On reality denial - the French Left

It could seem that my "transatlantic" focus is rather one way if I continue talking only about American politics...no worries!

[This post was started a couple of days ago and not finished...so it might look a bit old to French readers, but not so to others...]

The French Left has recently been giving a particularly absurd show - but unfortunately this has deep roots, and is not mere aberration. Looking at what befell the candidates for Socialist Party leadership is enlightening.



The Socialists just went through several months of campaigning, and finally an election by the party members, for their "General Secretary", i.e. party leader. Many things were weird:

-> A bit over 50% of card-carrying party members voted - so the leader was elected by maybe a total of 60,000 votes or so. The Socialists are a party that typically will aim at getting from 6 to 12 million votes or so in a general election - not much of a primary, really!

-> One of the frontrunners, the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe, narrowly got pushed out after the first round, after having been an early frontrunner. Delanoe's sin: he expressed in June his identity as "a socialist and a liberal" (the latter being in France understood generally as "free-market fanatic", which is not how he meant it of course). Given the general hyper-statist mood (financial crisis...), this clearly cost him a lot.



-> The two ladies who made it to the second round, Martine Aubry (the eventual winner by a handful of votes) and Segolene Royal (who was not a good loser, once again) fought bitterly and appeared to be rather from enemy camps than from the same party. What was weird was their political positioning:

> Aubry positioned herself as a "true left" believer, a kind of "historical socialism" stalwart - although she is the daughter of previous European Commission President Jacques Delors, of centre-left democrat-christian fame, and herself an able technocrat with a history of close relations with business circles. She was supported by the absurd (let's not say "unlikely" - this is not "unlikely" but clearly absurd!) alliance of the eurosceptic/old left wing of the party, and the clearly "social-liberal" (as we say in France) side of it (whose leader, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, could not run because he is heading the IMF...).

> As usual it would be difficult to say exactly what Segolene Royal stood for but she was arguably a combination of "more to the left" (popular participation is her great topic, as opposed to decisions coming from the top) and "more to the right" (a liking for law and order topics and, most importantly it seems, a professed openness to maybe one day discuss the possibility of talking to the Centre in order to consider some kind of "let's not call it an alliance but..."). The latter (readiness to talk to the Centre) was attacked by her internal opponents in pretty much the way the US neocons attacked Obama for his professed openness to maybe talk possibly one day to adversaries of the US. Seems the neocons are not the only absolute morons around.


So, in short, the leardership election was won "to the left", and through a vote involving a handful of card-carriers. And what does this "left" mean?

Marcel Gauchet in Lieux de Memoire has analyzed "left" and "right" not anymore like what they pretend to be, but as identities. As such, it does not matter so much what ideologies they cover, but rather whom you belong to. In this sense, they are still valid: there are still people who relate to them, and are convinced to be right...But what does this mean, except for this identity, which could be a secular, urban replacement of the old religious and village identification...?

Francois Furet in his books on the French Revolution showed how, starting from the Revolution onwards, what had once been the "left" of ideas and parties (and politicians) got constantly pushed to the "right" by the emergence of more revolutionary, further "left" ideas and movements. The criteria of being "more revolutionary" being to be for more equality - not more liberty.

I guess we have arrived at the point where we have gone full circle. Some ideas have been going from left to right, then back and forth - such as nationalism, the engine of the Revolution, then later in the 19th century becoming the source of a major right wing movement - and now? are not many defenders of the nation-state, again, on the left? The left never really was the party of the movement, is it still the party of equality?

Probably there is a lot to gain in trying to understand "left" and "right" as temperaments: "why not" against "why", "it could get better" vs. "it could get worse". But it is doubtful whether the French left even still matches this description, and it is Sarkozy's strength to have understood it: most of the left speaks only of preserving, conserving, defending...Not much optimism that things could get better!

Now, why did I name this post "reality denial"? Because the current state of affairs of the left in France is:
- a strong (both through public presence and votes) far-left movement that is against "capitalism", markets, globalization, private property, name it (and which is partly "alternative", i.e. ecological, libertarian in social issues - but only partly so)
- a mainstream socialist party, which is led by graduates of public administration, with a significant training in economics and international relations, but apparently pretend to be some communist operatives from the fifites...I mean, seriously, this is what they talk about:
-> globalization is BAD BAD BAD - just ask the millions of Chinese, Indians and others who escaped poverty in the past twenty years what they think? but never mind, it seems equality is meant only for French state employees??
-> markets are REALLY EVIL - never mind that the left wing governments under President Mitterrand did probably more market friendly reforms than the right, and that, unsurprisingly, combined as it was with reinforced (but "traditional French", one could say) public investments and planning, it worked, with France enjoying a very good time in the nineties, with strengthened competitiveness and a modernized country
-> more more more regulation is GOOD - no one even dares talk about reducing bureaucracy and red tape. Any "deregulation" is just evil - full stop - move over.

