Skepticism and Hope
Upon my return, i continued listening to Michael Nagler’s lectures on Nonviolence. In the third lecture he makes some startling claims. Well, they startled me at least. The one that prompted me to listen to this lecture again was that the science in “What the Bleep” is portrayed accurately. Uhm. No. It’s not, at least it’s not according to one of the scientists included in the “What the Bleep” infomercial. For some reason, quantum physics is sexy and i haven’t fully understood yet exactly why Nagler brings it out – it has something to do with his claim that sciences other than physics have to deal with diversity. Well, yeah. You don’t have to go to quantum physics to make that point. You could simply look at an evolutionary biologist’s work.
Nagler also does not acknowledge that the demolition hypothesis of the towers on 9/11 has been debunked by most scientists, except for a handful of conspiracy theorists. It wasn’t a governmental coverup that kept this story out of the limelight. It plain did not make much sense – even though it came from a physicist.
Finally, his most startling claim: Darwin was wrong. Nagler hastens to add that he doesn’t deny evolution but he does not specify exactly what he thinks Darwin was wrong about. Listening between the lines, it seems that Nagler claims that Darwin thought competition was at the heart of evolution. It wasn’t actually Darwin who emphasized the “survival of the fittest”. That emphasis is one of the myths that surrounds the theory of evolution – a myth that is all too helpful in maintaining the current status quo.
I’ve tried to figure out why all these claims bother me so much. Yes, there’s a wish for honesty, yet, this doesn’t seem to fully capture it. When i listened to the next lecture, i gained some clarity around my reactions. Nagler talks about the three consequences of the scientific view: Scarcity, determinism, and separateness. He ties determinism to not taking responsibility for our action, for example how the idea of corporate personhood takes away any personal responsibilities of the executive team. While i completely agree with Nagler that this lack of responsibility is a huge problem and that the personhood of corporations has created many of the issues we are facing, i got lost that this is tied to determinism. For one, claiming that consciousness is an expression of matter rather than a separate entity does not strictly lead to determinism. The manifestation of consciousness is likely much more involved than a straight line, so the claim “my neurons made me do it” won’t hold up even if we can ultimately reduce consciousness to something material. I then realized what bothered me the most in Nagler’s arguments: He was reinforcing us-vs-them thinking by splitting science into the “old” science (the Newtonian model, which leads to determinism according to Nagler) and the “new” science (quantum physics, which doesn’t). Old science is bad. New science is good. This creates an artificial separateness! And it’s actually scientifically incorrect: Quantum mechanics does not replace Newtonian physics, just like the theory of relativity didn’t replace it. It’s a matter of scale: Quantum physics explains some things better than Newtonian physics, yet there is a lot that the “old” science explains very well. (Additionally, physicist express worries about using quantum mechanics to say anything about consciousness – see the Albert quote).
And then i remember to look for the underlying needs: Nagler does not have a need for “bashing science.” He is interested in healing this world, giving us hope that nonviolence is possible, and focusing on interdependence. He is trying to find paradigms within science that can provide a framework for this. These underlying needs, including his dream, i share with Nagler. I disagree with the effectiveness of his strategy to use a pop-culture interpretation of quantum mechanics as the foundation. Further, dividing science into good and bad, ironically reinforces the separateness Nagler is so worried about. Inclusion of all the voices, especially those which might on the surface support the current dominant cultural paradigm, could provide a more credible foundation for a science of nonviolence – and ultimately for shifting our current cultural paradigm away from violence to nonviolence.
Alternative Sources for Learning about Nonviolence
Steve’s comment below reminded me that there are other options to learn about nonviolence than through Nagler’s work. Here are some options – please feel free to add more in the comments, i will compile them into this list:
- Miki Kashtan’s Gandhian Principles for Everyday Living (the link takes you to the fifth part, which contains references to the first 4 parts)
- The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
- Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
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I’ve just started listening to Nagler’s PACS 164A lectures too, and I was stunned to hear him suggest a 9/11 demolition. Amazingly, he cites and accepts exact figures, down to the second, for how long it would take each building to fall if the planes were the only causes. Then he says when things get bad, people don’t want to question their beliefs/assumptions/etc. Yet he doesn’t even consider questioning his figures (though it should be pretty obvious that there’s no way to devise such figures accurately without tests — soemthing obviously impossible — and surely even such tests would vary, because buildings vary in construction methods and quality of materials, weather conditions, etc.)
