Why the President Matters in the 21st Century-Mateus Baptista
We face a challenge of leadership; there is a void in our body politics that remains to be filled. First, expectations of the president need to re-evaluated. The public’s perception of the president is unrealistic and inflated. A CBS News/New York Times poll in March 2012 reported that 54% of people believe the president “can do a lot” about gas prices.
Our economic recession adds another dimension to the public’s bloated expectations. In the wake of the 2008 economic recession all eyes turned on what the President-elect would do once in office. People believed and still do that the President had the ability to fix the global economic meltdown. The public expected the President to solve our economic problem without understanding that in the globalized neo-liberal regime markets are highly connected. It is no longer possible for a single country to ameliorate the effects of an economic meltdown.
The president will only matter in this century if it is first addressed how we perceive the president. He is neither a deity nor a dictator. His actions in an increasingly filibuster-happy congress are limited. The public’s expectations must be re-evaluated and shaped to accept reality. The president cannot solve all our problems; the very fabric of the American constitution prohibits the president from securing more powers. The justified fear of an autocrat prohibits action. This tradeoff was accepted by the founding fathers and it must now be accepted again.
Once expectations are adjusted, how then does the president matter? The president will matter as long as he can engage citizens in our democratic process. The pervasive idea that democracy is simply voting has filled the minds of millions. The civic and democratic institutions lie asleep in times where the market prevails. People have given up on government; they see it as an artifact to be studied in history books. The president must see his role as protector of our democracy; he must be its biggest champion. This cannot only be done through rhetoric alone. The president must help foster an engaged citizenry that actively participates in our democracy.
The danger to our politics does not come from terrorist it comes from a citizenry that is not informed, does not participate, and could care less. When the media suggests the president must rise above politics the only way that can be done is to address the inherent problems in our current political system. It is to remind citizens of the price paid by their forefathers for political rights. The president must become the chief persuader thereby helping bring citizens into the political fold. The only way for the president to matter in this century is for people to see him as a protector of this great experiment and not merely as passerby.
These leaders will come from the left and the right alike, engaging citizens should not be a partisan issue. They must also come with a historical understanding of our democracy and American institutions. This does not mean they will rise from academia, but that their understanding cannot be informed by current political debates but rather by history. New political leaders must accept a non-politicized history that seeks truth.
Facts have become politicized, each side molding it to their own advantage. Objective truths are irrelevant because each side has been allowed to massage it. On August 28, 2012 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie lied by omission. He gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention claiming that there has been a New Jersey come back. That his policies have worked and all it takes is serious leaders to tackle our problem. He claims he cut the state deficit while decreasing taxes. The governor forgets to mention he also cut pensions, teachers, firefighters, and many others. What is more glaring is New Jersey’s unemployment rate at over 9%.[1] The myth is created allowing Governor Christie to become a hero in the Republican Party. The truth does not lie with either party. A new leader must inform citizens of the reality rather than try to score political points. This may be impossible but it is the only way that the president will matter.
People are tired of the partisan bickering; Obama’s unemployment rate is just as bad as Governor Christie’s and yet both sides claim victory. A president will not matter until he can acknowledge the fundamental problems at hand. For a leader to matter he must stand for something greater than his own party. He must stand for citizen participation and access to information. A leader would not claim victory but would relate to citizens the problems we face and the solutions they believe will solve it. They must acknowledge when those solutions do not work. It is a pragmatic president that will matter in this century, one who is willing to suffer the consequences of failed policies for democracies sake.
The Millennial generation will inherit a troubled world by the year 2040. Their ability to lead will prove extremely important. They will be the heirs to the American dilemma. The hope is that they rise and fill the leadership void not as past generations have done, but as new leaders different and emboldened by a fight for a vibrant participatory democracy. It is John Dewey that should inform what a new president needs to fight for. “[T]he task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute.”[2]
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[1] http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/08/nj_unemployment_rate_rose_in_j.html
[2] John Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task before US
Does the President Matter?
Does the President Matter? Consider this quotation from Jurek Martin in today's Financial times:
Barack Obama and Mitt Romney may speak, sometimes even to real audiences but more often to fat cat fundraisers, but their words fall on deaf ears if not empty wallets. Lots of people speak for them, in the strange languages known to advertising and political consultants, but what they say is ephemeral and leaves, beyond the daily news fix, “not a wrack behind”, as Shakespeare put it. Yet they are fueled by piles of money, which means they speak more and more – to lesser and lesser effect.
Lawrence Lessig is of course right to worry about the corrupting influence of money on our elections. But the greatest effect of all this money is the drowning out of meaningful speech in a throbbing sea of money-driven sound bites, consultant-approved platitudes, and poll-tested attacks. Everyone must stay on message, which means that no one says or does anything. In such a system, how can the President matter or make a difference in the world?
If you have an answer, enter our 2012 Thinking Challenge by answering the question: "How might the President Matter in the 21st Century?"
Learn more here.
And the winners are…
The winners for the Arendt Center's first thinking challenge have been chosen. The competition was fierce and we received a large number of high quality entries from many countries on four continents. But, these entries stood out to our judges:
WINNERS (in alphabetical order):
Jacqueline Bao - Click here to read Jackie's entry, "Whistle-Blowers as Truth Tellers".
J.P. Lawrence- Click here to watch J.P.'s entry, "Weaponized Words".
Katya Lebedev - Click here to read Katya's entry.
Our three winners will each be awarded $500, and have the opportunity to participate on a panel at our upcoming conference, "Truthtelling: Democracy in a Time Without Facts" being held on October 28-29, 2011. They will also receive a signed copy of Thinking in Dark Times.
SPECIAL JURY PRIZE
Rezarta Seferi - Click here to watch Rezarta's submission, "Who was Josip Broz Tito, and why?"
HONORABLE MENTION
Steven Tatum - Click here to read Steven's entry.
EARLY BIRD WINNERS (in alphabetical order)_
KELLY MCLAUGHLIN - Click here to read Kelly's entry, "So Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes".
EMILY PASCUAL - Click here to read Emily's entry, "The Voiceless Generation".
Our early bird winners will each receive $50.
Congratulations to our winners as well as all those who submitted entries. You should all be proud of the wonderful and thought-provoking work you produced.
Click here to see all of the entries.
Thinking Challenge Submission – Anonymous
Just picturing, imagining realistically the future of "democracy in an age without fact”, two strong, surging, upwelling feelings come to me. The first is an anxiety provoking grief, the feeling of being lost. The second, coming from under the first, behind it but driven more powerfully, is a complex vision of a better world, an enthusiastic hope.
This essay will first examine the institution of fact, as a failed one; it will move on to see how this failure can bring about a positive change in ethics; and finally a project of thought will be proposed around the notion of personal interest.
'Fact', taken in its common usage of 'scientific i.e. immutable', aside from being a great human institution, through science has taken a particularly strong importance in the modern era. It connotes an unquestionable, certain truth entirely justified on a human level – religion, chance or fate are not called on to justify this type of truth; it is a self-sufficient rock of man made creation on which we can found our conception of the world. Hence the blow, the grief felt, when this reliance on fact can be thought of as coming to an end. The foundations are taken away, a world is turned upside down, and we are thrown back into an ether of lack of conception. Thought relying on 'fact' will eventually end up in this state.
Indisputable fact, surely enough, is not what it seems: in the vast majority of cases it is most definitely fallible, and at its best it can be said to be highly probable. Scientific facts are relative to context and can always be refined, and even mathematical certainties are not at the safety of being overthrown come a revolutionary discovery (such has happened a few times the last hundred years), or the invalidation of an axiom. David Hume proved this over 200 years ago when he said that the only reason we think we know that the sun will definitely rise tomorrow morning is our habit of it doing so, nothing guarantees that it will. [necessary? If so explain better] So taking scientific fact as an unshakable base of thought, when it comes down to it, is a mistake, and also a bad move on the human level. Surely enough, when statements are pushed to this level of infallibility, when they become 'fact,' they are unquestionable laws, a modern type of dogma. Such dogma cannot be questioned or argued, it is oppressive, and going against it will provoke social punishments. Even the highest level intellectuals and scientists (the high priests of fact), must take the greatest care when questioning it, going slowly, and most definitely avoiding certain essential ones. Transfer this pattern to the life of an individual, and while fact may give him solid beliefs (and maybe a useful sense of security) it also closes his thinking, making him doomed to make certain mistakes over and over, and to missing the classes of truth in life that his facts have rendered improbable. This greatly hinders an individual's liberty of judgment, a capacity not only needed to a happy life, but absolutely necessary if one wishes to satisfy more subtle needs and wants, the ones which mainstream wisdom does not know how to address.
In short, the loss of the illusive fact, though disorienting, could also be a step towards a better life. Not to mention it is a step towards the truth, and just so in this aspect, desirable. It leaves us much freer to intellectual exploration; ideas and truths can be sought without the fear of outstepping accepted-as-indubitable facts. In a world with issues such as ours, this could prove essential. But still, as people, to be able to think effectively we do need a certain frame of thought. Fact has fulfilled this role, but if we are approaching “an age without fact,” we need a new, more solid and less oppressive, frame of thought. The dangers of not having one would be utter intellectual erring, or worse, the choice by default of an even worse frame of thinking.
In the light of our new freedom of thought, and to fulfill the conditions of a new frame of thought, I would like to see a habilitation of human facts as the center of our thinking. For the sake of explanation we can lump these into two categories, private and interpersonal truths. The first can be true for a person and not for another, they are private, and respectively can only have a corresponding level of validity, but which should nonetheless be respected. The second are true for pretty much everyone, but only in a human and non-scientific way. Interpersonal truths should have about the same validity as scientific truths do today, but of course, due to their interpersonal nature, would be prescribed in a different way. They are not strictly objective. These are the truths dictated by human nature, of human needs and desires. They include positive ones, like empathy and self-fulfillment, but also the negative ones, like hate and greed.
This implies that greater trust must be given to individual judgment, as well as to the human intelligences which are usually repressed or hidden rather than understood. These include the various intuitions, emotions, spirituality etc; the capacities which as living beings are often our greatest source of intelligence. This is a re-centering of ethics around the individual, and not the fact. Though the fact is important, its prominence over the individual has attained a level of absurdity and so should be re-contextualized, and in any case, if a fact is truly important to us, it is because it is somehow linked to certain human values. We implicitly function around human values today, but in too much of an indirect manner.
To prescribe the project I just described seems quasi-impossible, or at least incredibly vague. And I'm pretty sure that it is impossible to create a systematic implementation of it, even if it were clearly defined, because of its very human and non objective nature. It would have to respect each person's individual freedom. In the mean time, in spite of this, I would like to attempt a step forward. We cannot aim directly towards a more human society, but we can make ourselves think in a more human way. Since such a human-centered system would emerge through the free choice of the collectivity of individuals, I think it would surely be beneficial to rethink a big element in the directing of this choice, our private and collective notions of “personal interest.”
This notion which guides our actions and shapes the courses of our lives is generally misunderstood today, and thus wreaks havoc on our world. Thinking about it is easy enough and accessible to anybody, and its practical concreteness makes it a much more approachable project than the abstract human-centered society referred to earlier. In an idealist perspective, we can justify that if the greater good follows from everyone pursuing their profoundly best interest, logically, a project of clarifying these interests would be key to this greater good. In a practical sense, such a reflection would give people better awareness of their actions and goals, and hence the ability to choose them more carefully, and so if nothing else, greater personal awareness and freedom. The feeling of personal interest is probably the oldest guiding thought of people; with the unprecedented level of material ease possible today it deserves some attention and maybe a bit of education (because it is still centered on survival, and maybe desire as a secondary one, not the notion of living a good life).
Presently, particularly in America, this notion has been completely blurred and uniformized, and people are losing their freedom. Without a solid sense of ones personal interests, one will be misguided, attracted by empty or destructive goals, and with one's energies so misspent it will be impossibly difficult to lead an ethical life. Too many people equate a desirable life with wealth, fame, or power, when the pursuit and even obtaining of such things will lead to unhappiness and pain for most people. This goes from people taking out gigantic loans to buy things that they don't need; to wall street traders, whose intellectual capacities could probably do a good deal to make society better, but instead act as essential pivots in participating in making it more unstable; or the student chasing a career that he doesn't really want or will even be suited for (hence, perhaps, a certain proliferation of bad doctors and unhappy dentists...). To generalize a bit, within the limits of American society, personal interest is dogmatically taken to mean 'going up' whatever that entails. To have another conception of personal interest is tagged “alternative” or deviant, is frowned upon or ignored from a distance; in any case it is socially excluded. The freedom of self-definition is replaced by the freedom to social mobility, and in becoming a norm (or a necessary goal) it becomes a limit to the freedom of the self.
The pursuit of upward mobility as the guarantee of a good life (or happiness) is fundamentally flawed. First of all, individually, it will not satisfy anything more than the most basic material and social needs of a person; and second of all, collectively, the number of people at the 'top' of society never increases – and one going up generally implies another coming down: the number of people in desirable positions never actually changes, it is an empty promise for a better society. Also, more people in high profile, high paid positions, structurally implies more people in low profile and underpaid ones supporting their activity – let it be in poor parts of big cities, or on the other side of the world (behind each “Made in China” label there is a worker...).
It should be noted that this essay does not intend or desire a kind of class revolution. The proposed project lacks this controversy. It should be offensive to nobody –it is adaptable to all non-controlling systems of thought, religions, social classes etc--, and even if it does not 'solve' any of the ills of society, it is hard to see how it could be unhelpful. At its most extreme, a rethinking of personal interest would entail a shift from directing life with explicitly external values (wealth, power etc), to personal ones (self-fulfillment, happiness, empathy etc). Practically, the values that would really matter are more along the lines of personal fulfillment, pleasure, integrity, self-respect, etc. Wealth or power, etc, would only be valuable in relation to the latter values, and to the very few people suited for such positions.
