Bertrand Russell's bigotry

Bertrand Russell thought that 'a good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own.'

The problem here is that if we become aware of different dogmas, we may be tempted to trade in our own beliefs for those held by the most admired or successful. 

For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different bias.

But, in your imagination, that other person might not smell bad or be as poor as shit. In other words, you are not able to observe whether the opposite dogma to your own is associated with better or worse socio-economic outcomes.  

This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not subject to the same limitations of time or space.

But our history and geography matter a great deal in determining when and where it is wise to hold a particular dogma.  

Mahatma Gandhi deplores railways and steamboats and machinery;

Russell could have met the fellow easily enough. He was certainly aware that Gandhi & his crew were shit and that India was a shithole. In 1942, the wrote to the Time magazine saying Britain must not transfer power because if Indians were responsible for defense, Japan would conquer the country very quickly. Even if there was no Japanese threat, the country was likely to experience civil war. Part of the problem facing India was that Gandhi was a fucking cretin who believed earthquakes were a punishment for sin. 

he would like to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting any one who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted.

But western countries have plenty of crackpots. Gandhi got his anti-industrialism out of British, American and Russian authors. 

But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might say in refutation of them.

Russell was an even crazier pacifist than Gandhi. You are right to agree with the prevailing opinion if this is in your interest. Otherwise, why bother? As for Gandhi, the guy couldn't refute shit.  

I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent.

You may as well be cocksure about dogmas which it is in your interest to hold. If you appear wishy washy even on matters of vital importance to your survival, people will think you are weak and unreliable.  

Some 20 years before Russell gave the speech quoted above, an American court prevented Russell taking up a College appointment. A wealthy man- Alfred C Barnes- hired him to lecture at his foundation, but dismissed him after a year or two because he was rude to students. Private enterprise, it seems, can encourage a diversity of opinion. However, diverse opinions can pose an existential threat to the polity. Trinity had dismissed Russell for his pacifist views during the Great War. He had been sent to prison for, very foolishly, opposing America's entry into it. In both cases, there was a justification for punishing an influential man who was preaching dangerous and stupid shite. 

Returning to Russell's 1922 speech, we find that refuting his dogmas requires seeing them as stupid, unreasonable, or dangerous to his own vital interests. It does not require considering the plausibility of a position as stupid, but opposite, to his own. 

There are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would solve almost all social problems. The first is that education should have for one of its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is some reason to think, that they are true.

Some person could have some reason to think any possible thing is true. Indeed, one could have a reason for thinking a set of incompossible or contradictory propositions is true. Why have an aim which anything whatsoever could fulfil? 

Education is either being imparted or it isn't. Its aims are irrelevant. The question is whether the thing is worth the student's time and money. But this is true of any service industry. 

The second is that jobs should be given solely for fitness to do the work.

So, when hiring a cook, all that matters is that the man cooks well. It does not matter if he is sleeping with your wife or if he keeps telling everybody you have a tiny dick.  

To take the second point first. The habit of considering a man’s religious, moral, and political opinions before appointing him to a post or giving him a job is the modern form of persecution, and it is likely to become quite as efficient as the Inquisition ever was.

Only in the sense that the habit of moving away from a person with a strong body odor is likely to result in the setting up of Nazi death camps. The reason Russell mentions the Spanish Inquisition is because neither the Gulags nor Nazism had been heard of at that time.

The old liberties can be legally retained without being of the slightest use.

A liberty is a Hohfeldian immunity under a bond of law. It is useless if there is no effective remedy. 

If, in practice, certain opinions lead a man to starve, it is poor comfort to him to know that his opinions are not punishable by law.

It may be great comfort for him to know that he can fucking emigrate rather than starve. Also, having certain opinions- e.g. that you are entitled to fuck a gangster's wife- which are not punishable by law may still get your fucking head kicked in.  

There is a certain public feeling against starving men for not belonging to the Church of England,

There is no public feeling against sacking a Vicar who insists on sodomizing the curate while presiding over Satanic rituals in the apse of the parish church. The fact that the Vicar does not belong to the Anglican Church is all the more reason for denying him any remuneration even if this means that he has to go hungry. 

or for holding slightly unorthodox opinions in politics.

or for holding orthodox opinions but expressing them by a series of vociferous farts  

But there is hardly any feeling against the rejection of atheists or Mormons, extreme communists, or men who advocate free love.

Russell was speaking of polygamous Mormons who were welcome to emigrate and populate some distant territory.  

Such men are thought to be wicked, and it is considered only natural to refuse to employ them.

It may be unnatural, but sensible to refuse to employ them. You may, quite naturally want to exercise your advowson in favor of your brother who is an Anglican priest in good standing. It may not be sensible to do so if he expresses his orthodox opinions by an interminable series of vociferous farts. That sort of thing is better left to the Methodists.  

