Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Left Is Not Woke" with Susan Neiman

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"Left Is Not Woke" with Susan Neiman · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  G'day humans, welcome to the space space of dangerous ideas and sometimes I speak with someone
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  for an hour and I think, how has this been an hour and how do I have I covered so little
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  of what we could potentially talk about because this person is so interesting and they
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  know so much more than I do about all of the important things that there is to know about,
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  that there is to know about, that there are to know about, it's a plural, Zeps, Susan
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  Namen is a philosopher, not just a philosopher, arguably one of the world's most influential
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  living philosophers, she's an American, she went to Harvard and she studied under John
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  Rawls who is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century and I wanted to talk
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  to her now because she's a leading expert on the Enlightenment and on Enlightenment
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  values and that may sound a little bit stuffy, but in a nutshell it's probably the thing
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  that we're at most risk of losing in the current culture wars, both Trumpy conservatives
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  who have a disregard for institutions, we hear a lot about this, like what about the
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  norms and institutions that are being subverted by, you know, alt-right parties or far-right
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  parties or by Trump trying to overturn the election, and norms and institutions feels
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  a bit stale to me, as does the word the Enlightenment, but on both right and the woke left there's
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  a current fever pitch hysteria that strikes me as un conducive to calm, thoughtful, reasoned
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  scientific analysis of the situations that we're in and therefore un conducive to finding
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  resolutions to some of the big challenges that our planet faces, be they social and political
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  ones or environmental ones like climate chaos, we're just not doing a very good job of having
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  the big conversations that we need to have in the kinds of ways that very smart people would
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  want to have them, and Susan is someone who understands why, because she understands
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  how culture shifted from being a world in which we were just tribes arguing with one another
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  to a world in which reason a belief in progress, a belief in the universalism of humankind,
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  a belief in justice as distinct from power, where these values started coming to the
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  fore, and that is what she studies, that is what the Enlightenment meant, and that is what
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  is currently being undermined by today's fads on the left.
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  It's a total coincidence that Susan's new book is called Left Is Not Woke, she is not
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  an anti-woke crusader, we arranged to speak with each other months ago before even knew
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  about the existence of this book, in fact I was most interested to speak with her because
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  even though she's an American and was educated at Harvard, she now lives in Germany, she's
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  the director of the Einstein Forum, she's a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy
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  of Sciences, these are all very illustrious things that you don't need to know about, trust
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  me they're important, and so she's done a lot of study about the German relationship to
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  its Nazi past, she has a book called Evil in Modern Thought, another book called Moral
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  Clarity, and another book called Learning from the Germans, and at a time when we're all
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  trying to wrestle with the sins of our forefathers, I thought it would be useful to go to Ground
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  Zero of National Guilt, Germany, and hear from an expert on moral clarity and the Enlightenment
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  about how that country has dealt with it.
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  This conversation ranges all over the place, I really hope you enjoy it as much as I do,
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  I just want to sit down with Susan every day and pick her brain, please enjoy it, the
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  one I know me, Susan, name it.
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  Let's talk about the general values of the Enlightenment, I mean I want to talk about
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  National Guilt because I don't know if you're aware that but this year Australia is going
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  to vote in a referendum to amend the Constitution, to recognise Indigenous and First Nations
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  people, and so there's a lot of conversation here about the recognition.
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  What do that mean recognition?
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  I know that there are things going on.
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  Yeah, so there'll be a couple of parts to it, the most important one being that it will
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  establish an assembly of First Nations representatives who will debate and then advise Parliament
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  on bills that may impact First Nations people, so that's called the voice, basically
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  aware of providing an institutional and constitutional forum through which First Nations communities
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  can advise Parliament.
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  And then it'll just remedy the fact that there is no mention in the Constitution of the
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  fact that this landmass had been inhabited for tens of thousands of years prior to the
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  1780s.
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  So those are the two things.
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  And needless to say that has sparked a conversation about some of the First Nations groups say we
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  shouldn't be given an assembly until we have a treaty and we've never seeded sovereignty
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  to this land, so the more extreme voices on the Indigenous side will say this is window
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  dressing what we actually need as a treaty and then the opponents on the other side will
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  say why are we creating what smells a lot like another chamber of Parliament essentially
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  for one particular identity when the majority of Australians have arrived since the Second
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  World War anyway and where a multi-ethnic melting pot and so this runs counter to small
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  little liberal ideals.
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  And then behind it all I feel there's a backdrop of what exactly do the descendants of people
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  who work colonizers owe to the descendants of the colonized.
