# 70
It doesn’t get any easier. Events in the
reported world these last few weeks have left many of us by turns anxious,
angry, appalled, saddened or just profoundly depressed. It is difficult to sustain
a belief in the possibility of progress, of making a better future, when day by
day the broadcast news contains more of the medieval world than the modern. If
we cannot even respect each other’s lives, how can we claim to care about our
society, let alone the environment? When people are murdered at random, whether
by knives, rockets, bullets, car bombs, IEDs, sarin gas or missiles fired from
drones, civilisation is always the first casualty. Killing people is actually wrong.
After ten thousand years of civil society, do we still not know that? The
weaponry employed indicates a level of access to technology, not the ethical
standards of the killer. Murder remains murder; it is never excusable as
‘collateral damage’. Killing in the name of a religion diminishes all its
followers – especially those who are priests, imams, rabbis or sheikhs; the
schooled and the scholarly, whom you might suppose should at least know better.
Refugees are everywhere. What Blair and Bush
began as their ‘war on terror’ makes refugees of us all. Those not yet
physically dispossessed require places of refuge if they are to preserve their
sanity. For me, this week, one such place of safety became the British Museum. Established by Act of Parliament
in 1753 “…to be preserved and maintained not only for the Inspection and
Entertainment of the learned and the curious, but for the general Use and
Benefit of the Public”, Sir Hans Sloane’s original bequest embodied the 18th
Century Enlightenment’s ideals of Reason, Discovery and Learning. These remain
guiding lights in the present murderous gloom. They continue to form the basis
of all reliable and humane alternatives to any self-styled radical’s barmy
recital of opaque verses from whatever Holy Book comes to hand.
The Museum – literally ‘the temple of the
Muses’ - enjoys a serenity that belies the violence sometimes involved in the
creation of its ancient artefacts and their later, enforced, collection into this
one place. But as Lloyd Evans wrote in The Spectator recently, defending the
Museum against the prospect of cuts in its government funding, “To most of us
the museum is like drinkable tap water or tarmacked roads; it’s one of the
bare-minimum amenities of civilised life. You rely on it without giving it a
moment’s thought.”[i]
With our history so accessible, why have we
conceded ownership of the title ‘Radical’ to the forces of darkness? We grew up
associating ‘radical’ with anything even vaguely progressive; a popular
agitation, chipping away at the established structures of wealth and power.
English Whig parliamentarians began calling for ‘radical reform’ of the
electoral system in the 1790s. A few years later, supporters of Jeremy
Bentham’s utilitarian principles were called ‘philosophical radicals’ and gradually,
all over the world, the term ‘radical’ became attached to progressive, liberal,
reforming political movements and ideologies.
The ‘Radicals’ found in our history books
were often people motivated by religious beliefs but their ‘radicalism’ was
directed outward at economic, social and political reform. It was not
self-destructive and did not require actions which contradicted the basic
tenets of their faith. Religions have an appalling track-record in terms of
what happens when they do take power. History teaches that a secular democratic
state is the single best guarantee available of human rights, of any and all
religious freedoms and the toleration of dissent. Be your heart’s desire
ever-so ‘Radical’ or ever-so ‘Fundamental’, for God’s sake, let’s please just
keep our politics secular.
[i] ‘It’s madness to slash the British Museum’s budget.’ Lloyd Evans, The
Spectator, 01 June 2013.
