Changing the way we think, Cherwell, 24 October 2003, p. 11.
Miranda Kaufmann finds a new muse in Oxford don and idealist Theodore Zeldin
Theodore Zeldin, senior fellow at St. Anthony’s, is a man who wants to change the world. This is a statement people mock, but as he says: “The world needs mending. We know that we will make mistakes, we know that we will probably fail. That doesn’t matter. If we can make it one inch less cruel, that isn’t bad. If we can get two people to respect each other, that is an amazing step, because we’ve established equality.”
In his 70th year, he still has the idealism of a young man: “It’s taken me a long time to become young. Children ask excellent questions –'Why is that so' 'Because it is'- is not a good enough answer.” Zeldin feels that mankind’s next great adventure is to discover who really inhabits the earth. “My feeling is that, just as in the 15th century we discovered new lands, in the 20th century we discovered the moon and space, now we have the means to discover individuals.”
His project, the Oxford Muse, plans to “make a portrait of the inhabitants of Oxford, as a model for what other cities can do. It’s been adopted in Paris; 137 portraits will soon arrive from the Paris Business School, somebody in Brazil is also starting a Muse project. We’re discovering Oxford in a way that is astonishing. My ambition is to have 6 million portraits in which people say what they wish the world to know about them.”
“In Oxford, there are people who feel lost, who feel that their work makes no impression on them. Professors seem to be stuck, unable to progress with their thinking... One 45 year old Oxford resident who left school at 15, has no property, no pension... and he was absolutely brilliant intellectually. His self-portrait will be called 'What one can achieve without an Oxbridge education'...We had a blind woman who insisted on coming to see me- with her dog. She had tried to make her blindness an asset. One homeless man who came to me said 'The fact that you are listening to me really makes me feel appreciated.'”
The stories reveal that everybody lives behind a mask. “People don’t always put into practice the beliefs they claim to have. They say they believe in God, but that means many different things. We met one person who’s an absolutely fervent Christian, with great belief in God and God’s protection, and though she says it makes her feel comfortable with everyone, in fact there are great limitations to the number of people she feels comfortable with.”
Zeldin hopes his portraits will show the immense diversity of every religion, so the idea of a clash of civilisations will not be meaningful. “I think it’s one of our duties to stop the clashes in religion, which is why we’re doing this in Turkey, on the border of Islam. The attitude of religion to women is going to be of increasing importance. Women in Turkey are wearing Islamic clothes, and going to University, and developing a different kind of feminism.”
The way to understand different cultures is through conversation. “When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards. By discovering what other people are like you discover what the world is like. You can get beyond geographical boundaries- and we have the technology to make that possible. When we have all these portraits on a searchable database, we might have new kinds of relationships, and we’ll have a new kind of democracy. At the moment there is an increasing lack of interest in what politicians are doing, a crisis in democracy, but if each individual said 'this is what is important to me', then politicians could become intermediaries.”
His ideas are infectious: “a Professor of Medicine said my ideas might combat depression, predicted in the next 10 years to be the biggest cause of disability. Stress at work now affects 50% of workers- we’re creating a system that is killing us. Our methods can give people a chance to look outwards, get a purpose in life, an interest in helping others. This could become a preventative medicine, a scientific validation, of what we’re doing.”
As Associate fellow at Templeton College, and honorary professor at Paris Business School, Zeldin meets executives whose lives are miserable because they work nineteen hour days. He did a report on the 'Future of Work', supported by the European Commission. Work is inefficient, he concludes. He met a Peruvian accountant working as a chambermaid. People’s skills and interests should be harnessed in the workplace. Through talking to workers, and acting on discoveries, we can effect change.
He has developed a course, which is designed to be the opposite of the Oxford degree, which “will show you the problems of the major subjects, by giving you a list of the most modern, advanced, ground-breaking books, and getting the authors to lecture, so one is right at the frontiers of knowledge, not just learning, but participating in research designed to open up new directions.”
Zeldin also harnesses the arts. “Portraiture got stuck when people focussed on the individual face.” This cannot possibly reflect our multi-faceted personalities, “so artists are rethinking the art of portraiture. And abstract sculptor will create portraits of humanity. Each object could be surrounded by sounds. Two musicians, Vince Clark and Andy Bell (of Erasure) have invented a system by which a beam of sound is sent so as you watch this sculpture you’ll have a certain atmosphere of sound about you, and when you walk to another it’s a different one.”
Zeldin is trying to change the way people think. “Rather than concerning ourselves with getting richer, and wondering what to do with our wealth, we should try to help others, beginning by talking to them. Which is difficult.”
