Degenerate Discourse

Shaky Ground

In the course of argument it is generally true that the weaker one's case, the more likely spite and vituperation against one's opponent will surface--quickly. Academics appear to be especially prone. Or so Theodore Dalrymple argues.

He observes that Richard Dawkins has recently experienced the syndrome.

Not every devotee of reason is himself reasonable: that is a lesson that the convinced, indeed militant, atheist, Richard Dawkins, has recently learned. It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that he has learned it the hard way, for what he has suffered hardly compares with, say, what foreign communists suffered when, exiling themselves to Moscow in the 1920s and 30s, they learnt the hard way that barbarism did not spring mainly, let alone only, from the profit motive; but he has nevertheless learned it by unpleasant experience.

He ran a website for people of like mind, but noticed that many of the comments that appeared on it were beside the point, either mere gossip or insult. So he announced that he was going to exercise a little control over what appeared on it - as was his right since it was, after all, his site. Censorship is not failing to publish something, it is forbidding something to be published, which is not at all the same thing, though the difference is sometimes ill-appreciated.

The torrent of vile abuse that he received after his announcement took him aback. Its vehemence was shocking; someone called him ‘a suppurating rat’s rectum.’ He replied to this abuse with admirable restraint:

"Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly to something so trivial."

Some would suggest that Professor Dawkins was experiencing a particularly poetic form of justice, since in his public career he has been known to hurl gratuitous insults, mockery, and scorn at his opponents from time to time, and imply they were lagging behind the higher stages of human evolutionary development, of which he considers himself an avatar. But we digress.

Dalrymple goes on to observe that vituperation appears to be particularly prevalent in internet discourse, and that he himself has suffered it.

For example, I received unpleasant abuse for articles I wrote about Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw. I am the first to admit that what I wrote was not emollient, indeed it strongly attacked both these figures to whom some people are strongly attached. But while I might have been mistaken in what I wrote, I do not think I am being partial in my own defence when I say that it was at least rational in the sense that it was based upon evidence culled from what they wrote. I quoted them at some length precisely to avoid the accusation of quotation out of context.

It is not necessary to repeat here what I said about them, but I shall give just one example. I pointed out that George Bernard Shaw never believed in the germ theory of disease (possibly the greatest advance in medical science ever made), regarded it as a delusion, and called Pasteur and Lister – two of the greatest benefactors of mankind, if one is prepared to admit that there can be such – impostors and frauds who had no idea of scientific method, unlike George Bernard Shaw, presumably. This was a preposterous, but not untypical, misjudgement of his, and one which he never recognised as such. Indeed, he went on re-publishing his libels on their memory until quite late in his life.

I suspect that he had that contrarian mindset that supposes that the truth must be the opposite of what everyone thinks, instead of the judicious mindset that supposes that the truth might be the opposite of what everyone thinks.

From the quality of the replies that I received, you might have supposed that I had animadverted on the moral qualities of the mothers of Latin American sons. No one ever wrote a reply (on these subjects, at any rate) claiming that I had misquoted them, quoted them out of context, misrepresented the totality of their work, overlooked their good qualities etc. I do not think I did these things, but still such replies would have been reasonable. No; I just received abuse, some of it unprintable and quite a lot of it vile.

Now, from whom did the bile eruct? Dalrymple says it was largely and particularly from university professors.

Indeed, much of the abuse, even the vilest, came from university professors. Almost to a man (or woman), they said that what I had written was so outrageous, so ill-considered and ill-motivated, that it was not worth the trouble of refutation. On the other hand, they thought its author was worth insulting, if their practice was anything to go by. I didn’t know whether I – a mere scribbler – should feel flattered that I was deemed worthy of the scatological venom of professors (not all of them from minor institutions, and some of them quite eminent).

What struck me most about these missives is the sheer amount of hatred that they contained. It was not disdain or even contempt, but hatred.

The question is begged as to why this should be. Dalrymple observes that prior to the internet he used to get critical letters, but few containing the venom expressed via digital electronic media. He suggests it has something to do with the immediacy of the internet. It is hard to sustain venomous ire while sitting down and writing a letter, which in the nature of the case takes longer and forces one to be more deliberate. The features of immediacy and instantaneous release, he suggests, help facilitate ad hominem bile in internet discussion. Maybe.

But one would have thought that the professional stock-in-trade of academics was to critique analytically and that, even if brief, academics who were supposed masters of their subjects and craft, would be both adept at and used to employing pithy rejoinders. But alas, it would seem not. Instead unremitting ad hominem appears to be the order of the day when academics post on the internet.

Dalrymple thinks that the immediacy and relative anonymity of the medium is to blame.

So it seems to me at least possible that easy access to public self-expression tends to make people more bad-tempered and ill-mannered than they would otherwise have been. It releases people from inhibitions, and allows them to breach psychological barriers. Even wit suffers, for it is far easier to insult than to think of a really damaging, but amusing, witticism. To write to Professor Dawkins that one feels ‘a sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails down your throat’ is easier than to explain succinctly why he is wrong, if he is wrong.

Moreover, the fact that one can vituperate using a virtual rather than a real address promotes such verbal intemperance.

But it seems to us that these features may exacerbate, but are not themselves the cause or fundamental explanation for the syndrome. Ad hominem and personal vituperation is the first preserve of weak argument and shaky rational ground. In general academia in the West has claimed for itself (and been granted) virtual infallibility. Having denied God, the West looks for infallibility and certainty elsewhere, and its intellectual elites are it.

As Frank Furedi and others have argued, it has turned to "experts" who are always clothed with the garb of intellectual academia. Conformity to group-think and consensus has replaced argument, debate, and critique as ways of doing business because of the place in society in which academics sit and the functions they are expected to perform. Infallibility and debate do not sit well together. Society prefers certainty, not argument, when it wants to know "what to do". It therefore finds academic consensus much more congenial and consistent with its own narrative of the virtual infallibility of academic experts. It quickly becomes impatient with debate.

Academics, cloistered amongst group think and consensus, can inevitably find it difficult to cope with contrary views, which can quickly become typecast as blasphemous. Ad hominem, easily facilitated by the internet, becomes the response of choice. But what it betrays is that all the "learning", all the "knowledge" is built upon marshy foundations. Repetition and reiteration has been masquerading as truth. When one's familiar prejudices get exposed, vituperation is the reflexive response.

The outpouring of venom tells us far more about the true state of academia in the West than it does about the limitations of the internet.