22AR27-36

( - previous issue - / - next issue - )

pdf = www.bit.ly/3DbtYLb

AR 27:36 - Muslims' misfortune: an emerging "Islam of the Internet"

In this issue:

ISLAM - as many versions as there is diversity among Muslims?

PHILANTHROPY - the increasingly dominant gospel of "Effective Altruism"

SECULARISM - "productivity and performance over mysticism"

Apologia Report 27:36 (1,589)
October 19, 2022

ISLAM

"An Islam of the Internet" by Guy Sorman (City Journal contributing editor/French public intellectual) -- includes an interesting thumbnail of Islam in general: "If one were to sum up, in a provocative but illuminating aphorism, what we need to know about Islam, one would turn to the great Algerian Islamic scholar, Mohammed Arkoun: 'Islam does not exist. There are only Muslims.' Every Muslim can enter into a relationship with God by the intermediary of the Koran. Apart from the Shiite minority, no clergy exists in Islam. The Sunni religion, which represents 90 percent of practicing Muslims, might be compared with Protestantism in its infinite variety and its lack of hierarchy and of a necessary clergy. Only Shiite Islam, which is a kind of national Persian Church, is theocratic.

"It follows that Islam takes on the character of those who practice it. If there are as many versions of Islam as there is diversity among Muslims, it is because all interpret the Koran in the light of their own culture. Between a Moroccan and a Javanese Muslim, the difference is even greater than between a Brazilian Pentecostal and a Swiss Lutheran. The misfortune that has befallen Muslims ... is the emergence of an Islam of the Internet, a collection of hateful slogans, severed from all study of the Koran and deracinated from all culture." City Journal, Aug 25 '22 <www.bit.ly/3rxnbos>

---

PHILANTHROPY

"A Technocrat's Tomorrow: The gospel of 'Effective Altruism' is shaping decisions in Silicon Valley and beyond" by staff editorial writer Barton Swaim (Wall Street Journal, Aug 26 '22) -- in this excoriating review of William MacAskill's recent book, What We Owe the Future, <www.bit.ly/3fYqJOi> Swaim notes that the promo material lauds MacAskill as "the most widely cited philosopher of his age. ... MacAskill is 35. He is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford, a position that he has held since age 28." Furthermore, "very few philosophers in the 21st century are 'cited' at all, and fewer still are cited 'widely.' Anyway, the book comes with a long list of VIP accolades. ...

"MacAskill <williammacaskill.com> is the co-originator of and chief personality behind a movement called effective altruism, a web-based and Silicon Valley-connected confederation of idealists who believe that carefully targeted charitable giving accomplishes more good around the globe than individual behavioral changes or activism. Accordingly he has co-founded and leads a trinity of nonprofit organizations....

"What We Owe the Future purports to address the question of how the human race should organize itself to increase the chances that it will survive and flourish over the next several hundred millennia. There are, Mr. MacAskill explains, two main ways we can "impact" (that word again) the long-term future. First, "we can affect humanity's duration: ensuring that we survive the next few centuries affects how many future generations there are. That is, we can help ensure civilisation's survival." Second, "we can affect civilisation's average value, changing how well or badly life goes for future generations, potentially for as long as civilisation lasts. That is, we can change trajectory." Concern for these two ends Mr. MacAskill calls 'longtermism.'

"Skeptical readers, of whom I confess I am one, will find it mildly amusing that a 35-year-old lifelong campus-dweller believes he possesses sufficient knowledge and wisdom to pronounce on the continuance and advancement of Homo sapiens into the next million years. ... [It] is a preposterous book.

"Every writer is allotted a few platitudes to make a point," but Swaim takes pains to show how MacAskill beggars credulity. It's MacAskill's "arguments themselves that dumbfound. ...

"Books like this very often mask the impracticality of their arguments by assigning agency to a disembodied 'we.' Mr. MacAskill does this on nearly every page," including the book's title. Yet, Swaim himself gets carried away. His review's title pointed us to "Effective Altruism," but don't wait for it. The phrase is never discussed in the piece.

Swaim concludes: "Rarely have I read a book by a reputedly important intellectual more replete with highfalutin truisms, cockamamie analogies and complex discussions leading nowhere." <www.on.wsj.com/3ekX4OE> (paywalled)

(In service to the general public years ago, I [RP] collected examples <www.tinyurl.com/snappyrevcoms> from reviewers who cannot resist such fodder for their literary criticism. However, Swaim's review must surely hover near the top of the stinky pile.)

But wait - there's more!

