Requiem for a cathedral

As I sit in my office writing this, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris is burning.

It's hard for me to describe what I am feeling.  Mostly, it's a deep, deep grief that something beautiful, something irreplaceable, is gone forever.  It was a place of devotion, a building that had been lovingly cared for and added to for almost nine hundred years, an iconic symbol of the city of Paris.

And now it's gone.

I know that loss is part of the human condition, but this is a big one.  It appears that there isn't even anyone to blame, to take our minds off the grief, as there was with 9/11; the best guess anyone has right now of the cause is an accident during renovation.  That one blunder could deprive the world of something this grand is mind-boggling, but that's what seems to have happened as of the time I'm writing this.

[Image is licensed under the Creative Commons Diego Delso creator QS:P170,Q28147777, Paris Notre-Dame cathedral interior nave east 01d, CC BY 3.0]

This sense of grief at the destruction of something beautiful has been with me for a long, long time.  My first contact with it happened when I was little -- probably not more than four years old -- and my mom, who was a devoted gardener, presented me with a little packet of forget-me-not seeds.  I was so excited I had to open it and pour them into my hand, and in the process stumbled walking across the yard and dropped them into the grass.  I don't recall what my mother did other than saying "so much for that."  What I do remember is crying inconsolably that something that could have been beautiful was lost.  Every time I've been confronted by loss since then, I remember that little packet of seeds and how final and irrevocable it seemed, how nothing I could ever do would change what had happened, would ever make it all right again, world without end, amen.

And it always launches us into the if-only trap, doesn't it?  When a chance set of circumstances led to the death of our beloved border collie Doolin a few years ago, I spent the next weeks trying to parse what we could have changed had we only seen ahead.  Tiny differences -- waiting two minutes, leaving our house through a different door, taking a different path into our yard -- any one of those would have meant that she and that speeding car would not have been at the same place at the same time.

But we're not prescient, and all of those tiny events only add up in retrospect.

Every time something irrevocable occurs, from the minor to the overwhelming, I can't help thinking if only something could have been done differently.  If only someone hadn't blundered, hadn't had a moment of carelessness, had been paying more attention.

And each time, I am brought to the reality that the if-onlys are pointless.  It's done, it's over, it will never be again.

It's the scale of this one that's so horrible.  Consider the love and wonder of the millions of tourists who visited Notre Dame; the ones (like myself) who wanted to go, always intended to go, but never did; the thousands who devoted their time, effort, and money to the upkeep and renovation of the structure; the countless devout Catholics who considered this a central icon of their deeply-held faith; and you have a glimmer of understanding of what people are feeling right now.

I keep going back to the news stories, watching the videos as if to make sure I've understood right, that Notre Dame is really gone.  A part of me still can't quite believe it.

Of course, I still mourn the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, so it may be a while before this wound heals.

Firefighters are still trying to save what they can, but the last word I heard was that even the vault might be in jeopardy.  Realistically, I don't see how anything but the stone framework will remain standing, and probably not even all of that.  And if they rebuild it, then what?  What they create might well be beautiful and awe-inspiring, as the 9/11 memorial and the new World Trade Center are, but it won't be what it was.  That will only exist in our remembrance -- and in our art, photography, and writing, which (after all) are our species's collective memory.

I'm not sure what else to say.  It still seems surreal, a blow to our false confidence that the world will always remain as it is.  I will be processing this for a long time, I think.  But for now, I'm going to go look at some photographs of a treasure that is now lost forever.

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Monday's post, about the institutionalized sexism in scientific research, prompted me to decide that this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Evelyn Fox Keller's brilliant biography of Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, A Feeling for the Organism.

McClintock worked for years to prove her claim that bits of genetic material that she called transposons or transposable elements could move around in the genome, with the result of switching on or switching off genes.  Her research was largely ignored, mostly because of the attitudes toward female scientists back in the 1940s and 1950s, the decades during which she discovered transposition.  Her male colleagues laughingly labeled her claim "jumping genes" and forthwith forgot all about it.

