Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • Atheism 2.0? Dear God, No…

    Alain de Botton is a philosopher. He recently gave a talk at a TED conference where he proposed “Atheism 2.0”, a form of atheism that would reject all deities and supernatural acts but cater to the “ritualistic side” of some atheists.

    It sounds like an appalling idea to me. I see that Jerry Coyne, over at Why Evolution is True, finds the idea to be “a facile attempt to appropriate the trappings of religion as something essential to an atheist world”. As Coyne says, “What we need, as sociological studies indicate, is not stained glass, potted lilies, and a gasbag orator, but a society that cares about its citizens”.

    In fact, I like some rituals, such as walking the dogs in the woods, or going to the theatre or listening to a concert; but the idea of elevating those ad-hoc activities into prescribed rote and trappings is simply a bad one, and has nothing whatsoever to do with “atheism”.

    What really irritated me about de Botton’s performance in this TED talk, is that he opens it with a thinly-veiled sneer at Richard Dawkins, saying that “many [people] who live in North Oxford” simply find religion ridiculous. De Botton then has the effrontery to go on to say that:

    I’m interested in the kind of constituency that thinks something along these lines: that thinks, “I can’t believe in any of this stuff, I can’t believe in the doctrines. I don’t think these doctrines are right. But,” a very important but, “I love Christmas Carols, I really like the art of Mantegna. I really like looking at old churches. I really like turning the pages of the Old Testament”.

    So de Botton has created another Dawkins strawman by his sneer, because, in fact, Dawkins is in just the kind of constituency that de Botton claims he is interested in. Dawkins is on record as recognising himself as a cultural Christian, who loves listening to Carols, and who, in The God Delusion (p.344 in my hardcover edition), writes:

    …an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

    I should note that I’ve read very little of de Botton that I have been able to nod my head in agreement with, or indeed, take seriously. Give me Daniel Dennett any day…

    On a side note, is it just me, or has the quality of TED talks gone down the toilet in recent years? There was a time when I enjoyed listening to them, but these days they seem to contain a high percentage of woo-merchants doing their happy-clappy schticks.

  • Forced to be Sterilised

    There are times when the law goes beyond being “a ass” as Dickens’ Mr Bumble famously said, into realms where the law is simply anti-human.

    I was amazed to learn this week that Sweden requires, under force of law, that its transgender citizens be sterilised. I was prepared, at first, to think that, OK, it’s a quirk of the law that no-one could foresee, but now that we are in the 21st Century, it will be changed tout suite.

    Not a bit of it.

    The Christian Democratic party in the Swedish Parliament, being key to the coalition, are against any change to the law. As an aside, I am really not surprised that it’s a political party with religious roots that is insisting on this barbarism – ‘twas ever thus.  However…

    As the Human Rights Watch organisation states:

    The Swedish transgender law stems from 1972 and is out of step with current international best practice and understandings of Swedish obligations under international human rights law.

    In July 2009 Thomas Hammarberg, the commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe, made the observation about the forced sterilization requirement that in reality the state prescribes medical treatment for legal purposes, “a requirement which clearly runs against principles of human rights and human dignity.” This was followed up in the extensive report on human rights for LGBT people in Europe that the commissioner published this summer. The commissioner there recommends Council of Europe member states to do away with all physical requirements for people who want to change their legal gender.

    In March 2010 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommended to member states, including Sweden, that requirements, including changes of a physical nature, for legal recognition of a gender reassignment, should be reviewed in order to remove abusive elements. The Committee recommended that member states should take appropriate measures “to guarantee the full recognition of a person’s gender reassignment in all areas of life, in particular by making possible the change of name and gender in official documents in a quick, transparent and accessible way.”

    I am mindful that the situation here in the Netherlands is not so far in advance of that in Sweden; however, the Dutch government, a coalition of the conservative Liberal Party and the Christian-Democratic party, has publicly acknowledged that its transgender law violates international human rights law and has published a law proposal which does away with the forced sterilisation requirement.

    Here’s Georg Elfvelin asking for your support to help change the Swedish law:

    And here’s where you can sign a petition to Sweden’s Prime Minister. I hope that you will.

  • Dedicated Comic

    I see that yesterday’s Jesus and Mo is dedicated to Rhys Morgan, Jessica Ahlquist, One Law for All, and Salman Rushdie. Quite right, too.

