January 15, 2021
LIVE NOT BY LIES:
PODCAST: Living in Truth - Vaclav Havel on Existential Dissent & the Re-discovery of Conscience (Michael Matheson Miller, The Moral Imagination)In this episode I speak with Flagg Taylor about the Czech playwright, dissident, and political figure Vaclav Havel.
We discuss his idea of dissent as living in truth. For Havel, dissent is not primarily a political act, but an existential one--it is a dissent from ideology, from the politicization of life, from false narratives, political fashion, and consumerism.We discuss a number of his essays, including a letter to Dr. Husack, his very famous essay, Power of the Powerless, Stories and Totalitarianism, and we talk about some of his plays including The Audience. We also discuss Havel's life and some key events like Charter 77, and his shift from a writer to a political figure.Though many of his plays and essays were written in the 1970s and 80s under Czechoslovakian communism, I think they are very relevant to our time. Havel stresses the importance of self-awareness and how to avoid thinking only in ideological categories that we see all over the left and right. We discuss the idea of dissent and theatre and culture, and how dissent is sometimes as simple as sitting down with one's family and reading together, playing music together, doing theatre, and so on. The family of Vaclav Benda did just this--part of their dissent from communist rule was Mrs. Benda simply reading the Lord of the Rings to their 6 children each night.
Nice to hear an intelligent discussion between two conservatives who survived the Trump years undemented. Their discussion provoked one particular insight though not the direct subject they were addressing. The totalitarianisms of the 20th century necessarily tried to create a New Man, one who fit their ideologies. This required a denial of the whole human who actually exists. The impossibility of the task and the inevitable disproof of the ideology then leads to a regime that has to rely on lies. Later they talk about the prevalence of belief in conspiracies.
This all ties into the current cancer of Nationalisms as well, particularly in the American context. Our regime proceeds from self-evident truth that all men are Created equal. Trumpism instead imagines that one race (and gender) is supreme. Yet, no matter how firm their faith in the ideology, reality refutes it. So their leader has to lie to them and create a web of fantasy to maintain the illusion that the ideology is sound. The nervous breakdown we've seen on the Right is a function of those lies falling apart as their avatar is booted from office in a victory for everything(one) they hate; blacks, women, Latinos, Muslims, etc. The triviality of whiteness and maleness are being rubbed in their face. This is their moment of Glasnost, when the curtain came down and the people of the Communist world were confronted with the reality of how backwards their nations were, how catastrophically ideology had failed them. And for those on the Right who bitterly cling to the White Supremacist ideology, how do you explain that the "superior" men are failing? Why, naturally, it must be due to conspiracies!
Not only is the pod worthwhile in itself, the frissons of recognition it sets off make it thoroughly topical.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 15, 2021 5:18 PM