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  And so I was initially intrigued, I mean I've sort of been vaguely aware of your philosophy
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  ever since I was a university but I was particularly intrigued when my friend and colleague Stan
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  Grant who works at the ABC as well mentioned you in the context of National Guilt and how
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  our country reckons with its own, reckons with its own past.
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  So I wasn't going to start there but now that you've asked me about the First Nations
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  stuff, why don't we start there, how do you think about it?
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  We can start there and what I have to say is that for the first time in my life in the
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  process of a deep rethinking of a book that I published just about three years ago and
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  the book was called Learning from the Germans and in it I argued that other countries have
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  a lot to learn about the way the Germans have reckoned with their historical crimes.
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  That is it in a nutshell but it's not a theoretical book, it's a book in which I do lots of interviews
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  with people both in Germany and in the deep south of the United States which was my main
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  focus. I mean the thesis was true for other countries but even at a time my view was very
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  much that these are not questions that you can give general algorithms for.
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  Want to deal with a historical crime, here's the steps you follow because every culture
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  is different and the nuances matter and the crimes are different.
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  So I wanted to by looking at these two cases examine in detail what might look like a
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  just and healing way of dealing with historical crimes.
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  This has never happened to me before, this is perhaps the danger philosophers get involved
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  in very timely topics but in fact as I keep quoting my late friend Tony Judd with a historian
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  who in turn attributed the quote to somebody else doesn't matter who.
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  When the facts change I change my mind, what do you do sir?
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  The facts have changed both internationally I think as well as in Germany I mean focus has
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  you know there's only a number of countries you can follow at once so I know what's the
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  change Susan. So the change is that I think certainly in Germany historical reckoning has
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  gone haywire and Germany's focus on its own crimes have been so intense that they have forgotten
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  to look at the present of two countries that are extremely important to them and important
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  politically at the moment one is Russia and the other is Israel people have been asking
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  themselves a lot there's been a lot of hand-dringing and chest beating why didn't we see what
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  Putin was doing earlier on and there's a simple explanation which I must say the media always
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  loves cynical explanations I don't which says well the Germans were lazy they were living
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  on Russian gas and some people some of them were getting rich on deals this is true of our
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  ex-chancellor get trotter it is not true of the majority of Germans who were arguing that
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  you know after the Crimea we we shouldn't exaggerate too much it's an enormous amount of
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  German guilt also towards Russia most people don't know outside Germany that first of all
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  that the Russians bore the brunt of the war both in terms of contributing to the victory
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  but of having those casualties Germans do know this it was 27 million dead members of the Soviet
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  Union about 14 million civilians and about 13 million soldiers now many of those people were
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  of course Ukrainian but at the time that wasn't a distinction that anybody was paying attention to
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  and so the feelings of good Germans I'm not talking about people who weren't you know sensitive or
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  didn't care was we we owe the Russians something we really we devastated their country I mean it wasn't
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  only the 27 million people killed it was the basically laying waste to all the territory from
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  Belarus to Moscow okay you know tremendous amount of damage and so the focus was on what the
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  Germans had done wrong 75 are now going on 80 years ago rather than what Putin was doing you know
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  since 2014 or even earlier and the same problem is even clearer with regard to Israel
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  understandably enough and this is something that I have praised and seen as mostly a unique and important
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  historical development Germany has focused on its crimes towards the Jews it didn't want to
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  initially certainly West Germany didn't want to it took about 40 years for mainstream society
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  to stop feeling as if they had been the worst victims of World War II the sounds crazy to people
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  who are outside Germany but this was really the truth and attitude and you know you can see the
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  argument especially if you've lived here for a while and listen to what people say they lost the war
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  their country was divided they lost seven million dead their cities were in ashes and on top of
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  that the allies insisting saying the the war was their fault whether war was their fault okay but
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  you know that was the attitude in West Germany for good 40 years and by most of the people
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  and to turn from that attitude towards an attitude that acknowledged no actually we committed really
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  incredible crimes against the Jewish people was a new historical moment okay no other country had
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  ever put its historical crimes in the center of its narrative and Germany did that who did that
