The Niqab and The Visual Cortex

Most of what we’re reading these days about the niqab deals with the  arguments over facial coverings and whether these coverings are matters of “personal choice” or symbols of “cultural identity”. If the classification is “personal choice” then the Libertarian position is advocated. If the belief the niqab is a symbol of loyalty to a particular set of cultural values then the debate’s focus shifts over to the more involved attempt to decide if the values symbolised by the niqab are “congenial with” or “alien to” those of Western Liberal Democracy.

It is not necessary to into the details of why it is that the niqab is not required by Islam at all. Trying to parse the nuances of niqabs versus hijabs is likewise too  esoteric for this post. This comment only addresses the matter of a cultural (but, note, to explicitly religious) tradition which requires women to cover their faces while in public.

We all know these discussions. We have seen them unfolded with emphases on the emotional appeals (fear on the one side,  acceptance on the other),  ethical appeals (bigotry is bad, cultural loyalty is good) and longer term appeals to social and political abilities of Western society to absorb and integrate – into the broader values of Western Democracy – large numbers of people whose cultural history is neither Western nor democratic.

This comment is different. It deals with a speculation on the social implications of covering one’s face.

Facial recognition is something people do very well. We’re extremely good at it. Facial recognition software is still fairly primitive and consumes many machine cycles. Humans do it with something all primates and many other creatures have: The Fusiform Gyrus. (A brief aside. The fusiform gyrus is arguably not really part of the visual cortex but if the title had “fusiform gyrus” in it then the link to vision would not have been as obvious.)

We can ask a new question here: If “facial recognition” were not vitally important to human survival then why would Mother Nature (in the guise of Natural Selection) have spent all that time and effort creating such a highly evolved capacity?

Now I’ll speculate.

Facial recognition allows us quickly and accurately to determine if other people, from a distance, are family, village mates, familiar strangers (i.e. “safe strangers”), unfamiliar strangers (i.e. “who are those people?”), provocateurs, or enemies.

Facial recognition also allows us to evaluate the mood-state of others. Preoccupied (lost in thought), Confused (just plain lost), happy, unhappy, calm,  afraid, deranged, demented, scary, ill, well, and so on.

Walking around with our faces exposed to the community allows us to be fully engaged and involved in the Public Sphere. We are “in public”.  We are participating fully in the “visual presentation of self”.

People who walk around shrouded and with facial coverings are withdrawn from full participation in the Public Sphere.  Those who do so for “personal reasons” may make the others in the Public Sphere inquire about the individual. Friend? Enemy? Stranger? Mentally ill?

Perhaps in “niqab requiring” public spheres donning such garb allows people to be “appropriately invisible” – in the sense of “knowing their place”. In those cultures where the Public Sphere does not have an acceptable category for people who should “know their place by being individually invisible” then such attire not only attracts attention but invites one or two questions.

“Why are you hiding?”

“Should men also have to dress like this?”

The niqab is only worn in Islamic societies and Islamic societies are based on Sharia law.  Sharia law endorses many things. Including Jihad. Neither of these is truly compatible with “Western Values”.

Equating the niqab (and, in fairness, also the hijab) with the endorsement of sharia and jihad elides the meaning of the classification from “personal choice” to “cultural symbol”. Classifications are often not fully objective. The way we classify things determines how we react emotionally and socially to them.

Here is another “face covering” option. Is it to be considered a “personal choice” or “symbolic statement”? Would it arouse concern if someone wanted to be so attired and swear a citizenship oath? Would anyone be perturbed if members of the civil service dressed this way?

This option is fairly light-hearted. Other options — and they are easy to imagine — are much more “symbolically incendiary”. One fairly tame one allows us to ask if wearing a certain article of clothing while taking an oath is the equivalent to the Western meaning of “crossing ones fingers”. Western societies have two meanings for “crossed fingers”. One is “good luck”. The other is “the words I am speaking are invalid”.

It should not be overlooked that Islam has the concept of “taqiyya” which permits “dissumulation” (lying) for three reasons. Two of them relate to self-defense. The third to the prosecution of jihad.

This raises an interesting and officially “never asked” question: How can a person swear a holy oath in the name of a religion which permits lying?

