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RANK IGNORANCE
Sir Vidia Naipaul's passionate denunci- ation this week of the present government for its cultural vandalism was wholly justi- fied. Indeed, cultural vandalism is likely to prove Mr Blair's most enduring legacy.. . Philistinism is not a new thing in British public life, of course. Whereas in France, no candidate could expect to reach office unless he paid at least lip-service to high culture, aspiring British politicians have long needed to conceal both their high intelligence, if they possessed it, and their cultural interests, if they had any. This anti-intellectualism is not wholly to be regretted. Indeed, it could be said that a healthy scepticism about intellectuals is what saved Britain from the ideological excesses that resulted in untold millions of deaths on the Continent during the last century.
But the philistinism of the present gov- ernment is of a totally new order. It is pro- foundly ideological, whereas the philistin- ism of the past was largely an instinctive reaction to the humbug to which an over- intellectualised or over-aesthetic view of the world often gives rise. The ideology of modern philistinisrn is a Poisonous concoction, composed of rank egotism, cynical populism and a genuine, though unjustified, loss of confidence in the worth of the cultural heritage that has been handed down to us.
Only egotists wish systematically to denigrate the achievements of the past, imagining that wisdom began with them. By doing so, they inflate their own impor- tance and significance; it is therefore well for Mr Blair that British children know nothing of Walpole, Pitt, Wellington, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone or Churchill, for then there is no painful comparison to be drawn.
An undervaluation of the cultural achievements of the past flatters the pre- sent, and is thereby also a manifestation of cynical populism, which seeks to assure people that their cultural tastes, activities, desires and achievements are as good as any in the world, past or present. What the people admire is, ipso facto, admirable. And who (other than a cultural snob) is to say that Hamlet is better than EastEnders, and more worthy of serious consideration? By claiming that Bob Dylan is the Schu- bert of our times, a politician can demon- strate that he is a man of the people, and no elitist. Popularity is the measure of all things. At the same time, intellectuals have long been undermining the claims of high cul- ture to superiority over low. Cultural rela- tivism is the intellectual orthodoxy of the age, so it is hardly surprising that cultural slumming has become a sign not only of enlightenment but also of virtue. By paying serious attention to even the most vulgar, degraded and intrinsically worthless mani- festations of popular culture, an intellectu- al can show that he, too, is a man of the people. He demonstrates by his attention that he is open-minded, and not a force of conservatism. That is why the genius of Mozart can hardly be mentioned these days without an allusion to Michael Jor- dan, a mere sportsman; as if the aiming of a ball at a basket were of the same order of activity as the writing of a string quintet.
Cultural relativism has, of course, effects beyond the sphere of culture. If there are no higher and lower manifesta- tions of the human intellect — if push- penny really is as good as poetry — then it is hardly surprising that many people should conclude that one way of life is as good as another, and that one way of behaving is as good as another. If Oasis is as good as Haydn, why should vomiting in the street not be as good as raising one's hat to another or letting someone pass? Civilisation and civility are intimately connected.
Civilisation depends upon a delicate bal- ance between conservation and innova- tion. The achievements of the past are not to be repeated mindlessly, nor are innova- tions to be rejected just because they are new; but, as Cicero said, to be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain for ever a child. We are fast turn- ing into a nation of cultural children, and the government's cultural policies and predilections are aiding the process. Chil- dren, after all, need to be controlled; and the government has shown itself far from averse to the task of meeting this need.
The present government is the apotheo- sis of a long period of cultural treason by the British intelligentsia. It has for many years judged all previous cultural achieve- ments by a crude, vulgar, Marxist political criterion: is this work of literature, art or music a product of an unjust, oppressive and unequal society, and, if it is, should it not be rejected as part of the apparatus of power that maintained that unjust, oppres- sive and unequal society? If the England of Jane Austen was elitist and unjust, then to read her with pleasure is to benefit from elitism and injustice.
Needless to say, such a stance will turn us swiftly into deracinated savages. We are coming to resemble barbarians, swilling champagne in the ruins of the civilisation we inherited and destroyed.
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