  • A Dastardly Plot

    I know that there are some intelligent churchmen around, but I do despair when I read bollocks like this:

    The Spanish Catholic Church is also concerned about homosexuality. During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. “The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”

    It, quite literally, beggars belief.

    Update: Benedict also talks bollocks. Sigh.

  • Slice of Life

    I was writing a reply today to an email from old friends who had recently emigrated to Canada. In it I wrote that, having arrived here in the Netherlands 27 years ago, and in spite of having dual Dutch and British nationalities, that I nevertheless expected to die here, and not return to the UK.

    One of the reasons is that, despite my disappointment in the rise of Geert Wilders and his Christian xenophobia, there remains in Dutch society a residue of the tolerance and openness that attracted me here in the first place.

    On this New Year’s Eve, for example, the main entertainment programme on TV was presented by Paul de Leeuw, an out, and married, gay man (and who always strikes me as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”). His guests were the Dutch equivalent of the Speaker of the British House of Commons, a cocaine-using Dutch Olympic gymnast (wearing a very tight T-shirt that displayed his body and arms to their best) and twins who are the oldest working prostitutes in the Netherlands. Somehow, I can’t imagine the equivalent happening in dear old Blighty…

  • Gay Rights Are Human Rights

    I missed hearing or reading about this speech that the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, gave to an audience of diplomats at the United Nations in Geneva on the 6th December. It is quite remarkable. I’ve put some extracts below. The full transcript is here, and it is well worth reading.

    “It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

    “The second issue is a question of whether homosexuality arises from a particular part of the world. Some seem to believe it is a Western phenomenon, and therefore people outside the West have grounds to reject it. Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors.

    “Being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality. And protecting the human rights of all people, gay or straight, is not something that only Western governments do. South Africa’s constitution, written in the aftermath of Apartheid, protects the equality of all citizens, including gay people. In Colombia and Argentina, the rights of gays are also legally protected. In Nepal, the supreme court has ruled that equal rights apply to LGBT citizens. The government of Mongolia has committed to pursue new legislation that will tackle anti-gay discrimination.

    …

    “The third, and perhaps most challenging, issue arises when people cite religious or cultural values as a reason to violate or not to protect the human rights of LGBT citizens. This is not unlike the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning or female genital mutilation. Some people still defend those practices as part of a cultural tradition. But violence toward women isn’t cultural; it’s criminal. Likewise with slavery, what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.

    …

    “The fourth issue is what history teaches us about how we make progress towards rights for all. Progress starts with honest discussion. Now, there are some who say and believe that all gay people are pedophiles, that homosexuality is a disease that can be caught or cured, or that gays recruit others to become gay. Well, these notions are simply not true. They are also unlikely to disappear if those who promote or accept them are dismissed out of hand rather than invited to share their fears and concerns. No one has ever abandoned a belief because he was forced to do so.

    “Universal human rights include freedom of expression and freedom of belief, even if our words or beliefs denigrate the humanity of others. Yet, while we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose, not in a world where we protect the human rights of all.

    “Reaching understanding of these issues takes more than speech. It does take a conversation. In fact, it takes a constellation of conversations in places big and small. And it takes a willingness to see stark differences in belief as a reason to begin the conversation, not to avoid it.

  • RIP, Hitch

    So, Christopher Hitchens is dead. He has left Tumortown and passed beyond the Land of Malady, after leaving us with some last words of advice on dealing with mortal illness.

    I’ll miss his voice and his writings. We now have all that we are going to have from him.

    I can’t resist adding his widely-quoted words of wisdom:

    “The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.”

    Like Christopher Hitchens, I’ve enjoyed them all. Over-rated? Possibly. Enjoyable? Certainly.

    RIP, Hitch.

  • The Kindness of Strangers

    In today’s Observer, Henry Porter writes about a revelation that his friend, Gilbert Adair, had in the months before he died. It’s worth reading. And it’s a reminder that for some people, nursing remains a vocation, rather than a service from which profit must be wrung. Treasure them.

  • Boris and Brazil

    I read this in the New Statesman today. It reminded me of the scene in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil where armoured police break into the flat of Archibald Buttle, terrorising his wife and children and ultimately bringing about the death of the innocent Buttle.

    I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson. This makes me like him even less. This is not how community policing should be.

  • It’s Time…

    Life, dating, love, tears – and a marriage proposal; all in a little film that lasts under two minutes. What on earth could be wrong with that?