Would asking for clarification be a politically incorrect microaggression?

Humans are social. Humans cannot live long or well outside a social context. It is only logical to conclude the most important sense we have – vision – should be optimally adapted to improve our chances to survive.

When we see things we cannot properly classify we seek more information. When the failure to classify increases the probability that a threat is present then the response is predictable as well.

When someone is compelled by cultural convention to “faceless” in the Public Sphere then that person is, arguably, compelled by cultural convention to be ineligible for full participation in the culture — second class. The forms of “public” nonverbal communication are reduced to: the observation of the walking gait, the various permitted fashion accessories, any bundles or burdens which they may have, and the direction of travel.

The Ideology of Multiculturalism demands that the host population make as many allowable accommodations to newcomers as possible. Multiculturalism, by its very nature, must keep “assimilation” and “integration” to an absolute minimum.

Meanwhile, the ideology of democracy usually means that “all people are equal”. To say “all people are equal” is another way of saying  that no people are inherently “second class”.

It is consequently essential to determine if the donning of the niqab is “personal” or “cultural”. This means we need to know what “culture” is before we can ask if all “cultures” are equally congenial with the constraints of coexisting in a “Multicultural Society”. There are some cultures which regard the “loss of face” to be so devastating as to justify suicide.

But by failing to articulate what, exactly, a “culture” is in the first place the ideology risks becoming incoherent and thereby self-destructive. One such incoherence is the inclusion in the Public Sphere of symbols which are, or can be interpreted as being, at variance with the fundamental values of Western Society itself.

Denmark, for example, has just recently decided that “foreigners” will not longer be eligible for Danish Citizenship. The term “integration has failed” sums up the Danish experience with Multiculturalism.

The multiple monologues on the status of the niqab in particular and Islam in general  in Western society have yet to begin to converge on the standards of an honest dialogue. This is clearly part of a much greater dialogue: one which deals with the uniqueness of Western Culture and whether it is worth protecting.

This dialogue is long overdue.

Addendum. Last week I walked past a woman I know. She was on the phone and she looked very sad. I waved and kept walking. Yesterday I saw her again. Again she was on the phone. This time she was smiling and looked very happy. I waved. She waved back. She said “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” I told her she seemed very sad to me last week and very happy now. I expressed my pleasure at this change. Her reply? “Thank you, thank you, thank you!!”  It is not necessary to continue with the substance of the conversation. It is enough to note it could not have happened at all if she had been wearing a niqab.

Europe’s Moral Duty to Migrants. And Her Own Children

Prologue

This is the first of several comments on what is transpiring in Europe. The following is written as events are unfolding so quickly it is impossible to keep all the details both current and accurate. The last time anything this transitional happened was when the USSR came to an end. In some ways what is happening in Europe is the reverse. Thus the decision to use a number of linked posts rather than just one which is proving to be unwieldy and far too long.

The events are so complex and each one needs detail to cover it fully. The challenges which confront Europe and the world involve a vast array of factors. Historical, predictive, ethical, cultural, identity, and economic. Pundits will focus on one or two and leave the others to be inferred or assumed as being able to “sort themselves out” through some other means.

The crisis has three major features. The first is the emotional aspect, the second the moral aspect, and the third is the logical aspect – the appeal to reason. How do we “feel”, what “should” be done, and does it make any sense to do it? These are the three kinds of appeals described by Aristotle in The Rhetoric: Emotions. Values. Reason. It is appropriate to use a “Western thought paradigm” to approach this situation.

The first – feelings – is fed by media stories of people fleeing for their lives trying to escape what is clearly a deeply troubled part of the world. The focus of this is emotional, personal, and aided by photographs and anecdotes. The second deals with the idea of “doing the right thing” – an ethical dimension – which has its own justifications and sources of origin. The third deals with reality in a more dispassionate and pragmatic fashion. Can Europe stem this tide in any case? Will this influx irreversibly change European culture and the hopes and dreams of “ancestral Europeans”? Is resistance futile whether or not resistance is prompted by feelings or ethics?

Much of what is being written is produced with major references only to one of these three factors and from the viewpoint of only one of the interested parties in the drama.

