Ways of thinking about the Future

 The last post was about Geoff Mulgan’s thoughts about the future in which he made a reference to what someone had called the tenth chapter problem – namely these books which spend the first 9 chapters describing the mess we’re in but cannot produce anything for the final chapter except anodyne platitudes and truisms. Mulgans’ lecture shows how it should be done by offering some imaginative ways to think about the future 

But there are many methods that can be drawn on to expand a possibility space. 

Applying a few simple rules can help anyone or any group to generate options, for 

example to transform an existing activity like childcare, pensions, libraries, tax 

so as to multiply options.  
First you think about extension - taking an aspect of existing practice and going 

further, like Bach’s extension of fugues to six voices or extending the idea of rights 

to new fields, extending school hours, extending suffrage by giving the vote to 

sixteen-yearolds, or six-year-olds.  
Then you try grafting (or combining) taking an idea from another field and applying 

it to another. Again, this is very common in the arts—for example, grafting ideas 

from photography back into painting—and other examples include the way that the 

idea of auctions was grafted onto the management of the electromagnetic spectrum 

(the radio waves used for mobile phones, satellites or television), or how the idea of 

the jury was grafted onto democracy in the form of citizens’ juries.  
A more radical approach is to use inversion, as practised in the Middle Ages during 

Carnival, when for a day the poor pretended to be rich and vice versa.  What if 

farmers became bankers (as happened with the microcredit provided by Grameen 

Bank); patients became doctors; or social care were provided by people who had 

themselves been recipients of care?  What if consumers became makers of things? 
Addition and subtraction are also useful. Baroque and traditional Hindu architecture 

are good examples of extreme addition, and any social service can easily add on new 

elements—like a family doctor who also offers advice on welfare. Much modernist 

art and music favoured subtraction, leading to Malevich’s painting ‘White on White’ 

in 1918 or the silence of John Cage’s 1952 composition 4′33″. This way of thinking 

can also be generative in social contexts: what if you took away half of the roles in 

a hierarchy or introduced a maximum income? Or what if you had to cut a budget by 

half?  Noone likes cuts but I’ve worked with public parks that faced a 50 per cent 

budget cut and were prompted to come up with dozens of creative ways of raising 

money, through events, music, festivals and food, leaving the parks more vibrant 

than they had been before. The cheap prices of today’s supermarkets are only 

possible because Clarence Saunders in Memphis in the early twentieth century had 

the inspired idea of subtracting service staff and letting customers pack their own 

bags. 
Sometimes, not doing things is better than doing them. A surprising example of this 

was found in the military’s experience that taking immediate action to treat soldiers 

suffering from PTSD tended to make it worse. It proved better to let people mobilise 

their own resources and then to focus on the 4 or 5 per cent for whom that approach 

hadn’t worked. Less can be more. And of course veganism is an approach which 

subtracts—excluding meats and dairy products from diets— while much law and 

regulation is now focused on reducing energy use, carbon emissions and travel, 

rather than increasing them. 

If these are some basic methods creative thought can also be helped by mobilising 

metaphor and analogy—seeing one thing and thinking of another (a variant of the 

grafting process described above). Much of social change comes from shifts in 

metaphors. Do we see society as a war, a body or an organism; a building, a machine 

or a family? Is the economy analogous to a household, which means being very careful 

not to spend more than you earn, or is it more like an entrepot or trading post, 

in which case debt may be essential? 
We are at a time of extraordinarily fertile analysis of the past – the ‘long durées’ of 

inequality, governance, values, families – and just as fertile analysis of the present. 

But we’ve made it harder for social scientists to engage with understanding or 

shaping the future. If we really are in a time of multiplying crises then we badly 

need options, and social scientists need to be part of this work. 

 We need the best brains to be working out how to design and run a zero carbon 

economy; a society with more disability; how to make ubiquitous smart technologies 

serve us rather than the other way round; how to counter polarisation; 

misinformation. We need to populate our fuzzy pictures of the future with complex, 

rich, plausible deas, pictures of the possible – a possibility space that is capacious 

and helpful for action in the present. There may not be an immediate demand for 

these, not least as governments attend to the immediate.  

