Lesson from a Facebook debate - Questioning Intentions of the Author

I recently had a small Facebook fist fight with a good friend over the relative merits of an article that was being shared a lot. The article elicited cries of protest from several people who took offense at its free-wheeling and rambunctious dismissal of India's prospects for the future, particularly if seen in the light of the idea of India that was sought after by stalwarts such as Gandhi, Nehru and Patel.

The skirmish started and ended in a couple of hours and when I looked back at it today I realized a simple problem that was at the heart of the debate -  the question over authorial intentions.

It should be simple enough, in hindsight of course. Before that, an overview of the type of arguments offered today is necessitated.

The lowest, the basest of arguments, take place when people just stand by their opinions and tell the opposite side to accept the divinely inherited wisdom they propound. As useless as this description sounds, it's in most vogue on our public fora.

Then, comes the interesting part. Ideally, any debate should be on the arguments of the piece. That's difficult. For that one needs to either have subject expertise or she has to make the effort to individually research the points made and come out with conclusions and rebuttals. It is even more difficult than it sounds.

And then there's the middle rung. The one where you don't consider yourself foolish enough to reiterate your beliefs but you also can't find the time to understand the nuances of the argument. You still dislike the article but you feel you're intellectual (or neutral) enough to not simply say that.

That is the case when a debate is fought over questioning the intention of the author. As was the case in my little battle. If you can't go into the claims of the author, just disparage him by claiming he works against the nation, or that he is part of an elite, or that he is part of a West appeasing cult. There, you say that and you build your case over protecting the honour of your nation. In which case, a randomly lurking lackey will latch onto your topic with relish and fight for honour (never mind the ensuing hilarious implications).

What I missed, however, is the fact that a battle over intentions is also difficult. And well nigh impossible especially when dealing with acclaimed intellectuals. That's because you have no way of judging the intent of an author without knowing her body of work. A brief study tells you about her stature, her consistency (+1) and periodic if any instabilities in sticking to a stance (-2). In my example, the author is universally known as a man who disputes the assumption of western superiority, going on to embellish the stature of Asian statesmen. That implies a fair amount of cognitive dissonance when connected with an appeasement narrative. That is if my friend had that knowledge, obviously. Instead, the claim was coupled with vague assertions of finding weak arguments and not believing in the data shared. Without sharing the weak points and coming out with the right data, of course.

I didn't freely see it then. A debate on intention is not possible without any knowledge of the author's oeuvre. It's like calling Tarantino a racist because he uses the n word a lot. But that was the case in my spat.

Lesson learnt.

A Belated Eulogy

“Steve Jobs, pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.”

                                  -  Richard Stallman

On October 5, 2011 it seemed the world at large was in grief over the untimely death of a great entrepreneur. Hashtags abounded (#iSad?), cut-copy-paste was channelled effectively in sharing eulogies and there was turmoil of despair in the minds of millions of wannabes.

The dust has largely settled. It’s much safer to wade against that time’s tide and it gives me a chance to say a few things that have been brewing in my mind ever since the departure of a great visionary. I thought of many ways to begin a measured tirade but I have a somewhat easier approach to bring home my case with an appropriate analogy. The Oatmeal, an instrument of satire and slapstick had recently called Thomas Alva Edison as the biggest douchebag in the history of geekdom. The accusations levelled against Edison can be briefly listed as follows:

1. That he did not invent the light bulb himself but only improved it in a way that made it accessible to everyone. “Edison simply figured out how to sell the light bulb.”
2. “Edison was not a geek; he was a CEO.”
3. “Edison was known for rushing to the patent office as soon as one of his employees had something.”
4. He was utterly ruthless with his employees (even with Tesla when he worked under Edison) and would get down to ridiculous levels of savagery to disparage his rivals' works.

The Oatmeal guy then concludes his robust and highly impartial analysis of the achievements of Edison with the following apt conclusion:

In short, the only thing Edison truly pioneered was douchebaggery.

See anything familiar?

Exactly.

