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Random outings

The title is provocative enough, if not exactly incendiary. But Andrew Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur with the subtitle ‘How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture’ is not really a technophobe or a Luddite.

He is quite a stakeholder in the Internet because he had a music Net startup called ‘Audiocafe’. Of course, this was during the dotcom boom era at the turn of this century. A 47-year-old north Londoner settled in California, he is game for an intellectual gladiatorial fight with geeks from all over. He has targeted the bloggers, Wikipedia — where anyone and everyone can add his or her stuff on any topic — and YouTube. And he is unrelenting in his acerbic tone. He says, “Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys …are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity.” And he also lobbed other epithets like “intellectual kleptomaniacs” and “pajama army”. In turn, all that his enraged victims could think of calling him was “elitist intellectual” and “conservative”.

It is quite likely that his arguments which merit some serious rethink might just get lost in a loud clash of words and across the campuses of the west coast of the US of America. It has created enough clamour and confusion.

Once the noise dies down, there is, perhaps, need to consider Keen’s charges against the pulping of the Net. It is there for all to see, and there is no need to belabour the point. But Keen’s argument is not entirely original. Similar fears have been expressed on several occasions in the last 100 years or so. At least two examples come to mind — 19th century English poet and critic Mathew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, published in 1882, and Spanish thinker Jose Ortega Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses written in 1930. So Keen is not really a prophet in wilderness. Both Arnold and Ortega Gasset were worried about the toxic effects of the aam aadmi taking centrestage, and voicing his or her opinion on everything — simple and complex. There has always been this uneasy tension between democracy and culture, between the masses and the classes. Many sensitive and sensible individuals are truly worried about the dumbing down effects of democracy.

This is not an easy issue to resolve. It is not a case of a simple right and wrong. Most of us would like to believe that deferring to elites smacks of feudalism, and that the views and feelings of an ordinary person are as important as those of the most sensitive.

But we will come up with a genuine difficulty on this path. We will soon discover that most believe more and more in the same things, and there is really not much differentiation. Secondly, and this is the point that Keen is eager to make, it is true that those who have the platform now to express their views and take a stand of their own are not equipped to meet the challenge. They are not sufficiently informed, and they have not given enough thought to the matter.

Many of us have to make the difficult and honest decision: We have to decide whether standards and quality are important, whether there is a difference between a Picasso and a toddler who draws. Though our hearts may be in the right place, and we support the logic of democracy that everyone has the right to air one’s view and be heard, it will be necessary to say that not all views have the same value.

But it does not mean that only some are capable of giving out worthy views. Anyone can, provided he or she thinks and ponders hard enough. The temptation to give up the idea of excellence in favour of singing the praises of the masses is indeed great, especially for liberals. But they should resist populism, and even risk the anger of the masses. That is what being a liberal, a good liberal, a classical liberal, is all about. Be unpopular for the right cause.

Email: r_parsa@dnaindia.net