Author Archives: Don

Words, Words, Words

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Many people unintentionally allow themselves to be fooled. Perhaps the most common and traditional way is simply by holding the pervasive belief that words stand for precise things out there, and that the relationship between word and thing is eternally unambiguously clear if we use language ‘correctly’. —— -If it only were!

The Age newspaper (May 5) provides a sample problem when it announces the new trial in America of five terrorists who have been in custody for some time. Billed as the “trial of the century”.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the deemed master-mind behind 9/11, is the most notorious of the five – but for more than one reason. It has been officially confirmed that he was ‘water-boarded’ 183 times in the first four weeks of his capture.
No information has been made available on his carceration during the following several months.

This intensive treatment is but a tip of the iceberg. The article fails to remind readers that American authorities officially deny that ‘water-boarding’ is ‘torture’. So, to them, Khalid has never been tortured. He never will be – we will be officially reminded of this from time to time. He has experienced only “enhanced interrogation technique”.

The article also fails to tell its readers that American authorities remain unwilling, unlike most other countries, to officially define ‘torture’. This refusal extends as far as the special international committee commissioned to reach some universal consensus on the term. TheAmerican position is firm: ‘we would all recognise it if ‘torture’ was ever used anywhere; and we would all agree then to condemn it’.

[ This stand allows America the freedom to use any technique any time it wishes, and whatever that is, it can never be shown by others to be ‘torture’. By definition – permanently undefined.]

So a “reformed war crimes tribunal” is due to begin, after an earlier version had been found ‘unconstitutional’ by the US Supreme Court.

The new prosecutor, General Martin, is confident about the unblemished status of the upcoming trial. He insists that any army officer selected to serve on the jury from a pre-determined selection of 230,000 serving officers, will be ‘impartial’ even if that soldier had been fighting in Afghanistan for the last ten years. As he says, the military can be trusted to be “just”; it has “proven so in the past”.

So there we are. Officially, the five terrorists have never been tortured and, whatever the outcome, we are reassured the trail will be a just one. There is nothing to be concerned about; the entire process is one of trust. Everyone, even terrorists, will get a “fair-trial”. Someone like Khalid, however, will not be allowed to use the occasion “as an opportunity to grandstand; that would be too dangerous” it is said. [That is why the US Congress stopped the earlier New York Federal Court trial].

To many observers the process has been dismissed as a legal sham; any confession by Klalid, they argue, cannot be accepted as valid after the treatment he has received. A ‘second-tier justice’ normally associated with the ‘show-trials’ of China and North Korea is the harsh judgment of many legal observers.
Indeed this trial has been characterised by the previous chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, who resigned from the position in 2008, as the equivalent to “putting lipstick on a pig”.

But the public, anywhere, can be understandably confused about what to believe. Is ‘water-boarding’ torture of not? Would senior American officials lie about such a thing? What proof do critics have to support their accusations of torture?

Can we, late in the day, learn to realise that words are words are words – and can never become ‘facts’ even if they look as if they are? We know that in certain cases; just because someone says “I love you” it does not necessarily mean (s)he does, or if (s)he does mean it, what does ‘mean’ mean; and when (s)he acts in some way or other is it an act of love or not? These questions are unanswerable – because words can never be pinned down like that. There is no one meaning of ‘love’; there never can be and nothing can ever be proven one way or the other.

Most people probably realise that in some way, but they tend to forget that the same rule applies to any word we can utter – it cannot be otherwise. ‘Smart’ people knowingly exploit that reality; and innocent even reasonable people get fooled.

‘Terrorist’, ‘just’, ‘fair’, ‘impartial’, ‘torture’ are words. Language can only be language. We can say anything with words but as one leading philosopher of the twentieth century said: “A use of language is also an abuse of language”. We can’t do much without language, but it can never settle anything scientifically, rationality. It is always ambiguous – and that can’t be reformed.

Intellectual argument is of little value. We cannot prove the current American position on torture, terrorists, justice and fairness to be wrong and, likewise we cannot prove that we are right. It is in every case a matter of belief and moral intuition.
Which in every way, however, is both more important and more profound.

