The activist's Ivory Tower
Hunger and famine is a problem in many parts of the world, isn't it?
Imagine that some governmental and/or non-governmental body decides to tackle the problem at its roots. They have a nice solution that everybody is excited about. The public is delighted: at last a comprehensive solution is going to be discussed, putting an end to famines and human miseries.
A large conference is organized in some poor African country in order to work out the last details. The conference is taking place in some fancy palace. The attendees are discussing a 20 year plan to eradicate hunger. They can't be disturbed: this meeting is critical. The conference lasts several days, and copious meals are served at regular intervals.
Meanwhile, outside of the palace outer walls, the famined populace is slowly dying of hunger, begging for some food now and for some media attention. They don't understand the conference, and couldn't care less about it. What good is a 20 year plan to them, when they might be dead next week?
I would fully support such a conference, and the 20 year plan, should it be realistic. Much more than the average citizen, I care about long term solutions, I care about dialogue and such. I want to help find solutions that cure the root of the problem. But we must remember that people are suffering - and dying - right now. We should not allow ourselves to become disconnected from the real issues.
In my allegory, the conference is the Ivory Tower in which the attendees congratulate each other on being so caring... while they completely forget about the people outside the palace walls that they are supposed to serve and to help.
Both this site and minguo.info are like conference venues, where we can discuss long term solutions, tackling the root of the problems. But I don't want either site to become my Ivory Tower.
Dave, I told you several times that much more than either web site, I care a lot about the actual effect they will have on the ground, within our society. I guess you didn't realize how serious I was. I fully support your long term goals. I like your vision. Also, I am working a lot on minguo.info even though it won't actually change anything today, next week or next month. But like you, I am hopefull that those two web sites will contribute to concrete change taking place within a year or two (or more...).
Meanwhile, I won't allow myself to be locked into a kind of activist's mental Ivory Tower. I don't want to loose touch with the real, day to day issues. I told you already: I don't care either about activistsolutions.org not about minguo.info if they don't succeed in creating actual change.
At best, there are currently only 3 active members in this site: you, William and myself. It's a start but not yet nearly enough to fulfill our mission. I am hopeful that many members will join us (hopefully soon). But injustice happens every day, right now, as I type this, as your read this.
What can I do today? I can only reach out to other people where they are.
That's why I am not interested in discussing legal technicalities with anybody. That's one aspect of the Meyer @ FU incident that I don't like: everyone talked about it, they all have their own opinion, their own comment to make, posting video blogs in response to the original videos, etc.... But how many of the millions who took a passionate interest in the case actually did something positive to solve the underlying problems (whatever they perceived the problems to be)?
I have completely avoided being drawn into the very active discussion (re. Meyer) on youtube. For the same reasons, I was not eager to be drawn into a lengthy discussion with you here. But, since we are close collaborators, I guess I had to take the time to explain my point of view.
Again: I agree with you about the need for dialogue looking for the best solution to the root cause of the problem. But I want to balance that with a hands on approach on concrete cases, where we can actually see the difference we have made.
I had decided to write this post about the activist's Ivory Tower. Before actually starting writing, I went to wikipedia to see what they had to say about this expression 1. I was surprised to see that its modern usage was started by French poet Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve!
What's more, I was delighted to see in which context the poet used the expression. He was comparing the social involvement of the two French poets Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo 2:
Hugo, strong partisan ... fought in armour,
And held high his banner in the middle of the tumult;
He still holds it; and Vigny, more discreet,
As if in his ivory tower, retired before noon.
In the original French:
Lamartine régna ; chantre ailé qui soupire,
Il planait sans effort. Hugo, dur partisan,
(Comme chez Dante on voit, Florentin ou Pisan,
Un baron féodal), combattit sous l'armure,
Et tint haut sa bannière au milieu du murmure :
Il la maintient encore ; et Vigny plus secret,
Comme en sa tour d'ivoire, avant midi, rentrait.3
I have never been attracted by de Vigny, so much so that I barely know any of his work. But I esteem very much Hugo. His novel Les Misérables is my all time favorite novel, the best of what the XIXth century world litterature has to offer. I like the way Hugo was truly engaged in scores of social issues. He used is power to enable change, fighting for various social causes. He is also famous for his stance against capital punishment 4. I regard Hugo as one of the most evolved Human Being of the last 2 or 3 centuries or more.5
Back to the original topic. I do not have the literary clout of Hugo. But if I feel I can do something, and actually help someone, I will try to do it. I shall carry on pursuing long term goals within activistsolutions and minguo.info. But I won't allow this to make me forget that I can help today on issues where a resolution could be reached in the short term. I can help to expose the situation in Roseland, Indiana. Hopefully, Roseland citizens will elect a better government at the end of this year, and Snyder kicked out of office. But the police officer should not get away with his act of unjustified violence while wearing the uniform.
