September 1, 2024 • 70 mins
To learn more, please visit the World Culture Project and read about D. Paul Schafer's most recent book, The Great Cultural Awakening
Show Notes:
0:00 Schafer quotes Gurte: “live in the whole , the good and the beautiful”
2:15 background
7:50 Ontario Arts Council
8:15 Arts Administration and Cultural Policy graduate program at York University
8:45 freelancer-UNESCO, Canadian Dep’t of External Affairs
9:25 publications predicated on argument that it’s time to shift from Economic Age to Cultural Age
9:50 creation of the World Culture Project
16:40 Culture: Beacon of the Future (1998)
18:10 AI impact
18:45 Geoffrey Hinton’s concerns over AI
20:50 Revolution or Renaissance: Making the Transition from an Economic Age to a Cultural Age (2008)
24:25 The World as Culture: Cultivation of the Soul to the Cosmic Whole (2022)
30:05 The Great Cultural Awakening: Key to an Equitable, Sustainable and Harmonious Age (2024)
42:30 future leaders should have backgrounds in the arts and culture sector
46:50 Feedback received about The Great Cultural Awakening
48:00 excerpt from The Great Cultural Awakening’s chapter titled Tale of Two Ages that references Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities
53:00 the power of art to address social injustice
1:00:00 definition of justice
1:02:20 Cultural Historian Johan Huizinga, author of The Waning of the Middle Ages
1:04:20 legacy
1:06:40 future projects
Please share your comments and/or questions at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com
Music by Toulme.
To hear more episodes, please visit Warfare of Art and Law podcast's website.
To leave questions or comments about this or other episodes of the podcast and/or for information about joining the 2ND Saturday discussion on art, culture and justice, please message me at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com.
Thanks so much for listening!
© Stephanie Drawdy [2025]
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've told you about some of the things that I just
happened on over the course ofmy work in the cultural field.
One of the most important was aphrase I read quite
accidentally by Goethe, theGerman poet and scholar, who
said live in the whole, live inthe good, live in the whole,
(00:24):
live in the good and live in thebeautiful.
And if I could express what allmy work is all about in the
final analysis, I would go toGoethe and that very insightful
and timely comment live in thewhole, live in the good and live
in the beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Warfare of Art and Law, the podcast that
focuses on how justice does ordoesn't play out when art and
law overlap.
Hi everyone, it's Stephanie,and that was Paul Schaeffer,
founder and director of theWorld Culture Project and author
(01:07):
of many books on arts andculture, including his most
recent one entitled the GreatCultural Awakening Key to an
Equitable, sustainable andHarmonious Age.
In the following conversation,mr Schaefer shares why he
(01:27):
founded the World CultureProject and why he believes it's
pivotal for our future leadersto come from the arts and
cultural sector.
Paul Schaefer, welcome toWarfare of Art and Law.
Thank you so much for being onthe podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's my pleasure.
I really am looking forward tothis discussion with you and
admire all the work that you'vedone in this area in the past.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Oh well, I certainly admire your work, and so perhaps
we could just start with yougiving an overview.
You've written multiple booksabout culture, in addition to
the one we're going to talkabout today, and then you have
this whole other background ineconomics.
So would you kind of walk usthrough what your background is?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I'll do that and it's a real pleasure for me.
I guess it really, as I lookback on it now, it goes back to
grade six in public school whenour teacher asked us to select a
project that we could developat home in order to present to
the class at school.
(02:30):
So, with some help from mymother and some searching around
, I finally decided to do aproject on Marco Polo and the
trip he had with his family andsome close friends he had a
couple of them, as you know toChina, and then all the time he
(02:50):
spent around China going todifferent countries in Asia and
other areas as a result of theprovisions made by Kublai Khan,
the great Khan of China.
And I found this.
I mentioned this in the bookthe Great Cultural Awakening.
I found this very fascinatingbecause I thought at the time
(03:15):
and I wasn't very old if onlyeverybody could have the kind of
exposure that Marco Polo andhis family and friends had to
the various cultures and peopleand foods, cuisines,
recreational activities,languages and so on.
(03:36):
The world would be a muchbetter place as a result of that
, and I remember thinking at thetime that at some point in my
life I'd really like to try andwrite about that, and I remember
thinking at the time that atsome point in my life I'd really
like to try and write aboutthat, and I saw it as something
that was very important, thatseemed to be missing in the
world.
However, that sort of retreatedinto the background after grade
(03:57):
six in public school by the timeI got to university and had to
make a tough decision about whatmy career prospects and
aspirations would be.
I finally chose commerce andfinance, and I think I chose
that for a couple of reasons.
One was that my father was anaccountant all his life and that
(04:20):
seemed sensible.
I had a brother who was alittle older than I was and he
was pursuing a career as acomposer, and I remember by that
time thinking well, vincent VanGogh had some financial help
from his brother, theo, becausehe wasn't selling of any of his
paintings.
So maybe if I went intocommerce and finance I'd be able
(04:43):
to help my brother with hiswork as a composer.
It turned out in the end thathe accomplished things in the
arts and cultural and especiallymusical field much sooner than
me, so my help there wasn'tneeded.
But I also thought that thiswould be a good kind of base
(05:04):
from which to function goingforward into the future.
When I was studying commerce andfinance and that was at the
University of Toronto Idiscovered that many of the
professors that were teaching inthat faculty were actually
economists and not professors inaccountancy or financial
studies, money and banking andso on, and I got very interested
(05:29):
in economics.
In the last three years I wasin commerce and finance and
finally decided to go on and doan MA in economics at U of T,
specializing in internationaldevelopment and particularly the
history of economic thought.
I was very fortunate then.
(05:49):
It was a real stroke of goodluck in that Canadian
universities were looking forCanadians to teach some of these
courses, because there wasquite a large influx of
Americans coming over to teachthese courses at Canadian
universities.
So I got an opportunity to godown to the Maritimes and teach
at Dalhousie University inAcadia economics for several
(06:14):
years and it was a veryenjoyable experience doing that.
But eventually I found that Ithought I had originally decided
to pursue a lifetime career ineconomics and economies, but I
started to get more and moreworried, even back then, about
(06:34):
the fact that economists didn'tgive any consideration to the
natural environment in economicswhen it was started, as it
developed, and certainly what Iwas there teaching in the
Maritimes.
So I was confronted with a verydifficult decision.
I had to decide whether Iwanted to stay in economics and
(06:56):
try and address that problemfrom the inside out or whether I
should go into another area andtry and address that problem.
And when I gave it my seriousconsideration I thought I really
couldn't do it from the insideout because there were some
things that were reallybothering me about economics as
(07:18):
a discipline at that time, notonly the environmental problem
but the fact that it seemed tobe preoccupied with materialism
and material and monetary wealth.
So I decided to leave economicsand go out and search for a new
area where I could more or lessstart from scratch.
(07:38):
So I had a very difficult timethan trying to find the right
area to do it and the rightprofession for me.
But finally I got a job at theOntario Arts Council and so that
sort of I'd had a very artisticand cultural upbringing when I
(07:59):
was young, like my brother did,and I decided that that was
probably the right place for me.
I felt comfortable there, but itwas more like turning a
vacation into a profession bystarting to work at the Ontario
Arts Council.
I worked there for several yearsand then I got an opportunity
to start a graduate program inarts administration and cultural
(08:23):
policy at York University inToronto, which I did, and after
directing that program forseveral years I decided I wanted
to more or less double down onmy interest in arts and
humanities and culture, and so Ileft York University and became
(08:45):
a freelancer and did work fororganizations like UNESCO and
Canada's Department of ExternalAffairs, and that is really when
I started to work intensivelyin the arts and cultural field,
and I've been doing that now forthe better part of 40 years.
So that's the kind of thumbnailsketch of the overview of my
(09:08):
career, starting in economicsand ending in the cultural field
.
But it did accomplish one thingMost of my publications, in one
form or another, have beenpredicated on the argument that
it's time to move out of theeconomic age and into the
cultural age.
So that experience in economicsand economies was invaluable in
(09:34):
helping me to understand theeconomic age and make the
argument that we should now bemoving into a different kind of
age, the cultural age we shouldnow be moving into a different
kind of age, the cultural age,the impetus to create the World
Culture Project.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
can you kind of give like the building blocks of that
and how that segued with thethemes of your books over the
years?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yes, I'd be pleased to do that.
One of the things that justhappened coincidentally, but at
a very important time for me wasthat the United Nations and
UNESCO had identified back inthe 60s, a number of what they
(10:19):
called decades of development,and these decades were designed
to focus on particular globaland national and local problems
and issues, and they started, ofcourse, with economic
development, but they eventuallygot around to a world decade
for environmental development,and that decade was followed by
(10:42):
a decade on cultural development.
And it was just coming aboutthe time that decade was
followed by a decade on culturaldevelopment, and it was just
coming about the time that I wasgetting very immersed in
culture, and so I decided thatone of the things I wanted to do
to commemorate and respect thatdecade of cultural development
was to start a world cultureproject.
(11:05):
That decade of culturaldevelopment was to start a World
Culture Project and I was incontact with UNESCO about this
and its colleagues and theythought it was a very good idea
and eventually the World CultureProject became a officially
designated project of the WorldDecade for Cultural Development
(11:26):
by UNESCO.
So it was really divided intotwo components.
It was divided into aninternational component and a
Canadian component and in theinternational component I was
looking at general issues andproblems in cultural development
.
In the Canadian component I waslooking at a specific culture.
(11:49):
So I'd take those generalproblems and then I'd apply them
to Canadian culture and I wrotea number of monographs on
different aspects of Canadianculture at that time and some
monographs on the generalproblems.
So what are the great culturalissues and problems in the world
?
This is still going strong andI'm now getting I'd be
(12:15):
continuously adding.
Over the last 40 years westarted in 1988, so roughly 40
years I'd be continuously addingmore and more material to the
world culture project.
It's it's free, anybody canaccess the project.
They, they can use any of thearticles that are in that listed
(12:35):
.
The links are listed in theproject a variety of books and
articles and all that isavailable free of charge and,
just incidentally, they canaccess that on
wwwworldcultureprojectorg andI'm now getting, uh happily, uh
(12:56):
visits from uh probably 1500 uhindividuals and organizations a
month and they're coming fromall over the world.
So it really seems to beworking now and generating
interest in culture and culturesin different parts of the world
, which was really the objectiveof the whole project.
(13:19):
In that project, two things areimportant.
One is that I've taken a verylarge view of culture rather
than a narrow one, what I'lltalk about later as the holistic
view or definition of culture,and I think that is exceedingly
difficult going forward into thefuture.
(13:41):
And the other is that you know,we have to be careful about how
we're going to be developingculture and cultures in the
future.
