I have at last finished reading all 448 pages of “The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker. (This count does not include the 78 pages of notes, glossary and index, which I was more than happy to skip over.)
As usual, I do not intend to review this book but will just share a few general impressions. This is the second Steven Pinker work I have read — the other was “The Stuff of Thought” in 2007. I had enjoyed “The Stuff of Thought” and so I was looking forward to this read. But I did not realize when I started “The Language Instinct” that Pinker wrote it in 1994. The content felt dated to me and the arguments too familiar. “The Stuff of Thought” was tighter and more interesting, and I would recommend it over “The Language Instinct.”
One other note. The older I get, the more impatient I am with writers who use more words than necessary to get to the point (writers who are not concise, that is!) Pinker tends to use many more illustrations and examples to support an argument or convey an idea than I think are necessary, and I doubt that I am more quick-witted than his average reader. Yes, assertions need to be supported, but after a while, Pinker’s elaborations grow less and less entertaining and feel more like padding. Douglas Hofstadter and Jared Diamond are two other authors who I have found do the same.
With non-fiction, what I look for is some unusual insight or new way of thinking about a given topic. I only need the work to be entertaining enough so it does not put me to sleep before I have a chance to learn something from it.
My next read? Well, I changed my mind — it will not be about the causes of World War I. I need a break from non-fiction! My next read will be “Ride,” a novel by David A. Walton, my creative-writing professor in 1970 (and again in 1973). I thought it was about time that I returned the favor by reading something he has written. His novel, published in 2002, has been favorably reviewed but I will soon let you know how I, his former student and therefore expert on such matters, liked it. Can you wait?
An op-ed essay in today’s New York Times has the headline “ISIS is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism.” ISIS certainly is a disgrace — to humanity. But as well-intended and carefully-worded as this essay by Slavoj Zizek (a Slovenian) may be, its aim is poor and it misses the mark.
ISIS is a ruthless and despotic group, comprised of people who would act out their psychopathology in service of any religion (but Islam will do). Fundamentalism, on the other hand, is a stance a person chooses to hold, a stance that elevates one particular dogma above all and in exclusion of all. Fundamentalism builds walls around its domain, so that it doesn’t have to admit reality, so that it can pretend not to see reality.
Fundamentalism promotes ignorance (of non-fundamentalists), fantasy (that one’s own dogma is the true dogma) and isolation (we all know, painfully, how interconnected we are as inhabitants of this planet). Fundamentalism of any description is less a disgrace than an I-spit-on-you insult to rational thought and productive human interactions.
An essay asserting that ISIS is not truly “fundamentalist” should not turn into a back-door exoneration or endorsement of fundamentalism. By now, we know hundreds of reasons (namely, hundreds of deaths) why we should condemn the actions of ISIS psychopaths. But we should fault fundamentalism for different reasons, and Mr. Zizek was wrong to conflate them. To mention ISIS and the Amish in the same paragraph, let alone in the same essay as he did, is a true disgrace.