It's all about striking a balance between short term goals and a long term vision.
The international conference should indeed carry on their long term work to eradicate famine. But at the same time, they should at least share some of the copious meals with the people starving outside the gate.
- See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_tower
- See: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ivo1.htm
- Pensées d'août ; poésies complètes, 1863, t.II, p.231.
See article in French. - I am sorry to say that France had to wait until 1981, when Socialist Mitterrand was elected president, before it abolished capital punishment altogether. Hugo had died in 1885, i.e. 96 years earlier.
- for similar reasons, I like Émile Zola, too. For example, his novel Germinal denounces child labor in coal mines. He is the author of the famous "J'accuse".
Coming down from the Tower -- what's to be done?
I perceive the basic problem of "talking" instead of "walking" much as you do. The largest number of people seem always to stop at the point of taking constructive action. My hope is that we can make a difference by getting people who agree (about what the problem is and what action to take) in contact with each other. Our long-term plan, as you know, is to follow the Solution Exchange with the development of a network of small problem solving groups. Each group will consist of people who met on the site and live close enough to each other to meet face-to-face on a regular basis. The purpose of these meetings would be to plan and take whatever action they agree on. When small groups join with other groups that share the same view and are willing for the same action, political movements form. Many such movements, taking different action, each from their own point of view, could result in the first functioning participatory democracy. That's admittedly a far-fetched fantasy at this point in our social evolution, but aren't all dreams far-fetched until they aren't -- and you have to start someplace, don't you?
I agree with your thoughts about immediate steps to eradicate famine, but I think you underestimate the difficulty of doing that, whatever the nature of the famine. The problem of hunger, or any unsatisfied human need, is not as easy to solve as just sharing food with the hungry people you have contact with. Nor are any of the other problems of poverty. But after much long, hard thought, I do have some ideas I can express that don't need a lot of time to begin to implement. I intend to write them and post them, together with many other ideas about what's to be done about the problems that exist. I hope that people who see my posts and agree will make contact to plan and then to take action. Or, a more likely result of whatever I post, is that someone will come up with better ideas than mine. My hope is that somewhere along the line, some action will be taken.
Towers made of durable and cheap materials
You make a series of points, all of which I want to respond to. I think we agree in more ways than you realize.
First, about our conversation about police brutality. I have somehow given you the impression that I object to your interest in publicizing the police brutality examples that you posted. I don’t. If you see an opportunity to have impact, I think you should take it. You probably won’t have much impact by talking about it on the Solution Exchange, because, as you point out, we don’t have many active users yet. Because of this, I made the assumption that you are seeking to have impact on the issue elsewhere, and were posting it here with a slightly different goal – to brainstorm possible longer term solutions. As you wrote above:
This is precisely what I thought you were doing all along – taking immediate action elsewhere, and simultaneously raising the issue of “police brutality” as a problem needing solutions. It was primarily in that latter vein that I tried to respond. I didn’t mean to start a big discussion about “legal technicalities.” As I tried to explain, I intend to check out anything people post as “facts” and post what I find. But the main thing I was trying to do in responding to you was to look beyond the specific incidents you introduced to the larger question of what can be done about police brutality as a widespread problem. I thought that this was in line with your own intentions, but either way, I didn’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t be trying to raise awareness about the specific incidents.
Leaving aside this recent conversation, and whatever misunderstandings we may have had, there is the larger question of immediate action vs. long-term solutions. I don’t think we differ much here; perhaps we have a little difference of emphasis.