At the time of the World Decadefor Cultural Development, a lot
of the activity that was goingon in the world was undertaken
(14:03):
by anthropologists, sociologistsand those types of people and
their tendency, because one ofthe great problems in the world
back in the 1970s and 80s wasthat a lot of cultures and
civilizations from ancient andhistorical times were vanishing
(14:24):
or disappearing or crumbling andbreaking down and fewer and
fewer of the remnants of thosewere left.
So there was a lot of interestin looking back at culture and
cultures.
My interest with the WorldCulture Project was looking
forward.
I really felt very stronglythat what we should be talking
(14:47):
about here if I can put it in ashort-term phrase is living
cultural anthropology.
It's sort of taking where we'reat now and looking forward into
the future to see where weshould be going in the future
with the development of thevarious and diverse culture and
cultures in the world.
(15:08):
So given that I was by that timewe're getting now into the late
1990s I was more or less on myown and I had saved up a lot of
money, so I decided that Ireally wanted to plunge in to
(15:28):
trying to.
I didn't have any education inculture and cultures, it was all
in economics.
So I had to educate myselfabout culture and cultures and
the only way I could do that wasto read extensively about that
subject.
And fortunately, when I wasteaching at some universities in
(15:50):
arts administration andcultural policy, they had
excellent libraries there inculture and I had a fair amount
of it on my weekends, justreading books and articles and
publications that had beenwritten by cultural scholars,
cultural historians, people inthe arts, humanities, heritage
(16:14):
and history and so on, and Islowly started to build up an
understanding of culture andcultures and broadening and
deepening that understanding andknowledge, and I felt that I
was getting ready to start towrite about that subject.
So I did write the first bookthat I wrote on this subject.
(16:39):
It's Culture Beacon of theFuture.
Culture Beacon of the Future.
And that book, which waspublished in 1998, really tried
to provide an overview of whatculture was all about.
So it went into many of thedifferent domains of culture,
from heritage to humanities, thearts, to municipalities, towns
(17:07):
and cities.
On and on it went historicaldevelopments and so on.
But I deliberately, based onthe readings that I'd done, I
called it the culture beacon tothe future because I wanted to
make the argument right at theoutset that culture and cultures
(17:31):
have their positive andnegative dimensions.
They could do a great deal ofgood or they can do a great deal
of harm, and that's what Ilearned from my reading of all
these works by culturalhistorians and scholars, and I
felt it was so important to makethat clear at the outset of
(17:53):
what I was attempting to do,which is, you know, try and
create more information in thisparticular area and make it
accessible.
We're experiencing, just as asideline, that problem today
with AI, artificial intelligence.
It's very interesting that thishas evolved so quickly that so
(18:17):
many people have jumped on thebandwagon.
Once the bandwagon got rolling,then people saw yeah, the
corporations, governments,educational institutions are all
taking this up very seriously.
They're saying this is thefuture that we got to take in
the future.
So it was easy to hop on thebandwagon and say I better get
(18:37):
in there and learn somethingabout this too, and it's a very
important area.
It's a very important areaUntil Jeffrey Hinton, one of the
pioneers in AI, about seven oreight years ago, I believe, made
a public speech in which hesaid hold it, hold it, stop.
(18:57):
There are going to be problemsin the future about AI and not
just benefits, because the roadwe're traveling now, if we're
not very careful, we could getinto a very difficult problem
where eventually, robots becamesmarter than we were and they
(19:20):
were governing us rather than usgoverning them.
So from then on, I think nowwe're seeing that when AI is
talked about, people areaddressing much more carefully
the positive and negativebenefits and effects from that
particular area concerned at thevery outset to make it clear
(19:48):
that culture.
It was a beacon in the sensethat it could shine a light on a
very viable and enticing pathto the future.
But it could also warn ofimpending danger and make sure
that we set up the safeguardsand precautions to come to grips
(20:11):
with those dangers.
And of course, that's what agood beacon is all about.
It's the two sides.
They lighten and reveal andthey tempt and indicate that we
have to look very closely atboth dimensions, not just one
dimension.
(20:32):
Having done that, about a decadelater I was ready to move into
the secondary, a second phase ofmy research and writing on the
subject of culture and culturesand a cultural age.
By this time and that book wasRevolution or Renaissance,
(20:53):
making the transition from aneconomic age to a cultural age.
And that's where I drew on myresearch and writing on both
economics and culture.
The book is divided into twoparts.
The first part is the age ofeconomics and it goes very
(21:19):
carefully.
This is a 300-page book.
This is a 300-page book.
It goes very carefully throughhow the economic age developed,
from Adam Smith's Wealth ofNations in 1776, the classical
economics, the neoclassicaleconomics, the Marxian economics
(21:40):
, all the way down to thepresent and it describes how
this age developed.
And then the final chapter ison the strengths and the
shortcomings of the economic ageand the balance sheet on the
economic age, and in the balancesheet I say that probably the
(22:01):
economic age is the greatesthuman achievement of all.
Billions of people, first inthe western part of the world,
but increasingly in other partsof the world, have benefited
from the economic age and allit's brought to us in terms of
the creation of goods andservices and material and
(22:23):
monetary wealth creation ofgoods and services, and material
and monetary wealth.
But at the same time, byneglecting to examine some of
these areas that were veryimportant in the development of
the economic age, like ignoringthe natural environment, not
(22:43):
placing the economic age in ahuman context rather than a
material context, problems likethis are now increasing, as we
know, very rapidly.
So there are shortcomings ofthe economic age and not only
strengths of the economic ageand not only strengths of the
(23:05):
economic age.
And my conclusion, takingeverything into consideration
about that, is that while theeconomic age has been a
tremendous period in history anddelivered so much, it's not
viable going into the futurebecause it's designed to create
material and monetary wealth andgoods and services.
(23:26):
It's not designed to deal withthe problems that we're
confronted with today, likeclimate change, global warming,
the environmental crisis, hugedisparities in income and wealth
, more wars and conflict in theworld over resources and land,
and things like that.
So we need to move into a newage.
(23:48):
The second part of the book,part two, is then devoted to the
age of culture, and I gothrough the same process there
that I did with the economic age, by identifying well, what are
the signs that are bringing acultural age into possible
existence, what might it be likeif cultural age was brought
(24:12):
into existence, and what wouldthe strengths and shortcomings
of that be?
So that was the next sort ofmajor book I wrote in this
process.
This brings me to the thirdbook.
I only have this one and onemore, so there were many more in
the series, but these are thefour most important books.
(24:39):
This book is the World asCulture, and the subtit with
this book is I've gone back tothe beginning of history and
I've traced the evolution,historically, of culture as an
(25:00):
idea and reality from the earlypart of history right up to the
present day, and there are awhole series of pretty definite
periods in this historicalevolution.
It started, as far as mostpeople in the cultural field
(25:21):
could determine.
It started back with Cicero inabout 80 years before the birth
of Christ, and he said cultureis the philosophy or cultivation
of the soul.
I imagine somebody having thatkind of vision or perception of
(25:44):
what culture is going back morethan 2,000 years.
So he was the one that reallystarted the discussion about it.
It derives from an Italian word, culture, so he really started
the discussion on what cultureand cultures are really all
(26:04):
about.
Then there was a period inwhich culture was concerned.
People working in the culturalfield were concerned basically
with the arts, humanities andheritage of history.
So that was another definitionof period, but that broadened
the understanding of whatculture and cultures are.
Then, following that, we had aperiod closer to the present,
(26:29):
with anthropologists,sociologists, psychologists, who
were looking at culture andcultures from their particular
academic perspective and theytended to be even much broader
again than the arts and thehumanities and heritage and
history.
So you're getting more and moreexpansive understandings of
(26:52):
culture and culture goingforward.
What we've had more recently inthe world is the next period
and the period we're in now,which has been governed more by
the work of biologists,ecologists, zoologists,
(27:12):
botanists, environmentalists,who've been looking at not only
the cultures of the humanspecies but cultures of other
species, and so that makes itpossible to say that culture now
, in the present, has somethingto do with all living species as
(27:37):
a minimum and the naturalenvironment of course, behind
that species as a minimum, andthe natural environment, of
course, behind that.
So you can talk about and thisis what I've done in the Great
Cultural Awakening you can talkabout the cultures of all
species now and people get it,and they're starting to get it
more and more.
As we look into the cultures ofplants and animals, we're
learning about how theycommunicate, how they talk to
(27:59):
each other, how they developtheir each other, how they
develop their own cultures, howtheir cultures are different
than our cultures, and on and onit goes.
And this is not only foranimals but also for plants that
are now.
People in the horticulturalarea are saying plants
communicate among themselves,they have their own means of
communication, they have theircultures, they can warn other
(28:22):
plants when they're impendingdangers, and so on.
So it's now a vast domain, andso what I have argued in this
book in the conclusion, is thatthe real foundations of human
and species existence in planetEarth and the world we're living
(28:47):
in are culture and cultures andnot economics and economies.
These are the real foundationsand the real essence of what
life in the world is all about.
And the economic argument thateconomics and economies are
(29:10):
central.
That's a kind of facade thatwe've developed during the
economic age, largely throughthe arguments of economists like
Adam Smith, david Ricardo andespecially Karl Marx, who wrote
the Economic Interpretation ofHistory, which was based largely
(29:32):
on a physical and materialinterpretation, and came to the
conclusion that the world, inthe final analysis, is all about
economics and economies.
I think what this bookdemonstrates, and in a
well-documented form, is.
That's not the case.
The root of everything isculture and cultures, and not
(29:54):
economics and economies.
So that leads me to the finalbook here, the Great Cultural
Awakening.
The subtitle is Key to anEquitable, sustainable and
Harmonious Age.
Will there be others in thisseries?
(30:20):
No, I really see this book, theGreat Cultural Awakening.
I've told you about the purposeof these other books.
This book is really about thesummation and culmination of all
my work in the cultural fieldnow over a period of some 40 or
(30:41):
50 years.
It's really designed in my workin the cultural field.
I'm not trying to come up witha separate cultural theory of
some type.
Many of the anthropologists,sociologists, cultural
historians and so on that havewritten about subjects like this
(31:03):
.
They're interested indeveloping a particular theory
of culture or cultures and therehave been many books written
that have very differenttheories about that.
What I'm trying to do in mywork in the cultural field and
it's benefiting tremendouslyfrom the experience I've had in
(31:25):
economics and the socialsciences in my work I'm trying
to pull everything together andput it in one place and try and
make it accessible in a fewbooks and the World Culture
Project website.
So people that are working inthe cultural field or interested
(31:46):
in the cultural field, they cango to those sources and
everything is pulled together.
They don't have to spend allthe time that I spend
necessarily reading the works ofindividual cultural scholars
and cultural historians.
They can have the overviews, Imean the overviews that underlie
yeah, so that's what, now, thisbook is really designed.
(32:10):
If we want to go on now and talka little bit about this book,
this book is really designed tomake the case that there is a
cultural awakening taking placein the world today.
I don't think it's certainlynot fully recognized at present.