I believe water-boarding to be torture. I believe that the American government has with full awareness behaved reprehensively ever since 9/11 in the broad arena of terrorism, torture, justice, honesty, decency. What they do, and don’t do (cf refusal to concede any benchmark on ‘torture’) is utterly immoral and done in a conscious political process of immediate vindictive punishment of anything or anyone deemed an enemy – even though what they do clearly aggravates not ameliorates the international situation. And this is why they feel they have to deceive the world (as best they can) by linguistic chicanery.

Because a judgment like this, or any other, can never be proven right, it must not deter anyone from making a judgment. We should never let words, words deliberately chosen to politically deceive people, trick us into silence and confusion. That applies all the time – and everywhere.

Postscript: the trial has begun. But after one day of ‘mayhem’ it has been postponed. Justice, in this case injustice, may eventually be served by other means of current American-style
‘law and order’ – it seems pre-determined.

Don Miller

May 17, 2012

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News, Views, Ads.

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The other day I drove past a new advertisement on the largest bill-board I have seen in Melbounre, a real Jumbo. It was advertising the return of MasterChef on television this week. It features those three big name, big personality chefs we have got to know so well over the last year or so.

And their pose: all arms held high, mouths wide open cheering, barracking, urging, supporting. A joyous, fun-loving cheer-squad. So what is cooking in this very popular cooking show? Another sport, competition, challenge; teams, players, winners and losers; spectator-sport, loud applause, speed, panic, time, race, the final bell. And all good fun. The Art of Cooking? Australia style.

Celebrating the first anniversary of the death of Osama Bin Laden the White House reminds the country of its national hero, President Obama, who bravely brought that evil man to justice twelve months ago to the day.

It went further and questioned, in prime presidential
campaign style whether his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, would have the courage to do the same. Romney quickly reassured the country he did. No presidential aspirant could have done other.

This was and was not the time for anyone in the public eye to raise ‘disloyal’ questions like the cost of that killing: a ten year war (the longest in American history), an extensive destruction of two countries, tens of thousands of lives lost, steep decline of America’a global respect and authority. Was this the global war on terrorism or the global recruitment campaign producing a corps of new, young terrorists?

All in the mode of a traditional American western. The cult of the hero in a lawless society. The killing/assassination, represented as the final surprise shoot-out.

The White House called the adventure “legal, ethical, wise”. America style law. morality and wisdom.

Don Miller
May 9, 2012

The latest blog on http:/melbournecentreforideasposterous.com/
Is titled “Capitalism”. Have you read it?
dm.

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Capitalism

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“There are two kinds of justice: one for the rich and powerful, and another for everybody else.”

Who wrote that? You may be tempted to say Karl Marx – it has in a way a quasi-Marxist ring about it. I actually don’t know who originally said it but it has been repeated many times, in one form or another by critics of contemporary western economy and society.

This particular quotation in fact is drawn from an article by Joe Nocera in the New York Times, reprinted in The Age on 16 April. Times have changed! Current attacks on the world-wide economic system, capitalism (the term ‘free/private enterprise’ is underused in critical moments like the present), have never been as pervasive and emotive since the days of the Great Depression.

Attacks seem double-pronged: the excessive greed of the very wealthy, and the increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. The ‘rich’, significantly, been frequently differentiated between the ‘rich’ and the ‘extreme rich’. General comparisons abound: one being that the richest one percent of the population ‘earns’ 460 times more than the average family. The term ‘class’ is rarely employed; even less so is the author Karl Marx – despite his analysis been considered by many still the most accurate and comprehensive on how the capitalist ‘system’ operates, and systematically dysfunctions.

Joe Nocera writes as he does having read a history of BP which apparently overwhelmingly demonstrates that the recent spill off the American coast was no accident but a patterned consequence of BP always cutting corners in pursuit of greatest profit. The question is ‘when’ not ‘if’ the next ecological disaster will strike. And it coolly follows that policy, the book argues, because it knows that whatever huge compensation repayments recur it can still make the profits it desires. Nocera urges jail sentences rather than court fines as the only effective real deterrence. But how likely it that? Thus two kinds of justice. The BPs of the world will continue to laugh all the way to the bank. And the poor will become homeless.

John Lanchester writing ‘Marx at 193’ in London Review of Books on April 5 reminds us that the once witty expression ‘socialism for the rich’ is in fact a perfect description of how capitalism works. And it continues to survive because of its effective globalisation (which Marx foresaw): flourishing, in fact, because it hides the operation of ‘surplus value’ – tens of thousands of third world labour scanning the contents of ‘hygienic’ Facebook for ‘offensive images’ – working for wages as low as one dollar per hour. And it is now ‘worth’ $100 billion.

