The Doubter's Companion Read online

  CNN A privately owned reincarnation of the Voice of America, except that government funding and an official foreign policy commitment have been replaced by a brilliantly simple financing system.

  The CNN formula is to report on public affairs in the manner of a local American commercial television station and to broadcast it around the world. This means choosing a few high-profile international events, which are then reduced to a visual form resembling that of tabloid headliners, all reported from the U.S. point of view. These suggestions of internationalism are then interspersed with soft documentaries on minor topics, such as the closure of a naval base in South Dakota or the spread of a new venereal disease among blind drivers in California.

  The secret to CNN’s success is the marriage of satellite technology with the power of the American myth—in other words, modern PROPAGANDA. And propaganda can be profitable as well as useful.

  The Voice of America was not entirely without merit and neither is CNN. In a single moment of journalistic glory during the Iraq War, CNN surprised the international news-gathering community when it left a journalist in Baghdad, thus providing the only counterpoint of information in the most controlled war story of modern times.

  By 1993 it had sunk back down to its natural level. This meant covering the parliamentary revolt in Moscow with portentous declarations of its own importance, but mainly without leaving their studio. Their message to the world was a faithful reflection of the American president’s.

  COLLECTORS In 1983 a junior Paris bank employee failed to turn up at his office. The police forced the door of his apartment only to find it blocked by what turned out to be a solid mass of garbage, which filled the entire apartment to within less than a metre of the ceiling. They found the bank employee lying under a blanket in a little dip on top. He had died in his sleep.

  What they publicly categorized as garbage was actually old shoes, old clothes, abandoned suitcases, rags, empty bottles and scrap-paper. The apartment was so full that the collector was obliged to eat, bathe and change elsewhere. To get out the door he had to shift a whole section.

  Each item had been cleaned, washed and brushed before being added to the collection. He was forty-nine and died of undetermined natural causes. It may have been gasses emanating from his clothes and newspapers.

  To collect objects is an obsession which can either be positive or negative. The positive collector believes that he or she is doing it for pleasure—his own or that of others. The negative personality mistakes his collection for immortality and thus for power.

  There is an infectious joy in positive collectors. In an almost childish way they often give their lives over to the pursuit of beauty, like Nabokov with his butterflies. In this obsession they are not creators but detectives, and they know that yet more wonderful objects are to be found hiding somewhere ahead; hiding because everyday life can be cruel to beauty and so it is often lost or forgotten. These collectors are the agents of our collective memory. Their weapon is not money (although they often need it). They work with intuition and a good eye. They are the true creators of our public collections.

  Museum curators are sometimes collectors. But more often they are the technocrats and accountants of creativity. Not obsessed by beauty, but by identifying precise styles. One of their principal jobs is to seduce aging negative collectors and then convince them to will their objects in the right direction. This is a macabre profession which involves soliciting old men incontinent in bed with their best objects hidden underneath as if they can be carried with them through death, and old women in apartments they rarely leave, surrounded by their debris of historic beauty.

  These collectors and curators clarify the past. By exposing the sense and pleasure of creations they can make history useful. But their museums play an increasingly confused role—larger and larger, basements and warehouses stacked high with objects never put on show, curators battling for ever more pieces. André Malraux pointed out that the very idea of the museum is only two centuries old; that they have served to separate art from its function and so to free beauty.

  But is it free without function? Can beauty even exist without function?

  The practical effect of our emphasis on treating objects as something to be appreciated is that our society spends far more on collecting, cleaning, restoring and identifying than it does on creating. Those fascinated by new technology are more likely to be interested in the archaeology of beauty than in the creation of it. To hand so much of our aesthetic sense over to collectors and curators—scavengers and pathologists—seems to indicate that we are confused about what beauty can mean if it doesn’t have a purpose.

  COMEDY The least controllable use of language and therefore the most threatening to people in power.

  In class-based societies a great deal is made of accents and linguistic formulae. Civilization is then defined as the verbal elegance needed to avoid engaging with other people. Language in such cases is designed to glance off the edges of all important subjects. Comedy is reduced to the harmless elegance of deft and amusing wit.

  In contemporary society, respectability is tied to expertise. Subjects are controlled by those who know how to talk about them properly. These DIALECTS of expertise are both obscure and SERIOUS. They require the gravity of the insider. The effect on public debate is to transform any levity into irresponsibility. Almost everyone then feels they must use responsible language when they talk about public questions. Individuals far from power and from specialized language try to mouth the formulae of the economists when they talk about debt, as if they were all Cabinet advisers.

  In this atmosphere comedy is excluded and reduced to base entertainment intended to distract the non-expert. Television situation comedies are examples of this. Comedy is converted into moralizing belly laughs which reinforce the authority of the controlled, serious, specialized language.

  Real comedy doesn’t give a damn about respectability. It belongs neither to a class nor to an interest group and expects to mock power and those who hold it.