(32:31):
It's partially recognized byparticular groups and
organizations and institutions,I believe.
But some of the biggerinstitutions, like governments
and corporations, this is not ontheir agenda now because,
obviously, one reason they'recaught up with AI and now all
(32:54):
the economic problems we'reexperiencing in the world.
So if somebody comes forwardand says, well, there's a great
cultural awakening going on inthe world, so if somebody comes
forward and says, well, there'sa great cultural awakening going
on in the world, uh, they wouldsay, well, culture, culture
it's, it's not a an importantactivity.
And I think you'll find if youlooked into, uh, what the big
players in terms of uh, wherethe world should go in the
(33:18):
future are talking about is notculture or cultures or the arts,
or the humanities, or thesocials or the heritage of
history.
For some very obvious reasons,which we'll talk about in a
moment, they're looking atconsciousness, changes in
consciousness, the wholeenvironmental situation and on
(33:42):
it goes from there.
So it's not being recognized,but I think that positive and
meaningful changes are takingplace in this area and I would
suggest, in order to justify myargument, that it is going on
and it is very important.
Black peoples, indigenouspeoples, oppressed people,
(34:08):
marginalized people, people thathave been colonized and we're
talking here about a very largenumber of people in the world
Asia, africa, north and SouthAmerica, the Caribbean.
A lot of those peoples aregoing back and connecting with
(34:30):
their original cultures becausethey were either forced out or
encouraged out, mostly forcedout of their own cultures in
order to adapt and adopt othercultures, mostly colonial
cultures.
What they're finding now isthat they're going back to their
own traditions.
(34:50):
They're going back to their owncustoms, their rituals, their
stories, especially theirlanguages A lot of them are
learning their languages now, aswe know and the roots of their
cultures.
How did they start in thebeginning.
What's their cultural heritage?
So that's one group and that'sa lot of people, but that's not
(35:16):
all.
What's happening in addition tothat is that a lot of
organizations are nowconsidering themselves to be
cultural organizations in theholistic sense.
A lot of the work for this wasprepared by a scholar at, I
think, mit and Harvard, edgarSchein, who wrote a book on
(35:41):
organizational cultures and whathe said?
That organizations in theholistic sense, rather than the
partial sense, are reallycultures.
They have values, they havetraditions, they have ways of
life, they have worldviews Onand on it goes, and so this is
(36:01):
very important, and we're nowseeing that a lot of
organizations in the world arestarting to look at themselves
as cultural organizations in theholistic sense, asking
themselves in the future, whatare our values going to be, what
are our worldviews going to be,how are we going to interact
(36:21):
with our clients, with ouremployees?
What are our new directions forthe future?
How can we play a better rolein the world?
How can we make ourselves moresuccessful in environmental and
human terms, and not just inmaterial terms?
You see this happening inpolice forces, in hospitals, in
(36:42):
corporate organizations, innon-profit organizations, and
that's a large group as well.
In addition to that, what we'realso seeing in the tourist field
which, as we know is verylucrative is the evolution and
that's been going on over sometime now of cultural tourism
(37:04):
rather than just tourism ingeneral, and the difference in
that, of course, is thatcultural tourism if you're a
cultural tourist and you decidethat you want to go to Asia, for
example, you're probably goingto do advanced reading about the
histories and the cultures ofthe Asian countries that you're
(37:25):
going to visit.
You're probably then going tosearch out a lot of things that
you read about before and youwere preparing for your trip.
You're probably going todocument your experiences, not
only by taking a few photos, butalso by taking notes, and
sometimes copious notes, andyou're also going to come back
home and you're probably goingto think about those experiences
(37:47):
and say, oh, there were somethings there that were very
helpful.
I think I could change my lifeand make some improvements in my
life from the things that Iexperienced in the Asian
cultures I was in.
So there's another area wherethe great cultural awakening is
starting to come to the fore.
It's going to take more time, Ithink, and it's not going to
(38:11):
happen overnight and it's notwithout its difficulties.
But I think it's going toevolve and evolve, and evolve
and we're going to take more andmore interest in this in the
future, which is why I believethat we're standing on the
threshold of a cultural age andif we really give the thought
and consideration to it and thelong-term development, I think
(38:36):
it's inevitable that we might goin that direction.
So this book is really designedto make the case that we should
move into a cultural age.
The first five or six chaptersare all about well.
There's a chapter initially onwhy we should enter a cultural
age, reading the signs andsignals.
(38:57):
Then there are about five or sixchapters on culture, starting
with people or cultures and thecultures of families Very
important chapter in the bookbecause you know, if children
and parents and families do noteducate themselves properly and
if the children aren't taughtproperly, then we're going to
(39:19):
have a lot of trouble in thefuture.
So how culture and cultures arehandled in families very, very
important.
How their parents provide theopportunities and resources for
them to do that.
There's city cultures,community cultures, regional
cultures, national cultures,international cultures, and then
(39:41):
finally the cultures, nationalcultures, international cultures
and then finally the culturesof other species.
So that's about five or sixchapters of the book.
Then there are about threechapters of the book on, well,
what foundations have to be putin place in order to realize a
cultural age, and here I'vementioned the importance of
creating a cultural age.
And here I've mentioned theimportance of creating a
(40:02):
cultural interpretation ofhistory rather than the economic
interpretation of historyprovided by Karl Marx, engels
and the Marxists.
The centrality of culturalpolicy and development rather
than the marginalization ofcultural policy and development,
(40:22):
which is the case today.
And what are the roles of themain stakeholders?
I've identified three in thisbook.
The first and most importantare people in the arts,
humanities, heritage of history,cultural industries and various
other aspects of culture, as wementioned in anthropology,
(40:45):
sociology and so on.
They have to provide thesymbols, signals, the metaphors,
the rituals that are necessaryto move us into understanding
what culture and cultures at anylevel geographically are all
(41:05):
about.
So I think their involvement inthe initial stage, in a
proactive way, is veryfundamental to all this.
The next stakeholders, in myview, are the governments.
The next stakeholders, in myview, are the governments.
If we don't get somerecognition from governments at
(41:28):
all levels I'm talking about, Iguess now, from municipal to
national and then internationalorganizations working in
political and governmentalfields if the governments don't
act to bring a cultural age intoexistence, that's going to, I
think, provide a very seriousblock to moving forward with the
(41:51):
entry into a cultural age andenabling a cultural age to
(42:12):
flourish.
And then, finally, I think,it's the general public.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I think it's all up to us, in the longer term of
schemes and final analysis, tounderstand why it's important a
cultural age, as best I can andprovide the documentation that's
necessary for it, and I believeI've heard maybe another
(42:37):
interview where you touched onthis is that leaders going
forward, talking about the pointyou're making about the
governments needing to beinvolved in this, that leaders
should be those that come fromthe arts and culture sector, and
(42:59):
I really I had already beenthinking about that myself, so
it really resonated with me.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, well, I'm glad to hear that, because I haven't
heard anybody discuss thatproblem and I think it's a very
critical problem now on theinternational stage.
I think if we look at whattypes of people ended up in
government or ended up inpolitics and initially, I think,
(43:26):
when laws came into existenceand for a long time thereafter,
they were mostly lawyers,because there had to be people
that understood the law and howthe law functions and works, so
they had to know very well allthe legal constraints and
problems that exist.
So there was a long line of, Iknow.
(43:47):
If I look at Canada, my owncountry, you go back, you know,
a century or so, and basicallythree-quarters of them probably
were lawyers.
Maybe some people that werepopular in communities, but a
lot of lawyers, and for goodreason.
What we've experienced morerecently is and this is
understandable, living in aneconomic age is that more and
(44:10):
more of the prime ministers andleaders in the political and
governmental realm are from thecorporate community.
And obviously they're in thecorporate community, from the
corporate community, becausethey have seen through their
work in corporations thatthere's a lot of power and
(44:31):
capabilities in governments, andif you're in government, you
might be in a better position tooffer opportunities for
economic growth and developmentthan if you stayed in a
corporation.
Now, and what I've tried to doin the book is point out that in
certain European countries,some of those presidents and
(44:53):
prime ministers have come fromartistic backgrounds, humanistic
backgrounds in Poland and inCzechoslovakia and so on and
these are people that have acultural background.
And the interesting thing aboutthose people I didn't go into a
lot of detail or research onthis, but a good interesting
(45:14):
thing about it is that they seemto govern very well and produce
very positive results.
And so I think that in thefuture because a lot of the
issues in the world now areessentially cultural issues that
have to do with interaction andintermingling of different
(45:34):
peoples, different genders,different races, different races
they're going to have to bepeople that have a background in
culture and culturaldevelopment to understand what
is needed and what I think thecultural domain and realm could
(45:56):
provide more than anything else.
Going forward into the future isa holistic view of things
rather than a partial view.
The economic view perspectiveis a partial view.
It sees things through the lensof economics.
What the argument is in myliterature and in this book is
(46:17):
we need a lens that permits usto see the big picture, and
there may be some lenses beyondour knowledge that could do this
, but as far as I know, the lensat present that provides the
biggest portrait or pictureresults from the holistic
(46:38):
definition of culture andcultures, even more than AI, and
I think eventually andhopefully we'll come to realize
that.
But this is a big perspectivethat we need now going forward.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
What is the feedback you've received thus far from
this book?
Speaker 1 (46:56):
The feedback has been very good.
There hasn't been a lot of it.
I've been working very hard tobring the book to the attention
of others and it's going to taketime, but the feedback that
I've had has been very positive.
The reviews that I have thatare on the back cover of the
book have been very positive.
(47:17):
I haven't had many reviews onAmazon, but I'm working on that
now and other reviews, but I'mvery happy with the reviews that
have been provided.
There was one thing, one of thequestions you asked, which I
thought was a very interestingquestion, and I don't know
(47:39):
whether you'd like me to proceedwith an answer to it or not,
but you asked the question justbefore what you've asked now
about can you read somethingfrom the Great Cultural
Awakening?
Speaker 2 (47:51):
yes, yes if you would .
You've already given such arich taste for the book, but if
you would want to share anexcerpt, that would be lovely
I'd love to do that and I'lltake a couple of minutes with
this just to explain what'shappened.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
When I was doing my research, one of the things that
hit me on a few occasions wasthat the, the research in
writing, what I'm doing for thisbook, you know it's consistent
in many ways with CharlesDickens and a lot of Charles
Dickens novels, because Dickens,he really was so humanly
(48:36):
concerned about the welfare andwell-being of people and country
and people and countries that alot of his books have to do
with this, whether it's the, youknow, the Christmas Carol or
any of the other books that he'swritten that deal with the
subject.
So, and I was really thinkingmore and more as I worked on
(49:01):
this book about the similaritiesbetween Dickens' Tale of Two
Cities and my tale of two ages,the economic age and the
cultural age, which is the lastchapter, chapter 14 in the book.
Chapter 14 in the book BecauseDickens' Tale of Two Cities.
