Attended a Marjane Satrapi lecture at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the best parts of which were cocktail party-style anecdotes and Satrapi’s visible enthusiasm for life. She displayed remarkable humility when asked about current events in Iran, saying that she hadn’t been back to Iran in 13 years and was not qualified to opine. Having started out as a talented chronicler of her personal story, with the graphic novel Persepolis, she now offers opinions on how the 7 billion other folks on Planet Earth may live in harmony. She tried to comfort the audience with the thought that only at most 18 percent of the world’s population are fanatics. The audience reacted warmly, presumably indicating that very few had reflected on the fact that 18 percent of 7 billion is 1.26 billion and that there is no evidence that the remaining 82 percent are sufficiently passionate about politics to oppose them. Satrapi talked briefly about the rise of the Nazis in Germany, attributing Hitler’s popularity to economic difficulties. She essentially argued that all cultures and religions are equally good or bad and that all people share a universal experience. She drew a parallel between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, pointing out that the Christian who kills an abortion clinic doctor is the same as a Muslim terrorist (not sure how this squares with the obvious facts about what typical Christian fanatics do, e.g., join a monastery or spend their lives ministering to sick people in a malaria-plagued jungle). Satrapi criticized suicide bombers for irrationality, saying that humans have a natural survival instinct (she did not point out that some suicide bombers may earn economic benefits for their families (see Der Spiegel)).
If nothing else, the lecture demonstrated that one thing is universal across all cultures: when an artist acquires Hollywood fame, he or she will begin to claim special knowledge of how world peace may be attained.
I don’t think it is just when fame is acquired. “If only we could get the bartenders and taxi drivers to run the world, everything would be great,” is an old joke.
Great comment. Moral equivalence is the home of weak minds. If you agree with someone, they will think you are intelligent. I think artists are afraid people will discover they are not smart, hence they regurgitate what the “smart” people around them say. We all do it to some extent, but when it is put on display outside of the context it can become quite sad.
You’d think her experiences growing up during the Iranian Revolution would have taught her something about irreconcilable human differences, but no, her worldview has all the nuance and subtletly of a Coke ad. Denying that there’s any sort of conflict between Christianity and Islam shows shocking ignorance of both; there’s been a slow-burning war between them for over a millennium.
Regardless of whatever else a suicide bomber or other martyr might be, he or she is a victim of whichever belief system has subverted his or her survival instinct – but you don’t have to be killed by your belief system to suffer for the fact that you’re acting as its host.
What’s wrong with applying the scientific method to the belief systems used – by leaders who happen to be “believers” (perhaps in the Machiavellian sense) – to justify society’s constraints upon individual liberties and basis for ideological conflicts?
That all religions are equally dangerous is not a matter of “moral equivalence” – you’ve not done your research if you think you can name one religious belief system that hasn’t – either by active edict or by coerced inaction – killed someone.
“when an artist acquires Hollywood fame, he or she will begin to claim special knowledge of how world peace may be attained”
Let’s hope that some of those who do this are following the example of U2’s Bono who said that his fame is “currency”. In any case, unlike in the case of the politicians who also do this we’re not as dependent on these artists, aren’t we?
Z: The fact that Christianity may have resulted in at least one death does not make it immediately and obviously equally dangerous as every other religion. The historical Muhammad was a military leader who commanded an army and conquered vast territories (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Muslim_Conquest.PNG for example). The historical Jesus was primarily a philosopher and teacher. The historical Buddha was also a philosopher and teacher. A fundamentalist attempting to imitate the lives of these three men would behave very differently.
I have to ask: Why did you attend her lecture? Didn’t you research first to get an idea about her background and what she will be talking about, or were you there so not to disappoint someone else who wanted to see her?
Anytime anyone lectures of “world peace,” all that I see is yet another actor who has found a way to entertain.
That humanist teachings can be employed to such ends is further evidence that any system of belief is dangerous. Systematic rejection of reality enables real behavior with real potential to harm others.