It continues to flourish for the major reason, according to Lanchester, that it has ‘flourished’ in even more complex ways than Marx expected. The working class or proletariat has not become the strong, centralised, solidarity group or movement as originally assumed: ‘it’ is complex in itself, a heterodoxy. It is also spread out – around the world. Interests are many, loyalties are many – and transient. A government, even a state may be confronted perhaps overthrown – witness the Middle East last year – spontaneous unity, apparent success, then promptly disunity again. But how much more complex and difficult against an ‘economy’. It has no head-quarters to storm. And the IMF and WTO are secure in the hands of their patrons.

Society and individuals, affecting each other, become infinitely complex. Each forms the other into multi-classifiable labyrinths. It is not quixotic that the notion of ‘complexity’ has become the most common and telling description of modern society and life. Everyone militates against a common ‘consciousness’. And that is before we consider the many cultural seductions of modernity which easily distract us from more ‘serious’ concerns. We are too busy on tour and detours.

We can go even further, I think, in explaining the continued absence of a unity, a solidarity, a classness. The culture of thinking, eduction, does little to discourage narrow thought: we think at a shallow level, on immediate concerns, in local circumstances. Our curiosity is circumspect, through a narrow lense. We think, feel, identify and have compassion only close to home, to ourselves, for tomorrow. We remain as uncommitted to class conflict as we are to global warming. In each, pleasure and immediacy reign supreme.

Marc, once again, predicted that the efficacy of capitalism and its spirit would expand our consumption without end. We steadily become more and more glutted. And never satisfied.

But Lanchester’s final observation is that in factt no-one could have been expected, one hundred years ago, to realise that the earth is actually finite in all its resources. There is not enough to go around – let alone remove or even reduce the consumption gap between the rich and the poor. Or even between the poor in the wealthy western countries and the poor in the non-western world. His telling sample: the average consumption of water in America is one hundred gallons a day. There is not enough fresh water in the world to satisfy everyone on that need alone. Will it ever be likrly?

Is ant greater equality further doomed to fail? Can we expect people to limit their wants, he wonders. Can the rich reduce their desires?

Don Miller
1-5-2012

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Playing with Ideas

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The imagery of ‘playing with ideas’ is of a seated person seriously thinking about some concern or other, probably with pen and paper at hand. It does not readily go with images of physical activity in some untamed environment.

Britain’s National Trust thinks otherwise. It is keen to urge people, especially the young, to get out of that chair and away from Facebook and smart phones all of which monopolise children’s attention these days. (See The Age Saturday 14 March). It had been shocked to discover a survey showing one in ten children had never ridden a bike or regularly played in ‘wild spaces’. One in three had never climbed a tree.

It has since created the campaign “Fifty things to do before you’re eleven”. I loved reading a short list of these things: such as make a mud pie, roll down a hill, run in the rain, skim a stone, fly a kite, dam a stream, climb a huge hill, go rafting, use a map and compass, cook on a campfire, discover what’s in a pond.

This campaign does not simply achieve getting children outside and enjoying a variety of physical activities. It does that and more. Each activity stimulates imagination and curiosity: doing the activity naturally generates new ideas, and in the most direct ways, stimulate the mind – things short on the production line these days.

It would appeal to adults as well. Playing with ideas, playing ideas, ideas at play.

Don Miller

17-04-2010

Posted on www.melbournecentreforideas.com

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When is a Base not a Base?

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Two weeks ago the first 200 American marines arrived in Darwin. The number is due to grow promptly to 2500 in accordance with the agreement of last year. Such a rotating number will be based here for training for six months every year. Accompanying that arrangement American warships will be regularly using Darwin facilities for a variety of purposes.

Announcing that arrangement during President Obama’s short visit, the Prime Minister was obviously very pleased. She was still pleased when she welcomed the first troops two weeks ago, calling the intended joint exercises an ‘evolution’ of existing military ties. Nevertheless she felt it wise to clarify matters. “There are no US military bases in Australia, and this will not change” she firmly announced.