What we get is “political rhetoric” when what we need is “political science” – which also has its some of roots in the work of Aristotle. The difference is to be dealt with in detail elsewhere. For now suffice to say the fully articulated “scientific paradigm” should contain all possible “rhetorical narratives”.

What is attempted here does not rise to this level. It is not in any way synoptic but rather a halting attempt to draw attention to the most obvious of the factors from the viewpoints of those who are presumed to be most directly at risk in the unfolding drama. The main focus of the Western media is on those who are entering Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and northern Africa. Relatively little attention is being given to the people already living in Europe whose lives are manifestly going to be massively disrupted.

No analysis at all has been done on how the future of Europe will be changed. The construction of a single nuclear power plant or wind farm requires years of “environmental impact” study. There are “good reasons” for this since these will change the ecological environment for generations to come. It is important to have a good assessment of the social and cultural costs these “benefits” may bring.

Shutting to borders to West Africans during the Ebola outbreak was likewise “reasonable” despite no studies at all having been done on what would happen to the already in-situ European population without them.

So what makes the decision of Angela Merkel and other EU leaders – and by that status the Western World itself – to put one and only one response option on the table? What will happen to Europe and the West if her act of apparent “emotionally” and “morally” justified generosity has hugely destructive consequences which only “reason” could have anticipate? Are consequences “unanticipated” because “no human can be expected to know” or because “we do not choose to know”?

We have a computer gaming industry which has the equivalent of Simulation Models for virtually all historical and imaginary scenarios the authors can conjure. Many academic social science departments are engaged in Simulation Modelling as well. If simulation models are good enough for the Climate Change lobby why not for the Population Change one?

And then there are our elected officials. Constitutions and laws and oaths of office are not software packages. They require constant monitoring and tweaking to work properly. For those of us who use portable computers there is even the possibility our own preferred operating systems are not perfect. With software we call the help line. For political leadership we need the people we elect to be “trustworthy”. People of “Good Character”.

The captain of an ocean going vessel will sometimes have to move to port, sometimes to starboard, sometimes go slow, and sometimes go fast. We need to trust the captain to know where “home” is and to steer by the fixed stars (for political leaders, “reason”) to bring us safely through times of trouble. Steering by the lights of each passing ship is not an option.

Our political leaders are, today in the West, ruling because they have sworn allegiance to the protection and preservation of a nation, a country, and a set of ideals. They do not rule absolutely by Divine Right. They are not empowered to change our nation and the world forever without so much as a referendum to validate this endeavour.

The same EU which demanded relentless economic austerity from European nations like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland is not demanding not even the slightest demands from the German decision to let in hundreds of thousands of culturally alien people from the Middle East. Why?

Angela Merkel is not a Tsarina. Not a Kaiserin.

The “demographic” assault on the European “social ecology” is being ruled by emotions and pleas to morality while the iron discipline of the Eurozone Bankers shunned any and all appeals to sentimentality?

Greece has just re-elected the Syrzia party.

There is also a secondary agenda with this comment. It is to show the extraordinarily intricate and complex thing that “human social identity” really is. The people who are entrusted with being leaders of large social groups (cities, states, provinces, countries, corporations, etc) are almost totally untutored in social history, political science, and the humanities generally. Ignorance often leads to incompetence. When those who are incompetent do not know they are incompetent the damage they do is even greater. When such people influence the path of history itself the danger is incalculable.

Western Europe and the EU are presently in the midst of a crisis. It is a flood of people who are entering the EU but primarily heading towards Germany and other countries with high levels of social welfare, generous benefits, and social stability.

The debates – and therefore the posts which will follow this one – involve several aspects. This list may change. It is flexible. It is presented here to provide a sense of what will be attempted.

The first is terminology: are these people “migrants” or “refugees” or “illegal aliens” or “displace persons” or “invaders” or “colonists” or “opportunists”? Are all of these categories and more represented?

The second involves motivation: the motivation imputed to the flood of people will determine both the label and the appropriate response. The motivations include physical safety, religious freedom, social welfare benefits, better future options for the children of those coming in, the establishment of a new kind of non-European society, a sanctuary for those in temporary exile who wish to return to their own homes one day, and so on.

