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name of survival. As the lions isolate the lonely orphan from the herd and pounce with brutal efficiency we ease our horror with talk of the rich cycle of life, survival of the fittest, evolution, you know, all for the best. These explanations help to placate our children’s need for the why, but does nature really lend itself comfortably to judgement in terms of human values? Cuckoos don’t make nests. Instead they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. As a result the other birds incubate the cuckoo’s egg and bring up the cuckoo’s chick instead of its own. Consider this description of the Pallid cuckoo (Cuculus pallidus) from the Readers Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds: At least 80 other species of birds play unwitting host to the egg and young of the pallid cuckoo. One of the most common victims of this parasite is the yellow-faced honeyeater Lichenostomus chrysops. As with other cuckoos, the nesting pallid cuckoo ensures its survival by ejecting the eggs or young of its adoptive parents from the nest. After it has left the nest, its loud squawks for food sometimes induce even birds other than its foster parents to feed it. So just how evil is this little creature? I challenge anybody to read this description and not judge the cuckoo harshly. Based on the values of any society, this bird has broken every rule in the book – murder, theft, fraud, sloth, trespass, exploitation, even, perhaps, genocide. Yet to judge the cuckoo as an evil creature is to miss what could be the most valuable lesson for the long-term survival of the human race. The relationship between the cuckoo and the honeyeater is a metaphor for society. Each is programmed to do only what is “right”. Yet this path of righteousness will probably lead to the demise of the honeyeater according to the laws of evolution. The cuckoo is bound to flourish. It has 80 different species working for its survival. Does this make the cuckoo bad? Right now there are about six billion humans on earth and we all have one trait in common. Like the cuckoo and the honeyeater, we all do what we believe is right. It may not be what others judge as right, it may not even be legal, but whatever it is we are doing, we believe it is right. Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn beheaded in 1536 because he believed it was right. The Catholic Church had Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno burned at the stake in 1600 because it believed it was right and he was wrong. When Hitler invaded Poland he believed it was the right thing to do. President Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because he believed it was the right thing to do at the time. Nixon and Kissinger bombed Cambodia, Arthur Miller refused to rat on his colleagues, Christiaan Barnard gave Louis Washkansky a new heart, Andy Warhol painted Campbell’s soup cans, Gough Whitlam bought Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, somewhere a teenaged boy took his life, Bob Dylan got an electric guitar, Nelson Mandela chose forgiveness, a psychotic father murdered his children, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, George Bush invaded Iraq, a husband had an affair and a child ran away from home, all for the same reason – they believed it was the right thing to do at the time. We always do what we consider is right. However, what is right for me, may not be right for you. Just as what is right for the cuckoo is not right for the honeyeater. Also, what I believe is right for me now, I may well consider to have been a huge mistake in hindsight. The Nuremberg trials exposed a blazing example of our extraordinary ability to convince ourselves that what we are doing is okay even though in hindsight it becomes blatantly clear it was so very wrong. We all have this exceptional gift of bullshitting ourselves. As Eduardo Giannetti says in his book Lies We Live By: “The most intimate, treacherous and defining relationship that a human being has is with himself.” When Mohammed Atta flew an airliner into New York’s World Trade Centre, he didn’t do it for money, nor did he do it for personal gain. Unpalatable as it may seem, the fact is his motives were entirely altruistic. He did it because he believed it was the right thing to do. This belief was so strong he was willing to sacrifice his life for it. His actions caused a tsunami of emotions to sweep the world – horror, shock, fear, awe, bewilderment, sadness, grief, anger. So how evil is Mohammed Atta? How evil are these terrorists? The last time I saw my grandmother she was sitting in her lounge room with a blanket over her knees. A chronically considerate, completely altruistic, religious woman, Grandma suffered from Altzheimer’s disease and as a result she repeatedly asked whether or not she had said her nightly Rosary. Although her hands were blue with cold, she was aching with concern of others in the room, continually trying to offer her blanket to my wife. My grandmother was a terrorist. So was my grandfather. They were married while on the run from British troops. Their devotion to the church was surpassed only, it seems, by their dedication to their country. As commander of the West Connemara Brigade of the IRA, my grandfather had to confront his local bishop in what became his own personal church-state clash. He found many of his volunteers were becoming reluctant to continue with the cause after the Catholic Church degreed that all members of the IRA would be excommunicated. Today the local church in Ireland has a stained-glass window dedicated to my grandfather. There is no such thing as evil. There is tragedy, there is injustice, horror, sadness, even irony. There are no good people and there are no evil people in this world. There are only people. Human beings all trying to do what is right according to the hand we have been dealt. We are all as altruistic or as selfish as we are capable of being. Mother Teresa and Mohammed Atta were both totally dedicated to what they believed was right. Some of us are cuckoos, some of us are honeyeaters – and we have no say in who is who. When we are born into this world we are assigned a name, a race, a nationality, a religion -- or lack of religion -- two parents, a standard of living as well as a host of other attributes. We have no say in these circumstances and yet they will have a profound effect on how we live our lives, what we believe and what we ultimately become. Judgement always closes the door on understanding. Once we believe someone is “bad”, we will never trully understand them. While there are no good or evil people, there is behaviour that, as a society, we assess as acceptable or not acceptable, constructive or destructive. In order to encourage more of what we considers positive behaviour and less of the negative, we have laws. Judges determine whether questionable behaviour is lawful or unlawful. But what they can’t really decide is whether it is right or wrong, nor can they decide whether it is good or evil. As pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim pointed out over 100 years ago, it is the criminals who often determine social change. Laws evolve over time, yet this evolution is determined by those who challenge the laws by breaking them. Look, for example, at the evolution of laws governing prohibition, censorship, public decency. To judge people as good or bad we have to first assume we know who we are. Let me ask you this: Are you always honest with yourself? If you believe you are, how could you possibly know that?
