Earth-Shattering News
Look, I am no seismologist. But I cannot agree with the people of the Malaysian province who claim that a recent fatal tremor was nothing short of divine retribution.
The tribal folk in the neighbourhood of Mount Kinabalu say that local deities – the aki – took violent exception to a group of streaking European tourists, and in particular a young British woman who loosened her girdle and shook her naked breasts at the mountain. They say that the spirits quivered in corresponding outrage. They say that the great earth mother was so outraged that she uncorseted herself and wobbled the peaks with such fury that 18 people died.
I think on the whole that this is mumbo-jumbo, and that there is a perfectly good scientific explanation. And yet, I am afraid that we in 21st-century Britain are in no position to snigger at the tribes and their fit of irrational indignation. We have our own mystery gods these days. We have our own chthonic powers, and when someone is deemed to have said or done something to cause offence to the great and implacable Moloch of Political Correctness, then the priests and priestesses of that religion will sometimes react with a vindictiveness – and a total lack of reason – that is in itself a kind of anthropological marvel.
Take the case of that great and good man, Professor Sir Tim Hunt. This world-famous British biologist has consecrated his life to the study of cells, and in the early Eighties he was looking at some sea urchins when he made a breakthrough. He discovered cyclins – crucial proteins that help somehow with cell development. He has won the Nobel prize and just about every other award; and last week, at the age of 72, he was giving a light-hearted, off-the-cuff speech to some scientific journalists in Seoul. Those remarks have prompted such global outrage that he has been stripped of honorary positions both at University College London and the Royal Society. In an interview at the weekend, he said that he was “finished” and that his career was at an end.
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