Open letter to Damian Thompson on reading a bit of his wretched new book
Dear Damian
I was flipping through Counterknowledge: how we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history in Waterstones, Trafalgar Square, earlier today, quickly but carefully and with a slight intention to buy, but since reading up on your oeuvre I’ve put off paying for it until I can pick up a used copy. I’d hate to encourage you.
I find it anything but astonishing that a person of faith takes the trouble to publish a book damning all but the big narratives of culture and science. This sort of thing happens all the time. And it’s anything but startling to see someone bandy the word ‘reason’ around and adduce science simply in an attempt to scatter the opposition and pre-emptively shut up those who don’t hold the same tenets of faith that they do, who don’t presume to start from Enlightenment reason — anything but — and who don’t base their knowledge on the last word in science.
It would be more interesting to take the argument to the opposition by examining the ideological ground on which they stand, if it’s apparent, and put aside for a book’s space the preconceptions borne of dualism, under which reason automatically, naturally and without prejudice cannot help but oppose wild unreason. If it seems to you that there are enough “What ifs” without you adding to their number, perhaps you’re missing the point of scientific inquiry. What if the straight median line of progress through reason running through the idea of God, slave-owning democracies, hierarchical meritocracies, the dispassionate science of economics, and all the rest of it, touches affective narrative waymarkers either sides of the line in its inexorable linearity, rather than existing simply as a forward-moving thing ever-present and immanent?
With science being, as you imply, a relentless ongoing process of inquiry with no knowledge gap untested, leaving only reason in its indisputable wake, and since history is just the one full, true story, leaving no one ignorant of its veracity, surely we are, as you contend, replete with precisely the positive knowledge we require. However, you don’t start from such a positive position. You argue that we should not tolerate counterknowledge and must destroy it because it is non-knowledge. In fact, you go further and suggest that counterknowledge is worse than ignorance because it purposefully seeks to negate knowledge’s true other. It is precisely the beyondness and independence of that anti-ignorance strategy that makes it so attractive to freethinkers and so dangerous from your point of view.
What could it be in counterknowledge that so unites sceptics and true believers?
Reason
And what of those dangerous people who benefit from the progression of true knowledge but insist on negating its reasonable provenance? I denounce your attempt to divide a world of thinking people into those who’ve failed to embrace reason/science and those who remain true to the one true story you narrate. Yours is a mean–spirited, ugly, divisive sort of discourse.
Although I’m with you in detesting the New Age and conspiracism knowledge markets, I can’t go that extra mile with you and label all unincorporated counterknowledge as moribund. Why? I’m not certain that all known counterfactuals — not to mention the unknown ones — have been disproved or illuminated by scientists or that one history, the true one you’re advancing in opposition to the ‘fake’ ones you mention — not even the history of science or the story of God — is capable of describing all the truth of human experience now and in the past.
Do I accept ‘reason’ and ‘Enlightenment’ as facts? No, because I’ve read widely. Do I accept that science is a dispassionate search for true facts, a thing apart? No, because fallible humans make it. Do I accept that history can be faked? Yes, because all stories are part fiction, even the true ones. Do I accept there is danger in people reconsidering history, science or culture in the light of their own experience? No, because that’s exactly how those things are made. Can I conceive of a turning point in human affairs at which ‘reason’ supported by faith-in-ritual — including faith in rituals of knowledge acquisition and transmission — triumphs over counteractive heterogeneity and productive, interactive experiential differences, whether reasonable? Yes, I’m afraid I can. And that is why I’m not supporting you by buying your book.
Thanks for doing me and the reading/thinking public the courtesy of being accessible to criticism. I wish more writers would do the same.
All the best
Neil Palmer
Feastofpalmer.com
Edit: I wrote this to post in the contact form linked to on http://www.damianthompson.net/. But the web form does not work, so I’ve posted it here. And I retract the last paragraph.
