Some Things I've Changed My Mind About

I argue that the defining characteristic of someone dedicated to the sceptical paradigm is the singular ability to change one's mind and opinions based on the presentation of new evidence. As soon as you're bound to a particular conclusion, you're no longer acting sceptically, and have become an ideologue.

It's the process of scepticism that's important, not the conclusions it leads you to. The "truths" about the world that scepticism reveals must, necessarily, be secondary - because they're always provisional, and should, ideally, constantly be re-evaluated based on new information.

With that in mind, I think it's a valuable exercise, as a sceptic, to pat oneself on the back from time to time, by identifying some of the things you've changed your mind about, based on new evidence or arguments coming to light. I hope to make this a regular series, but since this is the first instalment, I'm going to look at some of the biggest issues I've changed my mind about in my life.

UFOs

I've always been fascinated by space. Before I knew how to spell the word, I wanted to be an Astronomer (either that or a Paleontologist, which I also couldn't spell at the time). I was mesmerised by Saturday night presentations of Star Trek and Space 1999 (even though I barely understood them at the time). I was also transfixed by Carl Sagan's haunting speeches in the Cosmos series about the possibilities of extra-terrestrial civilisations, and the hope that we might someday communicate with them.

Somehow or other (probably through my school library) I came across the notion of UFOs and alleged encounters with extra-terrestrial beings. Being the credulous lad I was, I bought it. I was thrilled and terrified at the prospect that visitors from other planets were visiting us, and I eagerly awaited the day official First Contact would happen.

It never did.

One day, while looking for awesome pictures of Star Trek ships online, I stumbled across a website that astounded me: www.badastronomy.com. Phil Plait's simple, elegant and humourous explanations exposing the flawed assumptions, innaccurate information and simple logical refutations of the things I had believed were overpoweringly persuasive. After only a few days' worth of reading, I had no choice but to reverse my belief in UFOs. The evidence and logic where too clear not to.

Alternative Therapies

In my early twenties, one of my first full-time jobs was for a company planning a health and fitness expo. It was my job to cold-call possible exhibitors and then meet with them to try and get them to buy some floor-space at the expo.

I was terrible at it.

Nevertheless, I was encouraged to seek out anyone and everyone selling something relating to the pursuit of health. Since I didn't know any better at the time, I basically opened up the Yellow Pages to "H" and started calling. On the whole, I found the purveyors of alternative therapies to be far more willing to meet with me, and to buy floor space. During those few months I met with a bevvy of homeopaths, naturopaths, massage therapists, acupuncturists, iridologists and assorted other well-dressed people with fancy-sounding titles (including one lady who informed me with a giggle that she enjoyed sitting in her hyperbaric chamber between appointments with her "patients")

Like this. Seriously.

I recall being taken aback when I met with one man, an actual MD, who asked what sort of other exhibitors would be present. He was outraged when I mentioned the word "homeopath", and the sales call ended then and there. I hadn't the foggiest idea why at the time.

It would be years before I learned about the distinction between medicine and alternative medicine (aka: not medicine), and finally came to understand that doctor's reaction. I learned that the faith I had placed in advertising was misplaced... a faith that even three years of studying advertising at college hadn't shaken. I learned to mistrust people claiming to be authorities, and instead evaluate the claims on their own merit.

God

I was raised a Christian. Not the evangelical, biblical literalist kind. I was raised in a traditional presbytarian church. I didn't resist my religious indoctrination at all - I trusted my parents and other elders to give me the right information. I went to church every Sunday. I sang in the choir. In my late teens, I even qualified and practiced as a Sunday School teacher for a while. I bought it.

A likely contributing factor to why I bought it was the somewhat moderate nature of the doctrine I was fed. I was simultaneously taught about the scientific explanation of the origins of the world and about the biblical account of creation in Genesis. I was told that there was no contradiction between the two, since the former was scientifically accurate, and the latter was more of a metaphor, used by God to explain to bronze-age people the fact that he created the universe, not so much how he did so.

After my introduction to organised scepticism via Bad Astronomy, I did a lot of reading. It was a lengthy process in which I systematically evaluated and then abandoned a lot of my former beliefs. The last big one to go was God. For the better part of a year I remained ambivalent on the question of God. I wasn't a Christian anymore (although I still called myself a "Philosophical Christian", whatever that means"), but I wasn't ready to abandon the whole idea. I couldn't bring myself to adopt the label "atheist" or even "agnostic".