If you can convince a person to believe in an unverifiable afterlife and further convince that person that any atrocities they commit at present can be forgiven later, that person is now capable of justifying harm to others with impunity.
“Many Nazis promoted positive Christianity a militant, non-denominational form of Christianity which emphasized Christ as an active fighter and anti-semite who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany
George: Why did I attend the lecture? Satrapi is an accomplished artist and http://www.mfa.org/programs/lecture/evening-artist-author-and-filmmaker-marjane-satrapi-0 says that she’ll talk about “her creative process and work” (i.e., not whether or not there is a conflict between Christianity and Islam). Anyway, most of my life decisions are made under a “one woman, one vote” system, so it really doesn’t matter what I think!
If only everyone was an atheist like Mao, Polpot or Stalin there would be no more atrocities.
Religions are a bit like dogs. While given a big enough sample it would be possible to find people hospitalised by an attack from a border collie or a greyhound, most incidents would show that for the overwhelming majority of serious encounters the dog is a guard dog or a fighting dog.
Like dogs all religions could be used for violence (though my attack trained pug does not seem to scare the postman). The issue seems to be that, some breeds, and some religions, are more prone to violence than others. It’s the ‘more prone to violence’, and the body count, that matters, not the low threshold of ‘at least one victim’.
Arthur D,
Are all atheists communists?
Political philosophies are a bit like religions in that not all of them involve equally aggressive attempts at world domination and or mass murder.
I’m always fascinated by your blog posts, and then refrain from commenting, as I don’t like to ‘lecture’. Now I’m doing it (forgive me). Because it took me a long time as well to understand politics. The references that helped me to make some serious progress are Anthony de Jasay (The State), Eric Voegelin (Hitler and the Germans), and especially Frank Van Dun (a Belgian philosopher of law I, who is completely ignored by ‘institutionalised’ philosophy, but whom I would rank higher than Ronald Dworkin) – his bibliography is published at http://rothbard.be/artikels/350-bibliografie-van-dun, and I would recommend “Hobbesian Democracy” as a starting point.
(Democratic) politics is the ultimate prisoners’ dilemma (of the free-rider game to obtain through political power what cannot be obtained through negotiation), which even repetition cannot cure (at least as far as we can see):
(1) everybody has a reason to complain about inequality;
(2) every political attempt at correcting inequality creates new inequalities (leading back to 1).
Commutative justice and distributive justice (Thomas d’Aquino) are two non-intersecting domains, but through politics distributive justice ‘expands’ into the domain of commutative justice and ‘supersedes’ its order (Mancur Olson). As there are an infinite number of rules or forms of distributive justice (Isaiah Berlin), political questions of distributive justice can never be settled (Kenneth Arrow). Democratic politics as the continuation of war (of all against all) with democratic means is the only outcome (Frédéric Bastiat).
A bit in the line of Gregory Clark’s findings on the Industrial Revolution (“A Farewell to Alms”) one could speculate that the prisoners’ dilemma will one day be overcome (Democratic Revolution) if only a critical mass of people will have become immune to the temptation of politics. But it is mere speculation without logical foundation.
Boiling it down to the smallest element, one could say that it all hinges on the little word ‘we’. “Nobody has the privilege to govern us, except ourselves” is not a bad formula to describe the idea of democratic self-government. But there are two radically opposed meanings that can be given to the word ‘ourselves’: either ‘we’ as a collective of people (which leads to Hobbesian or collectivist democracy), or ‘each of us himself’ (which leads to lawful democracy).
[The link is with your final pun on Marjane Satrapi: “Il y a trop de grands hommes dans le monde; il y a trop de législateurs, organisateurs, instituteurs de sociétés, conducteurs de peuples, pères des nations, etc. Trop de gens se placent au dessus de l’humanité pour la régenter, trop de gens font métier de s’occuper d’elle.” — Frédéric Bastiat, La Loi (1848)]