But it is precisely at these times that we need to look ahead, just as in dark days of 

1930s and WW2 some worked hard to think about what could come after, from 

designing welfare states to macroeconomics, decolonisation to human rights and 

the creation of the UN, which a decade before it was founded seemed utterly 

utopian. 

Further Reading
Future Matters – action, knowledge, ethics  B Adam and C Groves (2007) explores 

the adequacy of current ways of handling the future – although the book is just over 200 

pages, this is only google excerpts
Future Babble D Gardner (2010) more books could benefit from this useful summary
Future Vision – scenarios for the world in 2040 Richard Watson and Oliver Freeman  (2012) 

The book is almost 300 pages and is a useful outline of scenario planning – the epilogue 

traces 10 possible shocks.
Global Trends 2040 – a more contested world National Intelligence Council (2021) 

You can always rely on the security services to demonstrate a realistic approach! 

The final section on 5 future scenarios is particularly worth reading.
Global Risks Report 2024 (World Economic Forum) I’m not a great fan of WEF reports 

which tend to suffer from groupthink. This a short (120 page) report which doesn’t 

mention the risk of pandemics. 

LINKS – and what they tell you about someone

My blogroll lists 70 blogs I try to follow – one being an old site of mine which was suddenly removed, without notice. So, be warned, all those precious papers and books could suddenly vanish!!. And buying a web address is not a solution – as this, just as easily, can also vanish via a takeover. Indeed that’s just happened to one of my bank accounts – NatWest International who seem to have taken over the Royal Bank of Scotland - which has intimated that they are closing the account in which I have 5k dollars in late January. They offer no option to allow me to transfer the money to another account. Such are the ways of corporate capitalism.

But revenons aux moutons – to the matter of what links can tell you about a person. The last post led with a link to a file containing a 100 page list of the hyperlinks I had selected this year for their interest. Both the blogroll and this list of hyperlinks tell you a lot about what grabs my interest – for example.

The Journal of Intellectual History is onec of my favourite journals and occasionally has free articles. Two recent were

Neoliberalism – an intellectual history N Mulder review of 3 recent books

one on Anti-fascism which places the literature in the wider context of anti-colonialism

We are not ready - policymaking in the era of era of environmental breakdown

(IPPR 2020) which assesses the UK against 3 criteria

Putting the Gaza ethnic cleansing in context

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/18/chris-hedges-the-death-of-israel/

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/12/patrick-lawrence-gaza-confronting-power/

https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/israeli-apartheid-and-its-apologists/

Human Rights Watch 2021 Report on Israeli use of apartheid

polarisation article

https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Ending-stagnation-final-report.pdf

In the Ruins of the Present Vijay Prashad 2018

How to understand a world of unemployment and annihilation, of poverty, climate catastrophe and war? What concepts do we have to grasp these complex realities? The modes of thought that come from North American positivism – game theory, regression analysis, multi-level models, inferential statistics – are at a loss to offer a general theory of our condition. Steeped in common sense understandings of power and naive about the role of elites in our world, these approaches might explain this or that aspect of our world.

https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/politicians-who-respected-kissinger?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

https://www.noemamag.com/what-ai-teaches-us-about-good-writing/

Some recent Development material

Newsletter from “thinking and working politically”

Promoting institutional and organisational development 2003

Fragility, Risk and Resilience UN 2016

understanding institutional analysis

civil servants, social norms and corruption

And the number of downloadable BOOKS is increasing eg

• Tomorrow’s Communities Henry Tam 2022

• The Gutenberg Parenthesis Jeff Jarvis 2023

• The Ecology of Freedom M Bookchin 1982

• Institutions Taking Root - Building State Capacity in Challenging Contexts World Bank 2014

• The Government Analyics Handbook – leveraging data to strengthen public administration D Rogger and C Schuster World Bank Sept 2023

• Passion, Craft and Method in Comparative Politics Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder 2007

• Globalisation and contestation - the new great counter-movement Ronaldo Munck 2007

• Digital Transformation and public services A Larsson and R Teigland 2020

• Struggle makes us human Vijay Prashad 2022

• Prisoners of Time - prussians, germans and other humans chris clark 2021

• Walter Kempowski’s Familienchronic thesis 1990

• The Language of Politics Adrian Beard 2000

• Faith seeking Conviviality Sam Ewell 2020

WHAT SORT OF FUTURE ARE WE LEAVING BEHIND?

