Little Atoms
So didja listen to JS on Little Atoms? It was pretty funny, in an absurd sort of way. He has some kind of bee in his bonnet that people who sign the Euston Manifesto think it is going to set off a mass progressive movement. It turned up in that HERO interview too. HERO asked ‘Ophelia, you are a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, and Butterflies and Wheels is an affiliated site. What are your expectations of the movement for a rational left, and how much do you feel that blogging and, more widely, the internet has contributed to the timing of this development?’ and he answered –
The Euston Manifesto will die a quick death. There is no chance for any kind of mass movement of the rational left, and blogging and the internet will have little effect outside the chattering classes. I think there is an interesting point here about wishful thinking, irrationalism, etc., which is that it has always been the case that the politically engaged – well, large numbers of them anyway – have very little sense of just how uninterested the mass of the population are in politics.
But notice – the HERO question doesn’t say anything about a mass movement – JS inserted that ‘mass’ himself, for no apparent reason. Of course I don’t bloody think the Euston Manifesto is going to set off a mass movement! I’m not insane, or delusional, or on Ecstasy. Just signing something isn’t such a huge colossal effort that making the effort implies a magical belief that it will change the universe. I signed the dang Euston Manifesto (despite disagreeing with parts of it, especially the part about the US as a great country – I think the US’s tragically broken political system makes it difficult to say that without instant qualification) for the same sort of reason I (and presumably JS) co-wrote WTM, and I have to point out, signing the EM was a great deal less work and took up far less time. If writing that book was worth doing (and I think JS thinks it was) then why wouldn’t siging a manifesto you mostly agree with be worth doing? Consider: the first takes some months, the second takes – what? five seconds?
I’ll have to give him a good sharp talking-to on the subject if I ever get the chance. But it made for some pretty funny listening – you could tell the hosts were starting to want to slap him. I know the feeling. snicker. There was also some nonsense about how people who disagree with religion (people like me, it seems, since he muttered something about me before launching that particular tirade) don’t understand about death and loss. Now really. Really. He would know, if he ever read the essays I write for TPM Online, that at least half of them are about nothing else; that I’m obsessed with the subject. I mean really.
Then there was the beginning where he said actually he’s not sure truth does matter – that was amusing too. (Mind you, in the sense he meant, nor do I, and I spent the first couple of pages of the book saying so. But ‘why truth matters in rational empirical inquiry’ would have been a not very catchy title, so we didn’t bother suggesting it.) Anyway, it was quite an entertaining interview.
Well, I don’t think his statement as quoted implies that he does think the question said anything about a mass movement – he seems to be saying that whatever kind of movement there is will be confined to the ‘chattering classes’, hence will not grow into a mass movement.
Seems clear enough to me.
Am I having a deja-vu?
I feel like I’ve read the exact same post months ago.
Not having a déja vu, not having a déja vu. You probably read a similar post (that would be on the HERO interview, I expect), but not an identical one.
Just saw a programme about bullying on UK’s C4 television which made light of it, featured a bunch of people speaking bemusedly and ammusedly about their experiences with bullying (never as victim and never in such a way as to reveal the vile and self-destructive energies behind it).
But the point here is that one of those talking in a light-hearted way about bullying several times mentioned some “dévu ja” experience.
I nearly fell out of my chair and it was then I realized we had been suckered into watching something no better than a discussion on Big Brother about bullying – worse actually because these people were presented to us as… something, I don’t know what, worth paying attention to.
Maybe it’s not so bad because things like that will surely undermine the notion that anyone on TV necessarily speaks with any knowledge. But I’m afraid in the meantime it undermines the actual value of knowledge and questions the idea of understanding.
To redeem myself and go back on topic I will say that to choose to take the interview question in a direction where he could speak negatively suggests JS has a negative view of the EM. But it tells us nothing about why.
I didn’t sign the EM because I found it waffly on freedom of expression (or maybe I was just fed up with lot about freedeom of expression) and because, because I’m just not sure about politics right now. The only things that matter to me now dont’ fit well on a left/right continuum.
But, hey, it never set out to start a mass movement. It has drawn phenomenal attention and become a wonderful focal point for some important ideas. And the idea of criticising it for not being a mass movement says more about one’s view of politics in general than (perhaps actually nothing) about the EM itself.
Hmmyeah…I suppose. But all the same, I don’t see how that is fundamentally different from writing a book like WTM. (The activity that goes with it may be; going to meetings and such, but that’s a different matter – one that I, being 6 thousand miles away, don’t have to have an opinion on.) Aren’t we basically drawing a line between two forces of the left there?
But maybe I’m wrong; maybe signing a manifesto is a different kind of thing. I’m open to that suggestion.
However – I notice that Padraig said to you exactly what I said in the HERO interview: it’s not expectation, it’s hope. Surely there’s a huge difference between the two – all the difference in the world, really. One can hope things will improve and thus try to work to help them do so without telling oneself a lot of lies. That’s often difficult, but it’s not impossible; it’s not contradictory.
One sure difference between signing a manifesto and publishing a book — there’s definitely no money in the former. So one up to you, OB.