What is to be done?
I can’t remember if it was author Michael Chabon or journalist Peter Pomerantsev who did it. Or was it listening to Greta Thunberg’s passionate remarks at the UN? Whoever it was, one of them spoke to my increasing sense of unease: I’m concerned about current events, but I am not doing much about them. Lenin’s question never goes away. What should I be doing, when democracy, mutual respect, even our natural environment are all disintegrating, when even deciding to have children is a dilemma for many people? [i] I used to teach, now I write blogs, but it’s not enough.
The way I see it, there are various levels at which some kind of action is needed. There’s the global level, where climate change is still largely unchecked, and where populist right-wing governments are chipping away at democracy. There’s the national level. For me that includes both the USA and Australia. The two countries are converging as rampant lying and deliberate manipulation further racist, sexist and class intolerance, where economic exploitation and rent seeking by the few grows worse and worse, and where governments resemble oligarchies. These events at the national level are paralleled by similar shifts in the two countries’ states. And then there’s what might be called the local level, the community, physical or electronically mediated. Since I feel most ineffective at the international and national levels, is that where I should start?
Michael Chabon was writing in the Paris Review, in their art and culture section. He was worried that after nine years as Chairman of the MacDowell Colony’s Board of Directors, things seemed to be falling apart, and that “art has no power at all over the world and its brutalities, over the minds that conceive them and the systems that institutionalize them”, and that all it might be doing is making depressing things bearable. [ii] I was beginning to worry as I read. He is an extraordinarily good novelist, and was he about to give up? Then I reached the end:
“What is the truth of art, that slaking drink in the desert of the world? It’s this: You are not alone. I am not I; you are not you; we are we. Art bridges the lonely islands. It’s the string that hums from my tin can over here looking out of my little window to you over there, looking out of yours. All the world’s power over us lies in its ability to persuade us that we are powerless to understand each other, to feel and see and love each other, and that therefore it is pointless for us to try. Art knows better, which is why the world tries so hard to make art impossible, to immiserate artists, to ban their work, silence their voices, and why it’s so important for all of us to, quite simply, make art possible.
Yes! I write, hopefully sometimes reaching others as I do so, but I need to have more to say.
Peter Pomerantsev offers some clues in his essay on ‘The Death of the Neutral Public Sphere’. His explained his concern at the beginning of his analysis, “What do you do when the metaphors, stories, and premises that hold together a society are rendered meaningless? When things that you imbibe with your earliest thoughts as beyond question crumple? That’s the stage we are at with the once seemingly permanent principles meant to guarantee the culture of common deliberation and debate on which democracy depends, and to stave off manipulative propaganda.” He went on to add, “We need to generate a political discourse that focuses on an achievable future where evidence and facts become necessary again.” [iii] Yes, we do.
Pomerantsev focussed his concern on what he saw as the collapse of the ‘marketplace of ideas’, a forum in which rational discussion takes place, with objectivity and accuracy integral to the process. Can that be restored when authoritative sources have disappeared, or have they lost their commitment to finding and emphasising facts? Traditionally, the media, especially newspapers, played a key role in keeping the community informed. While editorial pages and opinion pieces would indicate overall political preferences, the other pages were intended to offer reasonably objective reporting. We might buy a newspaper that reflected our political views, but we would expect that it provided information that was reasonably accurate, and reasonably similar to the information found in the stories on the same topic in other papers.
Electronic media changed that, and they have changed print media too. The reason for change is quite simple: competition and the decline of many areas of traditional revenue, (job advertising migrating from newspapers to online is one important example), have led to all media needing to be even more competitively successful (‘more eyeballs’ as the current terminology has it). Reports and stories have to be more interesting, interpretations more compelling, and news more immediate to capture readers. As a result, news is often reported or published as events are still taking place, with frequent errors, exaggerations and mistakes, because reporting what is taking place now has precedence over offering understanding. Initial reports may be corrected later on but any amendments and retractions are likely to be tucked away and forgotten.