The Battle for Grammar

There was a time not very long ago when I used to feel very proud of my control over grammar. You know, your ears prickle when you hear an incorrect sentence, you have the ability to catch hold of the best way to express a thought and you’re able to correctly apply some of the more rigid rules (those that are less conducive to being explained through simple logic) of the Queen’s. I lived in a happy bubble. Even after turning incredibly lazy and occasionally spewing out a dirtier combination of easy-to-use phrases, I still turn red whenever I make a blatant error. I wasn't the only person to harbour a feeling of supremacy and quiet contentment. The number of grammar conscious people constantly increased in my circle and all was well.

Or so it seemed. Peers play a crucial role in moulding your tastes. I had no qualms about using SMS slang in chats and texts. I had no problem not using the proper sentence case while typing. Not until I experienced deep disapproval from my seniors that I changed my preferences and started looking down upon the lowly classes. “That guy writes ‘hawt’!” or “I can’t understand why they spell ‘kool’ when the original’s in four letters too”.  I was part of the elite, the Right, a protector of the sacrosanct ways of English. I could only generate sympathy for the other side in a good mood, and scorn otherwise.

Things started changing soon. For one thing, your friends are a mirror of your own self and I could see how I looked to the outside world- patronizing, insensitive and deluded. Besides, there was a limit to my desire of emulating my peers. As the years went by, I thought I had narrowed my view of the world. The argument that resulted from my mental meanderings was this: as long as you can convey your thoughts to the intended recipient does it actually matter if you use proper grammar? And who sets the rules anyway? If we had not digressed from the standards set by the pre-eminent linguists of the era we’d still be using old English. Shakespeare would have been convicted for gross sacrilege and hanged as he invented words on the go to suit his need and distorted verbs and tenses that go far beyond anything else done by a writer in the name of poetic license. Language is a living body; it reflects the pace and needs of our times. We might just end up with Newspeak. But the difference is that people aren’t being forced onto a newer language, we’re adapting it to our lifestyles. On the other hand, a Hagrid sort of a guy generally wouldn’t get a chance to speak at an international conference of leaders. His language may be a natural consequence of his environment but it’s like the FPS system. It’s good enough for the entire course of a person’s life but wouldn’t fetch him/her an entry into a science seminar where the de facto standard is the SI.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to search very far to receive a context to my tribulations. There is a raging debate going on in the academic world, the battle between the Prescriptivists and the Descriptivists.

A brief description is warranted. Precriptivists are the conservatives. They demand the need to define and regulate the form of language. There are rules and these must be followed to maintain the beauty of language and to keep out all forms of ambiguity or dilution of standards. A case in point is the difference between the use of “who” for the subject and “whom” for the object in a sentence. They say that rules are important to avoid chaos and to keep everyone in line (at the expense of losing those who couldn’t be inducted in the right way). Descriptivists are those who believe that rules are nothing but the current predominant state of usage. It’s enough for a child who learns a language from his environment and then uses it to communicate effectively with others. An emphasis on rules necessitates bias against certain dialects and forms. Language is a living system of internally consistent logic. Many of the rules, they say, have no basis in them. They are, to use Steven Pinker’s words, “old wives' tales”.

I mention Pinker’s name to stress that this is not a debate between the academics and the masses. It’s a battle that’s raging between the top psychologists and linguists of the world. A recent essay by Joan Acocella sparked off a skirmish between the two sections. On first glance and to an uninitiated mind the review is a lengthy discussion of the merits and fallacies of a recently published book. A more informed read tells you that the reviewer has launched a scathing attack on the decriptivists. It would have been all well too, except that Acocella makes several mistakes in her analysis. Consequently, her review has been lambasted  and ridiculed. You can’t launch an attack without knowing your terrain.

To my mind, the greatest difference between the two sides is the emphasis which they put on the role of rules in defining a language. It would be easy to state that a middle path is desired, one that allows language to evolve continuously but with the rules there in place to avoid confusion. It sounds simple. It isn’t. The hardest thing for an intelligent mind which has spent years on a problem is for it to concede or compromise. I don’t think rules are so important. I don’t find anything wrong with slang. Historically, truth and convention are defined by the majority. The day enough people regularly write hawt instead of hot will be the day it’s inducted into the dictionary.

Take it away, Bob:

For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Sporty Behaviour

If you’d ask me, I’d say all of sports is a big sham. Probably the biggest of them all. Millions or even billions of dollars going up in smoke over a bunch of guys in shorts who spend an hour or more grunting, cussing and running all over the place. Think about it. What have they done for us? Have they cured a life threatening disease? Have they stopped wars, or given birth to the steam engine or even the little Post-It notes that dot my desk? No, sir, they have not.