* - Also from the Wall Street Journal, columnist Andy Kessler offers "'Effective Altruism' Is Neither,” which alerts readers that "Its biggest proponent is crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX," who warned on a podcast that "he might donate $100 million to $1 billion in the 2024 election cycle." July 24 '22 <www.on.wsj.com/3sbMT25> (paywalled)

* - Helpful background: "How a Scottish Moral Philosopher Got Elon Musk's Number” by Nicholas Kulish, who explains that "If the movement has an ur-text, it is the Australian philosopher Peter Singer's article, 'Famine, Affluence and Morality,' published in 1972" <www.bit.ly/3D8NpnY> New York Times, Oct 2 '22 <www.nyti.ms/3VELTRG> (registration required)

---

SECULARISM

This review by Katherine Oktober Matthews in Riding the Dragon (Jul 8 '22) begins: "'On paper, Silicon Valley is one of the least religious places in America,' writes Carolyn Chen in her book, Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley. <www.bit.ly/3CMdbNm> The [typical] company effectively hoards time, energy and enthusiasm that would otherwise go to families, churches, or local communities, producing a workforce that is cut off from the outside, much like a cult. ...

"The fascinating part" of reading the various parties interviewed "employees, managers, HR, executive coaches, and the spiritual leaders invited to teach a work-friendly version of religion on the company dime - speaking in their own words is that, ... their portrayals can easily represent either a utopia or a dystopia. ...

"Chen rightly points out that transformative experiences cannot be compartmentalized to booked timeslots in a company meeting room." She also explains how "religion is able to be brought into the workplace at all - not wholesale, but rather stripped down to an office-safe palatability. ... Most of the developmental tools that are introduced, such as meditation, are Buddhist practices decoupled from their religious roots and reframed as 'self-hacking' or 'optimization.' This reduces a complex belief system to its superficial benefits, replacing inherent spiritual growth with instrumental gains to a marketable skillset, and leaving an individual's inner world vulnerable to be harvested for capitalistic gain. Moreover, by framing work as an inherent good, it enlists the individual into participating in their own harvest, leading to burnout and alienation from other restorative relationships. If the gig economy celebrates working yourself to death, then Silicon Valley dogmatizes it. ...

"What we see in the workplace version of Buddhism is also a disturbing manifestation of what [philosopher] Alain de Botton proposed in his TED talk, Atheism 2.0: stealing from religion. <www.bit.ly/3Thaevw> 'If you don't believe in a religion,' he says, 'there's nothing wrong with picking and mixing, with taking out the best sides of religion.' ... However, in Silicon Valley, we can see what happens when religious practices and the search for meaning are shucked of their spiritual underpinnings.

"Yet, regardless of the object of a religion, whether spiritual or secular, the worship of an idol is bound to disappoint eventually. Those in the throes of work-as-religion are vulnerable to the same crushing reckoning as the religious when god fails them: a crisis of faith." (See for example, Emi Nietfeld's New York Times article: 'After Working at Google, I'll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again.') <www.nyti.ms/3D5zwHd>

"The phenomenon that Chen describes "is now a widely recognizable trend of urban tech companies worldwide. ... Chen's analysis ... provides a crucial warning to would-be copycat companies as well as the parishioners of startup evangelism: Be careful what you worship." <www.bit.ly/3EsfHLa>

Religion Watch (37:8 - 2022) adds that "Chen's book challenges Max Weber's classic thesis that work and capitalism disenchant people and society, although she does note that religion as work changes both traditional companies and society and the nature of faith and spirituality. As work has expanded to cover more aspects of people's lives and also become more enjoyable - at least for higher-level professionals - it has taken on religious aspects, especially in the hands of management consultants who have increasingly used the concepts of 'family' and 'community' and spoken of the company as serving a meaningful higher goal. ...

"Chen's interviews reveal that many Silicon Valley professionals (especially engineers) don't have a crisis of faith so much as they quietly put religion off to one corner of their lives or neglect it because of negative peer pressure, professional busyness, and the move away from their hometowns. ...

"While workers deride open use of the term 'spirituality,' 'behind closed doors with me, many corporate managers said that spirituality is an important - if not the most important - dimension of the work they do,' Chen writes. They even used terms like 'helping people connect to self and Universe,' 'awakening mystery,' and 'sneaking in spirituality,' even if in public they would say 'unleashing your potential.' ...

"Chen writes that while these ideas complement the instrumental approach that hi-tech workers take to their lives and professions, such use of spiritual traditions shapes them to accommodate productivity and performance over mysticism. In particular, the ethnic and religious dimensions of Buddhism are papered over to make the spirituality more scientific and secular, with meditation teachers having to make significant trade-offs to continue their work. The book concludes with the sober observation that as workplaces increasingly draw social, spiritual and communal energies, they can deplete the energy people usually devote to other social institutions, including organized religion, that have traditionally been sources of life fulfillment and social betterment." <www.bit.ly/3SLWKY9>

( - previous issue - / - next issue - )