On the Standard of Opinion Formation

Who is qualified to talk about geopolitics?

FOREWORD: The inspiration for this essay

Let us begin with a short story.

Many moons ago, I formed part of a local badminton group. We played week after week, honing our skills at the local leisure centre. Then, regular as clockwork,  we would go to a cosy pub for a beer and a chinwag.

One evening, while sipping the Berkshire ale and crunching on our Walkers crisps, the issue of the Middle East came up. I don’t remember how. And it certainly wasn’t me that ushered in the poisoned chalice.

We were a reasonably diverse bunch in terms of age, nationality and origins. The lady on one side of me was descended from the Kindertransport refugees. The lady to the right came from Germany. And it was from the latter that the controversy unforgettably sprung. She began to spoke of her sadness for the “poor Palestinians”. Members reacted diversely to this socially-shattering nuclear incursion; and from quite different perspectives. I was taking the calm, moderate, rational and decidedly equanimous approach firing one piece of information after another at her in an unfailingly polite manner.

Then, suddenly, she stopped making her case and said;

and I will never forget this;

that it was unfair debating with me because,

and I quote,

 “(I knew) too many facts!”

It is indeed a problem when one party knows their facts and the other is relying on hearsay and emotions; for by relying on emotion alone, your case is automatically without merit. Instant disqualification. A red card in the World Cup Final.

And it raised the most salient of questions: What really qualifies someone to comment on geopolitics? It’s a nagging question that’s stayed maturating in my mind ever since. Until today. Until I read a marvelous essay from David Hume. Until I encountered the literary and philosophical masterpiece “On the Standard of Taste”. And though it may ostensibly concern artistic appreciation over geopolitical analysis, the analogies it pricked in my mind were overwhelming. So now, over a decade later, I feel (I use this word advisedly) qualified to answer that pressing enquiry. And in the essay below I reveal my conclusion. It will be for you to decide whether I fulfill the exacting criteria…

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“On the Standard of Opinion Formation” by Daniel Clarke-Serret

[ Image: Cenk Uygur vs Mosab Hassan Yousef on Piers Morgan Uncensored, two of many guests to have opined on the Middle Eastern conflict. Who is really qualified to comment on this issue?]

Guerre and Shalom is all about thought-provoking essays. And there can be no essay more thought provoking than that penned by the Scottish wizard David Hume. “Of the Standard of Taste” was ground-breaking in the way it broached the topic of artistic appreciation.

Noting that opinions on art are many and varied - both here and abroad, in our time and throughout history - we are left with the obvious question: is everyone’s opinion equally valid? If matters of taste may not submit to one right answer, then is my view on a restaurant dish equal to that of a Michelin starred chef?

It is a matter of dispute as to whether an object in itself can manifest beauty or whether instead “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. But even if one were to fall back on a position of radical subjectivity, one would still be forced to defend the proposition that all opinion formers were equally qualified to proffer a judgment. In the view of David Hume, there was no equality in the matter. A true judge of the aesthetic would need to fulfil a fivefold set of criteria which he summarised thus:

Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.

We will examine what Hume meant by these propositions shortly. But even before we take such bold a step, I am wont to advance a yet more radical proposition: that in the same way that artistic opinion formers must undergo a certain training to amplify their experience, grant them awareness of detail, heighten their senses, give them the abiliy of comparison and remove from them all prejudice, so must opinion formers on geopolitics and the Middle East undergo the same process. And short of succeeding in these endeavors, their views must be considered nul and void.

Though it must be accepted that a variety of legitimate opinions can be held, distinguished from each other by nuance and perspective, it is nonetheless so that no person can be entitled to audience by mere fact of their terrestrial existence. Whilst freedom of thought remains; and freedom of speech gloriously beyond that; so does freedom to ignore the ignorant stand out as a yet more prescient necessity. There may be more than one right answer; but an equality of all answers that in no way implies. Anti-factual answers are wrong. Illogical, morally-bereft answers are wrong. And any answer pronounced by the unqualified condemns its fate to irrelevance by definition.

Like art before it, a commentator on the Middle East needs to fulfil certain unavoidable tests, without which their view ought be condemned to expression in a vaccuum.

Living in the area of conflict is incidentally not one of them. Do we ask scholars of Shakespeare to have lived near the Bard all those centuries ago? Do we require survivors of the Holocaust to be physically present before others may lecture on the Nazi terror? Just as a historian may use documentary evidence to prove their case, so may the far-distanced observer use their fact-drenched intelligence, emotionally detached as it likely is, to pronounce on foreign, geopolitical realities.

Indeed they may be rather better placed to do that those close at hand. For compared to anxiety-frayed local commentators, they lack the raw emotion of prejudice, and are all the better for it.  My father-in-law, a qualified historian, often commented that the inquisitive Spaniard, in search of the truth about the eponymous Civil War, will find themselves turning to British-written accounts of the disputed events (Anthony Beever, Paul Preston and so on); for none of their fellow countrymen are seen to be sufficiently unprejudiced to comment.

[ Image: British historian Paul Preston is seen by Spaniards as a leading authority on the Spanish Civil War. What makes him more qualified than his Spanish counterparts?]

“He must preserve his mind free from all prejudice, and allow nothing to enter into his consideration, but the very object which is submitted to his examination.”

David Hume

Absence of prejudice is indeed one of the most difficult of the Humist principles to fulfil. In the ever contentious domain of artistic comment, cultural and time-bound prejudice seem ever present, perverting the critic’s mind from objective consideration. Should the artist have expressed some vulgar racial epithet typical of their time, the beauty of their work may be dismissed in the rage of haughty presentism condemning a timeless object to unwarranted dismissal.