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  how did that happen yeah it's a great question and it doesn't have a simple answer first of all
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  there were groups in civil society artists intellectuals church groups who pushed for this for quite a
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  long time there was also East Germany once again people don't know this but because we've accepted
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  the idea the completely false idea that communism and Nazism are variations of the same thing so people
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  often don't remember that East Germany was a genuinely anti-fascist country that its leaders
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  had spent the war either in exile or in concentration camps so when they came back they genuinely
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  wanted to get rid of the old Nazis in their mist I have to say there's a long chapter about this
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  in my book learning from the Germans anybody who wants to start shouting now should please look it up
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  it was the most controversial chapter of the book and I knew it was going to be so I asked three
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  historians to fact check it okay and it's you know it's just true that there were moral Nazis arrested
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  more executed more and most importantly pushed out of their jobs then happened in West Germany okay
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  and there were things taught in the schools and there were hundreds of close to a thousand
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  films made that were shown on television about the war and about the Holocaust and this just
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  didn't happen in West Germany but to be fair there may be several explanations for that one of
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  which is that these Germans were more anti-Nazi but the other of which is that they were more
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  authoritarian and therefore had the ability and willingness to execute Nazis and
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  overhaul school curricula to their liking in a way that a liberal society wouldn't
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  well you see you're right about that although I I want to emphasize the executions there weren't that
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  many of them it's just that there were almost none in in West Germany including people who were
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  mass murderers but um you know yes they were more authoritarian but what you have to ask yourself
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  is in a society which had lived for 12 years under Nazi propaganda wasn't it right that the state
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  should take over and take a very hard line let's say no no this is not what we want you to believe
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  and um I think that they should have taken a hard line in any case um to get back to your original
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  question um yes the the anti-fascist move was sometimes instrumentalized by the East Germans
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  no question about it but most governments instrumentalize their ideology and this the fact that
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  they kept saying this and it was getting out you know over the wall etc etc did have an impact on
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  West Germany even though West Germany wanted to dismiss this as propaganda so you had kind of
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  forces one from West German civil society another from uh East Germany which was holding
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  you know trials in absentia for some of the main figures in the West German government
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  whose Nazi past had been covered up you had a lot of different influences the student movement
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  of the late 60s was terribly important um and at a certain at a certain point the uh you know
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  the the weight of the accusations we have not dealt with are Nazi past
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  became much for people to bear and there is a point in German postwar history 1985 where you can say
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  that um things change because the president we have a different the president is different
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  from the chancellor doesn't have much political power but has a great deal of influence and moral
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  influence in particular gave a speech that was much heralded as a kind of watershed where
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  he sort of began by saying yes I know we all suffered during the war but other people suffered
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  more and it was our fault um again I was in Berlin at the time and I thought you know isn't
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  this just like saying water is wet this is how I often fail Susan in you know I lived in New
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  York for a dozen years for most of my adult life and the you know conversations with people I
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  I had a roommate who was from the deep south and conversations about slavery were quite eye-opening
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  like I thought you know he thought it was he thought it was a really interesting and progressive
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  thing to say that slavery was bad you know I was like yeah isn't that the first moral it's like
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  that most obvious moral question like that's one of what I did when I was writing this book was to
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  compare what Germany had done and what was still the case in the United States focusing on the deep
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  south and you'd be amazed I was doing this research in 2016 2017 spent about half a year there
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  you'd be amazed at how how many people also still think it's progressive to to acknowledge that
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  it was bad and just to Susan do you so when this was all happening in Germany and this was and the
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  center of gravity was shifting from a persecution complex to a recognition of the gravity of what
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  the nation had done the pushback to that was there an analogue between that sort of pushback
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  and I'm just thinking about the fact that at some point we will talk about wokeness and I'm trying
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  to get in my head the the pushback that one here's now against wokeness or black lives matter or
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  first nations issues in Australia I mean I'm talking about black lives matter in America
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  is we don't want to have a sort of black arm band view of our own history you know we are not
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  an iridimably white supremacist society there are good things about our past as well so
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  like what form did that instinct take in in Germany?
