Invading the Sphere of Informal Relationships - Quareness Series (7th "Lecture").
Fellow Citizens,
In recent years we here in Hibernia seem to have been evolving an alarming lack of depth in much of our society's approach to living e.g. the practical discouragement/prevention of poor auld fellas having a few social jars in country pubs, the time urgency being forced upon our home help providers leaving little if any room for the "sit down for a chat" element formerly (and I suspect still) prized by many of the "clients", and the scant surface level consideration of many issues in the celebrity obsessed media and in general conversation. Not that long ago these auld fellas could drive in peace to their local hostelry along quiet country roads, replenish their stock of social contact on their own terms keeping in touch with their neighbours through informal and comfortable (for them) contact/conversation in their traditional social centre, and drive home afterwards without apparent mishap (as far as the disaggregated evidence shows). Alas the "one size fits all" brigade have managed to largely put a stop to all that (in the interests of "health & safety" of course and for the oldsters' own good) with their "concerned" almost blanket bans on "drink driving" and "smoking in the workplace". Ironically some of this same brigade are now worrying themselves silly over the "social isolation" of these same poor auld fellas. The "professionalisation" of our home help service doesn't appear to entail any understanding of the importance to real health of the informal relaxed social interaction for our relatively isolated elderly citizens (are they ever really listened to by those "who know best"?). Any issue with depth and requiring a bit of "trying to understand" effort on the part of the listener/reader/viewer seems to get less and less discoursive coverage in the main stream public domain in favour of an illusionary advantage for the slick shallow sound byte approach, thereby adding to a general tendency towards dumbing down of the society.
In truth these "problems" may really be symptoms of a more diseased state with serious ongoing implications for our true personal and societal freedom.
When our institutions (particularly those of culture and education) treat people as consumers to be spoon fed, this tends to foster a regime of low expectations which does little to stimulate public discussion and debate and leads to a society that is more devoted to celebrating a few individual voices rather than the healthy development of the mass of its members. On the other hand an intelligent public can be said to be the product of intellectual and cultural ferment and intense "to and fro" debate. Where this is absent far fewer people express their opinions than receive them and communications are organised in such a manner that it is difficult for people to answer back or with effect. The mass of society then has no autonomy from institutions but rather the agents of "authorised" institutions interpenetrate and reduce any autonomy the mass may have in the formation of opinion by discussion. In these conditions the growing intervention of the state in cultural life serves to reduce the terrain on which the public can exert its autonomy. Policies which fly the flag of inclusion, access and participation quite often lead to the intrusive penetration of official institutions into people's lives and auditing of cultural institutions then tends to compromise informal and spontaneous interaction. Through a variety of devices - formal lifelong learning, certificates of competence, training & development - people's intellectual and cultural life becomes subject to institutional expectations and this state of affairs leans towards stimulating a mood of conformism and passivity.
The imperative of social engineering can eventually lead to the colonisation of people's informal lives e.g. accreditation leads to the auditing of personal experience according to criteria established by an external institution and contains the potential for forcing the public into a relationship of subservience to the auditors. In other words this whole outlook/project may really be one of invading and taking over the sphere of informal relationships. Is this what we want for our people?
In the final analysis intellectual life needs an intelligent public and art needs an engaged critical audience. However, this other cultural flattery stuff creates little incentive for people "to rise to the occasion" resulting in the pool of society's creative energy being wasted on creating and responding to the demand for "shallow" recognition. In an era of the infantilisation of culture and education, we need greater commitment to intellectual autonomy and treating people as grown ups as essential prerequisites for our freedoms.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
May 2011.