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February 1, 2007
By James Mitchell
Simon & Schuster R189,95
Dare to question. Most don't. Indeed, many people get alarmed, agitated, when difficult questions are posed.
Questioning settled assumptions forces people to think, which can be a frightening, radical exercise.
Consider the "dangerous ideas" listed here: "Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?
Were the events in the Bible fictitious - not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires? Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer lifelong damage? Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape? Do men have an innate tendency to rape?
Are suicide terrorists well-educated, mentally healthy, and morally driven? Are Ashkenazi Jews, on average, smarter than Gentiles because their ancestors were selected for the shrewdness needed in money lending?
Would the incidence of rape go down if prostitution were legalised? Is morality just a product of the evolution of our brains?
Do parents have any effect on the character or intelligence of their children? Have religions killed a greater proportion of people than Nazism? Would Africa have a better chance of rising out of poverty if it hosted more polluting industries or accepted Europe's nuclear waste?"
How's your blood pressure? If you're puce already, best read no further, and certainly not the book itself. Stick to SABC News with its meaningless, comforting bloviation.
Steven Pinker, in his introduction, calls these "dangerous ideas - ideas that are denounced not because they are self-evidently false, not because they advocate harmful action, but because they are thought to corrode the prevailing moral order".
We all know the quickest way to end an argument is by crying "racism". Criticise cruelty to animals, or corruption in society, and soon the r-word shuts off all rational discourse.
Then there are ideas that run contrary to in-group perceptions. Among the "innest" of in-groups are those of generally liberal conviction who work in the media.
Here I - as your reviewer - include myself. We know for a fact censorship is wrong. Freedom of speech is right. Finished and klaar. Change the subject.
So understand my dismay at reading neuroscientist Marco Jacoboni's piece (just two and a bit pages) in which he argues we should seriously consider whether "media violence induces imitative violence".
He notes that while for more than 50 years, behavioural data has suggested "media violence induces violent behaviour in the observers", the most telling criticism of this observation has been there is "no explanatory power"
. In other words: "I can't explain it, so it doesn't exist."
But now researchers believe there exists a "plausible neural mechanism that can explain why observing violence induces imitation". It's the "human mirror neuron system".
So what's happened to free will? To the belief that the effects of free speech/inappropriate sexual behaviour/horror movies/disgusting hate-filled rap songs or whatever "are always subject to the mental intermediation of the listener/ viewer".
What if certain neurons, located in the premotor cortex of the brain, "fire" when we observe certain acts? And, just as watching others eat can make one hungry … well, you can fill in the rest.
Having decided this idea is not only extremely dangerous, and, even worse, possibly correct, I looked at an earlier piece by physicist W Daniel Willis, on "the idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas".
"Some ideas are dangerous because they are false, like an idea that one race of humans is more worthy than others, or that one religion has a monopoly on the truth," he writes.
"False ideas like these spread like wildfire and have caused immeasurable harm."
True, but problematic: Shouldn't the free market in ideas be enough?
Immediately after Willis's contribution, psychologist Daniel Gilbert employs just 131 words to shoot down the thought "that ideas can be dangerous".
Paradoxically, he states "the most dangerous idea is the only dangerous idea: The idea that ideas can be dangerous."
Whew! I was worried for a moment. Like the meaning of life, there's no simple answer. Which is why so many, desperate for certainty, shy away books like this.
Personally, I relish such questions, and if you have any sort of an open, enquiring mind, then so will you.
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