Last post
The Freethinking Festival is over, for this year at least. It wrapped up with a big bash in Liverpool last weekend, featuring dozens of public talks, debates and discussions, most of them recorded for broadcast on 成人论坛 Radio 3.
The idea behind the whole project was, I guess, to thow open the bedroom windows and let a bit of fresh air into the speech output of Radio 3, though some observers may also have been reminded of George Orwell’s famous description of the 成人论坛 as ‘halfway between a boarding school and a lunatic asylum’ (actually he said ‘girl’s school’ but never mind).
So how did the experiment go?
Some of the talks were good (the wonderful Jude Kelly for example), but I was not so sure about the discussions. The best ones, I suspect, were the low-key events hosted by the brilliant Liverpool organisation , which sets up meetings in public spaces, where anyone can join in and rack their brains over questions like the nature of happiness or the value of human rights. It could be awful, but in fact it’s inspiring: the conversation is serious, concise, focused, generous, relevant, open and intelligent. Apart from Philosophy in Pubs, there was also a kind of undirected open-mike session for the public and the freethinking bloggers (John McGuirk, Esther Wilson, Rana Dasgupta and me), and I thought we made some pretty good headway with the meaning of prejudice (the highlights should be transmitted on 24 November).
The other discussions (to judge by the small sample I attended) were more problematic. They took a standard radio format, with four would-be experts guided by a presenter-chair who might or might not understand the subject under discussion. The difference was that they had a live audience in front of them, and that participants had been primed with the chosen buzzwords of the festival.
In the first place, everyone was asked to focus on ‘the future’. I must admit that I did not find that very helpful: ‘the future’, it seems to me, is not so much a well-formed topic as a soiled old rag-bag. You can hardly discuss anything at all, however ancient, without touching implicitly on things that have not yet come to pass, and you cannot explore what has still not happened except on the basis of what already has. So what could a discussion of 'the future' be about? My advice for the future: make the future history.
And as for the invitation to expatiate on what we’ll all be up to in the decades to come, may I please be excused? Most of us find it hard enough to know what we’ll be doing next week, and beyond that, the only certainty is that things are unpredictable.And the record of high-altitude punditry is not very encouraging. The 成人论坛 was already fussing with it sixty years ago, and in 1945 the historian A.J.P. Taylor offered his ha'porth on the Home Service: ‘Nobody in Europe believes in the American way of life, that is, in private enterprise’, he said: ‘or rather, those who believe in it are the defeated party, which seems to have no more future than the Jacobites in England after 1688.’ So much for private enterprise. The 成人论坛 is planning another Festival in Liverpool next year, but let’s hope they’ll give the future a rest.
Secondly, everyone was asked to be ‘provocative’. The word is as familiar as an old sock, but still it gets on my nerves. It’s not that hard to be provocative, after all: it means not caring too much about subtlety, precision, fairness or finesse, and being as boorish, laddish and egocentric as you like. Now if they’d asked for courage that might have been rather different.
Third, there was the banner under which the whole festival took place, namely ‘freethinkng’. The 成人论坛 seems to have thought that everyone would know what the word meant, and what’s more that we’d all agree that it is something we should aspire too. They had perhaps forgotten about T.S. Eliot’s notorious claim that ‘freethinking’ was a threat to British culture (actually he said ‘freethinking jews’, but never mind). As it happens, the ambiguities and paradoxes of freethinking have been the constant theme of this blog, from my first post at the end of July to this, which is my twenty-second and my last. Through my own 15000 words, and nearly 300 comments, we have seen how the concept of freethinking can sometimes refer to something rare and fine and beautiful; but we have also seen that it can mean nothing but unconscious subjection to commonplace, prejudice and cliché. There are none so servile, it seems, as those who are sure they are free.
I must admit I had was not sure what to expect when I started this blog. I talked to some blogocrats who advised me to observe the established conventions of the genre: very short posts, composed at high speed; unpredictable leaps from one topic to another; linking up with like-minded bloggers, funky photos, and revelations about peculiar private habits &c &c &c. I knew that would not come easily to me: I write in order to think, and thinking takes time, and anyway I don’t want to be part of any gang, even a cyber-gang. I was not a complete novice on the internet, and I knew that it can be (amongst other things) a hotbed for self-enclosed egotisms, where people one might politely call eccentrics advertise sets of opinions that have no unifying thread except the insistent strumming of ‘I, I, I’. (Virginia Woolf once said that ‘I, I, I’ was the characteristic refrain of men’s writing, and male behaviour in general: I think she had a good point, and I have been struck by the preponderance of men – or at least masculine avatars – in cyberspace, and indeed in comments on this blog. Is the blogosphere is masculine enclave, I wonder: is blogging especially for boys?) But does it have to be like that?
I am glad to say that my experience of blogging has not been as bad as I feared. I'm afraid I have failed to live up to the conventions of blogging; or, to put it differently, I seem to have defied the supposed laws of blogospheric gravity. Over the months I have groped my way from one entry to the next, following the argument wherever it took me, guided by some of the excellent comments I received, for which I am really grateful. The result has been, I think, not so much a series of disconnected opinions as a continuous inquiry, in which I at least have become a bit clearer than I was about the connections between freedom, thought and progress. Maybe you have too: in any case, if you have been, thank you for being patient. For the time being, the space remains open for comments (I may chip in with one or two of my own), but as far as posts are concerned, this one has been my last.
Well done. It was stimulating and satisfying. Knowledge is too hard to find sometimes, so having access to yours was a gift appreciated. Perhaps patience is a virtue after all?
Yes I can hear the faint echos of the "last post" as it fades across the Mersey. Don't worry about more posts JR, we'll carry on regardless, we have so far!
And we'll try to keep it short and pithy right Panda?
MARIE CELESTE'S BORED
She decided on a mys-tery
so long had she floated the sea.
She'd go away and ne'er come back.
Go to live with provincial hack.
Leave her board and see the world,
from small compass --
dancing whirled.
In her barns and village fetes:
out of system all she hates.
---Found computer back of shed;
switched it on, went out of head.
Now and then gets library book,
restarts studies, phone on hook.
If you're wandering -- can't get through --
deep-end-studded, she be true.
All these stacks of ancient lore,
all the new e'en to Al Gore,
mean sheer frustration if no sense
overcomes our sheer pretence.
Ah, bliss to be
on deserted ship.
Sail in doldrums, shoot from hip.
Sort out self, sunbathe on deck.
Come to world new day, new values,
new knowledge, old reason.
Sublime Peter - could never have put the ending so well - yes we will keep posting despite these absent philosopheeeeeeers!
I liked this blog a lot.