Watching the news about the Bhutto assassination, I am reminded what a poor job our media does of covering the news (see this post). But I am not one to blame the messenger. It is our individual responsibility to learn more about any given topic and use that knowledge to form our own judgements.
Not too long after 9/11 I was browsing the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble, and saw the cover for The Clash of Fundamentalisms. It was quite provocative, explicitly comparing George Bush to Osama bin Ladin. The book proved to be both more and less provocative than its cover. It was both a history of the author’s (Tariq Ali) personal odyssey from Islam to Marxism and a history of Pakistan. Although I had lived through most of the events described in the book, it was astonishing how ignorant I was about the details.
The book describes how since it’s first Prime Minister was assassinated in 1953, Pakistan has been ruled by the military, a corrupt elite propped up mostly by strong support from US governments. Originally, the US saw Pakistan as an anti-communist bulwark positioned against the USSR-friendly India. Long after the fall of the USSR, the US-Pakistan tie has continued. Since 9/11 Bush & Co has poured billions into Musharraf’s corrupt dictatorship, calling him a “good friend” and crucial for the “war on terror.” How ironic, since the Taliban is the creation of the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI). While I don’t buy in to the conspiracy theories that 9/11 was “an inside job,” one has to be more than naive not to believe that bin Laden is still at large because he is under the protection of the ISI, and that Bush & Co are well aware of this (and probably not displeased). After all, al Queda is a useful bogeyman who can be pulled out on every occasion, including the Bhutto assassination.
Besides reading Ali’s book, I strongly recommend these two recent articles he wrote, one before the assassination and another after. Robert Fisk’s commentary is worthwhile as well.
One can legitimately ask how is it possible to inform yourself on a topic by reading books and articles written by people with a strong bias? After all, shouldn’t scientific inquiry be totally impartial and unbiased? The answer is: there is science and there is science. When we talk about objective science we are referring to predictive sciences, such as physics. We can define an experiment that tests a given theory of physics. If the test passes, we say the theory is “true.” If it fails, we say it is “false” and try to improve on the “law.” Note that this definition of truth is a purely pragmatic one. It is true because it works. it is this pragmatic nature that makes science so beneficial (for the most part).
There are parts of human inquiry that will, at least in my opinion, never achieve this pragmatic criterion of truth. I would argue that human consciousness is so complex that we will never truly fully understand the working of the human mind. What experiments can we create that will unequivocally prove or disprove some “laws” about our emotions? Moreover, the mind itself is doing the inquiry and to reach some objective level we would need to be able to view ourselves with a meta-mind. And if this is true of one human being, how much more so is it true of humans acting in groups.
Hence whole fields of scientific inquiry will never be predictive. These include psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics and history. That is not to say that these fields are outside the field of scientific inquiry. Science always begins as descriptive. Physics did as well. It is just that some fields will forever remain descriptive. History is a descriptive science par excellence. Enjoying all these other history books I have been reading, I decided to read the first historian, Herodotus. History is Greek for inquiry, and Herodotus’ The Histories is a wide ranging inquiry into human life and affairs with a strong bias. Bias does not detract from the usefulness – it actually enhances it. If the inquiry’s author uses facts to buttress his/her arguments, if the arguments are logical and consistent, if the author is highly intelligent and insightful and straight forward about his/her bias, then the conclusions they reach will provoke the reader into thought. You can agree or disagree, but you can’t ignore them. Even if the author pretends to be unbiased, the mere fact that humans are being studied inherently means bias is present. Better to freely admit this and get on with it.
So clearly, even descriptive science is useful. We live in the human world and we need to make judgements and decisions. Experience tells us that well-informed judgements and decisions are more likely to be beneficial. Moreover, descriptive sciences are quite often used and abused for quite pragmatic purposes. For example, while it may not help us absolutely predict a given individual’s actions, behavioral sciences can be used to manipulate reactions for marketing (propaganda) purposes. A good example of how descriptive science can be used and abused may be found in another provocative book I recently read, Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. Results of horrific experiments on human subjects were applied by intelligence agencies around the world (including the CIA) to refine methods of torture. This is yet another reason why human sciences can never be fully predictive – because experimentation requires abusing human subjects in a way no sane society should allow.
