The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 2

Last week, I posted part one of my Philopolis discussion. Here is part two.

            Historically first in line is Chautauqua. Before my friend Bruce told me about this event, I had never heard of it (though obviously it’s a real thing because my spell-check doesn’t scream at it with red, squiggly lines). Luckily, PBS does documentaries on all kinds of things that I’ve never heard of, so I was able to gather some background intel. Chautauqua was founded in the late 19^th century in the US as a place to instruct Sunday School teachers. It was founded on the idea that an educated public is key to the health of democracy, and the idea that churches had an important role to play in this. In order for the church to fulfill this role, the Sunday School teachers needed to be educated enough to educate their flocks, and Chautauqua aimed at just this kind of learning. It was really Bildung in the old German sense: not just an education, but a formation, an acculturation.

            Chautauqua ran on the idea of learning as a lifelong pursuit, and offered exposure to the fine arts, discussion of current events, ideas in the arts and sciences, and in religion, as well as incorporating a recreation component. It was basically a summer camp where people could get away without feeling guilty that they were wasting their time because they were learning while they were there. The original facility was installed on the edge of Chautauqua lake in the state of New York, but its immense popularity eventually lead to correspondence courses, installations popping up all over North America, as well as the inauguration of a traveling circuit, like a circus of intellectuals and artists.

            What drove Chautauqua? It responded mostly to three needs: the need for a place to take a “vacation” without the guilt of a vacation; the need for information and intellectual exposure in the United States, particularly in the rural areas where access to such things was greatly restricted. Interestingly, this movement showed that “infotainment” need not be totally vicious. To pass off entertainment as information, as we see in the sensationalist news media today, is deadly to our democratic engagement. But to pass off information as entertainment is just the reverse: what a virtuous idea! And what a biting criticism of our education system that we scoff at the very possibility of learning as entertaining and enjoyable.

            So what killed the movement, then, if it was so big? The pressures of the Great Depression didn’t help anything, as the network had greater and greater trouble supporting itself financially and had to pare back its offerings, but the deathblow was struck by the introduction of radio (and television) into the mass market. The greatest need that pushed Chautauqua was the relative scarcity of access to information in rural areas, where universities and libraries were difficult to access. But radio broadcast changed all of that by providing access to information through a much cheaper distribution medium. Moving people around from town to town is costly, especially relative to the cost of moving some electrons. By the end of the Second World War, Chautauqua was passé, and only the original installation in New York state is left as a commemorative to the movement. (It still offers a whole summer worth of activities, and actually has a whole town that it runs somewhat like a summer camp.)

            Radio, television and movies made the dissemination of information and entertainment (as an outlet for one’s leisure time) much easier to access. Are these not still around? Do these not still work against the possibility of offering something like Chautauqua? Make no mistake, there are definite parallels to the festival of philosophy, and we need to be aware of the forces that would undercut our relevance and our ability to grow. Radio and television definitely make market penetration more difficult, but we can offer something that they can’t: interactivity. Radio and television disseminate; they are not participatory. That’s where Philopolis has the upper hand in this battle.

Here is the third part.

What does a Smart Conservative look like?

You know, I think I might finally be starting to understand where the Conservatives are coming from. I've been looking to understand the "nuanced" version of their policies for a while, and thus far have gotten nowhere, but hopefully this is a first step in the right direction. (Also, I don't spend much time in Alberta, or around many Conservatives, so the sample size that I've seen is quite small; it's not that I believe there to be no Smart Conservatives, but I do believe that there are only few in proximity to me.) They believe that the government is a bunch of bunglers, isolated in their policy tower as the academics are isolated in towers of ivory. Consequently, politicians don't know a thing about actually running anything, resulting in wasted money, ineffective policies, etc.

The Conservative response is to hand over control to the corporations, assuming that they'll do a decent job at running it themselves if the bunglers just stop gumming up the works.

Is that a good strategy to take? It can be: look at the way immigration in the US is run in large part by its economy, where immigration status is tied quite strongly to employment and businesses themselves are responsible for a great deal of the process. In this instance, the US immigration system has shown that there can be some success allowing companies to be heavily involved in running something that we Canadians typically take to be a gov't matter. (US immigration has some definite problems, but it also has a track record of some success, and at a modicum of stability; the program is far from an utter failure, though it's also far from perfect.)