The third set of debates involve moral obligation: Are those in Europe morally obliged to disrupt and perhaps destroy their own cultural traditions in order to accommodate any and all who come? This will involve a discussion of moral philosophy as well as the introduction of the theme of Cultural Marxism. It will also treat the “European” nature of “European Values” with closer attention.

The fourth involves inevitability: since Europe is unwilling or unable to defend itself is the best course to make peace with the bringers of the new cultural reality? Will these newcomers repair the demographically depleted Europe and restore the economy, if not the culture, to its former glory?

The fifth relates to eligibility: Is anyone at all welcome or only those fleeing from Islamist terror? Does this mean Christians and other non-islamics  are more welcome than any others? Since Islamic law treats all outside that faith as second-class citizens then are they given the highest priority?

Sixth: are women, children and the elderly to be given preference? The largest single group is young adult men travelling alone.

The seventh deals with how the burden on the European nations is to be carried. Since Angela Merkel is not in charge of the EU does she have the moral authority to demand – as she has done – that other nations “do their share” when she has neither established the moral foundation of their “obligation” in the first place nor is in possession of the coercive power to compel their obedience in the second. The seventh relates to the ability of the EU to endure this ordeal intact.

The eighth relates to the survival of Western Culture in the European Continent. Is Europe going to become non-European? If Europeans become cultural refugees where will they go?

The ninth will address the long-term options which are available – whether they are seen as politically viable or not. Is Europe doomed as a place where the “aboriginal culture” of “indigenous Europeans” can flourish? What choices are available?

When Siblings Get Religious

Not too long ago a CBC announcer spoke of an upcoming a radio commentary on what can happen in a family when one of the children becomes very religious. What kind of stresses will enter the family? How will people cope.

The on-air promotions only mentioned how one sibling would deal with another sibling who had become “super religious”.
I decided to get this podcast and listen to it. In light of the recent news reports of brothers (and sometimes sisters) leaving their secular Western families to run off and join the worldwide Jihad against Christianity by going to Syrian and participating in ISIS the topic seemed entirely in keeping with one of the dominant questions being asked: has the West somehow failed to be nice enough to these young people? This is the allegation made in the Washington Post by Masha Gessen regarding the reasons for the Boston Marathon Bombers engaging in terrorism. How Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s immigrant path explains his guilty verdict

				How Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s immigrant path explains his gu…Masha Gessen explores what shaped Boston Marathon bombers.
				View on www.washingtonpost…	Preview by Yahoo

I was naturally interested, too, in the problems of identity which arise when people leave their homeland and enter into some kind of diaspora community. What is “identity” and how does it enter into the lives of people in our ever more mobile world. How does the ideology of “multiculturalism” which seems to demand simultaneously that we should all maintain our “authentic” cultural roots as well as being completely tolerant of all other cultures regardless of their fundamental differences with our own.

The CBC broadcast I finally heard was about secular Jewish woman from Vancouver whose previously secular brother had become an Orthodox Jew and insisted on obeying all the kosher laws when he visited other members of his family.
Peace in the House: A not-so-religious Jew and her Orthodox siblings

				Peace in the House: A not-so-religious Jew and her Ortho…Danielle Nerman grew up in a secular Jewish household, with two secular Jewish siblings. Then something happened when they became adults. Her siblings got religio…
				View on www.cbc.ca	Preview by Yahoo

As I listened I learned of the compromises which involved using paper plates, the purchase of a barbeque which would only be used to cook kosher meat, and how Danielle’s brother prayed every day. I heard about his wearing a ball cap to keep his head covered while at the beach. I heard about his concerns about how some “kosher” products were not really “kosher enough” and so on.
What I did not hear was any hint of a discussion between the secular sister and the “SuperJew” brother about such things as abortion, same-sex marriage, the political tensions in the Middle East, or really anything at all which related to “religious differences” other than the need to keep meat and dairy separate and observe the sabbath.

Nothing about siblings heading off to distant lands to engage in acts brutal aggression or die almost immediately. Nothing about differences of worldview and belief so thoroughgoing that the only shared emotions left were contempt, disappointment, and loss. Minor inconveniences, not broken hearts, were all which were likely to arise.

