Stephen Pinker and Magical Thinking

I make it a rule never to write (except for money or mineral rights) during August so this will be the last posting until September ... or I might stop completely.  After all, the whole point of the annual pause is to ask whether something of value is becoming a mere habit.  Time is a commodity like any other and it is good to halt once in a while and ask - is this the best use of it? ...

Stephen Pinker, the scientist and commentator, has an interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times on 'dangerous ideas' - http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/469317,CST-CONT-danger15.article - and he offers a tentative dig at the prevailing and patronising ideology of political correctness amongst the educated Hilary-Clintonesque Anglo-Saxon 'educated' middle class.  But this is largely America's problem not mine.  I was merely diverted by two connected sentences:

Only children and madmen engage in "magical thinking," the fallacy that good things can come true by believing in them or bad things will disappear by ignoring them or wishing them away. Rational adults want to know the truth, because any action based on false premises will not have the effects they desire.

Pinker's Throwaway Lines

Pinker is a Professor in Psychology at Harvard. These two throwaway lines tell us a great deal about the stranglehold of positivism and scientism on all matters to do with the mind.  It is immature or insane (it is asserted) to believe that matter (things, though we must allow that things may include social relations) can be changed by the exercise of mind as belief or denial.  Further, it is assumed that there is something called truth which is defined, along traditional American pragmatic lines, as that which has desired effects.

Pinker sweeps over these assertions in his effort to make his intelligent if not particularly sophisticated popularising points about academic freedom and responsibility, all (despite his aura of courage) well within the mainstream of American ideology. The level of 'courage' may be deduced from the fact that, despite being the most obvious example of ideological pressure on academic freedom this year, the lengthy article does not deal with the debate over the influence of the Zionist lobby, yet finds time to mention Torquemada and Larry Summers. 

Although not threatened with incarceration in a mental asylum (but only with loss of revenue, reputation-bashing and difficulty in getting published), the liberal academic and intellectual is being placed under increasing ideological pressure, much as any Brezhnev-era Soviet intellectual might have been.  It is a sign of intellectual decadence in the world's greatest power that matches the concurrent rise of primitivist neo-conservatism - two camps twisting reality for political purposes.

Managing 'Socially Harmful Information'

The creepy argument from certain self-appointed secular priests that there is a "logic ... for keeping socially harmful information out of the public sphere" is the very essence of the new liberal totalitarianism in which we, the people, are regarded as too stupid to know our own interest. 

The sinister Mr, Plato, having been at the birth of so many murderous essentialist utopianisms, is now in at the birth of a new form of culturicide - a mental rather than physical enslavement of the many by the few.  Thus, once again, frightened middle class liberals, often over-rating their own intellectual abilities, conspire somewhat incoherently with the neo-conservative impulse to manage us in our own alleged interest.  Enough already!

If you take Pinker's passing excoriation of 'magical thinking' and add to it the idea of "keeping socially harmful information out of the public sphere", it might then become perfectly "logical" to ban some dangerous ideas that might actually be quite liberating for the mass of the population, a popular liberation from the rule of experts whose own knowledge of micro-effects is often expanded, without just cause, into macro-policy affecting the daily lives of millions.  You can see the existential panic amongst scientists - if the masses deny the scientific assessment of micro-effects (or merely consider them irrelevant), then liberal-positivist legitimation of its command of macro-policy may collapse.  But this is just panic ...

Some Alternate Propositions

Let us try some alternate propositions on thinking ...