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  so that's a great question because people who were insisting on looking at the Nazi
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  crimes and I was there towards the end of that period so I you know saw this in real time
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  we're saying um you know these are people who want to dirty their own nest
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  as a German word for that and you know we the very very parallel
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  um you know we we cannot we cannot bring these things up it's it's an insult to our parents who
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  were after all only defending their homeland I mean you got people arguing that and to you know
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  up into about 2000 it's quite it's ordinary so yes there was a lot of pushback and a lot of hostility
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  um and at a certain point there did come to be a consensus that was also there's something famous
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  called the historians stride where you had serious historians saying well Stalin did it first
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  and actually you know worse things you know bad things always happen in war we won't
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  worst than anybody else so you didn't have a lot of pushback and that's important I think to
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  realize for our contemporary debates where the Germans are always or the Nazis are always depicted as
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  the absolute epitome of you know evil and horror and one in which there's some kind of absolute
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  consensus that consensus didn't exist 25 years ago right right and it's important to know that
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  on the other hand and this is I suppose where where some of my own views have been changing
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  um they're I do think that nations just like people need not only stories about perpetrators
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  and victims they also need stories about heroes it's my actually my next book is going to be out of
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  heroism um and I think of this a bit in the way that I think of of people coming to turn with
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  turns with their personal history unless you're really unlucky and you came from a deeply abusive
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  family part of what it means to grow up is to sift through your own childhood memories and your
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  understanding of what your parents did and what they gave to you because we're all helpless you
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  know basically helpless the first 18 or 20 years of our lives we have to take whatever frameworks
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  our parents give them and growing up is about looking at those and thinking you know what um that I
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  wouldn't have done and don't want to pass on to my children if I have some but um there are other
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  things that I'm proud of and I'm glad my parents gave me and I really look at national reckoning as
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  very very similar I think that if you can't do some of that if you can't find something in your
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  national history that you want to take as your own you're going to be in a lot of trouble and I
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  think most nations however much violence and injustice they have they usually have a fight against
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  injustice and those are the kinds of examples that we can look for so I mean I'm not I certainly
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  wouldn't go all and all all the way back to saying you know run to Santa's in America say um shut the
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  doors no black history no um you know whatever um these are not subjects that we want to we want
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  children to learn they're not things in our national history that we want to emphasize uh I think
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  they need to be learned rather than swept under the carpet and acknowledge and I think that's
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  part of a process of coming of creating a healthier society but when that's all we talk about
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  when all we talk about is trauma there's a problem right I mean and at the risk of caricaturing
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  desantis and and conservatives in America I'm always cautious of us not creating a a liberal bubble
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  in which our in which we caricature the the the points of view of our enemies I mean I think that
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  the the the more reasonable there are of course racist crazies on the right in in all countries
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  including America but the the the most generous interpretation that we can give of the people
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  who would back a desantis style education overhaul would be that look we're just trying to go back
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  to the way that we understood slavery like five years ago or eight years ago like we don't want to
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  not teach it we want to teach it in the context of it being a major wrong but the you know the pushback
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  that's currently happening I think I'm in the United States as I understand it is that kids are
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  coming home from school saying oh we didn't exercise today were all of the all of the kids of color
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  and all the white kids were separated and you know then we were taught about how the white
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  kids have have to take responsibility for the fact that they live in a white supremacist nation
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  and that all disparities of of outcome in America are caused by structural institutional racism
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  and like that these are ideas that maybe aren't appropriate for five year olds I mean I think