At a time when we are bombarded with fake news, media are no longer reporters but conductors, channeling the flow of (mis)information to identifiable groups, each pathway shaping what is said and explained to suit that news organisation’s customers. In case immediacy is not enough, television stations and online sources use commentators. Do they help? When we see experts from different viewpoints debate an ongoing event, we are being entertained, with jousting and point-scoring reducing the likelihood of seeking common ground or a search for objectivity. In many cases the media concerned curate their ‘experts’, ensuring their comments will confirm what their audience already knew, or, by criticising the other speaker, will reinforce suspicions already held. Fake commentary on top of fake news, with entertainment and careful packaging designed to reinforce the prejudices of each carefully researched and targeted audience.
All this rests on the slippery sands of postmodernism. Any perspective can be dismissed as the result of speaker’s or organisation’s background, biases, or warped sensibilities. In colleges and universities concerned to protect students from uncomfortable perspectives, we see this taken to an extreme. As Steven Gerrard recently explained in discussing the ‘comfort college’: “That is why, in the comfort college, testimony has come to substitute for rational argument. When students (and more and more faculty) demand a new policy, their arguments often begin as (and rarely go beyond) accounts of victimization; the account is justification enough. This ritual institutionalizes the denial of rational justification. It corrupts the healthy multicultural idea, built on Enlightenment universalism and cosmopolitanism, that different perspectives matter, and that what one sees often depends on where one stands – identity politicians reject the Enlightenment’s hope of mutual understanding and reason’s path to get us there. In the fragmented comfort college, the only tool is power — the power to enforce the dogma.” [iv]
The only tool is power: we see it being exercised every day. The miserable Peter Dutton, Australia’s Home Affairs minister, managed to demonstrate his fascist credentials by urging welfare cuts for protesters and recommending mandatory jail sentences and public shaming of climate change activists. As Australian Greens leader said, “Peter Dutton doesn’t know what living in a democracy means.” He went on to add “One of the most fundamental rights in any democracy is the right to speak up and to protest against those in power … He’s starting to sound more like a dictator than he is an elected politician.” [v] In recent days, criticism of protesters concerned about climate change accuse them of attacking capitalism. In a sense, yes, they are criticising many companies, with very good reason. A recent report showed that just over one-third of carbon dioxide emissions over the past fifty years came from just twenty companies, all in the fossil fuel business. The five largest in this group spend nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change. [vi] There is a problem with capitalism.
Speak truth to power. The Quakers were right. It was refreshing to read about Camille Paglia, who planned to give a lecture on “Ambiguous Images: Sexual Duality and Sexual Multiplicity in Western Art” at the university where she held a tenured position. According to a letter that two student activists released, they wanted her out. The activists followed a familiar path, using social media callouts; urging the university leadership to impose outcomes they favoured, without regard for overall student opinion; and they tried to marshal antidiscrimination law to limit freedom of expression. One argument was piled on top of another, and the activists pointed to an interview posted to YouTube in which Paglia dismissed some allegations of campus sexual assault, ending with the comment ‘If a real rape was committed, go friggin’ report it to police.’ “Perhaps this is an ‘opinion,’ but it’s a dangerous one, one that propagates rape culture and victim-blaming. For this and other reasons, I find her place as an educator at this university extremely concerning and problematic.” [vii]
It could have ended badly, but it didn’t. Camille Paglia doesn’t hold back. [viii] The petition seeking her dismissal suggested “Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color. If, due to tenure, it is absolutely illegal to remove her, then the university must at least offer alternate sections of the classes she teaches, instead taught by professors who respect transgender students and survivors of sexual assault.” However, David Yager, the university president , held firm: “Unfortunately, as a society we are living in a time of sharp divisions — of opinions, perspectives and beliefs — and that has led to decreased civility, increased anger and a ‘new normal’ of offense given and taken. Across our nation it is all too common that opinions expressed that differ from another’s — especially those that are controversial — can spark passion and even outrage, often resulting in calls to suppress that speech. That simply cannot be allowed to happen.” He went on: “Artists over the centuries have suffered censorship, and even persecution, for the expression of their beliefs through their work. My answer is simple: not now, not at UArts.” [ix]
