An article and an interview
About two weeks I had my first ever paid-for article published. “Are Videogames Conservative?” appeared in the September edition of The IPA Review (57:3).
Today, Libby Price, a presenter on Melbourne radio station 3LO, got in contact with me to do a radio interview. I managed to schedule a break in my Berlitz training so I could do the interview live from Ôsaka at about 16:40 Australian time. Thanks for the opportunity, Libby: it was great fun. Dad managed to tape the interview for me, and played it back to me over Skype tonight. It sounded really nice: a good, relaxed interview. Not bad for a first try.
First article, first radio interview. What a couple of weeks it’s been… And that’s even without considering my move to Ôsaka, and my new job.
London bombings: Ken Livingston speaks
A few of London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s words addressing the London bombers and their motivations are worth reprinting here:
Even after your cowardly attacks, people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential.
They come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that. And however many of us you kill, you will not stop their flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another.
My grounds for supporting VSU
Today, the last in a series of emails I exchanged with Michelle Smith, Publications Officer of the University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association, about the relationship between identity politics and VSU (Voluntary Student Unionism). In today’s installment, I explain that one of the reasons I support VSU is because I believe it’s immoral to force people to pay for services rendered to others. This wasn’t intended to be the last word on the subject, but there wasn’t anything else to say after this. Next: Something on another topic…
My final email to Michelle Smith
Thanks again for your reply, Michelle. It’s a pleasure to read such thoughtful responses.
I have just one short thing to say, and it’s possibly where the source of our disagreements lies. I believe that it is immoral to coerce people into helping provide services or advocacy for others, and that to do so is destructive to the liberty of all. The only things I believe people are entitled to expect are the freedom to behave as they see fit (provided they coerce no other), and to have their own bodies as their property. People have no entitlement to assistance of any kind, whatever their circumstances, if that assistance must be extracted involuntarily. It is admirable that UMPA does provide products, services, and assistance that can’t be made to turn a profit or even to break even. However, under VSU, UMPA will not be able to force students to co-operate, and will have to rely on their generosity instead. This is as it should be. Start preparing convincing appeals to students’ sense of charity if you wish things to continue as they are at UMPA, but don’t try to trick them into believing that their own freedom of choice is a bad thing.
By the way, I consider the ban on UMPA mass-emailing postgraduates denies all its staff their entitlement to behave as they see fit. It also disadvantages students by preventing them from receiving direct email communications from UMPA even though they may (as I would) prefer that money, paper, and labour not be wasted on mail-outs.
I hope to hear that your colleagues approve of my reproducing your responses. If not, I invite you to post a comment to the entries appearing on my blog from Sunday, so that your point of view can be represented.
Sincerely,
Ben Hourigan
Personal attacks
Today, dogpossum posted what is, so far, the most antagonistic comment related to my site that I’ve yet received. Her blog doesn’t have permalinks, so you’ll just have to search for 17 March 2005. Currently, though, it’s at or near the top of the blog.
I don’t mind antagonism. In fact, I know that just by putting forward my opinions on some issues, I’m going to bait people. Possibly everyone. My post on Australia Day baits jingoists: but being mostly acquainted with people of the university set, I don’t expect many jingoists to be reading. My post on arts funding has attracted a lot of comments, most disagreeing with me forcefully. I knew it would bait those kind of responses. That’s not why I write things like that, though: I hope I do so because I have good reasons for my views, and I want to express them, to open up debate. So they have. I enjoy this. So, I hope, do you, my readers and correspondents, most of whom (and possibly all) are of the university set. “University set” isn’t meant to be an insult, by the way: I’m a member of the same cultural milieu, and though it irritates me some times, I still feel at home in it.
Dogpossum’s post seems to be a fairly visceral reaction to my politics, and except where she points out that I don’t know much about Australian cinema (touché), it’s not a good example of a contribution to debate. It shows a common tendency of writers who identify with a leftist politics, and who imagine those who disagree with them are all contemptible rightists. Its response to me is almost entirely to attack my person: to call me a “fool” and an “imbecile,” to ridicule my recording, in my resumé, of my intelligence percentile, determined by a psychologist-administered test, and to “mock” my “turn of phrase”. It objects to my politics without specifying grounds for objection, and without even identifying what my politics are.
For the record, I’ve met dogpossum at least once in RL, where our disagreements were not apparent, and where I found her very likeable. I enjoyed meeting her.
Dogpossum, you owe yourself better than to be so uncivil in writing. I don’t expect you to disagree any less forcefully: but if you can’t say anything nice about my person, you maintain your honour better by not saying anything at all.
Dogpossum’s personal attacks are symptomatic of a tendency that I’ve noticed in my interactions with Cultural Studies academics generally, particularly where political matters are involved. There’s a set of people and beliefs that they assume everyone agrees or disagrees with (i.e. we are all ‘left’; capitalism is immoral; everyone who disagrees with you is a right-wing bastard, especially people who criticise identity politics or French pseudo-philosophy; logic is a tool of oppression; and so on). If you challenge one of these, you get hammered with personal attacks. For an example of what I’m talking about, have a look at the threads resulting from my recent intervention on the CSAA email forum. (Note that the thread goes on into subsequent weeks). Here it’s not me who’s the subject of the attacks (in the main), but rather so-called “right wing jocks” who dare (often very unskillfully) to criticise Cultural Studies. The sad thing is that Cultural Studies practitioners attack these people personally when they could have targeted the gaping holes in their opponents’ arguments, which end up going unmentioned.
I believe this kind of behaviour (and it seems to come from multiple sides) is extremely damaging to the intellectual climate wherever it occurs. Intellectuals should be debating each other’s ideas, not calling each other fools and imbeciles. We can leave that to those who don’t know any better.
Dogpossum, I believe you do know better.
In a comment on dogpossum’s post, I’ve invited her to discuss her objections with me. I hope she’ll take up my invitation, hopefully here, because of the lack of permalinks on her site. I would expect our words to make for interesting reading.