Now, this really sounds like a party that is ready to govern in the 21th century, doesn't it? Flatly deny the tremendous positive changes that globalization has brought for such a large share of the world's poor (sorry, just count how many there are in China and India, who recently went out from poverty!). Deny the accomplishments of the governments you ran and the obvious merits of focusing the state on where it can do most good, and let the market decide of resource allocation. As if we had not had enough experience of governments (left and right) throwing billions of dollars at: steel (ended up downsizing and globalizing anyway), shipbuilding (ended up with the only shipyard remaining open being the one that was clearly competitive from the start), computers (ended up wiped away anyway), banks (anyone remembers how much state-owned Credit Lyonnais lost for the taxpayers!?)... And finally, always proposing just more more more more rules?! You must be kidding...?
But then, there is the right...

Giving thanks to whom?

I loved this secularist conservative/libertarian take on Thanksgiving:

The problem for the nonbeliever is not that there is no one to thank for our good fortune but that there are more targets of gratitude than we can possibly acknowledge.

And let me point to a few more posts on this brilliant blog, that proves that the American right is not yet entirely brain dead:

- on creationist nonsense:

...evolution is one of those things where I have a very high degree of certitude as to whether it is true or not, such that I feel ridiculous wasting my finite life discussing its truth or not.

- on left and right definitions:

The Secular Left asks, why not?

The Secular Right asks, why?

The Religious Left demands that we should, “Because god wills it!”

The Religious Right asserts that we can’t, “Because god forbids it!”

If the secular right defines itself this way, along Montaigne's tradition, then it makes sense to read what they write...

Detroit in dire straits...

[An easy pun: "detroit" in French means "straits"]

Massive arguments go back and forth on the auto-industry bailout, or absence thereof, in the US. I mean: the "US-based" car industry bailout, or whatever you'd call it. Seems no one is calling to bail out US-based Honda, Toyota, BMW and other factories. But to the point:
- free-marketeers, libertarians, deficit hawks and a lot of reasonable economists and other people make the (absolutely correct) point that bailing out failing industries is a tremendous waste of resources, and usually fails in the end. YES, this is true! France has had extensive experience with this in the 1980s, bailing out shipbuilding, steel and what not, mostly to very little results compared to the costs
- proponents of the bailout (an odd coalition of unions, car industrialists, some progressives though not so many, and obviously Michigan politicians...) argue that the Detroit Three have been sunk not by their bad management, bad cars, bad quality (bad work quality?), but also/mostly/whatever by the huge costs they had to bear for their pensioners, which in other countries are socialized.

Now, I find they have a point. There is no way in hell I'd buy a car manufactured in the US by either of the Big 3 (though I'd buy a European Ford or GM), but still: the US car industry used to have far more employees than it has now because ALL THE WORLD's car industry had far more. And in other countries pensions and health insurance are covered by either the State or some mutualized, nationwide scheme. Only in the US are the costs borne by the companies themselves.

There is a nice summary of the unending discussion of what is correct on this point here (the summary is not necessarily balanced, but nice nevertheless). But my point is:
- it is extremely unlikely that the bailout would do any good on the long term - it would probably be a huge waste of money - and probably there are far better ways to use this money to ease the pain for GM and Chrysler employees (seems Ford should survive)
- BUT if America wants to avoid this kind of mess in the future, looking at universal health care and another pension system could be interesting.

By the way: too late to discuss this today, but fascinating to see that so many on America's right still think that the US would get worse health care if there were a national system. The US spends far more on health than France or Germany, but gets distinctly worse health results. Interesting...

Political spectrum

"Obama is a socialist" -
now that he has been elected (and he has picked his economic team), we could laugh about this statement. But let's rather pick it apart:

(1) it means that "socialist" is an insult - interesting from Europe where pretty much every country is or has been governed in recent years by a socialist or social-democratic party...

(2) it means that, for many, any attempt at having the State provide some sort of health coverage for all and/or some kind of redistribution is "socialism" - which just indicates a very wide understanding of words indeed

(3) it illustrates the difficulty of communicating political debates across the Atlantic - some of the issues:

• the Republican party is now so far "right" that many of its members would not even be accepted in "mainstream" extreme-right/neo-fascist parties in Europe - they would have to go to the "lunatic fringe" of the splitter-microparties. Say, Sarah Palin. Why? because no one remotely electable in Europe would stand for creationism - put in another way: no one would vote for a creationist!
• the political discourse in the US is still defined at least in part by "fear of the reds", even though 1917 and the Cold War are long past - the only other country where I can think of something partly similar (on the right only) is Italy (but obviously with very different roots)
• at the same time, the US sees, and has seen, massive State intervention in the economy, and everyone wants more, or nearly everyone!