* Observable effects on matter (science) should be strictly assessed as technology - the information's only pragmatic value is how it can be used for personal or social ends

* Non-useful science should be considered as narrative and should not be privileged (or diminished) over other narratives - if it cannot be used, then it is merely interesting

* Non-scientific thinking or narrative that effects perceptual change may be said to affect social relations (since social relations are based on perception) which, in turn, affects the uses and ends of technology - and, therefore, the limits and value of science

* Individuals and communities generally (though not always) know what is good for their own survival and their real problem is lack of information (including lack of scientific information) so the free flow of all information is essential to individual and social decision-making - free cultural and technological education remains the foundation of the good society

* Apparently irrational belief-systems have social advantages and communities may legitimately choose to deny the use of technology or scientific narrative or use other narratives (art, religion, magick) to express what they are and what they wish to be

* Those who do this are neither immature nor insane, just different

* Boundaries against harm (child abuse, denial of medical care, exploitation, or whatever) need to be negotiated as general values applying to all narrative choices: these boundaries have a relationship with technology and psychology (which, as we will see, must include 'magic') but have little to do with particular narratives - they are the arena of 'good politics'

* Truth may be no more than that which demonstrates desired effects in the American pragmatic tradition, but self-constructed ways of thinking to shift perception and make oneself whole (or as whole as anyone can expect to be) can involve a great deal more than applying reason to that 'which is not reasonable' (i.e. the essence of being human)

* No social policy that involves values can do more than hold the ring between varying responses to Wittgenstein's 'that of which nothing can be spoken', whether it be the response of denial that such a zone matters from a positivist mind-set, the Christian's belief in the mysterium tremendum or the anarchic mentality of the Chaos practitioner.

In this context, bad mouthing those outside the prevailing positive orthodoxy as immature or insane sounds like the act of a dominant class seeking to maintain its hegemony over truth. If something works, then it works and people will use it because it works, but the ends for which technologies are used are why the fact that it works is important.  There is no 'truth' as such in these workings, only in the ends and scientists have a somewhat disturbing moral record to date in this area. 

There are, of course, legitimate fears over social order (from the right) and exploitation (from the left) but these are best handled through a rules-based general political debate and not by prescription on values from an anxious and weakening positivist academic caste.  There is certainly no justification in replacing a theocracy with a liberal meritocracy where the rules have inappropriately fixed who will be a member of the caste and who will not.

The fear of this meritocratic liberal caste is that their (liberal and open) absolute values will be displaced by someone else's absolute values.  But this very resistance to other ways of thinking tends to strengthen the fundamentalists on the other side.  The proper response is to place both one's own and other's absolute (or even nihilistic) values beneath the rule of fair play, law applicable to all and my oft-quoted democratic socialist principle of exploitation as a wrong-in-itself.  Boundaries can then be regarded as simply a matter of political struggle between interests instead of struggles between value-systems.

The Awkward Case Of Magick

Which brings me to the particularly awkward case of Magick - that odd minority practice that (despite claims of antiquity) emerged amongst the British haute bourgeoisie at the peak of Empire and was accompanied or succeeded by a number of neo-pagan religions (Druidism, Wicca and Heathenism).  These have all spread and taken root in American soil much to the consternation of Christian and scientific fundamentalists alike.  Is the Magickal tradition of Crowley (represented in America by different and darker strands from Parsons through to the avowed Satanist LaVey) immature or insane - or are they merely exploitative of the immature by cynical opportunists?  Or is it something else or all of these and more?

There are few reliable sources but a new book, The History of British Magick After Crowley, by Paul Evans, an academic historian, tries to bring some objectivity to what this odd little minority are engaged in because they are, by their very existence, clearly a standing challenge to Pinkerism - especially when you find out that its contemporary practitioners include a significant proportion of science graduates and that some of them actively use the wilder shores of science, as Pinker would understand the term, for their practices and researches.

Unfortunately, Evans' book is not well edited (it is published outside the mainstream by Hidden Publishing), it rambles and it sometimes assumes too much knowledge and then repeats itself on things that we all know anyway as part of our common culture.  But it is engagingly honest about the prejudices Evans experienced in the Academy for even taking on the issue, for his determination to uncover the truth about leading figures and for his own description of 'anthropological' participation in rituals and their effect on him - and his struggle (which clearly exercises him more than the reader) to remain 'objective'.

