From the idea of Europe to a Europe of ideas: A colonial reflection

Budd’s blog makes interesting reading. To those of us unliberated from the European continent yet, hopefully, able to detach ourselves form its cultural embrace, there are lessons to be learned from it.  I’m not sure about a link between neoliberalism and Nazi ideology, but this economic and political system, imported from the USA, has certainly divided the continent and provoked a questioning of the European adventure.

 European togetherness though has never been popular with the people. The few referendums held so far on European legislation have usually rejected the proposals for closer union. It’s easier to say no, especially when certain political leaders play the nationalist card, and the populist press has an eye on increased circulation. In several European countries, nationalist movements are leading a return to the days of the 1930s when nation states were nation states and not subject to interference from any supra national body. And we all know what that led to.  

 So the question is what is actually driving ithinking in Europe. For the vast majority of people it isn’t ideas, or forward thinking or working out Europe’s place in world affairs. It’s more the (alleged) scandals of the bureaucrats, the (alleged) wastage of money, the  (alleged) clogging bureaucracy and the remoteness of Brussels from their everyday lives.  Their information comes from the populist media, much of which, in Britain especially, is dominated by what Budd rightly calls the cowboy capitalists. And in this age of giving power to the people this is troubling for such outward-looking notions of a Europe of Ideas, no matter how seductive it is to intellectuals.

 So whither the Europe of ideas? It is an enticing concept given that there are so many original thinkers in academia and a burning desire to help change the global status quo.  Regrettably I believe that neo-liberal austerity orthodoxy will also constrain the influence of universities and they will continue to be under pressure to conform to political and commercial requirements for their funding.

 The upside may be that ideas are not inhibited by politics, economies or commerce. They are the result of thought processes, often but not always supported by research, and a desire to change the status quo.  Many of the world’s most original thinkers – Newton, Pascal, Descartes, Einstein, Karl Marx, Wilberforce, Freud – the list is endless, were European, just as in their own  milieu and time, were non-Europeans such as Confucius, Mandela,  Ibn Khaldun,  Said, Thoreau, Chomsky and others.  The trick is to make the ideas audible over today’s media babble and that is not what we are very good at.

 Which leads me to think, as I think that Budd does, that this may be a role for PASCAL. Unfortunately I will not be in Catania – a retiree’s pension doesn’t permit such luxuries - but this is a subject that should be debated.

Do conspiracy theories of Right and Left deepen the crisis of Western democracy? This is suggested by Natalie Nougayrede’s opinion piece in The UK Guardian (19 December 2015 p.37).  

She considers something that we are surely aware of but from an angle new to me and relevant to our concern about crisis in Western democracy. ‘Both [Left and Right] peddle a simple us-and-them narrative. The results are calamitous… what has become most striking is the degree to which conspiracy theories abound in the political arena’. Nougayrede cites examples from Marine Le Pen and Putin as well as Soviet bloc regimes, but also the Greek Syriza movement and Spain’s Podemos. The Left inclines to blame the system and external forces: ‘the traditional rules of the political game are questioned and the legitimacy of representative democracy put in doubt….. reasoned facts are sidelined by emotion’.

It is simple binary: the people versus the system, with charismatic leaders claiming to be, and appealing to, the will of the people. Referenda, online voting and other devices weaken representative democracy. Thus Le Pen’s rule by referendum would bypass ‘the occult links’ that tie us to ‘globalists who deceive’. Putin ‘rails against a US-led world order’. In Britain the ‘political class’ is a system locked against the people; more light-heatedly, Jose Mourinho identified a conspiracy against Chelsea that led to his downfall. The power of conspiracy theory is the way that it un-self-critically locks proponents into ‘enemies of infinite power’, ‘setting the stage for the erosion of democracy’.

Why is this relevant to the lifelong learning of individuals, organisations and communities?  ‘…..in a political world of conspiracy theories, there is little room for the kind of lengthy structured dialogue, deliberation and building of compromises that representative liberal democracy – at its core – is made up of’. This is a job for education.

Building a stronger civil society foundation for long-sighted and accountable governance and sustainability requires a new generation of political educators. It requires new curricula and methods for a civic and political education that dismantles conspiracy fantasies unremittingly and without fear.

We adhere to the rhetoric and narrative of lifelong learning. We seek its enactment via learning cities and communities. But between broadly humane socially informed learning by individuals supported in local communities and economic growth-oriented skill development and work readiness, hard-edged political education slips away. A new wave of local community empowerment education needs to connect with the larger political arena. It is time to reappraise how to get better governance grounded in hard data and critical analysis. To beat the ‘conspirators’, engaged citizens must read, lead and not be led by the media.  Representatives must govern in the daylight, guided and constrained by an informed citizenly holding them to daily account.