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  that's the kind of thinking I would be really suspicious I mean I know these claims are made
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  but I'd be really suspicious if that happened with five year olds or did even 10 year olds okay
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  yeah I don't know I haven't done I haven't done investigative research into it but that's the
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  that's the rhetoric that you hear at the you know school board meetings and so on nonetheless let's
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  let's let we don't need to go down that rabbit hole so the question becomes yeah at what point
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  I do I have a sense and I think a lot of centrists have a sense
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  there were at some sort of a tipping point in the woke culture wars where the fixation on the
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  wrongs of the past has become counterproductive in our ability to come together and get big things
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  done but I'm not sure how to recognize that point without it sounding like I'm being one of those
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  old Germans who saying oh we shouldn't care about Nazism because we don't want to poo in our own
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  nest sure sure so that um that's one of those questions which like most interesting questions
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  you can't give a number for it you know you can so I can go up to you know 7.0 and at that point
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  I have to stop it's a question of nuance how much of you know looking at national crimes
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  and how much of trying to find national values that even if they were never perfectly realized
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  have been pushing forward okay and you know I know he's gonna be able to give you a formula for that
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  you have to have some taste and some judgment what I think that needs to do it and that's why
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  I've just written this book left is not work I think you need some basic philosophical ideas
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  to help you and so my book is not centrist at all I'm a woman of the left I always have been
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  and I really read this book because so many of my friends who had spent their lives being on the
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  left in many ways very actively working for social justice we're having conversations in which
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  they're saying I guess I'm not left anymore um because of some of the woke phenomena and I felt
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  like no I'm still left they're the ones who have changed and it's a different understanding of
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  left so what I wanted to do in this book is to set out principles that I think the woke
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  have unintentionally abandoned okay one of them is a commitment to universalism rather than
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  tribalism and that was always a left wing position it was conservatives who believed that you
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  really only have deep things in common with people of your own tribe and deep obligations only
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  towards people of your own tribe whereas it was people on the left who said no no the tribes you
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  could embrace the whole world okay and this is why you care about and want to learn about freedom
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  fighters in South Africa or strike minors um you know somewhere else or whatever the you know
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  indigenous people in the Amazon who's you know homes and lives are being destroyed okay and um
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  strangely enough that you know the sense of universalism is a dirty word now um it's thought
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  to be something that's fake and I think that's seeding something very important to the conservatives
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  the second principle that I would identify as left is a commitment to a hard distinction between
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  justice and power and you know that's a distinction that is that we can get quite cynical about
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  because so many claims that are dressed up as claims to justice turn out really only to be a
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  power grab we all we you know we all know this we all have examples of this from uh you know sort
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  of ordinary politicians but you can also see historical examples and of course once again it's
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  often true that people make claims you know about justice that turn out to be hypocrite hypocritical
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  and um you know not uh not genuine but Susan where do you see this in in wokeness because I
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  I hear wokeness as saying that there are institutional power structures that are unjust and that we
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  have to smash and reform so there is that to me strategy as an argument that there is something
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  different between justice and power we absolutely do hear that but at the same time you often hear
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  you know claims that what justice would be would be getting more people of a certain category
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  in power okay rather than uh justice and once again this very tricky thing um people of color
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  and women up until very recently were in fact often left out of responsible positions and that
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  in itself as an injustice but simply rectifying um that injustice by insisting on diversity
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  isn't necessarily um a claim for justice and then the third principle that I think is crucial to
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  being left that I think the left has sometimes abandoned is the belief that progress is possible
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  it's not necessary but it's possible now you can comment me and say again wait a second I do see