People have hardly yet waked up to the fact that this refusal, in a highly industrial State, amounts to a very rigorous form of persecution.

This is because in a highly industrialized state, emigration is impossible. Moreover, there is a Boss's cartel. You can't go into business for yourself. Also the Spanish Inquisition is conducting auto da fes all over the place.  

If this danger were adequately realized, it would be possible to rouse public opinion, and to secure that a man’s beliefs should not be considered in appointing him to a post.

Russell was unaware that the 'public' knew very well that if you have a useful skill, you can always get work somewhere or other.  

The protection of minorities is vitally important;

Only if the minority provides a vital service 

and even the most orthodox of us may find himself in a minority some day, so that we all have an interest in restraining the tyranny of majorities.

Very true. It is vitally important to protest against death because even the healthiest amongst us may find themselves facing death one of these days. We must restrain the tyranny of Death. After that, we can tackle the problem of farts which turn into sharts.  

Nothing except public opinion can solve this problem.

Sadly, public opinion can't solve shit. Otherwise every kid would be educationally above average.  

Socialism would make it somewhat more acute, since it would eliminate the opportunities that now arise through exceptional employers.

Emigration is the traditional solution to the problems of Socialism.  

Every increase in the size of industrial undertakings makes it worse, since it diminishes the number of independent employers.

No. There will be more niche service providers and thus more employers. Sadly, there may be 'duality' such that the big firms pay more than the ancillary SMEs. 

The battle must be fought exactly as the battle of religious toleration was fought.

Russell preferred to fight imaginary battles. He didn't want to fight the Germans.  

And as in that case, so in this, a decay in the intensity of belief is likely to prove the decisive factor. While men were convinced of the absolute truth of Catholicism or Protestantism, as the case might be, they were willing to persecute on account of them.

If Protestantism means you get your hands on Abbeys and Church Estates, then you will be happy to persecute the fuck out of any Jesuits lurking in priest-holes. Catholics too might want to get their mitts on the accumulated wealth of industrious ranters to mention Jews. 

While men are quite certain of their modern creeds, they will persecute on their behalf.

Not if they immediately get their heads kicked in.  

Some element of doubt is essential to the practice, though not to the theory, of toleration.

We tolerate getting fucking in the ass if the alternative is having our heads kicked in prior to being fucked in the ass.  

And this brings me to my other point, which concerns the aims of education.

If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true.

Why not the habit of breathing? After all, respiration is vital to life.  

For example, the art of reading the newspapers should be taught.

Teechur shud x-plane that newspaper is owned by Murdoch. He is bad man.  

The schoolmaster should select some incident which happened a good many years ago, and roused political passions in its day.

Russell supported appeasement. He thought Britain should surrender to Hitler. This aroused political passions. But if you read the newspapers of the day, little of it was communicated. Partly, this was because Chamberlain's government managed the Press very successfully. Also, the BBC had a monopoly on radio broadcasts and it had been made to toe the line. 

He should then read to the school-children what was said by the newspapers on one side, what was said by those on the other, and some impartial account of what really happened.

Nothing of the sort is available. Passions may be strategic but they are emotional and reflect normative preferences. Britain didn't want to fight over Sudentenland. In any case, Poland and Hungary too wanted to take a bite out of Czechoslovakia. Poland was a different matter. I firmly believe that we in this country have always felt a debt of gratitude to the many telephone Poles which have served us so well. Sadly, as more and more people ditched landlines, the British chose Brexit.  

He should show how, from the biased account of either side, a practised reader could infer what really happened, and he should make them understand that everything in newspapers is more or less untrue.

No. Newspapers carry some news as well as some views.  The latter are 'imperative' and are neither true nor false. 

The cynical scepticism which would result from this teaching would make the children in later life immune from those appeals to idealism by which decent people are induced to further the scheme of scoundrels.

Teaching can't make kids immune to shit. That's why murders still happen.  

History should be taught in the same way. Napoleon’s campaigns of 1813 and 1814, for instance, might be studied in the Moniteur, leading up to the surprise which Parisians felt when they saw the Allies arriving under the walls of Paris after they had (according to the official bulletins) been beaten by Napoleon in every battle.

This is nonsense. Parisians knew their fate was sealed as Napoleon kept retreating. However, many thought the Allies would go after Napoleon in the South rather than enter Paris. 

In the more advanced classes, students should be encouraged to count the number of times that Lenin has been assassinated by Trotsky, in order to learn contempt for death.

It enough to learn contempt for Trotsky who waded through an ocean of blood only for Stalin to inherit the throne of Ivan the Terrible.  

Finally, they should be given a school-history approved by the Government, and asked to infer what a French school history would say about our wars with France.

They say the same thing we do. Perhaps things had been different when Russell was a boy. He was a home schooled. It may be that Douglas Spalding, his tutor and the lover of his mother, kept urging him to reconquer Calais for the Queen. 

