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peristaltorIt may come as some surprise for citizens of the United States to learn that the United Kingdom has no formal equivalent of the freedom of speech. Maybe that is one reason, perhaps the reason, this US right is the first listed in our Ammendments.
A quirky result of this lack of speaking rights has been an interpretation by the British courts that one may indeed speak in an inflamatory manner provided one not taint the Queen's earth while doing so. Prove this for yourself. Travel to London. Make your way to Hyde Park near the Marble Arch (there's a tube stop at Marble Arch to make this easy). Make the journey on a Sunday, just about any Sunday, in fact, and you should see a crowd celebrating the court's exception to less-than-free-for-all speaking. At the Speaker's Corner, speakers raise themselves on pedestals of all types, from elaborate laddered platforms, soapboxes (it's where we get the term!), to, when I visited, a precarious balancing act on a fire hydrant, and spew forth opinion.
The crowds gather not for the speakers and what they have to say, however; even in the US, having the right to say something doesn't gurantee an audience. No, the crowd turns out to heckle, and to witness the heckling. That is the sport, the interchange between those that would posit and defend contraversial opinions and those that arrive in all states of intoxication to shout them down in the most entertaining manner possible.
It's a great show.
The speakers? Seldom worth hearing, as one may expect. There was a communist, who started to point out the waste of energy and resources involved in international apple shipments reduced to sputtering by the taunts of footballers.
There was the man who did the hydrant balance try to convince the audience that women were inferior. He was so obviously joking that I got into the act, informing him loudly that he had no right to get laid. One teen took him too seriously, however, ready to pommal the speaker, and had to be pulled back into the crowd and subdued by his giggling relatives.
The best show of the day was the Iraqi, waving Saddam's flag and railing against America and the Coalition forces that brought the first Gulf War (this was December of '94). He was heckled most effectively by a little British man carrying a newspaper. When the Bathist proclaimed that he spoke 7 languages, the little man noted "yes, but you don't speak any of them well." "The only thing you need to say is 'Welcome to 7-11' or "would you like fries with that?'" That little guy was relentless, and, to prove the point, informed the speaker half way through his spiel, "No one wants to hear you. They're here to hear me. To prove it, I'm leaving now, and you will be all alone." And he did leave, and soon the guy was alone.
After that show, I wandered about for entertainment, and found that looked like a doozy; an older, professor-looking gent standing on a wooden box holding a sign that read:
Christian Atheist
And so I asked him for his delivery.
He wasn't cut out for the frivolity of the Corner. His argument was cogent, and quietly delivered. I found myself listening and, rather than shout the rejoinder, bringing up salient points and counterpoints. I was hooked on his philosophy, but still found something, I don't know, missing.
Here's Mr. Xian Atheist's philosophy in a nutshell. The Bible actually works as a teaching guide to good living, especially the New Testament, but there is no reason people should continue to embrace the archaic attachments of faith and beliefs in, well, god. Rather, he feels we should be a Xian world without the emotional baggage and needless spirituallity of Xianity.
(I find that many who have no spirituality themselves often act disparagingly toward those who treat faith as a necessity. They don't get as much press as those with faith who treat disbelief as a polar issue, ie. one is either a believer or an atheist. Neither seem able to appreciate the respectful disengagement of well-balanced agnosticism.)
Mr Jumbo Shrimp appreciates that there is a disconnect between morality and spirituality -- He does, after all, wish the laws of Xianity upon us. As is all too common, however, he evidently feels the spiritual element of religious faith to be a Freudean phase that, like belief in Father Xmas, may be overcome by maturity. Sorry to disagree, Mr. Speaker of the soapbox. I've seen too many people of faith there in church not just for the package of laws that codify the universe to simply write off the Spiritual Experience.
(There must be something worthwhile for these folks to pursue. I realized a long time ago that it is something I will probably never find. No matter.)
I brought up this eccentric little guy for a reason. I wonder: Why did he choose the Xian tenets of behavior? True, they are familiar to our Western civilization and therefore not a new philosophical framework to sell to the populace, unlike, say, strict Kosher rules or those rules of the Hindu faith.
Well, Mr. Military Intelligence, how about this to try on for fit? What if we develop laws not on any ancient texts, but on what may be best for our continued survival and well-being? Toss those concepts of good and evil. Embrace nuanced interpretation -- embrace the irreducable continuum! -- and thoughts of holistic beneficial verses detrimental behaviors.
The best attribute to pragmatism unadulterated by source reference is its blindness to tradition. It's one thing to sell a Western bill o' Xian goods to a Xian nation, minus one little item (actual belief in a Xian god). That, however gives you unintended baggage far beyond what is workable for a secular society. It just doesn't go far enough.
I hear Pragmatism was popular in US politics before the First World War. The horrors of that conflict -- the trenches, the gas, the killing tactics unseen in history prior -- galvanized thinkers worldwide to reject what they saw as the evil that led to the war. With architects, it was stylistic ornament in building, a movement that became Modern Architecture. Politicians dumped pragmatism in favor of a polarity of existance, a conceit that all actions are either good or evil.
I don't know exactly what pre-war pragmatism entailed, but I still crave a return to what I feel pragmatism -- no, Pragmatism, as a movement -- should embrace:
-- A rejection of purely adapted policy that parrots without critical examination of ultimate effect the dogma of any religion, organized or sporatic;
-- An effort to weed out the unexamined detrious of law and culture to gear law and policy toward the beneficial and away from the detrimental; and
-- Shifting the burden of law away from polarity and toward the irreducable continuum of existance (more on this later, Gentle Readers).