Undeterred, McClintock kept at it, finally amassing such a mountain of evidence that she couldn't be ignored.  Other scientists, some willingly and some begrudgingly, replicated her experiments, and support finally fell in line behind her.  She was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine -- and remains to this day the only woman who has received an unshared Nobel in that category.

Her biography is simultaneously infuriating and uplifting, but in the end, the uplift wins -- her work demonstrates the power of perseverance and the delightful outcome of the protagonist winning in the end.  Keller's look at McClintock's life and personal struggles, and ultimate triumph, is a must-read for anyone interested in science -- or the role that sexism has played in scientific research.

[Note: If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Paris attacks redux

There's a fundamental rule I follow: if I make a statement, and people I trust take exception to it, I try to listen.

That happened today.  My earlier post (which I will take down as soon as this is posted) resulted in so many people whose opinions I respect taking exception that I have spent most of the day re-analyzing my thoughts regarding the terrorist attacks on Paris, who is responsible, and what our attitude should be toward Islam, ISIS, and the Middle East.

First:  I was beyond angry this morning.  I don't get that way often.  This is not meant as an excuse, merely a statement of fact.  In the grip of high emotion, it's all too easy to let yourself be carried away, to let logic, rationality, and compassion be swept off in a red haze of rage against people who could perpetrate such acts.

But on reading what people have written, both as comments on my blog, on Facebook, and in personal emails, here are a few things I have gleaned.

1. Blaming an ideology for the actions of a few is lazy thinking to the point where it is indistinguishable from being wrong.  No adherent to a religion, or any other belief system, follows it 100%.  If there are immoral commands in the ideology, and a person follows them, it is the person who is making the immoral choice, and theirs is the responsibility.
2. The situation in the Middle East is far too complex to place root causes for ISIS (or anything else) on one thing.  I should know better; I teach the Single-Cause Fallacy in my Critical Thinking classes.  The Middle East wouldn't be the miasma of poverty and oppression it currently is if it weren't for multiple causes -- not only fundamentalist Islam, but western colonialism, greed for oil, greed on the parts of the rich people in the Middle East itself who are desperate to quell dissent and stay in power (yes, I'm referring to the Saudi royal family here).  To lay it all at the feet of Islam is simplistic.  Once again, i.e., wrong.
3. It is probably impossible to do what I set out to do -- to tease apart the belief system from its adherents.  In leveling blame against Islam, I was coming dangerously close to aiming blame at all 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, law-abiding and lawless alike.  I object like hell when someone does that sort of thing to me -- "all liberals believe X, aren't they stupid?" -- and here I was doing it myself.  What's the biblical quote about casting the beam out of your own eye before trying to remove the splinter from someone else's?
4. Shutting down the rights of Muslims who are already peaceful residents (and/or citizens) of the United States, or any other secular democracy, is the road to becoming the same kind of oppressive dictatorship we rail against.  
5. I really shouldn't write blog posts when I'm furious.

I'm left with questions.  How do we stop the transmission of the ideology of hatred?  How can we eradicate such blind, senseless violence from the world, without becoming blindly violent ourselves? How can we criticize beliefs and ideas without it sliding into denying the freedom of speech and religious observance to the believers?

I wish I knew the answers.  Hell, if I did, I'd run for president.

In any case: thank you to all who took the time to respond thoughtfully, even those who were angered by what I said.  To be a true skeptic means to be willing to admit when you're wrong -- or at least, when you have cause for serious uncertainty.  And about the Paris attacks, at the moment I have no answers, just a deep sense of grief that such things could happen in the world.

Culture, criticism, and Charlie Hebdo

I'm certain that all of you by now have heard about the deaths of twelve members of the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in an "apparent Islamic militant attack."