All this would be a far better training in citizenship than the trite moral maxims by which some people believe that civic duty can be inculcated.

If no special training is needed to train people in citizenship, it is likely that citizenship training is not required either. It is a different matter that a country may have a citizenship test for those seeking naturalization.  

It must, I think, be admitted that the evils of the world are due to moral defects

only sentient organisms which have arisen by biological evolution are said to have 'moral defects'. We don't attribute the evils of the world to them because, obviously, this evil world is the fitness landscape on which they have arisen.   

quite as much as to lack of intelligence.

Rocks aren't intelligent. World is very evil due to I tripped over a rock and scraped my knee. Bertrand Russell should kindly educate rocks and stones of various descriptions. 

But the human race has not hitherto discovered any method of eradicating moral defects; preaching and exhortation only add hypocrisy to the previous list of vices.

The threat of punishment may do so but exhortation can have no such effect if it is always possible to kick the ranters head in 

Intelligence, on the contrary, is easily improved by methods known to every competent educator.

Which is why, if you send a rock to Collidge, it will become very smart. 

Therefore, until some method of teaching virtue has been discovered,

it has. There were and are plenty of religious schools. You pay more to send your kid to a place where the teachers aren't drunk off their heads and constantly shagging each other. Obviously, if your kid has a taste for arson, you may have to send the fellow to an experimental school. Maybe if he takes enough drugs he won't keep trying to burn the house down.  

progress will have to be sought by improvement of intelligence rather than of morals.

One can easily give up immoral activities- e.g. making fun of deaf people or pretending to be a Nigerian princess- but it is very difficult to raise a person's IQ. Look at Rahul Gandhi. 

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity,

There is no connection between the two. A very smart guy can be very credulous of all sorts of fads and fancies.  

and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity.

Such instruction is easily available from hobos wearing tin-foil hats who warn passers-by that demons have taken over the DMV.  

Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education,

teechur shud say 'Government is lying to you. So is the boss class. As for your so called 'parents' don't get me started!'  

it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation,

or misinformation about the terrible threat of misinformation 

and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

Democracy is very naughty. It should not let Miss Information sit on its face.  

Hence the increase in the circulation of newspapers.

Miss Information has a fine pair of knockers.  

If I am asked how the world is to be induced to adopt these two maxims — namely: (1) that jobs should be given to people on account of their fitness to perform them;

leave this to the profit motive 

(2) that one aim of education should be to cure people of the habit of believing propositions for which there is no evidence —

there is no evidence that any such 'cure' exists. Why aim at something wholly imaginary or incompossible?  

I can only say that it must be done by generating an enlightened public opinion.

That public opinion was enlightened enough to reject Russell's stupid Pacifism.  

And an enlightened public opinion can only be generated by the efforts of those who desire that it should exist.

And those who desire that it should exist should buy my books and pay good money to attend my lectures.  

I do not believe that the economic changes advocated by Socialists will, of themselves, do anything towards curing the evils we have been considering. I think that, whatever happens in politics, the trend of economic development will make the preservation of mental freedom increasingly difficult, unless public opinion insists that the employer shall control nothing in the life of the employee except his work.

The Law can do so. Public opinion can drive legislative changes but, equally, a 'test case' could be brought so as to clarify that an employer can't make unreasonable stipulations regarding the employee's private life.  

Freedom in education could easily be secured, if it were desired, by limiting the function of the State to inspection and payment, and confining inspection rigidly to the definite instruction. But that, as things stand, would leave education in the hands of the churches, because, unfortunately, they are more anxious to teach their beliefs than freethinkers are to teach their doubts.

Unless they are pedophiles.  

It would, however, give a free field, and would make it possible for a liberal education to be given if it were really desired. More than that ought not to be asked of the law.

So, it is the law- not public opinion- which matters. The population may support capital punishment for kiddy fiddlers but the law may forbid any such outcome.  

My plea throughout this address has been for the spread of the scientific temper, which is an altogether different thing from the knowledge of scientific results.

Actual scientists have a scientific temper though they may be very religious. Russell wasn't a scientist.  

The scientific temper is capable of regenerating mankind and providing an issue for all our troubles.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Scientific Temper, he cannot enter into the kingdom of Uranus. 

The results of science, in the form of mechanism, poison gas, and the yellow press, bid fair to lead to the total downfall of our civilization.

Woe unto Nineveh! Woe, woe! Also Babylon is fucked. As for Harlem, don't get me started.  

It is a curious antithesis, which a Martian might contemplate with amused detachment.

while pleasuring himself with an anal dildo composed of anti-matter.  

But for us it is a matter of life and death.

No. It is just hot air.  

Upon its issue depends the question whether our grandchildren are to live in a happier world, or are to exterminate each other by scientific methods, leaving perhaps to negroes and Papuans the future destines of mankind.

Fuck you Papuans! Fuck you very much!