Now, Obama probably would sit somewhere on the centre-right in most European countries, simply because the political field is in a different place altogether. But, lest you think this means you can just say Europe is more to the "left" or America to the "right" - where do you expect the next Prime Minister or President to be black???

[and, a wink to despairing French leftists, where do you get real primaries to choose your leader?]

But this leads us neatly to the car industry, I guess?

About the unborn

The debate about abortion, or rather the abortion wars raging in the US, are difficult to understand from Europe, and in many ways.
Apart from a couple of Catholic "fortresses" like Ireland and Poland, not only is abortion legal in most of Europe, but it is mostly a non-issue. Now, it has not always been the case. The fight was intense in...the sixties and early seventies! More than thirty years ago... There are of course still people who strongly oppose abortion, but those for whom this is a key issue are a small minority, and located on the far right of the political spectrum. Abortion is simply not anymore an important topic of social and political confrontation. It is legal, and regulated, late abortions being generally banned or strongly restricted, counselling being often compulsory, etc. And in most countries there is State or at least public support to education campaigns on contraceptive use, to avoid abortion being the "contraception of last resort".
The US knows a strange situation indeed, whereby abortion, as made legal by the Supreme Court "Roe vs Wade" decision, is totally unrestricted - but where opposition to abortion is definitely one of the top issues politically, socially, culturally, name it. And it is certainly not a "fringe" position in the political spectrum.

I read many highly interesting posts recently about abortion, and the (im)possibility of a compromise, in many excellent blogs. Too lazy to chase all of them but here is an excellent summary, courtesy Ross Douthat.
In a nutshell: however you turn it, this ends up being metaphysics or theology. It is so difficult to define "scientifically" a human being, that there is not much sense trying to pin down if and when the embryo or the foetus is/becomes human. I personally don't think that the early stages of cell division qualify as a human being as such, but one can argue that all the genetic information is there, thus it is a human being. I could respond using the "hardware" vs. "software" argument: the hardware is here (genetic information), but no software (the mind) - since there is not even a brain yet... But this would not convince the other side. Conversely, believers who hold that God infuses the soul upon conception will find the whole discussion absurd, but they cannot convince the non-believer...

There are many intractable debates, many issues where there is no "self-evident" truth. Abortion is a particular case: there is little doubt that, as Andrew Sullivan puts it, "every abortion is a tragedy" (even though I have my doubts about the very early ones, as I wrote above, but then again). But not all tragedies can be prevented. Not all tragedies are crimes. And there is also very little doubt that regimes of abortion prohibition do not result in less abortions, but in more hazards for women. So a compromise solution like adopted long ago in most of Europe seems obvious, and still...
Not sure when this issue will stop poisoning America's political life.

Where does the Church belong?

Separation of the Church and State? America has long had its own specific approach to this: Churches are fully separate from the State (understandably as the country was founded by "Nonconformists" who had to flee England because of religious persecution...) - but religion is everywhere (including a lot of swearing on the Bible, or on other holy books...). This is well known, so nothing new here...But what struck me recently is this:
- several Catholic bishops and priests, in their Sunday (and other) preaches, warned their flock against voting for Barack Obama
- some of them even hinted such voters could be in a state of sin, and thus unable to approach the communion
- and since the election this has continued - several Catholic columnists et.al. say that Obama's election is a sign of Catholic moral collapse etc.

I am not sure what is the most stupefying:
(1) that this can happen at all? I have to say that ANYWHERE in Western Europe (except maybe Ireland) this would be impossible to imagine - and not only in France (where the Revolution and the 1905 Separation of Church and State left the Catholic Church in relatively weak standing) but even in Italy (where the Church is powerful, active in politics, and strident about abortion)...such an intervention, in France, would certainly add an immediate 10% of the vote to the politician under attack...and result in the clergymen being sacked on the spot by their hierarchy...
(2) the reason why it happens? the only and exclusive issue is abortion. Now, we all know that abortion is everywhere in this Pope's (and the previous's) speeches and edicts, but not always in the Church's discourse in Europe. They also speak about social justice, peace, helping foreigners, and what not...Seeing the Church (rather: part of it, but still, during the preach) taking such a stance on the basis of abortion exclusively is impressive.

Which brings us to: this strange obsessive debate about abortion...

