Heaven on earth

Kevin Moss | 19:25, 11th June 2016

The hordes of visitors traipse happily around the venue, or bask in the unfettered warmth of the sun's rays, occasionally diving into one of the cool, dark marquees in order to encounter celebs, or listen to keynote speakers – all of whom will be signing their new books afterwards.

This is the Hay Festival. If ever there was a kind of physical embodiment of the warmest aspirations of the 18th Century philosophes, it is this place. If books, the writing and reading of them, the owning of them, and the discussion of them could form the basis of a new heaven on earth, then this would be a great place to start.

If books ... and the discussion of them could form the basis of a new heaven on earth, then this would be a great place to start.

It is no coincidence that those French Enlightenment thinkers began their utopian project by reformulating human knowledge into the Encyclopédie. These huge volumes were part of a bigger polemic which attempted to suggest that all knowledge was secular, material knowledge – and there are plenty of fat, atheist tomes adorning the shelves at the Hay book tent. Indeed, this somewhat self-indulgent, corpulent and godless mindset seems all-pervasive.

It is easier to imagine utopia when the sun is shining. The portaloos are a clear hint to the limitations of what may be achievable on earth, but there are certainly compensations in terms of the quality of the speakers. Amongst others, we've opted to join the atheist faithful in the Christopher Hitchens Lecture, delivered most ably by David Aaronovitch, and dealing with the new challenges raised by 'safe spaces' and free speech. It is, indeed, a bit like church inside the 'Tata Tent' – a kind of breathless veneration pertains before Aaronovitch emerges, clerically, from the vestry, and some effort is directed to channeling the presence and authority of one of atheism's greatest saints, The Hitch himself. We are reminded, pungently, of the Eternal Atheisticness of late lamented Hitch – a kind of secular equivalent of Mary's Perpetual Virginity. It seems that even 21st century Enlightenment thinkers cannot function without the appropriation of religious motifs for their own devices, but this has been ever the case.

Aaronovitch is, by any assessment, superb. He chronicles for his audience the recent cases in both the USA and UK where free speech, and the free engagement with ideas has been radically curtailed by a militant minority on university campuses who demand the right not to be offended in any way. He recounts the persecution of the Yale professor, Erika Christakis and her husband to audible expressions of horror from the audience, and then covers a number of other key examples of this phenomenon, including that of Germaine Greer. Aaronovitch is very clear about the dangers of all of this, commending an excellent article in 'The Atlantic', and flagging up the real dangers of what he describes as "vindictive protectiveness" and "an exaggerated punitive outrage against what others are allowed to say". These descriptions are most apt, accurately describing the new culture: Aaronovitch's capacity for expression, and his ability to respond thoughtfully and relevantly to his questioners is something we might desire from our politicians.

... much effort is devoted to describing the thing itself, the anti-libertarian response to discomfiting ideas ...

As with most modern secularist thinking, much effort is devoted to describing the thing itself, the anti-libertarian response to discomfiting ideas, born out of a febrile, fragmented persona, held together only by an elastoplast of simplistic memes ('black rights', 'gay rights', 'trans rights'). Both Aaronovitch and his audience seem to share the view that this is deeply unhealthy, and there are expostulations that we "ought" to handle conflicting ideas, as a culture. But moving from the mere description of facts, to some kind of "this is how we ought to manage things" is not always straightforward, especially when our secular education system has spent decades excising from our way of thinking any reliable basis for the "ought".

Christians in the West know first hand how this works in practice; perhaps the secular left is beginning to discover these unsettling truths for itself.

Outside, in the bright sunlight, I was grateful for an opportunity to speak to Aaronovitch. Clearly, he is highly exercised over this issue of freedom of expression, so what (I asked) might we do about it? His response was, on one level, entirely reasonable, and on another, deeply unsettling. Aaronovitch has little faith in the intuition or ability of politicians to take the right measures, and with that view I would concur: our politicos seem driven either by pragmatism or ideology, and rarely by the exercise of reason. Consistent with his own atheism, he shuns the kinds of principled morals that he associates with 'the church', but then he recognises that what we are left with is merely "subjective". And, of course, when morality is denatured in this way, how we go about agreeing 'your right' to free expression, and 'my right' to free expression devolves down to a whole new spectrum of equalities, the kind that George Orwell wrote powerfully about in 'Animal Farm'. Christians in the West know first hand how this works in practice; perhaps the secular left is beginning to discover these unsettling truths for itself.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the opportunity to tell people what they do not want to hear.
(George Orwell, from the foreword to 'Animal Farm', 1945)