I've got my book on my lap and the cat has curled up, she's in for the long haul, and it's late in the evening. I thought I'd peruse iPlayer and see if there was something light to watch, and landed on www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/Justice_A_Citizens_Guide_to_the_21st_Century, presented by Michael J Sandel, a very unassuming man, deeply committed to Justice, in philosophical, political, practical terms. Incidentally, he's an American Jew, grew up in Los Angeles, and this in itself provides an interesting biographical framework. Not the light viewing I was looking for, but how enlightening.
The book was still in my lap. Deyan Sudjic, blogger for the Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/profile/deyansudjic and Director of the Design Museum, London : The Language of Things (Penguin, 2008) is a really entertaining writer - from his personal experience and pleasure in designed objects, to decoding the cultural, economic, social, class, and gender values of the DNA of objects, he makes for fascinating reading about the designed world around us. He opens with a comment on the redundancy and obsolescence of consumer goods, and the social values that these imbue - the Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver 'have my mates around and be a domestic goddess / blokest with the mostest'. The trendy demographic of the audience that was Delia Smith's, when we all used to cohabit.
Sudjic makes the hamster wheel point eloquently: desirable object, imbues identity of family values combines with latest in technology. My mother was considering a Thermomix, rolling in at £1100 or thereabouts, but this machine facilitates the likes of molecular gastronomy a la Heston Blumenthal (don't we love him, he's so cute) but I'm glad the innocuous-looking machine hasn't appeared in her kitchen. It would be a pain to calibrate but it does make bechamel sauce in 3 minutes. Anyway, make more money, buy more toasters (toys/idols of family values), less time at home, built in redundancy, replace, go out and get more money... but he says it with style. Why didn't I quote him? I tore that page out earlier today and gave it to a friend who will sellotape it back in when she reads the book after me.
Anyway, back to the box. Sandel is in conversation with a Greek philosopher and a Greek sociologist, and they're standing in a street - a casual conversation but also also the most democratically owned space the the world. At one point, Sandel is talking to another Greek philosopher, but they're sitting in a grove of olive trees. The ongoing debate in my head about religion vs philosophy rages, but to put that aside...
They're discussing Aristotle - his life, work, the culture that he lived in, and the concepts and ideals that Aristotle handed down - it's obvious that there is little difference between these men's understandings of Aristotle as an academic entity, and morals, beliefs and a way of living that is part of their cultural heritage and understanding that is much a part of their daily life as Tescos' is for me. Here's the point - I had already started to destroy the book in my lap by tearing out the page, the damaging of a book, an object we value, generally, but the temporal nature of television communicated a new way of articulating for me a huge bugbear: how to be an adult.
An idiot, in Athenian Democracy, is a person concerned with the private, and a citizen concerned with the public : recognising that we are all political beings; public duty; and that character and virtue come from participation in civic life, coming to maturity in guiding public opinion. Although we are shaped by a national politic, the ideas of community, personal accountability and responsibility and participation are strong in my mind - how, as an adult, citizens are made through education - and although some are well educated, they still act like idiots with a gross disregard for their community.
I'm not talking about graffiti or teenagers on street corners, but it could easily go that way. Well, they were invited...
No comments:
Post a Comment