Calum Nicholson – An Anthropology of our Age of Discord

Dr. Calum Nicholson, a scholar at the University of Cambridge and the Danube Institute, speaks with John Bell about the cultural undercurrents impacting politics everywhere – including spurious Western attitudes, assumptions, and habits vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

Nicholson is a specialist and consultant on ‘climate migration’, as well as on the historical significance of social media. He teaches courses on international development, international migration and the impact of social media at the University of Cambridge.

00:00 – Intro
02:08 – Failures in the West’s intervention in Afghanistan
08:31 – The epidemic of hubris in the West
13:47 – The lost lessons of humility
18:44 – What is pluralism?
24:11 – The island mentality of the Anglosphere
27:53 – The end of the pretense of US moral legitimacy
32:23 – America as a culture that has exhausted itself
35:02 – The U.S. is transitioning to a new era
37:54 – Our agreed upon truths have de-composed
41:11 – Future political schism between visions of a digital and analogue world
44:58 – We need a better anthropology of ourselves
48:45 – Narratives have a warping effect on how we relate to each other
53:09 – Narratives are a magic that bewitch us

[Katia-Trost]

Listening to someone with the ability for complex thought and who understands systems is very relaxing. So hard to find nowadays. Great conversation.

[marktyrrell]

Fascinating, thank you. It's a seeming paradox in that we, western societies, have become complement and hubristic and yet we desperately doubt ourselves; have lost confidence. Perhaps two sides of the same coin.

[lembittork]

Fascinating. Thanks John and Calum! Many moments of recognition. Sitting in the cool air of my apple garden I was tempted to get a pencil to take notes every 90 seconds. Icebreaker-wise, my core "objectivity of pluralism" stance has me informing people that I'm indeed biased. In these and these ways. The idea generally being: So mebbe git off of yer high horse, pardner, own up to yours too, to take some edge off our "island mentalities"? C/o culture, education, civilisational consensus/ normality biases, personal histories. And neurology. I was shocked to discover my father had serious dental work done without novocaine. Ouch! He said he didn't like the thick tongue feeling and drooling into his collar afterwards. Yeah. And I don't like being tortured. So already from "body" should we be surprised some of our "filtering" forming our base perceptions differ so? "Archaeology of ourselves". "Bewitchment of words". Self-hypnosis thru narrative? We're swimming in it. A. Watts: "A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily". And a special joy was considering Calum's suggestion of the future determined by a bifurcation into 2 phyles, "the digital and analog". That was a beaut. Cheers from bonny Estonia!

[ellengran]

I my view, he is right. We all really need to take a good look at ourselves and our own culture.

[danzanegra]

"'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear" - Antonio Gramsci

[andrewross]

Many thanks Callum. Your theory on "narrative" relativity is very powerful indeed.

"Bewitched" is a passive word. I believe a more active descriptor, that takes personal ownership of the "narrative dream" we self-create, may be needed.
What you describe is an active process: it's antidote being in witnessing and remembrance.

[thurstonhowellthetwelf]

Excellent guest, some great incites..thankyou so much..

[Liisa]

The digital vs analog scenario for the future is spot on interesting. I'm mostly for the analog, but of course I do not want to ditch all digital. So far I have chosen not to have a smartphone and it seems to be a bit of a trend among young people to go back to dumb phones, maybe keeping a smartphone as a secondary device, but still, taking back their time off-line.

[donnadumare]

I'm all for accepting pluralism as a given. I'm concerned about the lack of awareness of this a priori is the failure of modernity. IMHO of course.

[viasha]

whilst appreciating points made about inadequacies of the west, I would love to know whether he attributes anything like as much fallibility to the east, with particular reference to afghanistan, middle east, etc? genuine question, just curious. only just today discvered this guy, still mulling over this vid.

[curiousfella]

Analogue union sounds cool but so why not have a 5 times more productive society as well?

[Jindinhackerhelp]

Do this Dr really believe usa went to Afghanistan to implement democracy 😂

[vincentquintero]

this two guys live in they own comfortable worlds with out worry about ends meat go to the reallityof poor people and stop talking as if you knew the truth

[selfpityingslogan]

kinda feels like the centre is going thru some sort of identity crisis lmao i believe the sentiment that people need to put humility before their ego in order to discover the greater good, but the centre simply loves to pretend that they're the Just Right melting pot when imo they're just a separate political class that need to realise this and act accordingly - a culture obsessed with the supposed virtues of apoliticality and demonstrating Hubris to distance themselves from the attraction of ideology - 'we're too good for that, we're too rational for that sort of base impulse' and also, this repetitive superstition from the 'centre' always pretends it's all fair game & we're all playing to the same tune, we just have different ways of going about it ~ to morally equivocate about the supposed mirroring of left and right misses the morales in any basic policy making, where the attention is at:

the left: the working people (& the conscientious liberalism of the middle classes)
the right: the capitalist elite (& the bored reactionary grievance of the petite bourgeoisie)
the 'centre': the institution (& the happy consent of the capitalist elite)

there is so much hubris in pretending that we're just Over moral discussions, that it leads to some sort of Sense/Sensibility schism we can't come back from. it's not the case, being a left wing person & advocating for redistributive wealth so people don't Have to live in poverty bc of an economic system is NOT the same as being a right wing person advocating removing civil rights from all marginalised people, encouraging the exploitation of anything that comes near you, or simply people to become comfortable with poverty in order for a small few (often of a a supposedly elevated racial cast) to benefit.


to conclude, i think the asking of the question here is Good, but the liberals need to figure out what side of history they want to be on, really - a side that advocates to save humanity from itself (the humility of giving oneself over to the greater good, not individualistic ideas of stoic, proud centrism, ie. Rory Stewart (Tory)), or a side that doesn't care about organic things, like the approach taken by US foreign policy. the greatest failing of liberals perception of themselves is that they believe they're incorruptible, that they're level headed and true. this is why there's such a flexi between centre-left/centre-right communities, it's why the Labour Party has become a hybrid of the two bc of this Hubris of moral clarity - there is an arrogance in saying 'everyone else is just dumb and infighting and if only they could just get it together' when you literally won't admit to yourself that You Have Bias, and that that's ok! we all do, but at least the left's bias is to make life materially better for people explicitly, whereas the centre is basically now the PMC class that is used to bossing people around and ultimately can't deal with the fact that they've had power for so long (or had close proximity to it), and they just don't know what to do with it....

[JorgeOrpinel]

Wait so he thinks it's nonsense to determine whether things that happened in the past like colonialism were good or bad? (Terrible example btw because that is still happening.) At the same time he complains that people forget lessons of history XD Hey, "the past is the past", don't worry about it!