I believe in the practical feasibility of this, that a person holds the notions of his fundamental personal interests inside of him, and that with proper research and guidance the individual can find them. This project requires solid guidance and education; self education at early stages of life can easily result in disaster. Guidance should be opposed to directing: to help someone find what is best for him rather than dictating it. The notion of personal interest itself has to be reconsidered for each and every person. Simply superimposing various pre-existing notions of personal interest is a mistake – a particular individual should require his very own one, and even if he doesn't, he should at least be required to make the effort to find which one is his.
I believe that society today does not function properly. The desirable system of society, the one we're looking for, is structuring but not controlling; it organizes people without preventing their well being and hindering their free will. The ability of the leading class to control its people should no longer be such an important value if we wish to attain a human-centered society. It seems like a safety net which we are stuck in. If each individual chooses what is profoundly best for him, the sum of these decisions is what can let a “better world” emerge. Controlled revolution, with its manifestos of predefined values seem like the reiteration of a bad idea. A rethinking of “personal interest,” while not a sufficient condition for a human-centered society (as opposed to economy centered, or ideology-centered ones), definitely seems to be a quasi-essential part of it. But if nothing else, if these goals are completely unrealistic, such a project would give people the added awareness of their own decisions without which they cannot be said to be free.
“Mis Mentiras” – Andres Martinez de Velasco & Loretta Lopez
Statement of Purpose
Mis Mentiras is a colaborative project built upon communication. Loretta wrote the poem in Spanish and as she searched for an accurate English version of her words, Andrés composed music for the Spanish version. Andrés’ music does not explain the poem, it investigates its core and expresses it as a reaction. His work captures the sentiment of Loretta ́s. It is not a translation but an invention in itself.
In the English translation of the poem, the words wrap the core predecessor. Like Andres’ music, Loretta ́s translation prioritizes the preservation of sentiment . It does not work on an entirely factual level, it chooses to understand a meaning and preserves the truth through further invention.
Mis Mentiras works on a principle of risk and creation. When we voice truth through art we engage in a simultaneous act of creation and loss because the accuracy of any medium is limiting and the extent of understanding indefinitely variable. Different understandings become part of the artwork, part of the truth, or a new truth.
-Andrés and Loretta
Song: Mis Mentiras mis+mentiras+mp3-2.mp3
Excerpt of score:
Lyrics in Spanish:
Mis Mentiras
He decido decir la verdad a través de metáfora.
Mis mentiras son de leopardo,
mi lengua es de colibrí,
se extiende hacia flores y agua de azucares para que los niños se asomen de sus balcones.
Me he abierto y cerrado tres veces pero no es ahí donde uno encuentra el misterio.
Ayer en sueños, nos sentamos en el piso azul de la cocina agachados enfrente del goteo,
me dijiste que solo me entenderías hasta el final, esto nunca fue un cuento, pero siempre lo será. Entiendo que recordarme es mentir. Derive un color del color original, agregando el blanco, seguí este movimiento y cada color nuevo se convirtió en el original. No hay un ancestro, mis hijas de amapola son los ancestros.
Las semillas muertas dan flor.
Somos abuelas sin nietos y líneas rectas desvaneciendo a la ausencia de oscuridad.
Hablemos ahorita para representar el olvido,
para impregnar estos cielos de montaña,
las estrellas siempre han sido la mas grande distracción al verdadero negro.
Realmente es el vacío que se refleja en esta laguna.
Construí mis propias lagunas donde se reflejan las caras de vírgenes adornadas en piedras falsas y chucherías de hogar,
tengo la adicción de representarme con estos objetos. Reconozco la inmoralidad de una mentira y lo tristemente ordinario de la verdad.
Lyrics translated into English:
My Lies
I will tell the truth through metaphor,
through leopard lies,
and my hummingbird tongue
that reaches into opening flowers and sugar water so children lean out their balconies.
I opened and closed myself three times but that is not where we find the mystery. Yesterday, in dreams, we sat on the blue kitchen tiles in front of a leak, you said you would only understand me at the end but this wasn’t a story—though it always will be.
Recalling myself is also a lie.
I painted you
deriving a color from the original color by adding white,
following this movement every new color became the original.
There are no ancestors, my amapola daughters are the ancestors and
dead seeds flower
we are the grandmothers without children and straight lines fading into the lack of darkness.
Let’s talk now to show our forgetfulness
and impregnate these mountain skies with this conversation.
Stars distract us from true blackness,
really it’s the void reflected upon the lagoon.
I built my own lagoon, it reflects the faces of virgins adorned in false gems and the knick knacks of a home.
Addicted to representing myself with these objects, I recognize the immortality of a lie and the commonplace sadness of the truth.
Truth-telling in the Age of Opinion-Laurel Harig
In the age of rapid- response media, truths are deployed like hard drives, consumed and then over-written by newer, faster, more expedient truths. We want instant insight and commentary, not hard- won wisdom. Contemporary journalism in the United States is broken when there is no culture of analysis to support it, when pundits offer pre-packaged opinions that are wielded with nonchalance by everyone from citizens to senators alike. Debate meanders circularly and there is no resolution because there are no facts or values held in common. This is how something like climate change which is recognized by 98% of scientists can become a matter for debate. The remaining 2% of scientists can become a credible reason for doubt. After all, truth is all in how you tell it, which facts you reveal and which you keep hidden, which are distorted and which are twisted beyond recognition by losing their context and history. The appearance of fact is enough in a timeless, soulless world. What is truth-telling in the age of opinion?
Listening to Syrian- American hip-hop artist Omar Offendum’s album, SyrianamericanA, throws into relief the tensions and richness of cross-cultural experience. The narrator is living a life that is familiar to those who cross between the Arab world and the West. Each verse becomes a meditation on colonialism, Orientalism, the nomadism of “success,” feeling torn between two cultures, two moralities, two inseparable, dissimilar lives. ” Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane,” he sings. “it’s an Arab super hero and he came to bring change.” The voices of truth-telling in the future belong to those who are caught, by chance or circumstance, in between two or more conflicting narratives of power– when ideologies are examined in the light of lives we must live, the story unravels and we can see beyond the frame.
Tunisian revolutionaries have expressed “we don’t want to be called by the names of flowers!” Especially after the Tunisian Ministry of Tourism has marketed the country for years as a land of exotic fragrances and accessible to Europe Mediterranean charm. The Arab revolutions, not “the Arab Spring,” or “the Jasmine Revolution,” offer new possibilities for speaking and thinking from and to the centers of power. Once ignored by the mainstream media, activists, in particular from the Egyptian youth movements, have been featured on Al-Jazeera and honored by establishments of “human rights.” With this recognition, however, comes an even greater challenge. The call by Egyptian activists at the beginning of the revolution was for each man, woman and child to come down into the square. Not only those who have access to blogs, Twitter or Facebook, those who are young, globally connected, or connected to leftist politics were responsible for the events which are continuing to shake the foundations of the world we thought we knew. We all have a responsibility to the cities, the politics we find ourselves in. Hannah Arendt said famously that “freedom has a space, a place.” (The Promise of Politics) These spaces, Arendt says, are the heart of the city or polis and contain the essence of democracy. The Bahraini regime knew this perfectly well when they destroyed the Pearl Roundabout which had been the epicenter of demonstrations in March of 2011. Around the world, public spaces are being reshaped and reclaimed as spaces of dissent, debate and action.
These spaces are not given for free. Waves of development have ripped out the collective spaces from cities, turning historic neighborhoods into block of “luxury flats” or boutique hotels which cater exclusively to foreigners. Gentrification pushes families further away from the centers of cities into hard to access suburbs. Beirut’s cosmopolitan charm is largely a fiction invented by the tourism industry. Recently in Beirut, several friends have been wounded by thugs of the Syrian regime. People are pulled off bar stools for criticizing Assad’s regime and beaten up in nearby alleys. The freedom that we struggle for is not an abstract, but a daily sensous reality. It demands an awareness and a greater attention to the small politics of daily life. Sometimes a revolution can be a few previously unspoken words, sometimes it can be a look for or against what is easily apparent. At all times, it is the will to resist “the way things are.”
A friend of ours who was being prosecuted by a military court for his activism committed suicide last week in Beirut. “I die as I have lived,” he wrote, “a free spirit, an anarchist, owing no aliegance to rulers heavenly or earthly.” In the discourse surrounding his death, however, one truth risks being drowned out by the fervor to write his death as a heroic gesture, a revolutionary position. That truth, rather quietly, is that Nour had struggled for many years with severe depression. It seems wrong to paint him as a hero in death when he might have lived as a man. If we were to follow Nour’s example, we would work tirelessly and quietly for the causes we believe in. Truth, in the manner of an enduring wisdom, is always soft-spoken, always humble and often found in unexpected places.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz50_1Y2pXU&feature=player_em
The Truth Within the Fact in the Context of Politics-Blagovesta Atanassova
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."
Hannah Arendt, "Origins of Totalitarianism"
What is truth? Is there such a thing as a universal truth or is truth something that is based on one’s belief? I was confronted with this question recently, in my Theory of Knowledge class, and my first reaction was: yes, there is such a thing as a universal truth! But as I got to think about it more and more, I came to realize that actually truth is what one makes it to be. For an example, it was a universal truth for many societies, including the Ancient Greeks, that the Earth was the center of our solar system. It was the logical thing to assume, since everyone could see that the Sun and the Moon circled our planet. But did that make the theory true? In the early 1500s, Nicholas Copernicus realized that, while the Sun might seem to circulate the Earth, it is, in fact, the Earth was circulating the Sun and the only reason it seemed to be the other way was because Earth was making circles around itself. Today, through modern technology we have concrete proof that the Earth truly circulates the Sun - and nobody would believe if they were told the geocentric theory.
The purpose of that analogy is to show that society can quickly be convinced based on what they see on the surface. For the early people, it was very clear that the Sun moved on the sky and that the Moon did so, as well, thus the Earth had to be the center of the universe. Similarly, in history and politics, sometimes people tend to be led by their beliefs rather than what is beneath the surface. Many politicians have for years believed that lies are not harmful when trying to achieve a great cause. Yet, that is not so. Perhaps, for those leaders who chose to lie, it is indeed not harmful, for they do tend to achieve their goals. All they need is the perfect circumstances, a few wielded facts and the right words. For the society which follows them blindly, the consequences are often much greater.
One great example in history would be that of the French Revolution. The time preceding the Revolution was that of a financial crisis. More and more people struggled to survive, having lost their jobs, living under miserable conditions and often unable to buy even a loaf of bread. As in many occasions in history, one man succeeded to make the best of the situation. Maximilien Robespierre was one of the many revolutionary leaders. He used the people’s desperation, and, using a language of hatred, inspired the people to rise against the government and overthrow the monarchy. In much what he said, Robespierre was right - indeed, the royal family lived an expensive life off of the money of the people. What he did not tell, however, was that, the royal family in France had always lived in the same way Marie Antoinette and her husband did - the difference was that the previous generations did not have to face the financial crisis the last French royal family did. Thus, by twisting what is now known as a historical fact and using the desperation of the French people, Robespierre created a truth of his own, which the people accepted and turned into a universal truth. That lead to Robespierre achieving his goal - he got power and became a leader. But those who had supported him, such as his fellow revolutionaries, suffered, for almost all of them followed the royal family on the guillotine. Robespierre’s reign of terror lead France into a different kind of crisis, and it was a consequence of the people’s folly. It took generations to achieve the ultimate goal of the French Revolution: “Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood”.
Of course, not all political figures twist the truth to achieve a greater good for themselves - in some cases; they do it believing that they would achieve a greater good for their country or even the world. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is, to this day, known as one of the greatest presidents of the United States. And, in many ways, he saved this country. But in order to do so, he had to make sacrifices. Sacrifices that cost others great pain. At the end of WWII, at the Conference at Yalta, a document known as the Declaration of Liberated Europe was signed by FDR, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. In that document, it was declared that after the end of the war, with the liberation of the countries influenced or occupied by Germany, free elections would be held, in order to establish new order. These words sounded very promising, yet there was a problem - they were very vague. At the time, almost nobody was able to see that. The war
had caused too much damage. All people wanted was a peaceful resolution. The prospect of free elections seemed wonderful, and everyone was too eager to believe there would be such a thing. I can testify for that, using the example of the country of my birth - Bulgaria. When the Declaration of Liberated Europe became a public fact, preparations for elections began in Bulgaria. Candidates were picked out, campaigns were started. Great was the shock of the people, when the government, which had been a communist-oriented one, with a prime minister close to Stalin, arrested everyone who had been pro-democracy and executed the leaders of the opposition. Not too surprisingly, the leaderships of almost the entire Eastern Europe, with the exclusion of Greece, turned red, or pro-Soviet. There was a purpose behind the vagueness of the Declaration of Liberated Europe - free elections, as far as Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill were concerned, meant elections in which Stalin’s post-war vision of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe would become a fact. In other words, the
Big Three knew that at the Eastern European elections, there would be no governments that would turn out as pro-democratic. FDR also succeeded to achieve his goals - there was peace, but he had to lie and sacrifice Eastern Europe for it. Citizens did not know that - they believed in what they saw on the surface, in what they heard from their leader and created a universal truth, which ended up hurting the Eastern European peoples.