My memory wandered back to some people I met a few years ago. Their nice secular Jewish daughter had spontaneously (i.e. no “love interest” was involved) converted to Islam. She had begun learning Arabic. She had cut herself off from them. She had taken herself out of their lives completely. And they said they did not know why. They could not imagine why.

I wondered what they and their other children would have to say about this broadcast.

If religious fundamentalism were about nothing more than dietary laws, head coverings, not missing the daily prayers — the content of which is not to be discussed in any case — if religious fundamentalism were understood by everyone as nothing more than personal lifestyle choices which in no way required anyone else in the world to change their own behaviour for any reason other than keeping “peace in the house”, then we would not be living in the world of today. We would not be gazing helplessly at pictures of the Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram, at the mass beheadings of Christians on beaches by ISIS forces, of the wanton destruction of Nimrud and other world heritage sites because of their being somehow “unislamic”, the destruction of the Timbuktu libraries because infidel books are haram, the multiplying of no-go zones in the cities of Europe, and so on.

We would not be wondering why thousands of people born and raised in Western countries would be inspired to embrace these religious teachings, run away, and join their communities either to be “fighters” or “brides”.

Keeping “peace in the house” is one thing.

Not noticing the gorilla in the living room is another.

Migrants, Refugees, Duties and Causes

The world is having problems of two main types.
Eastern Europe and China are suffering from the aftermath of the misbegotten doctrine of Marxism. The roots of this worldview are the ultimate cause of a large amount of present misery.

The second main problem source is islam. Islam is what these “migrants” are fleeing. They are running away from the horrors of sharia law. They are running away from ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Shabab, Boko Haram, and so on.

The EU is meeting at the moment with some kind of emergency agenda and they are discussing sinking boats before they have people on them (human shields? has anyone heard of human shields?) to prevent the trafficking of people to Europe. Other well-intended folks are saying this is a “European” or even a “world” crisis. We are told it is “morally necessary” for the West to “do something”.

Apparently it is not “morally necessary” or even polite for the West to question the “peacefulness” of Islam.

But what if the ultimate root of this problem is Islam itself?

To make an analogy.

Ebola.

Should we have let all the people afraid of contracting Ebola into North America and Europe even though they were possibly also infectious? Should we let in “migrants” who may be carrying toxic cultural beliefs?
The analogy here includes comparing the culture of a country to its ecosystem.

Is the Ebola problem solved before we have a vaccine to make sure people are immune to it? Can we find a vaccine to prevent marxism or islam from infecting people so that the benevolence of “asylum” will not simple mean ‘importing the problem’?

The EU meetings do not appear to be looking at either the “root causes” of the problems or the “long-term consequences” of unchecked immigration of “cultural aliens” for Western culture itself.

Cultural Aliens?

The Sierra Club people would go bonkers if we started importing “endangered species” into “fragile North American ecosystems”.

“Invasive species” are not welcome here. Every member of the Green Party agrees with this enthusiastically. Is the concept of an “invasive species” the product of an enlightened and humanist mind?

Is there such a thing as an “invasive culture”? Is the concept of an “invasive culture” the product of a xenophobic and fascist mind?

Is “culture” the “environment” in which the self, the mind, and the soul are nurtured?

What if the “morality” which makes giving space to these refugees is itself a product of Western culture itself? Why isn’t China offering to let these people in?

There are folk tales about “killing the goose that lays golden eggs” or “cutting down trees to make it easier to get the fruit”.

Could the lessons these stories are meant to convey be extended to “cultures” as well?

The members of the narcissistic “selfie society” don’t know and don’t care. The members of the “get on the right side of history” cultural marxist worldview are sure there is no reason to worry.

What if they’re both wrong?

Jihad Comes to Paris

The news media are all filled with outrage and fear following the killing of 12 members of the Charlie Hedbo staff and the wounding of seven more. The people killed were cartoonists and writers who had over the years offended the sensibilities of Islam and made unflattering caricatures of Mohammad and contemporary Islamic leaders. The offices were firebombed in 2011 after naming Prophet Mohammad as “Editor-in-Chief”.