Only after reading The God Delusion was I able to shake off the invisible sky daddy once and for all. There was no magic bullet - no single problem that I wasn't able to reconcile. But if I had to choose the argument that I found most persuasive, it was Russel's Cosmic Teapot.

Jesus (twice)

After adopting the label of 'atheist', I wasn't sure what to do with my ideas around the historicity of the bible as a whole, and Jesus in particular. Just how fictionalised were the accounts contained therein? How much was metaphor, exaggeration, copy-error and pure fabrication?

The first person who helped me to answer this question was Robert M. Price, in his appearances in the Bible Geek episodes of the Infidel Guy Show podcast. Through Price I learned that whole sections of the bible had been copied from other, pre-existing documents; that there's little to no archaeological evidence supporting any of the "historical" narrative in its pages, and that at least a few serious biblical scholars doubt that there ever was a historical Jesus.

I found his arguments persuasive, and came to conclude that there likely was no historical Jesus. Or, at the very least, the one described in the bible had been so distorted that he likely bore no resemblance to any actual, one person.

Not an actual person

More recently, I've read some of Bart Ehrmans' work. In Jesus, Interrupted he argues that a substantial portion of the biblical account of Jesus' life was likely fictionalised, but that with careful scrutiny quite a lot of it can be determined to likely be historically accurate - suggesting that Jesus probably was an actual guy, a teacher of sorts who started some shit in ancient Palestine.

My interest in the bible and the origins of the Christian religion is ongoing. One of the things I'm particularly interested in is evaluating the claims about certain traits that Christians claims are unique to them. Are they unique to Christians? Where do they come from? Are the useful or not? Fascinating stuff.

Free Will (twice)

A tough pill to swallow has been the existence of free will. I think we all assume, probably automatically, that we have a will of our own, that is somehow independent of our circumstances and environment.

But in a deterministic universe (as I now believe to be the one I live in) it simply can't be so. Decisions are made in the brain, which is a physical structure that conforms to deterministic physical laws - it can't do otherwise. Even in a quantum universe, where randomness is always a factor, randomness isn't the same as free will. Free will, so defined, is a persistent illusion.

Don't think about a yellow beetle.

I've recently called this conclusion into question. Not so much because I think my assumptions about it are wrong, but rather because I think I've been defining the terms incorrectly. If, instead, I consider free will to be my own ability to make decisions free of imposition from other causal agents (in other words: other people) I'm happy that it's free enough to be considered 'free'.

Assuming I'm not under the influence of another person's manipulations, my decisions are effectively free. That's not to say that my brain isn't still a deterministic machine, subject to environmental influences - it's more of a metaphysical redefinition of 'freedom' in this context.

I can live with the fact that my brain will do what it does, because it can't do otherwise. But when I feel that my choices are being manipulated or forced by another person who is deliberately limiting my options, I start to get annoyed. That's when my 'free will' is being compromised.

It's because of this, that I'm starting to re-evaluate my long-held position in favour of some form of communism. I'll keep you posted on where I get to on that one.

Geo-based Social Networking

I've known about the location-based social networking tool, Foursquare, for a while now. I've always thought it was rather silly - checking into places and earning points and badges along the way. Not to mention earning the dubious title of "mayor" of your favourite hang-out.

I was perfectly happy with the other geo-based social tool I was already using: Google Latitude. It was more convenient (automatically broadcasting my location to my friends, no check-in required) and didn't have that silly gaming element to it - so it was more serious.

When Google Buzz was released, it added an extra dimension to my geo-social world. Suddenly the tool I was already using for Latitude (Google Maps for Mobile) allowed me to post things, attaching them not only to coordinates on a map, but to places that have been indexed by Google Maps.

My biggest gripe with it was, and is, if the place I wanted to buzz about hadn't been indexed, as is far too often the case, the whole thing got kind of messy. I had to try and link it to an address, or to my own current location (which, if I am indoors and can't get a GPS signal, can sometimes be off by a couple of Kilometers).

A couple of weeks ago I started noticing something interesting: there was a sudden upswing in the number of Buzz posts in and around Joburg in Google Maps for Mobile. Looking at the posts, I noticed that almost all of them were coming through from Twitter. I knew that Twitter supported geo-tagging of tweets (provided you have a Twitter client that lets you do it), and it seemed that those geo-tags were being pulled through into Buzz via the Twitter integration. Awesome.

Lots of Buzz in Joburg today

Upon further scrutiny, I noticed that a substantial portion of those buzzes were being posted via Twitter from Foursquare. I was intrigued, so I took a look another look at it.