  Intelligent mediaeval kings kept court fools to remind them of the natural limits on their unlimited power, but also to prevent the swirling clouds of courtiers from binding them up with obscure servility. The novel first found its role as the most effective device for questioning established power, truths and language through satire, which was often wicked and vicious. Swift, Voltaire, Cervantes, Rabelais and Fielding refused to engage according to the rules. Instead they mocked the established order by removing its protective armour of dignity.

  Salman Rushdie has said that the worst thing about the conundrum in which he finds himself is that everyone has forgotten The Satanic Verses is a comic novel. Being taken seriously is the kiss of death. He also points out that when Mohammed captured Mecca in 630 after fleeing eight years before, he was remarkably forgiving. Few people were punished and only two writers were executed. However, both of them were satirists.6

  In classical thought people imagined confrontations between the wise man and the tyrant. Often the wise man used satire and wit to keep his life while speaking out.

  But how could contemporary philosophers play that role, locked as they are in obscure SCHOLASTIC studies? The profession has never recovered from the heavy hand of Immanuel Kant.

  Part of their role has been picked up by burlesque comics. Some of them carry sharp social knives, but most seem isolated from the mechanisms of power. And the men of power have themselves discovered comedy. Stalin and Mussolini were great practical jokers of a deadly sort. The false Heroes of modern politics have discovered their jokester privileges. The president of the United States is always presenting funny hats to senators or having himself tackled on football fields by entire teams of courtiers. This is comic PR—a return to the humour of royal noblesse oblige. It stands comedy on its head by making it serve the interests of power.

  But how can comedy have any power in a technocratic society? The drabness of modern intellectual discourse and the insistenc
e on specialist knowledge are the barriers which writers must penetrate in order to liberate language and with it our ability to communicate. Comedy remains one of the last weapons we have. Above all, the writer has to resist the seductive call of respectability which dresses itself in myriad forms from professorships to prizes, honorific titles, medals and the siren call of art for its own sake, which leads us to take ourselves so seriously.

  If writers and readers feel they must act in a respectable manner, then comedy is dead. And what is true for the writer is true for the citizenry. There is no reason why all of us—except perhaps the head of government and those in charge of financial policies—should worry about sounding responsible every time we open our mouths. Gravity is a lot less useful than irresponsible inquiry. See: EXISTENTIALISM and SERIOUS.

  COMPETITION An event in which there are more losers than winners. Otherwise it’s not a competition. A society based on competition is therefore primarily a society of losers.

  Competition is, of course, a very good thing. We cannot live in a complex society without it. On the other hand, if the principal relationship between citizens is based on competition, what has society and, for that matter, civilization been reduced to? The purpose of competition is to establish which is the best. The best may be defined as any number of things: the fastest, the cheapest, the largest quantity. It may even be the highest quality. Unfortunately the more competition is unleashed, the more it tends to eliminate quality as something too complex to be competitive.

  The point of competition, if it is left to set its own standards, is that only the winners benefit. This is as true in economics as it is in sport. And a society which treats competition as a religious value will gradually reduce most of the population to the role of spectators. Democracy is impossible in such a situation; so is middle-class stability. That is why the return to increasingly unregulated competition over the last two decades has led to growing instability and an increasing gap between an ever-richer élite and an ever-larger poorer population.

  We appear unable to decide what sort of competition we are referring to when we treat it as a religious truth (see: HOLY TRINITY—LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY). After all, competition must be a relative term. Everyone means something different when they talk of it.

  Competition in a middle-class society must include the costs of a middle-class infrastructure. In a Third World society these secondary costs are almost non-existent. Thus if a middle-class people compete without the benefit of a formal handicap against slaves (to take the most extreme example), the slaves will be more competitive.

  Hundreds of other factors create hundreds of other levels of competition. That’s why in serious competition, such as hockey or football, there are strict regulations controlling time, movement, numbers, dress, language. Unregulated competition is a naïve metaphor for anarchy. See: LEVEL PLAYING FIELD.

  COMTE, AUGUSTE Having invented sociology, he bears some responsibility for society’s return to a persistent belief that human behaviour can be quantified—as it was in the Middle Ages with the statistical weighing of sins. Behaviour can then be altered in a manner satisfactory to the value system established by the quantifiers—rather in the way sins could be wiped out through the calculation and sale of indulgences. See: AUTOBIOGRAPHY and FREUD.

  CONFESSIONALS Business schools, law schools, medical schools and schools of public administration have recently taken to teaching ethics with some enthusiasm. This has come in response to the widespread public perception of unethical behaviour by the élites—in particular by the corporate leadership—during the 1980s. The public’s scepticism and the eagerness of the élite schools to appear to be doing better are signs of a general crisis of confidence in the rational élites.

