Department of Unusual Certainties
The Department of Unusual Certainties is a relatively new collective, who have begun a debate series entitled “New Discourses for a Tired Century”. The first (on the future being hopeless) passed me by, but I took the opportunity to attend the second in the series, asking whether our democracy was in crisis.
Held on the second floor of the Gladstone, five people sat around a table, two for a side with a moderator. They didn’t say anything surprising or interesting, which I hope to argue here, is no one’s fault. What I heard was a presentation of usual certainties, which could be summarized thus: people aren’t engaged, people may have shitty jobs which distract them from politics, yet we have a society of outlets, most obviously the internet, which allow us to express ourselves and make our thoughts known.
How I arrived at the summary is not something I could describe, except to say that my snapshotted memories seem to cohere into that narrative. I found the debate to not be a debate, but rather a series of 3 minute statements, of which no real conclusion was reached, and had we been given cards to vote for the winner of the debate (such is done at the Munk series) I do not know how I would have voted. The exercise, it seemed to me, was a way for a generation younger than myself to discuss and present their research reports on the state of our democracy, arriving at conclusions already reached by older people such as myself, and thus presenting “usual certainties”, such as everyone talking about the internet.
I was left feeling that I will live to see the collapse of civilization, only because things have become so fragmented. Democracy for example, is clearly in crisis, and while I appreciated the remarks by its defenders, it seems to me that our current political cohort are so uncultured and contemptuous of the citizenry they have besmirched what had been a valid institution.
In proroguing the Ontario legislature, for example, Dalton McGuinty gave us a Trudeau salute and a cause to question the validity of the House – if it can be shut down for such an extended period of time without any ill effect, what good is it? Further, I wonder if people like Stephen Harper aren’t envious of heavy-handed authoritarian states like China, in that their governing structure’s simplicity allows them to operate a ship of state as such, rather than the herded chickens metaphor Western democracies are subject to.
I envision a century from now, Parliament could effectively be replaced with an app, to use the terminology of our time. Our governing structures are pre-telephone, let alone “INTERNET INTERNET”, and one imagines the practical minded, pre-ironic men of the past would have conferenced called their concerns had the technology been available to them. We instead are beholden to a tradition of physical presence in rooms which increasingly seems absurd.
If I am to be an informed citizen served by journalism, why reduce the fruits of my information to a penciled X every four-to-five years next to a name of someone who I’ve probably never met outside of the campaign, asking this stranger to “represent” me? I am currently lucky in that my representatives at the municipal, provincial, and federal level do tend to voice things that I agree with. However, we all don’t always vote for the winner, and it should be stated everyday that the governing Conservative party formed their majority on less than the majority of the vote. This is a stupid and insulting situation, which is further infuriating given we have the infrastructure to replace this model … if 114,000 people can ‘like’ a Kim Kardashian photo on Instagram, for god’s sake why can’t we all be using this technology to direct our representatives on how to vote, or better yet, directly vote on proposed legislation ourselves?
Stefan Wehrmeyer, a German software developer and activist who wants the government to do a better job of opening up its data, has downloaded the German federal government’s complete laws and regulations and posted them to GitHub. That’s the popular website that lets users track changes to documents — typically software — and make their own modifications.
The point, Wehrmeyer says, is to make it easy for German voters to track changes to the laws — and to also give lawmakers a vision of the future. (Wired, 9 Aug 2012)
I was left feeling that I would see the collapse of civilization because instead of actively working to use social networking infrastructure for collective decision making, I see another generation going over media talking points, given voice by virtue of their degrees. We the audience, passively watch as usual certainties are given “unusual” presentation because we’ve all been enculturated into this model of sit-down-shut-up-and-listen. I want to say that model is currently only valid for theatre: tv, movies, plays … yes, please shut up and watch. But not ideas.
I used to go to lectures regularly, and perhaps it was an historical moment: between 2000-2010, lectures seemed theatrical, and were even made into a TV show – TVO’s Big Ideas. Last week, TVO announced Big Ideas had been canceled, thus marking the end of the historicity. I’m painting with a broad brush here and ignoring for the moment the long history of the “presentation” as a form of theatre (like the Mark Twain & Dickens tours) in order to suggest that a moment had its time and passed. I think the model of being “educated” from a stage needs to be done away with, and replaced with community conversations.
I end this with a congratulations to the Department of Unusual Certainties in providing a forum, and a reason for people like me to give voice to these thoughts. I found the evening valuable and worthwhile, a reminder that tedious things are not necessarily bad things … in other words, not everything needs to be amazing to be of value. I would like to see them move into the type of participatory conversation that has been achieved by theater folk in this city, to not render the audience of interested minds a passive witness to thesis defense by PHD students.
Democracy is in crisis because we are beholden to traditions that ignore our new realities. Debate formats such as what I witnessed are an example of such a tradition.