I still think the gaming side of it is rather silly. But the one thing I particularly like about Foursquare that Google Buzz lacks, is the ability for end users (like me) to add new places to the database if the place I'm sitting in isn't there already. Although there's still a little fiddling with addresses and things to create the place to begin with, once it's in there I (or anyone else) can check into it with no further fuss.

So, I'm giving Foursquare a go. I'm still not entirely happy with the manual check-in process. Also, the fact that there's no native app for my mobile device means that I'm forced to rely on the mobile website, which can also be a bit of a hassle (my network's DNS isn't exactly the fastest).

So far I'm liking it. I'm finding it a rather fun addition to my existing suite of geo-social apps (not a replacement, a supplement). I haven't had any situations where it filled a serious need. We'll see if it does that.

In the mean-time, I'd suggest you try it out too, and add me as your Foursquare friend so we can compete on points and stuff. See you there!

Making Choices

I had an interesting conversation over the weekend with some friends, about the processes involved in making choices. I learned that not everyone has heard as much about these sorts of things as I have. And since I've found the knowledge to be liberating and tremendously useful, I thought it might be a good idea to present it here.

First, a disclaimer: I'm neither a psychologist nor a neurologist. My understanding of these things comes from the sorts of books and blogs I like to read, and podcasts I like to listen to. Usually, the sources they come from are experts (often actual psychologists and neuro-scientists), so I'm pretty confident in their reliability. That said, I'm going to be reproducing a lay-person's understanding of these things, which is probably not a reliable source (read: it's probably way over-simplified and most likely wrong in a lot ways). If you're interested in a more detailed (and probably more accurate) understanding of this, I'd suggest further reading. But I hope you'll find this a useful and enlightening starting point.

The first thing we need to agree on is that the brain is where all the action happens. It's not only where memories are stored, but it's where all sensory information is processed and consciousness is somehow generated. We know that this is true, because decades of medical records show that damage to the brain impairs the ability to recall memories, to perform tasks and to process sensory information.

But it goes one step further: damage to specific parts of the brain can impair specific functions. That implies that the brain has a kind of modular structure: different bits have different functions. When they work together they do the things we know the brain does. Neuro-scientists have very sophisticated instruments that can observe those different areas operating distinctly, but together, and working to produce the subjective experience of life.

But they've also learned some other interesting things. When a certain part of the brain is damaged, the person isn't necessarily aware of the damage. They might not even notice that a certain set of tasks they used to be able to perform are no longer available to them. This could be some missing memories, an inability to recognise faces, even an inability to see (something you'd think people might notice!).

What that tells us is that the brain isn't very good at internal diagnostics. It's not really capable of doing a self-check to make sure that everything's in working order... it just keeps going as if the damaged part is working normally. That means that our conscious experience doesn't really include any awareness of how our brain is functioning: There are processes going on inside us that we're completely unaware of, even in a perfectly healthy brain.

Another important point is the way the different parts of the brain are put together. They're not just all squeezed together in a lump - there's a specific structure at work. To understand this structure better, we need to understand a little about evolution.

Although all living things on Earth are related to each other, not all living things have brains. Only a small portion of us have those. Most multi-cellular animals have a kind of nervous system - a specific set of cells that act as a communications network between the the various parts of the body. The nervous system helps to coordinate things, like moving around, breathing, eating, pumping blood and so on. Many of the more complex kinds of animals have a central core, where the processing of commands for the nervous system happens - that's what the brain is.

Larger and more complex animals have brains that can do more than just coordinate things and process sensory information: they can store memories, evaluate threats in the environment and make decisions about how to react to a given set of circumstances.

A small sub-set of those can do even more complicated things: they can recognise specific individual members of their own species (which allows them to interact socially and collaborate on rearing offspring), they can coordinate activities like hunting or evading a predator. A tiny minority can even think in abstract terms: Recognising themselves in a mirror, inventing and using tools and constructing complex communication systems. Humans are a member of that minority.

Over many millions of years of evolution, our ancestors started out with a primitive nervous system, then developed a brain. That brain grew in complexity, and new regions and areas grew out of old ones, until now we have the familiar-looking brain we recognise. An important thing to note is that those old, primitive brain regions haven't gone away - they're still a part of our brains today. Evolution has just added new 'modules' to the brain, piling them up, one on top of the other.