So, one can apparently have troops based somewhere, without that entailing the existence of a base. Of course. There is no need to check for legal usage – involving the notion of sovereignly I assume. That, is the Prime Minister’s statement is probably ‘legally’ correct. But that is irrelevant to the anticipated criticisms of the ‘basing’ agreement at hand (sic: two can play the game). The criticism is political – and it is a strong condemnation of the arrangement – whatever one chooses to call it.

Briefly, two issues are at stake: firstly, this is the worst time that Australia (or
anyone – but I think we are alone in what we do) should encourage a declining America to rattle sabres anywhere. On the contrary we should be doing all we can helping America to adopt a new sharing/multinational role, away from destabilising behaviour which can have nothing but a provocative effect in the region.

Such a willingness to share facilities also encourages America to believe Australia will continue to be a soft touch – and we now hear already about the Cocos Is. and American drones – if that goes ahead it will one day be recorded I am sure as the most disastrous foreign policy decision Australia ever made (potentially worse than Vietnam involvement).

The second objection to such friendly US/Australia agreements is that it automatically and gratuitously slaps China in the face. (a senior American spokesman has already referred to Australia as America’s only ‘ally’ in Asia – the notion of ‘ally’ has been out of service for some time). To say, as several Australian leaders have already said, that China would not take any offence from our behaviour, is naïve, irresponsible and insulting.

Politicians love playing with words as much as poets do, not necessarily to the same effect. To use words which either appropriately enhance one’s own position be that good or bad, or to demean that of an opposition, without actually lying (that, like military action is for last resorts) is the first skill honed by polies (although, before you feel sanctimonious, I must soon discuss how all humans seemingly ‘naturally’ learn to employ euphemisms in their own best interests).

Having said that I feel that the Prime Minister miscalculated about ‘bases’. She may have been ‘strictly’ right about her usage of the word, but I feel certain it was a pyrrhic victory. In fact, she does have difficulty scoring a point in most circumstances.

Don Miller
11-04-2012

Note:
‘Life Imitates Art’ was posted yesterday at
www.melbournecentreforideas.com

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Rumi and Freud

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An exquisite exhibition, Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond, is on display at the Public Library, Melbourne. Illustrated manuscripts starting from the 13th century mainly from Persia are the highlight – in the most literal sense of the word – the colour and form of the illustrations are wondrous. Poetry, overwhelmingly secular in tone, by several writers of the time wet your appetite. I can understand how Rumi, a Persian Muslim poet, jurist, and mystic, has recently topped the poetry best-seller list in the New York Times (such are the vagaries of cultural tastes).

One sentence, said to be well known in the West, struck me:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers
within yourself that you have built against it.”

Why has that poem, and others by the same author, appealed to western tastes so much? I know why it appealed to me – I thought immediately that that sentence quite perfectly represents Freudian psychoanalysis – six hundred years before the event.

Most westerners have a notion about Freud, without likely ever having read much of his work, that it’s all about sex – in some way or other. I prefer to think that the basic issue of Freudian thought is the role of the unconscious, and the repressed, denied, forgotten hidden there. This is what distinguishes Freud’s work from what preceded, as well as so much of what follows him.

Unlike dominant western thought since the sixteenth century which firmly believes that rational, conscious thinking determines what we mostly do as mature adults, Freud insists that man is racked by conflicting demands, many of which we are unaware of, they being so deeply buried away; and that in the long run it is these unconscious factors that shape what we do. We are divided within ourselves, and our consciousness, with its intentions, play the lesser role in our lives. We, quite understandably, deny this; but this normal human process explains why it is so hard to know why we behave as we do. And why it is so hard to change our ways. We are creature of habit, whether we want to be or not.

That is Freud’s diagnosis, and his recommendation is the hand of analysis which can help us, though not necessarily successfully, discover what exactly are the particular unconscious desires and drives which force us so often to act against our best interests, and which subsequently produces so much mental pain for us.

The two writers are talking the same language: Rumi ‘love’ and Freud’s ‘sex’ run a similar gauntlet of travails and the same broad spectrum of passions.

——————————–

It is commonly assumed, I think, that psychoanalysis, as a way of thinking about human affairs, and as a therapy to help heal our self-inflicted wounds, can only be a western phenomenon because ‘introspection’ is essentially only a western mode of reflection. Our literature essentially rests on the novel, which overwhelmingly is a study in individuals psychology. It is not the case elsewhere, it seems to us.

