Book Review: 'On Tolerance'
By Frank Furedi
Continuum
ISBN 978-1-4411-2010-6 (HB)
"I have the right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong."
Recognize the tone? If you are one of those who - with the Global Warming Policy Foundation - strives to bring more light and less heat into the climate change debate (pun intended), you should. The fact that this odious remark fell from the lips of a French Catholic theologian in 1691 doesn't make it any the less modern for those seeking rational discourse about global warming.
Professor Furedi's forensically thorough thesis opens with a detailed examination of the changing face of something Western society seemed to think it had settled – tolerance, the widespread acceptance of the existence of differing opinions and beliefs. Echoing J.S. Mill's seminal On Liberty, Furedi celebrates true tolerance, arguing that
“The tolerance of dissent and opinions that are regarded as erroneous or offensive is motivated by the conviction that it is only when no belief is beyond question that insight into truth can be gained… even truths can turn into superstitious dogma if they are merely held on faith: indeed, without the exercise of individual judgement, the meaning and intellectual content of an opinion becomes exhausted and transformed into prejudice.”
But now, he says, tolerance is more and more turning into its mirror image. It has first morphed - indeed, it has sometimes been morphed, by law - into an unquestioning, blanket recognition of the special claims of social groups. With a grim irony, those who challenge those special claims then become the victims of intolerance themselves. Furedi puts it this way:
“Those who claim that recognition is a right also take the view that no tolerance should be shown towards those whose words and behaviour threaten to destabilize people’s identity. This claim for rationing tolerance is warranted on the premise that it is essential to protect people from suffering psychic injury. Advocates insist that those whose speech and behaviour inflict harm should face legal sanctions.”
Along with sticks and stones, now it seems that words may break bones – an “inflation of harm” against which Furedi firmly sets his face.
What follows is that we are no longer free to form our own judgments - for we have farmed out judgment to others, most often (and most worryingly) to an increasingly powerful state. The famous paraphrase of Voltaire “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” becomes "I disapprove of what you say, because I'm told you have no right to say it."
Once that is understood, it is depressingly easy to see how, with the theory of man-made climate change, that process of what we might call “inverted tolerance” has also polluted science and scientific discussion - even, some argue, scientific process itself. Group-think is all. Each reader will have in mind her or his most strikingly repellent example from the global warming shock army – mine being the suggestion by a celebrity journalist that every time a Bangladeshi drowns, an airline employee should be taken out and drowned too. But Furedi has plenty of other equally rebarbative utterings to offer - members of my own profession of journalism being only too well represented:
He cites one warming enthusiast who says:
“There is no intellectual difference between the Lomborgians who steadfastly refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence of human caused global warming from scientists of unquestioned reputation, and the neo-Nazi holocaust deniers.”
Leaving aside this zealot's inaccurate reporting of Bjorn Lomborg's views, we move on to another Nazi-sniffer, who has this moderate take on any who challenge 'The Science':
“We should have war crimes trials for these bastards... some sort of climate Nuremberg.”
Greenpeace of course are never far behind. Here's their Communications Director for India on climate sceptics, in full 1920’s Chicago mode:
“We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many but you be few.”
Well, at least we can console ourselves, in the words of 'The Godfather', that “It's nothing personal. It's only business.” (And in the case of Greenpeace, what a business it is too!)
After such rantings, it's almost a relief to hear former Met Office head Sir John Houghton warn of “a dangerous mood of public scepticism.” Until you remember that he is by profession a scientist…
What does all this mean? It means there is to be no tolerance for climate change scepticism - even though scepticism is a key part of the scientific process, and even though those challenging climate change orthodoxy include many scientists in good standing. It also means that Professor Furedi’s painstakingly intellectual defence of tolerance is as timely as it is welcome.
The irony becomes almost unbearable when Furedi tells us that the Royal Society, one of Britain’s most venerable scientific institutions, has on its crest "Nullius in verba" - "On the word of no-one." To think that this celebration of intellectual inquiry should be the motto of an organization that sometimes seems simply enraged by any challenge to ‘The Science’! It is not as if, after all, even the most eminent scientists are always wholly right - as history shows.
Near the close of this important work, Professor Furedi issues a clarion call for the rebirth of true tolerance - especially in respect of free thinking and so, scepticism.
“Criticism, and even disrespect, of competing beliefs and views is entirely consistent with the act of tolerance; indeed tolerance has as its presupposition the logically prior assumption of disagreement and disapproval. Society needs to regain the capacity to question, discriminate and judge.”
But he leaves his readers in no doubt that this battle for tolerance - thought largely won in the post-enlightenment growth of free intellect - will be a hard one. Though well worth the fight.
And that Royal Society crest, with its proud assertion of intellectual freedom? It can still be found, on their website.
But not on their logo. It’s in the history section.