I remember as a lad when people used to start shedding tears whenever we lost a critical fixture at the Cricket World Cup. Not to mention all those who harangue their own senses by hockey’s "sad" demise in our sporting culture. These days we’re all obsessed with the Premier League, something that confounds my mind to no end. It’s the height of irony. People in India tend to support the predominant teams of the decade. In a way, you can tell when your friend started watching club football. If it’s Arsenal, it was probably during the Invincibles season, Chelsea for the Mourinho era and United does the job of ensnaring all our remaining die-hard fans. No Sunderland, no Blackburn (with or without Indian ownership) and definitely no West Ham (that’s taboo).

Don’t brand me a heretic. I’m ready to fight my case. When a team or an individual or a mix of both get famous, brands are all ready to splurge their booty for a 15 second commercial that leaves some of us salivating. Fuming in my case. You could do a lot with that cash. Give it to the families of those who’ve sacrificed their lives in the army, or use it to help the poor and the unfairly deprived. I get it when someone works to earn his money. I just don’t understand the logic behind the crunching of numbers in this case.

Of course, I can make an exception with certain sports. Or certain individuals. Take Roger Federer, for instance. One look at him and you can tell he’s special. The sort you see once in your lifetime. Calm, elegant, and with shots that speak of grandeur and understated efficiency in one go. Nadal’s good but he runs around too much for my liking. That’s a lot of hard work and getting brutishly physical. Achievable as well, I expect a horde of clones in the near future. Djokovic is on fire but then it’s hard to see how he can keep this up. Even today, when Roger plays, he makes his job look ridiculously easy. That is, I think, the mark of a true genius. You work as hard as you can to get there but not without some innate talent. If you can look at a sportsperson play, and then shake your head with a I-can’t-do-that-the-way-he-does look, the player is huge.

My obsession with Roger started in the summer of 2004. I was then an admirer of Andy Roddick. Boom-boom serve and all that. The Wimbledon final was on air. The match was a big one, Federer defending his title against a resurgent Roddick, looking for a shot at reclaiming his No.1 ranking. Federer won in straight sets. And I shamelessly switched allegiances. It was all smooth sailing from then on. For several years then, there was a juggernaut annihilating everything in its path, and as a fan I was happily sitting on the bandwagon. Things started to change after the Wimbledon 2007 final. You could see the great man was struggling. The victory was difficult, and mononucleosis followed the next year. In one swift stroke, I was thrown out of the lazy comfort of my courtside loyalty into the dark streets of uncertainty and doubt. Every point lost was terrible, each title lost was a pain that shot up my forehead. It reached a nadir when a victory could only bring relief while every loss brought days of disillusionment and despondency.

That’s when I realized the three stages of fan following. They don’t necessarily follow a particular order. But this is my story, and this is how it went. There’s this glorious phase of upsurge and triumph where you can only get better, when a loss is only a stepping stone to even more greatness. It’s easy to support your man, and you can let loose screams of vindication, and snarls of condescension. Then, the plateau. A phase of recurring patterns, of victories in familiar grounds, of defeats that shouldn't have really happened, it’s when you start coming to terms with the possibility of vulnerability and mortality. It becomes hard to accept things as they come and a lot of your mates have a thing or two to say about your erstwhile claims. And then there’s the last stage. You happily accept what comes your way. You will most happily revel in victory but a loss would only mean a kind shrug of the shoulders and a fatherly clap on the back of your man. 

All right I admit it. I am a hypocrite. Arrest me if you will. I don’t think sports is so great, that Lionel Messi is a lot more than a short kid who runs really quickly. I mean, think about it. What have these people done to our lives? Made us happier? Only if you are ready to immerse yourself in their victories and defeats. If I had my way, I’d tell every sportsperson that playing sports is deeply atavistic, a throw-back to the times when we had to live a Captain Caveman life. Grow up folks, we’ve evolved over the years, we need to get a thrill from sophisticated, metaphysical constructs. Not animalistic activities. I do make liberal exceptions and while I write this the French Open shall soon begin. Allez Federer! Get through the semi-finals and I’ll be proud of you!