Human Brain

So when we look at the structure of the human brain, we see the oldest, simplest structures at the bottom (the spinal cord) and the newest, most complex parts at the top (the frontal lobe). Those old structures still do what they always have (coordinating bodily functions and processing sensory information) and the newer parts do the things we tend to think of as being uniquely human (compassion for others, planning for the future, art, logic, philosophy, language and so on). The cerebral cortex is also the part where most of our consciousness happens.

The brain is also wired up according to that pattern of development. Since the eyes developed long before the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information sits in one of the older parts. There's also a part of the cerebral cortex devoted to processing visual information, but it only does so once the older part of the brain has had its first pass. We know this because there is a condition where people have damage to the visual cortex, and thus are unable to see - but they can somehow still evade obstacles in their path. This means they're still processing visual information, but that information isn't being passed through to the conscious mind.

This is important, because it seems that there's another part of the brain, separate from the conscious mind, that makes decisions.

That's what researchers see in experiments. Neuro-scientists have a very useful tool called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) which allows them to look at a brain as it's working. They're able to plot out the parts of the brain which are busy by literally seeing which bits light up on the screen while the test subject performs a task.

"I like the pretty lights"

When a test subject is given a choice to make, the first part of the brain to light up is the limbic system. This is a group of components of the brain that form part of the "brain-stem" - a very old part of the brain, just above the spinal cord. This is a part of the brain known to be associated with emotion and processing sensory information (also where the famous "fight-or-flight" reaction lives). Once the subject has made the decision, the reasoning and creative parts of the brain light up, as they start to explain how they arrived at that decision.

So what does that tell us?

It strongly implies that it's our primitive mammalian (or even reptillian) parts that are in charge of making decisions. The 'higher' brain functions are then tasked with rationalising those decisions after they've already been made.

Let's think about that for a little while. It means that the little ferret-like thing living inside you (the legacy of your ancestor from hundreds of millions of years ago) is the one in charge - making your decisions and running your life. It's making those decisions based on simple emotional responses to sensory information, and its primitive little analysis of the world it's living in. The big, clever, human part of you is pretty much along for the ride - making up the story of your life after it happened. That's kinda scary, isn't it?

Who's the boss? This thing.

I said at the beginning of this post that I found this understanding liberating and useful. What's so liberating about having a rodent in the driver's seat of your life?

It's this: I'm no longer bound by my own irrational decisions. I'm able to recognise (sometimes with difficulty) that the choices I've made about my life haven't always been the best ones. How could they be? How can my inner weasel possibly comprehend the complexity of modern human life? If I found that I've made a bad decision along the way, I can go back and revisit it: re-evaluate the story I told myself about it, and try to come up with a better choice based on the real facts of the matter.

I picture myself taking my inner hamster out of his little wheel, giving him a little saucer of things to eat, and explaining to him why his decision was wrong. I give him a bunch of new facts that he probably didn't consider first time around. I show him some mental pictures of how things could have been if he'd acted differently. When we agree on what to do next, I put him back in his little wheel, and get on with it.

My limbic system

I believe that recognising the fact that your own decisions may have been bad, no matter how rational they seemed at the time, is an important revelation. Whenever possible, I try to have that little bonding moment with my Paleomammalian brain before I do anything foolish. I'd suggest that you try that too.

I've gone on about this for far too long already. But I'd like to close with one thing to keep in mind: when making a potentially important decision, try to ask yourself "What would a marmot do?"

Homeopathy Awareness Week

Yay! It's everyone's favourite week about nothing at all!

So, in celebration, I would like to repost this for your entertainment and edumacation:



So what's the harm?

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's my Back to Basics post.

And just for fun, here's the one where I (metaphorically) punched a homeopath in the face.

Facebook Foolery

Yesterday a Facebook friend of mine posted a status update that got me thinking. I haven't asked his/her permission to reproduce it here, so I won't mention names unless that person decides to identify themselves in the comments.

The Status update was as follows:

"Scientists have discovered yet another link their evolutionary chain: a couple of supposedly several-million-years-old skeletons of "humanoids" that resemble orangutans. Has it occurred to any of those brilliant scholars that those really ARE orangutans?? Hello?"

Without going into too much detail, this person is intelligent, creative, well educated and has an interest in the sciences. How, then, could someone like that be so completely wrong in every detail?

Before I delve into that question, let's first look at why it's wrong.

Given the timing of the post, I'm assuming that it refers to the recently announced discovery of two skeletons belonging to what is being called Australopithicus Sediba - a supposedly previously undiscovered hominid species native to the area surrounding Johannesburg, South Africa (my home - one of the reasons I'm particularly interested in it).

