Scott Douglas Jacobsen on Lots of Stuff

Author(s): Adewale Sobowale (Interview) & Scott Douglas Jacobsen (Transcriber)

Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/11/20

*Interview by Adewale Sobowale, transcription by Scott Douglas Jacobsen.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Founder of In-Sight Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of “In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal” (ISSN 2369–6885). Jacobsen is a Tobis Fellow (Research Associate) at the University of California, Irvine for 2023-2024. He is a “Freelance, Independent Journalist”, “in good standing” with the Canadian Association of Journalists. He considers the contemporary scientific method as the pragmatic, functional source of understanding the world and universal human rights as the moral frame leading substantive ethical discourse, internationally. You can email: Scott.Douglas.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com. Here I talk with Adewale Sobowale of The Migrant Online about a lot of things.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I’m enjoying the Vancouver life still, still at the ranch here. 

Adewale Sobowale: [Laughing] Alright, how was the experience?

Jacobsen: It was good. I found it, more or less, educational. I found them focusing less on specific orientations around economics and more on principles and models, and concepts, of economics. That’s different than one might expect in an economics course for journalists provided by a thinktank because, when most of us have an idea of a thinktank, we’re thinking of a group of people with a good deal of funding who provide a specific lens on economics, on policy, on politics, on analyzing society. This wasn’t that. So, I think the fact that we included people from left to right to center in the political spectrum looking at some of the biographies of some of the people participating with us in our class of 22 minus 1 was very good. So, I think the presentation was fair and the information was informative. How did you find it?

Sobowale: By the way, Could you introduce yourself?

Jacobsen: Sure [Laughing], that might help. [Laughing] So, hi, my name is Scott Jacobsen. I live in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. I am a freelance, independent journalist in good standing with the Canadian Association of Journalists. I am a Tobis Fellow for my second/renewed year 2023/24 at the University of California, Irvine in the Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality. The title is Tobis Fellow for that. I have a lot of titles and things of that nature and a long history of doing different things. Right now? I just came off shift doing ranch labour with horses. It is exactly what you’re thinking about: cleaning buckets, shovelling poo, driving the tractor, loading manure bins. Things of this nature.

Sobowale: You must have a lot on your hands. 

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I assure you. We have a team. This team, they grew up with horses. It’s a much different experience for them. For me, I had no background with horses. As far as I am concerned, I had no right to be here. Yet, I wanted to take on that challenge. In a Ghandian sense, I wanted to be among a people to be able to know them, and then be able to write on them, appropriately. So, I have been doing interviews, writing some articles, but more interviews with people in the equestrian industry in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Because, at least, the moniker in public discourse – news, opinion pieces – in the history of the township is “the horse capital of British Columbia.” That’s a fair statement given the number of horses here and the fact that we have Thunderbird Show Park, which is, probably, the largest facility, probably, in British Columbia for any equestrian sport. Probably, the biggest in Canada would be Spruce Meadows, which has this huge international status. People I have interviewed in Holland would consider it an honour to fly their horses from Holland to Alberta to compete at Spruce Meadows. This is the kind of thinking of a horse person when they look at Spruce Meadows or other similar stature places.  

Sobowale: Now, we discussed about your activism and all those things. Can you just tell us why you’re an activist and which type of activism are you into?

Jacobsen: I’m into a lot. It depends on the frame. It depends on the time. It depends on the interest. If I have the time, I try to commit some time to it. If there is a season of life where time or finance might be a little more limited, I can’t fund things as much as I would like to; I can’t take as much time as I would like to, to help some initiatives that, to me, seem important. So, the types of activism, more to the question; they’ll, typically, be around critical thinking, scientific education, Humanism, human rights, and a wide smattering of those things. Those tend to be relatively broad terms. You know, when we say, “Human rights,” as you know, those can be broken down to a number of different things. I know we are doing this interview for Migrant Online. When you look at the number of international treaties and rights documents on migrant and refugee rights, there are an extraordinary number going back decades near or at the founding of the United Nations. One of the most recent was even in 2010. Certainly, there will be more coming through in different bodies of the United Nations. It speaks of States’ responsibilities and human rights simply for the fact of their humanity. 

