Coming to terms with cultural change in Europe

I haven't been writing much lately but it is important to me to keep some sort of diary going which is accessible to friends, relations and other interested parties. My focus lately has been on Substack but I also want to keep this site active. Reprinted here, then, is my latest Substack piece which has the somewhat unwieldy title, Old memories, current realities: coming to terms with social and cultural change in England and Europe and finding a long-lost friend...

For me the past year has been a time of travel, observation and reflection, and I intend to continue this itinerant lifestyle for the foreseeable future. Not everything has gone smoothly but things have gone well and happily enough for me to want to continue the experiment.

My geopolitical views and opinions have, on the whole, been reinforced as I have followed the events in Ukraine and other areas of conflict or potential conflict. And I have deepened my knowledge of the changes that have occurred and are occurring in Europe and Great Britain, having spent considerable time in the Balkans, Malta and the U.K.. The last six months, spent entirely in England, has been a particularly significant and emotional time for me as I have slowly come to terms with current British social, cultural, political and economic realities.

Though they often become entangled, the personal has always been more important to me than the political. Old memories gain a new lease of life when they are activated and added to, and this process — which can be painful and confronting — has been driving my thoughts and feelings lately in all sorts of ways. I’ve always been fascinated by time and the dynamics of memory, and I’m not alone here: it’s been a perennial literary theme from (at least) the early modern era.

Cultural traditions (including literary and artistic ones for those so inclined) make us who we are. For me, literature and film are important in two main ways: in so far as they reflect the cultures in which they arose; and for the ideas which drive them. Naturally we are drawn to works which reflect a culture with which we feel a strong affinity, attitudes which we share and ideas which we find stimulating.

Artworks only justify themselves, in my view, to the extent that they shape, shake or comfort us; that is, to the extent that they touch individuals at a deep level and nourish the various cultural and transcultural values that we all embody (and so bring to life and carry forward).

I recently had some personal encounters which got me thinking about these matters and about time and memory but privacy concerns prevent me from giving an account of the most significant of these meetings and the communications which led up to it. This encounter involved seeing again an English couple I had not seen or been in touch with for decades.

There is a personal dimension to the story and also a cultural one. The woman in question — who, I readily admit, had made a much greater impression on me than I had on her — influenced my cultural attitudes quite deeply when I was in my twenties. It was fascinating and satisfying to make contact again after so long, and in an England which has changed so radically.

Part of the interest related to seeing to what extent our respective values and attitudes had changed in response to these broader changes as well as to growing older. (Not a lot, as it happens!) But part of the interest was — as is often the case with long-delayed reunions — simply in discovering who remembered what in regard to prior interactions.

The moral of the story (were it to be told) would probably be something along these lines: that the persistence of values and character traits in the respective parties is more important for the possible continuation of a disrupted friendship than a perfect congruence of shared memories.

Calmer and marginally less pessimistic (at least on a personal level), I am leaving England for Germany tomorrow.

Interesting dinosaur

My interest in literature and the arts has faded over the years. The arts have a habit of getting in the way of experience, filtering it, encouraging an indirect (and often government-subsidized) engagement with the world. And the world mediated by pictures, movies, performances, fictions and so on is not really the world, is it?

Besides, the arts aren't what they used to be.

A few interesting dinosaurs still roam the literary landscape, however. Like Tom Stoppard.

Unusually for arts intellectuals these days, his instincts are basically conservative, and his interests range widely and encompass the history of ideas, including mathematics and the sciences. (His play Arcadia bears witness to this.)

Stoppard was born in what is now the Czech Republic just before World War 2, and his (Jewish) family fled the Nazis to the Far East. His father (working as a doctor in Singapore) was captured by the advancing Japanese and died in a prison camp. Stoppard's mother escaped with her two sons to India and married a British army officer, Kenneth Stoppard.

Like many other central Europeans who fled the Nazis (or, in subsequent years, the Soviets) and who eventually found refuge in England, Stoppard embraced English culture with great enthusiasm – despite the fact that the English themselves, sensing that their glory days were behind them, were losing faith in their country and its future.

