Draw Breath

It's been my feeling for quite a while, but the JFK fuel bomb 'plot' and yesterday's and today's events in London and Glasgow seem to confirm it. We're not facing a dire threat to civilisation. We're not often facing a focused and determined organisation in a struggle against our societies (whatever that might mean). For the most part, we're facing individuals who, just as they didn't realise that liquid explosives will probably just burn your hand, don't know that gas canisters and oil pipelines don't blow up in fires (forgive the tone of that article: it's the chemistry 101 I'm interested in). Even given the horrifying successes of some, for the most part the only product from the amateur bomb-makers has been, with some encouragement from various daft or self-interested rhetoriticans, that they manage to frighten us far more than they deserve to.

It seems that the two-way straw men of the stem cell debate are alive and well on the Irish Times letters page. Keith Lockitch, who seems to be a postdoc at the Ayn Rand Institute, wrote a letter the contents of which I'm guessing are pretty much here. He leaves a marvellous hostage to fortune in claiming that the embryo is not quite human. Rather:

"An embryo is a potential, not an actual, human being, just as canvas is a potential, not an actual, work of art. It is a primitive cluster of cells, which is no more unethical to destroy than the cells that make up one's appendix. Calling an embryo "human life" is an evasion of the distinction between a mass of undifferentiated cells in a test tube and an actual, living human being."

This provokes a response from Fr Séamus Murphy SJ, who decides that the best strategy is to put the most unsympathetic spin possible on Lockitch's words by responding that,

"the embryo is not any old heap of undifferentiated cells, but a cell-grouping of a very particular kind, or an adult human being would not be its long-term outcome…[Lockitch] says that an embryo is a potential, not an actual, human being. Yet the living embryo exists and is therefore 'actual,' so it must be an actual living something, and that can only be human."

Following this, Gerry Whyte from TCD's Law School weighs in with a more intelligent letter to tell us about his secular defence (pdf; pp. 73ff) of the embryo's right to life. I was struck at first that Whyte co-opts Peter Singer into defending precisely the opposite opinion to that which Singer is proposing in the book that Whyte quotes. I find that a bit strange, but still Whyte is quite correct in that Singer would agree with the narrow point that Whyte makes: that, as Singer has it,

"the discussion up to now has shown that the liberal search for a morally crucial dividing line between the newborn baby and the fetus has failed to yield any event or stage of development that can bear the weight of separating those with a right to life from those who lack such, a right, in a way that clearly shows fetuses to be in the latter category at the stage of development when most abortions take place. The conservative is on solid ground in insisting that the development from the embryo to the infant is a gradual process."

Of course, Singer makes this point, from his Utilitiarian perspective, to say that the abortion debate is barking up the wrong tree in trying to find that line in the development of a human being between deserving a right to life and not deserving a right to life. For Singer the important point is that at which one becomes a person (and yes, that implies for Singer that there are no particularly good reasons for extending rights to newborn human beings). Singer wants us to protect beings who can anticipate the future and have desires and wants for the future and who envisage and fear their own demise. Their desires are valuable, and producing fear in them is cruel.

Whyte is using the Singer quote to precisely the opposite end: for him it implies precisely that the embryo must be treated as a unique human being, with all the protections you and I enjoy, from the moment it is fertilised.

But, was this Lockitch's point? That the embryo is not human? Well, I doubt it. I suspect that Lockitch's point is poorly articulated version of  Singer's. What he ought to have said is that an embryo is not a person and therefore doesn't have the same moral weight as a person. So, no Fr. Murphy. A fair reader would have acknowledged that this was probably Lockitch's point. Although, the embryo is an 'actual' living something, it is not a human person. Our genetic relation to it is not morally important.