Some things would also be around human rights. There has been a focus on some Indigenous rights. That has been more giving some profile of people in the secular community who haven’t had much of a voice. In fact, there isn’t much of an organization around it. If an individual classified under the United Nations title of “Indigenous” exists and does not adhere to the traditional beliefs, so, they know of their cultural background or what is left post-colonial context. Yet, they don’t believe in the supernaturalism around it, for example. Those people have a hard time organizing because they could lose, sort of, community support for having given up those beliefs. There is a similar situation, as Mandisa Thomas of Black Nonbelievers (Inc.) told me, with regards to African Americans who reject the African American Church, for instance, because it is sort of a mixed history. On the one hand, and this is the way it’s explained to me, there is the history of racism and slavery and the use of the church to oppress, while, at the same time, during the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Era in the United States; the church was one of the only places of civil and political organizing to simply fight for basic rights, for equality, as African Americans with not only white Americans, but others in the United States. It is seen as a system of oppression taken on by African Americans and then used in a positive way for community building. 

But then, if one doesn’t adhere to a belief in a God and in the relevance of the Bible to their personal lives, it becomes very difficult – this is the way it is explained to me – because it is sort of a mixed history because it is a positive and a negative thing to them. Just given their right to freedom of belief and freedom of religion, they have the right to leave. The rub is when they do leave. It comes with certain social consequences. It becomes particularly acute when the major social capital, social support systems, aren’t from the State. It’s from the community and, primarily, from the church community. So, by rejecting that structure, they give that up. So, I’ve done some work profiling some of those voices because I think it’s important. I have more stuff coming on down the line regarding that. A lot of people who tend to be non-religious in highly religious societies. There are some very good societies where people get along. There is a lot of inter-religious, inter-belief dialogue. People getting along, respecting each other. There are other contexts where the State, by law, is used to keep people, sort of, in the closet about their non-belief. There are a number of people who I have interviewed who could not finish the interview because they were taken to jail in the process of the interview. 

This did not happen in Canada. One happened in Pakistan. Another, who I did several interviews with and was doing several more, as I talked over dinner with you, happened to an individual from Nigeria, Mubarak Bala. I don’t know if his term is up. He is the President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. It’s an important country because it is a huge population of people. Not everyone agrees with what was done, obviously, because people don’t want that to happen to them for their personal philosophical beliefs. Yet, it happens. I think cataloguing some of those views does a little bit of work that is important to help out. It is free. It is a little bit of time, little bit of labour, and taking the time for a conversation. Others, it’s really getting people who come out of traumatic circumstances. There were a couple of cases, where it is somewhat associated with the last topic. Individuals who gave up their religious belief. But it wasn’t necessarily for formal theological reasons. It wasn’t, “I studied the text. And I disagree with the orientation or the statements within the holy text.” Rather, it’s the home circumstance was abusive. They managed to get out or had to flee. It’s similar with some of those cases where the State is after them for their things stated, then the reprisal isn’t from the public, but more from that which the public pays for with taxes: the government. 

Other cases, there’s been a lot of board work as well. So, I think United Nations Women Canada does important work, but I think that’s dissolved into a foundation now. There are a lot of concerns with the United States in Canada given the overturning of Roe v Wade, which was a major landmark in a lot of active equality movements, human rights movements, reproductive justice movements, for women in terms of, at least, having some choice in whether they have the child. So, if they can delay their pregnancy or plan it out, or if an unplanned pregnancy happens and it’s the wrong person, say, then this can be halted. They can pursue an education.

Sobowale: Excuse me, are you linked to any organization?