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  these woke people working for progress and I see them too and some of them are friends of mine okay
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  but they don't have the theoretical resources to actually do so and if you
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  talk to them for a while they're uh to far too many of them you know basically went to school with
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  Foucault who believe that every apparent step forward to progress um is actually a more subtle
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  form of domination and that way of thinking has gone so deep into the woke left that uh you know
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  it undermines the genuine work that some activists really want to be doing towards progress now
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  all of those three principles could also apply to most liberals but there's a fourth principle
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  that I uh think is important for um being on the left and that's the idea that
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  social rights are genuine human rights they're not benefits they're not safety nets
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  but that people in addition to the right to travel or the right to vote or the right to speak
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  also have the right to a set of um you know social structures that we fortunately have in
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  Europe and I'm sorry I don't know enough about Australia but you don't have them in the United
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  States we just have we are clinging on for dear life uh yeah we do we do we would we are closer to
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  the Western European model than the American model I mean think Canada think Canada basically
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  okay I mean anybody's better than the United States it was a huge strike that the uh the
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  Amtrak or the train workers have no right to um take off when they're sick in the middle of
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  an international epidemic when I tell this to people in Europe they look at me as if I'm mad um so
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  anyway that's you know there was a universal declaration of human rights signed by most countries
• 34:16
  of the world in 1948 uh and uh no country has ever completely instantiated them but if you're
• 34:25
  on the left you believe that um you know universal human rights are a genuine aspiration
• 34:35
  another pipe dream okay right I mean and just to explain to people that universal
• 34:42
  declaration of human rights includes a set of rights that some people I mean like the right to
• 34:47
  a free university education I believe that some people would regard as being on the boundary I
• 34:52
  mean we we got rid of that in Australia actually and although that there is no longer a financial
• 34:57
  impediment and the upfront financial impediment to going to university because the government will
• 35:02
  give you an interest free loan a loan peg to inflation uh that you only pay back through your taxes
• 35:08
  once you start earning a certain amount of money so there so there is a it's much more egalitarian
• 35:12
  than in the United States where it's profit driven uh Australia would fall afoul of the of many of
• 35:18
  those universal declarations of human rights that but would still regard there as being universal
• 35:23
  human rights that are social rights like the right to not be left in the street starving or the
• 35:29
  right to free health care which we have and so on so each I suppose each developed country is
• 35:33
  going to find its its borderline somewhere amongst those Susan the the interesting thing one
• 35:39
  interesting thing that I know that I wonder if you've thought about is the commitment to universalism
• 35:45
  and the belief in the possibility of progress which are two of these three or four criteria that
• 35:50
  you're saying would put someone on the left there is the lack the the lack in among woke
• 35:59
  circles in the belief in the possibility of progress the claim that our societies for example
• 36:06
  let's take race the claim would be that it's naive that the the colour blind aspiration is naive
• 36:13
  and that to say we should all get along and ignore people's racial backgrounds and treat
• 36:18
  each other equally is just never going to happen and therefore we have to accept that we are
• 36:24
  different identity groups and the only way to get justice in the new model of sort of
• 36:29
  woke equity discourse is to proactively elevate certain historically disadvantaged groups because
• 36:37
  you're never going to you're never going to achieve the aspiration of treating all people
• 36:42
  truly equally that then feeds into I mean the commit it strikes me that the commit the lack of
• 36:49
  commitment to universalism and the disbelief in the possibility of progress are almost flip sides of
• 36:54
  the same coin aren't they they're very connected you're absolutely right look um
• 37:01
  color blindness always struck me as a very silly um aspiration I mean unless you're literally
• 37:07
  colorblind you see the difference between you know red and green or if you notice somebody
• 37:13
  short is blue rather than you know yellow I mean um so the idea of becoming colorblind and not
• 37:20
  literally noticing how someone looks is you know um I mean it's quite silly right that's not what we
• 37:29
  mean by an income and parlance right we mean that I can I know that we mean that we give it as much
• 37:35
  we give it about as much relevance as your eye color or hair color or dress color yeah but I think
• 37:40
  it's important uh often when we're thinking about these things to actually look at what they would
• 37:46
  mean we you know we're we're not careful with our words and one thing that you know philosophy
• 37:51
  teaches you how to do is be a little bit more careful um you know I am not at all suggesting
• 37:59
  that cultural differences you know don't exist or aren't important I use a metaphor that
• 38:06
  strikes me as helpful universalists can believe that uh you know we all have the same bones which we do
• 38:19
  and still understand that of course it's the flesh that comes in all colors and sizes um and
• 38:27
  that you know puts literally flesh on the abstract bones of what we have in common
• 38:34
  histories and cultures are interesting I mean there's no question about it somebody that
• 38:43
  doesn't acknowledge the interest of different cultural traditions is uh you know kind of trying
• 38:50
  to turn us all into robots frankly the question is whether we can look at those differences
• 38:59
  as a source of interest pleasure and even sometimes joy um rather than seeing them as a threat