History often tends to repeat itself, although in different forms. Today, I can clearly see a radical new movement in the United States - a country that has always symbolized freedom, democracy, and rational thinking. I angered to hear a statement that the newly popular Tea Party had made - they accused President Obama of being a socialist. I cannot be sure if it is the atrocity of this statement, or the amount of people supporting it that bothered me more. Ever since the Cold War, in the United States the term “socialist” had ben related to the Soviet Union and its dictators. I find it funny, knowing the true meaning of the term, how correct the Tea Party leaders are. For, the initial ideal of socialism is that all people would be equal. If one sees the term in this fashion, then yes, Obama is a socialist, for he wants all Americans to have equal opportunity, and he has been fighting for that with the Universal Health Reform and the plans for job opportunities. But I know that the Tea Party does not use it in this way, nor do their supporters see it as such. No, they use the term in a Soviet-related fashion, thus offending people like my mother, who lived in a communist state, experienced the transition, and came here from a post-communist society and knows what the true meaning of a communist dictatorship is. But the Tea Party leaders have found the perfect circumstances, hitting on a nerve in a time of deep economic and financial crisis and have used a hateful language to achieve their own purpose - to have power. Perhaps it is too early for many of their followers to see, but as I personally believe, American society is dividing and the people are suffering. The problem is, they believe they suffer because of the wrong person. They have created their own truth, a truth which for them is universal, like the truth of the geocentric theory or the free-elections of post WWII Europe.
No, there is no universal truth, there is truth based on the interpretation of facts. And it is the responsibility of society, the citizens and their leaders to overcome their bias and look beneath the surface, seeing the facts as they are.
A Show About Nothing: Addressing the Lack of Objectivity in the US-Pak Relationship – Saim Saeed
Within the context of the chronically unhinged US-Pak relationship, truth seems to have a Holy Grail-like existence, a perpetual not-being. Every aspect of this relationship seems to be based on projected motives, half-truths, distrust, covert missions, divergent interests and blatant lies.
I’ll lay out the perceived truths of the matter. America thinks: Pakistan is obsessed with India. Any weapons or military aid given to Pakistan will go to the eastern, rather than western frontier. Pakistan wants ‘strategic depth’ – it wants a friendly Afghanistan in case of war with India, in case of geographical, tactical and political maneuverability. It wants elements within the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network to be in power after the US packs up to achieve that friendly government. It is afraid of Indian influence in Afghanistan – Pakistan does not want to be flanked with hostile governments on both sides. Pakistan, hence, has an interest in fueling in the conflict in Afghanistan so that it could wield influence in ‘endgame’ negotiations. Hence, Pakistan, a supposed ally, is providing the very weapons and funds that the United States is supplying to Pakistan, to the people that the United States is fighting against.
Pakistan thinks: The United States is not to be trusted. They abandoned Pakistan in 1989, when the Soviet-Afghan war wrapped up, and this occasion will be no different. Pakistan needs to think of a post-US map of South Asia, getting as much influence, and as many concessions as it can before the withdrawal. As for Pakistan’s stance towards the militants, Pakistan is the biggest casualty in the War on Terror – a war not started by Pakistan. Pakistan has suffered thousands of military and civilian deaths at the hands of militants, and Pakistan has been stretched to the limit in fighting this menace. The Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network does not threaten or endanger Pakistan. Pakistan would be stretched even thinner, and be even more insecure if Pakistan expanded its theater of military operations. Furthermore, the United States does not respect Pakistan as an ally, expanding drone operations on Pakistani sovereign territory despite Pakistan’s continuous calls for the abandonment of the program. The United States consistently favors India over Pakistan, legitimizing, indeed enhancing, the former’s nuclear program, while constantly heckling the latter’s.
Where does this lead? Not anywhere desirable by either party. The United States assumes that the war in Afghanistan will carry on indefinitely until the security threat coming from within Pakistan’s borders is neutered. Pakistan will continue to try and muscle its way on to the negotiating table in Afghanistan and recreate a former sphere of influence. In real terms, therefore, when the matter is put in such terms, the Afghan war, drone strikes, terrorist attacks, occupation, and everything else that is ugly will continue to come out in news items, Twitter feeds and body bags – an inadvertent upholding of a status quo that nobody wants, except for militants. And like that, the interminability of it all evokes cynicism, despair, a gross acceptance of the atrocity that is war, and everything that comes with it.
There is nothing inevitable about the state of affairs between Pakistan and the United States. At the most fundamental level – and it is condescending to say so – there is a lack of empathy. The realities that Pakistan and the United States create for themselves are warped, subjective, narrow and dissimilar. They lack any objective truth, making any meaningful negotiation – even conversation – impossible. Pakistan and the United States, as political entities, are impossible to reduce to their tactical objectives. Furthermore, they both project what the other side wants rather than disclosing their own objectives. Finally, there is an expectation of deceit that renders any candor as insincere.
So why and how does truth matter? Recently, there has been a lot of academic interest in Pakistan. Journalists, authors and academics have spent time and energy to try and go deeper than simply talk across a negotiating table to better understand the dilemmas, the aspirations, the thorns in the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan. They went to search for the truth. Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven is probably the most apt manifestation of this interest, in which he travels far and wide, interviewing day laborers, bureaucrats and army generals, painting a rich and complex canvas of a nation of a hundred and eighty million. The truth, especially in a country as multi-layered and multi-dimensioned as Pakistan, is never categorical and always nuanced.
That doesn’t suit power brokers very well. Things have to be suchandsuch in order for them to do soandso. When entities such as the Pakistani military are so fractured that one wing is Islamist while the other is secular, it is difficult to characterize the Pakistani military that takes into account such contradictions. Hence, either the secular side is pretending, or there must be two separate militaries. Pakistan’s obession with India is taken as a given, and it takes Aatish Taseer, the son of a murdered Pakistani governor to try explain why even that supposedly irrational position exists. Empathy is not extended to the other side either. The United States also has a need to have itself and its allies dissociated from any form of terrorist activity. This is not as obvious as it sounds. The United States, and most countries, have supported militant non-state actors in the past to meet particular strategic and tactical objectives, whether it be the Contras in Nicaragua, or the even the rebels in Libya in the present day. But the advent of Al-Qaeda has tempered this political phenomenon, making the United State particularly averse; a sensitivity that Pakistan does not appreciate.
I speak not of morality. I am not an idealist. I understand the strategic and pragmatic motives that compel states to act with each other with the ruthlessness and trepidation that they do, and that they are a symptom of the fundamental uncertainty that exists in international relations. What is evident, however, is the elementary mismatch of two countries trying to work together when there is nothing objective for them to work on. A comic example of this would be the meetings between Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart on their respective shows. Their summits tend to be cagey and volatile, where the presenters spend most of their time in holding their own, rather than trying to seek any kind of objectivity in the current American political framework. They cognitively treat as fact the notion that there can be no agreement between rival factions. By agreement I do not mean accordance. I mean an acceptance of certain political truths. For example, Republicans think military intervention is bad when a Democratic President does it, and for Democrats, intervention is bad when a Republican President does it. There is nothing categorically ‘bad’ or ‘good’ about interventions, according to politicians.
So when Jon Stwewart and Bill O’Reilly talk to each other, there is nothing objective being discussed at all; it is, all just an articulation of their own interpretations of reality that the other chooses not to accept.
Mr Lieven’s book to me, then, is the reality that best represents the objective truth in politics. In the case of US-Pakistan relations, it is the objective reality that needs to be considered by both Pakistan and the US so that at least they can talk about the same objects, rather than simply hurl vindictive, venomous accusations at each other.
I want to make this very clear. This is not a case of ‘can’t we all just get along?’ That would be a patronizing – indeed, wrong – characterization of how international relations work. What I am calling for is the need for objective truth, an undeniable state of affairs, the undeniable object of negotiation, so that even in the case of diverging opinions, the fundamentals of what is being discussed is not in dispute. In American-Pakistani relations, and most international disputes, that is lacking. When the CIA itself says that there has not been “a single collateral death” from the drone strikes, while other reports say almost a third are civilians, then there is a fundamental need to have the truth about the drone program to assess its efficacy. Any discussion regarding the drone strikes is an exercise in futility since nobody, not even the CIA, has an idea of what reality is actually being discussed. Even if they did, it evidently is not being shared. And so, again, negotiation – discussion – becomes a tragic case of he-said-she-said - or he’ll-say-she’ll-say - that, inherently, is doomed to fail.
Strategic thinking is an integral part of politics; but when it clouds our basic fundamental interpretation of reality so much that we fail to recognize any empirical, epistemological truth, Afghanistan does indeed become a quagmire – just like it is in our heads.
A Devised Truth-Morgan Green
Truth is a political construction. Last week, two women were fined for wearing burqas in a suburb of Paris. This was the first application of a controversial law passed in France forbidding Muslim women from covering their faces in public. Compulsory unveiling in France creates a narrative of a homogeneous French identity. In an age of mass immigration and turmoil between Islam and the West, the veil functions as a synecdoche for Muslim dissonance. Cultural battles are often fought through the form of the female body, though the conflict is much deeper than a thin layer of fabric across the face. Women are traditionally the mothers, home-keepers, and face of moral society, and therefore visually represent national ideals. A cultural battle is being fought through the body of the Muslim French woman, using her image to project political truth.
The right wing political pursuits in France have encroached on women’s right to freely practice their religion. While France claims to be in favor of women’s rights and freedoms, a woman’s right to identify with her religion, a precious freedom, is now forbidden. The choice to wear a headscarf should be personal and not legal. Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab believe that Islam liberates and empowers them, while the image of the veil challenges the Western notion of these words.
This ban is accompanied by a great ignorance that will not be recognized until the controversy is over. This shrouding of the truth must be dispelled in the name of human rights. Seeing a woman fully covered from head to toe can be discomforting. From a Western perspective the covering of ones face can be interpreted as a refusal to exist, an erasure from society, an equivalent to silence. Muslim women cover their face in order to be modest and diminish their publicly exposed sexuality, but when out of context as in France the veil intensifies sexuality in its excessiveness. It is conspicuous, and being so visible calls more attention to Muslim women rather than less. There is mystery and fear of what is under the veil, and this ban is an attempt to control women, more so than the veil is misconstrued to do so itself. Save for extreme circumstances in conservative Muslim countries, women choose to wear their head coverings and are not required to do so.
The only obligatory dress code for Muslims according to the Koran is to dress modestly. The Koran actually says in Surah XXIV Light “And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only what which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosom” It goes on to describe the close relations with whom the woman can share her
adornments. There are no specifics about the hijab or burqa. There is no sketch or diagram. Covering the head is a cultural and personal choice in order to identify with faith. Muslim women wear the hijab to feel connected with their faith and with their community, as well as to distinguish themselves from Western traditions. Men are [i]not limited in their choices. This tradition is not distinctly Islamic. There are Hasidic Jews, as well as Amish men and woman who dress in a distinctive conservative style as well. A headscarf can even be as secular as a fashion statement as seen above on the lovely Grace Kelly! France especially recognizes the power of clothes, where being fashionable and beautiful is an expression of patriotism.
Despite these truths, it is difficult to know a person without seeing their face. However, there is a difference between the burqa, which covers the entirety of the face, and the hijab, which leaves the face exposed. The Muslim women in France who choose to wear the full burqa are a vast minority: about 3 thousand out of a country of 62 billion. France, the most secular country in Europe, practices a strict separation of church and state. So why should the government ban the religious choice of a small selection of their citizens?
The projected truth of what it is to be French was discussed in an official national debate on French identity led by President Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s attempt to define the national essence encourages a false ideal that all citizens must comply with the same set of values. Hannah Arendt also sees truth as something that applies to all men, a universal fact. However, the French government is trying to enforce a truth of the French image, while discounting the realistic diversity in their population.
According to the French government, the veil undermines national unity and threatens community. The French Right sites the preservation of frenchness as its primary objection to the veil. The veil has also become an issue of National Security. Muslim women must be totally visible in public. It is not safe to drive with vision obstructed by the veil. The tradeoff of these precautions is encroachment on the freedom of religion. Moreover, Muslim women have expressed the willingness to show their faces when legally necessary as in court, or at the bank.
The subject of women’s body as a form of political debate is not unprecedented. Catholic missionaries attempting to convert and assimilate Native American women cut off their long dark braids. Mini skirts in the late 60’s were measured with a ruler in schools for proper length. My mother was sent home from higschool in Austin, Texas for having yarn shoelaces that dragged on the ground. While the French claim to be protecting the equality and dignity of women, they are in fact disrespecting women’s right to choose their own religious practice.
Kenza Drider, a conservative Muslim French woman, announced her candidacy for President the same day the women were fined for wearing their veils in a town hall. She proposes to serve all women who are the subject of political discrimination, and though she has little chance to win the election she brings up the excellent point: How does controlling what women wear protect their rights?
When I was in the West Bank for three weeks I was asked to cover my hair, which I found unpleasant. Covering my latest haircut or dye job: both of which have the power to transform and reinvent self-image, felt oppressive. I wore a scarf to and from the school where I taught and quickly tore it off the moment I entered my classroom. It is part of Western culture to celebrate the beauty of the female body, which consequently means to expose it. This is something I believe in personally, and support the celebration of the female body. However, my mind was opened when my students told me why they love their hijabs, and choose to start wearing them much earlier than they needed to. Generally girls adorn themselves with hijabs when they begin menstruating. They said it makes them feel like more of a woman, and they are proud to feel that way. I had never thought of it like that, but now see that this choice is strongly cultural and connects the fashionable young ladies with their community as well as their religion. The choice is not unlike my own to begin wearing a bra and shaving my legs during those same formative years.
The choice to wear a hijab ties a young woman to their families as a representative symbol of societal values. This is not in accordance with the Western idolization of individualism, and therefore an essential difference between our cultures. By dictating how women can dress, France is dismissing differences in culture that it should tolerate rather than control.