Some Findings

The bottom line of 400-odd pages that should be 270 but remains a valuable source is three-fold.  First, the obfuscation of Magickal language and technique from Crowley onwards hides a genuine attempt to find a way into that world of 'that of which nothing can be spoken' which we all know lies at the limits of science and logic and which is also dealt with by art and religion - and through the sheer exercise of imagination.  Poetry and ritual are methods to an end as much as scientific hypotheses and experimentation can be in the search for useful technologies - positivists may not like that conclusion but these people are neither immature nor insane, just different.

Second, this world does attract the immature and probably the insane, so there is an issue of exploitation.  Evans' book does not try to justify the antics of Kenneth Grant or Amado Crowley as some might do as merely the antics of Loki or some other Trickster god.  These figures that lie between Crowley and the Chaos magicians are deeply flawed, just how flawed requires a reading of the book because I am not going to put myself or Zaadz at the risk of a British libel suit. 

I can see (from other sources) that a tendency to charlatanism and trickery is becoming self-corrected in the next generation (giving way, in turn, to a fourth generation of socially committed 'magical' eco-thinkers), but Pinker and others are both justified in caution if perhaps more forgiving of historic charlatanism in the sciences when it had had neither a strong culture nor an institutional base to support it.  Alchemical thinking opened the doors to more serious work in chemistry and we ordinary folk have had to put up with some pretty daft theories and vile inventions from scientists, pimping themselves to power, over the last 300 years.

Life-Affirmation as Ends

But, third, the actual experience of Magick is clearly life-affirming and powerful for that tiny minority of practitioners (estimated at less than 50,000 or around 0.1% of the British population) who engage with it.  The 'scientific question' is - does it work?  And the proper answer is - for the purposes of many of these people, yes it does.  The scientist must then ask (assuming he does not dismiss such people as merely deluded and hand them over to the clinician) - how does it do this? 

It seems to do this by a practitioner taking command of how the world is perceived in order to effect change in oneself that then enables one to change social relations (definable as 'matter' in some respects).  This, in turn, affects the purpose and use of technology if not the laws of physics.  It is about self-empowerment through controlled 'transgression' but there is no evidence to suggest that such people are more or less psychopathic, 'insane' or even manipulative than other groups of people.  My daily life is spent in business, politics and public relations and, believe me, if you want psychopathy, manipulation and attempts to bend reality to will, try my world!

This does leave the claim of some Magick practitioners (and Wiccans and Druids) that ritual or will can change matter or the laws of physics.  This claim is not metaphor but based on a reading at the cutting edge of physics that the mind and matter can operate at micro-levels 'under will' (I oversimplify) so that greater change can be effected through the oft-quoted 'butterfly effect'.  The implication is that will can direct change.

Scepticism About Scepticism

Not so many years ago, I would have rejected this out of hand and am still suspicious that a psychological pudding is being overegged, but now I think, while the claims are unproven, seem unlikely and may never be provable, relations between mind and matter (given that both may be broadly the same substance whether to materialists or radical gnostics and, if not, there is still no clear account of how one works on the other within the body other than the circular explanations of neuro-science) are not known truly to scientists any more than 'magical thinkers'.  This void creates a gap for surmise and imagination. The attempt by one narrative [science] unwarrantedly to seek to expand into the void as lebensraum, by abandoning its own methodological rigour in order to exclude another which it finds uncomfortable, strikes me as unethical.

Similarly, at the margins, there is room for doubt about strict radical techno-materialism.  The much-despised para-psychological profession within the academy is finding 'anomalies', the power of ritual and words to effect psychological change quickly is being shown to be true if only in the middle management fix of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and a variety of 'new religions' seem to give pastoral care to the new 'damned of the earth' deep within our own liberal culture (the trailer boys sucked into overseas military adventures, the sex working single mothers).

These self-taught techniques for psychological regeneration seem to be a helluva lot cheaper and more focused on reality than the inordinately expensive and lengthy talking cure much preferred by the tormented liberal middle classes of the East Coast.  In short, the 'does it work' test is not only subjectively passed by the group but there may be objective hints of why it works and what its social role and rational economic value may be.