(49:26):
It moves back between Englandand France, paris and London,
and in many ways Paris andFrance are indicative of the
economic age.
When we think of Paris andFrance, we think the arts, we
think cultural things.
When we think of London andEngland, we think very often of
economics.
I mean they control the worldat one time on the basis of
(49:47):
their economic ingenuity.
And so I thought you know likehe's going back and forth
between these two areas in theage of the Tale of Cities, and
I'm going back and forth in thelast chapter about the tale of
two ages.
So here's what I would like toread.
(50:08):
That chapter starts, the tale oftwo ages, from a quote.
It's the first quote in thebook by charles dickens.
It was the best of times, itwas the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom, itwas the age of foolishness, it
(50:29):
was the epoch of belief, it wasthe epoch of incredulity.
It was the season of light.
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope.
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope, itwas the winter of despair.
And I thought, boy, you know, Imean the endurance of some
literature to transcend spaceand time and be relevant for all
(50:53):
time and all spaces is quiteremarkable.
So that's how it the lastchapter starts.
Then this is how the lastchapter starts, then this is how
the last chapter ends.
Without doubt, culture andcultures possess everything that
is needed for all people andall countries to live full,
(51:15):
fulfilling and constructivelives, to produce a great deal
of more joy, happiness,well-being and equality in the
world, and to contribute tomaking the world a better, safer
and more stable place foreverybody and everything.
In the final analysis, this iswhat systemic cultural change
(51:39):
and participating in the greatcultural awakening are all about
and designed to accomplish.
The doors are opening on acultural age.
It is time we realize this,cross over the threshold to this
age and enjoy all the profuseopportunities and benefits that
(52:00):
can arise from it.
Will all come to echo the wordsthat end Dickens' novel A Tale
of Two Cities.
For in entering a cultural age,each of us might well say and
this is the last sentence inDickens' book it is a far, far
(52:26):
better thing than I do, than Ihave ever done, it is a far, far
better rest I go to than I haveever known.
I just think that says so muchabout the compassion, the
spirituality, the human goodnessthat Dickens had in all his
(52:48):
work.
And I think this is one of thedimensions of a cultural age
that maybe is more importantthan any of the others bringing
out that humanity and thatcompassion and that humility in,
in, in human and humane waysthank you, thank you for reading
that.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I agree, and it kind of highlights the link and
importance between the arts andhuman rights.
Absolutely, absolutely.
This is a thread, I think,throughout your work that we've
(53:29):
been talking about the power ofart to address issues like
social injustice.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Well, I think there are many.
As you know, I've just writtenan article on the arts.
On the arts, one of thechapters in this book is a
chapter on harmonizing crucialcultural relationships, and it
(54:00):
mentions a number of thosedifferent polarizations, if you
like the arts and the sciences,human rights and human
responsibilities, war and peace,material and non-material
development.
There are about 10 or 12 thatI've mentioned, but there are
many others, and most of thosecultural relationships get
(54:25):
polarized over time and withpolarization, as we know, you
get imbalance and disharmoniesand there's a great disharmony
at the present time between thearts and the sciences, because
the sciences are surging aheadvery rapidly because of
(54:47):
phenomenal innovations andinventions in technologies,
digital devices, industrialpractices, space exploration, ai
, on and on it goes, but thesciences in the last four or
five decades have just beensurging ahead very rapidly.
(55:10):
Five decades have just beensurging ahead very rapidly.
Unfortunately, the price that'sbeing paid for that is that in
educational institutions and ingovernmental and corporate and
foundation work, a lot of thefunding for activities has gone
to science rather than the arts,and this has put the arts in a
(55:31):
very dreadful position, theposition that they're in at the
present time, because not onlyare they considered to be
marginal activities, largelyrecreational and leisure time
activities, but I think a lot ofpeople would feel that well,
they don't have any concretesubstance or practical outputs,
(55:56):
so they're good to enjoyourselves with, but they don't
have any really importantrelevance to what's going on in
the world.
I think we're making a bigmistake here, and that article
is about how we are desperatelyneeded at the present time to
double down on the developmentof the arts and humanities and
(56:17):
heritage of history so that thatimbalance, which has always
gone on to a certain extentthroughout the world between the
arts and the sciences, it canbe more stabilized and made
harmonious.
So I'm for advocating spendingmuch more money on the arts,
(56:38):
helping artists, artsorganizations and the arts
generally going forward into thefuture, because I think those
are the organizations that,through their works, bring the
humanity, the compassion, theconcern, the feeling, the
emotions that are necessary notonly to deal with general
(57:04):
problems but also to deal withsome very difficult problems
today, particularly conflictsand wars, where it seems to be
that there is very littlehumanity now in the way wars and
conflicts are conducted.
So the role that artists couldplay in that is very powerful
(57:25):
but not being used.
And I think that you know,through the arts and their
ability to develop the signs andsymbols and metaphors and
rituals and so on we weretalking about earlier, they can
shine a lot of light on the needfor the kind of social justice
(57:49):
that we need in the future andbringing an end to social
injustices.
And the biggest injustice ofall, as you and I know, working
in the arts and cultural fieldis the way artists and arts
organizations are treated inmost societies and countries
today.
Societies and countries todayLow wages, poor working
(58:12):
conditions, very little concernfor their, their futures, where
their income is going to comefrom in the future, the present
laws that exist with respect totheir inventions and innovations
, and collective goods andservices they provide in society
(58:40):
.
The list goes on and on.
But one positive message, Ithink, in all that is we're
beginning to see that more andmore arts, icons and cultural
treasures are being restored tothe countries of origin.
So that, to me, is a verypositive sign that has to do
(59:01):
with social justice rather thaninjustice.
But definitely I think we haveto focus our attention.
If we focus more attention onthe artists and more funding, I
think some of those realinjustices that artists and arts
organizations experience willbe dealt with, and they have to
(59:22):
be dealt with by corporationsand governments and foundations.
They've done everything that Ithink they can possibly do from
within to confront thoseinjustices in their protests and
protest movement.
It's now time for governmentsand corporations, foundations,
to ante up and help them in thatfield, deal with their
(59:44):
injustices.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Has there been for you, over the course of your
career, a definition of how youview justice?
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
that it is, but I don't think that I've ever gone
into any depth in terms oflooking at what you know
different groups andorganizations in society and
particular artistic andhumanistic and heritage groups
are confronted with in terms ofjustice or injustice.
I mean, I dealt with that veryspecifically when I was teaching
arts administration andcultural policy, because those
(01:00:39):
problems were problems that wehad to deal with when we were
training arts administrators andcultural policymakers, but it's
not a subject to date that I'vereally looked at intensively.
(01:01:04):
Is there though a personal viewthat you have either how'm
concerned about is in my work.
The most important objective inmy work has been to provide
research and writing that canmake a contribution to evolving
(01:01:24):
a different path in the future,and in my case it's a path that
is based on the centrality ofculture and cultures and
entering a cultural age.
If it turns out that you knowthat's not possible, then I
guess my follow-up objectivewould be breaking the
(01:01:47):
marginalization of the arts andthe humanities and the heritage
of history in the world.
If nothing else can beaccomplished from what I've
researched and written, it wouldbe my hope that we could at
(01:02:08):
least will and the desire andthe fortitude to bring the and
this is something you askedabout different cultural
scholars and historians thathave been influenced by research
and writing.
One of the ones that's done thismost is Johann Huizinga, who
(01:02:30):
wrote the Waning of the MiddleAges, and he was a cultural
historian that was very muchconcerned about the
harmonization of economic andmaterial and corporate values on
the one hand, and artistic,aesthetic, humanistic and
(01:02:51):
philosophical activities on theother hand.
Much of his writing is concernedabout, you know, rather having
imbalances and disharmonies andpolarities and polarizations
between those two things Hisconcern was about how do we
bring them together to create avalue system, worldview and way
(01:03:16):
of life that integrates both ofthose dimensions with the same
value and the same importanceand same priority.
That to me, I guess, is what Iwould like to see in terms of
creating the justices that arenecessary for people in this
(01:03:36):
particular area the arts,humanities, heritage of history
and culture generally that havereceived second billing in most
parts of the world because ofthe prominence of other values
and worldviews.
And I think now there could beno better time in the world than
now to produce those justicesby bringing those two things
(01:04:02):
together and working outlifestyles and ways of life that
compromise and compare andcoalesce those two sets.
Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm just curious also and you seem
to have already kind of answeredthis but is there with all of
this amazing wealth of resourcesthat you've created and the
work that you're doing, thatyou've created and the work that
you're doing?
Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
is there a legacy that you are aiming to create
with your work?
No, I can't, you know.
I mean it would be nice ifthere was a legacy to the work
that I've been working on.
I mean, as I said at thebeginning, you know I had this
experience with Marco Polo andhow he interacted with so many
different cultures and thoughtthe world would be a better
(01:05:01):
place if we could do that andcreate the educational systems
and political and social andeconomic and other activities
that are necessary for that.
So I mean, if it happens thatwhat I've been working on proves
(01:05:22):
useful in the future, then Iwould be very happy about that.
But the real challenge, I think,is to get it down in the
clearest and most basic termsthat I can in trying to make
this case so that it will beavailable to President and
future generations and it wouldbe there.
(01:05:44):
And I guess that's why Iappreciate so much your
willingness to take the timegoing into depth about my
experiences throughout life thatarose from my experience and
reading about Marco Polo and howI made that my life's work and
you know what some of thevehicles are available now as a
(01:06:06):
result of that that people canaccess readily and say, well, I
take it or I leave it, butthey're there.
And that's why I say my workhas not been on creating a
particular theory, but ratherjust trying to pull everything
together that's been writtenabout a certain subject that I
(01:06:27):
feel is very important andhasn't been done up to the
present time subject that I feelis very important and hasn't
been done up to the present time, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Is there a project or are there?
Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
projects that you're currently working on that we can
look for going forward.
I think probably we're all.
I've been spending more and moreof my time as you may know from
information that I've writtenin the Great Cultural Awakening
with a variety of organizationsin the arts and cultural field
(01:07:00):
that are working on activitiesand projects that are of
interest to me, and I'm tryingto provide more of my time and
my attention to people that arenow, you know, coming to the
conclusion that they'd like towork in the arts or cultural
field and provide them with somehelp with that.
So I'm going to do a lot more ofthat in the future, but it may
(01:07:24):
be that I'll try and sort ofpull everything together in some
kind of book on the.
It's been a very fascinatingcultural journey over the course
of my life and I may well tryand sort of put it into some
kind of form where it might beuseful to other people.
But it's all about getting outof the self and getting into the
(01:07:49):
other, isn't it?
I mean, this is such animportant part of what culture
and a cultural awakening are allabout is getting out of our own
skin and providing the help andsupport that's needed by other
people, other organizations,other countries.
Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
That brings to mind for me the individual who
brought us together, ashvakishak, who focuses so much of
his work on empathy, and youtouch on that in the great
cultural awakening, so it's sucha perfect point to end on.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Well, is there anything elsethat I have not asked you that
you would like to share?
Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
no I.
I think you've been verygenerous with your time and
attention and given me anopportunity to get a lot out
that I've been anxious to getout for a long period of time.
All I can say in conclusion isthank you very, very much indeed
for this opportunity.
A heartfelt thanks, becauseit's been so enjoyable doing
(01:08:50):
this program with you and I hopeit serves a useful purpose
going forward.
Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
There will be links in the show notes to learn more.
If you were intrigued by thispodcast, it would be much
appreciated if you could leave arating or review and tag
warfare of art and law podcastuntil next time.
This is stephanie drottybringing you warfare of art and
law.
Thank you so much for listeningand remember injustice anywhere
(01:09:20):
is a threat to justiceeverywhere.
I've told you about some of the things that I just
happened on over the course ofmy work in the cultural field.
One of the most important was aphrase I read quite
accidentally by Goethe, theGerman poet and scholar, who
said live in the whole, live inthe good, live in the whole,
(00:24):
live in the good and live in thebeautiful.
And if I could express what allmy work is all about in the
final analysis, I would go toGoethe and that very insightful
and timely comment live in thewhole, live in the good and live
in the beautiful.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Warfare of Art and Law, the podcast that
focuses on how justice does ordoesn't play out when art and
law overlap.
Hi everyone, it's Stephanie,and that was Paul Schaeffer,
founder and director of theWorld Culture Project and author
(01:07):
of many books on arts andculture, including his most
recent one entitled the GreatCultural Awakening Key to an
Equitable, sustainable andHarmonious Age.
In the following conversation,mr Schaefer shares why he
(01:27):
founded the World CultureProject and why he believes it's
pivotal for our future leadersto come from the arts and
cultural sector.
Paul Schaefer, welcome toWarfare of Art and Law.
Thank you so much for being onthe podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's my pleasure.
I really am looking forward tothis discussion with you and
admire all the work that you'vedone in this area in the past.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Oh well, I certainly admire your work, and so perhaps
we could just start with yougiving an overview.
You've written multiple booksabout culture, in addition to
the one we're going to talkabout today, and then you have
this whole other background ineconomics.
So would you kind of walk usthrough what your background is?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I'll do that and it's a real pleasure for me.
I guess it really, as I lookback on it now, it goes back to
grade six in public school whenour teacher asked us to select a
project that we could developat home in order to present to
the class at school.
(02:30):
So, with some help from mymother and some searching around
, I finally decided to do aproject on Marco Polo and the
trip he had with his family andsome close friends he had a
couple of them, as you know toChina, and then all the time he
(02:50):
spent around China going todifferent countries in Asia and
other areas as a result of theprovisions made by Kublai Khan,
the great Khan of China.
And I found this.
I mentioned this in the bookthe Great Cultural Awakening.
I found this very fascinatingbecause I thought at the time
(03:15):
and I wasn't very old if onlyeverybody could have the kind of
exposure that Marco Polo andhis family and friends had to
the various cultures and peopleand foods, cuisines,
recreational activities,languages and so on.
(03:36):
The world would be a muchbetter place as a result of that
, and I remember thinking at thetime that at some point in my
life I'd really like to try andwrite about that, and I remember
thinking at the time that atsome point in my life I'd really
like to try and write aboutthat, and I saw it as something
that was very important, thatseemed to be missing in the
world.
However, that sort of retreatedinto the background after grade
(03:57):
six in public school by the timeI got to university and had to
make a tough decision about whatmy career prospects and
aspirations would be.
I finally chose commerce andfinance, and I think I chose
that for a couple of reasons.
One was that my father was anaccountant all his life and that
(04:20):
seemed sensible.
I had a brother who was alittle older than I was and he
was pursuing a career as acomposer, and I remember by that
time thinking well, vincent VanGogh had some financial help
from his brother, theo, becausehe wasn't selling of any of his
paintings.
So maybe if I went intocommerce and finance I'd be able
(04:43):
to help my brother with hiswork as a composer.
It turned out in the end thathe accomplished things in the
arts and cultural and especiallymusical field much sooner than
me, so my help there wasn'tneeded.
But I also thought that thiswould be a good kind of base
(05:04):
from which to function goingforward into the future.
When I was studying commerce andfinance and that was at the
University of Toronto Idiscovered that many of the
professors that were teaching inthat faculty were actually
economists and not professors inaccountancy or financial
studies, money and banking andso on, and I got very interested
(05:29):
in economics.
In the last three years I wasin commerce and finance and
finally decided to go on and doan MA in economics at U of T,
specializing in internationaldevelopment and particularly the
history of economic thought.
I was very fortunate then.
(05:49):
It was a real stroke of goodluck in that Canadian
universities were looking forCanadians to teach some of these
courses, because there wasquite a large influx of
Americans coming over to teachthese courses at Canadian
universities.
So I got an opportunity to godown to the Maritimes and teach
at Dalhousie University inAcadia economics for several
(06:14):
years and it was a veryenjoyable experience doing that.
But eventually I found that Ithought I had originally decided
to pursue a lifetime career ineconomics and economies, but I
started to get more and moreworried, even back then, about
(06:34):
the fact that economists didn'tgive any consideration to the
natural environment in economicswhen it was started, as it
developed, and certainly what Iwas there teaching in the
Maritimes.
So I was confronted with a verydifficult decision.
I had to decide whether Iwanted to stay in economics and
(06:56):
try and address that problemfrom the inside out or whether I
should go into another area andtry and address that problem.
And when I gave it my seriousconsideration I thought I really
couldn't do it from the insideout because there were some
things that were reallybothering me about economics as
(07:18):
a discipline at that time, notonly the environmental problem
but the fact that it seemed tobe preoccupied with materialism
and material and monetary wealth.
So I decided to leave economicsand go out and search for a new
area where I could more or lessstart from scratch.
(07:38):
So I had a very difficult timethan trying to find the right
area to do it and the rightprofession for me.
But finally I got a job at theOntario Arts Council and so that
sort of I'd had a very artisticand cultural upbringing when I
(07:59):
was young, like my brother did,and I decided that that was
probably the right place for me.
I felt comfortable there, but itwas more like turning a
vacation into a profession bystarting to work at the Ontario
Arts Council.
I worked there for several yearsand then I got an opportunity
to start a graduate program inarts administration and cultural
(08:23):
policy at York University inToronto, which I did, and after
directing that program forseveral years I decided I wanted
to more or less double down onmy interest in arts and
humanities and culture, and so Ileft York University and became
(08:45):
a freelancer and did work fororganizations like UNESCO and
Canada's Department of ExternalAffairs, and that is really when
I started to work intensivelyin the arts and cultural field,
and I've been doing that now forthe better part of 40 years.
So that's the kind of thumbnailsketch of the overview of my
(09:08):
career, starting in economicsand ending in the cultural field
.
But it did accomplish one thingMost of my publications, in one
form or another, have beenpredicated on the argument that
it's time to move out of theeconomic age and into the
cultural age.
So that experience in economicsand economies was invaluable in
(09:34):
helping me to understand theeconomic age and make the
argument that we should now bemoving into a different kind of
age, the cultural age we shouldnow be moving into a different
kind of age, the cultural age,the impetus to create the World
Culture Project.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
can you kind of give like the building blocks of that
and how that segued with thethemes of your books over the
years?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yes, I'd be pleased to do that.
One of the things that justhappened coincidentally, but at
a very important time for me wasthat the United Nations and
UNESCO had identified back inthe 60s, a number of what they
(10:19):
called decades of development,and these decades were designed
to focus on particular globaland national and local problems
and issues, and they started, ofcourse, with economic
development, but they eventuallygot around to a world decade
for environmental development,and that decade was followed by
(10:42):
a decade on cultural development.
And it was just coming aboutthe time that decade was
followed by a decade on culturaldevelopment, and it was just
coming about the time that I wasgetting very immersed in
culture, and so I decided thatone of the things I wanted to do
to commemorate and respect thatdecade of cultural development
was to start a world cultureproject.
(11:05):
That decade of culturaldevelopment was to start a World
Culture Project and I was incontact with UNESCO about this
and its colleagues and theythought it was a very good idea
and eventually the World CultureProject became a officially
designated project of the WorldDecade for Cultural Development
(11:26):
by UNESCO.
So it was really divided intotwo components.
It was divided into aninternational component and a
Canadian component and in theinternational component I was
looking at general issues andproblems in cultural development
.
In the Canadian component I waslooking at a specific culture.
(11:49):
So I'd take those generalproblems and then I'd apply them
to Canadian culture and I wrotea number of monographs on
different aspects of Canadianculture at that time and some
monographs on the generalproblems.
So what are the great culturalissues and problems in the world
?
This is still going strong andI'm now getting I'd be
(12:15):
continuously adding.
Over the last 40 years westarted in 1988, so roughly 40
years I'd be continuously addingmore and more material to the
world culture project.
It's it's free, anybody canaccess the project.
They, they can use any of thearticles that are in that listed
(12:35):
.
The links are listed in theproject a variety of books and
articles and all that isavailable free of charge and,
just incidentally, they canaccess that on
wwwworldcultureprojectorg andI'm now getting, uh happily, uh
(12:56):
visits from uh probably 1500 uhindividuals and organizations a
month and they're coming fromall over the world.
So it really seems to beworking now and generating
interest in culture and culturesin different parts of the world
, which was really the objectiveof the whole project.
(13:19):
In that project, two things areimportant.
One is that I've taken a verylarge view of culture rather
than a narrow one, what I'lltalk about later as the holistic
view or definition of culture,and I think that is exceedingly
difficult going forward into thefuture.
(13:41):
And the other is that you know,we have to be careful about how
we're going to be developingculture and cultures in the
future.
At the time of the World Decadefor Cultural Development, a lot
of the activity that was goingon in the world was undertaken
(14:03):
by anthropologists, sociologistsand those types of people and
their tendency, because one ofthe great problems in the world
back in the 1970s and 80s wasthat a lot of cultures and
civilizations from ancient andhistorical times were vanishing
(14:24):
or disappearing or crumbling andbreaking down and fewer and
fewer of the remnants of thosewere left.
So there was a lot of interestin looking back at culture and
cultures.
My interest with the WorldCulture Project was looking
forward.
I really felt very stronglythat what we should be talking
(14:47):
about here if I can put it in ashort-term phrase is living
cultural anthropology.
It's sort of taking where we'reat now and looking forward into
the future to see where weshould be going in the future
with the development of thevarious and diverse culture and
cultures in the world.
(15:08):
So given that I was by that timewe're getting now into the late
1990s I was more or less on myown and I had saved up a lot of
money, so I decided that Ireally wanted to plunge in to
(15:28):
trying to.
I didn't have any education inculture and cultures, it was all
in economics.