Climatologists may overwhelmingly (the exact figure is some 97%) be convinced that global warming is a real and immediate threat - but the public is not so easily persuaded. Our reasons are many and diverse

• The world's climate tends to go in cycles – remember the Ice ages

• experts are increasingly suspect – their forecasts often turn out to be falsified

• technological innovations will save us

Beneath such rationalisations lies an almost religious belief in the idea of “Progress” which has recently become the subject of increasing criticism

As individuals, we deal with the threat of global warming in a whole variety of different ways -

• we deny it

• we mobilise and protest

• we accept fatalistically that future generations are doomed and feel guilty

• we invent a new vocabulary – of “resilience”

• and resort to notions of local self-sufficiency” and “degrowth”

This post is about two climate activists whose writing has engaged my interest in the last few days – Rupert Read and Jem Bendell. Read is one of the founders of Extinction Revolution but has just left his posiyion as a philosophy academic to concentrate on his activism. Bendell is a geographer who has edited a book jointly with Read

Let me start with Read's latest book - Why Climate Breakdown Matters (2022) which starts with reminding us of the anxieties we had in earlier decades

Not so well known is that in 1983, we came even closer to nuclear war. This was instigated by a flock of geese flying across the edge of the Soviet Union. The USSR’s radar systems misidentified this avian excursion as a series of incoming nuclear missiles. It was only due to the prompt action, or (if you will) inaction, of an intelligent and calm Russian officer (not even a very senior officer), that nuclear missiles weren’t released in response to those geese. Against protocol, he delayed authorizing a retaliatory strike, until the looming threat was unmasked as simply birds. This episode is documented in a film called “The Man Who Saved the World” and the title is apposite: he did.....

Thankfully, Read's book is a short one. We are so overwhelmed with books on the subject (and many others) that I have several times appealed to writers and publishers to discipline themselves and give us shorter books (ideally half his length!). But because its a recent book, it's able to trawl over the writing of the past four decades on the issue and identify their shortcomings -

While discussion of the science is abundant, discussion of the social, political and economic ramifications of taking the science fully seriously is typically far more marginalized. For instance, most of ‘Political Science’ and of Sociology still simply ignore the way that the ecological crisis will entirely transform our world in the lifetime of students now studying these subjects at university. Browsing through the latest issues of top philosophy journals reveals a similar lacuna in the discipline, with some notable exceptions. This is insupportable and unethical. But it is part of a wider trend.

And why has there been so little focus on adaptation in climate activism, climate politics, and climate science? Adaptation is creeping steadily up the international agenda, but is still not being taken anywhere near as seriously as mitigation/prevention.

Most books on the subject are equivocal about future prospects but Read is emphatic that we are far beyond the tipping point - hence the emphasis on adaptation. He stresses the need to think about our children and the importance of future generations

Conventional wisdom in mainstream climate activism has until recently – until the game-changing advent of the likes of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion – said that if we direct people’s attention to the scale and severity of present and impending ecological collapse, then they will abandon all hope in the face of it and will fail to act against it. The consensus has largely been that messages of hope and progress motivate, while those of impending catastrophe and failure demotivate and alienate otherwise receptive audiences. In short, put on a happy face (p16)

Social responses we can expect to emerge as the intensity and frequency of disasters is amplified – as it will be. I draw on the work of disaster studies scholars that shows that the popular narrative of these events as a catalyst for the worst elements of our nature is (thankfully) hugely inaccurate. Instead, thoughtful and attentive empirical research suggests that disasters are often the scene of intense community building. This shatters an important cultural myth about human nature. More importantly, it is also a source of real hope for fast changes in our attitudes to climate breakdown. It may be that from the aftermath of disasters we can seize renewed vigour for creating a better and more resilient world. (p21)