The problem that the Conservative government is failing to recognize is that not everything can work this way. It's in the shared, short & long term interests of governments and businesses that the incoming immigrants be employed: governments don't have an economically sagging immigrant population to prop up through social services, and companies have lots of control over who's allowed in, meaning that they get the pick of the litter. Long term, immigrants don't become a perpetual weight on the social services, and capable people are probably more likely to have capable children (teaching them good habits, sending them to good schools, providing safe environments in which to grow up, etc).

But while it's in the interests of the government, both short & long term, to protect the environment, it's only in the long term interests of companies to protect the environment from which they draw natural resources. Their short term interests are radically opposed to this, because it requires postponing profits. Sadly, long-term viability is not in vogue in the business world nowadays (was it ever?) and so leaving the governance of the environment in business hands is just asking for a catastrophe. Furthermore, there an non-economic interests in the environment, which corporations could only have an instrumental interest in protecting (in order to protect their own image, say).

This is where the Conservative idea goes wrong: they believe that the solution to political ineptitude should be solved by deregulation and governance by economic corporations, but overlook the fact that political mandates are far broader than economic interests (including that which can fall under the heading of "instrumental to economy"), and that short term interests will win out over long term interests in the economic sphere. (Also, anyone who was a sentient being in 2008 knows that the ineptitude and greed of big business can lead to catastrophes all on their own, without the help of bungling politicians standing in their way.)

Maybe what we need instead is to have our bungling politicians, if indeed that's what they are, to collaborate more closely with people involved in economy, environment, health care, etc. But any such collaboration is totally impossible in the political climate that Harper's Conservatives have brought about.

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 1

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking about the Philopolis festival, and wondering what it really is. These thoughts come up every time we need to create a new call for activities, but this time in particular I was sparked by a discussion with Ajay Heble, who asked me what Philopolis does that's unique. "It's the only festival of philosophy; there are no others." That was my response, but in giving it, I realized that I didn't really know what a "festival of philosophy" really is, or what it should be. That sparked these reflections, and so after much soul-searching, reflection, conversation and investigation, I've written up a piece that discusses how Philopolis fits into the intellectual and cultural landscape around it. The piece is quite long, so I've broken it up into four section. Here is the first:

            Philopolis is an event that’s been extremely recalcitrant to definition since its inception. It picked up where La Nuit de la Philosophie left off, meaning that it was basically an attempt to bring ideas from academic philosophy back into contact with the general public. That means taking these (sometimes hyper-)technical ideas and presenting them in a language accessible to the broader community, and bringing them into contact with issues that matter to that community as well. We need to find in common a language and a set of concerns. Philosophy simply cannot continue to be a jargonistic, self-referential and entirely insular investigation, as it has been in academia for far too long. (For those who think that it always was, I suggest reading Plato’s dialogues in which he documents the very concrete and accessible examinations carried out by Socrates. I’m sure there are more contemporary examples as well…)

            Why should academic philosophers concern themselves with problems outside of their professional domain? First off, because philosophy has the power to do so. Its Socratic beginnings show that philosophy can be eminently relevant. Second, because (at least here in Canada) academics are publicly funded. In taking public support, academics tacitly agree to be the researchers of the people. To turn our backs on the people, then, and to research things that do not even concern, much less interest, the broader society is to fail in our duty as public researchers. Simply put, we must offer a return on the public investment. Third, the principles of democracy rely on an educated and critical public, and philosophy play an important role in the development of critical skills.

            Fourth, the adequacy of philosophical ideas rests on being in contact with material outside its own confines. One need think only of how bad some philosophy of science has been as a result of being totally divorced from any scientific practice. Philosophy often has impact on real-life problems, as opposed to those found only in internal academic dialogues, and so the adequacy of those ideas is jeopardized by the utter segregation from those problems. Reflection does not take place in a vacuum. Even Descartes, who famously withdrew to the solipsistic confines of his chamber to write his Meditations, could not withdraw from language and the sense of self that are the marks of communal existence. He may have isolated himself physically for a short time, but his isolation was limited in important ways. Notice that the first thing he does after wiping the slate clean through hyperbolic doubt is to engage God in his writing. Way to isolate.

