Geof, I have read what you wrote a few times, but I don’t really understand the point you’re making. Apologies, therefore, if I’ve misunderstood.
A church, or a branch of Alcoholics Anonymous, or a football club does not have, as its purpose, debate. That has nothing to do with power or privilege, but purpose.
A debating society has, as its purpose, debate. A university debating society’s purpose should be to expand the minds of its students, and to equip them to engage in debate with people with whom they whole-heartedly disagree. If you can’t engage with people you disagree with, with the intention of persuading them, then you end up with two sides shouting slogans at each other and fiascos like the election of Trump or the vote for Brexit. (In fact, the Rod Liddle incident occurred when he was invited as a speaker at a formal dinner, if I remember correctly, and the students felt (not unreasonably) he had been sprung on them. The reference he made to prostitution seemed to trigger the reaction; again, I have a lot of sympathy for the students and none for the Principal.)
As for Rod Liddle, his writing (and the magazine’s position on Brexit) were the last straw and what caused me to cancel my subscription to the Spectator (we now subscribe to the New Statesman, though not to any party ideology), but he’s no more an extremist than is Jeremy Corbyn.
We’re at cross-purposes here Porridge for precisely the same reason we were in the Roe vs Wade thread - your abstract conception of the world vs. the real, historical reality.
Hence you ignore all the crucial factual points and instead retire into an abstract discussion about the ‘purpose’ of different forums. But the discussion - and the real-world social division, as expressed by walk-outs, etc - is not about the abstract ‘purpose’ of a forum, but precisely who decides the 'purpose’.
So let’s get back to the facts.
I mentioned the Durham dinner as an illustration of how ‘cancel culture’ works in right-wing mythology: when the powerful and privileged want to preach, others must sit in silence and listen; when those with no institutional platform try to make their own very different views known, this very exercise of free expression is branded as ‘censorship’ or such like by the powerful and privileged. This is what actually happened (this is what the college principal actually said), and it keeps happening. Just observe it unfiltered by your (ideological, abstract) conception of ‘purpose’.
Similarly, you mentioned the Durham sex worker training. So shocking, eh? - as the abstract statement you (and the right-wing media) made it. But the reality is that students are being forced into prostitution and other sex work because it’s the only way they can carry on living and studying, and other students who care about this, and care about them, organised training to keep them safe. But such simple caring actions - like their admirable objection to Liddle’s bigotry - get distorted into something reprehensible.
My point is that when you look - in detail, at the reality on the ground - of all these supposed ‘cancel culture’, ‘wokery’, etc, incidents ,this is what you find. Propaganda. No more, no less. I really don’t know how to explain this more clearly than I have.
Now, if you want to have the very different discussion about the liberal-capitalist-enlightenment conception of a value-and-power-free ‘public sphere’ (which is what your use of the idea of ‘purpose’ seems to imply, although I guess you imagine it to be an a-historical and culturally universal abstraction, rather than a specific ideological construct) that’s OK with me.
It has little to do with the current Tory culture wars, but I’m happy to go with your subject change. However, in that discussion I’m also going to want to talk not about abstract concepts, as if they are outside of history and culture and the real world, but about the concrete history and economic function of that ‘public sphere’ conception.
I can’t help but think there are certain restrictions on thought that operate beyond the typical ‘culture warriors’ ideas though and these have a vice like grip on British/American media.
Whether on the right or the left, there are certain orthodoxies or fashions that people follow or subscribe to and it is very hard to depart from these if you are within that group.
Look at for example the knots that people get tied up in about any criticism of Israel.
Oh I agree. This is ‘ideology’ isn’t it? (Ideology in its technical sense - ‘an imaginary relation to reality’ - rather than the popular meaning of a particular political philosophy.)
As I remarked earlier in the thread:
The really interesting thing about this whole question is people’s tendency to believe it of others, but not of themselves. People brought up in christian countries turn out to be christian; people brought up as muslims turn out to be muslims; people brought up in capitalist countries believe in capitalism - and so on. Yet they all tend to believe that their ideas are their own, and that they are the right ideas, rather than simply the ideology imposed on them by the society they were born into.
But the crucial self-awareness here, surely, is that it is generally always going to be those in the political or religious ‘centre’ of any culture - those that are generally accepting of the status quo there - that are the most ideological in this sense, rather than the consciously right or left-wing
This is slightly making my tiny brain ache, and I should probably read the whole thread again but…
Isn’t everyone’s relationship to reality imaginary really then?
And if you have chosen to espouse a particular ideology that is more outside of the mainstream then you are more enthusiastically endorsing a specific take on reality that is just as imaginary as any other?
To some extent I think it is (not answering for Geof, of course). Very few people effectively (and honestly) examine what they believe. I can’t remember who, but one of the Greek philosophers talked about « the unexamined life ». That’s why debates like this can be very helpful (when they don’t veer off into personal attacks, or making unwarranted assumptions!).
Most people just think that what they believe is, self-evidently, « the truth », and are deeply offended by any suggestion otherwise.
In general - yes I think it is. Different types of human thought and enquiry have different approaches to making our way through to truth - we call these techniques things like ‘scientific method’, historiography, poetry, enlightenment (in buddhism), ‘archeology’ (in post-modernism), etc - the point being that things like ‘traditions’, ‘opinions’, ‘common sense’, etc, are likely to be mere ideology - the uncritically accepted norms of the time and place we happen to find ourselves in - only by adopting a rigourous, tested methodology can we hope to cut through to the truth.
Isn’t the eternal problem that the truth is only a matter of perspective? Any truth or consensus that is reached will come with its own set of unique problems. A good example of this is ways of managing Covid 19.
But I agree with what (I think) you are saying. An unquestioning acceptance of the way things are is lethal in the state of environmental emergency we find ourselves in. There is no going back and we urgently need to adapt and put in place new ways of existing.