Of marriage (cont'd)

I am a poor blogger indeed. Working too much, I guess...I write dozens of posts in my head, but can't seem to write them. So here is an interim one to flag a couple of issues.



First, the issue of marriage. I love this by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Exposing far more beautifully than I could why he (they) is (are) not married. Well, for that matter, I married (partly for administrative reasons, as we are from different countries and visa issues can hurt) - just making the point that this is not the only option. The US seems to have considerable difficulty adjusting with the idea of a more flexible family. Trying by all means to have marriages all around does not seem to result in more stability, not even for children... Interesting that in France things seem to be going the other way: since the "PACS" (civil union) was introduced (supposedly for same-sex couples mostly), it has been widely used by heterosexual couples too, as a way to get (some of) the same tax and other privileges of married couples, without marriage. And children of the many many unmarried couples seem to be doing fine. Might it be that the American society has a problem with its fixation on marriage?

Now of course, part of the story is the symbolic of names like "husband" and "wife" - and I love this destabilizing shattering of the obvious:

I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.
Turns out it’s
fun.
Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
She says,
correcting me, “He’s my husband,”“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

(through Andrew Sullivan)

But let's talk a bit about something else than marriage, lest one thinks I am obsessive...

What "transatlantic" - and a first post on human "software" and "hardware"

This is this blog's first post. I feel like it has to be a kind of introduction to the reader - but who wants to read a personal introduction on an anonymous blogger? Well, let's see.

First it's in English - and it is posted from France (and yes, I am French - not one of the many foreigners who have pushed real estate prices up in past years - though this may be past now... - not that I have anything against them in any event!) - that goes a bit towards the "Transatlantic" - and Trans-Channel, maybe.

Second, well, it's anonymous. Employees of public international organizations are not supposed to blog outside of the fence, or they do it anonymously. So I had to find myself some funny identity. Sorry, I stole from Voltaire, my master.

Then, let me not bore you about where I come from, but use it to start serious discussion. What got me writing, among other things, was the tension, between the cultures I (have to) operate in. I come from France, and feel deeply European. I work in a US-based multilateral structure, which is impregnated with American and to some extent British culture - and I lived in Central Asia, and tried to take something from there too. Maybe this last point is the third spike of the triangle, the one that enables to triangulate, to get out of the dilemma / opposition. So in short: the US and France / Europe: so close sometimes, so far often. And myself finding always that on some points one side seems helplessly backwards, but on the others, well, the other side is...Sounds abstract, but reflects the spontaneous feelings of many European and Americans when confronted with the other side of the Atlantic: a mix of admiration and puzzlement (at the absurdity of "these weird people"). Now enough already - let's get down to it.

Somehow, I picked up psychoanalysis for this first post. Maybe fittingly, for it is in some way the history of the mind, and I have always believed in starting with history. So, p-analysis: still powerful in France, still influential in Europe, weak in Britain, obsolete in the US. Oh please, do not shoot! I do not pretend that this fully reflects reality, but relatively it does - meaning the gradation in prestige and influence is roughly in this order, and of this order of magnitude. And of course it is rather on the wane everywhere, in the intellectual debate sphere at least, and up to a large extent in teaching too. Among patients, I have no statistics - relatively, it is maybe declining, but because there are so many therapies developing. The overall market for psycho- and pan-therapy is growing so much, it seems at least all the analysts I know are rather refusing clients. But what I care about here is the intellectual field, precisely.

I remember already some lecturers when I was in grad school (that is, over 10 years ago) saying that purely neurological explanation of the brain was all the rage. Now again I am reading many posts on blogs I deeply admire (like Andrew Sullivan's) that again revolve around the brain being just a computer, sort of...There are actually quite interesting attempts, it seems, at creating computer replicas of the brain. Here is what the experimenters say:

They deal with the problem of free will, or, as they term it, the possibility of
a random or "physically indeterministic element" in the working of the human
brain, by declaring it a non-problem. They suggest that it can be dealt with
rather easily by "including sufficient noise in the simulation ...
Randomness is
therefore highly unlikely to pose a major obstacle to WBE."
And anyway: "Hidden variables or indeterministic free will appear to have the
same status as quantum consciousness: while not in any obvious way directly
ruled out by current
observations, there is no evidence that they occur or
are necessary to explain
observed phenomena."

