The Age of Anger: Pankaj Mishra
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- Опубліковано 2 лис 2022
- The Age of Anger: Pankaj Mishra
Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of our center, believed that persuasion was at the heart of civilized government. At the same time, however, Arendt well knew the limits of persuasion. When confronted by ingrained prejudices, ironclad ideologies, or faceless bureaucracies, reasoned persuasion stands little chance. The well-known "rage against the machine" is a rational response to a bureaucratic system of power that claims to be rational, natural, and unavoidable. The real source of rage, Arendt understood, is a sense of powerlessness born of "a much deeper hatred of bourgeois society." Arendt sees that in the face of such hypocritical quasi-rational structures of power, rage can often appear to be "the only way to set the scales of justice right again."
Rage can seem righteous just as today rage against immigrants, white people, and experts is justified by those crusaders who argue that in an unjust and hypocritical system, rage is necessary for radical political change. Such collective rage may inspire virtues of courage, loyalty, and meaning; but the virtues of rage come at a cost: It is the disintegration of the common sense and common viewpoints that unites us beyond our political, racial, class, and sexual identities.
Faith in a rational politics was shaken in the 1930s, but the rise of totalitarian governments led democracies to reject a politics of angry mobilization. We are witnessing, once again, the retreat of reason and the return of rage as a key driver of political and social relations. At a moment when materially comfortable societies are teetering and the visceral attraction of tribalism is rising all around us, we must ask how our liberal democracies can survive and thrive amidst intensifying partisanship and the decline of public reason. The flip-flopping, nonscientific nature of our collective responses to travel bans, vaccines, masks, and lockdowns make clear that public discourse is driven by emotions rather than reason.
Social Media is not to blame for the rage that is ravishing our society, but the algorithms that drive social media do allow emotional and angry opinions to spread with unprecedented vigor and vitality. It is easy to condemn social media for its filter bubbles, its spread of rumors and conspiracies, and its polarizing impact on our lives; social media is so successful in splintering our society, however, because the very foundations of liberal democracies are so tenuous. And the rage that social media thrives upon answers a real need for belonging and conflict and sacrifice at the heart of the human condition.
The Hannah Arendt Center Conference Rage and Reason responds to the undeniable fact that rage and emotions are increasingly a force in our political and cultural lives. We ask:
• How can democratic rage be harnessed in social and political movements?
• Is rage essential to call out systemic and ingrained injustice?
• How can a politics of rage acknowledge rational and expert authority?
• If humans are tribal beings, how can they live in multicultural liberal societies?
• Are experts and elites themselves simply one tribe defending their self-interests?
• Must social media contribute to the fracturing of society into raging tribes?
• Is there a common interest in society knowable through reason?
Above all, we ask, how can we uphold our liberal institutions and our common world in the midst of the polarization and fracturing of that world?
what an articulate speaker is Mr. Mishra , thank you
The notes that HAC attached to this video are spot on IMO. This 70 year old male would add that for me Ms Arendt's most powerful statement when she was challenged over her criticism of Jewish leaders failure to act against the scourge of Nazism 'at first I am human' cracked open my mind. This realization united our current and rapidly growing knowledge of DNAs unimaginable power. Today we're 8 billion precious humans and every year another 80 million net new precious humans join us. DNA connects every human not only with each other but with the entire DNA based biosphere. This is the basis IMO for a new religion. A religion which casts off all of the cultural based myths humans have used to better understand who they are and what is their relationship to the greater world. Thanks to HAC for your work to open minds, eyes, hearts.
DNAs unimaginable power. That claim is a bit overdone. Given that we as a species, are irrational and so full of ourselves (look at the planet). Adios!
Excellent lecture !
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Interesting stuff. I just wonder why he always says 'resentment' in French.
That’s because he’s referring to Nietzsche, I think: “But the racism and misogyny routinely on display in social media, and demagoguery in political discourse, now reveals what Nietzsche, speaking of the ‘men of RESSENTIMENT’, called ‘a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts’. (Age of Anger, Prologue)
And just in case you’re wandering: we use the French term in German, so that’s why Nietzsche uses it. I hope that helps. :)
I also found that a bit funny
Oxford reference: "A vengeful, petty-minded state of being that does not so much want what others have (although that is partly it) as want others to not have what they have. The term, which might be translated as ‘resentment’, though in most places it is generally left in the original French, is usually associated with German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who defined it as a slave morality. Nietzsche sees ressentiment as the core of Christian and Judaic thought and, consequently, the central facet of western thought more generally. In this context, ressentiment is more fully defined as the desire to live a pious existence and thereby position oneself to judge others, apportion blame, and determine responsibility. Nietzsche did not invent the concept of ressentiment, it was a term that was very much ‘in the air’ in his lifetime (the late 19th century), as Fredric Jameson points out in his sharp critique of the concept in The Political Unconscious (1981). Jameson's quarrel with ressentiment, or more particularly Nietzsche's deployment of it, is that the latter fails to consider the ideological weight the term carried in its own time; thus, in Jameson's view Nietzsche fails to see that it is a category deployed by the ruling bourgeoisie elite to simultaneously justify their privileges and rationalize the denial of those same privileges to the poorer classes (on this view of things, the masses revolt not because their cause is just, but because they resent the rich)."
@undertheriverstone Thank you! I have learnt a thing!
@@benjamingeorgecoles8060 💌
Kudos to HAC crew to put this seminar as public access (watching from Valencia ESP) - Wish esteemed Pankaj Mishra spoke a bit more, about resistance, what can be done to counter - specifically about the rise of "Buffalo Nationalism" in India. The last 20 years to be precise, the rise of right-wing hindu hordes, perhaps in millions now, the biggest threat to the rest of Indians, and bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Nepalis etc (about 1.9 billion more or less).
any publication?
He has written a book under the same title, Age of Anger.
Mike Johnson had stage fright, complicated by fear of looking like a fool and a weakling compared to Nancy Pelosi. To manage the stage fright, someone taught him a few rudimentary stage expressions. But he was so self-conscious (and therefore out of touch with the room) that he could only get one of them on his face.
It reminds me of Anne Richards on the first Bush: “Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
Both speakers are bit too soft spoken for public speaking..wish they spoke bit louder.
Why he silent on Afghanistan Pakistan Arab Democracies and
He isn’t. Read the book.