Respecting beliefs and the right to opinions

About a month ago there was an ethicist on Hack talking about people's right to opinions (about asylum seekers, as it happens, but the argument is general). She agreed with the general principle that everyone has the right to their opinion, and the right to express it if, and only if, those opinions are not based on fallacies - especially fallacies designed to inspire hatred. In other words, no-one actually has the right to spread hate-filled lies. I tend to agree with her.

Yesterday I was accused of being a bigot, on the basis that I show a "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from [my] own". I'm pretty confident that I tolerate, and indeed respect, a lot of beliefs that I don't agree with, but it's also fair to say that there are some beliefs that I have absolutely no respect for. Those are beliefs that internally inconsistent.

I've argued and debated all sorts of positions. I know that the belief that underpins my world is that there exists an observable universe, and that we are able to observe it. There are inherent assumptions there that people have challenged, but at this stage I'm running with it. I try to keep the rest of my world view consistent beyond that assumption. When I get caught out in an inconsistency, I have to change my views.

I've known a number of people holding various flavours of religious beliefs who have argued with me over the years, and while they start with some differing assumptions, their beliefs have also been internally consistent. I utterly disagree with them, but I respect their integrity.

None of this is the point here, the point is that I really don't respect, or even tolerate, internally inconsistent beliefs. People who claim, for example, that they believe that personhood starts at conception (thereby making abortion murder) but also support the death penalty. People who claim that any religious text is infallible, and then ignore inconvenient bits of it. People who understand how science works, and yet still claim its results are free from subjectivity. And, well, people who believe we were populated by space aliens and that Good People get a planet when they die.

There has to be some measure by which any person's beliefs can be assessed, or we will all have to respect the beliefs of the Sacred Sect of Brownie Worshippers who honour the Almighty Kodak Box Brownie through the sacrifice of chocolate brownies every Wednesday (who have registered as a religion for tax purposes). I doubt that anyone, actually, respects ALL beliefs. There may be other measures besides internal consistency, and if you have some other rule of thumb, let me know. If you think you respect all beliefs, I suspect I either don't believe you, or don't respect your beliefs.

Incidentally, this was sparked by my utter disrespect for Tony Abbott. I have no idea what his beliefs are, since he changes them so often it makes my head spin. A man that can't even own his religious convictions doesn't meet the criteria for respect.

Journeys in the wilds of Medicalia

Last week I took Elissa for another visit to the ophthalmologist, which resulted in much angst, frustration and anger.

The back story to explain how I got to condemning the whole of the medical profession in a single tweet is worthy of sepia tones and darkened edges. When I was a kid (about 18 months old), I had a squint - otherwise known as a turn in the eye. It was corrected with surgery, but I was also found to have a lazy eye. Thus began many, many years of glasses, eye patches and visits to doctors which ended, finally, one afternoon when I was about eight. I sat on the front step of our house and looked at the telegraph pole across the street. I looked at it with and without my glasses, about 30 or 40 times before deciding that I could definitely see better without them, and burying them in the garden. This didn't get me in the shit you may imagine, because my mother had also given up on the palaver at about the same time and quite possibly didn't even notice.

Then when I was twelve, in a fit of Responsible Parenting, my mother took me off to a specialist one more time before I went to high school. He looked at my eyes and listened to my history and got very excited and called in other colleagues. Apparently I had some condition which was genetic (classically dominant, I was told). It resulted in my optic nerve failing to develop correctly and no amount of patching or wearing of glasses could possibly have done anything to change it. He declared that my father had the same problem, and my father suggested he had inherited it from his mother.

We all went away satisfied that we knew what the problem was and that was that.

But like all good soap operas, it doesn't end there. When I was pregnant with Elissa, the mutation was discovered. The geneticist I was seeing felt there was unlikely to be any connection between my genetic eye problem and the mutation on my 15th chromosome, but sent me off to an ophthalmologist who specialises in this sort of thing just to be sure. She declared there was no such thing as the condition I described, and announced that my poor eyesight was due purely to a failure to comply with the patching regimen. (To quote her: "If you're only patching for a couple of hours a day, there's no point even bothering". I was patched all day, every day, for months at a time.) I was Unimpressed. (Anyone who knows my mother, knows that if she agreed to patch, patch she did! There was no question of non-compliance.)