I don’t know how well that stands up to any rigorous global investigation, but it appears to apply at least to Indian culture. I have found that so from my own experience. But the testimony of Sudhir Kakar, India’s finest psychoanalyst scholar, is more powerful. He says that he has to spend nine months with new Indian patients for them to learn to be introspective, before he can begin psychoanalysis with them.

But reading Rumi presented me with a new idea. Poetry has for a long time been a mass popular culture in at least several countries, including Iran. Poetry automatically delves into the psyche every bit as much as the novel. Witness the Rumi. I am kee to explore further this insight.

In the meantime read some Rumi and visit the exhibition. And read some of Kakar’s beautifully written boos

Don Miller
2-4-2012
to to posted on melbournecentreforideas.com.au
See also
http://melbournecentreforideas.posterous.com/language-never-innocent posted 27-3-2012

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Food for Thought

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I want to start with the beginning of a newspaper article on food, written in 2003, which I have just come across.

“In an age when restaurant menus are dumbed down to read like shopping lists (duck leg with pancetta, potatoes, wild mushrooms and savoy cabbage), there is something rather endearing about a traditional Chinese menu, with its pervading sense of poetry and mystery. It is clearly so much more romantic to start with Mermaid’s Tresses, go on to Beggar’s Chicken, and finish with Eight Treasure Pudding.
These are names that are more than just names. They are miniature history lessons, concise geography studies, and glimpses into social cultures and customs of long ago.”

Now ask yourself some questions – and be ruthlessly honest with yourself – after all you are doing it in private.
Question 1. Which of the two approaches do you prefer?
Question 2. Why do you prefer that?
Question 3. Why are the reasons for that preference? (that’s the hard one)
Question 4. Just speculate – what do you think might be unconsciously behind that reason? (harder again)

If you genuinely tried to answer those questions seriously you clearly would have enjoyed the play – and possibly even learned something.
Those four questions are good ones to ask yourself anytime about any of your firm beliefs, big or small.

Don Miller
20-3-2012

NB I am posting at the same time “Overkill” – to be found at http://melbournecentreforideas.posterous.com/Overkill

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Hard Science and Soft Science

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Those practising the ‘hard’ sciences of physics, geology, chemistry, astronomy et.al. know (or believe) they are being rigorous, rational, thorough and patient in their pursuit of truth. A goal reached only now and then to scientists – it is hard won, but practitioners are not deterred. They know science calls for such dedication; they are proud of themselves. By and large the public holds a similar picture of scientists; it respects them (ill-tempers over the proof of global warning notwithstanding). They are the experts after all. Only they represent Science and its dedicated search for knowledge. It is interesting to think that the word ‘scientist’ automatically carries with it the word ‘expert’. We do not conceive of a scientist being an inexpert or amateur.

On the other hand, those engaged in human and social studies, such as history, anthropology, psychology, literature, philosophy are seen and labelled differently. This separation is based on the view that they are not sciences, as we know the word. Nor do practitioners ‘appear’ rigorous, testing, patient, objective researchers of the truth. Rather they are seen as amateurs, speculative, imaginative. To be enjoyed – surely at times; to be taken seriously as purveyors of knowledge and truth – infrequently. At best they are artists. They may be deemed to represent the ‘soft sciences’ – an ambivalence – both pejorative and charitable a judgment surely.

But an alternative vision is possible. ‘Scientists’ by their own admission follow strict procedures. This may be their strength – it provides a clear guideline for young scientists, to begin with. It can also be their weakness. A formula, a standard, a rule which restricts, inhibits, controls – all features limiting new, yet to be considered possibilities. Imagination, speculation, sudden inspiration are absent, disallowed. Research under restraint. It is only the exceptional scientist (usually renowned and retired) who concedes that speculation and imagination play an important role in the best scientific research.

But science can’t have it both ways: its formula is the ‘scientific method’; its (occasional) imaginative behaviour is not. Is it an aberration, which sometimes pays off?

Consider the humanities scholar: provided one does not try to ape the stereotype of the hard scientist, she is wracked with problems all the time. Beginning with language itself, with all its ambiguities, allusions, and hidden implications. None of which can be solved or resolved before you proceed; and they haunt you always.