So I had to educate myselfabout culture and cultures and
the only way I could do that wasto read extensively about that
subject.
And fortunately, when I wasteaching at some universities in
(15:50):
arts administration andcultural policy, they had
excellent libraries there inculture and I had a fair amount
of it on my weekends, justreading books and articles and
publications that had beenwritten by cultural scholars,
cultural historians, people inthe arts, humanities, heritage
(16:14):
and history and so on, and Islowly started to build up an
understanding of culture andcultures and broadening and
deepening that understanding andknowledge, and I felt that I
was getting ready to start towrite about that subject.
So I did write the first bookthat I wrote on this subject.
(16:39):
It's Culture Beacon of theFuture.
Culture Beacon of the Future.
And that book, which waspublished in 1998, really tried
to provide an overview of whatculture was all about.
So it went into many of thedifferent domains of culture,
from heritage to humanities, thearts, to municipalities, towns
(17:07):
and cities.
On and on it went historicaldevelopments and so on.
But I deliberately, based onthe readings that I'd done, I
called it the culture beacon tothe future because I wanted to
make the argument right at theoutset that culture and cultures
(17:31):
have their positive andnegative dimensions.
They could do a great deal ofgood or they can do a great deal
of harm, and that's what Ilearned from my reading of all
these works by culturalhistorians and scholars, and I
felt it was so important to makethat clear at the outset of
(17:53):
what I was attempting to do,which is, you know, try and
create more information in thisparticular area and make it
accessible.
We're experiencing, just as asideline, that problem today
with AI, artificial intelligence.
It's very interesting that thishas evolved so quickly that so
(18:17):
many people have jumped on thebandwagon.
Once the bandwagon got rolling,then people saw yeah, the
corporations, governments,educational institutions are all
taking this up very seriously.
They're saying this is thefuture that we got to take in
the future.
So it was easy to hop on thebandwagon and say I better get
(18:37):
in there and learn somethingabout this too, and it's a very
important area.
It's a very important areaUntil Jeffrey Hinton, one of the
pioneers in AI, about seven oreight years ago, I believe, made
a public speech in which hesaid hold it, hold it, stop.
(18:57):
There are going to be problemsin the future about AI and not
just benefits, because the roadwe're traveling now, if we're
not very careful, we could getinto a very difficult problem
where eventually, robots becamesmarter than we were and they
(19:20):
were governing us rather than usgoverning them.
So from then on, I think nowwe're seeing that when AI is
talked about, people areaddressing much more carefully
the positive and negativebenefits and effects from that
particular area concerned at thevery outset to make it clear
(19:48):
that culture.
It was a beacon in the sensethat it could shine a light on a
very viable and enticing pathto the future.
But it could also warn ofimpending danger and make sure
that we set up the safeguardsand precautions to come to grips
(20:11):
with those dangers.
And of course, that's what agood beacon is all about.
It's the two sides.
They lighten and reveal andthey tempt and indicate that we
have to look very closely atboth dimensions, not just one
dimension.
(20:32):
Having done that, about a decadelater I was ready to move into
the secondary, a second phase ofmy research and writing on the
subject of culture and culturesand a cultural age.
By this time and that book wasRevolution or Renaissance,
(20:53):
making the transition from aneconomic age to a cultural age.
And that's where I drew on myresearch and writing on both
economics and culture.
The book is divided into twoparts.
The first part is the age ofeconomics and it goes very
(21:19):
carefully.
This is a 300-page book.
This is a 300-page book.
It goes very carefully throughhow the economic age developed,
from Adam Smith's Wealth ofNations in 1776, the classical
economics, the neoclassicaleconomics, the Marxian economics
(21:40):
, all the way down to thepresent and it describes how
this age developed.
And then the final chapter ison the strengths and the
shortcomings of the economic ageand the balance sheet on the
economic age, and in the balancesheet I say that probably the
(22:01):
economic age is the greatesthuman achievement of all.
Billions of people, first inthe western part of the world,
but increasingly in other partsof the world, have benefited
from the economic age and allit's brought to us in terms of
the creation of goods andservices and material and
(22:23):
monetary wealth creation ofgoods and services, and material
and monetary wealth.
But at the same time, byneglecting to examine some of
these areas that were veryimportant in the development of
the economic age, like ignoringthe natural environment, not
(22:43):
placing the economic age in ahuman context rather than a
material context, problems likethis are now increasing, as we
know, very rapidly.
So there are shortcomings ofthe economic age and not only
strengths of the economic ageand not only strengths of the
(23:05):
economic age.
And my conclusion, takingeverything into consideration
about that, is that while theeconomic age has been a
tremendous period in history anddelivered so much, it's not
viable going into the futurebecause it's designed to create
material and monetary wealth andgoods and services.
(23:26):
It's not designed to deal withthe problems that we're
confronted with today, likeclimate change, global warming,
the environmental crisis, hugedisparities in income and wealth
, more wars and conflict in theworld over resources and land,
and things like that.
So we need to move into a newage.
(23:48):
The second part of the book,part two, is then devoted to the
age of culture, and I gothrough the same process there
that I did with the economic age, by identifying well, what are
the signs that are bringing acultural age into possible
existence, what might it be likeif cultural age was brought
(24:12):
into existence, and what wouldthe strengths and shortcomings
of that be?
So that was the next sort ofmajor book I wrote in this
process.
This brings me to the thirdbook.
I only have this one and onemore, so there were many more in
the series, but these are thefour most important books.
(24:39):
This book is the World asCulture, and the subtit with
this book is I've gone back tothe beginning of history and
I've traced the evolution,historically, of culture as an
(25:00):
idea and reality from the earlypart of history right up to the
present day, and there are awhole series of pretty definite
periods in this historicalevolution.
It started, as far as mostpeople in the cultural field
(25:21):
could determine.
It started back with Cicero inabout 80 years before the birth
of Christ, and he said cultureis the philosophy or cultivation
of the soul.
I imagine somebody having thatkind of vision or perception of
(25:44):
what culture is going back morethan 2,000 years.
So he was the one that reallystarted the discussion about it.
It derives from an Italian word, culture, so he really started
the discussion on what cultureand cultures are really all
(26:04):
about.
Then there was a period inwhich culture was concerned.
People working in the culturalfield were concerned basically
with the arts, humanities andheritage of history.
So that was another definitionof period, but that broadened
the understanding of whatculture and cultures are.
Then, following that, we had aperiod closer to the present,
(26:29):
with anthropologists,sociologists, psychologists, who
were looking at culture andcultures from their particular
academic perspective and theytended to be even much broader
again than the arts and thehumanities and heritage and
history.
So you're getting more and moreexpansive understandings of
(26:52):
culture and culture goingforward.
What we've had more recently inthe world is the next period
and the period we're in now,which has been governed more by
the work of biologists,ecologists, zoologists,
(27:12):
botanists, environmentalists,who've been looking at not only
the cultures of the humanspecies but cultures of other
species, and so that makes itpossible to say that culture now
, in the present, has somethingto do with all living species as
(27:37):
a minimum and the naturalenvironment of course, behind
that species as a minimum, andthe natural environment, of
course, behind that.
So you can talk about and thisis what I've done in the Great
Cultural Awakening you can talkabout the cultures of all
species now and people get it,and they're starting to get it
more and more.
As we look into the cultures ofplants and animals, we're
learning about how theycommunicate, how they talk to
(27:59):
each other, how they developtheir each other, how they
develop their own cultures, howtheir cultures are different
than our cultures, and on and onit goes.
And this is not only foranimals but also for plants that
are now.
People in the horticulturalarea are saying plants
communicate among themselves,they have their own means of
communication, they have theircultures, they can warn other
(28:22):
plants when they're impendingdangers, and so on.
So it's now a vast domain, andso what I have argued in this
book in the conclusion, is thatthe real foundations of human
and species existence in planetEarth and the world we're living
(28:47):
in are culture and cultures andnot economics and economies.
These are the real foundationsand the real essence of what
life in the world is all about.
And the economic argument thateconomics and economies are
(29:10):
central.
That's a kind of facade thatwe've developed during the
economic age, largely throughthe arguments of economists like
Adam Smith, david Ricardo andespecially Karl Marx, who wrote
the Economic Interpretation ofHistory, which was based largely
(29:32):
on a physical and materialinterpretation, and came to the
conclusion that the world, inthe final analysis, is all about
economics and economies.
I think what this bookdemonstrates, and in a
well-documented form, is.
That's not the case.
The root of everything isculture and cultures, and not
(29:54):
economics and economies.
So that leads me to the finalbook here, the Great Cultural
Awakening.
The subtitle is Key to anEquitable, sustainable and
Harmonious Age.
Will there be others in thisseries?
(30:20):
No, I really see this book, theGreat Cultural Awakening.
I've told you about the purposeof these other books.
This book is really about thesummation and culmination of all
my work in the cultural fieldnow over a period of some 40 or
(30:41):
50 years.
It's really designed in my workin the cultural field.
I'm not trying to come up witha separate cultural theory of
some type.
Many of the anthropologists,sociologists, cultural
historians and so on that havewritten about subjects like this
(31:03):
.
They're interested indeveloping a particular theory
of culture or cultures and therehave been many books written
that have very differenttheories about that.
What I'm trying to do in mywork in the cultural field and
it's benefiting tremendouslyfrom the experience I've had in
(31:25):
economics and the socialsciences in my work I'm trying
to pull everything together andput it in one place and try and
make it accessible in a fewbooks and the World Culture
Project website.
So people that are working inthe cultural field or interested
(31:46):
in the cultural field, they cango to those sources and
everything is pulled together.
They don't have to spend allthe time that I spend
necessarily reading the works ofindividual cultural scholars
and cultural historians.
They can have the overviews, Imean the overviews that underlie
yeah, so that's what, now, thisbook is really designed.
(32:10):
If we want to go on now and talka little bit about this book,
this book is really designed tomake the case that there is a
cultural awakening taking placein the world today.
I don't think it's certainlynot fully recognized at present.
(32:31):
It's partially recognized byparticular groups and
organizations and institutions,I believe.
But some of the biggerinstitutions, like governments
and corporations, this is not ontheir agenda now because,
obviously, one reason they'recaught up with AI and now all
(32:54):
the economic problems we'reexperiencing in the world.
So if somebody comes forwardand says, well, there's a great
cultural awakening going on inthe world, so if somebody comes
forward and says, well, there'sa great cultural awakening going
on in the world, uh, they wouldsay, well, culture, culture
it's, it's not a an importantactivity.
And I think you'll find if youlooked into, uh, what the big
players in terms of uh, wherethe world should go in the
(33:18):
future are talking about is notculture or cultures or the arts,
or the humanities, or thesocials or the heritage of
history.
For some very obvious reasons,which we'll talk about in a
moment, they're looking atconsciousness, changes in
consciousness, the wholeenvironmental situation and on
(33:42):
it goes from there.
