Category: ideas

What were the top stories of 2003? Here’s our updated archive of year-end stories from publications around the world.

“The American intelligentsia is anxious these days… Anyone who watches television for more than five minutes can be forgiven for worrying about dumbing down, but the past year has seen a lively renewal of debate on this perennial topic.” From Terry Teachout’s blog post (here on ArtsJournal) calling for a re-embrace of 1950s-style “middlebrow” culture, to Curtis White’s disgust with a new breed of self-important intellectual wannabes which “wants to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has bought an SUV with the intent of visiting it,” America’s thinkers are unanimous that we need more old-fashioned thinking in our lives, but Canadian Kate Taylor feels they may be missing the point.

For two decades now, the world of humanities studies has been ruled by theory. “But there are reports from the academic world that theory may have run out steam. ‘Confidence in the technology of theory has faded. Theory’s opacities and arcane terms may be entrenched, but ‘they don’t come at you with the old assurance and swagger.”

Giving a present might make you feel good. But as an economic transaction, economists consider it inefficient. “So when I give up $50 worth of utility to buy a present for you, the chances are high that you’ll value it at less than $50. If so, there’s been a mutual loss of utility. The transaction has been inefficient and “welfare reducing”, thus making it irrational. As an economist would put it, “unless a gift that costs the giver p dollars exactly matches the way in which the recipient would have spent the p dollars, the gift is suboptimal”.”

Think the internet is a revolution of sharing ideas? Nope. “The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today’s websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialised in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, advertising free-sheets and broadsides. Depending on the interests of their customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices, share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from abroad.”

“Highly noticeable design in itself has become an acknowledged competitive strategy, so that the public now expects to be perpetually captivated and entertained and flattered by the novelty and the variety of design in every kind of commodity, not just in the aspect of goods but in their physical ambience. Restaurants are as over-designed as the meals they serve; new boutiques selling wine or cheese or jams or cookies are fitted up like exquisite art galleries, with hushed spatial arrangements so arcane that the goods cannot readily be distinguished from the décor. Such establishments might not sit on the same street with the fake-ethnic diners, but the source of their overt allure is the same.”

“Are we as a species really on the razor’s edge between salvation and destruction? How does this impact the creative spirit of our generation?” Ben Tripp has had these and other fairly weighty questions on his mind of late, especially as the world appears to have settled into a near-permanent state of Global Crisis, which makes it fairly hard to concentrate on such niceties as Art. Still, we know from past experience that “the springs and freshets of Art will bubble up to wet the stoniest ground, if you must put it that way. But are all great works accomplished in the face of hardship, or can I get a massage?”

There was a time when Toronto was one of the world’s intellectual centers, writes Philip Marchand, a gathering place for the study of what used to be called “arts and letters,” and there are those who believe it can be again. But as Canada embarks on a supposed ‘new direction’ under Prime Minister Paul Martin, one has to wonder about the priorities of the new PM and his countrymen. With the University of Toronto deemphasizing many of its less ‘glamorous’ departments and the country as a whole seemingly under-interested in the pursuit of studied thought for its own sake, can Toronto really be on the intellectual comeback trail?

The 21st century’s great intellectual conflict seems to be coming into focus, and it is a battle between Reason, the logic-based truth of scientists and academics; and Faith, the popular notion that truth is as much what we believe as what we can prove. The battle could be seen as a conflict between East and West, but those lines are blurring daily. It could be perceived as a battle between Left and Right, with the American right now teeming with evangelical Christians, and the left with secular intellectuals, but that leaves out the complicating factors of what is shaping up to be a truly global debate. “It is a conflict between competing certainties: between followers of Faith, who know because they believe, and followers of Reason, who believe because they know.”