Jacobsen: Right now, Humanists International, I am linked to. I do some work interviewing some of them. I used to be part of Young Humanists International. So, Young Humanists International, I used to be the Secretary-General for a time, which is an elected position. I believe I was elected in 2019 in Iceland. I was on the Board of Humanist Canada. Right now, I am on the Council for Centre for Inquiry Canada. It is a less active role than being on the Board and there are a larger number of people for that organization. It would, typically, be defined as a secular humanist organization. The main stuff I am doing right now would be associated with The Good Men Project for writing, as a platform. In-Sight Publishing as a sort of experimental platform, which stage-wise is having new things added to it. But given its experimental nature, how that will turn out is an open question, although, I have been working on it for a while on-and-off. And then, there is also the University of California, Irvine Ethics Centre. I am a Tobis Fellow there. A lot of the work I do through there or for them has to do with women in the academic system. I would say those three: The Good Men Project, In-Sight Publishing, and the University of California, Irvine, are the main ones with a lot of independent work. There were a lot of former board positions, where the term just ended. We can go into that more if you like. But I don’t want to ramble too much [Laughing]. 

Sobowale: Why are you interesting in fighting for human rights?

Jacobsen: To me, it seems like the substantive alternative. In fact, the only real game in town, internationally. Where, we have parochial ethical systems. You might find some in various Abrahamic religions or minority religions around the world. They have their uses. People, they build lives. They would define themselves as a religious person, as a moral person, living according to rules of their holy text. The one that everyone seems to, at least, declare that they would abide by, for the most part, even if they don’t in terms of action on the ground by governments, by States, Member States of the United Nations, is international human rights, international law. Those, to me, everyone, at least, seems to take part in them and that seems substantial to me. It seems more legitimate because everyone is partaking regardless of ethnicity, sex, gender, religion, non-religion, etc. So, it seems to me like the right thing to do, and, in terms of, at least, having the premise of a moral discussion; everyone plays by the same rules. 

Sobowale: What would you say about the state of the world now?

Jacobsen: Mixed [Laughing]. 

Sobowale: What would you say about the state of the world now?

Jacobsen: I would say the state of the world is mixed. I may have the general statement wrong. However, I think there are more democracies now than there have ever been. If that is so, that’s a positive.

Sobowale: Just a minute, when you said, “There are more democracies now.” Don’t you think there are pseudo-democracies?

Jacobsen: Yes, I would take it as a sliding scale. That would be the first caveat. On one, there are more democracies than ever. On the second hand, there is a sliding scale of democratic governance. So, individual States that have corruption of various degrees will have a lower democratic rating. Those that are autocratic, authoritarian. They would have an even lower status. I would take it as a sliding scale based on the strength of the institutions. I would assume there are indexes that sort of gather relatively agreed upon indices of democratic systems and then the degree to which each country has them. You collate those per country. You get the country. You rank-order them. Then you get a matrix of values per country. Then you rank-order them, then you have a relative system. There is a weakness inherent in that sort of ranking. 

Sobowale: Why has migration become a political issue? 

Jacobsen: Because if it’s a political issue, I would assume that it garners votes. If you can have something that is a social issue for a decent number of the population, good and bad, across the spectrum, then you can make a divisive opinion about it: complete migration, complete no migration. Then you come off as a firm, non-wishy-washy politician. People like that. So, you get votes in either direction. So, “hot button issues,” as they say in North America.

Sobowale: This migration issue, they are using it to gain or lose votes. 

Jacobsen: Yes, I mean this was part of the discussion over the weekend for our class. It’s not the money, in this sense. In some sense, we can talk about economics as about money and money as human utility, but money doesn’t capture everything. So, it’s not quite a generalized human utility index, so far. But in terms of just getting votes, if you take votes, the economics of votes. What topics come to the top of the list? If migration is a really big topic, then you orient your frame and your political party around that frame vis-a-vis migration and, at the end of the day, human beings – migrants and refugees, then you can run it through the marketing and public relations people. And they’ll jazz up the public about how you are dealing with this hot button issue. So, you can garner more votes on that. Either it’s xenophobia, “We don’t want these people here.” Or it’s ultra-compassion, “We are super good. The other party is super evil. We want more people in because we are the good, compassionate people. Those evil people don’t want them in.” Obviously, an oversimplification and simplistic, but I think the general orientation of the argument is that it is an economics of votes, and there’s a utility in taking firm stances or extreme stances, or both, about certain hot button issues. One of them happens to be migration. 