France’s burqa ban oppresses women by banning an essential part of their religious and cultural heritage. The ultimate right for any individual, man or woman, is choice. France’s nationalist battle of the veil prohibits this right. French Muslim women should not have to choose between their religion and their country because their country doesn’t view their choices as French. Does the narrative projected by the French government ring true, or is a woman’s right to choose the universal truth? Though the collective nationalist brainwashing can be compelling, in the end there can only be one truth. Either France is right and the burqa condemns the countries sense of self, as well as oppresses women, or Muslim women who freely choose to wear their burqas are the more free and liberated citizens of France. The ban exemplifies the manipulation of truth for a political purpose, using the woman’s body as an illustrative tool for change.
[1] Iranian Painter: Afshin Pirhashemi
[1] Jananne Al-Ani, Untitled, 1996
[1] Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief 1995
[1] President Sarkozy
[1] Kenza Drider announcing her candidacy
[1] My English Class, Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative, West Bank
[1] Lisa Lyon by Robert Mapplethorpe
Thinking Challenge Submission- Steven Tatum
I would like to conduct a poll: “If you had to describe political life today with one word, what would it be?” My hunch is that popular responses from both sides of the isle might include variations on ideological gridlock, frustration, partisanship, self-interestedness and impotent. In any case, with the approval ratings of congress at an all time low, there is a general sense that there is something seriously wrong with politics today. I worry that we are growing increasingly tolerant of our dysfunctional at worst, frustrating at best, political life. Is this just the way it has to be?
While much of Hannah Arendt’s essay “Truth and Politics” is devoted to an examination of the disintegration of political life that sounds all to familiar to a contemporary reader, she concludes by defending what she calls “the actual content of political life.” For Arendt, associating with others in public with the goal of making something new together can give rise to feelings of joy and gratitude. So what has gone wrong? Why is it that any attempt at political engagement today leaves us frustrated, resentful, and cynical?
I believe Arendt makes a strong case that the quality of our political environment has deteriorated because of our understanding of what it means to tell the truth. One easy way to see what Arendt is talking about is to consider comedian Stephen Colbert’s understanding of what truth is and where it comes from. When he coined the word “truthiness” in 2005, he went a long way toward explaining our society’s attitude toward truth. In Colbert’s satire, the proper source of truth is not reason or fact, but conviction and instinct, “know[ing] with the heart.” Extending these themes in his address at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Colbert argues that truth exists only in the “no facts zone” of personal conviction. By this definition, truth is no more than our personal understandings of the way the world appears and how it works. In other words, truth is just a very strong opinion.
It is precisely this tendency to blur the lines between truth opinion that Arendt believes undermines the “common and factual reality” which gives meaning and balance to our lives together in public. In a world where opinions are held to be true and truths debated with as if they are opinions, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the truth, and the common ground on which we stand erodes even further. A disinterested truthteller, who tries to make facts known to the public with no motives besides the desire to establish the existence of a common world, finds him or herself in danger of being swept up into politics. If one political group or another notices that the truthteller’s facts either to support or oppose their personal convictions, the facts themselves can be disagreed with as matters of political opinion.
Consider the climate change debate in this country. When scientists presented evidence that the global climate is changing and that human activity is a main cause, liberal environmentalist politicians quickly adopted their findings as justification for regulation and investment in alternative energy sources. When criticism of climate researched emerged in the scientific community the political right capitalized on the doubt, which is a normal part of the scientific process. Once science blurred with political opinions, it was subject to debate just as any other political opinion, and we could no longer look to science as a source of unbiased truth.
To the extent that we locate the truth with one political interest or another, we find ourselves in danger of destroying the concept of truth altogether. This is essentially what Colbert shows us. Truth has disappeared from our world. This should be shocking. And yet when Colbert dismisses books and their cold facts and celebrates truth that comes from the gut, we laugh. It’s as if we always knew that this was the case, but no one was audacious enough to say it. When a funny guy on comedy television announces it point-blank to everybody, even to the White House Press Corps, he made us aware of our unconscious worry that politics was really a farcical struggle for power that had nothing to do with what was true. We laughed because he showed us we were right all along.
Hannah Arendt isn’t laughing. She understands that people living in a political environment that is not grounded in apolitical facts will eventually lose faith in the existence of any truth whatsoever. Without the firm ground of truth, we literally lose our bearings in the real world that we share with others. In search of stability, we tend to strengthen our belief in a consistent narrative of opinions and lies that provides a satisfying explanation for the way things are. Since, for example, many climate scientists found themselves sucked up into political debate and subsequently lost their authority as truthtellers, we are left to orient ourselves by whichever political ideology that matches what we want to believe. In this situation, conversation between opposing groups becomes nearly impossible. Without reference to a shared factual reality, and individual or group that is convinced of his/her/its political opinions literally lives in a different world than someone who holds a different opinion.
I believe this loss of the ability to communicate with one another is largely responsible for the loss of the joy and gratitude that political life offers. As we feel more and more that we are living in differing realities, the opportunities for coming together, affirming the existence of a common world and taking action to make our new contribution to it become fewer and fewer. By associating more and more with people who share our political opinions, we make it more difficult to exchange opinions with someone with whom we are likely to disagree. How, then, in today’s political climate can we reclaim some of the joy in doing something together and gratitude for living in a world in which we act with others?
Obviously we won’t find that all our differences will vanish if we just start talking with one another. The emphasis on civility in politics today may change the tone of debate, but it will not help us find common ground. In fact, speaking nicely to one another may just make it more pleasant to stay in our separate worlds, convinced that our view is the right view, but polite enough to let others believe in their views.
One thing that can begin to reverse the trend of defactualization is increasing our awareness of the limits of political action and our sensitivity to the non-political experiences in our lives. If we were a little more willing to lay aside our political views and temper our conviction enough to experience facts and events as they are without the filter of political interpretation, we would begin to recognize that however powerful our capacity for understanding may be, the world of facts and events that stretches into the past defies our attempts at total explanation. Neither can we change or undo what has happened. Ultimately this contemplation of reality leads to the experience of wonder at things as they are. This experience of things as they are is the experience of truth. We make sense of this experience by selecting certain facts and events to incorporate into our own narratives and opinions. But the world as it is always serves as our starting point for political debate and the renewal of our world.
Arendt underscores the importance of maintaining institutions devoted to this contemplation of things as they are. Philosophers, scientists, artists, judges, and reporters must forfeit their roles in political life in order to be faithful truthtellers. But unless everyone cultivates their own sensitivity to the world that we share as it is, either through solitary contemplation or through dialogue with someone who has a different perspective, we will cease to live in one common world and all attempts at renewal will fail. Nothing less is at stake here than the continuation of the world of human affairs. As political debate reaches into more and more aspects of our lives, from health care and taxes to which television channels we watch and which newspapers we read, we lose more and more of the already rare opportunities to lay aside politics and be alone long enough to be overtaken by the world as it is. If everyone experienced a little more non-partisan care for and commitment to the world and a little less conviction that we know what is best, we might rediscover the joy and gratitude that Arendt tells us are meant to come with the task of renewing our common world.
Steven Tatum
Whistle-Blowers as Truth-Tellers-Jacqueline Bao
The New York Review of Books first published Hannah Arendt’s Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers on November 18, 1971, after Daniel Ellsberg had leaked 47 sections of the document to the New York Times. Originally commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Pentagon Papers was an effort to produce an “encyclopedic and objective”[1] report on the Vietnam War. The report was an authenticated document that proved the American government was engaged in over a decade of deception and secrecy aimed at the public—the president had lied, the secretary of defense had lied—no one was telling the truth, and even worse, truth just wasn’t accessible to anyone but the insiders.
The term “whistleblower” acquired its contemporary meaning in the early 1970’s as “‘one who blows the whistle’ on a person or activity, especially from within an organization.” The colloquial saying ‘to blow the whistle’ is derived from the literal act, like when a referee blows the whistle on a foul play or a police officer blows the whistle to expose and halt a crime in a crowded street. According to OED, the noun whistle-blower was first used in a contemporary, more figurative sense in 1970. In 1972, one year after the Pentagon Papers were leaked, an onslaught of critical whitstleblowers followed Ellsberg and Russo’s lead: Peter Buxtun blew the whistle on the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, ending a four-decade syphilis “study” conducted on 400 poor black Alabama males. That same year, Ralph Nader hosted the first organized conference on “professional responsibility,” later known to root the beginnings of corporate whistle blowing culture. And most famously, W. Mark Felt (or Deep Throat) tipped off the arrest of five men in the Watergate democratic headquarters, leading to the Watergate investigations. Whistleblowing would rise to become one of the prominent modes of truth telling in the increasingly withdrawing public sphere.
Forty years after the release of the Pentagon papers, WikiLeaks released “Collateral Murder,” a classified United States military video depicting soldiers firing indiscriminately at civilian targets, including two Reuters journalists. Private Bradley Manning was later charged and arrested for leaking half-a-million reports from the Iraq War, including the video “Collateral Murder.” Unlike the Vietnam War, during which photographers and journalists had relative independence in reporting, beginning with the Clinton administration and continuing through the Bush and Obama administrations, severe restrictions were placed on media coverage for wars. Truly authentic images of the war, as opposed to staged photo-press “opportunities,” surfaced mainly through insiders, amateurs, and whistleblowers. For instance, the amateur shot images of Abu Ghraib exposed by Joe Darby became the most publicized photography to come out of the Iraq War because of their unquestionable authenticity. The images proved and documented various incidences of torture, and what’s more, that torture was being inflicted on prisoners solely as a pleasurable pastime to fight the boredom of soldiers.
Hannah Arendt writes that secrecy has been a part and parcel of politics since the beginning of recorded time: “truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings” (LP4). But within the last half-century, lying became so prolific within politics that it became an “adequate weapon against truth” (TP 232). The fabric of our common reality, what Arendt defines as factual truth, began to erode. Unlike rational truth, or the truths of the mind—those mathematical, scientific, and provable axioms and theories—factual truths are dependent on discourse between men and remembrance in history for its survival. With the popularization and sharpening of organized lying, truth, exceedingly fragile in current affairs yet resilient in time, was lost in man’s present world. Without factual truth, “we should never find our bearings in an ever-changing world” (TP 261). Though the falsehoods of organized lying would never come to substitute facts, Arendt’s greater concern is that to live in a world without bearings means that men increasingly cannot move, act, and judge in the public realm; men lose touch with the world.
In the ‘ever-changing’ world where information cycles constantly—the 24 hours news circuit, twitter posts, and online media—more information often equates only to an increasingly defactualized world. In a recent New York Times article on the global mass protesting occurring independently on the streets of India, Israel, Spain, Greece, and even Wall Street, young protesters indicated “they were so distrustful their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring about real change.”[1] Indeed, whistleblowing has always sought to ‘assault the system’ by exposing organized secrets to the public to bring forth real change. But apart from the media outlets that they inevitably be dispersed in, does the leaked documents inhabit a privilege position to truth in our distrusting and cynical world? Or are these leaks just more organized lies atop a sea of deception. The latter of this paper is dedicated to examining, albeit shortly, the specific whistleblowing cases of the Pentagon paper, Wikileaks and Julian Assange, and the photographs from Abu Ghraib and how they are relegated into the factual world.
Daniel Ellsberg was the first figure to be called a whistle-blower in American popular culture. The legitimacy of the Pentagon papers derived not from the innumerable facts of a 7,000 page report, which of course few can say have read in full even after it was officially declassified this summer, but from the fact that because it was officially mandated, it revealed decades of deception by the executive branch aimed at both the public and Congress. In alignment with Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay ‘On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” Ellsberg’s actions voiced that it is a civil responsibility to disobey an unjust government and let truth be heard. What made Ellsberg a compelling truth-teller were the risks he took—ruining his career and ending his life as a free man—because it proved there could be no self-interest in the story and the interest really was simply telling the truth.
The ability to decipher what is real and what is a lie is continually being uprooted in our digital age as it becomes harder and harder to determine what documents are authentic. And yet, the digital age has introduced new cyber spaces, which are opening up for action. Last year, with the publication of Collateral Murder,[1] it seemed WikiLeaks and its spokesperson/founder Julian Assange
affirmed Arendt’s optimism in human natality, as the small non-profit has reimagined the possibilities of political activism and created a new and aggressive approach to insert itself into politics. Assange boasted that the organization provided ‘the world with more classified documents than the rest of the world’s media combined.’[1] However one year later, Assange is under trial for sexual misconduct, in process of being extradited by Sweden, and filing suit for the unauthorized publication of his autobiography. WikiLeaks and Assange appear in the media much less for whistleblowing leaks, than for defaming law suits. In a world where image is so pervasive, the defamation of Assange led to a discrediting of information provided by Wikileaks, despite the inherent truth or false value in them.
The Abu Ghraib prison photographs, released by Joe Darby to the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and exposed to the public by Seymour M. Hersh in a New Yorker article, evidenced what is ‘torture’ by standard definitions occurring in the Iraqi prison. The photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib are perhaps the most important images to come out of the Iraq War because unlike Collateral Murder, where content was edited, the photographs of Abu Ghraib spoke in totality. The premiere intellectual debate to rise from the images was not one that questioned the photograph’s legitimacy, but one that questioned what the image depicted, mainly, was it “torture”? To which Susan Sontag, the great cynic of photography responded “to refuse to call what took place in Abu Ghraib -- and what has taken place elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay—by its true name, torture, is as outrageous as the refusal to call the Rwandan genocide a genocide.”[2] Of course, the alterations of words—from torture to abuse—seek to shape and defactualize the truth of the image, alleviate the gravity of the crime. But whatever word chosen to replace the truth could never undermine the common sense reaction the photographs elicited: that it was wrong, it should be stopped, and it was hard for us all to witness.
