Losing the Middle Ground
The search for meaning is a never-ending quest. In part, it is what drives us to keep on learning, asking questions and attempting to make sense of what others are saying and writing. However, it is not just a matter of research and logic. I suspect many of you are like me, hoping to find some significant signs of change, especially at auspicious dates like a birthday, or the beginning of a new decade or century. What has happened, we ask ourselves? What has changed, what is different? It is an easier task when we look backwards, as we can see the evidence in major shifts, like those brought about by Newton’s Principia in 1687, or Einstein’s critiques of various classical theories in physics in 1915 (although neither of these were at the turn of a century or even a decade!). Actually, time distance is often important, as current theories about things like black holes and dark matter might also mark key turning points, but they haven’t been around long enough to become clearly understood.
Anyway, I guess science is easier, because there are ground-breaking experiments and key observations that have had a real, measurable impact. Other changes, changes in the culture, are harder to pin down. The shift from ‘photographic’ painting to impressionism and then to modern art took place over decades. As for the novel, where do we stop when we look backwards? Does Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji mark a key stage in literature? Or do we have to go even further back, to tales and legends from centuries before, like those Chinese stories about the nine-tailed fox from at least 2,500 years ago. Perhaps it is easier to find examples of major changes by looking at the cinema. There’s Citizen Kane back in 1941, with its stunning examination of capitalism, or La Dolce Vita and its critique of indulgent hedonism, or Taxi Driver, or Apocalypse Now, or The 400 Blows, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or North by Northwest. So many possibilities, but were any of these turning points, or simply progress points in a complex changing medium?
Perhaps I’m asking the wrong question. In culture, maybe what matters is what captures the zeitgeist, helping us understand this is where we are, or where we might be heading. Now we confront a rather different challenge in that there are so many contributions to culture, many weighted with apparent insights, while others only turn out later to have real significance. Again, we need perspective, to be able to stand back and understand how immediate events are related to others, and the underlying developments they illustrate. Easy to say, but hard to achieve at present when the politics of Australia, the US, and others seem to be headed to increasing polarisation. Right now cultural conversations appear steeped in opposition.
I imagined a possible test might be to look at current news topics. In early April 2024, (the 9th), my quick check through leading stories revealed the following. In Australia (I used the ABC as my source) the leading reports covered ‘punishing’ electricity tariffs; problems with hip transplants, scammers at work; lies and deceit over events in Gaza (the tone now shifting away from supporting Israel); housing affordability out of reach; together with critiques of Trump (!), petrol prices going up, various crimes, and problems with roads and rail lines. Next, for the US perspective, I checked The New York Times, where lead articles covered the war in Gaza (reports on disasters on both sides); the Vatican evidencing doubt over the ‘dignity’ of various gender issues; Chinese ‘outrage’ over a tv series (the 3 Body Problem); Trump, ‘deepfake nudes’, more Trump, killings and war in various places. Finally, the UK’s Guardian: yes, Trump’s there again, as is Gaza, ‘controversial changes to child protection scheme, NZ increasing visa restrictions, and the ‘tone deaf’ Melbourne City Council.
Of course, there was much more (a lot about a solar eclipse that couldn’t be seen in Australia or the UK (and tricky in many parts of the US because of cloud cover). However, the overall approach was clear in all three news sources. The emphasis is on people suffering, people treated unfairly, people fighting, people disagreeing for one reason or another. That mythical visitor from outer space would conclude that it wouldn’t be worth invading Earth. It’s full of miserable, divided and aggressive humans. Why, even the weather reports are discouraging.
Surely it was different 60 years ago. I managed to find a copy of The New York Times online for 9 April 1964. It was a bit of a shock. There was so much text, even on the front page! The headline stories concerned an agreement to end a dispute at the NY Stock Exchange over trading rules; a Wisconsin primary for the presidential election later in the year favouring George Wallace; General MacArthur lying in state at the Capital’s Rotunda (and photograph); with an article lower on the page about his view the British had vetoed his plans for winning the Korean War; a second article with photographs concerning a test launch of the Gemini spacecraft; and several smaller articles on strikes and actions in the US and overseas.