Australopithicus Sediba

As with any proposed new species, particularly those that are claimed to be part of the human ancestral line, there's a considerable scientific controversy about it. This is a normal part of the scientific process: whenever a new discovery is made and a claim put forward as to its place in the scheme of things, it falls on those discoverers to defend their argument from the scrutiny it will receive from the rest of the scientific community. If they're successful in doing so, their new idea will eventually become part of the scientific consensus.

Questions usually raised in cases like this are things like "Is this really a new species?", "Is it really as old as it seems to be?", "Does it really represent a species that is ancestral to Homo Sapiens, or is it only a cousin?" and so on. You may recall the back and forth we've seen over the discovery of "Homo Floresiensis" several years ago. The questions in that debate haven't yet been finally settled, and it may be several more years before they are. The same will likely be true of Australopithicus Sediba as well. John Hawks has written an excellent overview of the controversy surrounding it.

Okay, so that's the background, let's look at the actual claims in the status update:

"Scientists have discovered yet another link their evolutionary chain"

Describing the taxonomical classification of various species as a "chain" shows a pretty clear misunderstanding of how evolution works, and particularly the notion of common descent. For this reason, scientists almost never describe it as such anymore, and seldom, if ever, use the term "missing link" to describe new species either. Simply because those analogies aren't very useful or descriptive. You're far more likely to hear scientists referring to "branches" or "twigs" on the "Tree of life", because that imagery more closely resembles the actual structure of phylogeny. That doesn't stop tabloid newspapers from using the term "missing link" at every available opportunity... but if we haven't learned by now not to trust the mainstream and tabloid media for science news, we are truly lost.

Tree of Life

"...a couple of supposedly several-million-years-old..."

"Several" is an interesting choice of words here. The paper clearly states that the skeletons are less than 2 million years old - between 1.78 and 1.95 million, to be precise. That's not to say that those dates are subject to possible revision, but nobody is claiming right now that they're any older than that. Why implicitly inflate the age?

"...skeletons of "humanoids"..."

The correct term here is "hominid". "Humanoid" is a term used in science fiction to describe species closely resembling humans, but who don't necessarily have any biological relation to us. "Hominid" is a term used in paleoanthropology to describe a subset of ape species that are human-like, including Homo Sapiens - us.

"...that resemble orangutans..."

This is an even stranger choice of words. Why orangutan? Why not gorilla or chimpanzee?

Let's look at a little background in ape phylogeny. Today there are two subfamilies under the family of the "Great Apes" (Hominidae): Pongo (orangutans) and Homininae (gorillas, chimpanzees and humans). That means we're all pretty closely related. But it doesn't mean we're equally closely related to each other. The common ancestor between the Pongo subfamily and the Homininae subfamily lived a lot longer ago than the various common ancestors of the different species within the Homininae subfamily. That means orangutans are our most distant relatives within this family.

Ape Phylogeny

The subfamily Homininae is itself divided into two tribes: Gorillini (gorillas) and Hominini (chimpanzees and humans). That means that within that subfamily, gorillas are our most distant ancestor.

In turn, the tribe Hominini is divided into two subtribes: Panina (common chimpanzees and bonobos) and Hominina (all the different species of humans). Whether or not Australopithecus Sediba is indeed a new species, there is no doubt that it does fall within the Hominina subtribe, which makes it a human species. Which means that it most closely resembles other human species. It less closely resembles chimpanzees. And even less closely resembles gorillas. And even less closely resembles orangutans.

So why choose orangutans to compare it to? I don't get it.

"Has it occurred to any of those brilliant scholars..."

A scholar is a specialist in the humanities: art, history, philosophy. These people are not scholars, they are scientists. Describing a scientist as a 'scholar' is a subtle way of undermining their credibility.

"...that those really ARE orangutans?"

Although I can't read the minds of the scientists involved, I'm pretty certain that this thought has occurred to them. In fact, it's not necessary to be a scientist to make that determination, we can all do it right here together.

Here is the skeleton of Australopithicus Sediba:

The Malapa Skeletons

Here is a skeleton of an orangutan:

Orangutan

They certainly bear a striking resemblance - as do the skeletons of all the great apes. But they are clearly not the same. Even an untrained eye can see the clear differences between them.

Which brings me back to my original question: why would someone say something like this?

I suspect the answer is twofold:

First, the person is very religious (probably a Young-Earth Creationist) and therefore has a vested ideological interest in refuting the claims of paleoanthropologists.

Second, given that, I'm guessing the person relies on a combination of mainstream media (which is incompetent) and Christian publications (which have the same ideological bias, and are also incompetent) for their information.