By that time, Charlie had been under the care of a wonderful ophthalmologist at Randwick for nearly a year for his squint, and was being scheduled for surgery. That all went well, and I ignored the unhelpful woman I had seen and time passed. *insert wavy lines, cut to recent past*

This year, we realised Elissa also has a squint - a much smaller one than Charlie. Unlike Charlie, though, she has bad sight in one eye to go with it. And because this is a soap opera, there was a clerical error when the booking was made to see Charlie's doctor, and Elissa was sent to see another doctor. This doctor appears to be an excellent teacher. I say this, because he barely speaks to me, only to whichever registrar is looking after us on the day. I value teaching, but it would be nice if noticed we were in the room. Each time he's seen us, he's asked if he's ever seen us before, and there was no recognition when I said yes.

So far I've doubted a number of the measurements they've taken, and now they've recommended patching. For an hour a day, because, to quote this doctor, "You don't want to patch more than a couple of hours a day, because it affects the development of stereo vision." They suggested 8 weeks of patching, but I can't actually get an appointment for 12 weeks, so the poor kid has to go through this for 12 weeks, with no guarantees of success. And yes, I argued, and asked to see another doctor, and was fobbed off.

The orthoptist was the only person listening at all, and she's scheduled an appointment to see her only at about the half way mark just to make sure there is more than one review in 12 weeks.

I'm furious with this situation. The only reason I haven't been transferred to the doctor I was referred to is territorialism. There is clearly no consensus on patching or how it should be done, but there is no discussion as to the pros and cons. I have no choice but to go ahead with at least one round of patching, because for a small percentage of kids it works, and if I haven't given it a shot, I'm a Bad Parent. Added to that, if I don't give it a shot, I'm a Non-compliant Parent, which makes it hard to get any doctor to provide real treatment.

All the time, my gut tells me she has the same problem as I do, and all this will be for nothing. Unfortunately, I know perfectly well that my gut lacks real evidence, and has been known to be wrong before. So I have to play along until I have enough evidence to make a truly informed decision. I just know that I'm going to have to fight for that evidence, and I don't think it's reasonable that I have to find the energy for the fight as well as the treatment.

Spend spend spend

Today must have been Catalogue Day. I have an inch high stack of paper advertising to throw in the recycling. I flicked through it all to make sure there was nothing at a good price that I was already intending to buy - there wasn't.

The DJs catalogues though - wow! Two of them, one of which was the size and quality of a mid to high range magazine! The big one was the fashion one - the little one was merely homewares. I looked through the fashion one - not one single item that I looked at and thought "Ooooh, I'd like that." A couple of things I thought "Maybe it'd look ok, depends on the cut". That's it. And then I got to the afterthought that is the men's section. What are they doing to those male models? They are all photographed as they are about to fall over. Not a single one looks like he's in a stable position. Oh, unless he has a woman draped on him.

I was also slightly amused at the excessively manly man stance of the dude in the cream coloured cable knit cardigan.

I'm not sure what the subliminal message is here - men are unstable until they have a woman to hold up and look after? Or just that no matter how expensive it is, a cream cardy is never going to make you look like a macho man?

I've got the better part of half a tree in my lounge room trying to sell me stuff I don't need, and in most cases, don't even want. Makes that big lump of land somewhere out of Sydney look even more attractive, just to hide from the constant demands for me to spend.

I hate school zones

School is back (yay!) and so are school zones. 3 hours a day when cops sit around waiting for someone to forget what time it is and raise some more dollars.

This morning I needed to drive though seven of them, there were cops sitting 20 feet from the end of one of them. I saw precisely 3 kids within the school zones - 2 of whom were behind 6 foot fences.

I probably wouldn't have a problem with them if:

1. They all had lights and were operated by principals only when required, instead of for a random 90 minute window twice a day.

2. They were not outside high schools

3. It was illegal to park within the school zone, so that visibility of kids crossing the road was maximised.

At our school, for example, it operates, like all of them, from 8am to 9:30am. Kids are not even allowed at the school before 9am. If a child arrives 5 minutes late they are not covered by it. In the afternoon, the school zone starts 55 minutes before the kids come out. Not that it matters there - it is a cul-de-sac and you'd be hard pressed doing more than 40 anyway - but I am guessing it isn't the only one.

