French liberty has been lost
Will Hutton is broadly correct about the assimilationist approach the French take towards multiculturalism, and is probably correct about the tribal nature of French attitudes towards non-European cultures practised by a large minority of French citizens (26 August). He doesn’t mention one important fact about the burkini ban, possibly because it’s so obvious. Women who wear the burkini, the burqa or the niqab are wearing what they want to wear and not harming anybody.
These are the most important facts about the whole matter. It’s not relevant to the ban that Islamic clothes remind one of Islamic societies and that some of those societies are profoundly illiberal. It doesn’t matter that covering up is or isn’t required by the Qur’an.
The people banning the clothes aren’t living in those societies. What they are doing is stopping women from wearing what they choose to wear. They are, in fact, acting like the small-minded theocrats who force Iranian women in Iran to wear headscarves. What’s so liberal about that?
The French burkini ban-mongers need to rediscover the liberté in their national motto.
Floyd Kermode
Preston, Victoria, Australia
• “It has become fashionable to lampoon multiculturalism and its respect for diversity,” says Will Hutton. That sounds good – but what does it mean? A culture of total diversity – in extremis a mixture of all cultures on earth – would not be a culture at all. By definition any human culture has beliefs and practices particular to itself. In Britain, we expect visitors to drive on the left, for example.
Multiculturalism is a concept dreamed up by the French in an honourable attempt to cope with an influx of Algerian Muslims after the Algerian war. But at root it is a contradiction in terms. What is possible is a dominant culture that is tolerant of other cultures within it. That is what we should be aiming for.
So if we – or the French – are comfortably dominant in our own national cultures we should be able to cope with burkinis on the beach – up to a point. But if one day Hutton found that 60% or 70% of the ladies on his beach were clad in burkinis, would he be happy with that?
David Hayes
Bristol, UK
• We now live in a world where a woman can be forced by the police to remove some of her clothing in a public place. I hope bikinis never become obligatory.
Jenny Sandercock
Affoltern am Albis, Switzerland
US misdeeds in Yemen
Trevor Timm and Guardian Weekly deserve the highest commendation for the piece entitled US is promoting war crimes in Yemen (26 August), pointing the finger at the Obama administration as the reason for this human tragedy. Sadly, this is another man-made humanitarian disaster created by the west, especially the US. Why is this so?
George Monbiot, in relation to the climate crisis, wrote (12 August) that it is due to the media’s failure: “the media prefer to turn away from important issues and give us trivia”.
A strong and independent news media is the backbone of democracy. In all traditionally democratic countries the news media have lost their purpose in keeping the politicians on the straight and narrow. Today, many of the news media in the west are owned by the wealthy, who want to keep their economic and political power via controlling the media’s editorial policies.
One would hope that Timm’s report makes a difference.
Bill Mathew
Melbourne, Australia
• The G18 group of nations states that a Yemeni rally by Houthis makes the search for peace more difficult, but unmentioned as a block to peace are the Saudi/US bombings (26 August).
Robert Kinzie
Kaneohe, Hawaii, US
Google is affecting our brains
Stephen Poole asks whether it matters if Google is rewiring our minds (26 August). It is well to remember that all a Google search can do is acquire large quantities of information quickly.
The ease with which this can be done may inculcate lazy habits, and may make the user careless about the reliability of the information acquired. If so, that is his or her fault, or, for younger users, perhaps the fault of the way they were taught to use the internet.
In the recent past, students used “paste and scissors” material from books. Generally such activities were of little use. Google usually generates much more information in a shorter time.
Most people acquire information because they want to know something. Google cannot hurt if the searcher has acquired intellectual skills by grappling with the acquired materials: drawing “creative connections”, as Poole calls it.
The worst that Google can do is cause a certain amount of confusion until people are taught how to use it well and taught how not to be overwhelmed by what it throws up.
Greg McCarry
Sydney, Australia
• When reflecting on the possible negative impact of constant internet access on our memory, what Steven Poole didn’t touch upon were the aspects of impatience and ever-shorter attention spans.
Some of my friends are seriously stressed out because, every once in a while, they have to wait for more than three seconds before they can book their restaurant table online.
Unlike myself (I tend to quietly shake my head and smile patiently in these situations), my friends are all in their 30s, so you would think they would remember life without internet access or a mobile device. But far from it. The more information we have at our disposal and the faster we get it, the more impatient we become.
Did you know that according to a Microsoft study, humans have become so obsessed with portable devices that we now have attention spans shorter than that of goldfish?
Jan Schwab
Freiburg, Germany
Happiness has no price
Terry Eagleton’s review of William Davies’s book The Happiness Industry (26 August) raises many questions, not least concerning the degree to which psychology, and to a large extent psychiatry, have been commandeered by marketers in their attempt to manipulate an unwitting public.
As Aldous Huxley’s brilliant satire Brave New World demonstrates, “soma”, or drug-induced happiness, is potentially a very effective instrument of social control, similar in many ways to the Facebook definition of “friend”.
We are fortunate that wiser heads, including Davies’s, recognise that individual psychology is embedded in a broader social, geographic and economic context, and that happiness is beyond the ability of our current neuroscientists to define, control or locate in a specific region of the brain.
Does happiness even exist as a definable entity? Or is it, as I believe, an elusive state of mind that can never be found simply by looking for it?
Our past experience tells us one thing, at least: it can never be bought or sold, for which we can be eternally happy.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
Briefly
• I was pleased to discover that Hastings Council have made some amends since 1970 to the memory of Robert Tressell (born Croker in Dublin) for their shabby neglect of him at the anniversary of his birth (26 August). He’s got a Society now, and some pieces of his St Andrews Church panels are extant.
Why not name a bridge for him – The Tressell Trestle? He’d approve. And restore his manuscript’s title for the novel – Ragged Arsed Philanthropists.
RM Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
• Like Ted Jenner (Reply, 26 August) I think the Olympic Games should have a permanent home, probably Athens. I can’t see it happening though, as those who would decide to do so would not wish to see the gravy train terminated.
Why politicians vie for the massive dislocation of financial resources the Games brings to even the wealthiest city is beyond my comprehension.
Steve Thomas
Canberra, Australia
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