Their studies target, in one way or other, the human condition, whether the subject matter is history and its wars, cities and their rise and fall, the quest for political power, women’s repression, and economic cycles. Human beings are always, no matter how implicitly, the subject matter. And humans change yet remain the same; they are knowable yet remain a mystery. In all, they are full of contradictions, denials, deceptions – to others and to themselves. How do we make these fitful, capricious beings an object of rigorous study? Let alone an object of ‘scientific’
study’? [The effort to square the circle may be the cause of psychology’s poor repute, and its retreat into a ‘testing’ institution].

How do we ever ‘know’ human beings in all their machinations and manoeuvres ? Can we ever ‘understand the truth’ of love, hate, fear, joy – in all their guises ? Surely these studies are the real ‘hard sciences’. And there can never be the ‘last word’ on any element of the work. In comparison the exciting subjects of physics, astronomy and hydraulics pale into ‘softness’ – there the scientist has her ‘marching orders’, they know what they have to do, and they get on with the job, in a certain pure innocence.

Pity the poor poet or ‘student’ of politics (note we never say the ‘student of the galaxies’); they rely on little helpful directions on how to manage their work. Nothing instructs them; everything obstructs them. They grope and struggle for every insight in their practice of ‘hard science’.

Don Miller
8-3-2012

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The Expert

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Western culture has valorised the ‘expert’ for a long time. You could say the West specialises in expertise – and it is proud of such a profile. Besides, it does it well.

Specialisation is everywhere, not merely as the dominant feature of medicine – where I sense modern Australia first used the distinction between ‘generalist’ and ‘specialist’. Today there are few ‘generalists’ left specialising – anywhere. The entire workplace, from the most manual to the most cerebral, operates on a complex ‘division of labour’. It is even said that the “IT industry is no longer an (one) industry; within the last several years it has been filleted, segmented, into numerous, self-referring specialisations, with little intercourse between the various fiefdoms.

Accordingly, education becomes narrower as it advances into the tertiary and beyond. Sir Ken Robinson, the respected and feared controversial critic of British education argued several years ago that existing education clearly serves one goal only: to produce the next generation of university professors. But be clear what he is saying: it is not that education simply aims, in an elitist manner, to produce more experts on classical Greek verse in the second century BC, or more authorities on seventeenth century corn production in south-west Italy. What he is saying is that current education (without articulating it) aims to train future teacher-advocates at the highest tertiary level in whatever pure demarcated specialisations society may produce.

Subject matter may vary and change unbelievably widely – but what is being taught under whatever subject-rubric it is labelled is akin to a ‘global algebra’ – “algebra is that part of mathematics which investigates the relations and properties of numbers by means of general symbols” (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). Education has become a symbolic activity – geared unwittingly, self-deceptively, to produce nothing but experts in expertise. It applies fittingly to everything in its increasing diversification and isolation, as it moulds everyone into a common but lonely oneness.

Let’s illustrate.

As the twenty first century begins, ‘tourism’ for example has become a significant sector of life and work. It is accordingly yet another selective component of tertiary education around the globe. And accordingly again it, in its relative smallness, is further divided into smaller and manageable parts (I quote from the handbook of one typical Australian university): its subject matter at the undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate research level is divided into three areas of knowledge: Tourism Management, Hotel Management and Event Management.

The Department of Tourism at that university advertises its many memberships. These include UNWTO, I-CHRIE, ANZALS, QTIC, TTF, CAUTHE, ATLAS, and THE-ICE (to save space I will translate only the last – “The International Centre of Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality Education”). The future acme of learning: ‘Excellence in Bare Nothing’.

Each of us is expected to do one thing only, expertly, and nothing else: a special form of ‘trained incapacity’. Appropriately we can do nothing else – we have never been encouraged to, trained to. Modern society cannot tolerate dilettantes. The admired ‘Jack of all trades’ died with the advent of the first machine. Like all mechanical tools we can fit only one thing, do only one task. We all are now simply a ‘fitting tool’.

And the results?

A society of experts militates against the notion of a ‘community’: it has little to share; little cause to empathise; little experience of compassion; little chance to step outside ourselves. Such an atomised society has to be conservative. Such a society has no sustained interest in ideology, in politics, in working towards a better future; it is content with the administration of things – to make the present situation a more efficient machine. It reacts, that is it becomes agitated, only ad hoc against any issue which is not immediately rewarding to a special interest.