I came across an interview-based piece on Stoppard by Victoria Glendinning in the weekend press, and scribbled a few notes...

Stoppard dresses in an elegantly old-fashioned manner. He is not interested in clothes, he says: he just likes them.

He still smokes cigarettes. [I have a couple of theories about highly intelligent cigarette smokers, but I'll save them for another time.]

Stoppard: "The centre of gravity of our morality is our literary culture." [But, then, as a playwright he would say that, wouldn't he?]

Stoppard has for decades supported human rights and freedom-of-speech organizations, especially in connection with dissidents in Eastern Europe.

Stoppard: "Ultimately, at the level of government, decisive acts are acts of self-interest." (Thus the lack of international support for dissidents in Belarus, for instance, because Belarus has no oil, just people.)

Two final quotes:

"I can't bear travel. I hate the airport experience. Partly because I no longer like going anywhere anyway, partly because [the travel process] has become dehumanizing. Nobody is to blame. It is progress in operation."

"I am a small-c conservative."

Sinister influences

In a pluralistic society it seems sensible to let the market decide as far as possible who should be paid for doing what. The market may not itself be moral but ultimately it does reflect the values of market participants and in fact can provide fertile ground for the development and growth of many human virtues, such as prudence and a sense of responsibility.

It's all very well to say that someone should be paid to perform some (presumably worthwhile) activity, but if businesses or individuals are unwilling to fund them then any money must come from the state, from public resources. And - especially in these times of high government indebtedness - a strong case can be made that controversial or ideologically motivated activities or activities which are normally deemed to be inessential or which only benefit a small group should (whenever possible) be paid for directly by those involved.

Take sport and the arts. There is nothing to stop people getting together to play games if they want to. There is nothing to stop people putting on concerts or plays; and, if the product is popular, the audience will pay. Why should I subsidize writers or artists or performers in whom I have no interest and who, in many cases (given the left-leaning tendency of the arts community), are seeking to undermine the values I hold most dear?

I know that sports and the arts constitute only a small fraction of government budgets, but these areas are not discrete or easily defined, and they impinge on and merge into other more significant areas of government concern. For example, the arts merge into the media, advertising and propaganda. And sports funding is associated with community health initiatives. Nanny state, yes, but at least sport (unlike much activity in the arts) is not ideological.

Much arts funding is more about promoting multiculturalism (or, more cynically, about placating certain ethnic minorities) or winning votes from the broader 'arts community' than it is about encouraging artistic excellence (whatever that may be these days). But then, why should the state promote artistic excellence anyway? It is a good and worthwhile thing, but let it be left to artists to excel and to their followers to reward them.

At the elite end of the spectrum, both sport and the arts are used by governments to promote the 'national brand', an unfortunate tendency that appears - at least in respect of the arts in some European countries and in respect of sport just about everywhere - to have popular support.

Although the number of people directly employed by governments may be falling in some Western countries, the number who work for organizations which are dependent on government funding - including international organizations - is growing. And in areas such as health, education and aged care many mainstream churches and previously-independent welfare organizations have become mere 'service providers', following government rules and dependent on government largesse for their continued existence.

More insidious - if not sinister - is the way many groups espousing and promoting so-called progressive causes have inserted themselves, formally or informally, into the bureaucracy of national and local governments, redirecting resources and effectively reshaping the ethos of these bodies. Institutions and bureaucracies devoted to education are particularly culpable in this regard.

More broadly, laws and government regulations - promoted and encouraged by unions and other left-wing pressure groups - are making it increasingly difficult in many countries for businesses to make decisions about their own operations, including hiring and firing.

Similar constraints are being placed on professionals of all kinds. Once the professional-client relationship was, though essentially market-based, associated with well-understood and respected ethical standards. Direct and indirect government intrusions on this relationship are effectively undermining the very concept of the independent professional who maintains a direct relationship with clients based on trust and a sense of responsibility.

Freedom does not guarantee morality, but morality will only develop in the context of freedom, and withers in a highly regulated environment.