An important theme which occurs in the book is that of challenging our obsession with economics growth - and leads me to the subject of degrowth which has been the subject of some challenging books eg Post-Growth – life after capitalism; by Tim Jackson

During the year 2020, the world witnessed the most extraordinary experiment in non-capitalism that we could possibly imagine. We now know that such a thing is not only possible. It’s essential under certain circumstances. The goal of this book is to articulate the opportunities that await us in this vaguely glimpsed hinterland. (p12) Post Growth is an invitation to learn from history

Beyond the ‘fairytales of economic growth’ lies a world of complexity that demands our attention. Those fairytales are coded into the guidance manual of the modern economy. They’ve been there for decades. They continue to distort our understanding of social progress and prevent us from thinking more deeply about the human condition.

The broad thesis of this book is that good lives do not have to cost the earth. Material progress has changed our lives –in many ways for the better. But the burden of having can obscure the joy of belonging. The obsession with producing can distort the fulfilment of making. The pressure of consuming can undermine the simple lightness of being. Recovering prosperity is not so much about denial as about opportunity.

Robert Kennedy's Kansas speech attacking growth

That single number ‘measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country’, concluded Kennedy. ‘It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.’.....

JS Mill was saying that a postgrowth world may be a richer, not a poorer, place for all of us. And it’s that vision of a richer, more equitable, more fulfilling world – glimpsed by Mill and demanded by Kennedy and developed by Daly – which provides the inspiration for the arguments in this book.

There's a great conversation with Jackson here and a critique of the book here

Let me end with a superb post from my favourite blogger about the chaos which seems to be descending on us all

In ‘chaotic’ economic and political systems that means oligopolies, bribes, extortion and other ‘officially illegal’ activities may prevail without limit. In some cases, organized crime actually substitutes its own laws, rules and constraints, to deal with the chaos.

What I think we are starting to see this century is gradually increasing levels of chaos in much of the world. In fact, the increasing number of the world’s economies that are dominated by oligopolies and organized crime might actually be a little less chaotic than countries that are still trying to play by the rules. In countries ruled by oligarchs and organized crime, you at least know who you have to pay off, and how much, and the consequences if you don’t. That may be despotic, but it isn’t chaos.

If the system collapses to the point that even oligopolies and organized crime cannot maintain order, then you have at least short-term chaos and possibly anarchy. Immediately, in order to get essential things done (like food and energy diThe Future is Degrowth A Vetter and J Vansint 2022stribution), ad hoc systems will emerge.

Resource

 a review of degrowth literature (2022) 

 Deep Adaptation – navigating the realities of climate chaos ed J Bendell and R Read (2021)

Rethinking Readiness – a brief guide to 21^st century megadisasters 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii128/articles/kenta-tsuda-naive-questions-0n-degrowth 2021

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii115/articles/mark-burton-peter-somerville-degrowth-a-defence.pdf 2019

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii112/articles/robert-pollin-de-growth-vs-a-green-new-deal 2018

Previous posts on the issue

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/08/climate-change.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2014/07/why-we-disagree-on-wicked-problems.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2012/08/climate-change.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-patriotism-answer.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2022/08/why-polarisation-and-what-can-be-done.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2023/07/oberheated.html

And a newsflash https://bylinetimes.com/2023/09/06/courts-to-face-wave-of-protests-as-climate-campaigners-say-right-to-jury-trial-under-attack/

AGAINST DESPAIR

The Western world has, in the new millennium, become despondent. In the 90s it was euphoric – but its world came crashing down with the Twin Towers in 2001, dealing a warning about the hubris it had shown. The falling standards of the working class then brought populism; the Global Financial Crisis austerity and rage against the indefensibly rich 1% and the governments in their pay. Global warming has been the last straw.