There can be entirely invented ones too. If you can get a public riled up enough, this can also have political impacts. Even though, your neighbour might have superstitions about numbers. And you don’t. And you want to buy their property. This was an example from Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore, before he died. His son is actually likely stepping down next year or as soon as next year. He said, “If they move, and you put a pitch for the price for the home,” this isn’t the exact example. “You don’t care about that numerical superstition about some number. However, you have to take into account the other thinking of that person when you are purchasing that property because you have to take the how they are framing it.” So, even though, it is imaginary. It is a superstition about any number, doesn’t matter. You have to take that into account. A non-rational, irrational thing in order to do rational decision-making about house purchasing next door. It’s like that on any human issue, really. 

Sobowale: By the way, as you are talking about economics or whatever, I tend to think some of these leaders are, more or less, gaining economically, from instability, from whatever. You know?

Jacobsen: Yes, that’s where the economics of votes is really about economics too [Laughing]. 

Sobowale: ​​[Laughing].

Jacobsen: If you are a politician, in most countries, it pays well. You can decide your pay, sometimes. You get benefits. Some of the best benefits in the world. You get prestige. You get respect, sometimes. You get hate as well, and stereotyping as a politician. You get, sort of, career advancement. You can try to run for president, prime minister.

Sobowale: That’s true. 

Jacobsen: If you’re a place like Iceland, you have a president and a prime minister, but that’s another story. [Laughing]

Sobowale: By the way, even the arms dealers, the guys dealing in arms and ammunitions. They gain economically. 

Jacobsen: Yes, that’s the black market. In many ways, if you outlaw industry, an industry, you create a black market overnight. I mean, the more rapid example, by analogy, would be if you pass a law, overnight, you’ve made a whole class of criminals. A slow motion version of that analogy, going to the original example; you make a black market by outlawing things for guns because war is profitable. People will slowly develop a black market for AK-47s. Open question: What about all of the arms and artillery and tanks that the American military left in Iraq and Afghanistan after the Doha Agreement with the Taliban in 2020/2021? This is open field for high technology to be taken by religious fundamentalist militants, by State actors hostile to the United States, or simply State actors who have an interest in the black market economy of arms, even people who are non-State actors who have an interest in the black market economy of arms. There are prominent cases. I remember looking at some international individuals from different countries, including Nigeria, I think, who were dealing with arms or who had militias kidnap kids, drug them, brainwash them, train them to be killers. It is really horrific. Fundamentally, back to your original question about why get involved in some of these things, or at least write on them, do a small like that, not be boots on the ground getting kids out of hostage situations. It seems like the right thing to do. That’s an intuition rather than a firm fact. Yet, I think it reduces the total number of human suffering. So, I think it is a reasonably good thing to do. 

Sobowale: By the way, don’t you think the “Third World War” is starting?

Jacobsen: I don’t know. If you look at the Doomsday Clock of the Atomic Bulletin of Nuclear Scientists [Ed. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.], or however it goes, I forget the exact organization it’s from, but it is the Doomsday Clock. Certainly, it has been ticking closer to midnight. But we have conflagrations with the Russo-Ukrainian War, with the Hamas-Israeli war.

Sobowale: The last one or the continuous one. 

Jacobsen: The ongoing ones, it’s sort of in Middle East-North Africa and Eastern-Western Europe – Eastern Europe. Those two, certainly, represent conflagrations. Yet, I think it’s important to reflect. Most of human history has been war. I believe the number is less than 10% of recorded human history has been peaceful. So, the default is 9-to-1, war. Something like that. So, war is not new, as we both know. The ratio of war is not new. The major threats on the immediate ground have to do with nuclear powers fighting one another. 

Sobowale: By the way, what I wanted to say, you know, when you look at it: the distribution of arms or whatever. The amount spent on arms and munitions. If you could just slice this into half, would the world not benefit?

Jacobsen: I mean, I’m a peacenik. So, it’d be nice. The question is, “How do you get from A to B?”, or A to Z – so to speak. Treaties help. Where there is mutual benefit in a very hot situation, the Cold War would be a good example between the Soviet Union and the United States. Those treaties, that started, if you track them. I forget off the top because it’s been years since I looked at that stuff. The treaties, when you look at those treaties to reduce arms mutually, they were effective. So, international law and treaties, and focusing on reducing nuclear arms, did work. And not many nations necessarily have them. So, I mean…

Sobowale: …one thing, I see. Just like the internet, I mean, internet could be used for good purpose and for negative purpose. Nuclear, too, it could be used for good and for bad. 