I think it's pretty sad, really. A combination of selection and confirmation biases have conspired to make this person make a fool of themselves on the Internet. Unfortunately it's not the first time this has happened to someone, and it won't be the last.

Patriotism

There's something that's pretty much always bothered me, and it seems to have come to a head recently, what with the You Know What just around the corner. That something is patriotism.

Patriotism is a love for and devotion to one's country. Of all the things to love and be devoted to, a country seems like a pretty strange one to me. What is it about a country that inspires or is deserving of such devotion? Devotion of that nature seems to be based around the assumption that one's own country is somehow superior to all other countries - I call this 'the patriotic assumption'.

Patriotic car

I've been seeing car after car, advertising and shop windows, even people's clothing displaying the South African national flag, often accompanied by the logos and colours of our national sports teams (for obvious reasons). Why is it that these people do this? Why do they decorate their cars and themselves with these things? Why do I get funny looks when I say that I'm not at all patriotic?

Funny looks or looks funny.

Let's take a look at the components that make up a country: Territory, nation and state.

Territory

This refers to the physical land area contained within the official borders of the country. When it comes to South Africa, I don't deny that we have some pretty beautiful places here. Table Mountain, the Waterberg, the Drakensberg, the Wild Coast, the Karoo and so on... all awesomely beautiful places endowed with a lush biodiversity. Aesthetically pleasing to look at and even scientifically interesting.

Not bad

But is South Africa somehow better than anywhere else? Is Knysna a better rainforest than the Amazon? Is the Fish River a better canyon than the Grand? Are the ruins of Mapungubwe better than those at Macchu Pichu or Giza? No, of course not. They're all lovely in their own right, but I don't see any valid argument supporting the notion that our physical terrain is qualitatively superior to any other.

I don't see any grounds for the patriotic assumption here. Moving on.

Nation

This describes the human population of the country: The people themselves, their history and culture. Are the South African people better than anyone else? How would we measure that anyway?

Let's postulate a metric, one that's often mentioned in tourist material as being a distinguishing characteristic of the South African people: ethnic diversity. Sure, we have quite a variety of ethnicities present here, some indiginous and many others who have settled here more recently. Is South Africa more diverse than anywhere else? Is it more diverse than China, or even the United States? No. And even then, the metric itself is problematic in that the definition of a distinct ethnic group is fuzzy at best.

"Rainbow Nation"

The same goes for just about any other metric one could postulate: economic, psychological, academic... you name it. There is always a better country somewhere, and in many cases we're near the bottom of the pile. There just doesn't seem to be any objective measure that could be used to support the notion that the South African people are somehow better than anyone else.

State

This refers to the administrative aspects of the country: the government, the law and the principles upon which the country was founded. Are these any better than anywhere else?

The South African government, while not the worst around, are known to be riddled with corruption - even our current president is a known fraudster who used political pressure to escape prosecution, while simultaneously lying about it to the public. Escalating riots around the country inspired by lack of service delivery demonstrate that the government is not only corrupt, but also incompetent. I submit that our government is an embarassment, not something to be proud of.

President Jacob Zuma

What about our laws and principles? Surely our constitution would be the embodiment of that. While it's a pretty good one, compared to many other national constitutions, there are a number of fundamental flaws in it. Among them, the lack of an explicit separation of church and state, the awarding of taxpayers' money to "traditional leaders" who are given limited government powers despite not having been democratically elected, and so on.

In the areas where our constitution is strong, like in guaranteeing freedom of speech, the press and other civil rights, it is vulnerable to perversion and even revision by the corrupt successors of the people who drafted it to begin with.

In short, the state of South Africa has little to nothing about it worthy of admiration, and I therefore see no grounds for the patriotic assumption here.

So what now?

Why do South Africans still fly the flag? Why do they clutch their chests and get all misty-eyed when they sing the National Anthem? Why do they wear Bafana Bafana shirts to work every Friday? Why do they care who the Springboks or Proteas have or haven't beaten this week?

I don't know. I really don't. If there was some kind of real or imagined benefit to doing so, I might understand it. But as far as I can see there is none. Although the manifestation of this patriotic fervour seems similar to a kind of religious devotion, at least in religion there's a kind of expectation that the deity in question will likely bestow blessings upon you in return for your worship and dedication. There doesn't seem to be anything like that when it comes to patriotism... there isn't even an implied suggestion of tax breaks or improved service delivery.

Patriotism, it seems to me, is even less rational and more useless than religion.