    Well, judging from the comments on YouTube, and the fact that it was necessary to make the film in the first place, some people obviously do have problems with two people wanting to share their life together and having their friends and relations bear witness to their commitment.

    I’ve never understood their objections.

  • We Were Here

    A tip of the hat to Alistair Appleton over at Do Bhuddists Watch Telly for his post on the Documentary We Were Here by David Weissman. The film tells the history of the early 1980s when the AIDS epidemic grew and wiped out thousands. As Alistair says:

    More than 15,000 people died at the height of the epidemic in just the [San Francisco] Bay Area. All in the space of four or five years.

    Unlike the films And The Band Played On (which uses actors to portray the actual events of the time), or Longtime Companion (which is a fictionalised account of the rise of AIDS), We Were Here has real people telling their stories of that time and place (San Francisco).

    WE WERE HERE (trailer) from David Weissman on Vimeo.

    Martin and I are of the generation who faced the horror full on, and lost friends to AIDS. We will certainly watch the film (it’s being released next month on DVD) and remember. I also hope that some of the younger generation of gays will watch the film and get a sense of what we went through. The story is not all doom and gloom, however; as the plot summary on IMDB says:

    ‘We Were Here’ is the first film to take a deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of AIDS in San Francisco, and how the City’s inhabitants dealt with that unprecedented calamity. It explores what was not so easy to discern in the midst of it all – the parallel histories of suffering and loss, and of community coalescence and empowerment. Though this is a San Francisco based story, the issues it addresses extend not only beyond San Francisco but also beyond AIDS itself. ‘We Were Here’ speaks to our societal relationship to death and illness, our capacity as individuals to rise to the occasion, and the importance of community in addressing unimaginable crises.

  • Hardhearted Holland

    The Dutch media is currently full of the case of Mauro Manuel, a refugee who arrived here from Angola when he was nine years old. Now that he is 18, the Dutch Government want to deport him back to Angola. The Dutch Immigration and Asylum Minister Gerd Leers has ruled that Mauro had no right to stay in the Netherlands.

    Mauro’s case has been debated in parliament today, but the motion calling on Minister Leers to grant him a residency permit has been defeated by 78 votes to 72.

    Another victory for the baleful influence of Geert Wilders in his process of changing this once-tolerant country into an intolerant one. I don’t feel proud to be Dutch today.

    Update: Abigail R. Esman (also living in the Netherlands) has an opinion piece in Forbes that sums up pretty well my feelings of shame and anger over this case.

  • A Spot of Local Bother…

    Over the past year, there have been a number of cases reported in the Dutch media of gay couples being harassed to such an extent that they have sold up and moved elsewhere in The Netherlands. Such cases usually occur in the housing areas of the large cities, such as Utrecht and The Hague, where you can get very different cultural and ethnic communities living cheek-by-jowl.

    The latest case was reported last Friday, and I was somewhat surprised to learn that it happened just eleven km. down the road in Ulft, a little town of about 11,000 people. We live in the same municipality, and I was pleased to read in the local paper today (and on the council’s website) a statement on the case from the Mayor. It’s worth quoting in full:

    Perhaps you too have seen this on TV or read it in the newspaper in the last week. A homosexual couple will be moving out of our community. They have been harassed for years. Last Friday I spoke with one of them. He stated that he had repeatedly called the police and had also tried to pass their complaints about harassment to me. Only after four calls to the municipality’s office was an appointment made. By that time, they had already decided to move. Because they were so upset that they felt compelled to leave their beloved Ulft, they made the media aware of their displeasure.

    Apparently their complaint over harassment was not taken seriously enough for a meeting with me or the police. I want this to occur in the future. Meanwhile, I have made an agreement with the police that they are more alert over bullying, and over cases reported. In the Municipal Office, we will also be more alert. The Police have found no reports and the complaint is not known to the police on the beat. It is not an unwillingness of the police or municipalities, but bullying can be underestimated.

    The lesson for me is: when people call with complaints about bullying, then it deserves more attention than this couple has received. We shall be more alert. I find it too crazy for words that people were bullied out of their village because they are ‘different’. Let’s be on our guard about this, so that respect and tolerance are important values and remain so in our communities. We are jointly responsible for ensuring that everyone has a place, regardless of origin, race, orientation or religion. Everyone needs a safe place to live in and to live. If that is not the case then we must, depending on the specific conditions, get around the table and look together at what can be done. I want to know how many bullying problems there are. Therefore I make this appeal to you.

