It's Bulverism Gone Mad, I Tell You

The Intellectual Take Out website used Bulverism as a synonym for privilege theory. It claimed that the idea that black people and white people, or gay people and straight people experience oppression (or “oppression”) differently is Bulveristic and therefore false. Ezekiel Bulver has ruled “You don’t think American is racist because you are white and have never experienced racism” out of court. 

The same conservatives who decry privilege theory as Bulveristic are very willing to accuse liberals of being “politically correct”. They also use terms like “virtue signalling” and, repulsively, “woke”. All these terms are equally Bulveristic. My belief that we should use inclusive language is "PC"; my belief that we should not celebrate slave traders as heroes is "virtue signalling"; my belief that transgender people should be allowed to go to the toilet when they need to is "woke". You don't need to show that my beliefs are wrong: you only need to show that I hold them insincerely. I say "person who can't speak" rather than "dumb" because I want to toe the party line. I support Black Rights Matter because I want you to think I am a good person. I believe that transgender people exist because I want to patronise you. 

You might be right. Fashionable causes and bandwagons do exist. But equally, you may believe that we should celebrate the slave trade because that is the party line in your party. You may want to ban transgender people from public lavatories because you want the bigots in your own party to see how bigoted you are. You may say "retard" rather than "person with learning difficulties" because you look down on me. The whole point of Bulverism is that it cuts both ways. 

No-one ever says that saying "paramedic" rather than "ambulance dude" is sometimes "woke" and sometimes "not woke" depending on how sincerely the speaker means it and whether he says it in a patronising voice or not. And no-one ever says that supporting the Queen, or wearing a poppy or upholding the Second Amendment is politically correct, even though it is clearly the correct thing to say in some political parties. And no-one ever says that those people who form mobs outside courtrooms holding "string him up" placards and mock-nooses are virtue signalling. Political Correctness means nothing more than "the kind of thing that liberals believe". Virtue Signalling means nothing more than "the kind of thing that liberals do." Woke means nothing more than "the way liberals talk".

It is the absolute consummation of Bulverism. You do not have to explain, or find out, why it would be a bad thing if schools were wheelchair accessible. You only have to say that my belief that we should put ramps in school buildings is the kind of thing that liberals like me believe. You don't have to find out whether breath masks do, or do not, impede the spread of Covid. You have only to say that wearing breath masks is the kind of thing which liberals like me do. You do not have to make out a case for continuing to celebrate the slave trade. You only have to say that it is the kind of thing which liberals like me are against. 

Those PC wheelchair ramps! Those woke breath masks! Those virtue signalling BLM protestors! They only believe those things because they are the kinds of things that people like them believe. And the things people like them believe are wrong because people like them believe them.

My Patreon supporters have already read the whole of this essay (in a smart E-book format!) Why not join them? 

Alternatively please drop a few pence in the tithe jar.

The Most Bulveristic Argument I Have Ever Heard

In 2014 an academic called Karen King published what appeared to be a fragment of a seventh or eighth century Christian document which appeared to say that Jesus Christ was married (or, as she very carefully put it, that some Christians in the seventh or eighth century believed that Jesus Christ was married.)

The document was subjected to very close scrutiny by other academics, and the consensus was eventually reached that the document was a forgery. Simcha Jacobovici, who believes in a number of fringe-theories about the historical Jesus wrote the following: 

“The rules of the game are that any archaeology that contradicts orthodox Christian theology is either too late, too early, not what it looks like or an outright forgery. Nothing, I repeat, nothing in archaeology can ever contradict what Pauline Christianity says is the gospel truth. So in the 1970’s when Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University – the leading New Testament scholar of his day – said he found a version of the Gospel of Mark that contradicts the present Gospel, he was called an outright forger and he went to his grave with his reputation in tatters. They were kinder to Professor King. The sleeper agents of Christian theology didn’t say that she was a forger. They simply said that Professor King was dumb enough to fall for a forgery.” 

This is a classic “you only think that because...” argument: the new manuscript appears to contradict Christian orthodoxy; therefore anyone casting doubt on it’s authenticity “only thinks that because” they are orthodox Christians. Therefore all evidence that the document is a forgery can be discounted. When you have discounted the evidence that it a forgery, what you are left with is evidence that it is authentic. Hence it is authentic: QED. 

It is true that were an ancient document that shed heterodox light on the historical Jesus to be discovered, someone who was highly committed to orthodox Christianity would have an ulterior motive to say that it was forged. It is equally true that if a forged document were discovered, someone highly committed to different version—someone who claimed to have discovered the tomb of Mr and Mrs Christ and a coded Gospel describing their courtship, for example—would have an ulterior motive for saying that the document was genuine. But the theological prejudices of the writers tell us nothing about whether or not the documents is authentic or forged. That involves months and years of boring linguistic, textual and palaeographic study. 

If heterodox writers always believe that heterodox documents are genuine. and orthodox writers always believe that orthodox documents are genuine no discussion of religious texts can ever occur. Jacobovici's reasoning takes historical theology out of the realm of rational discourse.

My Patreon supporters have already read the whole of this essay (in a smart E-book format!) Why not join them? 

Alternatively please drop a few pence in the tithe jar.

11: 1908

Four months before his death, Lewis wrote to An American Lady 

“Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so blighted my childhood.” 