  However, the general thrust of what is taught in these schools remains unethical or is simply detached from ethics. The market-place, for example, is presented as a form of pure competition enshrining rational and necessary values such as efficiency, productivity and profit. Ethics taught in this context is reduced to a non-competitive sacrifice or something which may have to be dealt with in order to facilitate management.

  What does it mean to throw in an hour of ethics on Friday afternoon, except a return to the weekly confessional visit in a society organized to encourage sin? We teach ethics to make people feel better by making them feel guilty. Perhaps that’s why the chapel at the Harvard Business School was financed by the graduates of Michael Milken’s year. See: ETHICS.

  CONRAD, JOSEPH The essential modern writer. He demonstrated that the novel could have a third century of relevance if the story was transformed into metaphysics disguised as reality.

  Many of those who have continued to believe that the novel is central to public communication have gone out of their way to acknowledge Conrad as a spiritual godfather. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, André Malraux, J.M.G. Le Clézio, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez among others.

  Their conviction can be opposed to the prolongation of the art for art’s sake movement, which has paralleled the West’s obsession with specialization. Rather like doctors who devote their lives to a single organ, this school of writing has tried to divide fiction into a multitude of water-tight compartments. Their use of language is divisive and given to what might be called literary dialects which resemble the rigid SCHOLASTIC dialectics of the Middle Ages.

  Conrad’s most obvious strength was that of a Pole coming to English as an adult. While other writers were struggling with the baggage of their respective literatures, Conrad enjoyed virginal freedom. Just as his life at sea forced a certain practicality upon him, no matter how dramatic the circumstances, so the uncharted waters of English turned him into a practical explorer of the language. And his emotional freedom from any particular nation, with their interests and prejudices, made him a natural Universalist. When he wrote about power or ambition or hypocrisy or courage, he wrote about the things themselves in a way which has rarely been accomplished.

  CONSULTANTS In an attempt to discredit SOCRATES, the SOPHIST Antiphon attacked him as follows:

  Socrates, you decline to take money for your society. Yet, if you believed your cloak or house or anything you possess to be worth money, you would not part with it for nothing…. Clearly, then, if you set any value on your society, you would insist on getting the proper price for that too.… Wise you cannot be, since your knowledge is not worth anything.

  Socrates replied:

  Antiphon, it is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution.… So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutes of wisdom.7

  See: ACADEMIC CONSULTANTS.

  CONSUMPTION

  “You can never get enough of what you don’t really want."

  ” Eric Hoffer8

  The problem with markets dependent on consumption is that the consumer cannot be relied upon to know what he or she wants.

  Consumers are unreliable. The producer must constantly try to outguess them. This is risky and tiring. Above all, in a stable middle-class society, people don’t need or want enough goods to support an economy built upon their desire to consume. They already have a great deal. There is only so much room in their houses. Their family size shrinks as their class level rises. The middle-class mentality inevitably admires restraint and care and seeks quality goods which last and can be repaired.

  It is therefore more rational to simply decide what people should want, then tell them they need it, then sell it to them. This three-step process is called consumption. See: PROPAGANDA.

  CONTROL, BEING IN Ideal of managers and housewives. The enemy of creativity and growth, whether economic, social or individual. One of the most destructive characteristics of modern society.

  What is it exactly that they are trying to control? See: FEAR and MANAGER.

  CONVENIENC
E Thanks to flags of convenience and Third World fleets, the world of shipping—No! Don’t skip this!—has been the first sector to attain the Utopian ideal of free trade.

  Most goods that cannot be shipped by road or rail continue to move by boat. Only information can travel by the air waves and only small, light, high-cost goods by air itself. What could be more fitting? The first sector to achieve a truly open market in the new global economy is the one whose business it is to make the global market function.

  The result has been the virtual elimination of the merchant marines of developed countries. The new merchant marines belong to corporations which sail under flags of convenience or are domiciled in large Third World countries.

  Flags of convenience are truly Utopian because they permit the avoidance of all national regulations. They are issued by small countries which do not care what happens on the ships carrying their flag. Ownership is usually structured through off-shore financial mazes in order to escape completely from restrictive regulations.

  The now enormous Third World merchant marines have simpler structures. A Filipino ship will probably have a Filipino captain and crew. They are able to compete against the flags of convenience because the Filipino government either encourages them to operate in a competitive manner or turns a blind eye to the way they function.

  How are competitive shipping rates achieved by either system? Lower maintenance and safety standards keep expenses down. The crews are protected by no civilized regulations. At best they are treated as raw labour to be paid wages that are a mere fraction of those in developed countries. They can also be hired, fired and treated on a day-today basis exactly as the captain wishes. Since many of the crews are national units from Third World countries, the practical effect has been the creation of small floating slave gangs. Having gradually outlawed socially unacceptable standards on our own ships, we promptly sabotaged our fleets by sending and receiving our goods on those which adhere to eighteenth-century standards.