The cover of Charlie Hebdo following a 2011 firebombing of the magazine offices by Muslim extremists.  The caption says, "100 lashes with a whip if you don't die of laughter."  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The use of the word "apparent" is journalistic waffling, given that bystanders heard the gunmen shouting "Allahu akbar!" and "We have avenged the prophet Muhammad!"  The gunmen are still at large as of the time of this writing, and are the subject of a huge manhunt.

Leaders all over the world have responded to this atrocity.  Let's start with my favorite one so far, Ahmed Aboutaleb, the mayor of Rotterdam, himself a Muslim, who told the terrorists (and this is a direct quote) to "fuck off."  Here's the full quote, as translated by a friend:

It is incomprehensible that you can turn against freedom like that, but if you don't want that freedom, in heaven's name, take your suitcase and leave.  There might be a place in the world where you can be yourself and be honest about that to yourself, but don't go around killing innocent journalists.

That is so backwards, that is so incomprehensible -- disappear if you cannot find peace with the way we want to build our society here. Because we only want those people -- also all those Muslims, all those good-willing Muslims whom people are now looking to -- together, only those who are what I would call "our" society, and if you don't like this place because you don't like a bunch of humorists who are making a little newspaper, yes... how shall I put this...  how about you fuck off?

There has also, of course, been some opposite sentiment, and not just from Muslims in the Middle East.  Maori Party candidate Derek Fox of New Zealand said, basically, that slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier was himself responsible for the deaths:

The editor of the French magazine has paid the price for his assumption of cultural superiority and arrogance, he was the bully believing he could insult other peoples culture and with impunity and he believed he would be protected in his racism and bigotry by the French state. 

Well he was wrong.  Unfortunately, in paying the price for his arrogance he took another eleven people with him. 

Power cultures all like to use the old chestnut of freedom of speech when they choose to ridicule people who aren't exactly like them, and mostly they get away with it.

These guys liked the privilege but didn't think they'd be caught up in the ramifications - they were wrong. 

This should serve as a lesson to other people who believe they can use the power they wield by way of dominating the media to abuse and ridicule others they believe to inferior to them -- just like [in] this country.

Well, the backlash against Fox was immediate and vitriolic.  Fox was victim-blaming, people said.  National Party MP Chris Bishop said that Fox's comment was "horrific, ridiculous, (and) shameful," adding that supporting freedom of speech was not "cultural supremacy."

And people who are outraged by the murders have responded the way outraged people do; by drawing Muhammad in all sorts of vile ways and posting them on the internet, by offering insult and ridicule to Muslims of all stripes, by escalating the situation in every way imaginable.

I'm a strong believer in freedom of speech.  Words are words, and no one deserves to die for them.  However, I'm also a strong believer in the cardinal rule for human behavior, which is, "don't be an asshole."  The cartoons at Charlie Hebdo were largely banal, broad-brush attempts to ridicule an entire people, not just to lampoon particular acts that deserved lampooning.  In other words, they weren't even good political satire, they were mostly just childish barbs on the level of "Muslims are poopyheads."

Add to that the fact that my general opinion is that Islam is a counterfactual set of beliefs whose precepts suggest -- no, demand -- doing all sorts of things like killing apostates, subjugating women, and forcibly converting non-believers.  This sort of thing rightly should be intolerable to free-thinking rationalists.

It's possible to detest Islam as a belief system, to decry the actions of its adherents, to mourn the deaths of the twelve staff members of Charlie Hebdo, to support fully the right of every human to speak freely, and at the same time to wish that all people would simply treat each other with more respect and less deliberate provocation.  The world is a complex place, and humans are usually less motivated by logic than they are by emotion; trying to come up with one blanket response to any incident is bound to miss the reality by a mile.

So continue speaking out.  Continue to criticize worldviews that incite their adherents to do evil.  But also continue to treat each other with compassion, to err on the side of thinking kindly of people, to work toward understanding.  To do otherwise would be to fall into the very errors we are trying to eradicate.