Category: ideas

As 2002 began, art was supposed to be forevermore infused with the post-9/11 sensibility. Materialism and schlocky marketing were out, serious contemplation of the human condition was in. Riiiiight. So why does Frida Kahlo now have her own posthumous perfume, and why is the star of the year a shoplifting actress who hasn’t made a good film since (arguably) Girl, Interrupted? “In a year where the world was too much with us, art could at least be bewildering.”

The recent flap that ensued in Canada when a former First Nations activist went on a rambling, semi-coherent, anti-Semitic rant points up a larger problem among the nation’s public figures, says John Gray. Why can’t anyone in government speak with any degree of profundity or even a basic grasp of what makes for stirring oratory? “What I find not only boring but dangerous is not the lack of imagination, nor art, nor insight, nor even intelligence — but the absence of specifics. When Canadian public figures speak, I literally do not know what the hell they are talking about.”

It’s not like Communism wasn’t given a chance. But even though most of the major governments that followed the ideology have failed, Marx isn’t discredited. “Indeed, it is suggested, Marx was right about a good many things—about a lot of what is wrong with capitalism, for instance, about globalisation and international markets, about the business cycle, about the way economics shapes ideas. Marx was prescient; that word keeps coming up. By all means discard communism as practised in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (and China, North Korea, Cuba and in fact wherever it has been practised). But please don’t discard Marx.”

Used to be you went someplace where people were to find out what was going on. Now “swarming” makes it more efficient. People broadcast text or cell phone messages to get people to a location where something is happening. “Swarming reverses the idea that geography, in an Internet age, has become irrelevant. The whole point is to bring people together in one location for face-to-face contact. Swarming also is leading to such social developments as ‘time-softening,’ ‘cell dancing’ and ‘smart mobs’.”

What were the most underrated ideas of the year? The most overrated? From baseball stadiums to spas to war and propaganda, leading adademics and scholars made their nominations to the New York Times.

Why try to quote others? “Quotations are part of the fabric of conversation. We all repeat lines from our friends and family, passing on what Jane said to Tom, or retelling a joke we heard in a pub. Throwing Arthur Miller, or Nick Cave, into the mix is a way of including these people in our circle of intimacy, a way of paying homage to the works we love. Some argue that art works in a similar way, as an endless series of quotations and mis-quotations. Absorbed by a kind of cultural osmosis, they become the markers of our social and generational milieu.”

Are we more prone to accidents than in the past? A French philosopher believes so. “Technology and communications have made accidents more global in their impact. In his view, if an accident was long defined as chance, today only its timing and consequences are hard to predict; the accident itself is already bound to occur. To underline the importance of this unwelcome variable to modern society, Paul Virilio is promoting the creation of a Museum of Accidents. ‘The museum’s purpose would not be to ‘spread fear’ but to confront what is no longer a chance event’.”

“Hip hop has become one of the most influential U.S. cultural exports. In virtually every city on the planet, there are hip hop communities that not only have adopted the percussion-heavy music and spoken-word vocals, but have appropriated the sartorial and attitudinal style of the black and Latino youth who created the genre. Some 25 years after its birth, the genre has become a $5 billion industry but remains troubled at home.”