In Australia, I found a Canberra Times for 9 May 1964. There the major article on the front page was Labour winning local council elections in the UK! There was also an article about a summit planned between Malaysia and Indonesia; a gang fight in Melbourne; the amputation of a Croatian migrants legs following a bomb explosion in Sydney; and two ‘startling’ shooting incidents in Canberra (no-one was hit). I guess Canberra was a quieter place back then. Sadly, accessing The Guardian in 1964 required payment, but I did glean this was the time of Beatles hysteria in the US; ‘Cassius Clay’ won the world heavyweight crown; The Sun tabloid newspaper first hit the streets; and there were debates over the ethics of using ‘the pill’ (yes, that one!), whether or not the UK was in the Edwardian or ‘jet age’, and whether factory farming had come to stay as part of the agricultural revolution.
At first glance, the sixty-year gap wasn’t that great. Newspapers then and now seem to have a mixture of real news and more reflective pieces. Much was taking place on economic, political and technological fronts. However, reading the articles made it clear that the ‘tone’ was different. Perhaps I was too easily swayed, but it appeared that journalists were less strident in their reporting, even, (dare I say it), stories were better balanced. Then, as now, newspapers had to sell, and so stories tended to have an emotional character, but doing so by trying to add excitement rather than offering a very partisan perspective. Back then, newspapers were competing among themselves, but they weren’t also trying to stand out against television, let alone the increasingly complex world of today’s online information.
Has technology that has changed how people write and report or has there been another shift? Perhaps yet another perspective comes books. I chose two well publicised and popular books written in 2011. Quite different, and neither was particularly significant. Neither was particularly well-written, nor destined to be memorable. One was aimed at a young audience and has reported 25,000 in sales. The other book might have been aimed at young adults: it has sold 150 million copies and probably had many, many more readers. Neither is a ‘great book’ but they suggest an alarming narrowing of culture and perspectives in the 21st Century.
The first was written by Richard Dawkins. The Magic of Reality was an important staging post in explaining science, technology and genetics, aimed at children: “Magic is a slippery word: it is commonly used in three different ways, and the first thing I must do is distinguish between them. I’ll call the first one ‘supernatural magic’’ the second one ‘stage magic’ and the third one (which is my favourite meaning, and the one I intend in my title) ‘poetic magic’ […] I want to show you that the real world, as understood scientifically, has magic of its own – the kind I call poetic magic: an inspiring beauty which is all the more magical because it is real and because we can understand how it works. Next to the true beauty and magic of the real world, supernatural spells and stage tricks seem cheap and tawdry by comparison. The magic of reality is neither supernatural nor a trick, but – quite simply – wonderful.”
Dawkins’s intent is clear. In our search for meaning, science has the answers. You want to know what things are made of, and how they came to be like that. Forget myths and fanciful stories: we can describe the nature of matter in a way unimaginable 100 years ago, and the path of evolution that ends up with human beings. He explains the ‘selfish gene’though a thought-experiment. He imagines we have a complete set of photographs of all one’s direct male ancestors (why males?) stretching back from now to millions of generations in the past. Comparing one generation to the next would see little difference, but “your picture and one from 185 million generations back the two would be startingly different, perhaps your ancestor would seem to be some kind of fish-like animal.” Genetic change is slow and continuous. A child is the same ‘species’ as their parents, but species evolve over time.
If a young person is confused, Dawkins has it sorted. Science has the answers, and here is the evidence, lots of it, to prove the point. The book’s subtitle is “How we know what’s really true”. True believers in science know there are no miracles. This is the way things are, and this is how they got that way. Bought as a birthday or Christmas present, The Magic of Reality is far from magical. The underlying story is tough and realistic. It reflects Dawkins’s own childhood. Brought up in an Anglican environment, “I was religious, impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. That left me with nothing” (from a 2003 Guardian interview ).
A sometimes-combative exponent of the role of genetics in understanding evolution, Dawkins has explained ‘all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities’, (survival of the fittest). Youngsters reading The Magic of Reality in 2011 are now adults, and the relentless scientific perspective has led them into an even more demanding world. The rise of AI has prompted questions about the definitions and limits of consciousness. A cognitive scientist, David Chalmers, has provoked us to wonder where this technology leads: “If at some point AI systems become conscious, they’ll also be within the moral circle, and it will matter how we treat them.” From there it’s a small step to rejecting the idea technology is a neutral space devoid of moral judgments and spiritual implications, and that technology is preeminent. It’s not hard to understand the comments of young Callum, close to the intended age for the book who said: “Miracles don’t exist. Simple as that. The Magic of Reality hasn’t changed my views on anything.” (in The New Scientist, 17 September 2011).