Anyway, I was so stunned, I immediately searched his name in regard to 9/11 and demolition, hoping I totally misheard him (too afraid, I guess, to rewind). That’s how I found your blog.
So anyway, I’m still listening to Nagler’s 3rd lecture. And he’s presenting his absurd views on science now. Where he — a math phobic — claims that life sciences, etc, are only “soft sciences” because they cannot be mathematical (he says) and this is bad he says because (he says) the most important features of life cannot be accounted for by physical laws.
(Needless to say, there’s a huge inconsistency in his “thinking” here — because if the application of mathematics is his criteria for a “hard science” then surely how/why would he question physical laws? aaargh. Some thinking is so muddled, there’s little point in even trying to wade into it.)
I cannot excuse or justify his remarks as you have done, Rachel (I presume that’s your name:)
Nagler is simply buying into magical mysticism, while claiming to call it hard science. Worst of all, he’s teaching it.
And, I must admit, I was already feeling irritated in the first couple lectures as he seems to presume a very traditional western notion of a unified individual subject/agent, where thoughts always lead to actions/behavior, etc. Of course, the very effectiveness of nonviolent struggle (and civil rights laws) shows that people’s views can change as a result of external factors inhibiting or controlling their actions. Addiction treatment, and even recent psychology studies involving brain scanning, even demonstrate that actions & behavior do not follow from conscious mental states like Nagler tends to assume. But in this regard, Nagler is just like so many other New Age proponents who adopt/exploit eastern concepts to support a traditional western individualist worldview.
Well, I’ll stop ranting here. It’s just sad because nonviolence is, finally, getting a great deal of attention now, and Nagler is the only professor with webcast courses on nonviolent action. Or at least the lecture topics make them appear to be courses on nonviolent action. But aside from his 5 rules on fasting, derived from Gandhi, so far I’ve heard nothing concrete about actual nonviolent action & struggle.
Fortunately, there are many standalone lectures and webinars on the web regarding nonviolent action. And most of these are by younger scholars and researchers who are very committed to empirical data and research. They also don’t meander so much in their talks, so one’s time is better spent with them. I’m thinking here of people like Erica Chenoweth. See, for example: http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org.
Wow, Nagler’s been rambling about new age “physics” nearly the whole time I’ve been writing this. I might just jump ahead to other lectures where, I hope, he’ll discuss Gandhi’s satyagrahas.No wonder so many people drop his courses — or at least it seems that many people do. But he always assumes it’s due to their discomfort with nonviolence. I doubt that now. Come to think of it, I took a much more hard-headed (and fast-moving) upper-division course on nonviolence in college, and nobody dropped the course.
Btw, I feel compelled to point out that not only does science actually support a thoroughly materialist worldview, the latter worldview also works extremely well for nonviolence. One does not need to create a fictional spiritual apparatus in order for pacifism or nonviolence to become palatable or possible.
Professor Michael Nagler, I fear, is precisely the sort of person who drives so many people away from nonviolence. And though he says otherwise, he actually seems content with this — with being part of a small, select group.
Enough said. I need to turn off this lecture webcast before I become violent.
Steve
PS: At least I got a good book out of this. In the first lecture, he recommended B.R. Nanda’s biography of Gandhi, and I was able to find a nice copy of the unabridged edition for just a few dollars from a reseller on Amazon.com. (And I might jump to some other lectures later, maybe, to see what I can learn. Then again, this one really annoyed me. So maybe I’ll just stick w/ other books and lectures, and maybe look for an Indian history course on the independence struggle …and re-read Joan Bondurant’s Conquest of Violence too, which is a good book on the subject of Gandhian nonviolence.)
Thanks, Steve, for your comment! I am relieved to read that someone else felt as uneasy with Nagler’s excursions into fiction as i did. Please note that my post was meant neither to justify nor excuse his remarks. I was simply trying to understand where he was coming from. I, too, felt very uncomfortable with a professor at UC Berkeley presenting these myths as if they were truths.
I am also grateful that you mention some other folks to listen to as i’ve lost interest in Nagler’s lectures realizing that his foundation for his “science of nonviolence” is based on misunderstandings and misinterpretations, which makes it too unreliable to me.