So it's not being recognized,but I think that positive and
meaningful changes are takingplace in this area and I would
suggest, in order to justify myargument, that it is going on
and it is very important.
Black peoples, indigenouspeoples, oppressed people,
(34:08):
marginalized people, people thathave been colonized and we're
talking here about a very largenumber of people in the world
Asia, africa, north and SouthAmerica, the Caribbean.
A lot of those peoples aregoing back and connecting with
(34:30):
their original cultures becausethey were either forced out or
encouraged out, mostly forcedout of their own cultures in
order to adapt and adopt othercultures, mostly colonial
cultures.
What they're finding now isthat they're going back to their
own traditions.
(34:50):
They're going back to their owncustoms, their rituals, their
stories, especially theirlanguages A lot of them are
learning their languages now, aswe know and the roots of their
cultures.
How did they start in thebeginning.
What's their cultural heritage?
So that's one group and that'sa lot of people, but that's not
(35:16):
all.
What's happening in addition tothat is that a lot of
organizations are nowconsidering themselves to be
cultural organizations in theholistic sense.
A lot of the work for this wasprepared by a scholar at, I
think, mit and Harvard, edgarSchein, who wrote a book on
(35:41):
organizational cultures and whathe said?
That organizations in theholistic sense, rather than the
partial sense, are reallycultures.
They have values, they havetraditions, they have ways of
life, they have worldviews Onand on it goes, and so this is
(36:01):
very important, and we're nowseeing that a lot of
organizations in the world arestarting to look at themselves
as cultural organizations in theholistic sense, asking
themselves in the future, whatare our values going to be, what
are our worldviews going to be,how are we going to interact
(36:21):
with our clients, with ouremployees?
What are our new directions forthe future?
How can we play a better rolein the world?
How can we make ourselves moresuccessful in environmental and
human terms, and not just inmaterial terms?
You see this happening inpolice forces, in hospitals, in
(36:42):
corporate organizations, innon-profit organizations, and
that's a large group as well.
In addition to that, what we'realso seeing in the tourist field
which, as we know is verylucrative is the evolution and
that's been going on over sometime now of cultural tourism
(37:04):
rather than just tourism ingeneral, and the difference in
that, of course, is thatcultural tourism if you're a
cultural tourist and you decidethat you want to go to Asia, for
example, you're probably goingto do advanced reading about the
histories and the cultures ofthe Asian countries that you're
(37:25):
going to visit.
You're probably then going tosearch out a lot of things that
you read about before and youwere preparing for your trip.
You're probably going todocument your experiences, not
only by taking a few photos, butalso by taking notes, and
sometimes copious notes, andyou're also going to come back
home and you're probably goingto think about those experiences
(37:47):
and say, oh, there were somethings there that were very
helpful.
I think I could change my lifeand make some improvements in my
life from the things that Iexperienced in the Asian
cultures I was in.
So there's another area wherethe great cultural awakening is
starting to come to the fore.
It's going to take more time, Ithink, and it's not going to
(38:11):
happen overnight and it's notwithout its difficulties.
But I think it's going toevolve and evolve, and evolve
and we're going to take more andmore interest in this in the
future, which is why I believethat we're standing on the
threshold of a cultural age andif we really give the thought
and consideration to it and thelong-term development, I think
(38:36):
it's inevitable that we might goin that direction.
So this book is really designedto make the case that we should
move into a cultural age.
The first five or six chaptersare all about well.
There's a chapter initially onwhy we should enter a cultural
age, reading the signs andsignals.
(38:57):
Then there are about five or sixchapters on culture, starting
with people or cultures and thecultures of families Very
important chapter in the bookbecause you know, if children
and parents and families do noteducate themselves properly and
if the children aren't taughtproperly, then we're going to
(39:19):
have a lot of trouble in thefuture.
So how culture and cultures arehandled in families very, very
important.
How their parents provide theopportunities and resources for
them to do that.
There's city cultures,community cultures, regional
cultures, national cultures,international cultures, and then
(39:41):
finally the cultures, nationalcultures, international cultures
and then finally the culturesof other species.
So that's about five or sixchapters of the book.
Then there are about threechapters of the book on, well,
what foundations have to be putin place in order to realize a
cultural age, and here I'vementioned the importance of
creating a cultural age.
And here I've mentioned theimportance of creating a
(40:02):
cultural interpretation ofhistory rather than the economic
interpretation of historyprovided by Karl Marx, engels
and the Marxists.
The centrality of culturalpolicy and development rather
than the marginalization ofcultural policy and development,
(40:22):
which is the case today.
And what are the roles of themain stakeholders?
I've identified three in thisbook.
The first and most importantare people in the arts,
humanities, heritage of history,cultural industries and various
other aspects of culture, as wementioned in anthropology,
(40:45):
sociology and so on.
They have to provide thesymbols, signals, the metaphors,
the rituals that are necessaryto move us into understanding
what culture and cultures at anylevel geographically are all
(41:05):
about.
So I think their involvement inthe initial stage, in a
proactive way, is veryfundamental to all this.
The next stakeholders, in myview, are the governments.
The next stakeholders, in myview, are the governments.
If we don't get somerecognition from governments at
(41:28):
all levels I'm talking about, Iguess now, from municipal to
national and then internationalorganizations working in
political and governmentalfields if the governments don't
act to bring a cultural age intoexistence, that's going to, I
think, provide a very seriousblock to moving forward with the
(41:51):
entry into a cultural age andenabling a cultural age to
(42:12):
flourish.
And then, finally, I think,it's the general public.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I think it's all up to us, in the longer term of
schemes and final analysis, tounderstand why it's important a
cultural age, as best I can andprovide the documentation that's
necessary for it, and I believeI've heard maybe another
(42:37):
interview where you touched onthis is that leaders going
forward, talking about the pointyou're making about the
governments needing to beinvolved in this, that leaders
should be those that come fromthe arts and culture sector, and
(42:59):
I really I had already beenthinking about that myself, so
it really resonated with me.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Yeah, well, I'm glad to hear that, because I haven't
heard anybody discuss thatproblem and I think it's a very
critical problem now on theinternational stage.
I think if we look at whattypes of people ended up in
government or ended up inpolitics and initially, I think,
(43:26):
when laws came into existenceand for a long time thereafter,
they were mostly lawyers,because there had to be people
that understood the law and howthe law functions and works, so
they had to know very well allthe legal constraints and
problems that exist.
So there was a long line of, Iknow.
(43:47):
If I look at Canada, my owncountry, you go back, you know,
a century or so, and basicallythree-quarters of them probably
were lawyers.
Maybe some people that werepopular in communities, but a
lot of lawyers, and for goodreason.
What we've experienced morerecently is and this is
understandable, living in aneconomic age is that more and
(44:10):
more of the prime ministers andleaders in the political and
governmental realm are from thecorporate community.
And obviously they're in thecorporate community, from the
corporate community, becausethey have seen through their
work in corporations thatthere's a lot of power and
(44:31):
capabilities in governments, andif you're in government, you
might be in a better position tooffer opportunities for
economic growth and developmentthan if you stayed in a
corporation.
Now, and what I've tried to doin the book is point out that in
certain European countries,some of those presidents and
(44:53):
prime ministers have come fromartistic backgrounds, humanistic
backgrounds in Poland and inCzechoslovakia and so on and
these are people that have acultural background.
And the interesting thing aboutthose people I didn't go into a
lot of detail or research onthis, but a good interesting
(45:14):
thing about it is that they seemto govern very well and produce
very positive results.
And so I think that in thefuture because a lot of the
issues in the world now areessentially cultural issues that
have to do with interaction andintermingling of different
(45:34):
peoples, different genders,different races, different races
they're going to have to bepeople that have a background in
culture and culturaldevelopment to understand what
is needed and what I think thecultural domain and realm could
(45:56):
provide more than anything else.
Going forward into the future isa holistic view of things
rather than a partial view.
The economic view perspectiveis a partial view.
It sees things through the lensof economics.
What the argument is in myliterature and in this book is
(46:17):
we need a lens that permits usto see the big picture, and
there may be some lenses beyondour knowledge that could do this
, but as far as I know, the lensat present that provides the
biggest portrait or pictureresults from the holistic
(46:38):
definition of culture andcultures, even more than AI, and
I think eventually andhopefully we'll come to realize
that.
But this is a big perspectivethat we need now going forward.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
What is the feedback you've received thus far from
this book?
Speaker 1 (46:56):
The feedback has been very good.
There hasn't been a lot of it.
I've been working very hard tobring the book to the attention
of others and it's going to taketime, but the feedback that
I've had has been very positive.
The reviews that I have thatare on the back cover of the
book have been very positive.
(47:17):
I haven't had many reviews onAmazon, but I'm working on that
now and other reviews, but I'mvery happy with the reviews that
have been provided.
There was one thing, one of thequestions you asked, which I
thought was a very interestingquestion, and I don't know
(47:39):
whether you'd like me to proceedwith an answer to it or not,
but you asked the question justbefore what you've asked now
about can you read somethingfrom the Great Cultural
Awakening?
Speaker 2 (47:51):
yes, yes if you would .
You've already given such arich taste for the book, but if
you would want to share anexcerpt, that would be lovely
I'd love to do that and I'lltake a couple of minutes with
this just to explain what'shappened.
Speaker 1 (48:10):
When I was doing my research, one of the things that
hit me on a few occasions wasthat the, the research in
writing, what I'm doing for thisbook, you know it's consistent
in many ways with CharlesDickens and a lot of Charles
Dickens novels, because Dickens,he really was so humanly
(48:36):
concerned about the welfare andwell-being of people and country
and people and countries that alot of his books have to do
with this, whether it's the, youknow, the Christmas Carol or
any of the other books that he'swritten that deal with the
subject.
So, and I was really thinkingmore and more as I worked on
(49:01):
this book about the similaritiesbetween Dickens' Tale of Two
Cities and my tale of two ages,the economic age and the
cultural age, which is the lastchapter, chapter 14 in the book.
Chapter 14 in the book BecauseDickens' Tale of Two Cities.
(49:26):
It moves back between Englandand France, paris and London,
and in many ways Paris andFrance are indicative of the
economic age.
When we think of Paris andFrance, we think the arts, we
think cultural things.
When we think of London andEngland, we think very often of
economics.
I mean they control the worldat one time on the basis of
(49:47):
their economic ingenuity.
And so I thought you know likehe's going back and forth
between these two areas in theage of the Tale of Cities, and
I'm going back and forth in thelast chapter about the tale of
two ages.
So here's what I would like toread.
(50:08):
That chapter starts, the tale oftwo ages, from a quote.
It's the first quote in thebook by charles dickens.
It was the best of times, itwas the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom, itwas the age of foolishness, it
(50:29):
was the epoch of belief, it wasthe epoch of incredulity.
It was the season of light.
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope.
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope, itwas the winter of despair.