    Are you being bullied or know of situations where something like this is happening? I hope that you will report this to me. Naturally I will respect your confidentiality.

    I like the fact that the Mayor has looked beyond the fact that the trigger here was a case of harassment of a gay couple, and used it to assert that harassment of anyone ‘different’ in the community is unacceptable. Quite right too.

  • “The Consequences Are Real”

    I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I’m very lucky to be able to live in a country that has Civil Marriage for both same-sex and different sex couples. Some countries have only Civil Partnerships for same-sex couples, reserving Civil Marriage for different sex couples only.

    Many people think that these are, for all practical purposes, the same. But they are not. In Ireland, for example, the differences can have real consequences.

  • Through The Looking Glass

    Sometimes I feel like Alice – I’m in a looking-glass world where black is portrayed as white, good is bad, or up is down. It’s at times like these when I’m likely to throw a Victor Meldrew fit at the apparent stupidity, cupidity or just plain bare-faced effrontery of those in charge, who have the power to dictate what we will experience in our daily lives.

    What’s brought on this latest attack is the publication in yesterday’s Volkskrant newspaper of a two page spread covering the likely future of rail transport in the Netherlands.

    The kernel of the report was the finding that breaking up the national rail network into separate chunks and putting services out to tender will reduce delays, according to research by network operator ProRail.

    Let’s just savour that, shall we? And why would that proposition be true, in any meaning in the real world? Ah, we read, it’s because services will not be so interdependent, reducing the domino effect of delays, ProRail is quoting as saying.

    Dear god in heaven, do these people not have two braincells to rub together?

    Let’s just take a practical example. I want to travel from Amsterdam to my home – nearest station Varsseveld. That means that I’m using the Dutch National Railways (the NS) from Amsterdam until Arnhem, and then changing over to Syntus for the last hour from Arnhem to Varsseveld.

    So excuse me, but surely for me, these services are interdependent – I want to step out at Arnhem and step onto a train bound for Varsseveld with the minimum of delay.

    As a matter of fact, at the moment, Syntus (one of the independent rail operators that the Dutch Government is so in love with) offer what can only be described as a truly shitty service. I’ve lost count of the number of times that services have been delayed or cancelled, while the hapless train drivers run around like headless chickens, glued to their mobile phones receiving zero practical information.

    On more than one occasion, I, together with my fellow travellers in the outer regions of Hell, have been herded from one platform to another in Zevenaar at the behest of the Syntus staff for what seemed like hours at a time. “The next train for Winterswijk will leave from platform 3”, “no, platform 4”, “no, that’s going back to Arnhem”, “Platform 1”, “no, we’re putting buses on” – so three train’s worth of passengers have to fight for seats on a single bus.

    So, ProRail, don’t tell me that delays are not interdependent. Wherever they happen, they will have a domino effect on the individual traveller, if that traveller is where the delays are.

    I note, with a roll of my eyes, that the ProRail research report was carried out at the request of the private rail operators. I can’t say I’m totally surprised at the findings then, although it only serves to underline the fact that we are indeed in looking-glass land.

    And, oh joy, because of the love affair the Dutch Government have with the idea that more independent operators make for more efficiency, we have the situation to look forward to that if we want to travel from Amsterdam to Varsseveld, we will have not two, but three train operators to deal with: the NS, Breng and Syntus.

    It’s at times like this when I earnestly wish to be face to face with the authors of these research reports and the faceless bureaucrats who decide our transport fate and slap them hard around the face with a wet fish.

  • Amsterdam Canal Parade

    Today is the 6th August, 2011, and it’s the day of the annual Canal Parade in Amsterdam. I usually travel the 150 km to Amsterdam and join the 400,000+ onlookers to watch it, but this year I’m staying home. However, my thoughts will be there, in particular for my old colleagues from Shell who will be dancing on the Company Pride boat. Good luck, guys and gals – hope the weather gods smile on you today!

    My photos of some of the previous Canal Parades can be found up on Flickr.

  • The Buurt’s New Baby

    It’s become something of a tradition here in this part of the Netherlands that when a baby is born, the neighbours (the buurt) will celebrate the fact by erecting a wooden stork, festooned with clotheslines of baby clothes.