Access to the offices where the killings took place was gained by waiting for one of the staff members to pick up her daughter from daycare and then forcing her to let them in. By hiding under a desk she managed to avoid injury.

Two of the killers were born and raised in France. The police identified as Hamyd Mourad and brothers Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi as the killers and are conducting a national search for them.

This attack comes just two days after demonstrations in Germany by the Pegida group to protest the growing islamisation of Europe. The Pegida demonstrations were denounced by celebrities and politicians as “xenophobic” and “intolerant”. Those opposing Pegida outnumbered those in the anti-islamisation protest.

One of the more common themes in the Western media reaction is the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

Well.

No,

it’s not.

As Chairman Mao so perspicaciously observed, “power comes out of the barrel of a gun” and what all of our pen-wielding warriors will be demanding from now on are gun-toting bodyguards.

Statements like “the pen is mightier than the sword” and “power comes out of the barrel of a gun” are cliches. Slogans are at best like ideal laws in science. They only apply in textbooks where the reader is told what aspects of reality to ignore.

Other slogans or cliches draw our attention to this. “The Devil Is In The Details” or “When the rubber hits the road” remind us not to forget about context. Experts are people who not only know the rules but also know the contexts in which the rules do not precisely apply. Youngsters who know “F=ma” know jumping out of an airplane is a bad idea. Experts who know about air friction know skydiving is fun. Yesterday, for example, an airplane in New Zealand crashed. Nobody was hurt. Why? It was filled with six skydivers and six passengers. They all jumped out. So did the pilot. Had things not gone well the death toll would have been 13 and the world media would be running stories on how terrible it all was.

The general reason people say pens are mightier than swords relates to the role of communication in human society. It relates to the “power” of ideas.

But what is “power”?

In physics class we were given a little poem to remember the formula for electrical power. “Twinkle twinkle little star, “.

Which almost worked for us but one classmate blurted out

“Little star up in the sky, “.

Thus ruining it for everyone. And now for you, too.

Power also has a definitions for its mechanical manifestation.

Sometimes electrical power can be turned into mechanical power. This is known as “transduction”.

When the pen is used to motivate people into either picking up their guns and killing cartoonists (or picking up their guns to protect cartoonists) or to get everyone to put down their guns and resolve their disputes with words and pictures, then we are witnessing was is called “the power of ideas”.

Another kind of power.

Ideas are transmitted through words, deeds, and gestures.

And images.

The images used to transmit an idea must themselves present the idea either through representations or through icons. The are “communicative acts”.

The Parisian jihadis justified their actions by noting the ideas being communicated by the cartoons were deeply offensive and the appropriate action was communicate their displeasure with another communicative act. The act of killing the cartoonists.

The same cartoons which “communicated” the contempt the cartoonists had for Islam also “communicated” to the jihadists the need to kill the cartoonists in a manner which made their deaths iconographically significant. Both groups were “sending messages”.

If we look at these killings as forms of communication and if the message they were attempting to communicate was their degree of displeasure with the Charlie Hedbo worldview then we place these actions in the realm of “rational conduct”.

About a century and a half ago, Europe was in the grip of ongoing unrest because of the displacement of the working class by the industrial revolution. In 1871 the Paris Commune and one of its leading figures, the anarchist Errico Malatesta and others advocated what they called the “propaganda of the deed”. Those who followed this idea became the assassins, bombers, and rioters of their age.  So violent were the anarchists the US government banned their entry in the Immigration Act of 1903.

In other words, they were banned for what they believed, for their worldview.

The idea of “propaganda by the deed” was born in Paris in the 1870s and was practised in Paris once again in 2015.

The second half of the 19th Century was a period of great dislocation for people and most of these dislocations were caused, eventually, by ideas. The ideas of the Industrial Revolution created what Marx would contemptuously call the “lumpen proletariate” and the ideas of ethnic nationalism which were in their own way reflections of the loss of the centrality of Christianity as the dominant worldview led to Zionism, the Unification of Germany and Italy, Pan Slavism, and the realisation that something we now call “culture” is an idea which aids us in placing ourselves in the world and in our community.