• 39:09
  now the only way that you know there's there's literally not a way that people can do this for every
• 39:18
  person in the you know every culture in the world okay um what you can do however
• 39:26
  is to commit yourself to working your way into one or two cultures other than the one you were born
• 39:34
  into all right but that really means engaging with the literature with the music with the language
• 39:41
  hopefully learning another language and doing so of course teaches you things about your own culture
• 39:47
  not just about the other one and then you realize both you know differences can be something
• 39:55
  that's quite beautiful and at the same time you see what we have in common and you know that's my
• 40:02
  ideal of a universalist practice it's not to erase the differences it's not to be colorblind it can
• 40:12
  be to celebrate them not to see them as threats but as things that enrich our own lives and teach
• 40:19
  us a lot about uh where we ourselves come from because you know if you've never really engaged with
• 40:25
  another culture you tend to think that your own is the default position of the world we all do
• 40:31
  yeah Americans to have an American there many things I love about America and Americans but
• 40:41
  that Americans really do I mean I think we all we all think that we're the default to some extent
• 40:45
  but Americans actually believe it uh this reminds me a little bit of the controversies that flare
• 40:50
  up over asking people where they're from you know I don't know if you saw the the controversy at
• 40:56
  Buckingham Palace where one of the queens was fired because she asked a woman of color where she's
• 41:01
  from and you know yeah I understand what you're saying about colorblindness when you put it that way
• 41:07
  I get that of course we should have a natural curiosity and affinity towards diversity I mean
• 41:13
  when I was raised in the school system in Australia which is such a multicultural and such a new
• 41:17
  and young country such a migrant country I mean my my dad came on a boat as a refugee from the
• 41:23
  second world war so that's the tale of so many Australians and so many people who fled Vietnam
• 41:28
  or Cambodia or wherever the the the the the idea of bumping into each other and being curious about
• 41:34
  one's background is fundamental to the kind of national psyche and the the the notion that you
• 41:39
  would have to detail that or like just quarterize that that kind of sphere of interest in your life
• 41:47
  and and tread on egg shells and not want to trip trigger the trip-wise of polite conversation by
• 41:53
  pretending that everybody is the same or is so delicate that they're going to be offended if you're
• 41:58
  at your curiosity seems really anathema and I don't quite know what to make again you need
• 42:05
  tacked nuance and judgment here okay the lady in waiting who asked the Afro-British woman
• 42:16
  where she was from should have left it if the woman said she was from I don't know Chelsea
• 42:23
  whatever she should have left it there she should have been sympathetic to the idea that this woman
• 42:30
  you know in the first instance wanted to be recognized as British and it's a very specific
• 42:36
  situation because gosh I can still remember some 30 well maybe 40 years ago now tell me
• 42:44
  someone who was you know really quite a liberal lamenting that England was becoming so multicultural
• 42:51
  okay right and it's a decent human being but he just felt that what was being lost was this shared
• 42:59
  sense of history and culture and of course you know that attitude dies out slowly
• 43:08
  hmm if it's a person in power and aristocrat at Buckingham Palace saying no where are you really
• 43:17
  well we don't know I mean we weren't there I had that was my initial instinct and then I saw
• 43:22
  what she was wearing and she was wearing Africa-shaped earrings and an African headdress and African
• 43:28
  bead necklace and the African colors in a shawl so it would be fair if you're an 80-something
• 43:34
  woman whose job it is to find out why people are at the palace that you would want context around
• 43:39
  what that's all about so then the question becomes I mean I don't want to tell anybody but of course
• 43:45
  I have a problem with cultural the whole cultural appropriation argument too if I want to wear
• 43:52
  something in African colors to Buckingham Palace not that I've ever been invited I think I should
• 43:56
  be able to do so too well then you would be fired from Buckingham Palace yeah well no it's
• 44:04
  funny I a friend of mine from Senegal came for a visit I had invited him to conference
• 44:11
  and he brought me a very lovely what would I say Kaftan okay from Senegal now I happened to love I
• 44:22
  was in Senegal once and I love the craft work there and you know I thought about he didn't need to
• 44:31
  bring me anything of course I was slightly embarrassed but I thought about the whole cultural
• 44:34
  appropriation you know should I tell Libert Hima that no I'm not going to wear it because it
• 44:39
  wouldn't be wrong for me to wear this was meant as a gift of something beautiful from his culture
• 44:46
  to his host okay so I have deep problems with the whole I have a friend actually an Indian friend
• 44:54
  who ran a series called culture is appropriation right right I mean that just it's just a mix well
• 45:03
  any culture worth having is appropriation I mean the cultures of the the cultures that are the least
• 45:08
  appropriative are also the most boring that's true too Anthony Appia the philosopher is written a
• 45:15
  very good book on what's called the lies that bind which I think he takes down the idea of
• 45:22
  cultural appropriation very well but the fact that you might choose to wear you know African earrings
• 45:30
  or whatever you might choose it I might choose it this woman might choose it doesn't seem to
• 45:36
  me to have to imply that well she's not really British which is what this woman was implying well
• 45:42
  is it what the woman intended to imply or is it what was taken I think it's what she was implying
• 45:49
  frankly well if that's true then that's that's not right but the the I think the reason why it became
• 45:55
  a global conversation is because if the only if the only judge of whether or not that was the
• 46:03
  intent is the self-reporting of a person who belongs to an ideology that is becoming increasingly
• 46:11
  obsessed with self-victimhood then it becomes difficult to know whether the narrator is reliable
• 46:18
  I'm not saying this woman's experience wasn't true but I'm saying do we hand over the authority
• 46:25
  to judge our conversations and to determine the contours and the boundaries of our acceptable
• 46:32
  conversations to people who openly exhibit a level of sensoriousness and disproportionate
• 46:41
  offense-taking sort of professional umbrage takers sometimes take them and like outrage archaeologists
• 46:48
  who will go back through things that people have said 15 years ago and no town favorably that