And I thought, boy, you know, Imean the endurance of some
literature to transcend spaceand time and be relevant for all
(50:53):
time and all spaces is quiteremarkable.
So that's how it the lastchapter starts.
Then this is how the lastchapter starts, then this is how
the last chapter ends.
Without doubt, culture andcultures possess everything that
is needed for all people andall countries to live full,
(51:15):
fulfilling and constructivelives, to produce a great deal
of more joy, happiness,well-being and equality in the
world, and to contribute tomaking the world a better, safer
and more stable place foreverybody and everything.
In the final analysis, this iswhat systemic cultural change
(51:39):
and participating in the greatcultural awakening are all about
and designed to accomplish.
The doors are opening on acultural age.
It is time we realize this,cross over the threshold to this
age and enjoy all the profuseopportunities and benefits that
(52:00):
can arise from it.
Will all come to echo the wordsthat end Dickens' novel A Tale
of Two Cities.
For in entering a cultural age,each of us might well say and
this is the last sentence inDickens' book it is a far, far
(52:26):
better thing than I do, than Ihave ever done, it is a far, far
better rest I go to than I haveever known.
I just think that says so muchabout the compassion, the
spirituality, the human goodnessthat Dickens had in all his
(52:48):
work.
And I think this is one of thedimensions of a cultural age
that maybe is more importantthan any of the others bringing
out that humanity and thatcompassion and that humility in,
in, in human and humane waysthank you, thank you for reading
that.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I agree, and it kind of highlights the link and
importance between the arts andhuman rights.
Absolutely, absolutely.
This is a thread, I think,throughout your work that we've
(53:29):
been talking about the power ofart to address issues like
social injustice.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
Well, I think there are many.
As you know, I've just writtenan article on the arts.
On the arts, one of thechapters in this book is a
chapter on harmonizing crucialcultural relationships, and it
(54:00):
mentions a number of thosedifferent polarizations, if you
like the arts and the sciences,human rights and human
responsibilities, war and peace,material and non-material
development.
There are about 10 or 12 thatI've mentioned, but there are
many others, and most of thosecultural relationships get
(54:25):
polarized over time and withpolarization, as we know, you
get imbalance and disharmoniesand there's a great disharmony
at the present time between thearts and the sciences, because
the sciences are surging aheadvery rapidly because of
(54:47):
phenomenal innovations andinventions in technologies,
digital devices, industrialpractices, space exploration, ai
, on and on it goes, but thesciences in the last four or
five decades have just beensurging ahead very rapidly.
(55:10):
Five decades have just beensurging ahead very rapidly.
Unfortunately, the price that'sbeing paid for that is that in
educational institutions and ingovernmental and corporate and
foundation work, a lot of thefunding for activities has gone
to science rather than the arts,and this has put the arts in a
(55:31):
very dreadful position, theposition that they're in at the
present time, because not onlyare they considered to be
marginal activities, largelyrecreational and leisure time
activities, but I think a lot ofpeople would feel that well,
they don't have any concretesubstance or practical outputs,
(55:56):
so they're good to enjoyourselves with, but they don't
have any really importantrelevance to what's going on in
the world.
I think we're making a bigmistake here, and that article
is about how we are desperatelyneeded at the present time to
double down on the developmentof the arts and humanities and
(56:17):
heritage of history so that thatimbalance, which has always
gone on to a certain extentthroughout the world between the
arts and the sciences, it canbe more stabilized and made
harmonious.
So I'm for advocating spendingmuch more money on the arts,
(56:38):
helping artists, artsorganizations and the arts
generally going forward into thefuture, because I think those
are the organizations that,through their works, bring the
humanity, the compassion, theconcern, the feeling, the
emotions that are necessary notonly to deal with general
(57:04):
problems but also to deal withsome very difficult problems
today, particularly conflictsand wars, where it seems to be
that there is very littlehumanity now in the way wars and
conflicts are conducted.
So the role that artists couldplay in that is very powerful
(57:25):
but not being used.
And I think that you know,through the arts and their
ability to develop the signs andsymbols and metaphors and
rituals and so on we weretalking about earlier, they can
shine a lot of light on the needfor the kind of social justice
(57:49):
that we need in the future andbringing an end to social
injustices.
And the biggest injustice ofall, as you and I know, working
in the arts and cultural fieldis the way artists and arts
organizations are treated inmost societies and countries
today.
Societies and countries todayLow wages, poor working
(58:12):
conditions, very little concernfor their, their futures, where
their income is going to comefrom in the future, the present
laws that exist with respect totheir inventions and innovations
, and collective goods andservices they provide in society
(58:40):
.
The list goes on and on.
But one positive message, Ithink, in all that is we're
beginning to see that more andmore arts, icons and cultural
treasures are being restored tothe countries of origin.
So that, to me, is a verypositive sign that has to do
(59:01):
with social justice rather thaninjustice.
But definitely I think we haveto focus our attention.
If we focus more attention onthe artists and more funding, I
think some of those realinjustices that artists and arts
organizations experience willbe dealt with, and they have to
(59:22):
be dealt with by corporationsand governments and foundations.
They've done everything that Ithink they can possibly do from
within to confront thoseinjustices in their protests and
protest movement.
It's now time for governmentsand corporations, foundations,
to ante up and help them in thatfield, deal with their
(59:44):
injustices.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Has there been for you, over the course of your
career, a definition of how youview justice?
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
that it is, but I don't think that I've ever gone
into any depth in terms oflooking at what you know
different groups andorganizations in society and
particular artistic andhumanistic and heritage groups
are confronted with in terms ofjustice or injustice.
I mean, I dealt with that veryspecifically when I was teaching
arts administration andcultural policy, because those
(01:00:39):
problems were problems that wehad to deal with when we were
training arts administrators andcultural policymakers, but it's
not a subject to date that I'vereally looked at intensively.
(01:01:04):
Is there though a personal viewthat you have either how'm
concerned about is in my work.
The most important objective inmy work has been to provide
research and writing that canmake a contribution to evolving
(01:01:24):
a different path in the future,and in my case it's a path that
is based on the centrality ofculture and cultures and
entering a cultural age.
If it turns out that you knowthat's not possible, then I
guess my follow-up objectivewould be breaking the
(01:01:47):
marginalization of the arts andthe humanities and the heritage
of history in the world.
If nothing else can beaccomplished from what I've
researched and written, it wouldbe my hope that we could at
(01:02:08):
least will and the desire andthe fortitude to bring the and
this is something you askedabout different cultural
scholars and historians thathave been influenced by research
and writing.
One of the ones that's done thismost is Johann Huizinga, who
(01:02:30):
wrote the Waning of the MiddleAges, and he was a cultural
historian that was very muchconcerned about the
harmonization of economic andmaterial and corporate values on
the one hand, and artistic,aesthetic, humanistic and
(01:02:51):
philosophical activities on theother hand.
Much of his writing is concernedabout, you know, rather having
imbalances and disharmonies andpolarities and polarizations
between those two things Hisconcern was about how do we
bring them together to create avalue system, worldview and way
(01:03:16):
of life that integrates both ofthose dimensions with the same
value and the same importanceand same priority.
That to me, I guess, is what Iwould like to see in terms of
creating the justices that arenecessary for people in this
(01:03:36):
particular area the arts,humanities, heritage of history
and culture generally that havereceived second billing in most
parts of the world because ofthe prominence of other values
and worldviews.
And I think now there could beno better time in the world than
now to produce those justicesby bringing those two things
(01:04:02):
together and working outlifestyles and ways of life that
compromise and compare andcoalesce those two sets.
Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm just curious also and you seem
to have already kind of answeredthis but is there with all of
this amazing wealth of resourcesthat you've created and the
work that you're doing, thatyou've created and the work that
you're doing?
Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
is there a legacy that you are aiming to create
with your work?
No, I can't, you know.
I mean it would be nice ifthere was a legacy to the work
that I've been working on.
I mean, as I said at thebeginning, you know I had this
experience with Marco Polo andhow he interacted with so many
different cultures and thoughtthe world would be a better
(01:05:01):
place if we could do that andcreate the educational systems
and political and social andeconomic and other activities
that are necessary for that.
So I mean, if it happens thatwhat I've been working on proves
(01:05:22):
useful in the future, then Iwould be very happy about that.
But the real challenge, I think,is to get it down in the
clearest and most basic termsthat I can in trying to make
this case so that it will beavailable to President and
future generations and it wouldbe there.
(01:05:44):
And I guess that's why Iappreciate so much your
willingness to take the timegoing into depth about my
experiences throughout life thatarose from my experience and
reading about Marco Polo and howI made that my life's work and
you know what some of thevehicles are available now as a
(01:06:06):
result of that that people canaccess readily and say, well, I
take it or I leave it, butthey're there.
And that's why I say my workhas not been on creating a
particular theory, but ratherjust trying to pull everything
together that's been writtenabout a certain subject that I
(01:06:27):
feel is very important andhasn't been done up to the
present time subject that I feelis very important and hasn't
been done up to the present time, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Is there a project or are there?
Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
projects that you're currently working on that we can
look for going forward.
I think probably we're all.
I've been spending more and moreof my time as you may know from
information that I've writtenin the Great Cultural Awakening
with a variety of organizationsin the arts and cultural field
(01:07:00):
that are working on activitiesand projects that are of
interest to me, and I'm tryingto provide more of my time and
my attention to people that arenow, you know, coming to the
conclusion that they'd like towork in the arts or cultural
field and provide them with somehelp with that.
So I'm going to do a lot more ofthat in the future, but it may
(01:07:24):
be that I'll try and sort ofpull everything together in some
kind of book on the.
It's been a very fascinatingcultural journey over the course
of my life and I may well tryand sort of put it into some
kind of form where it might beuseful to other people.
But it's all about getting outof the self and getting into the
(01:07:49):
other, isn't it?
I mean, this is such animportant part of what culture
and a cultural awakening are allabout is getting out of our own
skin and providing the help andsupport that's needed by other
people, other organizations,other countries.
Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
That brings to mind for me the individual who
brought us together, ashvakishak, who focuses so much of
his work on empathy, and youtouch on that in the great
cultural awakening, so it's sucha perfect point to end on.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Well, is there anything elsethat I have not asked you that
you would like to share?
Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
no I.
I think you've been verygenerous with your time and
attention and given me anopportunity to get a lot out
that I've been anxious to getout for a long period of time.
All I can say in conclusion isthank you very, very much indeed
for this opportunity.
A heartfelt thanks, becauseit's been so enjoyable doing
(01:08:50):
this program with you and I hopeit serves a useful purpose
going forward.
Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
There will be links in the show notes to learn more.
If you were intrigued by thispodcast, it would be much
appreciated if you could leave arating or review and tag
warfare of art and law podcastuntil next time.
This is stephanie drottybringing you warfare of art and
law.
Thank you so much for listeningand remember injustice anywhere
(01:09:20):
is a threat to justiceeverywhere.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.