Jacobsen: Yes, it’s… the common example is a hammer. You can hit a nail into a 2×4 and build a cabin for a family to live in, in the forest, or you can bludgeon a skull and kill someone. This is in some of the oldest literature around like the story of Cain and Abel. These sort of violent stories of brother killing brother. I think it extends in a loose way to using a hammer to build a home or bludgeon a skull. Those kinds of examples are very clear to people. It sets an example that the category “technology” is neutral. It depends on the orientation of how you use it and then the purpose behind that, the why you are using it. Technology, even to the current moment, is like that as well. Something as advanced as nuclear technology is in a similar state. Even ones that are more slow proceeding threats since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution would be the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, and other emissions, those create, you know, these sort of negative feedback effects where there is a capture of additional energy into the atmosphere. It is sort of a greenhouse effect. So, we get a warming planet. That is more slow going. That didn’t start… that started well before either of us were born, but we can somewhat pinpoint it based on different metrics.

Sobowale: What kind of world would you see 5 years time?

Jacobsen: It is always interesting to ask that question or reflect on that topic when a war starts. Imagine asking this at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan war. I would argue we’d have relatively rapid technological change, faster than now, because we are not seeing linear changes on information processing fronts and developments in those styles of information processing. Somewhat similar to human, somewhat different, we are seeing exponential effects. So, let’s say a doubling happened every year, okay, year one from now. It seems the same as a linear change. By the fifth year, you’re 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. So, it’s 5 years, but it has been 16 times the change. That sort of scales up. That has effects on everything that is downstream from information processing changes. I think any kind of warfare we’re going to see, if we are sticking to war examples for the last few that we’ve had. We’re going to see less on boots on the ground, ships in the sea, planes in the sky, and more fourth dimension of war in terms of cyberwarfare: hacking, shutting down plants, gathering data and information about the citizens, the army. Those sort of hacking initiatives will be a difficult forefront. We are seeing some changes in the Canadian Armed Forces around this as well. Where some positions have come up in the last several years to sort of develop a frontline of protection for Canadian citizens from this, but, I mean, obviously, the secret intelligence services will be more important for that. I would see: war, but also a changing landscape of war. I believe the Israel-Hamas War will, probably… I mean, it is idiotic to make these kinds of predictions. Maybe, a cooldown and then a re-entrenchment by the Israeli forces into Palestinian occupied territory and with Ukraine and Russia; that ball is still up in the air. Most other parts of the world will, probably, be relatively similar.

Sobowale: Okay, we have about 6 minutes more. What do you hope to achieve with your activism?

Jacobsen: A modicum of change that only one person can make in a limited amount of time with limited resources, with time being another resource [Laughing].  

Sobowale: You know, change could be relative, you know? Look at this. The arms dealers, they are there to make money. I regret to use the word “developing” because we all know they’re underdeveloped. They are just there, right? They are there to make money. Where does that leave us?

Jacobsen: If people want to make money, that’s their prerogative. Not everything has necessarily been monetized at this time. Although, human beings, certainly, in many regards have been objectivized… objectified and made into commodities. Obviously, that’s a longer discussion, but, to the original question, nearing the end of that 6 minutes. I would aim to add a little bit of good that I can in a limited amount of time, and that without any praise from a higher power or sense of doom about a hell after motivating me, simply because it is the right thing to do is good enough for me. 

Sobowale: I just wish you all the best. Because I know the stories are out there. Because, I mean, like I just said, the arms dealerl, you are out there trying to fight for human rights, trying to do all those things. Maybe, the leaders in the developing countries. It’s kind of a morass, you know? But then, I just wish you all the best. So, let’s just quit the program and we’ll talk some other day. 

Jacobsen: Excellent, thank you, and thank you for the opportunity.

—

Audiovisual interview original publication at The Migrant Online:

(November 9, 2023)

A chat with Scott Jacobsen, a Canadian activist and journalist!

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