Former prisons minister in the Conservative government, Rory Stewart is currently presenting The Long History of Ignorance: From Confucius to QAnon on BBC Radio 4. The programme airs on Thursday from 10.30 to 11.00am. It is also available on BBC Sounds.
His central point is that in a society where we are taught that knowledge is power, we are all busy trying to accumulate facts and explanations, and that this leads us to grave mistakes and, ultimately, to conspiracy theories. As he says, “the desire for knowledge can make us believe lies”.
Appearing on the programme are Mary Beard, former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; Derry-born singer-songwriter Neil Hannon and former head of MI5 Jonathan Evans. And there is also any number of academics including Michael Ignatieff.
They’re all saying that there is so much we don’t know. “We don’t know how the brain works, and that’s a pretty big question,” says Stuart Firestein, who is a neurobiologist.
You can’t help feeling that the series does not make enough of some of its remarkable contributors. This is especially the case with Derek Black, who is the son of Don Black, and grew up in a loving home which was also the centre of a white supremacist website, promoting the conspiracy theory of evil Jewish cabals running the world, and the intellectual inferiority of black people and other racist beliefs. Derek Black is very interesting about how he came to abandon racial hatred, not by being argued with, but by making Jewish friends and being accepted by them.
The episodes cover different areas of human endeavour including psychology, creativity and politics. The politics episode is particularly interesting given Stewart’s previous career. He held six ministerial portfolios in four years. At one point, he says, he had to address the British parliament on the subject of Africa, a continent of 42 countries about which he knew next to nothing.
He argues, in this religion of knowledge, something has been lost.
Stewart walked across Afghanistan, covering up to 35 kilometres a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment