It is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it’s about to trip over something. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has also forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.
The kakapo is one of several island species of animals that, in the interpretation offered here, are ill-equipped to hold their own against predators and competitors whose gene pools have been honed in the harsher ecological climate of the mainland:
So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight – the locals wouldn’t stand a chance.
Of the endangered animals that Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine set out to see, one seems to have gone for good during the intervening two decades. We have now lost our last chance to see the Yangtze River dolphin. Or hear it, which is more to the point, for the river dolphin lived in a world where seeing was pretty much out of the question anyway: a murky, muddy river in which sonar came splendidly into its own – until the arrival of massive noise pollution by the engines of boats.
The loss of the river dolphin is a tragedy, and some of the other wonderful characters in this book cannot be far behind. In his Last Word, Mark Carwardine reflects on why we should care when species, or whole major groups of animals and plants, go extinct. He deals with the usual arguments:
Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our own survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients for many industrial processes.
Yes, yes, we have to say that kind of thing, it’s expected of us. But the pity is that we need to justify conservation on such human-centred, utilitarian grounds. To borrow an analogy I’ve used in a different context, it’s a bit like justifying music on the grounds that it’s good exercise for the violinist’s right arm. Surely the real justification for saving these magnificent creatures is the one with which Mark rounds off the book, and which he obviously prefers:
There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.
Yes!
The world is a poorer, darker, lonelier place without Douglas Adams. We still have his books, his recorded voice, memories, funny stories, affectionate anecdotes. I literally cannot think of another departed public figure whose memory arouses such universal affection, among those who knew him personally and those who didn’t. He was especially loved by scientists. He understood them and was able to articulate, far better than they could, what gets their blood running. I used that very phrase, in a television documentary called Break the Science Barrier, when I interviewed Douglas and asked him: ‘What is it about science that really gets your blood running?’ His impromptu reply should be framed on the wall of every science classroom in the land:
The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened – it’s just wonderful. And…the opportunity to spend seventy or eighty years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.*2
Seventy or eighty? If only.
The pages of this book sparkle with science, scientific wit, science seen through the rainbow prism of ‘a world-class imagination’. There is no cloying sentimentality in Douglas’s view of the aye-aye, the kakapo, the northern white rhino, the echo parakeet, the Komodo dragon. Douglas understood very well how slowly grind the mills of natural selection. He knew how many megayears it takes to build a mountain gorilla, a Mauritius pink pigeon or a Yangtze River dolphin. He saw with his own eyes how quickly such painstaking edifices of evolutionary artifice can be torn down and tossed to oblivion. He tried to do something about it. So should we, if only to honour the memory of this unrepeatable specimen of Homo sapiens. For once, the specific name is well deserved.
* * *
*1 A play on words, for this essay was first published as the foreword to the 2009 edition of Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See.
*2 The documentary was for Channel 4 and was broadcast in 1996. In the course of the interview, Douglas had just said that in the nineteenth century the novel was where one would go for ‘serious reflections about life’, but that nowadays ‘the scientists actually tell us much much more about such issues than you’d ever get from novelists’. I then asked him: ‘What is it about science that really gets your blood running?’ and this was his reply.
VII
LAUGHING AT LIVE DRAGONS
IN A WAY IT’S A FALSE categorization to devote a specific section of this book to humour. If you’ve read consecutively thus far, you’ll know why: even on the gravest of topics, where it issues in a hue pretty much as dark as black humour gets, and irrepressibly in lighter contexts, humour is a constantly glinting seam through the Dawkins oeuvre. So why this section? It’s always been a puzzle to me, and indeed something of an irritation, to read this or that interview or profile and find the writer saying something along the lines that ‘Richard Dawkins is of course a very clever man but has no sense of humour’ or ‘the trouble with atheists is, they have no sense of humour’. This is so blatantly wrong that it seems justifiable – and in harmony with the scientific method – to offer a little evidence.
Exhibits A–G here, chosen to reflect Richard Dawkins’ own heroes of comic writing as well as his own considerable talent in its practice, range from pitch-perfect pastiche to prodigal inventiveness to the pithiest of ironies. All have in common the wit and linguistic agility that run through so much of the material in this book; here that seam of gold hits the surface.
It was the search for gold, of course, that woke the dragon in Tolkien’s fantasy story The Hobbit; and it was the courageous ‘everyman’ Bilbo who cautioned himself: ‘Never laugh at live dragons.’ Richard would have no truck with fear of fire-breathing monsters; but his eagerness to prod the ferocious as well as the ridiculous might well raise a wizard’s eyebrow.
Pastiche and satire alike require a sensitive ear for voice as well as a practised hand with language; pastiche as satire requires a particularly sure touch, and ‘Fundraising for faith’ is so close to the voice of the keen New Labour acolyte as to make it hard not to feel for the blushes of the bright young things of the sometime PM’s office who surely must recognize their argot coming back at them.
Crafted with an equally sure touch, and wearing lightly their weighty messages – debunking the theology of the Atonement and outlining the mechanism of evolution by natural selection – the two Wodehouse parodies, ‘The Great Bus Mystery’ and ‘Jarvis and the Family Tree’, are sheer delight in their homage to a master of Englishness, right down to the aunt’s footstep on the stair.
Satire, of course, can be deadly serious as well as wincingly funny, as witnessed here most forcefully by the next piece, ‘Gerin Oil’. In view of Richard’s dedication to the frequently thankless task of bearing reason’s banner into hostile territory, it’s surely an achievement of some order to retain not only a lively sense of irony but a lightness of touch on even the grimmest of subjects.
There is plenty of companionable humour here,
too – laughing with the dragon-hunters and indeed the dragon-lovers. From P. G. Wodehouse to Robert Mash, the ‘Sage elder statesman of the dinosaur fancy’, there’s a heritage here of literate wordiness, a fellowship of lovers of language and what it can do, in which Richard is undeniably at home. In his foreword to Mash’s How to Keep Dinosaurs he sets out his own allegiances in literary humour and then, with evident delight and enjoyment, enters into the parallel world, picks up the baton and adds his own flourishing coda.
Finally, after the rich diet of dinosaur comes the astringent brevity of two crisp satires. ‘Athorism: let’s hope it’s a lasting vogue’ turns the language and argumentation of modern theology back on itself with evident glee and consummate skill; and to round off the section, ‘Dawkins’ Laws’ clothe wry frustration in the garb of philosophical discourse and nail an important truth with pinpoint wit.
Even Gandalf might be impressed.
G.S.
Fundraising for faith*
DEAR PERSON OF FAITH
Basically, I write as fundraiser for the wonderful new Tony Blair Foundation, whose aim is ‘to promote respect and understanding about the world’s major religions and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world’. I would like to touch base with you on six key points from the recent New Statesman piece by Tony (as he likes to be called by everybody, of all faiths – or indeed of none, for that’s how tuned in he is!).
‘My faith has always been an important part of my politics.’
Yes indeed, although Tony modestly kept shtum about it when he was PM. As he said, to shout his faith from the rooftops might have been interpreted as claiming moral superiority over those with no faith (and therefore no morals, of course). Also, some might have objected to their PM taking advice from voices only he could hear; but hey, reality is so last year compared with private revelation, no? What else, other than shared faith, could have brought Tony together with his friend and comrade-in-arms, George ‘Mission Accomplished’ Bush, in their life-saving and humanitarian intervention in Iraq?
Admittedly, there are one or two problems remaining to be ironed out there, but all the more reason for people of different faiths – Christian and Muslim, Sunni and Shia – to join together in meaningful dialogue to seek common ground, just as Catholics and Protestants have done, so heart-warmingly, throughout European history. It is these great benefits of faith that the Tony Blair Foundation seeks to promote.
‘We are focusing on five main projects initially, working with partners in the six main faiths.’
Yes I know, I know, it’s a pity we had to limit ourselves to six. But we do have boundless respect for other faiths, all of which, in their colourful variety, enrich human lives.
In a very real sense, we have much to learn from Zoroastrianism and Jainism. And from Mormonism, though Cherie says we need to go easy on the polygamy and the sacred underpants!! Then again, we mustn’t forget the ancient and rich Olympian and Norse traditions – although our modern blue-skies thinking out of the box has pushed the envelope on shock-and-awe tactics, and put Zeus’s thunderbolts and Thor’s hammer in the shade!!! We hope, in Phase 2 of our Five-Year Plan, to embrace Scientology and Druidic Mistletoe Worship, which, in a very real sense, have something to teach us all. In Phase 3, our firm commitment to Diversity will lead us to source new networking partnership opportunities with the many hundreds of African tribal religions. Sacrificing goats may present problems with the RSPCA, but we hope to persuade them to adjust their priorities to take proper account of religious sensibilities.
‘We are working across religious divides towards a common goal – ending the scandal of deaths from malaria.’
Plus, of course, we mustn’t forget the countless deaths from AIDS. This is where we can learn from the Pope’s inspiring vision, expounded recently on his visit to Africa. Drawing on his reserves of scientific and medical knowledge – informed and deepened by the Values that only faith can bring – His Holiness explained that the scourge of AIDS is made worse, not better, by condoms. His advocacy of abstinence may have dismayed some medical experts (and the same goes for his deeply and sincerely held opposition to stem-cell research). But surely to goodness we must find room for a diverse range of opinions. All opinions, after all, are equally valid, and there are many ways of knowing, spiritual as well as factual. That, at the end of the day, is what the Foundation is all about.