In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag ends her essay: “it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable.” The tenacity of images and their multiplication in digital world, mirrors the stubbornness of facts as Arendt affirms: “their fragility is oddly combined with great resiliency” (TP 259). Though it is impossible to quantify the impact in each of the three whistleblowing cases, whistle-blowers force the public to endeavor in the hard task of bearing witness. ‘Bear’ derives from the PIE root bher meaning to ‘give birth’ or to ‘carry the burden.’[1] In bearing witness, we carry the burden of the unpleasantary of truths just as we give life to the permanence of the world by establishing a common reality: “what is at stake is survival, the perseverance of existence, and no human world destined to outlast the short life span of mortals within it will ever be able to survive without men willing to do what Herodotus was the first to undertake consciously—namely, to say what is.” (Truth and Politics, 229).
[1] Hannah Arendt, Lying in Politics
[2] New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/world/as-scorn-for-vote-grows-protests-surge-around-globe.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&ref=world
[3] It should be noted that Collateral Damage was not
[4] Ted Talks, Julian Assange Interview
[5] Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
[6] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bear
Timely Truths – Hans Kern
I was born in 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and just before the first web page went up on the Internet. That year, the global population was 5.3 billion, NASA launched four manned space missions and Back to the Future III was released. Now I am 21 and the global population is about to reach 7 billion. A person born in the sixties would have seen the world population double in their lifetime, and a centenarian could claim to have lived through the quadrupling of all human life on earth. In these past 100 years, the face of our planet has changed more drastically than ever before in human history. More information is now exchanged and processed than ever before. Some even claim that we have wrestled nature into submission. But what does the future look like? The accelerated changes of our time are widening the eerie chasm between man and nature and it is becoming increasingly difficult to know what will come next. The pace and magnitude of these changes are unprecedented and therefore almost impossible to grasp, quantify or come to terms with. It is this predicament that I believe constitutes the profoundest dilemma in our search for truth. But does this alleviate the need for truthtelling? Certainly not, it amplifies it. In the course of this essay, I seek to demonstrate the importance of truthtelling with reference to the social, political and environmental spheres of our world.
What has become of the American Dream? The glory days of flagship capitalism, shiny metal and indomitable spirit have been phased out by a delirium of economic recession, plastic asphyxiation and national self-doubt. It must have been a sad day when, on July 8th of this year, the Atlantis took off on its final manned flight for the NASA space shuttle program and parents had to explain to their children that this spectacle marked the last time that America would be launching any astronauts into space.
Kids will now have to tell their parents, "When I grow up, I want to be a cosmonaut!"
The nation’s pride as vanguarded by the triumph of rocket science and other feats in engineering is over. And while the scientific knowledge of those times has only since evolved, it is the authority afforded by an ability to put theory into practice that has waned. We have, in recent decades experienced a growing divide between theory and practice. The democratisation of knowledge as facilitated by the Internet has diffused knowledge of most subjects, for better or worse. In the public sphere, respect for scientific truths has given way to flippant rejection of facts in defense of more convenient viewpoints. Hannah Arendt quite relevantly commented, some forty years ago, that unwelcome facts are consciously or unconsciously transformed into opinions. This “fact nihilism,” so common these days, seems therefore to suggest that the facts of our times must really be quite unwelcome. Well, they are. The infrastructure upon which our society is based is showing cracks, global oil extraction has begun to go into decline while demand continues to grow, and global weather patterns are becoming more erratic. And the dangers of denying such facts are, plainly, that we end up doing nothing to address them.
Politically speaking, we have lost sight of the “common good.” In Ancient Greece, the polis or city-state, represented the greatest concentric circle of the community and politics the common pursuit around which all members of the polis were united. Aristotle defined humans as “political animals,” suggesting that it is in our nature not only to live out our private lives, but to rule and be ruled in the affairs of society as a whole. The fact that people in America wish to have no part in governance is symptomatic of a larger problem. Perhaps it is because our democratic process alleviates any need for active participation in government, so long as the individuals submit their ballots and pay their taxes. Some would argue that the problem runs even deeper. Henry Miller believed that “it is the American vice, the democratic disease which exposed its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.” Does this mean that the people should not govern? Or does it mean, rather, that they should be endowed with greater responsibility, thus making them accountable for the state of their nation, thereby incentivising them to make more qualified decisions. I believe it is the latter. Were we to be more truthful about the volatile state of our world and our own role in it, a general regard for truthtelling would begin to take hold and good leaders be encouraged to step up to the pedestal.
Education is the fundamental building block of informed change. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, made a wise move when he introduced the “Citizen Science” program, geared towards instilling greater scientific literacy in students. After all, many of the political problems we face today will require scientific expertise to be resolved. From our bold beginnings as inventors of the stone tool, we have evolved to domination of the animal kingdom. From DDT to nuclear bombs and genetic engineering, there are countless examples of how man likes to play god. And every time we have done so in the past, we have gotten away with it. Is it foolish to assume that there are no limits? I think so, and repercussions could be plentiful. Committed as we are to reinventing the natural order of the world around us, we would be well advised at least to be fully conscious of our actions and their implications. Consider the pharmaceutical industry, where the race to develop new vaccinations as fast as pathogens adapt and form new mutations is neck-to-neck. What if we lose? These are eventualities that we as a culture should be collectively conscious of and that we should hold as a central threat to our pursuit of the common good. Lying about them won’t help.
should hold as a central threat to our pursuit of the common good. Lying about them won’t help.
Also worth considering is that there might be an underlying evolutionary drive to the seemingly reckless ways of our collective being. Leon Trotsky famously once stated that “war is the locomotive of history.” What he articulated was an aphoristic yet subtle insight; that it is only through discord and a breakdown of harmony that the true nature of things reveals itself and new things come into being. Perhaps it is out of a subconscious weariness of gradual change and sagacity that we, as a society, are speeding up as we navigate these unknown waters. It would seem as though the truths we are familiar with and yet choose to ignore are not sufficient to our pursuit of grand truths. Like the little boy who is warned of the dangers of touching the flame and does it anyway, we know what history teaches us about delusions of grandeur yet choose to find out for ourselves, in the hope that maybe this time will be different. What we are up against are the laws of nature. The big laws, laws that we have known to be constant and unchanging throughout history, that nontheless we choose to challenge. It is a formidable move. Like a dialectician playing devil’s advocate to a seemingly sound position, we, it seems, will not settle with the working hypothesis. Does everyone make this choice knowingly? Will the outcome do justice to the rich truth-seeking heritage of our civilization? Is there a more desirable way of going about this business? These are questions that I will leave up to the reader to answer. But they necessarily must be asked.
It is the end of an era. In his “Ode to Man” the great tradgedian Sophocles observed that nothing “towers more deinon than man.” Contained within the ancient greek word deinon is the complete dichotomy of the human happening:greatness and terror. In light of this, I call upon the reader to be fully honest about their role in the world, to “know their deinon” and act accordingly. It is Max Weber’s basic precept for anybody acting politically to act with full consciousness of the possible consequences. So, when we assume the role of challenger, we must do so boldly: “I am living like this because I wish to truly know, even if it may be at my own cost.” Only then can we say that we know what it means to be human. If, on the other hand, we no longer want to play this game, we must say so and act accordingly. But what we cannot do is pretend that everything is just fine as it is and proceed as usual. The times they certainly are a changin’ and we must face the truth, before it really is too late.
Nature is still full of surprises.
Thinking Challenge Submission-Anonymous
Just picturing, imagining realistically the future of "democracy in an age without fact”, two strong, surging, upwelling feelings come to me. The first is an anxiety provoking grief, the feeling of being lost. The second, coming from under the first, behind it but driven more powerfully, is a complex vision of a better world, an enthusiastic hope.
This essay will first examine the institution of fact, as a failed one; it will move on to see how this failure can bring about a positive change in ethics; and finally a project of thought will be proposed around the notion of personal interest.
'Fact', taken in its common usage of 'scientific i.e. immutable', aside from being a great human institution, through science has taken a particularly strong importance in the modern era. It connotes an unquestionable, certain truth entirely justified on a human level – religion, chance or fate are not called on to justify this type of truth; it is a self-sufficient rock of man made creation on which we can found our conception of the world. Hence the blow, the grief felt, when this reliance on fact can be thought of as coming to an end. The foundations are taken away, a world is turned upside down, and we are thrown back into an ether of lack of conception. Thought relying on 'fact' will eventually end up in this state.
Indisputable fact, surely enough, is not what it seems: in the vast majority of cases it is most definitely fallible, and at its best it can be said to be highly probable. Scientific facts are relative to context and can always be refined, and even mathematical certainties are not at the safety of being overthrown come a revolutionary discovery (such has happened a few times the last hundred years), or the invalidation of an axiom. David Hume proved this over 200 years ago when he said that the only reason we think we know that the sun will definitely rise tomorrow morning is our habit of it doing so, nothing guarantees that it will. [necessary? If so explain better] So taking scientific fact as an unshakable base of thought, when it comes down to it, is a mistake, and also a bad move on the human level. Surely enough, when statements are pushed to this level of infallibility, when they become 'fact,' they are unquestionable laws, a modern type of dogma. Such dogma cannot be questioned or argued, it is oppressive, and going against it will provoke social punishments. Even the highest level intellectuals and scientists (the high priests of fact), must take the greatest care when questioning it, going slowly, and most definitely avoiding certain essential ones. Transfer this pattern to the life of an individual, and while fact may give him solid beliefs (and maybe a useful sense of security) it also closes his thinking, making him doomed to make certain mistakes over and over, and to missing the classes of truth in life that his facts have rendered improbable. This greatly hinders an individual's liberty of judgment, a capacity not only needed to a happy life, but absolutely necessary if one wishes to satisfy more subtle needs and wants, the ones which mainstream wisdom does not know how to address.
In short, the loss of the illusive fact, though disorienting, could also be a step towards a better life. Not to mention it is a step towards the truth, and just so in this aspect, desirable. It leaves us much freer to intellectual exploration; ideas and truths can be sought without the fear of outstepping accepted-as-indubitable facts. In a world with issues such as ours, this could prove essential. But still, as people, to be able to think effectively we do need a certain frame of thought. Fact has fulfilled this role, but if we are approaching “an age without fact,” we need a new, more solid and less oppressive, frame of thought. The dangers of not having one would be utter intellectual erring, or worse, the choice by default of an even worse frame of thinking.
In the light of our new freedom of thought, and to fulfill the conditions of a new frame of thought, I would like to see a habilitation of human facts as the center of our thinking. For the sake of explanation we can lump these into two categories, private and interpersonal truths. The first can be true for a person and not for another, they are private, and respectively can only have a corresponding level of validity, but which should nonetheless be respected. The second are true for pretty much everyone, but only in a human and non-scientific way. Interpersonal truths should have about the same validity as scientific truths do today, but of course, due to their interpersonal nature, would be prescribed in a different way. They are not strictly objective. These are the truths dictated by human nature, of human needs and desires. They include positive ones, like empathy and self-fulfillment, but also the negative ones, like hate and greed.
This implies that greater trust must be given to individual judgment, as well as to the human intelligences which are usually repressed or hidden rather than understood. These include the various intuitions, emotions, spirituality etc; the capacities which as living beings are often our greatest source of intelligence. This is a re-centering of ethics around the individual, and not the fact. Though the fact is important, its prominence over the individual has attained a level of absurdity and so should be re-contextualized, and in any case, if a fact is truly important to us, it is because it is somehow linked to certain human values. We implicitly function around human values today, but in too much of an indirect manner.
To prescribe the project I just described seems quasi-impossible, or at least incredibly vague. And I'm pretty sure that it is impossible to create a systematic implementation of it, even if it were clearly defined, because of its very human and non objective nature. It would have to respect each person's individual freedom. In the mean time, in spite of this, I would like to attempt a step forward. We cannot aim directly towards a more human society, but we can make ourselves think in a more human way. Since such a human-centered system would emerge through the free choice of the collectivity of individuals, I think it would surely be beneficial to rethink a big element in the directing of this choice, our private and collective notions of “personal interest.”
This notion which guides our actions and shapes the courses of our lives is generally misunderstood today, and thus wreaks havoc on our world. Thinking about it is easy enough and accessible to anybody, and its practical concreteness makes it a much more approachable project than the abstract human-centered society referred to earlier. In an idealist perspective, we can justify that if the greater good follows from everyone pursuing their profoundly best interest, logically, a project of clarifying these interests would be key to this greater good. In a practical sense, such a reflection would give people better awareness of their actions and goals, and hence the ability to choose them more carefully, and so if nothing else, greater personal awareness and freedom. The feeling of personal interest is probably the oldest guiding thought of people; with the unprecedented level of material ease possible today it deserves some attention and maybe a bit of education (because it is still centered on survival, and maybe desire as a secondary one, not the notion of living a good life).
Presently, particularly in America, this notion has been completely blurred and uniformized, and people are losing their freedom. Without a solid sense of ones personal interests, one will be misguided, attracted by empty or destructive goals, and with one's energies so misspent it will be impossibly difficult to lead an ethical life. Too many people equate a desirable life with wealth, fame, or power, when the pursuit and even obtaining of such things will lead to unhappiness and pain for most people. This goes from people taking out gigantic loans to buy things that they don't need; to wall street traders, whose intellectual capacities could probably do a good deal to make society better, but instead act as essential pivots in participating in making it more unstable; or the student chasing a career that he doesn't really want or will even be suited for (hence, perhaps, a certain proliferation of bad doctors and unhappy dentists...). To generalize a bit, within the limits of American society, personal interest is dogmatically taken to mean 'going up' whatever that entails. To have another conception of personal interest is tagged “alternative” or deviant, is frowned upon or ignored from a distance; in any case it is socially excluded. The freedom of self-definition is replaced by the freedom to social mobility, and in becoming a norm (or a necessary goal) it becomes a limit to the freedom of the self.