Now, just one first observation: this whole metaphor of software and hardware, before even we start checking whether it can apply, before even we question if this can be the right metaphor - why not follow its inner logic...If the brain is like a computer, then surely it is the hardware. If it is a kind of hardware, then surely there is a software too. Maybe this is what analysts call "psyche" - call it what you will, the very inner logic of people who claim it is nothing but a computer suggests there is such a software. Now, obviously, it is a kind of massively evolutive, self-programming software. And most probably at different points in its own evolution it can take different turns because there can be several options, just like, say, in chess. Why is it not obvious, therefore, that saying "the human mind is all, entirely and exclusively about neuro-transmitters, neuro-receivers, chemical and electrical processes" does not in anyway prove that there is no such thing as a "psyche", or "soul", or whatever you call it. It just means that, well, whatever this "software" does, it does it through the operation of chemicals and electricity and/or it is a particular arrangement of chemicals and electricity. I mean, have any of these people (the authors of this brain-computer experiment, or the bio-psychiatrists who suggest that every human problem can be solved through the right pill...or more or less...) ever tried and use their computer with NO software installed. I guess they should...would save us from them writing anything! [Oh, by the way, yes of course really intelligent neuroscientists know this, I guess - but the moronic version of neuroscientists also exists, and is still active...]

Recently I was with my old grandmother. Her mind is failing with old age, and under the weight of a life full with more than one can bear. She bore it all, but losing memory, and gradually her mind, is probably some blessing in disguise, at least in part. But what is interesting, about my point: as she increasingly forgets (that guests are coming) and is unable to cope (with shopping, obviously, with cooking too, and even with simply entertaining some kind of conversation), she makes up whole stories: that we did not call, that if we called, we talked to someone else, that anyway she does not like Sundays (this is a Friday...), etc. Why, one could ask? If the brain is just about hardware, then senility is just gradual inability to function, so why is this defective hardware suddenly so creative and active when it comes to making up imaginary things? Because the internal logic of the software is at work: she has all her life had her own standards, and vision of herself. She is a mistress host, someone whose house is famed for her hospitality - or at least was. This cannot stop to be, so the mind will make up completely convoluted parallel realities so that it can continue to be. The software enters into a different "self-protecting" mode, and it re-programs itself in doing so.

Now, the inspiration to write this post did not only come from my grandmother. It also came from the campaign about Proposition 8 in California, the vote upon it, and the aftermath. What is the connection? Again, the nature of the mind, and of the human being, up to some point. Let me try and break this one in two parts, because the whole topic is so interesting (and yes, of course, it is not just interesting: the adoption of Prop 8 is a human tragedy, and I am on the side of those who lost, but with some difference in perspective...):

- the whole controversy on homosexual marriage, just as the controversy on abortion, reveals interesting and deep differences between the US and Europe - see next post...

- in the debate on proposition 8, one of the side topics is "innate" against "chosen", or some variation thereof. This is what relates to this post.

Now, what do I mean? Remember Sarah Palin (oh, I know, how could you forget this: her presence on the ticket meant that Obama's election was the equivalent of seeing a huge asteroid miss Planet Earth by a couple of miles...)? Well, in some interview, she went roughly: "oh, I don't mind gays, everyone should be free to chose, but etc.". And Andrew Sullivan, like many others, went: "homosexuality is not a choice" - one is like this, or not, and since one has no choice in the matter, denying marriage equality to homosexuals is a civil right issue, like denying it to blacks (or other colours, or whatever you may think of: midgets, say).

Now, I don't disagree with thrust of the argument (I have some difference on to whether the obsession with marriage is really such a good idea, but this is for a further post...), but there is a small nuance here. Being black, or small, or anything physically inalterable (exception made for the Michael Jackson approach), is something you really are born with, and pretty much does not evolve in any way during your life. This is a pure given. Sexuality is a much more fluid (and I would argue, therefore: interesting!) aspect of personality. Many heterosexuals can have homosexual attractions - and vice-versa. People have evolving sexualities, there is ample evidence of this. Now, I think psychoanalysts (I am going back to my original topic, finally!) have done a great disservice to themselves by being so much less clever than Freud was, and turning homosexuality back into a disease, and suggesting they could help to cure it, and one should aim at curing it. But what Freud said was quite different:

"Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too..."

Now, this may not be in politically correct style, and I don't say it is entirely correct either! But the suggestion that homosexuality could be linked not only to "innate" given, but also to the person's own history (and not necessarily only the relation with parents that supermarket-grade p-analysis ends up focusing on), with all its depth and complexity: why should this be shocking, or even surprising? If sexuality is not software, then what is?...

Actually, I found while editing this post a very similar view by (gay) writer Richard Rodriguez, through Andrew Sullivan:

...while there is some relationship between the persecution of gays and the
anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, I think the true analogy is to the
women's movement. What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the
traditional male-structured society. The possibility that we can form ourselves
sexually -- even form our sense of what a sex is -- sets us apart from the
traditional roles we were given by our fathers.

Now, this is the point indeed.