Dawkins’s world is one of impersonal scientific instruments and the methods of logic. My second book is quite different, a fiction where the instruments are whips and handcuffs, and the methods painful. It’s challenging to recall now, but when E L James’ book Fifty Shades of Grey appeared, it was a sensation. I remember understanding its impact seeing women (almost exclusively women) in a tube train on the London Underground openly reading about Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. I’ve often wondered if some forgot to get out at their central London station destination and ended up in Theydon Bois or Morden.
If The Magic of Reality offered a testament to the the primacy of science in understanding our world, so Fifty Shades of Grey was a demonstration of how little we have progressed in understanding relationships, especially between men and women. Fifty Shades, along with the following two books in a trilogy, is often described as a ‘dark romance’ novel. As romance, the three books contain a series of predictable if dramatic plots, but they are ‘dark’ because they explore complex and unsettling emotional relationships, nicely spiced up with unconventional sex. More to the point, they are frighteningly misogynistic
At one level the story is a fairly conventional rich boy meets poor girl fantasy. They fall in love. There’s some ‘kinky fuckery’ (perhaps the best bit of the book is that nice phrase!). Sadists are likely to go too far, and nice boys who become sadist can probably be saved, even if they cause a fair bit of drama and pain along the way. But how can Fifty Shades of Grey be linked with The Magic of Reality? The Magic of Reality suggests the centrality of science is the only way to make sense of our world; Fifty Shades presents a regressive view of interpersonal relationships, with masochistic sexual practices reinforcing sexual inequality . Is it part of the ‘sexual freedom’ debate that engaged so much attention and behaviour in the second half of the 20th Century? Far from it. Despite her steps to take some control, Anastasia Steele remains a ‘submissive’, a poor and beautiful girl in thrall to a dominating rich man. It’s a familiar story: a man with power and money, the woman a willing partner. The book legitimises softcore sadism – because women enjoy it! Oddly enough, both James and Dawkins have written books making clear ‘this is the way the world is’.
In picking these two books there is another key point to be made. Dawkins was part of the slow and steady process where science has become the only basis for explaining our world. That perspective has reached the point that now we are willing to read books suggesting we have no free will, that our lives and our perceptions are determined. It’s not that ‘miracles don’t exist’, but that anything and everything is the result of physical processes. Emotions are the result of chemicals in the body, triggered by reactions that, at heart, are about genetic processes to ensure the survival of the fittest. Science doesn’t just make our lives better, find treatments for illnesses, creates better environments; it reveals what ‘really’ drives us.
James is addressing a far more uncertain environment. Interpersonal relationships, gender, sexual preferences, all these are part of a confusing mass of shifting views. We might feel we are long way from the supposedly conventional lives of people before the Second World War. Today, we are aware that people have a variety of sexual preferences, we recognise that some groups are disadvantaged or even maligned, and we’d like to think that we can create a better world. However, dark romance has its other regressive message, and its continuing popularity reveals further perspective. In 2024, it is still the case that, to an alarming extent, men remain dominant, aggressive and controlling; women are expected to be subordinate and accepting. Little has changed over the centuries. If Shades of Grey explored some dubious sexual practices, its larger impact was to reinforce the traditional model: men dominate, women submit. Science progresses, alarmingly so. Sexual relations stagnate, alarmingly so.
If two largely forgotten books from 2011 speak to a theme, that theme is ‘beware’. The Miracle of Science sells a vision, that science is the exciting means by which we will live in a wonderful continually improving world. Really? Today, we’re confronting the manipulative world of AI. Shades of Grey imagines a world in which we will enjoy diverse and exciting sexual relations. Really? More than a decade later, sexual oppression continues to flourish. Each in its own way, these two books offer a depressing vision, where we’re going to be to be controlled by impersonal science or by warped visions of love and relationships. Where’s the middle ground? I try to stay sane by reading mysteries solved by Lacey Flint, Parveen Mistry or Adam Dalgleish. OK, but that’s escapism, and I know it’s not enough.