    This week, our nearest neighbours had the birth of their first baby, a boy. Since we are noaste naobers to them, it fell to us to organise the decorations in celebration of the fact. So, together with the other neighbours, we did. Naturally, we had to have the traditional stork:

    20110723-1113-55

    But Martin thought that we should also push the envelope a bit. Since José and Herman have referred to their new baby as their “little prince” (kleine prins), we thought we’d take them at their word…

    20110723-1139-21

    20110723-1115-43

    20110723-1115-32

  • The Psychopath Test

    Some weeks back I mentioned that I should put Jon Ronson’s new book: The Psychopath Test on my list of books to read. I did, and I’ve now read it.

    I liked it very much. Ronson’s style of writing is easy to read and often laugh-out-loud funny, although there are parts of the book that also made me gasp in astonishment. Don’t get it expecting to read an academic study on psychopathy (as some people who have reviewed the book on Amazon.com appear to have done, and who are then pissed-off to find it’s not). It’s not that at all. It’s more an exploration of some of the ways in which humans can behave, for better or worse. His jumping-off point is the strange story of a mysterious book: Being and Nothingness by an author Joe K (not Jean-Paul Sartre) copies of which were sent, out of the blue, to a number of neurologists and other academics. Ronson is invited by one of the recipients to get on the trail of who was behind the book, and along the way becomes intrigued by what defines mental illness.

    From there he meets Tony, an inmate of Broadmoor (one of Britain’s three high security psychiatric hospitals) who claims that he faked a mental disorder in order to get a lighter sentence, but who is now stuck there, because nobody believes he is sane.

    At the end of his book, Ronson returns to the story of both the mysterious book and Tony. Along the way, he meets many people involved in the “madness industry”; those who define the various labels of madness, those who wear the labels and those who use the label-wearers to make a living.

    I found chapter 8 – The Madness of David Shayler – the saddest. Partly because it tells of the impact on Rachel North, who survived the Kings Cross bombing of 7/7, only to discover that conspiracy theorists claimed that there were no bombs and that she herself was a government mouthpiece who had been tasked with disseminating disinformation. And partly because it tells of the journey of David Shayler from being a former MI5 security officer to someone who believes that he is the Messiah. Ronson charts the degree of media interest in Shayler and concludes:

    David Shayler’s tragedy is that his madness has spiralled into something too outlandish, too far out of the ball park and consequently useless. We don’t want obvious exploitation, we want smoke-and-mirrors exploitation.

    At the heart of the book is the Hare PCL-R Checklist, used to identify psychopathic traits. Ronson meets Bob Hare, the inventor of the checklist, on a number of occasions. The checklist becomes a leitmotif in the book, with Ronson musing on particular checklist items whilst describing the behaviour of those he meets, or even whilst describing his own behaviour and thoughts.

    It’s a good book.

  • Gawd–That Voice!

    Meryl Streep is playing the role of Margaret Thatcher in a forthcoming biopic. The first trailer is now available. Streep has caught the voice to a “T”, as it were, and it sends shivers down my spine.

    I’m torn between wanting to see the film, and dreading all the negative emotions that will be dredged up thinking about the impact Thatcher has had on British society.

  • All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace – II

    I mentioned how much I was looking forward to the new series of documentaries by Adam Curtis: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

    Actually, the first episode was last week, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped for. I never realised, until Curtis made it clear, that there was a close, if not intimate, connection between Alan Greenspan and the ethical egoist-cum-sociopath Ayn Rand. Pause for shudder…

    Tonight’s episode will look at how our view of Nature, as interconnected ecosystems, echoes our view of machines. Should be good. And next week, Curtis will look at our view of the human being as machine, and tell the riveting, and almost outlandish, story of George Price, who was one of the first to come up with the idea of the Selfish Gene.

    Adam Curtis has also been on Little Atoms, talking about the series and the ideas behind it (the second link on this page). Well worth a listen.

    The underpinning theme of All Watched Over… is that of Cybernetics, with which I was fascinated when younger. I wonder whether Curtis will mention William Grey Walter and his cybernetic tortoises? I built one of those when I was a teenager, but really, one was not enough, you really needed several to be able to study the emergent behaviour…

    At the very least, I hope that Curtis gives a shout-out to Anthony Stafford Beer, who was invited by Salvador Allende to implement Cybersyn to manage the planned economy of Chile. Unfortunately, like so much else, the experiment was swept away in the military coup of 1973, which was, surprise, surprise, endorsed by the US.