But what's new? My parents' generation had sleepless nights about economic depression and Fascism - my generation about the threat of nuclear war – although the 1960s brought new hope, starting with the initial issues of New Left Review (still going strong) and crystallised in the rebellious 1968

These thoughts were prompted by a post in Scottish Review which reflected on the author being accused of being too pessimistic in his writing – with links to posts in the same vein

The need for positive thinking has cropped up a couple of times in the blog – for example in a post about commanding hope and one about polarisation. And John Harris of the Guardian is one of the few journalists prepared to show examples of good community work - in his video series "Anwhere but Westminster"

But the real classics in the field (in descending order) are -

Hope in the dark Rebecca Solnit (2004) The classic contemporary statement of the need for a positive spirit – written at the time of the Iraq war. In 2016 Solnit reflected on the little book in this article

The End of Utopia – politics and culture in an age of apathy Russell Jacoby (1999) whose introduction contains this relevant injunction for our days - “At the dawn of another new century, Samuel Coleridge wrote to his friend William Wordsworth. Two hundred years ago, in 1799, he suggested that Wordsworth contest the widespread malaise and resignation. "I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes."' I have not written a poem,but I would like to think that in its defence of visionary impulse this book partially fulfills Coleridge's bidding”.

Living in Truth – 22 essays Vaclev Havel 1989 As Havel made clear in earlier works, such as 1992’s Summer Meditations, he saw his new political role as fully consistent with his dissident opposition to totalitarianism. In his post-1989 books and speeches, Havel continued to defend a moral vision of politics that he called “nonpolitical politics” or “politics as morality in practice.” He identified this vision with the demanding but liberating task of “living in truth.” Havel refused to identify politics with a dehumanizing “technology of power,” the notion that power was an end in itself. Instead he defended a moral order that stands above law, politics, and economics—a moral order that “has a metaphysical anchoring in the infinite and eternal.” His speeches as president, many collected in English in The Art of the Impossible (1998), were artful exercises in moral and political philosophizing, enthralling Western audiences.

The Power of the powerless Havel (1978) His classic statement

The Principle of Hope; Ernst Bloch 1923 One of the earliest invitations to get off our butts!  

Our Desperate Need for Humility

This blog may strike many readers as an opinionated one but let me assure you that I am more of a hesitant mugwump – with my bum on both sides of the fence. I am loathe to choose sides – not least because I can see so many. Indeed it’s why the blog carries the name it does. It’s a celebration of the benefits from looking at the world from different angles. An article by Agnes Callard n the current issue of the Boston Review impressed me both for the clarity of the language and the message it contained about the importance of questioning loose thinking.

This blog may strike many readers as an opinionated one but let me assure you that I am more of a hesitant mugwump – with my bum on both sides of the fence.

I am loathe to choose sides – not least because I can see so many. Indeed it’s why the blog carries the name it does. It’s a celebration of the benefits from looking at the world from different angles. An article by Agnes Callard n the current issue of the Boston Review impressed me both for the clarity of the language and the message it contained about the importance of questioning loose thinking.

Socrates did not write philosophy; he simply went around talking to people. But these 

conversations were so transformative that Plato devoted his life to writing dialogues 

that represent Socrates in conversation. These dialogues are not transcripts of actual 

conversations, but they are nonetheless clearly intended to reflect not only Socrates’s 

ideas but his personality. Plato wanted the world to remember Socrates. Generations 

after Socrates’s death, warring philosophical schools such as the Stoics and the 

Skeptics each appropriated Socrates as figurehead. Though they disagreed on just 

about every point of doctrine, they were clear that in order to count themselves as 

philosophers they had to somehow be working in the tradition of Socrates
Over and over again, Socrates approaches people who are remarkable for their lack 

of humility—which is to say, for the fact that they feel confident in their own 

knowledge of what is just, or pious, or brave, or moderate. You might have supposed 

that Socrates, whose claim to fame is his awareness of his own ignorance, would 

treat these self-proclaimed “wise men” (Sophists) with contempt, hostility, or 

indifference. But he doesn’t. The most remarkable feature of Socrates’s 

approach is his punctilious politeness and sincere enthusiasm. 
The conversation usually begins with Socrates asking his interlocutor: Since you 

think you know, can you tell me, what is courage (or wisdom, or piety, or justice . . .)? 