Whyte is more interesting. His narrow points on yesterday's letters page are entirely acceptable: you don't have to be religious to decide that life starts at conception (though I suspect that it helps). And, unless you decide it starts at conception, it's hard to decide the precise point when moral value can be attached to a human being. But his general point (in the dissenting opinion he links to) is not successful

It's all very well to say that "I cannot convince myself of any view other than that the embryo, as an inchoate unique and irreplaceable individual or individuals, is deserving of such respect as to preclude its deliberate destruction," but can this really be a moral solution to the debate? If it was that simple there wouldn't be a debate. Or to put it this way, I doubt that Whyte would like to put his moral money where his mouth is. If he meant it he would be saying that taking the morning-after pill is tantamount to murder. And I doubt he would go so far as to think that.

This isn't a particularly glib response. I want to highlight that, even though one might claim that the fertilised egg has the same moral standing as an adult human, one's sentiments don't really follow that line. And, to be briefly Nussbaumian about it, I suspect the emotions are a good guide here. There is something more profoundly wrong with the destruction of a self-aware person than there is with the destruction of a non-sentient being.

Singer's line is certainly uncomfortable, but it is persuasive because it gives us a reason for attaching rights to beings (whether human or not) because of the effect that actions have on their sense of themselves, not because of our arbitrary guesses as to their either their status or their potential status. 

Oh: Tom Morrissey. For a second there I thought it was a Eurovision thing.

I'm always astounded at the arguments, generally trotted out by reactionary sorts, that some dreadful comment or other is to be defended on freedom of speech grounds. I suppose it's a convenient strategy for the bullshitter. You know, why defend the indefensible when you can take umbrance at people questioning your freedom to speak? Best to ignore the fact that they're generally not questioning your entitlement to speak. They're generally questioning your honesty and your manners.

But still, the claim to a right to speech is fundamentally correct even if it's generally invoked by people who don't really care whether it's correct or not. One doesn't go around saying that people shouldn't be allowed say things simply because they're offensive. To be a little bit Millian, best to get it all out there, eh?

The serious problem with the 'free speech' distraction is that it tends to be used where no free speech exists. Although we may have a fundamental right to free speech, it's not an inalienable right. We can legitimately sign it away on a daily basis. Most notably, people's signing an employment contract either explicitly or implicitly involves their constraining their speech rights. In my profession, I can't start telling you what I think of my students, or what they got in their exams, or – as is the case in most jobs – my opinions of my colleagues, or myriad other things. If I did speak my employer would be well within their rights to fire me. I have contracted to remain silent where my private thoughts contradict a range of my employer's interests.

Of course, I can break the rules, but if I value my private thoughts so much that I can't abide by those rules, then I really ought to resign.

Well, you can see where I'm going with this. There is a ministerial code of conduct in Northern Ireland. Ministers sign it. And yet, when clever Ian Paisley Jnr announced last month that he finds what homosexuals get up to repulsive (why is it that some people spend so much time thinking about gay sex?) people trot out the free speech defence. David Vance asked if it is a crime for Paisley to say what he said, as if that's the question. Sam Hanna leaves a comment on Slugger attacking the 'bigots' that deny Paisley his rights to free expression. And on it goes. The debate came up again yesterday on Slugger, hence this post.

But this isn't about shutting down free speech. It's about the obligations that come with the job. Free speech only exists in the context of role, and when it comes to some roles (Paisley's and my own professions included), some public comments can never be made in a private capacity.

None of us are entirely free in the sense that the free speech defenders think. Or rather, there's an easy solution if one finds the constraints on speech that one has volunteered to adopt too much. Resign.

William Crawley has been looking at the worlds oldest footprints. Who'd have thought they be on Valencia Island?

These marks are 385 million years old. That's the point when our scaly ancestors grew legs and started flopping out of the sea.

Into Kerry.

Conor McCabe has an excellent ongoing series on the working class's place in Irish history and arts. His latest installment focuses on Conor's affinity with the English arts, suggesting that the Irish working classes are better described by English representations of the English working classes than by any Irish works. As Conor puts it,

"The problem is that I grew up in a working class area, but one with virtually no expression in Irish mainstream culture. In order to find similarities, we had to look to British drama. This was for very simple reasons. British drama has a strong working class identity to it.