The abuse of science, both predictive and descriptive is not just in the experiments done in their name or the pragmatic use of such science Unfortunately, scientific theory is often held up as an absolute truth. Scientific inquiry, by its very nature is relativistic. The truth of any “law” of physics is contingent – at any given moment we say the law is “true” because it has been confirmed by experiment. But we still call it a theory, not an absolute law because we know that no human theory can explain everything and future experiments might undermine these laws. The classic example is how Einstein’s Theory of Relativity upended, or rather expanded Newton’s theories. No real scientist would ever say that Einstein’s Theory is absolute truth. It is, rather, our current state of knowledge with many predictive results that have practical implications.
How ironic that it is in the descriptive sciences, more than elsewhere, where theories are held up as absolute truths. Marx claimed that his theory of economics was scientific. His followers claimed that Communism is therefore an absolute truth, historically inevitable. In yet another opinionated history book I just read, Tony Judt’s Postwar, you can read how in the twentieth century, the belief in that “scientific” truth led to a devastating cost in human life to tens of millions of people. Klein’s book tallies up the horrific damage of the mirror image of that belief viz. the belief in neo-liberal capitalism as an absolute scientific truth. For that belief as well, millions have died and suffered in the name of “science.”
In fact, taking a cue from Tariq Ali (as well as Judt’s book) one can say that fundamentalism has been the bane of the human race. Taking one abstract idea and holding it up as an absolute truth, a truth worth sacrificing human life for, inevitably leads to exactly those sacrifices. Whether it be a religious fundamentalism – Islamic, Jewish, Christian or Hindi or a scientific fundamentalism – Communism, Nationalism or Capitalism, the results are the same: suffering, death and destruction. Does that mean there is no absolute truth? Are we condemned to relativism? In another article I wrote about the ideas of the Enlightenment as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Right. Judt in his book discusses how the institutions of Europe in the twenty-first century has embraced these ideals and can be held up as a potential alternative to the wars and destruction that still engulf humanity. What distinguishes the absolutism of the Enlightenment from fundamentalist absolutism is that it is based on Kant’s Categorical Imperative. While certainly not perfect (or perfectly consistent) Kant places humanity and individual autonomy as absolute values. Inherent in this is the idea that we can’t use other human beings as instruments nor rule autocratically, the very opposite of fundamentalist ideologies which see human beings as instruments of some grander truth.
Critics of Enlightenment values, particularly Jewish ones, point to the rise of Naziism in Germany as proof of the failure of the Enlightenment. After all Kant was German, Germany was imbued with the Enlightenment, and yet the Nazis took over. This argument is often used to justify Jewish nationalism and/or religious fundamentalism. The flaw in the argument is the lack of logical coherence and factual basis. Yes, Kant was German. But Germany was a highly autocratic society, and the social and political institutions of pre-WWII Germany were far from being imbued with Enlightenment values. A better counter example is postwar Europe as described in Judt’s book. Here too, the “triumph” of Enlightenment values are hardly guaranteed. The main flaw in Kant’s philosophy or that of the Enlightenment in general, is that it portrays human beings as rational agents. Xenophobia and its abuses are highly irrational, yet highly prevalent. However, one can fully embrace the irrational side of humanity, and still argue that humanity and autonomy are absolute values, and effective in reigning in the abuse that people bring down on one another. By embracing these values since WWII, Europe has transformed itself from a continent ruled by totalitarian and/or colonial regimes, ripped apart by war and destruction, to the most stable, prosperous realm in the planet. While far from perfect, I would argue this is humanity’s only hope against the madness of fundamentalism.
Tags: Feature, Nationalism, Solutions, South Asia