Over and over again, it turns out that they think they can answer, but they can’t. 

Socrates’s hope springs eternal: even as he walks toward the courtroom to be tried

—and eventually put to death—for his philosophical activity, he is delighted to 

encounter the self-important priest Euthyphro, who will, surely, be able to say what 

piety is. (Spoiler: he’s not.) 

Her article resonates with those of us who are sceptical of the mainstream media (MSM) and the polarisation brought by the social media

Most people steer conversations into areas where they have expertise; they struggle to admit error; they have a background confidence that they have a firm grip on the basics. They are happy to think of other people – people who have different political or religious views, or got a different kind of education, or live in a different part of the world - as ignorant and clueless. They are eager to claim the status of knowledge for everything they themselves think.

Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge as a collaborative project involving two 

very different roles. There’s you or I or some other representative of Most People, 

who comes forward and makes a bold claim. Then there’s Socrates, or one of his 

contemporary descendants, who questions and interrogates and distinguishes and 

calls for clarification. This is something we’re often still doing—as philosophers, 

as scientists, as interviewers, as friends, on Twitter and Facebook and in many 

casual personal conversations. We’re constantly probing one another, asking, 

“How can you say that, given X, Y, Z?” We’re still trying to understand one another 

by way of objection, clarification, and the simple fact of inability to take what 

someone has said as knowledge. It comes so naturally to us to organize ourselves 

into the knower/objector pairing that we don’t even notice we are living in the 

world that Socrates made. The scope of his influence is remarkable. But equally 

remarkable is the means by which it was achieved: he did so much by knowing, 

writing, and accomplishing—nothing at all. 
And yet for all this influence, many of our ways are becoming far from Socratic. 

More and more our politics are marked by unilateral persuasion instead of 

collaborative inquiry. If, like Socrates, you view knowledge as an essentially 

collaborative project, you don’t go into a conversation expecting to persuade any 

more than you expect to be persuaded. 
By contrast, if you do assume you know, you embrace the role of persuader in advance, 

and stand ready to argue people into agreement. If argument fails, you might tolerate 

a state of disagreement—but if the matter is serious enough, you’ll resort to enforcing 

your view through incentives or punishments. Socrates’s method eschewed the pressure 

to persuade. At the same time, he did not tolerate tolerance. His politics of humility 

involved genuinely opening up the question under dispute, in such a way that neither party 

would be permitted to close it, to settle on an answer, unless the other answered the same. 

By contrast, our politics—of persuasion, tolerance, incentives, and punishment—is deeply 

uninquisitive. 

But the additional message it contains is the value of geniune exchanges – of real conversations and here we enter the realm made famous by Theodor Zeldin (who will be 90 in a few weeks and is perhaps best known for his encouragement of the art of conversation). He is also a maverick historian whose books have searched for answers to three main questions

• Where can a person find more inspiring ways of spending each day?

• What ambitions remain unexplored, beyond happiness, prosperity, faith, love, technology, or therapy?

• What role could there be for individuals with independent minds, or those who feel isolated, different, or are sometimes labeled as misfits?

His work has brought people together to engage in conversations in a variety

 of settings – communal and business – on the basis of some basic principles
His latest book is The Hidden Pleasures of Life It's an epub so does need 

conversion

Socrates did not write philosophy; he simply went around talking to people. But these conversations

 were so transformative that Plato devoted his life to writing dialogues that represent Socrates in 

conversation. These dialogues are not transcripts of actual conversations, but they are nonetheless

 clearly intended to reflect not only Socrates’s ideas but his personality. Plato wanted the world to 

remember Socrates. Generations after Socrates’s death, warring philosophical schools such as the 