"Whereas on RTE in the 1970s, the Irish working class were breaking out of Borstals or nicking TVs, living in slums and dying of poverty, on British TV and with British cinema, we had teenage boys obsessed with cornflakes passing under bridges, and trying to learn Italian so they could kiss the girl they fancied. On British TV, the working class lived…. On RTE they died with their (stolen) boots on."

This is interesting stuff. I do wonder, though, if Conor is not missing something in his discussion.

The tenor of his threads seems to be – and I hope I'm not misrepresenting him here – is that Ireland lacked a positive set of icons, whether in scholarship or in the arts) of the working classes because of because of the prejudice of the people who were recording events and because of the biases of professional historians (see here).

He's probably quite correct that the Irish working classes haven't had been sufficiently represented in the national story (which is really centered on a romantic vision of small-town morality), but I think he's mistaken in his view of what's going on in England. What he's pretty much missing, in short, is politics.

I doubt very much that the arts or academia in Britain are any more representative of the working classes than here in Ireland, and it's certainly not like English culture is lacking in snobbery. That said, the celebration of the working classes, or of working class culture, is very often an expression of political solidarity. Inclusivity does not exist in a vacuum. It is a function of politics, most visibly of socialism. Kes is the almost archetypical example of this, but one could also point elsewhere, for instance to the motives of many social historians, to see that the celebration of working class culture was also a rallying call.

Which brings me on to a second point. I think Conor underestimates the differences that ideological ferment produces between a working class identity like I suggest existed in England and that which Conor describes in Dublin.

It's important, first to recall that identity is distinctive from culture. Whereas culture happens in the background of people's lives, shaping their worldviews and behaviour, identity is the self-conscious expression of a group (or rather, of individuals claiming justifiably or not to represent a group).

As Bernard Williams pointed out, working class identity is unique and ought not to be considered as akin to other societal identity (like, say, self-conscious expressions of black culture). Working class identity specifically looks forward to the dissolution of the group, to the end of the working classes as a class. Whether this will happen through revolution or aspiration (in its social democratic and Thatcherite ways) is beside the point. The identity is not quite about celebrating itself or seeking inclusion of its distinct viewpoint. Rather it is about overturning the social order so that they working classes disappear (again, as a mass or as individuals).

Ireland probably doesn't have much in the way of a consciousness of working class culture because Ireland doesn't have much in the way of an ideological polity. Without a left, there was very little in the way of a requirement to address poor people on the lines that Ken Loach has done. Rather, poverty becomes simply a focus for charity. The problem isn't middle class historians. It's living in a conservative Catholic society.

I really am enjoying Conor's series and I hope it continues. But I can't help but think that, but putting his narrative across as an attempt to celebrate Ireland's working classes (as a ceaseless phenomenon), he's highlighting the degree to which he is a product of our culture. In which case, perhaps he ought not to look to Britain for identity. Instead, he should look to our conservative Catholic compatriots along the Mediterranean.

Gerry O'Sullivan has more.

What larks Damien Mulley is having. He complains about Sky Handling Partner's shoddy bag-retrieval habits (and their incredible customer service). Some weeks later someone comes across his posts on the matter (here and here) and all of a sudden he's signed up to a range of dating website. From someone with a City Jet Handling (now Sky Handling Partners) IP address.

Amazing…

An exhibition of early twentieth century photos has just opened in the City Museum in Galway. In 1913, a Parisian banker, Albert Kahn decided that a good course of action to promote world peace would be to make use of the new technologies in colour photography and send photographers all over the world to photograph different cultures. Two women, Marguerite Mespoulet and Madeleine Mignon-Alba arrived in Ireland and spent a number of weeks in Ireland. Unfortunately, Kahn’s motives were not well-timed and the world was taken over by the Great War. However, the quality and depth of colour of the photos online are breath-taking (see in particular the photo of the curragh and shawl).

Well I could finish the three half-posts hidden away here, but instead…