• 46:53
  those things don't no longer comport with what the current band out of fashion is that's yeah that's
• 47:00
  among other reasons a problem because you know it undermines the idea ideas of progress
• 47:08
  and which are not only you know seen in terms of nation but in terms of people people get better
• 47:13
  I mean things that were acceptable to do um sexist jokes um 15 or 20 years ago we've learned
• 47:21
  actually um you know that they reverberate uh in in ways that are uh it's not just that they hurt
• 47:30
  people they have assumptions about women and our role in the world that we weren't aware of before
• 47:37
  and you know the same thing goes about certain kinds of ethnic jokes or ethnic assumptions so
• 47:42
  I think we've actually learned things you say well should an 80 year old woman be expected to learn
• 47:47
  maybe if she's in a social function at Buckingham Palace she should be able to know that the
• 47:55
  repeated question as we were told it wasn't just where you from I'm from Brixton or I'm from you
• 48:02
  know wherever um but where are you really from in a in a way that very much suggested um you know
• 48:15
  she wasn't uh she wasn't entirely legitimate you know I've had that in a little a little bit
• 48:23
  sometimes in Berlin um on a good day I speak German without an accent on a bad day you can
• 48:32
  hear that I'm not a native speaker and you know because people don't think very much of Americans
• 48:41
  in any places in the world um sometimes people will then respond to me in bad English
• 48:52
  right yeah um you know would you just think I mean when this happens it's quite a bit worse than
• 48:59
  my German but then they will also you know the the where do you come from is not meant
• 49:08
  as a as an expression of genuine interest is that is a you really belong here do you let me assert
• 49:17
  my authority here so do we do we just have to trust the reporting of the person who's detecting
• 49:23
  that in the question of course not people may you know people make mistakes and they do it you're
• 49:30
  you're right um there's a certain status uh I mean you say of course not Susan but I think the
• 49:37
  consensus now and what wider society would be that yes you do that if I mean most of my friends on
• 49:43
  the left would say that if a person of color interprets something that is said as being racist
• 49:49
  then it is by definition racist that is what the definition of racism is if a woman you know
• 49:54
  perceives something as being sexist you don't get to say oh I didn't mean that as being sexist
• 49:59
  like that it is sexist by virtue of the fact that a female found it to be sexist and you can go
• 50:03
  but if a if a gay person finds something to be homophobic you have done the wrong thing you don't
• 50:08
  get to push back and be like oh I didn't mean it like that like wherever that whole conversation
• 50:12
  that would be the consensus attitude I know and I actually don't think any of us is infallible
• 50:19
  I think we're all you know able to you know we make mistakes we misinterpret things all right um
• 50:27
  and you know the as people pointed out in the me two debates believe women well there are women
• 50:36
  who get it wrong I think they're ought to be just because historically it has been so much in the
• 50:45
  other direction I think there ought to be the first assumption that if a woman says a remark is
• 50:51
  sexist or a person of color says it's racist I think it should be incumbent on us to consider
• 51:01
  whether it is all right um and you know not to immediately say um well that wasn't what I meant
• 51:10
  there's a nice German saying the opposite of good is good intentions
• 51:16
  intentions really don't count for everything okay so no but they count for something and they don't
• 51:23
  seem to count for anything in the current work climate it's a problem I I agree with you but they
• 51:31
  don't count for everything and you know if we have learned in the last five ten years that
• 51:41
  we need to examine things other than just our intentions that's a good thing okay but I agree
• 51:47
  with you if they count for nothing whatsoever we're in trouble yeah and when you say we need to
• 51:52
  account for more than just our intentions that's a good thing I would agree up to a limit and then
• 51:57
  there comes a point at which it ceases to be a good thing when it serves only to impede honest
• 52:04
  and open and frank and rambunctious and spontaneous conversation and leads to a world a climate in
• 52:11
  which everybody is constantly terrified of accidentally saying the wrong thing I mean you know
• 52:16
  there was a lot of I can't even see you yeah I can't get a sense of I don't know what you
• 52:23
  can't is to rambunctious you know we may have different ideas of rambunctious with some
• 52:28
  people's rambunctious is in fact my idea of offensive all right um you know this is going to
• 52:36
  send I'm going to you know repeat myself again and I understand that people get frustrated because
• 52:42
  they'd like to have a recipe it's a matter of reflection self reflection and trying to have a
• 52:50
  sense of the person that you're speaking to or speaking with I mean that's that's the aspiration
• 52:58
  and yet it's difficult to retain that good faith when one feels that there is an ideological
• 53:05
  barricade that is being manned intentionally to try to catch people out this is the professional
• 53:11
  umbridge taking that I'm talking about that I think that people feel in workplaces and HR
• 53:17
  departments and in mainstream media and broadcast media and so on that there's just a there is a
• 53:24
  narrative script that if you stray from too far the wolves are there at the door waiting to take you
• 53:30
  down and they're not going to really give a shit whether or not you were trying to be a nice
• 53:35
  person and self reflective if you say the wrong word then they're going to be on you
• 53:40
  it definitely happens I'd be silly to deny it it's happened to me you know and I do think it's
• 53:51
  a problem it's not really the subject of my book but it is something that I've been thinking about
• 53:56
  that I've experienced myself and that everybody I know frankly is concerned about and I again I don't
• 54:02
  mean um you know sort of centrist people who are just like us all to get along I'm talking about
• 54:10
  people with real commitments on the left who feel those commitments are being undermined by this
• 54:16
  sort of thing so yeah yeah yeah so there's no one to ask you a final few questions just for our
• 54:22
  paid subscribers because you're an expert on the enlightenment specifically and I want to know
• 54:26
  how the enlightenment is going in the 21st century so if you are listening to the free podcast I
• 54:32
  hope you enjoyed this chat you can subscribe at the link in the show notes and if you are
• 54:36
  already a paid subscriber you are doing God's work thank you uh Susan the enlightenment you're
• 54:42
  an expert on it how's it going um great question look um what am I doing this problem