My dear students | Notes on political engagement and research

(My dear students, a biweekly column that’s a conversation with young minds about current events, books, popular culture, pretty much anything worth talking about over a cup of coffee).

I want to talk to you about expanding your intellectual repertoire, but first let me digress a little. In my student days, I was drawn to a book called “In Defense of Anarchism” by Robert Paul Wolff. It is an attractive book for young people, because it lays the philosophical foundations for a rebellion against political authority.

Young people love to rebel but they need a cause. Wolff provides a powerful cause. Wolff argues that as people we have the right to make decisions on our own. Our autonomy in decision-making is of fundamental moral importance and cannot be subject to any expediency. A political authority by definition denies us this right. Therefore, all authorities are morally illegitimate. We may obey authorities for pragmatic reasons (we will go to jail if we don’t obey police orders), but no one has the moral authority to tell us what to do. Only we can decide that for ourselves.

In a sprawling democracy like ours, Wolff’s idea of ​​personal autonomy is difficult to achieve. How can citizens take a call on the main social and political issues of the day? Wolff’s solution is to explore direct democracy more seriously. People should not leave social and economic issues to politicians, but should collectively deliberate and decide on these issues.

Wolff was writing at a time of great angst among young people about the American involvement in the Vietnam War. He thought that a large majority of Americans entered the war because of the people’s inactive attitude toward authority.

There is a major problem with Wolff’s proposal. The intellectual culture of the country must allow his ideas on citizen participation in current affairs.

My dear students, you are about to become full citizens, and yet we have bequeathed to you a culture that simply does not allow for any meaningful discourse on a subject that reaches a certain level of complexity.

We know from a survey of social media that people are polarized on the issues. But the problem is deeper. When people are polarized, there is a tendency to make ad hominem attacks. The ensuing discussion degrades further. Also, discussions are becoming hyper-specialized. Economists argue with other economists, engineers argue with other engineers. Only lawyers argue with anyone who wants to listen. People are withdrawing from areas they are unfamiliar with.

Finally, people are not making connections between research domains. But the world is connected. Nuclear policy is related to employment; employment is connected to democracy; and democracy is connected to emotional well-being. When CLR James said ‘What do those who only know cricket know about cricket?’ he was talking about the problem of understanding a sport by focusing only on the sport. His warning, however, can be generalized to any domain.

How do we solve this problem? Fortunately, there are some resources available. I’ll give an example and I’m sure if you do a little more research you’ll find more examples. There are BBC Reith lectures (available online and without a paywall) going back to 1948 with Bertrand Russell’s first lecture and oddly enough, given what we’ve been talking about, his talk was on “Authority and the individual.” I spent many happy hours attending multiple Reith lectures.

I wanted to know more about him AI impact in the military, the economy, and in our work lives. I heard Prof. Stuart Russell from the University of California, Berkeley. The topic was complex, and yet it was presented in a way that anyone with basic familiarity with AI could understand. It was full of anecdotes and humor. The question and answer part at the end of the lecture brought out aspects of the topic that further enriched the lectures.

On the BBC Reith website, there are lectures on just about any topic of public importance you can think of. If you’re like me and prefer to read rather than listen, that’s no problem either. The BBC website has a transcript of all the
talks.

The world around us is not only complex, but it is getting complicated in complicated ways. Two aspects of our world are thrown in different directions. On one hand, all parts of our lives — education, health, governance, work — they are transforming in ways we are not yet ready for.

On the other hand, our echo chambers prevent us from accepting this change. Have
there is no choice but to deal with problems that demand technical expertise: climate change, pollution, health risks, military spending, welfare programs, immigration, to name a few. We can’t wait to read the technical papers in these areas; we are barely able to handle reading materials that we are supposed to be familiar with.

The only alternative is to explore resources that give us some thoughtful insights on these issues, that make us understand, with simple language and humor if necessary, the fundamental processes that drive activities in these areas. The alternative is that we decide to trust the experts completely. In practice, this means that we hand over our critical powers to paid lobbyists or the government.

That would be a descent into the kind of political system that drove Professor Wolff to despair. We must seek accessible knowledge instead of the consolation of philosophical anarchism.