            Philopolis is a festival of philosophy, where ideas are publicly displayed, discussed and developed in the name of promoting reflection in the broader community, but also in the name of improving philosophical research by putting it back in touch with the real world. So this is the beginning of a definition, but it’s still pretty preliminary. Let’s have a look around at some events like Philopolis and see if we can use a comparison/contrast to help us define our event.


Here is the second part of the series.

A Run for Cindy

This past weekend, I ran a 5k memorial run down in Buffalo for Cindy Frank, the mother of a good friend and former roommate. In these circles we stick together and support our own, but I honestly hate running. There's nothing to distract you from the burning lungs, and the tight back and thighs. You try to find a good balance between the rhythm of your breathing and the rhythm of your steps, trying to keep your body going and push through the air that holds you back and the gravity that pulls you down.

This run was for Cindy, to remember and honour her life and especially the heroic struggle that she put up against cancer in those final months. She too had to push through physical pain and the emotional drain, the persistent call to just let go and throw in the towel. Just as she had to push through pain and the erosive powers that has on will power, so too were we all fighting against our bodies, willing them to do something that they don't do happily or easily.

And Cindy had to go it alone.  Of course, she was surrounded by loving and supporting people, most of all her family, but none of them were running that race with her. They could only cheer from the sidelines as inevitably Cindy had to face her physical downfall and her human mortality on her own. That is a race we each must run alone. And so despite the fact that there were many of us running, unlike most of our group I decided that I would run alone too, just as Cindy had. And her positive attitude, the smile that she always had on her face for every visitor, regardless of how much effort she was putting just into living, was an important inspiration for me as I pushed through the twists and turns of West Seneca.

Twists and turns were abundant on that cold, April day, when the wind lashed at our faces and drained the warmth from our bodies, the skies right on the brink, threatening to pour at any moment. Throughout the majority of the course, one could never see too much further ahead. It was impossible to see the finish line, and beyond the next turn was always mystery. This is the experience of running a course that you don't know, and a distance with which you're totally unfamiliar. You don't know what's coming up. You know that eventually it will end, but you have no idea how much further you have to go. There were volunteers along the way, cheering us on and directing us through, making sure that we stayed on course. But I refused to ask them how much further, when it would be over. "Would Cindy have had that luxury?" I asked myself, "Could anyone have told her how much further? Could she have known how much or how little time she had left to fight?" I refused to ask, no matter how much I wanted to know. And we all want to know how much further we have to go. It's so much easier to keep pushing on when the end is in sight. But some things in life just refuse to cooperate, refuse to let us know how much further we have to push before we can catch our breath, and then move on again.

The twists and turns of the course finally gave way to the final stretch, one long sight line. And at the end of it: the cross, sitting high up above the trees and the houses, perched atop the steeple of the church (and school) to which Cindy devoted her life, her energy, and her vitality. "How fitting," I thought to myself, "that it only all becomes clear to us at the end; and in the final stretch we see where it all must come to an end." We can run that final stretch to the church, with the cross soaring high up in the air guiding us through those last moments.

My pace slackened, my footsteps grew heavy, but the oxygen was coursing back into my muscles as I gathered myself for one final push, a sprint to the finish line beyond which I could finally collapse and draw restful breath. And what a reception at the finish line, a crowd of smiling, clapping, cheering faces encouraging us all to finally reach the other side and find peace in the open and waiting arms of our loved ones. Just like Cindy's final push.

This inaugural memorial run was a huge success, and of course an emotionally charged morning. 350 runners came out to in memory of Cindy, and to be supported through their run by the memory of her, and I hope that this will set the stage for a strong annual turnout for the event. For we can run that race over and over again, but death is only once. No warmups, no practice laps, no looking ahead past the next turn. Just one push to the finish line, and we all must go it alone. I honestly hate running.