The pursuit of upward mobility as the guarantee of a good life (or happiness) is fundamentally flawed. First of all, individually, it will not satisfy anything more than the most basic material and social needs of a person; and second of all, collectively, the number of people at the 'top' of society never increases – and one going up generally implies another coming down: the number of people in desirable positions never actually changes, it is an empty promise for a better society. Also, more people in high profile, high paid positions, structurally implies more people in low profile and underpaid ones supporting their activity – let it be in poor parts of big cities, or on the other side of the world (behind each “Made in China” label there is a worker...).
It should be noted that this essay does not intend or desire a kind of class revolution. The proposed project lacks this controversy. It should be offensive to nobody –it is adaptable to all non-controlling systems of thought, religions, social classes etc--, and even if it does not 'solve' any of the ills of society, it is hard to see how it could be unhelpful. At its most extreme, a rethinking of personal interest would entail a shift from directing life with explicitly external values (wealth, power etc), to personal ones (self-fulfillment, happiness, empathy etc). Practically, the values that would really matter are more along the lines of personal fulfillment, pleasure, integrity, self-respect, etc. Wealth or power, etc, would only be valuable in relation to the latter values, and to the very few people suited for such positions.
I believe in the practical feasibility of this, that a person holds the notions of his fundamental personal interests inside of him, and that with proper research and guidance the individual can find them. This project requires solid guidance and education; self education at early stages of life can easily result in disaster. Guidance should be opposed to directing: to help someone find what is best for him rather than dictating it. The notion of personal interest itself has to be reconsidered for each and every person. Simply superimposing various pre-existing notions of personal interest is a mistake – a particular individual should require his very own one, and even if he doesn't, he should at least be required to make the effort to find which one is his.
I believe that society today does not function properly. The desirable system of society, the one we're looking for, is structuring but not controlling; it organizes people without preventing their well being and hindering their free will. The ability of the leading class to control its people should no longer be such an important value if we wish to attain a human-centered society. It seems like a safety net which we are stuck in. If each individual chooses what is profoundly best for him, the sum of these decisions is what can let a “better world” emerge. Controlled revolution, with its manifestos of predefined values seem like the reiteration of a bad idea. A rethinking of “personal interest,” while not a sufficient condition for a human-centered society (as opposed to economy centered, or ideology-centered ones), definitely seems to be a quasi-essential part of it. But if nothing else, if these goals are completely unrealistic, such a project would give people the added awareness of their own decisions without which they cannot be said to be free.
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Revolution, or Rethinking Truth and and Fact in Arendt-Brendan Flynn
In order to think the crucial question which inspires this essay— that is, “who today stands outside of politics and can tell the truth?”—we must reexamine the status of the political itself. In order to do this we must also rethink the relation of fact to truth. Arendt conjoins these terms with the concept of “factual truth” which, for her, “intend[s] no more than to say what is.”[i] The question is: do they really exist on the same plane? Does fact, the simple presence of “what is” (a presence which of course can be spoken or repressed, extolled or denounced) have the same status as truth, or is there an indeterminate topological heterogeneity between the two. Isn’t it the case that fact makes its appearance against the backdrop of a temporal situation rife with contradiction, whereas truth is always a militant engagement with the fundamentally open nature of any situation, and in which fact will necessarily assume a particular meaning depending on what stance is taken vis-à-vis this openness?
To get a sense of the ways subjectivity is involved in this discussion - crucial as the concept is for any examination of the question who can tell the truth – it is worth visiting Arendt’s remarks on the political in Ancient versus Modern society. Writing in The Human Condition, Arendt recalls Aristotle’s exclusionary notion of the political which, significantly, she says “formulated the [then] current opinion of the polis.” She states that “according to this [Aristotle’s] opinion, everybody outside the polis—slaves and barbarians—was aneu logou, deprived, of course, not of the faculty of speech, but of a way of life in which speech and only speech made sense and where the central concern of all citizens was to talk with each other.[ii]” For the Greeks the very condition of the political was a fundamentally split society. Within the social whole stand those for whom speech is the considered expression of sense and reason (this speech and the subjects who articulate it constitute the polis) and those whose speech is barely more than a simple motor function. The latter are quite literally outside of politics; they round out society but are simultaneously incapable and prohibited from political life.
In such a situation, it is not disingenuous to state the facticity of a citizen or a slave. Each really is what they are in their simple immediacy, the facticity of their being revealed in any number of symbolic designations. To take a historical example, then, the (factual) actions of a Spartacus make present the truth that barbarism and injustice are the necessary conditions of a slave-owning society. This truth is introduced retroactively. From the present standpoint of the citizens against whom a Spartacus rebels, his acts, embedded as they are in the facticity of the situation, can only appear as egregious violations against the order of things which is grounded in a deliberate series of rules and laws and are in no way unjust. Spartacus’ actions speak the truth, and the political consequences are obvious. Think of the obscenity however of grounding the truth of this revolt in the fact that he was outside of politics (which he was in the most radical way possible, in a truly ontological sense). On the contrary, the truth of that situation was heterogeneous to its facts, and could only come into being through a violent subjective engagement.
This example holds, though things are more complicated in Modern society.
According to Arendt the division which organized Ancient society is in Modernity displaced and internalized into the realm of the private since all are formally (legally, publicly) equal. Essential difference sheds its essentiality and becomes simple private particularity. Difference becomes interest which is free to re-present itself on a universal political stage. But it is this formal universal freedom and equality which makes the question of truth so difficult today.
This approaches the unique force Arendt attributes to the non-fact, the lie, in contemporary democracy. In pre-Modern society, where politics does not formally involve everybody and friends and enemies are essentially demarcated, the lie is a lie to an Other. “The traditional lie concerned only particulars and was never meant to deceive literally everybody.”[iii] Free speech, increased transparency and universality however ensure the impotence of this form of deception. The Other cannot be deceived so long as I know the truth, since truth is no longer something that can be partially withheld. Conservative critics of democracy, as Arendt notes, have long voiced precisely this complaint. It is what leads her to the ominous conclusion of “the undeniable fact that under fully democratic conditions deception without self-deception is well-nigh impossible.”[iv] This is how Arendt accounts for the uncanny efficacy of Modern propaganda, or the lie which has been able to establish itself as truth.
But what if the problem is even worse than this appears? What if it is not the lie but in a strange twist the fact which today is responsible for so much confusion? While we are desperately in need of facts today, what we need even more is an analysis of why they fail to resonate in the ways we might imagine. One reason for this is that today facts are immediately inscribed into competing narratives which fail to approach the truth. Global Warming is easily used as an example. Facts confirming its existence are constantly presented by prestigious scientists and institutions, yet to date no systematic political initiative which would seriously address and respond to this fact has been enacted. Yet how much of the debate remains caught between notions of legalistic corporate and personal responsibility on the one hand, and simple skepticism about the need for such measures regulating this responsibility on the other? Obama wonders aloud whose butt he needs to kick for the BP ecological catastrophe. But who wonders whether market conditions under capitalism, in which companies are constantly compelled to increase their profit revenues lest they be taken over by the competition, made the BP incident more or less inevitable, a necessary consequence of the rational cost-saving measures all corporations must take in order to survive? The fact of the catastrophe and its consequences are well known to all—the lie does not play. However the truth of this fact is systematically ignored and repressed. Fact is not so much absent as its meaning and force determined in advance.
Are we to resign ourselves then to the inefficacy of fact? Wikileaks is proof enough that this is far from the case. What Wikileaks exposes is precisely the way power is, under normal circumstances, able to take a cynical distance from fact, able to treat it in precisely the way Arendt suggests, namely, as a matter of opinion whose plausibility is always minimally called into question. This situation is expressed by what Lacanians call fetishistic disavowal, the “I know very well (that my country secretly bombs and illegally detains human beings in my name), but nonetheless I continue to act as if I do not know.” What Wikileaks courageously exposed is that this minimal but crucial distance that prevents one from subjectively assuming fact is not possible when one is confronted with the official, unfiltered directives, memos and reports of the State itself. Suddenly, fact is jarringly ripped from the mirage of false antagonisms it normally finds itself in (for instance, between liberal-parliamentary-capitalism and terrorism or totalitarianism), leaving us to potentially draw more radical conclusions.
The consequences of Wikileaks (where six weeks separate the release of the diplomatic cables from the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali’s flight from power) are instructive. As has been noted, most were already aware of the widespread corruption and inequality which the Wikileaks documents revealed. Yet this revelation made us confront the falseness and inadequacy of the typical “neutral” actions taken to combat these problems. When facts of inequality and oppression are perceived to be fundamentally rooted in corruption, the mode of engagement predictably calls for apolitical investigations which can perhaps lead to political solutions. But in this way the “apolitical,” non-governmental organizations are caught-up in the process they seek to combat. The irony is that from their “apolitical” perspective the widespread demonstrations and movements which ultimately manifested in the “Arab Spring” can easily be seen as similarly apolitical irruptions of irrational violence that bypass the proper democratic channels.
We are forced to conclude from this that there is a partiality to truth itself, or that it is only from the standpoint of an engaged subjectivity that Truth emerges. Where the “neutral” gaze of a non-governmental organization sees the violence of an unauthorized movement taking place outside of legitimate institutions, the people at Tahir Square constitute themselves as the Truth of a movement antagonistic towards the state of things. In such an open situation there can be no guarantees. There is only, like a Spartacus, an event which emerges that suddenly displaces the previous meaning of the facts on the ground and out of which Truth and its possibilities simultaneously arrive.
The Embezzlement of Hope-Aubrey Namakhwa
When faced with the challenge of thinking about the truth, I have personally been considering the phenomenon surrounding the orphanages and donor funds in poor countries, particularly in Africa. As this is an issue that has affected me personally, being an orphan myself, I will focus on my native country, Malawi.
Malawi being one of the poorest countries in Africa has for a long time been a targeted destination for donor funds. Obviously, due to the higher percentage of HIV/AIDS and health problems in the country, there are many orphans due to the death of their parents. There are therefore, many orphanages and community-based organizations in many villages in Malawi.
I am always motivated by the love, kindness and generosity that people from richer countries have shown to my country, Malawi. Having being born into a poor family and surrounded by drastic poverty in my life, I have grown to understand what it means to starve and try to live on a less than a dollar per day. I have seen too many orphan-care projects start and close. I have heard and seen many generous donors decide to boycott important orphan-care projects they were so devoted to. These were projects that were benefitting the lives of many poor and innocent orphans in the suburbs and villages of Malawi. These boycotts resulted from the embezzlement of donated funds by the people entrusted to manage the donations. One question that always lingered in my mind was why these donors whom I cherished and know to be so kind just give up on these poor lives like that? This question gave me the curiosity to search out the truth about the whole matter and I discuss it in this essay.
One thing that really puzzles me is that these donors do not just blame the people who are directly responsible for these embezzlements. Instead, they put the blame on the whole community as if everyone, from the project coordinator to the youngest infant benefitting from the funds, is crooked and untrustworthy. They hastily place blame on the whole community as if everyone is responsible for the embezzlement. “We are very disappointed in you people, you are too corrupt to be helped”, they say as they leave, “we had been so committed to helping you but you do not even care, all you want is to selfishly waste our money.” In reality, these claims are not true. They are the result of generalized thinking and a failure to analyze the situation in search of the truth.
The truth about what is going on here is not so simple. Not everyone in these communities is crooked and untrustworthy. There are many people who are faithful and good. These people are very eager to work with donors in helping the poor orphans in the villages out there. It therefore means that the generalized claims by most of the donors are simply subjective opinions raised in the midst of frustration and disappointment. It would seem that emotion has the ability to wreck havoc on our mind’s ability to search for that which is true.
A typical example of this rush to judgment happened in one of the suburbs in Lilongwe called Chilinde. There used to be an orphanage in that area known in our Chichewan language as ‘tithandizeni’, which means ‘help us please’. The orphanage took care of children between two and ten years old, small children. This orphanage was literally the difference between life and death for many children. The porridge they received every morning was the only food they could count on. They were really happy together and felt like a family, which helped numb the pain of losing their parents and being alone in the world.
This orphanage had been operating for less than a year, with things going normally. A new group of white people came to visit the orphanage. We learned that these people wanted to start funding a new project that would help those orphans as they got older. They would start a fund that would allow them to continue with their education so that they could become self-reliant. That idea was so welcomed as the children were now assured of hope for a brighter future. However, a month later this orphanage that stood as the source of hope for these orphans was nowhere to be seen. It was closed and the kids stood helpless again, literally on the street with nowhere to go.
While preparing the new project, the donors discovered that two employees of the orphanage were misusing the funds. There had been so much embezzlement that the funds that were been given to the kids were far less than they should have been. Consequently, the donors got very disappointed and disgusted and lost trust in everyone who was part of the committee. They left taking the hope for any kind of future for these orphans with them.
In this case, it is important to consider that it was the coordinator and treasurer who embezzled the funds and not the whole committee. The donors therefore, should have borne that in mind before turning their backs on the whole project. The other committee members tried their best to plead with the donors to let them explain but to no avail. Their plea was met with anger and words like ‘you people cannot be helped, we have been working so hard in your community and all this time you are just mere thieves and not to be trusted’. The truth, which the generous donors failed to consider, was that not all the people in the committee were untrustworthy and responsible for the embezzlement. There were other people in the committee who were really faithful and honest to the donors and were very transparent in handling the little funds given to them.
Now, are such honorable people unworthy to have funds entrusted to them? What about project coordinators in other orphan-care projects who have always been complemented by their donors for handling funds excellently? Is it right to disregard their hard work and dedication and generalize that the people or leaders of orphanages are thieves and embezzlers? Certainly not. But, it is easy. People are quick to believe their opinions to be widespread truth. Truly examining the situation from all sides would help these donors come up with important ways of facilitating the project while minimizing the risk of embezzlements.