Mr. Christian Atheist, Mr. Oxy-Moron, thank you for putting an idea in my head that took oh so long to germinate. Perhaps you're still standing on your soapbox somewhere. I hope we meet again. Next time, though, prepare to share the box.
A quirky result of this lack of speaking rights has been an interpretation by the British courts that one may indeed speak in an inflamatory manner provided one not taint the Queen's earth while doing so. Prove this for yourself. Travel to London. Make your way to Hyde Park near the Marble Arch (there's a tube stop at Marble Arch to make this easy). Make the journey on a Sunday, just about any Sunday, in fact, and you should see a crowd celebrating the court's exception to less-than-free-for-all speaking. At the Speaker's Corner, speakers raise themselves on pedestals of all types, from elaborate laddered platforms, soapboxes (it's where we get the term!), to, when I visited, a precarious balancing act on a fire hydrant, and spew forth opinion.
The crowds gather not for the speakers and what they have to say, however; even in the US, having the right to say something doesn't gurantee an audience. No, the crowd turns out to heckle, and to witness the heckling. That is the sport, the interchange between those that would posit and defend contraversial opinions and those that arrive in all states of intoxication to shout them down in the most entertaining manner possible.
It's a great show.
The speakers? Seldom worth hearing, as one may expect. There was a communist, who started to point out the waste of energy and resources involved in international apple shipments reduced to sputtering by the taunts of footballers.
There was the man who did the hydrant balance try to convince the audience that women were inferior. He was so obviously joking that I got into the act, informing him loudly that he had no right to get laid. One teen took him too seriously, however, ready to pommal the speaker, and had to be pulled back into the crowd and subdued by his giggling relatives.
The best show of the day was the Iraqi, waving Saddam's flag and railing against America and the Coalition forces that brought the first Gulf War (this was December of '94). He was heckled most effectively by a little British man carrying a newspaper. When the Bathist proclaimed that he spoke 7 languages, the little man noted "yes, but you don't speak any of them well." "The only thing you need to say is 'Welcome to 7-11' or "would you like fries with that?'" That little guy was relentless, and, to prove the point, informed the speaker half way through his spiel, "No one wants to hear you. They're here to hear me. To prove it, I'm leaving now, and you will be all alone." And he did leave, and soon the guy was alone.
After that show, I wandered about for entertainment, and found that looked like a doozy; an older, professor-looking gent standing on a wooden box holding a sign that read:
And so I asked him for his delivery.
He wasn't cut out for the frivolity of the Corner. His argument was cogent, and quietly delivered. I found myself listening and, rather than shout the rejoinder, bringing up salient points and counterpoints. I was hooked on his philosophy, but still found something, I don't know, missing.
Here's Mr. Xian Atheist's philosophy in a nutshell. The Bible actually works as a teaching guide to good living, especially the New Testament, but there is no reason people should continue to embrace the archaic attachments of faith and beliefs in, well, god. Rather, he feels we should be a Xian world without the emotional baggage and needless spirituallity of Xianity.
(I find that many who have no spirituality themselves often act disparagingly toward those who treat faith as a necessity. They don't get as much press as those with faith who treat disbelief as a polar issue, ie. one is either a believer or an atheist. Neither seem able to appreciate the respectful disengagement of well-balanced agnosticism.)
Mr Jumbo Shrimp appreciates that there is a disconnect between morality and spirituality -- He does, after all, wish the laws of Xianity upon us. As is all too common, however, he evidently feels the spiritual element of religious faith to be a Freudean phase that, like belief in Father Xmas, may be overcome by maturity. Sorry to disagree, Mr. Speaker of the soapbox. I've seen too many people of faith there in church not just for the package of laws that codify the universe to simply write off the Spiritual Experience.
(There must be something worthwhile for these folks to pursue. I realized a long time ago that it is something I will probably never find. No matter.)
I brought up this eccentric little guy for a reason. I wonder: Why did he choose the Xian tenets of behavior? True, they are familiar to our Western civilization and therefore not a new philosophical framework to sell to the populace, unlike, say, strict Kosher rules or those rules of the Hindu faith.
Well, Mr. Military Intelligence, how about this to try on for fit? What if we develop laws not on any ancient texts, but on what may be best for our continued survival and well-being? Toss those concepts of good and evil. Embrace nuanced interpretation -- embrace the irreducable continuum! -- and thoughts of holistic beneficial verses detrimental behaviors.
The best attribute to pragmatism unadulterated by source reference is its blindness to tradition. It's one thing to sell a Western bill o' Xian goods to a Xian nation, minus one little item (actual belief in a Xian god). That, however gives you unintended baggage far beyond what is workable for a secular society. It just doesn't go far enough.
I hear Pragmatism was popular in US politics before the First World War. The horrors of that conflict -- the trenches, the gas, the killing tactics unseen in history prior -- galvanized thinkers worldwide to reject what they saw as the evil that led to the war. With architects, it was stylistic ornament in building, a movement that became Modern Architecture. Politicians dumped pragmatism in favor of a polarity of existance, a conceit that all actions are either good or evil.
I don't know exactly what pre-war pragmatism entailed, but I still crave a return to what I feel pragmatism -- no, Pragmatism, as a movement -- should embrace:
-- A rejection of purely adapted policy that parrots without critical examination of ultimate effect the dogma of any religion, organized or sporatic;
-- An effort to weed out the unexamined detrious of law and culture to gear law and policy toward the beneficial and away from the detrimental; and
-- Shifting the burden of law away from polarity and toward the irreducable continuum of existance (more on this later, Gentle Readers).
Mr. Christian Atheist, Mr. Oxy-Moron, thank you for putting an idea in my head that took oh so long to germinate. Perhaps you're still standing on your soapbox somewhere. I hope we meet again. Next time, though, prepare to share the box.