‘We have established Face to Faith, an interfaith schools programme to counter intolerance and extremism.’
The great thing is to foster diversity, as Tony himself said in 2002, when challenged by a (rather intolerant!!!!) MP about a school in Gateshead teaching children that the world is only six thousand years old. Of course you may think, as Tony himself happens to, that the true age of the world is 4.6 billion years. But – excuse me – in this multicultural world, we must find room to tolerate – and indeed actively foster – all opinions: the more diverse, the better. We are looking to set up video-conferencing dialogues to brainstorm our differences. By the way, that Gateshead school ticked lots of boxes when it came to GCSE results, which just goes to show.
‘Children of one faith and culture will have the chance to interact with children of another, getting a real sense of each other’s lived experience.’
Cool! And, thanks to Tony’s policy of segregating as many children as possible in faith schools where they can’t befriend kids from other backgrounds, the need for this interaction and mutual understanding has never been so strong. You see how it all hangs together? Sheer genius!
So strongly do we support the principle that children should be sent to schools which will identify them with their parents’ beliefs, that we think there is a real opportunity here to broaden it out. In Phase 2, we look to facilitate separate schools for Postmodernist children, Leavisite children and Saussurian Structuralist children. And in Phase 3 we shall roll out yet more separate schools, for Keynesian children, Monetarist children and even neo-Marxist children.
‘We are working with the Coexist Foundation and Cambridge University to develop the concept of Abraham House.’
I always think it’s so important to coexist, don’t you agree, with our brothers and sisters of the other Abrahamic faiths. Of course we have our differences – I mean, who doesn’t, basically? But we must all learn mutual respect. For example, we need to understand and sympathize with the deep hurt and offence that a man can feel if we insult his traditional beliefs by trying to stop him beating his wife, or setting fire to his daughter or cutting off her clitoris (and please don’t let’s hear any racist or Islamophobic objections to these important expressions of faith). We shall support the introduction of Sharia courts, but on a strictly voluntary basis – only for those whose husbands and fathers freely choose it.
‘The Blair Foundation will work to leverage mutual respect and understanding between seemingly incompatible faith traditions.’
After all, despite our differences, we do have one important thing in common: all of us in the faith communities hold firm beliefs in the total absence of evidence, which leaves us free to believe anything we like. So, at the very least, we can be united in claiming a privileged role for all these private beliefs in the formulation of public policy.
I hope this letter will have shown you some of the reasons why you might consider supporting Tony’s Foundation. Because hey, let’s face it, a world without religion doesn’t have a prayer. With so many of the world’s problems caused by religion, what better solution could there possibly be than to promote yet more of it?
* * *
* Tony Blair sank from extreme popularity to the reverse, purely on the strength of his devotion to George W. Bush and their disastrous war in Iraq. History will be kinder to the pair of them, if only by comparison with what we are about to experience in 2017 and for the next four years. I’ve even heard American friends gloomily enunciating, ‘Come back, Bush, all is forgiven.’ And Tony Blair is re-emerging as a voice of sanity in Brexit-b
lighted Blighty. However, Blair’s immediate activity, on leaving office, was to found a preposterous charity for the promotion of religious faith. It didn’t seem to matter which faith you supported. Faith itself was supposed to be a good thing, to be encouraged. I published this satire on his foundation, complete with the style of English that has become known as mediaspeak, in the New Statesman, 2 April 2009. It’s a point-by-point spoof response to an article Blair himself had written in the same journal.
The Great Bus Mystery*1
I WAS HOOFING IT down Regent Street, admiring the Christmas decorations, when I saw the bus. One of those bendy buses that mayors keep threatening with the old heave-ho. As it drove by, I looked up and got the message square in the monocle. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Another of the blighters nearly did knock me down as I set a course for the Dregs Club, where it was my purpose to inhale a festive snifter, and I saw the same thing on the side. There are some pretty deep thinkers to be found at the Dregs, as my regular readers know, but none of them could make a dent on the vexed question of the buses when I bowled it their way. Not even Swotty Postlethwaite, the club’s tame intellectual. So I decided to put my trust in a higher power.
‘Jarvis,’ I sang out, as I latchkeyed self into the old headquarters, shedding hat and stick on my way through the hall to consult the oracle. ‘I say, Jarvis, what about these buses?’
‘Sir?’
‘You know, Jarvis, the buses, the “What is this that roareth thus?”*2 brigade, the bendy buses, the conveyances with the kink amidships. What’s going on? What price the bendy bus campaign?’
Science in the Soul Page 36