What makes the conference in your allegory an Ivory Tower, if I'm following you, is that the people running the conference are not relating to the immediate needs of the local people. They're so busy dreaming up the "perfect plan" to solve the problem, and congratulating each other on how caring and brilliant they are, that they completely miss the immediate suffering that's literally happening right outside their door.
This fits my definition of an Ivory Tower, as well, which is very similar to the definition offered in the Wikipedia article you quoted: "a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life."
The operative word here, in my mind, is "disconnected." What makes a place an Ivory Tower is it's separation from the world it is studying or influencing. I think you and I are on the same page there. But you seem to add an additional emphasis -- the dichotomy between short vs. long-term approaches to problems. You keep stressing the concerns of the famined populace, which are “real,” in contrast to the ”20 year plan,” which is by implication more abstract and less real. Now I think that this is very often the case – the 20 year plans are very often disconnected from the real needs of the people. But I don’t think this is because they look far into the future – I think it’s because they are drafted by the experts and academics in isolation, without the participation of the people.
The problem your allegory illustrates, from my point of view, is not that the conference is focused on solving poverty in the long-term rather than feeding the hungry right away; it's that the conference does not invite the indigenous people into the discussion. The assumption is that they don't have anything to contribute to that conversation, that they are simply interested in getting food right away.
Now, this may be true, to a certain extent. People who are literally starving right now need their immediate needs addressed. But I would bet that there are many others who are not quite so desperate and therefore could contribute in indispensable ways. And the starving could quickly be brought along, as well, once their immediate crisis has been addressed. I strongly believe that until we find a way to include the people "on the ground," there will be no good solutions to poverty, long or short term, or really any other issue. This is really one of the premises upon which the idea for ActivistSolutions.org was based. We have to find ways to expand the conversation about both short and long term solutions. The academics and experts need to actually engage with the people affected by their ideas, and find out what they think about them. The "common" people need to stop waiting for the government and NGOs and academics to come up with the solutions, and start thinking about what could work in their communities.
I agree with you that there needs to be "a balance between short term goals and a long term vision." But how do we strike that balance? Who decides? The problem that I have seen in literally every movement, campaign, or cause I have put time or money into is one of disconnection. Disconnection between the people making decisions and the people carrying out those decisions. Disconnection between both of these groups and the people affected by the decisions. My greatest ambition is to begin remedying this problem, because I strongly believe that the solutions we come up with and try to act on will ultimately fail until these connections are made. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, and I support and applaud anyone who takes action of any kind to make things better. But there are many sites already dedicated to taking immediate action. I don't think there are enough places dedicated not just to taking action, but to thinking and talking about what actions should be taken. And to the extent such places do exist, there are not enough of them where everyone is invited to the discussion.
So when you conclude that the conference goers should invite the starving people in to share their copious meals, I agree, but I am cynical about how much good that will do. In many ways, it will simply serve to assuage the guilt of the wealthy conference goers, who get to feel generous. The starving people won’t starve this week, but they probably will next week, so how much good did it really do them? But if they could actually participate in the conference, instead of just sharing the meals, then that might bring about some effective change. To begin with, they might succeed in getting the conference to shift its focus away from an exclusively 20 year framework to include short term solutions, as well.
I agree with what Mintza wrote above: the solutions to these problems are not so evident. Simply feeding people is more problematic than it appears. I'll give you an example, a scenario that has repeated in Africa over and over again. There is a famine. It gets some media attention. Western NGOs and governments respond, with the best of intentions, by flying in food aid to address the immediate problem. In so doing, they essentially bankrupt whatever local food economy there is. The few farmers able to produce food can't easily sell it to a population getting it for free. This sets the table for the next famine. Now, if the well intentioned NGOs and governments were to come in and buy the food from the local producers, instead of buying it abroad and flying it in, you might simultaneously feed the starving and support the development of a local food economy. The best solution is not short term or long term, but both. But this is precisely why the decision-making needs to be less insular. Without involving all the parties involved – the starving people, the struggling farmers, the Aid workers on the ground – the best-intentioned outsiders will continue to miss the boat.
As I wrote above, I don't think we really disagree. If we do, I don't think it is a problem. I think there is more than enough "room," both on the site and in the world, for discussion of long-term solutions and calls for immediate action.