Stoics and the Skeptics each appropriated Socrates as figurehead. Though they disagreed on just 

about every point of doctrine, they were clear that in order to count themselves as philosophers they 

had to somehow be working in the tradition of Socrates.
Over and over again, Socrates approaches people who are remarkable for their lack of humility—which 

is to say, for the fact that they feel confident in their own knowledge of what is just, or pious, or 

brave, or moderate. You might have supposed that Socrates, whose claim to fame is his awareness of 

his own ignorance, would treat these self-proclaimed “wise men” (Sophists) with contempt, hostility, 

or indifference. But he doesn’t. The most remarkable feature of Socrates’s approach is his 

punctilious politeness and sincere enthusiasm. 
The conversation usually begins with Socrates asking his interlocutor: Since you think you know, can 

you tell me, what is courage (or wisdom, or piety, or justice . . .)? Over and over again, it turns out that 

they think they can answer, but they can’t. Socrates’s hope springs eternal: even as he walks toward 

the courtroom to be tried—and eventually put to death—for his philosophical activity, he is delighted 

to encounter the self-important priest Euthyphro, who will, surely, be able to say what piety is. 

(Spoiler: he’s not.) 

Her article resonates with those of us who are sceptical of the mainstream media (MSM) and the polarisation brought by the social media

Most people steer conversations into areas where they have expertise; they struggle to admit error; they have 

a background confidence that they have a firm grip on the basics. They are happy to think of other people - people 

who have different political or religious views, or got a different kind of education, or live in a different part of 

the world - as ignorant and clueless. They are eager to claim the status of knowledge for everything they themselves think. 

Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge as a collaborative project involving two very different roles. 

There’s you or I or some other representative of Most People, who comes forward and makes a bold claim. Then 

there’s Socrates, or one of his contemporary descendants, who questions and interrogates and distinguishes and 

calls for clarification. This is something we’re often still doing—as philosophers, as scientists, as interviewers, as 

friends, on Twitter and Facebook and in many casual personal conversations. We’re constantly probing one another,

 asking, “How can you say that, given X, Y, Z?” We’re still trying to understand one another by way of objection, 

clarification, and the simple fact of inability to take what someone has said as knowledge. It comes so naturally 

to us to organize ourselves into the knower/objector pairing that we don’t even notice we are living in the world 

that Socrates made. The scope of his influence is remarkable. But equally remarkable is the means by which it was 

achieved: he did so much by knowing, writing, and accomplishing—nothing at all. 
And yet for all this influence, many of our ways are becoming far from Socratic. More and more our politics 

are marked by unilateral persuasion instead of collaborative inquiry. If, like Socrates, you view knowledge as an 

essentially collaborative project, you don’t go into a conversation expecting to persuade any more than you expect 

to be persuaded. 

By contrast, if you do assume you know, you embrace the role of persuader in advance, and stand ready to argue 

people into agreement. If argument fails, you might tolerate a state of disagreement—but if the matter is serious 

enough, you’ll resort to enforcing your view through incentives or punishments. Socrates’s method eschewed the 

pressure to persuade. At the same time, he did not tolerate tolerance. His politics of humility involved genuinely 

opening up the question under dispute, in such a way that neither party would be permitted to close it, to settle 

on an answer, unless the other answered the same. By contrast, our politics—of persuasion, tolerance, incentives, 

and punishment—is deeply uninquisitive. 

But the additional message it contains is the value of geniune exchanges – of real conversations and here we enter the realm made famous by Theodor Zeldin (who will be 90 in a few weeks and is perhaps best known for his encouragement of the art of conversation). He is also a maverick historian whose books have searched for answers to three main questions

• Where can a person find more inspiring ways of spending each day?

• What ambitions remain unexplored, beyond happiness, prosperity, faith, love, technology, or therapy?

• What role could there be for individuals with independent minds, or those who feel 

• isolated, different, or are sometimes labeled as misfits?

His work has brought people together to engage in conversations in a variety of settings 

– communal and business – on the basis of some basic principles
His latest book is The Hidden Pleasures of Life It's an epub so does need conversion

A Zeldin Resource

http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/book-conversation

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263330798_Zeldin_Theodore_1998_Conversation

http://www.oxfordmuse.com/media/muse-brochure[final].pdf

hidden pleasures of life http://www.anilgomes.com/uploads/2/3/9/7/23976281/gomes_tls.pdf

http://delarue.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/OLC-April-2011_DeLaRue_Art-of-Conversation.pdf