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Turning the Level of Civilisation up a TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHALLENGE

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Turning the Level of Civilisation up a TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHALLENGE Turning the Level of Civilisation Up A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHALLENGE JULIANNE SCHULTZ It Is a great prIvIlege to be invited How can knowledge of what Stephen to present this address, the 49th Academy Muecke calls the ‘cultural confederacy’ of Lecture—who would have thought when the interrelated communities, languages and theme was set a year ago that it would be just cultures of the First Australians shape us?1 so timely! Why don’t more of us know more about First, though, I would like to acknowledge this, and the lessons that can be drawn from the traditional owners of the land, the such survival? Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. It is How can we as moral citizens have been particularly fitting at a conference focussed on complicit, if not directly and personally, in the civilisations, that we pay tribute to the people historic attempts to wipe it out, but by not who are the custodians of what is arguably the succeeding in our lifetimes to find a respectful, oldest living civilisation on earth. meaningful and lasting settlement? This is not something to say glibly, but What lessons can we learn from these something to savour and interrogate. It is a successes and failures, in trying to find an statement that, quite frankly, when you think ethic for our times? about it, takes your breath away. 60,000 How can this inform the creation of a years is not geological time—that runs into distinctive, pluralist, best possible Australian the hundreds of millions of years—but it is civilisation? One that responds to the place long enough to have seen the physical nature and the people who call this land home in of this place profoundly change. For bays, a world that is confronting more than the beaches, cliffs to emerge and disappear and usual number of challenges. reappear again, and for people to have found These are, I am sure you would agree, a way to survive, struggle, make meaning and big questions to spin out of a few words of flourish together. Contrary to the perspective acknowledgement. But that is the business of those who arrived from the northern we are in: posing big questions that stretch hemisphere this was not barbarism in need of the brain. And little ones that add complexity civilisation, but a different way of being. on the path, we hope, to greater clarity. Trying What does it mean, to use the phrase the to understand how what happened before oldest living civilisation? shapes the now and influences the future, and ▲ Background photo by Alessandro What can we learn from those who hold its the challenge of making a future of our own Melis. Modified secrets, especially at a time when the planet is choosing. Simply seeking to define, so we can with overlay of facing at least one existential threat? see things better. Things that others might soundwave graphic. IMAGE: UNSPLASH 6 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 like to think are obvious—just common sense, democracies and authoritarianism. Meanwhile plain as the nose on your face. But there is our affluence, casual cruelty towards those with always more: history, context, language, science, less and calcifying institutions has not revealed economics, politics, philosophy, culture. our best selves. We have been responding defensively, rarely imagining or arguing for new ——— ways of being that might be more appropriate Earlier this year I took long service leave. for the twenty-first century. We have not learnt I was pleased to discover this was one of the the right lessons. enduring benefits of colonial society. A century So I interpreted the challenge Joy, ago travel ‘home’ would take many weeks and Bronwen Neil and Catriona Mackenzie gave so became a long-anticipated reward for an me to find a way of addressing Huntington’s extended period of work. Now that travel is final entreaty—to ‘identify elements of as simple as a click on a computer screen, the commonality’—from a somewhat unlikely flash of a credit card and a dash to the airport perspective. The world has problems, but as for a twelve- or twenty-hour flight, its rationale Huntington argued ‘different civilisations need has changed. to learn to co-exist with each other.’4 But, having done my time I took my So too in this great south land. How reward not long after agreeing to deliver might we draw on ancient, colonial, this address and drafting an abstract. It modern and contemporary traditions to is fair to say, I was still wondering what create a sustainable, hybrid civilisation that I would say. The starting point Joy Damousi respects people and place and provides a gave me was the reassessment, a couple of beacon to others? decades on, of Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash ——— of Civilizations’ thesis.2 You will recall that at the time this generated heated debate. So with this brief in my head I reached Huntington provocatively introduced the Singapore. On day one, decompressing by notion of passionately held difference into the pool, the Straits Times front page on a world that was supposed to have reached the 1st of June provocatively addressed my peak homogeneity, even the end of history. challenge: Has the West Lost It?5 Local grandee He disputed the notion that a universal Kishore Mahbubani argued that it was time civilisation was within reach and that cultural, for the West to seek to influence rather than religious, ethnic and political variation had dominate, to recognise that the rest of the been smudged into distinctions without world has taken advantage of the spirit of difference. Huntington quite wisely cautioned Western reasoning and been transformed— us not to be so hasty. Fault lines still existed at economically, socially and culturally. That with the ‘micro level’ over territory.3 At the ‘macro a little humility, a little more openness and level’ of military and economic power and the diplomacy, and less military might, a global enabling framework of institutions, politics, utopia may be within reach. values, culture and religion. He noted with a Then, because it was just day one of my long prescience that only became really clear to the service leave, I turned to The Australian. There rest of us on the 9th of September 2001, that on the front page was one of its ubiquitous cultural and religious differences were still real exclusives: ‘Fury as ANU dumps study of and defining. He was right, triumphalism was Western civilisation.’ Accompanying the report not only unattractive, but actually dangerous. was the full text of the ‘at a loss to understand’ Over the past two decades we have letter from the former Prime Minister John been distracted by wars and terrorism; by Howard, the chair of the Ramsay Centre which globalisation and technology; by the apparently had been in discussion with the university for impossible consequences of climate change; months. The somewhat menacing last line of while greedily eyeing the increasing affluence his letter made it clear that this was political, of the region, and watching the rise of illiberal not a normal commercial negotiation: ‘I intend HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 10 · 2019 7 ► Collection of Just a little light reading. books. And a weeping IMAGE: JULIANNE SCHULTZ Aphrodite, a memento from the extraordinary Acropolis ► Head of a goddess, perhaps Museum, and its moving Aphrodite. Marble evocation of the history copy of a gold and of myth, civilisation, war, ivory statue of the classical period, ambition, plunder and 2nd c (EAM 244), restoration. Acropolis Museum, It seemed appropriate Greece. IMAGE: JULIANNE that in these testing times the Greek goddess of SCHULTZ love, beauty, pleasure and procreation should to release our correspondence.’ Signed with be crying. Never mind that what appears to be the flourish of a hand that had despatched her tears are the oxidation of what were once thousands of letters. bronze eyelashes. Line up, line up, I thought. This is just the There is a bit to cry about. sort of stoush they love. They will nurture it: Or laugh. ivory tower versus the real world, with News In October 2005 Stephen Colbert was just Corp the white knight demanding that the starting his eponymous show. It is somewhat ivory be honed a certain way. It will run and chilling to realise that this was when he came run. As you know it did, and still does. up with the word truthiness: it seems so now, as ——— you will see if you watch it on YouTube. It has taken a while to reach maturity and morphed Some weeks later in Greece, after an intense, into the even more menacing trumpiness. reading, museuming, sleeping, swimming, Truthiness captures the slippery world eating break I had a couple of dozen books inhabited by those unencumbered by books, or I didn’t need to lug around any longer. facts, context or complexity—for those who just A local shopkeeper packed them in a Corfu know with their heart rather than their heads— Beer box and I entrusted it to the somewhat where things can just feel truthful.6 idiosyncratic Greek postal service. I watched the postmaster, who had left his key at home ► Stephen Colbert discusses that day put the box and 50 euros on the front “truthiness” on the seat of his beat-up old car. He promised to debut episode of despatch them after the weekend. I had come The Colbert Report, CBS TV. to expect trust to beat process in austerity-torn IMAGE: CC BY-SA 3 Greece, but I wasn’t completely confident. But sure enough a couple of months later the Corfu Beer box arrived.
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