It is also important to note that this inability to consider the truth of the matter here does not only affect the actions of the few donors who are embarrassed by the crooked ways of the coordinators of their projects. It also has the potential to negatively impact the thinking of other people who had been considering assisting orphans in poor countries. We are left with a potential ripple effect with far more damaging potential than drained bank accounts. For each of these children, it is the disappearance of the only spark of hope and light they had or will ever have.
But why have things turned out that way? The answer still brings us back to looking for the truth. People who are willing to start assisting these poor orphans get discouraged because they simply choose to agree with what they are told by other donors. This complacency and assumption clouds their ability to look at the truth. The worst thing about the acts of these embezzlers is the broad strokes with which their actions now paint a whole community in the eyes of those who fail to take the time to look for their own truth.
Again, what must be considered is the impact that lazy presumption rather than truth seeking is having on orphans. The famous pop star, Madonna came to Malawi with the idea of building a vast boarding school in the Kanengo area of Lilongwe to help poor girls. The project moved very quickly, and a large area of land was bought and soon leveled. The most unfortunate thing is that the project went no further. The cause was again, embezzlement of funds by those leading the project. The worst thing is that Madonna gave up the project and has moved on to whatever strikes her fancy at present.
Today if you look at that place, all you see is desolation. It is a visual representation of the barren future now left all of those girls whose hopes rested upon that school. Being deprived of their right to an education not only endangers their future, but the future of the world at large.
In conclusion, it is important that we start to think about the truth of every matter that concerns us in life and stop looking at things through the eyes and opinions of others. Pursuing our own search for the truth opens our minds and can bring positive change to a world in which everybody tends to look at things from a common point of view.
Aubrey Namakhwa.
Truth in the Public Sphere-Opinions and Their Space- Simon Staelens
How are we to understand Hannah Arendt’s repeated statement that politics require an independent and prior discourse of truth-telling? How can we understand the disturbing phenomenon in contemporary politics, consisting in the presentation of factual truths as being ‘mere opinions’ – the blurring (if not disappearance) of the dividing line between truths and opinions?
In what follows, these issues will be addressed in the context of Arendt’s understanding of the relation between truth, politics and opinions. By way of orienting the issues addressed in an Arendtian understanding of political activities, the conclusion that will be defended at the end, will be that, in order to ‘make democracy more truthful’, more public-political spaces should be guaranteed where not truth, but opinions can flourish.
To understand the role ‘truth’ – in the sense of a shared and unquestioned (factual) reality (objectivity) – plays in an Arendtian understanding of politics, a connection with the notion of plurality needs to be made apparent first. A comparison, by way of example, may help. Imagine the public sphere, around which the actors who politically secure it are situated, as a circled mirror painting.
Image by graphic designer Hartwin Calmeyn @2011
The image mirrored, only appears as a whole if and when there is a variety of different perspectives encircling and perceiving it. In other words, the plurality of perspectives is constitutive of the public sphere: if there would only be a single ‘Perspective’, one would always be looking at one single side of the mirror painting – which, as such, would never fully appear. The image mirrored ‘appears’, as a whole, because one can communicate to one another ‘how it appears to me’, ‘how I see it from my point of view’ – in brief: one can give his opinion and try to persuade others to consider one’s perspective on the matter. These opinions, according to Arendt, are not to be understood as mere (arbitrary) ‘subjective standpoints’ on an independent objective reality (the circled mirror painting), but rather as the different ways in which the objective reality opens up to the multiplicity of opinions of the political actors, communicating and trying to understand one another.
What, however, is necessarily assumed in all this, is the prior implicit acknowledgment that, although every actor has a different and unique location in the world (a different location around the mirror painting), all are still confronted with the same world (the same painting). Prior to the entrance into the public-political realm, one thus has a basis of knowledge, decided by truth: in order to be able to understand how the world appears to the other’s point of view, one has to know the other is looking at the same, unquestioned ‘objective’ reality.
The establishment of unquestioned (factual, rational or philosophical) truths and laws, marks off the space in which politics take place, and is thus prior to political action and speech, activities aimed at understanding the world from the other’s perspective, understanding the other’s opinion on the matter.
Truth does not support opinions. One cannot meaningfully be of the opinion that 2+2=5: truth is compelling, and necessarily valid for all individual subjects, irrespective of one’s concrete existence – one cannot be a democrat in matters of truth. Truth is characterized by an inability to overcome difference and precludes all debate. For opinions (δόξαι) – the objects of political speech – to be meaningful, they must be devoid of all elements of necessity: truthfully expressing one’s view on ‘things, as they are, how they appear to me’, cannot be pre-determined by necessary truths, or function as a means to something else (e.g. private interests), that is itself external to the political space, the space in-between subjects.
In order to truly look at things ‘as how they appear’, one needs to be liberated from all sorts of necessities that predetermine one’s political speech and judgment. This does not mean that truths are no longer true in the public/political realm, but only that, insofar as they are true, they cannot be the object of public debate. To return to the example above: the communicative exchange between the different perspectives encircling the mirror painting, is only possible as long as the objective status of the mirror painting itself is not put into question. If its factual reality does become the object of debate, this debate is no longer of a truly political nature, but has become a debate about truth, a debate in which differences of perspective are irrelevant, since truth is the same for all.
The antithesis between politics and truth Hannah Arendt puts forward, together with the statement that matters of truth ought to be located outside the realm of politics, does not imply a value-judgment – it is not the case that Arendt deems truth to be ‘unworthy’ of, or ‘irrelevant’ for public/political concern – but rather expresses Arendt’s concern for the status of opinions. The problem with contemporary politics as Arendt understood it – namely that “unwelcome facts are tolerated only to the extent that they are consciously or unconsciously transformed into opinions” – does not primarily reside in the experience that truth seems to have lost its compelling, unquestioned nature; but rather, that in modern democratic societies – although power has been given to the citizens – there are no durable, politically guaranteed spaces where they can truly act as citizens. As analyzed in her ‘On Revolution’, the problem is that public power has been given to the citizens, in their status of private persons.
The phenomenon we’re witnessing today – the dissolution of the public-political realm into different, separated ‘audiences’, holding different truths as self-evident – is part of the ongoing privatization of the public realm, against which few, if any, shared truths are safe. Rather than the ‘defactualization of our world’, we are facing today the loss of a shared world altogether: private concerns, and the truth-claims associated with them (of a religious, ideological, social, biological,… nature), prevent citizens to act as citizens: to act and speak freely – persuading the other of one’s judgment on the matter, not by recourse to truth (since truth compels but cannot persuade), but by truthfully expressing things-as-how-they-appear from one’s perspective, while simultaneously looking at these things from the other’s point of view. Only as such, according to Arendt, political judgment can attain the one kind of validity it is aiming for: an inter-subjective validity, not concerning the individual subjects in their singularity, but concerning that, which literally is in-between-the-subjects: the world which, despite all their differences, is shared between them.
The search for shared truths in politics – in a world where even factual truths are capable of being considered as opinions – will not be helped by political debates about truths, since their mode of asserting validity, prevents the other to be persuaded by (and not compelled to) taking a look ‘from a different point of view’. Where no shared truths, at all, are held in common, no meaningful public realm can appear. And one cannot expect problems of truth to be settled in something which does not appear. The ‘world’ which is held in common – the truths shared in-between-subjects – can only be enlarged, if there is something to be enlarged in the first place, namely: the truthful acknowledgment that, despite all differences between us, it is the same world that opens up to me and you.
Instead of trying to re-identify and secure already existing ‘objective’ spaces, that precede politics and where truth is of concern (e.g. the judiciary, the media, universities, etc.); what is needed, are places where citizens can truly act as citizens: secured and institutionalized spaces in which politics can become more political again. Where facts are transformed into opinions, or vice versa, what should be of concern from a political viewpoint, is the threat that the various opinions will become – and be perceived as – pre-determined by truth-claims and private interests, preventing political action and speech as the truthful expression of δοκέω μοι (‘how it appears to me’) – and, finally, annihilating all public aspects of what could once be considered ‘the public realm’.
Paradoxically enough, if one wants to ‘make democracy more truthful’, the most pressing thing to do, is not to search for ‘absolute yardsticks of truth’, but to expand those places where opinions, not truths, can thrive. It is because the public realm and the public debates taking place inside it, exist only insofar as different people can freely exchange their opinions about it, that whatever is drawn into the ‘public light’ is able to reveal all its aspects. Plurality, for Arendt, is not only the condition sine qua non, but also per quam of all political life: only where a political space is truly ‘political’ – the free inter-action between a plurality of utterly different perspectives – shared truth can truly manifest and reveal itself. It is only by acting and speaking freely with each other in the space of politics, that truth held-in-between will reveal itself, namely as that which in the first place enabled their mutual understanding.
- Simon Staelens
Thinking Challenge Excerpt-Perceptions vs. Realities of Remembrances-Veronique Whittaker
On a weekday morning of last week, while listening to National Public Radio, I first encountered the notion of Dignity Therapy. The concept is used by psychiatrists and seeks to soothe those who are dying, to aid them in coping with the realities of their impending death. The therapy consists of individuals writing the story of their lives’ joys, tragedies, memorable moments, etc. The autobiographies are how they want to be perceived, thus when they are gone, their loved ones will have the story of the memorable and significant events in the lives of the dear ones.
Aida Essenburg with her daughter Kate Fredo
In thinking of such a therapy, notions of human condition are brought to light: namely that we as humans want to feel connected, and that the truth about the events of our lives may change over time, in the face of time, and depending on how we wish to remember them. The nature of dignity therapy fascinates those most closely connected to studying the human condition: psychiatrists. As scholars seeking to understand the ideas posited by Hannah Arendt we must consider the nature of memory and narrative. We must ask: what are purposes of remembering those with whom you share human condition? What are the truths and untruths inherent in remembering, and ultimately what is it that we value about our human condition?
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Thinking Challenge Excerpt-The Voiceless Generation – Emily M. Pascual
The hard reality is that our generation as a whole is under informed and over complacent. The system may be flawed, but the only way to bring about significant change is to engage ourselves in the democratic process. Our generation seems more celebrity obsessed and needs to realize the effects of choosing apathy over engagement, before we become a politically voiceless generation.
We cannot expect favorable results when we do nothing to bring them about. That is at the core of P. Diddy's "Vote or Die" campaign, and the message he tried to convey to us back in 2004. Do something or expect nothing. Still, we should not rely on P. Diddy or any other Hollywood celebrities to engage our generation in political participation. We can do it ourselves!
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Perceptions vs. Realities of Remembrances – Veronique Whittaker
The Article: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/12/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life
On a weekday morning of last week, while listening to National Public Radio, I first encountered the notion of Dignity Therapy. The concept is used by psychiatrists and seeks to soothe those who are dying, to aid them in coping with the realities of their impending death. The therapy consists of individuals writing the story of their lives’ joys, tragedies, memorable moments, etc. The autobiographies are how they want to be perceived, thus when they are gone, their loved ones will have the story of the memorable and significant events in the lives of the dear ones.
In thinking of such a therapy, notions of human condition are brought to light: namely that we as humans want to feel connected, and that the truth about the events of our lives may change over time, in the face of time, and depending on how we wish to remember them. The nature of dignity therapy fascinates those most closely connected to studying the human condition: psychiatrists. As scholars seeking to understand the ideas posited by Hannah Arendt we must consider the nature of memory and narrative. We must ask: what are purposes of remembering those with whom you share human condition? What are the truths and untruths inherent in remembering, and ultimately what is it that we value about our human condition?
Dignity therapy has the potential to teach us truths about the lives of our loved ones, even after they are no longer with us. The notion of Truth remains dear to most of us throughout life, yet at our final moments of life, truth becomes an almost necessity for the dying person. The crafting of one’s own narrative is an awe striking moment where each individual is in complete control of her own memory in the eyes of loved ones, therefore the obvious question is raised: do most fictionalize, glorify their lives or tell the truth, even if it is less than flattering?
The program on NPR emphasized how dying individuals choose many ways to view dignity therapy, some seeing it as a chance to ask loved ones for forgiveness, while others saw it as a legacy in which they must shine, or warning against what evils men are capable of committing against their fellow man. The psychiatrist who created the therapy, Harvey Chocinov, had it in mind to ease the transition of death for those who would soon cross the threshold; however, he soon realized it was often the dying who were more comfortable with this thought than those they would leave behind. The truths of the dying were thus reinterpreted by the love ones, and revealed the evolution of the self over time, seen through the eyes of those they loved most.
When Hannah Arendt speaks of trutht elling in one of her greatest essays Truth and Politics, she wants us to consider the impact storytelling has on the human condition of the actor. Arendt believes that only through deeds and actions can we learn in truth, who we are. Therefore a thing like dignity therapy allows the stroyteller and the actor to meld into the same person, and the fact that it is mainly those who know the stroyteller/actor as a loved one, who are the listeners, it makes for a very powerful form of truth. As well as a truth that lasts.
An interestingly Arendtian aspect to this kind process of dignity therapy is consideringwho is qualified to tell their story and why? Are some more qualified than others because of age, social position, or life deeds? Or are all to be included in the chance to form a narrative of their own truth for those they love (ex. the participation of terminally ill children with Leukemia or Cystic Fibrosis in dignity therapy). Throughout her work Arendt speaks of the written word as a preservation of memory. Remembrance carries enormous power for all living within the human condition insofar as the narrative of an individual allows the life deeds to become sources of inspiration for the future, something to be imitated, even surpassed by those fortunate to learn from the words of their loved ones. A piece of writing formed in sessions of dignity therapy can alone save a life from retreating into oblivion or futility.
