So, if as I wrote last week, things might be fu*ked, how to save it? Here are five ways to help make the world a better place.
BE A GOOD ANCESTOR. The KEEN ON interview above is with Roman Krznaric, the author of The Good Ancestor and one of the few people around who actually deserves the “public intellectual” moniker. Krznaric’s focus on the long-term, while not exactly original, is a good way to escape the short-term utilitarianism which infects our 24/7 news cycle culture. The Burkean notion of thinking ancestrally used to define conservatism; in the 21st century, however, it is being used by smart progressives like Krznaric. Much more on long-termism in future KEEN ON shows, including a conversation with the New York Times journalist John Markoff, who has just written a biography of Stewart Brand, the eccentric father of the Long Now Foundation.
ACT REGENERATIVELY: Roman Krznaric’ long-term thinking is mostly driven by his concern for the planet. Like Krznaric, I’m a big believer in regenerative economics, especially its focus on the soil, which I explore in my Regenerate Forum, a show focused on alternative agriculture. “Acting regeneratively” is the next chapter in both the slow food movement and in green politics generally. One of the pioneers of regenerative economics is Kate Raworth, the author of Donut Economics and, as it happens, Krznaric’s wife. The really interesting question is whether regenerative economics is compatible with capitalism. Krznaric thinks not. I’m not so sure.
DON’T THINK TOO HARD. Last week, I did KEEN ON interviews with Linda Hirshman and Antonia Fraser, who have written books about the two great social movements of the 19th century: the abolition of American slavery and the legal fight for women’s rights. The heroes and heroines in the Hirshman and Fraser narratives - from Frederick Douglass to Caroline Norton - didn’t think too hard. They knew what was right and they pursued justice without compromise. In other words, to effect historic change doesn’t require one to be historical (or hysterical - as so many of our justice warriors are today).
DON’T NETWORK. Last week, I also interviewed A.J. Baime about his new biography of Walter F. White, the now forgotten NAACP leader. Nobody remembers White now because he saw political action purely in terms of networking. Knowing Harry Truman seemed enough for White in terms of the struggle for racial justice in America. What was missing from his rather tragic life, however, was a clear moral calling. The danger of intellectual compromise also reflected in my conversation last week with Harvard’s Eric Protzer who sees the best antidote to authoritarian populism as the pro-market centrism of Emmanuel Macron. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That’s certainly no way to make the world a better place.
ACT LIKE A VIKING. I really enjoyed my KEEN ON conversation last week with the archeologist Cat Jarman about the Vikings. As she told me, this uncompromising tribe of adventurers not only conquered much of Western Europe, but also successfully established themselves Constantinople, Baghdad and even India. Acting like a Viking means not thinking like a victim. Which is exactly what the Jewish scholar Dara Horn believes has gone wrong with our memories of the Holocaust. “Everyone loves dead jews like Anne Frank, Horn insists, because dead jews don’t have agency. So be a Viking. And, in contrast with Anne Frank, change the world.
Finally, happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Changing the world also means loving it unconditionally (a sixth way, perhaps, to make the world a better place). I suspect that the cultural critic, Laura Kipnis, stuck in her Harlem apartment for two long COVID years with an annoyingly bibulous boyfriend, could be a little less conditional in her loving. But I nonetheless enjoyed my conversation last week with the entertaining combative Kipnis about Love in the Time of Contagion.
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