This gives me heart: tell it like it is. That reassurance was reinforced by hearing Greta Thunberg speak at the UN meeting on climate change. She asked politicians to stop wasting time on irrelevant issues, and concentrate on what scientists are telling us about our world: act, she said, “because if politicians don’t act, she, and the rest of the world’s children will have their dreams stolen from them.” Powerfully, she ended, “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.” Focus on the facts. Her views has been praised, but, sadly, she’s also been subject to vicious attacks online and in the media. [x]
Chabon, Pomerantsev, Paglia and Thunberg were all, in their own way, saying the same thing: get facts, then act. They’ve succeeded in getting me to want to do more. At the national level, I have decided I should take the opportunities that are offered, through reviews and inquiries, to make submissions. I have just finished my first attempt at this, by responding to Australia’s Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee ‘Inquiry into nationhood, national identity and democracy’. I found it a personally rewarding experience, and maybe, just maybe, I said something that was relevant. Even if I didn’t, I can see this was a practice run, and for future opportunities to submit, I should be able to make a more worthwhile contribution. [xi]
Some years ago (when Trump was elected, which seems many, many years ago), I began monitoring the performance of my state and federal representatives in Congress and in the North Carolina General Assembly. I wrote letters. The responses were anodyne, uninformative, empty of any meaning, and I began to give up on the process. Now I am back in the game. My new letters are more pointed, on specific topics and the actions that have taken. It was easy to start: my first round focussed on climate change: future blogs will describe what I learn. Now I plan to do the same in relation to my local members representative in Australia, on exactly the same topic. Both the submissions and letters are one way to help the push for action, but they also feed my own writing. I have more to say if I have more to say!
Is that all? I have also been thinking about the domestic level, the more immediate things I should do. I am trying to make stronger efforts to reduce my carbon footprint, only using my car when I have to, completing as many tasks as I can in one outing. Less use of electricity, so I am keeping lights off. Less use of the heating and air-conditioning (a slight challenge as the hot weather has continued in North Carolina past the end of September into October!). In teaching, I am determined to keep pushing on the core academic values of objectivity, clarity, transparency and the importance of rational argument. I have started to reshape my course on innovation to use examples that address issues that matter. In 2020, the students will be asked to examine an innovation on climate change: if they can’t find a proposal, I will do it for them! I also want to keep pushing for lifelong learning. [xii] I hope my blogs are one small step in that direction.
I feel a little more alert to what I can be doing. I see people today use the word ‘woke’ today, but that is focussed on African American awareness of racial injustice (although it is used more broadly). Not woke, then, but awake and certainly I am a little clearer about what is to be done.
[i] On Choosing Life, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, The Point, Issue 20, 2019
[ii] What’s the Point? by Michael Chabon, The Paris Review: Art and Culture, September 23, 2019
[iii] In The American Interest, 18 September 2018.
[iv] How Comfort Conquered College, By Steven B Gerrard, Bloomberg Opinion, September 10, 2019
[v] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/03/peter-dutton-accused-dictator-urging-welfare-cuts-protesters
[vi] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions
[vii] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/camille-paglia-uarts-left-deplatform/587125/
[viii] Her collection of essays, Provocations, (Pantheon Books, 2018), is packed with frank and pointed comments
[ix] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/17/university-arts-rejects-calls-fire-camille-paglia
[x] https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/greta-thunberg-criticism
[xi] This is also the right place to make an appeal – please let me know if you are aware of an inquiry where I might contribute, in Australia or the US.
[xii] See The well-educated person, C D C Reeve, Aeon September 2019
