Recommendations that challenge our assumptions
What ideas shape our society? The think tank INVI recommends a podcast, a speech and a book that takes a critical look at what we rarely question - an important exercise for both thinking and creating new things and finding inspiration in old insights.
Esben Dahl Sørensen, Head of Secretariat at INVI, recommends the podcast Past Present Future
There is so much we take for granted about the society we live in. Democracy and institutions. Freedom and community. These are ideas that frame everyday life in our little corner of the world. But it didn't happen by itself. It is the sum of a stream of ideas that have traveled along winding roads throughout history before they became commonplace for us. One small bump, one fateful moment, and much could have been different.
So it's a great reminder for me - and perhaps others - to hear author Lea Ypi and Cambridge professor David Runciman discuss the history of ideas in the podcast Past Present Future. Ypi in particular, who grew up in communist Albania, has interesting perspectives on ideas like freedom and democracy. She remembers what everyday life looks like in their absence. It's worth listening to at a time when the free world is facing increasingly aggressive and authoritarian states. And when we need to remind each other that we, who are living right now, are responsible for the continued journey of democratic ideas.
Michael Spjuth, creative writer at INVI, recommends David Foster Wallace's dimmision speech to Kenyon College, 2005: 'This Is Water'.
I venture to assume that you, as a reader of the INVI newsletter, have an aspiration to challenge knee-jerk reactions and habitual thinking. David Foster Wallace animates this beautifully in this speech. He opens with a simple parable:
Two young fish swim past an older fish who greets them: "Morning boys, how's the water". They swim a little further before one of them puts their confusion into words: "What the hell is water?".
The point is not that age and experience provide access to deeper insights, but rather that the most obvious and crucial basic assumptions are often difficult to see and be aware of.
Furthermore, DFW points out that - while we all have embedded frames of understanding - the influence of active, personal choice on how we understand the world cannot be neglected. At least if we see ourselves as thinking people.
Maintaining critical awareness requires us to be a little less confident and occasionally challenge the assumptions we take for granted. Easy enough to say, hard to practice. That's why, in DFW's image, we must persistently remind ourselves: This is water, this is water.
As you read this, your gut reaction might be a healthy wonderment at how an American author's speech from 2005 could possibly be relevant to cultivating a break with the dogmas that prevent us from tackling wild problems.
So I'll just add that DFW has also written an excellent report on a political campaign and some of the campaign logic that stands in the way of real change. An assignment that Rolling Stone Magazine hired him for - and he excelled at - precisely because of his outsider perspective as "not a political journalist". It's for the avid reader or listener, but dazzlingly illuminates how difficult it can be to challenge stifling counterproductive patterns of behavior in politics without falling into the same. In my library (Copenhagen) it is available as an online article titled 'The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and the Schrub', elsewhere it can be read or heard under the title 'Up, Simba!
Finally, I can't resist paying tribute to psychologist and Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Daniel Kahnemann, who passed away last week, on March 27. The most important points from his life's work as a drum major for understanding our biases and spinal reactions - in line with DFW's speech - can be dutifully (re)read in the canonized work "Thinking, Fast and Slow", from 2011.
Listen to David Foster Wallace's speech here
Frederik Chrsistensen, intern at INVI, recommends the books 'Regime Change' by Patrick Deneen and 'The State' by Plato.
Fundamentally, what is our vision for the state? How should society be governed, who should it be governed by, and where should it go?
These are fundamental questions that can often be forgotten in a world that is racing ahead at an unprecedented speed.
There are many answers to the above questions, and we at INVI are not going to make up our minds about what is right. However, I will not refrain from making a few suggestions that will get you thinking and give rise to debate.
The first is from ancient Greece and the author is one of the greatest in our history, Plato. 'The State' is the first coherent attempt to outline what our state and society should look like.
Plato argues, among other things, how society should be divided into different social groups, with the 'philosopher kings' at the top of the hierarchy as the rulers of society.
It may seem distant to us today, but if you take a closer look at the structure of our society, you may find more similarities than you think. It's certainly food for thought.
The next recommendation is not from ancient Greece, but from contemporary America. In his book Regime Change from 2023, the political philosopher and professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame in the US points out that new thinking does not necessarily require new ideas.
Rather, we may already have access to the wisdom that can steer our society in a better direction. In short, the ideas are there, but they need new life.
Patrick Deneen attempts to give them such a new life and breath of fresh air in his book Regime Change.
Here he challenges Plato's construction of the top-down society.
Instead, we need to value practical knowledge and intuition more.
Deneen reminds us that we have forgotten Aristotle's teachings about the good society. And that this originates from below, not from above, as Plato would have it.
Aristotle upholds not so much technical reason as practical and universal reason.
This does not mean that expert knowledge should be rejected, on the contrary. However, Deneen points out that it is ever-changing and constantly evolving, and that it must therefore take a more humble place. That it must be supplemented and informed by concrete and lived life.
At a time when trust in politicians is at an all-time low, there might be something to it.