Everyone who has read Lewis’ autobiography remembers the lurid description of his prep school: he told one of the Narnia fans who wrote to him after he became a celebrity that it had been even worse than front line trenches in World War I. Some of his biographers think he went a bit over the top in his description. But it was clearly pretty bad. There was a single teacher; he didn’t make much attempt to teach the children; just set them maths problems to do over and over. The was an outside toilet, no library, no playground, no sports field, no science lab. The food was inadequate and disgusting. And naturally, the teacher used to hit the boys. Surprised by Joy includes a lurid description of “Oldie” (Rev. Capron) caning a pupil: Lewis describes it as a form of torture, and claims that the same boy had been beaten on twenty or thirty previous occasions. 

Well, that is how schools often were in those days. Lewis's dad said that schools had to be horrible or else they wouldn't be schools at all. It was 1908: you can’t (I am told) judge the past by the standards of the present. English teachers would carry on giving boys the cane for another ninety years. Winston Churchill and Roald Dahl got worse and it didn’t, to coin a phrase, do them any harm. Describing a prep school as being like a concentration camp seems a tad disrespectful to the Jewish community: did C.S. Lewis really read about the liberation of Belsen and think “Gosh, that sounds just like Wynyard Preparatory School”? 

Two points about Lewis’s description of the school seem to have entirely passed his biographers by. 

First, Lewis says that the headmaster treated him as “rather a pet or mascot”. It is interesting that he says “pet or mascot” rather than simply “favourite”. (The term “teacher’s pet” was certainly current by 1955 and probably in 1908.) He says that the rewards of being Capron’s pet were “purely negative”. It’s a very odd turn of phrase. A negative reward is by definition a punishment; although in some pedagogic contexts it might mean “withdrawing a privilege in the expectation that it will be reinstated later”. Does he mean simply “I avoided some ill treatment, but I didn’t get any kind treatment”; “I got fewer punishments but no treats”? Or does he mean “I was his favourite; but his favourites were singled out for worse treatment than the others?” But he talks about Oldie having “favourite victims” and “boys who could do nothing right” and he wasn’t one of those. 

And then he does something atrociously Lewisian. He tells us that there is something he is not telling us. 

He does this sort of thing moderately often: recall that later in Surprised by Joy he will announce to the world that he is going to “omit one enormous emotional incident”; elsewhere he mentions a friend who has a phobia of the Encyclopedia Britannica “for a reason I defy you to guess.” And of course, when sexuality pops up in his work, he is inclined to warn us that he is now going to speak very frankly about a certain thing and then refuse to name or mention it. 

“I must restrain myself. I could continue to talk about Oldie for many pages. Some of the worst is unsaid. But perhaps it would be wicked, and it is certainly not obligatory to do so.” 

“Some of the worst is unsaid.” He has described the teacher as being a bully. Lewis does not think that Capron is one of those who approves of corporal punishment because he was a sadist: he wasn’t spanking boys for sexual kicks. Perhaps he was simply a psychopath. Lewis says that he has heard a rumour that Capron was insane; it is a matter of fact he ended his life in Camberwell House Asylum. Walter Hooper claims that Capron had been declared mad by a brain specialist before Lewis arrived at the school. 

So what is this “worse” thing that Lewis thinks it might be immoral to reveal? He told his young fan that she was too young to know what really happened at his school: did a 1960s school-girl need to be protected from “he used to whack us” and “the loos were disgusting”? 

I draw a blank. Does he suspect that Capron murdered a pupil? Or is he alleging some kind of sexual abuse? He is a little old-boyish about the pedophilia at his next school: it definitely happened; it never appealed to him; but mostly he found it a crashing bore. He treats relationships between boys of eighteen and boys of thirteen as consensual love affairs. At Malvern when a younger boy became and older boy’s boyfriend he was referred to as a “tart”. Is it possible that Lewis is using the expression “pet or mascot” as a euphemism? And that the negative consequences of being favoured by the old man were that he avoided beatings but was subjected to molestation? 

But Lewis has one good thing to say about Oldie. In one respect only he was a good teacher. There was a particular subject that he taught well and that Lewis felt he was a better person for having learned. 

Which subject? See if you can guess. 

After the description of working-class “P” getting whacked, Lewis adds a footnote. I don’t know why it is a footnote: is it because he can’t quite bring himself to say it, or is it an afterthought, or is it a funny way of emphasising the point? 

"This punishment", he says, "was for a mistake in a geometrical proof." 

Oldie's one redeeming feature is that he was a good geometry teacher. And the one incident that Lewis singles out as an example of his cruelty is a geometry lesson. 

C.S. Lewis only believes in Bulverism because he was traumatised by an abusive geometry teacher.

My Patreon supporters have already read the whole of this essay (in a smart E-book format!) Why not join them? 

Alternatively please drop a few pence in the tithe jar.

When Did You Start Reading "When Did You Stop Reading Cerebus"?

Dear Andrew

I would very much like to read your 20,000 word appreciation of Cerebus the Aardvark in a pretty PDF format with added jokes and rarities from the Rilstone Vault. But I don't want to commit to paying you a dollar every time you publish something for the rest of my life. Is there anything you can do about that. 

A Dedicated Reader

Dear Dedicated 

Thank you for your letter. You can have a copy of the PDF of your very own if you send me $14 / £10.50 (the equivalent of a $2 pledge).

Andrew

Dear Andrew

The money is on the way. Are you going to put the booklet out as a physical book as well. 

A Grateful and Dedicated Reader 

Dear Grateful and Dedicated

I don't know. Maybe I should?

Andrew

When Did You Stop Reading Cerebus? 

80 page booklet / 20,000 word essay plus extras / pretty layout