Such a society thinks within more and more narrow boundaries; it has little motivation or imagination to think beyond the present: the new, the fresh, the different. Rather it nurtures a growing intolerance for anything uncommon, or critical. More ideas, more new ideas, new questions are angrily dismissed as utopian, mad, destructive, divisive, unreal. Its spokesmen, its leaders, its politicians will become smaller and smaller human ‘units’. It will slowly, eventually atrophy as it has little talent, established structure, or sense of big questions, bold challenges, creative ways of handling matters. And no solidarity, no expressive bonds, no communal purpose, no passion for others or other things.

Can we change matters, can we grow bigger, can we dream of a better, richer life? Can we wander, stray, become impatient with the present atomised life? Is there an alternative, interactive and interdependent means of living together possible?

I smile warmly yet sadly each time I re-read the words of Maryanne Wolf in her book, Proust and the Squid, when she says

“Children who never have a story read to them, who never hear words that rhyme, who never imagine fighting with dragons or marrying a prince, have the odds overwhelmingly against them”.

Modern society has been deprived of such treasured beginnings – and follow-ups; otherwise the global demand for universal expertise would have been dismissed as impoverished, unenlightened, boring and fruitless. And we all would be thrilled by being surrounded by curious, imaginative, bold thinkers ready to leap the boundaries keeping the myriad experts apart, each huddled in its narrow trench.

‘The Expert’ is posted on both www.melbournecentreforideas.com and

http://melbournecentreforideas.posterous.com

Don Miller
28-02-2012

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‘Asian Wisdom’

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Edward Said, the impressive Palestinian born American scholar and author of Orientalism, a book of enormous global influence, described the way the western world, in particular its scholars, unconsciously interprets the non-western world.

Essentially it sees that non-western world as if it were one: that is as if China and Japan and India and Iran and Malaysia were homogeneously the same. As well, the attributes of this false unity are taken to be inferior in all ways to that of the West. Instead of the west’s rational secularism, the other is irrationally religious; instead of healthy individualism it is unhealthily communal and collectivist; and instead of an inclination towards a responsible guilt it is shame directed to saving-face. It is in other words the strange Other – and they (the many nations involved) are all the same Other. ‘Orientalism’ is Said’s word for an extreme form of unrelenting, demeaning stereotyping.

Said went on to suggest that a secondary Orientalism also exists – among a minority of westerners. It is found among those liberal and tolerant people who, often out of curiosity with the ‘other’ or/and a certain disenchantment with the West, see the non-western world in rose-tinted mono-focal glasses.

Once again the non-western world is homogenised and made singular. But this time its uniform quality is one of goodness, contentment, wisdom – and implicitly, dramatically, contrasting it to the West (The God that Failed). No longer demeaning them, we simply deify them.

To talk of ‘Asian Wisdom’ is a perfect example of the more decent form of Orientalism. We need to move on. The countries of Asia are distinctly different from each other: economically, politically, culturally. In no way is India, for example, China; nor is China Japan. We need rigour in comparing and contrasting them; and we need honestly with ourselves: in avoiding projecting our disappointments with the western world on to uncritical adulation of all those beyond the western shores.

And we need to be chary with the language we use: ‘wisdom’ is a strong word (it is of course also a word full of ambiguity; that is no special problem here – all conceptual words, and beyond, are ambiguous). Which bit of India for example do we find ‘wise’? Don’t all cultures – east and west – have different bits of wisdom? Do any have a wisdom that pervades and shapes all other aspects of the culture? I think not. Further, for every bit of wisdom found in a culture, bits of folly, conceit, foolishness, idiocy, crassness, denseness and recklessness(and worse) can also be found.

And we need always to make two significant distinctions – whichever culture we are considering. Is for example the Confucianism of China we may admire that of its teachings or that of its practice, that of its early form or that of its current quality? Or is it only part of its quality that we find so admirable and other parts we ought admit being quite distasteful?

Or have we made an error of unwittingly putting together into some idealized imagined culture one good bit from each of several Asian cultures; together the mythic splendour dazzling us.

In the past the west have learned a lot from the east (although rarely acknowledged), and I have no doubt we will continue to learn more and new things from different Asian cultures in the future. Already it seems that Australia could profitably learn from certain current Chinese educational practice.

We can be judicious, respectful and grateful in what we see and admire and learn from, without being hyperbolic about the nature of the gift we have taken.

Don Miller

22-02-2012

PS. This topic would be an excellent one to stimulate an extended discussion on these pages.

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