Chapter 5The Fallacy
There are about six billion of us on earth right now. We’re all individuals with varying views, attributes, hopes, wants, needs, expectations, flaws and talents. We come in two varieties, those with a penis and those with a womb -- tackle in or tackle out. Just to be absolutely clear, those with the gear hanging in space are male, and those with the gear tucked away are female. Women can do things that men can't – give birth, breast feed, collect shoes, have multiple orgasms. Men can do things that women can't – piss up a wall, write their name in the snow. Throughout history there has been continuing debate about how men are better at this and women are better at that. You know the stuff – men are more physical, men can read maps, men are stronger, men can run faster blah, blah, blah. But in reality we are all individuals with varying abilities and talents.Remember, I’m a man, yet Florence Griffith Joyner would have no trouble whatsoever in thrashing me over a hundred metres, even if I had an eighty-metre headstart.The majority of this “better than” bullshit has traditionally come from men, because let’s face it guys, it’s really just pissing up a wall.Should women be allowed to be priests. This, and pretty much any gender-based argument, is phallic bullshit. Unless the job description specifically includes tasks that require the use of genitals, or a womb, there is no place for gender arguments. Therefore, unless the priesthood involves some secret rituals, like pissing up walls or inseminating altar boys, there is no reason to even discuss whether or not women should be allowed in. I use this priesthood issue, but it is not an exception. It empitomises the millions of fallacies that handicap humanity. Just look at how much time, energy and emotional angst goes into this question even today. And for that matter all the similar bullshit questions of the past – should women, be allow to vote, get equal pay, should slavery be banned, is apartheid OK, should blacks get the same rights as whites, is the earth flat or round, should we allow same-sex marriage. We could fill libraries with the reams of these, at-the-time all-important fallacies, not to mention the physical and emotional energy, the suffering and pain, that has been wasted on them. There is one vital ingredient common to all such debates, and that’s ignorance. For example, let’s examine this ridiculous “why priests must have a dick” argument. Like so many fallacies wasting our time today, it relies on a misunderstanding of scripture. It’s an argument perpetuated by people who assume that old books are closer to the truth than today’s writings. The older the book, the more important its messages, so ancient scripture must therefore be venerated. Whereas I say if the printing press had pre-dated Christ, we would have a very different sense of Christianity today. We would have a much greater understanding of how people thought and how they communicated at the time. We would have a plethora of books espousing all kinds of pluralist views. We would have critical reviews of the books of the day, including the Old and the New Testament. We would understand what Jesus really meant when he said, “This is my body”. “This is my body” is bullshit. Beautiful bullshit, certainly, just like Ich bin ein Berliner. We know Kennedy was not a Berliner because of mass media. Therefore we understand what he really meant. Could you imagine if the Bible was published today. Would it outsell Harry Potter? I doubt it. Although the Bible has many authors over many years, imagine – as many Bible “experts” still do – if it was written by one person. How would it stand up to peer review? How would the author go, for example, facing media questions? “So Mr God, are you expecting us to believe that Mary was a virgin? And if so, what exactly did she and Joseph do on their wedding night?” “If she gave birth to your son, doesn’t that mean you must have committed adultery, that is, broken one of your own commandments as referred to earlier in the book? What exactly do you mean when you say you did not have sex with that woman – Mary?” “What terrible sin did Joseph commit to deserve a wife who doesn’t put out?” “If the marriage was not consummated doesn’t that mean it’s annulled?” “If you are in all living creatures, doesn’t that make you personally responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world?” The Bible is littered with contradictions from cover to cover – and remember the Old Testament is fundamentally the Koran and the Tora. But they are only contradictions if you take the text literally. The fact is the Bible was never written to be taken literally – it’s beautiful bullshit from cover to cover. Scholars today understand a great deal about these documents and the |
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