After listening to the program that morning, like most students my age, I went about my day of classes and found myself lurking on Facebook in the evening. I began to think of ways my generation is affected by technologies of remembrance and narrative after looking at photos on the Facebook memorial page of a close friend of mine who died from Cystic Fibrosis when we were Eighteen. It occurred to me that Facebook is a true example of modern narratives of remembrance, among its many other complicated meanings for my generation.
The most revealing aspect of Dignity Therapy is that insofar as it lives as an ever changing, interpretable document, that lives long after the loved one’s death, it helps move us toward some form of truth. A trend throughout many of Arendt’s writings call for a “reconciliation with reality”, in essence for you to be told your own story, and then face the choice of whether or not you will accept it as reality. Something like dignity therapy provides a factual truth for the individuals who partake in the narrative forming process and even for their loved ones.
The psychiatrist Chocinov admitted there was not conclusive evidence that dignity therapy soothed or relieved the dying of their anxieties, however, it did allow for authority over how we are remembered; as well as a chance to “reconcile ourselves with reality” for the final time. A narrative document of one’s life also provides those with little influence to share their story with the world. Although it is up to the individual to to decide whether or not the document produced in her dignity therapy sessions will be full of truth or deceit, it is fundamentally true that through story and the storyteller, life itself is given meaning.
Toward the end of her essay Truth and Politics, though Arendt notes the limits inherent in a value as contingent as truth; she then goes on to state:
“It is limited by those things which men cannot change at will. And it is only by respecting its own borders that this realm, where we are free to act and change, can remain intact, preserving its integrity and keeping its promises. Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot change; metaphorically, it is the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us” (Arendt 259).
In my opinion, anyone can begin dignity therapy at any time in their lives, not just as they are in the process of dying. True that there is more to reflect on in the final days of one’s life, yet as hybrid beings, split beings, we are all imperfect, we all fail. Yet, we all have the capacity for truth, and this bonds us with those who share in our human condition. If the goal of moving toward some form of truth requires that we “reconcile ourselves with reality”, it would seem that it is never too late, nor too early to begin this personal journey; to think what we are doing.
Thinking Challenge Excerpt – James Hurley
Thinkers
"The “thinking” that politicians suggest we, as individuals are doing today amounts to little more than acting, and, if they have their way, leads to a robotic following. The dignity of truth calls us to political action beyond this stage however. The dignity of truth demands our full participation in the public realm as citizens of the world. And, tangentially, the dignity of politics, too, requires a participatory populous prepared and ready for discourse. The Athenian model is, for Arendt, and for us, the ultimate form of truth and politics. Furthermore, the figure of Socrates as a man equally at home in the marketplace as well as the academy presents a man who is participatory and engaged, rather than removed in a Congressional building or a lofty ivory tower. Socrates is who we, as politicians, as we all are, should aim to be."
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Thinking Challenge Submission Excerpt-So Shut Your Mouths and Open Your Eyes
SO SHUT YOUR MOUTHS AND OPEN YOUR EYES-KELLY MCLAUGHLIN
"...What I want from everyone is for them to close their mouths and open their eyes and ears. Because- listen to me!- because the inherent darkness of humanity is not hopelessness: it is hope. Too much of it. I hear you say that that is only my truth, but it is True. Look around you. You will see people of all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, of varying social status and faith. And the vast majority of them are deluding themselves with hope, like the Dickensian Mister Macabre. Some whose ships never sailed are certain that one knighted day their ship will come in. Those whose ships did come in are convinced that there has got to be something more.
Truth does not just reside here, in shining halls."
Photo taken at Portstewart
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Thinking Challenge Submission by James Hurley
It would appear to the modern day thinker that truth and politics are in some way opposed to each other, or at the very least have some inherent tension. I trace the genesis of this thought not to the Orwellian states that existed (and largely continue to exist) in the mid to late 20th Century, or even to the Machiavellian concept of the nation, but rather to the fall of Rome and the collapse of the feudal system. The most pressing issues that we must address are those that are “here and now”, a notion Hannah Arendt calls us, with much alarm to address. Politics, for most of the world today defines our lives; it affects our taxes, affects our laws, and limits certain liberties and freedoms that we might otherwise enjoy.
To be a model thinker, as Socrates was for Arendt, today means exactly the same as it did over 2000 years ago. The figure of Socrates stands in direct opposition to the figure of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was problematic for so many individuals not for his actions, no matter how egregious they were, but for his or her ability to relate with him, and to see himself or herself in his place. Eichmann is therefore a tool that Arendt used in order to express the thoughtlessness of the world as she viewed it. Jerusalem was, for her, a wakeup call, to view the world, and think about what we are doing, as workers, laborers, and as men of action. In our capacity for action, and our interactions with each other, we participate in the vita activa as Arendt defines it. We step out of the private realm that had been constructed by the Greeks and move into the public realm and participate in politics. But what obligations, if any do we have in this participation. I have included two works of art, one quite famous, below for contemplation as we begin this discussion on politics and telling the truth.
Lies have become a tool of the politician in modern times. As Rodin challenges us above we need to stop and think. For it is precisely in our action of stopping that we are able to give import and acknowledgement to the activity of thinking. As individuals, have been conditioned to believe what is said. For example, the “change” campaign that President Obama pushed during his original presidential campaign promised a serious shift in institutional priorities. Three years in, there has been limited change, and Obama has not produced on the promises he made, specifically in terms of American Foreign Policy and gay rights. We look to other countries, and see the same type of frustration with the recent allegations of fraud and embezzlement by some elected members of Parliament in the United Kingdom. They have used their political clout not as a tool to advance the voice of those they serve, but rather to serve their own interests. Society has been fooled into thinking that today’s politicians keep our best interests in mind. In reality, we see the judicial branch as the one with the most sincere ability to think. This is, of course partly due to the fact that judges have tenure and are not constantly on the reelection campaign, but this too should also call into question our notion a “politician” is somehow a career choice, when in reality we are all called to be politicians. In ancient Athens or Rome, such an occupation as a “politician” would be laughed at, for it was the full participation of all men in the marketplace or the Agora that defined politics.
The “thinking” that politicians suggest we, as individuals are doing today amounts to little more than acting, and, if they have their way, leads to a robotic following. The dignity of truth calls us to political action beyond this stage however. The dignity of truth demands our full participation in the public realm as citizens of the world. And, tangentially, the dignity of politics, too, requires a participatory populous prepared and ready for discourse. The Athenian model is, for Arendt, and for us, the ultimate form of truth and politics. Furthermore, the figure of Socrates as a man equally at home in the marketplace as well as the academy presents a man who is participatory and engaged, rather than removed in a Congressional building or a lofty ivory tower. Socrates is who we, as politicians, as we all are, should aim to be.
Truth and politics should participate together as a cohesive whole in the public realm if our society wishes to function appropriately? We need to call attention to the lies that we have been told in politics and demand that truth, discernible to those that think, is was should guide our politicians, and that we, as men, are all politicians in our own rite. We need to, quite simple, think what we are doing and act in such a way that our actions, by way of our thoughts are directed and concentrated and creating a society in which we want to both live and participate in the plurality of men. Like “thinker” we need to stop and think.
Connecting the points together we see that politics is in a very bad way. The way politics function as a game, as a career, and as a tool is not the way politics should aim to function as a system. In order for the political system to function correctly all members must participate fully and use their human capacity for reason and thought to challenge each other, and propel each other forward. The works of art above help to illustrate this, but on a more modern day level we can see the theme in the work of The Killers. “Are we human or are we dancers? / My sign is vital, my hands are cold / And I’m on my knees looking for the answer / Are we human or are we dancers?” A clear challenge to ourselves to discern if we are human in our capacity to think and act or if we are simply some sort of “dancers” that is subject to direction an choreography, with an inhibited sense of movement, and a loss of autonomy. We are human, and as such, we are indeed thinkers. Let us use our capacity to think to challenge the way politics is, and to bring about real reform.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZdjT1472Y&ob=av2e 
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The Voiceless Generation-Emily M. Pascual
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So Shut Your Mouths and Open Your Eyes – Kelly McLaughlin
The deeper my descent, the bleaker things became. It was an itinerary thought up by monsieur Alighieri, and it did not end until this wayfarer faced the cruelest monster of them all: hopelessness. I began again, descending one by one through the circles, and yet ne’er could I see the staircase Alighieri promised. Perhaps a trick of the light. Time and again I cam upon this beast, until at last- defeated- I knew its name: Truth. The circles did not descend at all, but ascend, reaching an apex not at hopelessness but at humanity. We are the darkness.
Yet there are those few who seek out the light, trying to find their happily-ever-after in this reality of misery. Some turn to pulp and ink and solitude and with all their puny might record whatever glimmer they can find. Some turn to the lens, or the canvas, or the wild outdoors. Their dreams are not the rule but the exception, yet when we turn to their tales we forget: forget the monsters we are and the darkness that is. The light kisses our faces like rain and we greedily drink it in, a nectar that will evaporate when the cover boards lay parallel once more, leaving a bitterness on our tongue that we cannot ever forget, and any distance we may have covered towards the light is lost as we turn it over.
For that brief moment, we held the truth in our hands. And then we walked away.
The truth is that the clouds tonight were painted on by Raphael, and that my life story was written by Alexandre Dumas.
Photo taken on the Antrim Coast
It is what we touch and taste and see and hear and smell. No matter that our languages are entirely imagined structures, no matter that our senses may deceive us, no matter that polite society is a volatile human construction. Through them we gain knowledge of the world around us, from the chair across the room and the stars winking in the now velvet sky. The truth of things. It is the only truth we have and we must learn to accept it as is, to pull it to us with open arms and make the best of our lot.
It is not omni-prescient; there is no one Truth that we can quantify of make tangible for all the world to behold. It is an ugly hydra. Let me share a sort of anecdote, if you will.
Photographs from seventy years ago. A window looking out of a plane, a new sprung and thriving city far below, a train’s railway track snaking through it. A dim, unidentifiable object hanging over the city. Nothing but huge plumes of smoke. Not even the wreckage of the Japanese city below was visible. Just that sepia smoke.
Nagasaki
It was war, in my hands. How many tens of thousands dead, in my hands? My mind ran away from me, and straight into the insurmountable wall of truth.
The people on both sides, or at least the majority of them, were just fighting to protect their loved ones. Maybe superficially they knew the bigger reasons for the war, but that wasn’t the issue first or last in their thoughts each day. So many join in the flames of youth- blood lust, war hawks, excitement, power. The stereotypes came and spread like wildfire, becoming the Truth. An out, as it were, a way of making the undirected killing acceptable. It had to be that way. It had to be the Truth. Because maybe they did not hate the men they were killing, maybe they did not love the ones they were defending. The lies that were made the Truth are the only things standing between millennia of soldiers and their morality, insanity, and status as upright members of the citizenry. Thus the Truth is and always will be that Americans were greedy white bastards and the Japanese were yellow heathens that attacked on the Sabbath. It may be facetious, but even the Truth cannot be perfect if it is always going to be true.
Or here is another example. Because of my academic pursuits, I often get asked about the Northern Irish conflicts. A few days ago, my own father looked me in the eye and asked, “So which ones are the good guys?” And I knew the answer right away, because in America there has only ever been one True answer to that: the catholic/nationalist plight. And that’s his Truth. It doesn’t matter how much time I spend explaining that both sides were equally gruesome and inhumane, or how both sides were guilty of heinous hate crimes, or that both sides killed on the age-old law of an eye for an eye. And everyone was blind. Because one side had a sort of upper hand, they became the bad guys. No matter that our so-called “good guys” created the cell system of terrorism. Never mind that we founded shootings and bombings.
Here is one truth:
Belfast
Derry
And here is another:
Belfast
Derry
The truth about the Truth is that people everywhere assume that what they take to be the Truth is universal. That spiders are nasty and that acupuncture is a joke. But to someone, that same spider is a miracle of life and acupuncture is the height of healing. The truth about the Truth is, it is not. It cannot and will not ever be, no matter how far and wide we search for it. There are few universal truths, and they are limited to such things as the need for sustenance, water, air, and shelter. And what is true today is not necessarily true tomorrow. Who knows, maybe some day out of necessity we will evolve to never need water again, although I suspect this day is a long way off.
What I want from everyone is for them to close their mouths and open their eyes and ears. Because- listen to me!- because the inherent darkness of humanity is not hopelessness: it is hope. Too much of it. I hear you say that that is only my truth, but it is True. Look around you. You will see people of all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, of varying social status and faith. And the vast majority of them are deluding themselves with hope, like the Dickensian Mister Macabre. Some whose ships never sailed are certain that one knighted day their ship will come in. Those whose ships did come in are convinced that there has got to be something more.
Truth does not just reside here, in shining halls.
Photo taken at Portstewart
It is not sacred, it is not lofty. It is mere reality- the very air we breath. We cannot afford to ignore it anymore as we all trudge towards death side by side, secluded in out misery. Unable to see past the great aspirations we harbor, we don’t see anything. We ignore those true truths that we can see and feel on our quest for the Truth, afraid that they are too obvious. The Truth doesn’t matter. But the little truths- those we must all begin to speak aloud. Be blunt, but tactfully so. It is inch by inch and day by day. And maybe when all those trillions of little truths, like so many winking stars, have been spoken- maybe then we can work on the harder ones. Maybe then it won’t feel like the waterfall of Veritas’ wrath thundering down on us, extinguishing the fire within and blinding us with mist.
Niagara Falls
So let me be the first person to speak the truth-as-it-is. No, I didn’t care for dinner, but thank you for it all the same. The grass is green. Water is wet. The sun is bright. Two wrongs do not make a right. Anger is easier. I love you. And yes, the sunset is breathtaking.
Photo Taken at Bundoran
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