Inspired? The Oxford Muse would very much welcome your help. http://www.oxfordmuse.com
Theodore Zeldin, senior fellow at St. Anthony’s, is a man who wants to change the world. This is a statement people mock, but as he says: “The world needs mending. We know that we will make mistakes, we know that we will probably fail. That doesn’t matter. If we can make it one inch less cruel, that isn’t bad. If we can get two people to respect each other, that is an amazing step, because we’ve established equality.”
In his 70th year, he still has the idealism of a young man: “It’s taken me a long time to become young. Children ask excellent questions –'Why is that so' 'Because it is'- is not a good enough answer.” Zeldin feels that mankind’s next great adventure is to discover who really inhabits the earth. “My feeling is that, just as in the 15th century we discovered new lands, in the 20th century we discovered the moon and space, now we have the means to discover individuals.”
His project, the Oxford Muse, plans to “make a portrait of the inhabitants of Oxford, as a model for what other cities can do. It’s been adopted in Paris; 137 portraits will soon arrive from the Paris Business School, somebody in Brazil is also starting a Muse project. We’re discovering Oxford in a way that is astonishing. My ambition is to have 6 million portraits in which people say what they wish the world to know about them.”
“In Oxford, there are people who feel lost, who feel that their work makes no impression on them. Professors seem to be stuck, unable to progress with their thinking... One 45 year old Oxford resident who left school at 15, has no property, no pension... and he was absolutely brilliant intellectually. His self-portrait will be called 'What one can achieve without an Oxbridge education'...We had a blind woman who insisted on coming to see me- with her dog. She had tried to make her blindness an asset. One homeless man who came to me said 'The fact that you are listening to me really makes me feel appreciated.'”
The stories reveal that everybody lives behind a mask. “People don’t always put into practice the beliefs they claim to have. They say they believe in God, but that means many different things. We met one person who’s an absolutely fervent Christian, with great belief in God and God’s protection, and though she says it makes her feel comfortable with everyone, in fact there are great limitations to the number of people she feels comfortable with.”
Zeldin hopes his portraits will show the immense diversity of every religion, so the idea of a clash of civilisations will not be meaningful. “I think it’s one of our duties to stop the clashes in religion, which is why we’re doing this in Turkey, on the border of Islam. The attitude of religion to women is going to be of increasing importance. Women in Turkey are wearing Islamic clothes, and going to University, and developing a different kind of feminism.”
The way to understand different cultures is through conversation. “When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards. By discovering what other people are like you discover what the world is like. You can get beyond geographical boundaries- and we have the technology to make that possible. When we have all these portraits on a searchable database, we might have new kinds of relationships, and we’ll have a new kind of democracy. At the moment there is an increasing lack of interest in what politicians are doing, a crisis in democracy, but if each individual said 'this is what is important to me', then politicians could become intermediaries.”
His ideas are infectious: “a Professor of Medicine said my ideas might combat depression, predicted in the next 10 years to be the biggest cause of disability. Stress at work now affects 50% of workers- we’re creating a system that is killing us. Our methods can give people a chance to look outwards, get a purpose in life, an interest in helping others. This could become a preventative medicine, a scientific validation, of what we’re doing.”
As Associate fellow at Templeton College, and honorary professor at Paris Business School, Zeldin meets executives whose lives are miserable because they work nineteen hour days. He did a report on the 'Future of Work', supported by the European Commission. Work is inefficient, he concludes. He met a Peruvian accountant working as a chambermaid. People’s skills and interests should be harnessed in the workplace. Through talking to workers, and acting on discoveries, we can effect change.
He has developed a course, which is designed to be the opposite of the Oxford degree, which “will show you the problems of the major subjects, by giving you a list of the most modern, advanced, ground-breaking books, and getting the authors to lecture, so one is right at the frontiers of knowledge, not just learning, but participating in research designed to open up new directions.”
Zeldin also harnesses the arts. “Portraiture got stuck when people focussed on the individual face.” This cannot possibly reflect our multi-faceted personalities, “so artists are rethinking the art of portraiture. And abstract sculptor will create portraits of humanity. Each object could be surrounded by sounds. Two musicians, Vince Clark and Andy Bell (of Erasure) have invented a system by which a beam of sound is sent so as you watch this sculpture you’ll have a certain atmosphere of sound about you, and when you walk to another it’s a different one.”
Zeldin is trying to change the way people think. “Rather than concerning ourselves with getting richer, and wondering what to do with our wealth, we should try to help others, beginning by talking to them. Which is difficult.”
Inspired? The Oxford Muse would very much welcome your help. http://www.oxfordmuse.com