Exploratory CW essay pieces look at the broader trends in contemporary society, politics and culture.

A selection of the Battle of Ideas’ Battles in Print is also available here.

Is technology making us smarter or dumber?

A talk given to the Brighton Salon, 2 November 2011

We can argue with the current shape of technology and propose how it might be better. But there is seldom much engagement in this direction. More common is dour warnings about our impotence in the face of new technology; that it is the agent and we the passive recipient.

The middle of nowhere

Arcelormittal Orbit, by Anish Kapoor, Stratford, London

Towers are monuments to our uncertainties. When Johnson talks with hopeful vagueness of the ‘mythic’ nature of towers, the word he is really after is ‘magic.’ The Orbit was designed to make the Olympic Park a ‘must see’ destination; the Orbit, that is to say, is a coercion; all towers are. Towers attempt to convince us that they, and by extension we, stand at the centre of things.

The 40 hours that shook European elites (and the timid Left)

Lessons for the Left from the Greek referendum debacle

The radical Left in Greece has always considered the European Union as the watchdog of European capital and a barrier to developing a different model of development and progress for the Greek people. Nevertheless, when the moment came, for the first time in 30 years, to challenge this burden, they seemed to consider the situation unbearable, and were afraid to step forward and lead.

Relocating to the Man Cave

A new genre of mainstream film dramatises young men’s retreat from the public spere

The characters and settings of the Man Cave films are grotesque caricatures, and the dudebro is, in reality, a tendency rather than an actual person. But the driving force behind the stories — the retreat from public life, the elevation of the domestic, and the use of a stunted emotional development for the forging of brotherhood — are all genuine features of contemporary society.

La vie bohèmienne

La Bohème, ENO, the Coliseum, London

In fact, central to bohemianism was a kind of ambivalence – were these real artists, or were they simply avoiding the traditional expectations of their stations by legitimising their own pleasure-seeking? This question of the status and quality of art was a genuine one and remains with us today, albeit tangled in quite contemporary concerns.

The evolution of a weird super-story

We are building a scaffold for investigative journalism out of the Dowlers’ suffering

The big story we have accepted has a very strange aspect. In one way it completes a triptych of betrayals of the people: the greedy bankers destroying the economy; the MPs’ expenses scandal; and now the press, in cahoots with politicians, big business and the police misleading the courts and carelessly pursuing a morally reprehensible course of invasion of privacy and bribery. We are all supposed to be joining in the circle of condemnation and moral outrage, waving our pitchforks at a newly discovered monster in our midst.

Wheezy arguments

Civil Liberties: Up in Smoke, by Simon Davies (Privacy International, 2011)

Advocates of the smoking ban don’t trust ordinary people to resolve any conflict between smokers and non-smokers, or not to chain smoke in front of their babies. In the same way, Simon Davies seems to think that readers need exaggeration and sensationalism in order to be convinced that the smoking ban is wrong.

Hairy days for journalism

The bigger picture behind the crisis in British journalism

Instead of technology, neurology and nature, the following, brief episodes – flashes from the history of news – are intended to show that journalism has been socially determined; and so too is our capacity to change its centre of gravity. Revealing the real elements of compulsion can only make the case for concerted change more compelling.

Belfast: Exposed

Where are the people? Contemporary photographs of Belfast 2002-2010, edited by Karen Downey

Ethical concerns can just as easily be motivated by an evasion of responsibility, as they can by a desire to capture the displacement of people from history-making. The absence of people in documentary photography can be an accurate picture of the position of the people in contemporary society, but this absence can also amount to an attempt to evade the question Where are the people?

Using art to nudge the public

Culture and Class, by John Holden (Counterpoint 2010) / Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts, by John Knell and Matthew Taylor (RSA 2011)

Today, Voltaire’s Enlightenment optimism has deteriorated into a deep pessimism about humanity and its place in the world.  In Britain, art is no longer seen by the elite as a way of dragging the lower orders up by their bootlaces, but as a sort of Valium to stop us getting any worse.

‘Muscular liberalism’: a paradoxical political philosophy?

Multiculturalism is far from dead. No apartheid exists in Britain. David Cameron touched on a few minority Islamist groups that hold segregationist attitudes, but many more Muslims live integrated lives. Nor does multiculturalism necessarily mean opposing to ‘British’ political values.

Better schools for all?

The Education White Paper and the Attainment Gap

The government has made some important proposals, such as refocusing on teacher quality as the key determinant of educational attainment.But this good work is in danger of being undone by the overly prescriptive and quixotic nature of the curriculum changes. The aim should not merely be to have good schools, but instead, a good schools system, so that all pupils regardless of their background and where they live have the chance to progress in a stimulating and challenging environment.

Love your enemies… but don’t let them eat you

Sam Harris on the science of good and evil, Intelligence Squared, London, 11 May 2011

In response to questions, Harris asked, seemingly bewildered, why anyone should be afraid of the idea that scientific experts might determine human values. One answer is that we value democracy; and science, for all its other merits, is not democratic. For the very same reason we object to theocratic rule, we are right to be suspicious of ‘scientistic’ pronouncements.

Not what you expect from opera?

Birmingham Opera Company and the politics of outreach

Niall Crowley asks if the work of Birmingham Opera Company – featured in a recent BBC documentary along with a screening of their unique production of Verdi’s Othello – and their goal of ‘making opera speak to a broad audience’ is just another attempt to use the arts for the purposes of social engineering or something to be celebrated.

Yeh hai Bambai meri jaan!

Mumbai Fables, by Gyan Prakash (Princeton University Press 2010)

The promise of the city, like that of Independence, was real – and perhaps still is. There is a tragic quality to Prakash’s account, but the gradual demise of the Modernist dream in the second half of the twentieth century should not be seen as inevitable or even, perhaps, final.