LETTING THE NEIGHBOURS KNOW

DANIEL C. DENNETT

It is easy to misjudge the effects of one’s public actions. It can be tempting to overestimate their influence, taking undue credit for a trend that was already simmering. Others have highlighted our meeting as the catalyst for what might be called the Great Reaction that is emptying churches around the world, but none of us has ever endorsed that simple view, gratifying though it would be. Just as likely is the opposite misjudgement: undervaluing the supportive role that can be played by a few well-placed and well-timed declarations. Memes can go viral today at near the speed of light, thanks to the new transparency brought about by the worldwide adoption of the internet and its supporting devices (and don’t forget radios and television).

MIT Media Lab professor Deb Roy and I highlighted these prospects a few years ago in a Scientific American article comparing today’s upheaval with the hugely creative but also destructive Cambrian Explosion of 543 million years ago.^*1 The Australian zoologist Andrew Parker has advanced the hypothesis that a chemical change which rendered the shallow ocean more transparent triggered that veritable Olympiad of evolutionary arms races, both extinguishing ancient branches and generating novel branches on the Tree of Life.^*2 Whether or not Parker is basically right about the Cambrian Explosion – and for what it is worth, I think he is – there can be little doubt about the Internet Explosion we are experiencing today.

We can now see further, faster, and more cheaply and easily than ever before – and we can be seen. And you and I can see that everyone can see what we see, in a recursive hall of mirrors of mutual knowledge that both enables and hobbles. The age-old game of hide-and-seek that has shaped all life on the planet has suddenly shifted its playing field, its equipment and its rules. The players who cannot adjust will not last long.^*3

Certainly the rise of the New Atheism was enabled in large measure by this expansion of mutual knowledge. Some of your best friends may be atheists, and you may know that, but now almost everybody knows that almost everybody knows that some of almost everybody’s best friends are atheists – which makes it much less daunting and dangerous to ‘come out’ as an atheist. There is strength in numbers, but much more strength when the numbers know roughly how numerous they are. It permits a measure of coordination, which doesn’t even have to be carefully reasoned out. It has recently been shown that bacteria – which are about as uncomprehending as a living thing can be – engage in quorum sensing, delaying their commitment to a new simple strategy until they have detected enough allies in the neighbourhood to mount a mass action.

There is another relatively subtle effect that can be achieved by everyday folks. You don’t have to be politically powerful or famous or eloquent or even notably influential in your community: you can be a sacrificial anode. The term sounds both dangerous and religious, but it is neither. It is well known among sailors and fishermen and others who work on boats and ships, and it goes by other names: cathodic protection system, or just zinc, or sometimes – a term I like because it conjures up such shocking images – sacrificial plate. (Did you just picture the head of John the Baptist on Salome’s serving platter?)

When a steel boat or ship with a bronze or brass propeller sits in salt water, a battery of sorts is created, with electrons flowing spontaneously from steel to the alloy, eating it away at an alarming rate. A brand new solid-brass propeller can become pitted in a few days and destroyed in a few months; painting it with some protective shield is ineffective. The solution: bolt a small piece of zinc (other metals will work, but zinc for various reasons is best) to the steel (alternatively, thread a zinc nut of sorts on to the stainless steel propeller shaft) and your problem is solved. The modest piece of zinc, being galvanically more active than the brass or bronze alloy, ‘takes all the heat’ (the current) and allows itself to be sacrificed in order to protect the part that needs to do the heavy work. Once a year, you can easily replace the almost-depleted piece of zinc with a new sacrificial anode.

The political moral to be drawn from this analogy is obvious. If you are, say, a US senator or representative, or other official whose effectiveness would be seriously diminished by a reputation for extremism (in any dimension or direction), it helps mightily to have others a little further out there, visible and undaunted, who can tolerate being seen as ‘too radical’ because their livelihoods and security don’t depend (much) on such a reputation. Since those on either side of any political divide are motivated to caricature and exaggerate the opinions of the opposition, effective political advocacy depends on being able to disavow slightly more galvanically active opinions held by some of the folks on one’s own side of things.

There are limits, to be sure. As in any other arms race, there is a dynamic interplay, and if polarization becomes too extreme – with many people all too willing to be sacrificial anodes for their favourite politicians – the value of the strategic principle evaporates. But here is where the frank and open expression of one’s actual views – however boring and middle-of-the-road they seem to you to be – can do some valuable work. Just calmly letting the neighbours know that you are in favour of x, disapprove of y, think z is not to be trusted – in short, being not just an informed citizen but an informing citizen – can substantially contribute to the reduction of polarization and the gradual displacement of received opinion in the directions you favour.

The diversity of opinions among the four of us provides a good example of these factors at work. For once in my life, I get to play ‘good cop’, because I believe that we should be concerned to preserve the good that organized religions can do. Does religion ‘poison everything’, as my dear, late friend Hitch insisted on saying?^*4 Only in a very attenuated sense, I think. Many things are quite harmless in moderation and poisonous only in quantity. I understand why Hitch emphasized this view; as a foreign correspondent he had much first-hand, dangerous experience with the worst features of religion, while I know of all that only at second hand – often from his reportage. I, in contrast, have known people whose lives would be desolate and friendless if it weren’t for the non-judgemental welcome they have received in one religious organization or another. I regret the residual irrationalism valorized by almost all religion, but I don’t see the state playing the succouring, comforting role well, so until we find secular successor organizations to take up that humane task, I am not in favour of ushering churches off the scene. I would rather assist in transforming these organizations into forms that are not caught in the trap of irrational – and necessarily insincere – allegiance to patent nonsense.

There are denominations that already have succeeded in this maturation, and I applaud them. Richard and Sam have their variant opinions on these matters, and we don’t hesitate to express our disagreements to each other when they arise, but these are all – so far as I know – respectful and constructive differences of opinion. Any who search the transcription of our discussion for either a monolithic shared creed or a contradiction suppressed for political reasons will come up empty-handed. It is always amusing to hear us accused of having our own ‘faith’, our own ‘religion’ – as if to say: ‘You atheists are just as unpresentable as we religionists are!’ – when the only shared dogma they can point to is our trust in truth, evidence and honest persuasion. That is not blind faith but just the opposite: faith continually tested, corrected and provisionally defended by the testimony of our senses and our common sense. Unlike proselytizers for any religion, we gladly accept the burden of proof for the positions we defend, and we never retreat to any holy texts or ex cathedra pronouncements.