The eternal captured in aspect may be obliterated to nothingness due to voguish rage or cultural misunderstanding or an unwillingness to regard the piece detached from the distractions of its time. A modern novelty may be absurdly prioritised over a past masterpiece, it being in touch with the values of the Geist. And the nostalgias of childhood may be shined with the light of seraphic beauty though they be mere representations of a nostalgia unforgotten. 

But though prejudiced judgment may temporarily cloud the judgment, and cause us to search long and hard for the ideal critic, we can rest assured that with time the truth will out. In Hume own beautiful prose:

“Authority or prejudice may give a temporary vogue to a bad poet or orator; but his reputation will never be durable or general. When his compositions are examined by posterity or by foreigners, the enchantment is dissipated, and his faults appear in their true colours. On the contrary, a real genius, the longer his works endure, and the more wide they are spread, the more sincere is the admiration which he meets with.”

And so it is that whilst contemporaneous criticism may leave the artist wild with anger, time will be his patient saviour. The tragedy of appreciation after death is a misery to have drowned the best of humanity; yet we are anaesthetised that the just judgment of history will come gushing in the magnificent fullness of time. We can yet hope for deliverance from a future unwritten. 

But in matters of geopolitical expression prejudice is a token worn with pride. To be self-blind, self-deaf and self-dumb is a trinity worthy of a Noble Prize. To be sightless in the full view of nuance is now to be expected. To listen. To seek accommodation. To understand that righteousness is not a gene imprinted at birth and only in those that agree. All these which would seem essential to the varied palate of intelligent comment are absent from any commentator seeking to speak at the left hand of Piers Morgan. There can be no greater sin than speaking truth and no more wretched quest than seeking it. Prejudice is to be celebrated. But though followers may worship their invariable stubbornness, time will not judge such analysts kindly:    

“When his compositions are examined by posterity or by foreigners, the enchantment is dissipated, and his faults appear in their true colours.”

David Hume

A true geopolitical commentator will exhibit the ability to compare, to seek what they may learn from other conflicts in other geographical spaces. They will search and apply insights from fields as varied as art and philosophy. They will make analogies where they can and recognise singularities where there are none. Just as a true lover of arts will judge one work by reference to another, correctly placing it in the hierarchy of human genius, so will the truth-seeking commentator place all in its non-prejudiced context, taking all relevant factors into account. Though they may be touched by anger in an instant; their sentiment buffeted by a storm of ignorant waves and tempestuous double-standards; their humours will return as before, equanimous and calm. They will compare. They will contrast. They will judge as if cloaked in crimson robes upon the dias.

But though prejudice be poison and experience essential, the ultimate Humian criteria is delicate sentiment; without which comment on art is futile and comment on events vacuous:

“It is acknowledged to be the perfection of every sense or faculty, to perceive with exactness its most minute objects, and allow nothing to escape its notice and observation. The smaller the objects are, which become sensible to the eye, the finer is that organ, and the more elaborate its make and composition. A good palate is not tried by strong flavours; but by a mixture of small ingredients, where we are still sensible of each part, notwithstanding its minuteness and its confusion with the rest. In like manner, a quick and acute perception of beauty and deformity must be the perfection of our mental taste; nor can a man be satisfied with himself while he suspects, that any excellence or blemish in a discourse has passed him unobserved. In this case, the perfection of the man, and the perfection of the sense or feeling, are found to be united.”

Though all Sapiens have a mouth with which to comment and an audacity with which to opine, the true critic will not be satisfied with generic remarks on the strongest of flavours. They will only judge themselves worthy of utterance if the golden test is passed: that they can identify the entire composition of an object, dish or written script, no matter how complex the intermixing of elements and notwithstanding the minuteness of each there combined. Not even the tiniest brushstroke will pass them unnoticed. Not even the most vanishing of errors will leave uncommented. All artistic choices will be uncovered and understood; their experience and training makes it so.

And yet again life imitates art. Or at least it should. The geopolicritic must not be swayed by the outward perception of the thing: the click-baiting “facts”, the gross emotions, the untrained face value. They must see all in glorious multicolour: the confusion of history, the intermingled narrative, the jambalaya of political machination and the complexity of the moment. Nothing must leave them undiscovered. And though such humans roam endangered - and even the greatest grope for ill-lit facts in full knowledge of their ignorance - we can say for a surety that such people once found would be the gold standard; all competing charlatans falling in their wake.

And yet we confuse apparent knowledge with prejudice; for those that claim “delicate sentiment” are oft mired in the gutter of unwashed bias. Only those cleaned anew with the innocence of total ignorance can state plainly that prejudice is far from their character. 

We seek the balance; and though it may be hard to find, there must be no question of its necessity. They with the full knowledge of a Shakespearean scholar along with the centuries-past detachment that the backward glance brings: Those are the ingredients of a worthy commentator. Extensive knowledge married to vast experience united to comparative ability seasoned with the beauty of a prejudice-free mind. To them alone I will listen. A utterance-sorcerer, deceiving that they alone have completed the quest to unrivaled understanding, is a charlatan deserving of instant dismissal.

And so we close with the unanswered: What is it with the artistry, the poetry and the poise that perfume this piece with unremitting insistence? Why must it flower an overbloomed garden? It is an insurance policy most well-advised. For even if time mocks the pretensions of my philosophy and negates the foolishness of my points, at least the finesse will remain. For though vogues may pass and treatises age redundant, art always remains. Shakespeare, Homer, The Beatles: Centuries may fly as if in the twinkling of an eye, but their brilliance will always shine. And that is my most noble of intentions.

In the majestic words of David Hume:

“The same Homer, who pleased at Athens and Rome two thousand years ago, is still admired at Paris and at London. All the changes of climate, government, religion, and language, have not been able to obscure his glory.”

The original David Hume essay is here: https://davidhume.org/texts/empl1/st

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