So, Professor ...

A little less science and a little more Magick might result in more fun and more safe sex at home for a lot of over-intellectualised graduate couples.  Who is going to be a happier soul - Woody Allen or someone dressing up in a wolf's costume (apparently not a real skin because of eco-morality ,so political correctness cannot be escaped even here), getting drunk, in the middle of the night, in woodland and calling on Herne to bless a couple before they go off to hit the sack? 

Thinking too much can be terribly depressing.  Especially when thinking (for most people) actually changes very little in one's life and reaches a point of diminishing returns.  To play with Pinker's second sentence - "Rational adults find what passes for truth as irrelevant, because any action based on true premises will still not have the effects they desire".

Why should the vast mass of the population, trapped in dead-end jobs and tired relationships with limited resources, sustain a thinking culture that does not work for them just to buttress the amour-propre of professional thinkers?  If thinking will not change that job, get more money and reinvigorate one's marriage, why not try something else - and, by the way, have some fun!  And, before the moralists get their teeth into this, it is the thinking culture that has the high divorce rate, not a magical one per se.

So, Professor Pinker, I know you mean well but don't be so po-faced about 'magical thinking'.  It may not be the way to run a nuclear power station or a train service but 'imaginative' thinking (if you dislike magical) is not immature nor is it insane.  It can change the conditions of matter by changing the person and social relations.  It can get that person out of the hands of an office bully without going through 'procedures' (yawn!) that change nothing fundamentally.  It can force a marriage to put up or shut up on mutual respect.  It may (and minds should remain open on this) even change matter at the margins - we do not know.  In short, in some cases, it can empower where liberals can only pontificate.

... And Back to Dangerous Ideas

And, perhaps more uncomfortably, outside the simple truths of proven cause and effect, there are many other truths.  No narrative has yet mastered, nor can it plausibly ever master, 'that of which nothing can be spoken', whether it be God, deity in general or (as I believe) simple raw unknowable Existence.  Science is rightly master of technology and of the means to new technology.  It is a describer of how Existence (or God) manifests itself but it says nothing about ends and little, in the long run, about what it is to be and feel human.  In that wider territory, it merely constrains the theories underpinning other narratives but it does not displace them.  It forces them on to new ground but it can never wipe them from that core territory of 'meaning'.

Which brings us back to the original article and 'dangerous ideas'.  For Professor Pinker, a dangerous idea is one that science develops through its method but which then has a potentially negative social consequence.  It may become propaganda fuel for racists or fascists - the Holocaust lurks behind every American liberal's picture of the universe as something that happens when science goes bad.  But this mis-explains the atrocity and is bad history.  Jews died not because of bad science but because of bad politics.  And, until we get our heads around that, people will continue to die before their time. 

We remain in denial about the importance of free political struggle under conditions of full information. Germans in 1933 did not, as a majority, vote in global war, mass murder and a terrible dictatorship.  A truly strong egalitarian democracy, with loyal militia and multiple sources of information available to the public would have strangled Hitler.  The science would have poddled along, eventually discovering that there was no basis to his potty racial theories.  As always, it was the elite who betrayed their own nation out of conformity and that time-serving mentality of people who think they have a little bit of power to play with and can use it well ... as if!

The liberal-totalitarian instinct is to try and hold a dangerous idea close and limit its use to the caste that can be trusted to handle it responsibly.  I would argue that this is patronising and that it privileges a caste with no rights to speak for the rest of us.  PInker quotes Brandeis approvingly - Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  Let him and other liberals hold that thought.

The long term solution is for science to place itself under the jurisdiction of the community, for all information to be given to the community and for the community to be trusted to develop an appropriate policy based on values that are derived from squaring all the narratives - from the materialist (economic welfare) to the numinous.  It is called liberal democracy and it is becoming plain stupid now to let the particular bloody events in a mid-European country three quarters of a century ago dictate how we treat and trust our own peoples.  Now that is immature and on the very borders of insane ...