to you as those that require your bravery. If you've nothing to contribute then you've nothing to contribute. Or if you prefer be a good opponent a good winner and a good looser or a good fan.

3. Only argue where both sides can in principle make good points and that both sides points count equal, those that dabble in cogito elenchi will make points that take away from yours. e.g. If they can 'prove' you're a racist , transphobe or woke etc then by specially unreasonable rules they just invented you end up with no points worth hearing.

4. Call out unfair play no matter which 'side' does it by assuming there is an umpire. This assumption should make cogito elenchi that much easier to spot and call out. Also you'll find that cogito elenchi style thinkers use the drama triangle, their worlds are full of victims, rescuers (usually them) and perpetrators (who they will usually seek to blame by using a specific unarguable labels, so everyone they don't like is a narcissist, a socio-path, a racist , a transphobe , a communist , a fascist, a racists, a nationalist, a colonialist , a globalist, ableist - in short labels that people wouldn't choose for themselves and which they alone are expert in wielding.)

5. Focusing on improving the quality of play in yourself and your opponent the better to win their admiration when you win.

6. Don't play with those that tear up the pitch.

In the end, like a child focused on improving their game, we should aim to be better debaters, thinkers, and citizens - not just winners of the last argument.

Or as Churchill , who had some quite choice views about Gandhi said "jaw jaw over war war"

Epilogue

Where we find Marx and Engles in the British Library in the process of cooking up a man made virus that would kill millions.

And thank you dear reader for getting this far. Marx and Engels made extensive use of the British Library's reading room for their research and in particularly they took testimonials from government reports (often called "blue books") detailing working conditions. These accounts were made freely available to them, and anyone else that cared to look at them, they had obviously been produced at substantial cost, and the reading room is an exceptionally comfortable place in which to do research, then as now.

So just to be clear here, Marx and Engels did nothing but visit the British Museum , and based on this testimonial evidence freely provided to them in extremely comfortable surroundings Marx and Engels were assured such society the British Empire would inevitably destroy itself, and they knew this because of theories, not their own, but a agglomeration of philosophers and testimonies of people they hadn't met provided for them to read by the power they sought to overthrow.

At least in Star Wars many had to die to uncover the secrets of the Death Star and they had to fly a particularly difficult route to achieve its destruction. But Marx and Engels invented their death star (capitalism) and then sat in a vast beautiful egg shell blue domed room which they imagined contained the plans revealing how a whole system would inevitably destroy itself . Well aren't they the heroes!

It isn't science if you don't do it scientifically. you can't play football without a football pitch.

A little history

1680s: Early Quaker anti-slavery protests begin.

1783: First petition against slavery presented to Parliament by Quakers.

1788: Sir William Dolben's Act, the first law regulating the slave trade, passed.

1791: Wilberforce's first abolition bill defeated in Parliament.

1772: Somerset v Stewart case - Lord Mansfield's ruling that slavery had no basis in English law and was unsupported by common law in England and Wales. This effectively ended slavery in England, though not in the British Empire.

1787: The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade founded by Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and others.

1807: Slave Trade Act passed, prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire.

1833: Slavery Abolition Act passed, abolishing slavery throughout most of the British Empire.

1838: Apprenticeship system ended, marking the final abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

1833: Slavery Abolition Act passed in the British Empire

1848: Marx and Engels publish "The Communist Manifesto"

1857-1858: Marx writes "Grundrisse," the preparatory work for "Capital"

1857 British Library built

1861: Serfdom abolished in Russia

1861-1865: American Civil War

1863: Emancipation Proclamation issued in the United States

1865: 13th Amendment abolishes slavery in the United States

1867: Volume I of "Capital" published by Marx

1870-6: Slavery abolished in Spanish colonies, Brazil (gradual process begins),Puerto Rico,Ottoman Egypt

1883: Marx dies.

Engels, laughingly compares Capital to Darwin's origin of the species and yet there attitude to evidence bears no similarity. One is the careful assembling of evidence that ushered in new fields of study. Marx and Engels did a smash and grab job with no care.

You want evidence of their lack of care? see the timeline above - the world was moving towards the end of slavery, no thanks to Socialism or Communism and England and the British Empire were in the vanguard of that movement, the last place to look for simmering resentments, but instead a capital city that was so self confident that it could afford to wash its dirty laundry in not just public but in the extremely salubrious surroundings of the British Library. A lack of precision and rigour presents itself also , they are in London and they get handed testimonies regarding the poor of London, however London at that time was at the capital of a vast empire, but of course it doesn't concern them to check if conditions were different elsewhere. The point is that for all their talk of Capitalism as an implacable foe, they were dilettantes, interested in making a show of their resentment rather than doing the work necessary.

A beautifully prepared court then, with all amenities provided for free, to allow anyone to see some of the least successful aspects of that society. Can you imagine any company before or since creating such a resource, can you imagine many other countries with the supreme confidence to create such a resource?

Consider the US with its freedom of information - very laudable but does it lay on the records for free, so that agitators from other countries may sit in splendour to see the least successful aspects of itself? - if you want evidence can I suggest watching "The Mauritanian".

And what did Marx and Engels do with this great resource, thankfully upon its publication Das Capital was little read, so no harm done, perhaps if it had been taken up more widely in England , the government might have reconsidered its approach to publication. But the blue books continues to be published to this day except unlike Marx who accepted them at face value the British Government has gone on to make them more statistical systematic and scientific Here is the Blue Book for 2021 . so who are the real heroes of this story? governments and Quakers because it is they that actually provide the courts both metaphorical and actual where the rule of law makes possible innovative positive change, the kind of of change that improves peoples lives.