For the next 100 years Europe and the West would struggle with the psychological requirements for identity and belonging and the undeniable impact of the ideas we call “science” and “rationalism”.

Now, with Europe again on the cusp of another industrial revolution and its implications for social relationships and communications, we find another revolution which was unthinkable to most (but not all) of those in the 19th Century. We are striving for mastery of our own genetic makeup. Every conceivable pillar of identity is now under attack by our culture.

This time, in addition to the members of our own culture who are facing redundancy and exclusion, our borders have within them people whose cultural and historical preparations are even less tailored to cope with these changes than our own is.

Islam, after all, is a religion which regulates almost all aspects of life. One is, for example, to cut one’s fingernails every two weeks and one’s toenails every month. It is a religion which in theory at least is based on a set of unchanging rules for the running of society.

One of the great oversimplifications of Western Idealism, one of the great slogans is the statement “all cultures are equal”.

There are two issues which arise here. The first is simply “what do we mean by ‘culture’ anyway?” and the second is the more thorny “if all cultures are equal then what does the term ‘multiculturalism’ signify?”

Each of these statements can be justified. What cannot be done is to make them justifiable in the same context. When we talk about these two viewpoints they are in fact different viewpoints. They occupy different “points” from which the world is perceived.

Recall the different ideas of “power” encountered earlier. It is possible to argue that the pen is “mightier” (more powerful) than the sword (or a gun) in one context but in another one sees the truth of the relationship between guns and power.

The gun has the power of compulsion. The pen has the power of persuasion.  Failing to get the contexts sorted out properly leads us into one of the most common logical fallacies in daily life. Aristotle called it the fallacy of the fourth term. Today it is often termed a “category error” and another term for it is “equivocation”.

In mathematics and science it’s a mistake caused by sloppiness or ignorance.  In law it represents a tactic open to both sides in an adversarial dispute. In art and literature it provides the ambiguity needed for the misunderstandings in which both tragedy and comedy see their plots advance. When found in the public policies of democratic states it is seen as hypocrisy, bias, preferential treatment, and special privileges.

Just two days before the killings at Charlie Hebdo, the Wall Street Journal’s “Weekend Interview” was titled “How to Fight the Campus Speech Police: Get a Good Lawyer”. The same people who now speak in stirring support of “free speech” may well be those who also will, without any hesitation, proscribe “hate speech”, “sexist language”, “islamophobia” and “homophobia”. They may well also denounce “eurocentrism”, “racism”, “sexism”, “anti-semitism”, “whiteness”, and “patriarchy” while they’re at it.  In Canada the graduates of Trinity Western’s school of law are not permitted to do their articles either in British Columbia or in Ontario because their university has a code of conduct which prohibits sexual activity between unmarried people. Two days after the Charlie Hebdo killings groups in Western Democracies were calling for the abolition of their various “hate speech” laws.

Nobody should really expect any culture anywhere or at any time to defend absolutely free speech. It would permit libel, slander, and all manner of misrepresentation. It would make society basically unworkable. The idea of being able to express one’s thoughts “freely” was at the outset not intended to be a way to flood the town square with kiddie porn or patent falsehoods about other members of the community. Originally it was meant to hold those who were in positions of authority and trust to account. The right to free speech was defined at the beginning as the right to criticise the government. It was related to what we now call “transparency”. It was seen as necessary for the kind of social harmony which is only possible in a society which is as free from corruption as is humanly possible. Societies work best when the people in it believe their fellow citizens are all carrying out their responsibilities as honestly and competently as possible (whether because they are inherently virtuous or they fear the shame of being shown to be dishonest and incompetent) and the openness and transparency must also extend to the reasons for certain people being given the authority they possess.  Many societies have mixtures of aristocratic and meritocratic forms of legitimacy but they too are governed by the need for transparency.

And this brings us back to “culture”. When we look at France’s Front National or Britain’s UKIP or the Dutch Party for Freedom we encounter people who believe their respective cultures are not congenial with the culture of Islam. When people in those countries take up the mantle of multiculturalism and denounce Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, and Geert Wilders as xenophobes and islamophobes another idea of culture is being given to us.