Posted by Neil
on January 8, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Tags: Counterculture, Individualism, The Unexplained, hauntiquarianism
January 9th, 2008 at 12:23 am
First, please, read the fucking book. You’re ascribing positions to me that I don’t take.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Oi Danny,
Your books are vigorously suppressed in my country of domicile so I gotta just got the amazon blurb to go on - which is less than palmer but please don’t swear at me coz I’m really sensitive and will blub like a tiny girl. “the counterknowledge industry has the potential to create new political, social and economic disasters.” Are you implying that ignorance is more dangerous than wisdom? This seems a bizarre viewpoint. It wasn’t primary school kids what engineered the death camps and the atom bombs was it? I get a dozen eggheads trying to biff me asswise for every cretin what tries it. I reckon yr hypothesis is ill-formed…
January 9th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Whoops - better clarify - danny’s blurbwriter *does* acknowledge that ignorance is less dangerous than falsehood (which seems tautological to me) - my point above was meant to be that ignorance is also demonstrably less dangerous than truthhood.
Reactionary intellectuals may like to postulate wisdom as a scale from -1 (absolute falsehood/antiknowledge whatevah) through 0 (ignorance) to +1 (absolute knowledge, truthhood blah), and regard degrees of conflict (and consequential danger) as a product of terms on this scale. In which case, terms closest to zero would be likely to cause lease harm. My inclination is that the sign of the term is insignificant in this context and potential danger is proportional to the absolute value of the term.
Sorry for the ambiguity!
January 9th, 2008 at 5:17 am
And not only that…
“From 9/11 conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial, creationism to alternative medicine, we are all experiencing an epidemic of demonstrably untrue descriptions of the world. ”
Doesn’t this imply that there was *not* a 9/11 conspiracy??? How the bloody fucking hell could one person hijack four separate jets? or a number of people commit such a crime without some degree of secrecy? Of course there was a conspiracy! And probably a secret one involving several criminals at that…
January 9th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Stop bothering me! I should be working…
January 9th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Damian
Please read the first fucking paragraph and the the end of the fucking penultimate one! I’ll read your fucking book when it’s fucking remaindered.
All the fucking best
Neil
January 9th, 2008 at 10:05 am
..or at least send me a fucking copy.
Neil
January 9th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Yo N!
BEWARE! If by any chance he’s right, the more you read, the more ignorant you’ll get! I only read the amazon synopsis and it borked my head irretrievably.
Yours fuckfully,
Strong esq.
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:08 am
Yo!
I have scored a copy (hbk) of damian thompson’s book C[O]UNTERKNOWELDGE. I thought it was his memoirs of a life in retail and being somewhat interested in retail culture (anna tightwad) I employed the principles of “The Secret” to score a freebie - Much to my PLEASURE the Universe delivered… Unfortunately now I that I have the book, I find it *is* bollocks.
Do ya wanna it? or do I combust it and film it and stick it on youchoob like all the other stuff?
S.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hi S
Sorry to hear it’s a dog. There’s always the hope that something of interest will emerge from even the most miserable of blurbs and PR exercises. I’d like to read it and compare it with what he’s writing on his website. Having escaped the academy, it’s always amusing to see how others try and keep knowledge in its ‘proper’ place. I suspect that Thompson’s approach to appropriate categories, filing and so forth will be a lot less interesting than most librarians’. But I’m always willing to give a struggling author a chance.
N
April 7th, 2008 at 3:55 am
Some individuals doubt the self-organising principles that underpin the
Universe regardless of the Weltanschauung of the observer themselves. No
amount of empirical demonstration will persuade them…
I’m so glad that I seen so much inexplicable crazy shit in my life so
far or I would be freaked out maximally by this sad epissode (sic)…
So I was going to post your copy of DT’s “Cunternollij” out this arvo
but figured WTF I’d have a read of it over lunch - (there’s no index, no
bibliography! therefore general nonfiction rather than academic ya dig)
Coming back from lunch I stopped for a piss in the basement khazi of the
library - (Mr P, you know where I’m going with this by now) - sorry to report
that during course of micturation Thomfuck’s book heaved itself of my
jacket side pocket and commenced to flush itself down the pan!!!! I AM
NOT MAKING THIS UP!* I shoved my hand in to rescue it in time but its a
bit uh pissed up. 35 years of pissing with a book in my pocket and this
has never occurred before - I can only assume that I must have been
unconsciously visualising this scenario and accidentally manifested it
inna “The Secret” stylee. Very sorry pal. I hope they let it through
customs. I’ll have to wait for it to dry out a bit before despatch…
en francais: Say “Lavvy”
S.
* You can tell that by the capitals