Right now it is a revenue raising exercise, and it irritates the crap out of me.

Tolerance, Acceptance and Understanding

Dina's awesome post on Michael Kirby brought up the very condescending nature of tolerance. As a high profile gay man, he pointed out that he has no desire for people to tolerate him, he wants them to accept him. Seems pretty reasonable to me, and it also brought to mind the fact that there are things I don't wish to tolerate. Tolerance is something best left to describe handling pain.

I agree that acceptance is where we all need to be with homosexuality. But the necessary step on the way is understanding. For mine, the key point about homosexuality is that it is part of who someone is, it isn't an abomination, and it isn't a choice. I can see why some people might feel that the idea is repugnant. I think the idea of eating mushrooms is repugnant. But that doesn't matter, you don't have to do it yourself (and it's much easier to avoid than eating mushrooms, I can assure you). Other people doing it isn't going to hurt you.

But I don't think all things different deserve acceptance. They do all deserve understanding. When something about a group of people induces a "that's just wrong" response, there are a number of things to consider.

Firstly, is it an integral, unavoidable part of who they are? Race, gender, sexuality and no doubt plenty of other things obviously are. Other things have ambiguous answers - paedophiles is one that comes to mind - clearly broken, but could conceivably be congenitally broken.

Second, am I in some way being required to participate?

Third, is the net negative effect substantial enough to warrant action? I'm thinking a borderline case here might be the Australian love of the swear word. Some people find it really offensive, and it disturbs them greatly. I'm not sure we should completely ignore that - after all most of us don't swear at relo's who really don't like it. But then how much damage is it actually doing?

The point of all this question answering, is that I think sometimes understanding can lead to intolerance, and justifiably so. A culture is not an unchangeable thing, it is reasonable to conclude that you personally don't like a culture. I really don't like the Japanese culture. But I find myself terribly reluctant to say that sort of thing for fear of being judged intolerant and racist. I don't believe anything much at all about Japanese people. Stereotypes come from people looking at a culture and making generalisations about the people who come from it. I don't vilify stereotypes, they are just the descriptive equivalent of statistics. They describe a population, but never a person. And just like statistics, they can be powerful, convenient or misleading. When deliberately abused, they are downright malevolent. Of course, that analogy would work better for the stereotype's image if our own culture didn't make so many decisions about individuals based on the statistics that describe the population they come from. The obsession the medical establishment has with a normal distribution and the damage that does to the field and its patients is a topic for another rant. However, just because we are inept at using them, it doesn't make them inherently bad.

We have to be very careful that we don't create a taboo about criticising culture, religion and other things which we have the power to change, simply because we are not part of them. Culture and religion are growing, changing things. I don't have to come from the Cape to know that the Aboriginal communities need to change the cultures in which child abuse has become endemic. Nor did I need to live in Northern Ireland to know that both sides needed to let go of the hate, because it simply wasn't working.

Of course, understanding is a pre-requisite to criticism. I was trying to come up with an example from Africa, where all sorts of atrocities are taking place, but I simply don't understand enough to be able to make anything resembling valid criticisms. This is why comparitive religion should be taught in schools. If you want to criticise religion A, you really should understand it first.

I don't have moral dilemmas about criticising a culture - a culture gets a "no" answer for question 1. The moral dilemmas I have are when there is a "yes" to question 1 and a "yes" to question 3. If paedophilia (or a subset of it) turns out to be a kind of congenital brokenness, what should we do? Clearly children need to be protected from harm, but I have a problem with vilifying someone for something they can't do anything about. It's a lose-lose. Logic dictates that the safety of the child takes priority, because all morals aside, it may help prevent more brokenness in the future.

Something which, with understanding, is unacceptable and changeable, should be criticised and discussed in an effort to make real change.
Something which, with understanding, is unacceptable and unchangeable is a real challenge. Tolerance is still not an option. Understanding is needed in buckets and a lot of deep thought about avoiding harm in ways that don't vilify those who have no choice.

On a positive note, there are a lot more things that with understanding, turn out to be homosexuality or mushrooms - nothing at all wrong with them as long as no-one's making it compulsory. Acceptance follows naturally from that. And if someone is making it compulsory, that's who needs to cop the flak, not the mushrooms.