What is “culture” anyway? Can both of these groups be correct in the same way that both the statements relating pens to power are also correct? Is there a contextual understanding which will allow us to place into a common framework the two (or three if we include Islam) contending worldviews?

Anthropologists speak of culture in several ways. When they examine archaeological finds they are primarily looking at the “material” culture of a society. This gives an idea of technology, of economy, and of various approaches to social status. Examining burials can show some clues as to the attitudes towards death and eternity.

A society which has written records can give us insights into their worldviews, their ways of understanding the human condition, their ideas.  If cultures are not only shared languages and shared economic undertakings but also shared ideas then multiculturalism must not only confront technological and linguistic dissimilarities but also a possible lack of agreement on ideas. Some of those ideas could possibly involve the most basic tenets of how a society is to be organised.

Cartoons are little more than lines on paper. They are iconographic representations of events, individuals, and possibly through allusion to metaphors, of ideas. They are not only highly symbolic forms of communication, they can only have relevance if the iconography of the cartoon is shared. It is only when the iconography is shared that additional modifications to the way the cartoon is rendered can make it funny, informative, insightful, offensive, and so on.  They occupy a level in the hierarchy of communicative actions which is presumably inaccessible to frogs, dogs, and most likely even chimps.

As such they can engage that part of human consciousness which is most unique to humans. It is that same level of consciousness in which our ideas of the meaning and purpose of life, of the distinction between law and justice, and the abstractions we call mathematics and philosophy are located. The content of particular cartoons may be frivolous or absurd or boring to us but the ability we have to make such determinations is given to us by our highest intellectual capacities. And it is from those highest intellectual capacities we apprehend what we generally take to be the answers to the most important questions of our existence. The most resilient and advanced forms of culture provide not only the technological means for daily physical survival, not only the patterns for the organisation of how the necessary tasks of communal life, and not only the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable conduct in communal dealings, but they also provide concepts of individual virtue and the moral justification for the continuation of the community’s patterns itself. They may also extend the definition of the community’s relationship to other communities and justify (or even mandate) everything from peaceful co-existence to the need to conquer and force into submission all those which differ in their cultural interpretations.

Here we encounter that part of human culture which is essentially confined to human consciousness. This is the aspect of culture which allows us to synchronise our individual sense of self, our sense of identity, our experience of existence, with those around us. This is the source of those shared understandings which give us our place in history as well as our role in the present.  This is the genesis of those values and behaviours which make it possible for different communities to live both distinctly as themselves while harmoniously dealing with one another. It is also the genesis of those values and behaviours which make it legitimate for one community to exterminate, subjugate, or expel another.

Analogies are not proofs but they can be useful for illustration. Keeping in mind that “cultures” are not “atoms” it may be beneficial to use this as an analogy.

Each culture has some core values which cannot be removed without changing it. An atomic nucleus is defined ultimately by reference to the number of protons it has. Changing that number invariably changes it to a different atom. Atoms can have different isotopes and different levels of ionisation but as long as they have the same number of protons there is some definable group to which they invariably and exclusively belong.

When we confront secular French society we find words like “secularism”, “rationalism”, “democracy”, and “tolerance”. When we look at Islam we discover Sharia law which has words like “submission”, “ummah”, “caliphate”, “jizya”, “jihad”, “taqqiya” and rules on how to deal with “unbelievers” and “polytheists”.

Extending this atomic-nucleus analogy allows the posing of the following questions:

First, would a dialogue based on the comparative evaluation of the various cultural core values be possible? Would it lead to a greater understanding of what kinds of state and what kinds of state laws could accommodate particular cultural orientations? This may lead to one or all sides having to surrender various aspects of their collective life and have them excluded from “the public square”.

Second, would it be advisable to augment existing immigration laws for various countries to go beyond the present educational, occupational, and physical attributes and look at cultural values as well?

Third, will we find that only some groups cultures are able to co-exist peacefully for multiple generations with one another?

Fourth, are there some cultures which must dwell alone?

As these words are written the news reports inform me the jihadists in Paris, like their victims, are dead.  The consequences of their actions live on.