politics

One might expect there to be a strong correlation between the amount of time that someone spends reading or thinking about the terrible things that humans do to one another; and their view of human beings, of humanity in general, and of what is possible and desirable in a world created largely by humans. What seems strange is that the correlation appears to go in the wrong direction: those who are best informed about human rights violations - in other words, those who are most aware of the horrific things that some humans do to other humans - tend to be those who actually believe that (all) human beings are worthwhile individuals and that the world can be made into a place where people treat each other fairly, with respect¹.

On the other hand - those who appear to know least about the horrific experience and consequences of oppression, inequality, injustice - those with their heads in the business clouds, or anyway somewhere other than the human rights clouds - those people tend, in general, to have a less idealistic - some might say more cynical - view of humankind. (They would say, of course, that their view was more real-istic.)

Perhaps the second half of that 'correlation' is less universally true, but it is the first half that is so surprising. If anything ought to shake a belief in universal human dignity, then evidence of brutal, callous, selfish, devious behaviour by human beings on a widespread scale should do so. If anything ought to undermine our faith in the potential for universal human justice in the future, then evidence of fairly universal injustice in the present, endlessly rewarded, ought to do so; and if anything should breed cynicism, a resigned acceptance that the world is pretty grubby, always has been, and likely always will be - then an awareness of the impact and extent of human beings cheating, exploiting and oppressing one another surely ought to do so.

And yet... still it doesn't. I think we can even say with certainty that it will not do so: no amount of reading the reports of Amnesty International could make a human rights believer stop believing that even torturers are human beings, and even they deserve some minimal respect. More surprising, perhaps, no amount of seeing the depths to which human beings can sink appears to dampen hope that one day, if we were to do things differently, humanity just might stop sinking altogether.

It could be the case that the correlation (if indeed it exists) is coincidental: it could be the case that our belief in the possibility of a better world develops in parallel with, but wholly independently of our awareness of the inadequacies of this world. That seems unlikely - not least because the correlation seems so strong.

Perhaps it is that those who have their heads in the human rights clouds - or in the smog of violations - have more need for something to believe in, something that will clear the smog. So their belief in the fundamental dignity of terrorists, torturers and - even - US Presidents, however brutally and inhumanely they have all behaved, could be just a form of faith. I do believe to some extent it is (as I have said before).

Or then there are two further possibilities: the first is that by bumping into violations (intellectually, because I don't believe it holds on other levels) we come to see, to understand, how 'worthy' human beings can engage in brutal treatment. So the brutal treatment is viewed in context, rather than just being seen as a freak event, as evidence of 'evil'. That may be why someone like Eugene de Kock ('prime evil') who showed humanity in his genuine remorse is in some ways such a comfort: he confirms what we hope, desperately, is true of those who act in brutal ways.

But even so, and although I think that seeing things in context plays some part in explaining how the human rights believer can continue to believe - even so, I rather doubt it plays the most important part. I feel sure that we think we know the answer to the question about context before we bump into the 'evidence'. I feel sure that human rights believers start out believing, and then reshape the evidence they come across to fit it to the theory (just as the other side do too, undoubtedly). A suicide bomber, for example, must have had a reason; a torturer was almost certainly a victim; a president... Well, I'm not quite sure...

That isn't quite as hopelessly irrational as it may appear - and as the other side would paint it. It is certainly no less - but probably no more - rational than the other side's behaviour. It is just a very different view of human beings. And given that we start out with a different understanding of human beings, it cannot be surprising that we end up with a different explanation for why people do what they do. Their explanation doesn't work for us, because human beings are not like that (not evil, for example); and ours doesn't work for them for the same sort of reason. Human beings are not like that, they say, so they will not behave significantly differently in different circumstances.

The catch is that we can't change the circumstances without their help, and that means that it's very hard to prove to them that we are right.

A wonderful quote²:

"the forward-looking moral vision of human nature that is the source of human rights provides the basis for the social changes implicit in claims of human rights... We say: if you treat human beings this way, you will get truly human beings. They say: no you won't. So we don't need to treat them this way"

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1I mean armchair awareness, of course. I make no claims for those who have experienced real human suffering on themselves.

2I cannot for the life of me remember where I found it, but I will trace the author. I have the page number (18!)

1. 1. 1.
2. 2. 2.

Theseus' Ship

Theseus sets off on a long voyage, and his ship encounters various maritime obstacles - sharks, barnacles, winds, lightening and lashing waves - all of which cause damage to the infrastructure. Being far from land, he can't throw out all the rotting and damaged timbers at once, because he would sink, so he has to replace the planks of the ship one by one while still at sea. After a number of lengthy and dangerous voyages, all the original planks and other parts of the ship have been replaced: the ship is now entirely made up from new components.

Philosophers love Theseus' ship, with its multifarious identities: the ship before it leaves the shore, composed of planks that later rot at sea and have to be discarded; the ship while under repair, still made up from a few of the original, rotting planks and some pristine healthy ones (fortuitously to be found at sea). And then the final product, a brand new ship, rebuilt from those fortuitous planks and containing none of the original rotten ones. A new ship, in fact? Or the same ship? (Or a stupid question?)

Otto Neurath and then W. V. Quine used the idea of repairing the ship at sea as an analogy for the way we use language and the way we build up theories about the world:

We cannot start from a tabula rasa as Descartes thought we could. We have to make do with words and concepts that we find when our reflections begin. ... every statement about any happening is saturated with hypotheses of all sorts and ... these in the end are derived from our whole worldview. We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood, the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.”¹

Political opposites appear to sail in different ships and then continuously rebuild them from construction manuals which those on other vessels never see, and which have been selected because they fit the type of ship that needs to be repaired. Not surprisingly, the ships - and their inhabitants - go on getting further and further apart; the chances of shouting from one to another, let alone of building a common ship become more and more remote.

At which point do we make the choice about which ship we want to sail on, and what are the things that influence that choice? Some people start on one ship (as I did), and make the transition to another one, but mostly people stay on the one they started out on when they first began to form political opinions. Even if we throw the manual for one ship over to a different one, the sailors mostly look at it with scorn: the manual for one ship impinges only very rarely, barely noticeably on the way that others think that their ship should be patched up.

I don't think it is a question of evidence: I think it is more to do with the type of world we want to believe in; and momentum. It is far easier to stay on the same ship, with old friends and colleagues, without changing your lifestyle, without having to question any of the planks you are currently sitting on. Changing ships is a precarious business, and you might easily sink in the transition.

All that is to say ... what?

1. That there is a lot of construction involved in our political viewpoints, a lot more deliberate selection and fitting facts to what we want to see, rather than - as we tend to think - drawing conclusions from facts.

2. That there is a lot of vested interest in staying on the same ship, and relatively few advantages to changing ship (at least, if you are the sort of person whose life or lifestyle is strongly influenced by political viewpoint).

3. That after a certain point, it is almost impossible to tempt someone onto your ship, however good the arguments supporting it may seem. I could not get Tony Blair or Boris Johnson (thank God) onto my vessel. And the last thing (I hope) that I would ever do is jump ship onto one of theirs.

4. (Maybe) that dialogue with certain people - people who are far enough away from your position - is pointless. I hate reaching that conclusion: so maybe we could just say that expecting to meet as a result of dialogue is futile; but perhaps you could bring the 2 boats into the same ocean - which could, after all, be an improvement.

5. If we want to make sure people catch the right ship (or build the right one) then we need to catch them early! Get into the primary schools, get whittling those planks, setting up the rigging, tuning the engine, handing out construction manuals.

Well after all - it's what the others do.