Warfare of Art & Law Podcast
Warfare of Art and Law Podcast sparks conversation about the intriguing – and sometimes infuriating – stories that arise in the worlds of art and law with artist and attorney Stephanie Drawdy.
Warfare of Art & Law Podcast
D. Paul Schafer on the need to shift from the Economic Age to the Cultural Age and his new book, The Great Cultural Awakening: Key to an Equitable, Sustainable and Harmonious Age
To learn more, please visit the World Culture Project and read about D. Paul Schafer's most recent book, The Great Cultural Awakening
Show Notes:
0:00 Schafer quotes Gurte: “live in the whole , the good and the beautiful”
2:15 background
7:50 Ontario Arts Council
8:15 Arts Administration and Cultural Policy graduate program at York University
8:45 freelancer-UNESCO, Canadian Dep’t of External Affairs
9:25 publications predicated on argument that it’s time to shift from Economic Age to Cultural Age
9:50 creation of the World Culture Project
16:40 Culture: Beacon of the Future (1998)
18:10 AI impact
18:45 Geoffrey Hinton’s concerns over AI
20:50 Revolution or Renaissance: Making the Transition from an Economic Age to a Cultural Age (2008)
24:25 The World as Culture: Cultivation of the Soul to the Cosmic Whole (2022)
30:05 The Great Cultural Awakening: Key to an Equitable, Sustainable and Harmonious Age (2024)
42:30 future leaders should have backgrounds in the arts and culture sector
46:50 Feedback received about The Great Cultural Awakening
48:00 excerpt from The Great Cultural Awakening’s chapter titled Tale of Two Ages that references Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities
53:00 the power of art to address social injustice
1:00:00 definition of justice
1:02:20 Cultural Historian Johan Huizinga, author of The Waning of the Middle Ages
1:04:20 legacy
1:06:40 future projects
Please share your comments and/or questions at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com
Music by Toulme.
To hear more episodes, please visit Warfare of Art and Law podcast's website.
To leave questions or comments about this or other episodes of the podcast and/or for information about joining the 2ND Saturday discussion on art, culture and justice, please message me at stephanie@warfareofartandlaw.com.
Thanks so much for listening!
© Stephanie Drawdy [2025]
I've told you about some of the things that I just happened on over the course of my work in the cultural field. One of the most important was a phrase I read quite accidentally by Goethe, the German poet and scholar, who said live in the whole, live in the good, live in the whole, live in the good and live in the beautiful. And if I could express what all my work is all about in the final analysis, I would go to Goethe and that very insightful and timely comment live in the whole, live in the good and live in the beautiful.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Warfare of Art and Law, the podcast that focuses on how justice does or doesn't play out when art and law overlap. Hi everyone, it's Stephanie, and that was Paul Schaeffer, founder and director of the World Culture Project and author of many books on arts and culture, including his most recent one entitled the Great Cultural Awakening Key to an Equitable, sustainable and Harmonious Age. In the following conversation, mr Schaefer shares why he founded the World Culture Project and why he believes it's pivotal for our future leaders to come from the arts and cultural sector. Paul Schaefer, welcome to Warfare of Art and Law. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 1:It's my pleasure. I really am looking forward to this discussion with you and admire all the work that you've done in this area in the past.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I certainly admire your work, and so perhaps we could just start with you giving an overview. You've written multiple books about culture, in addition to the one we're going to talk about today, and then you have this whole other background in economics. So would you kind of walk us through what your background is?
Speaker 1:I'll do that and it's a real pleasure for me. I guess it really, as I look back on it now, it goes back to grade six in public school when our teacher asked us to select a project that we could develop at home in order to present to the class at school. So, with some help from my mother and some searching around, I finally decided to do a project on Marco Polo and the trip he had with his family and some close friends he had a couple of them, as you know to China, and then all the time he spent around China going to different countries in Asia and other areas as a result of the provisions made by Kublai Khan, the great Khan of China. And I found this. I mentioned this in the book the Great Cultural Awakening. I found this very fascinating because I thought at the time and I wasn't very old if only everybody could have the kind of exposure that Marco Polo and his family and friends had to the various cultures and people and foods, cuisines, recreational activities, languages and so on. The world would be a much better place as a result of that, and I remember thinking at the time that at some point in my life I'd really like to try and write about that, and I remember thinking at the time that at some point in my life I'd really like to try and write about that, and I saw it as something that was very important, that seemed to be missing in the world.
Speaker 1:However, that sort of retreated into the background after grade six in public school by the time I got to university and had to make a tough decision about what my career prospects and aspirations would be. I finally chose commerce and finance, and I think I chose that for a couple of reasons. One was that my father was an accountant all his life and that seemed sensible. I had a brother who was a little older than I was and he was pursuing a career as a composer, and I remember by that time thinking well, vincent Van Gogh had some financial help from his brother, theo, because he wasn't selling of any of his paintings. So maybe if I went into commerce and finance I'd be able to help my brother with his work as a composer. It turned out in the end that he accomplished things in the arts and cultural and especially musical field much sooner than me, so my help there wasn't needed. But I also thought that this would be a good kind of base from which to function going forward into the future.
Speaker 1:When I was studying commerce and finance and that was at the University of Toronto I discovered that many of the professors that were teaching in that faculty were actually economists and not professors in accountancy or financial studies, money and banking and so on, and I got very interested in economics. In the last three years I was in commerce and finance and finally decided to go on and do an MA in economics at U of T, specializing in international development and particularly the history of economic thought. I was very fortunate then. It was a real stroke of good luck in that Canadian universities were looking for Canadians to teach some of these courses, because there was quite a large influx of Americans coming over to teach these courses at Canadian universities. So I got an opportunity to go down to the Maritimes and teach at Dalhousie University in Acadia economics for several years and it was a very enjoyable experience doing that.
Speaker 1:But eventually I found that I thought I had originally decided to pursue a lifetime career in economics and economies, but I started to get more and more worried, even back then, about the fact that economists didn't give any consideration to the natural environment in economics when it was started, as it developed, and certainly what I was there teaching in the Maritimes. So I was confronted with a very difficult decision. I had to decide whether I wanted to stay in economics and try and address that problem from the inside out or whether I should go into another area and try and address that problem. And when I gave it my serious consideration I thought I really couldn't do it from the inside out because there were some things that were really bothering me about economics as a discipline at that time, not only the environmental problem but the fact that it seemed to be preoccupied with materialism and material and monetary wealth. So I decided to leave economics and go out and search for a new area where I could more or less start from scratch. So I had a very difficult time than trying to find the right area to do it and the right profession for me.
Speaker 1:But finally I got a job at the Ontario Arts Council and so that sort of I'd had a very artistic and cultural upbringing when I was young, like my brother did, and I decided that that was probably the right place for me.
Speaker 1:I felt comfortable there, but it was more like turning a vacation into a profession by starting to work at the Ontario Arts Council.
Speaker 1:I worked there for several years and then I got an opportunity to start a graduate program in arts administration and cultural policy at York University in Toronto, which I did, and after directing that program for several years I decided I wanted to more or less double down on my interest in arts and humanities and culture, and so I left York University and became a freelancer and did work for organizations like UNESCO and Canada's Department of External Affairs, and that is really when I started to work intensively in the arts and cultural field, and I've been doing that now for the better part of 40 years.
Speaker 1:So that's the kind of thumbnail sketch of the overview of my career, starting in economics and ending in the cultural field. But it did accomplish one thing Most of my publications, in one form or another, have been predicated on the argument that it's time to move out of the economic age and into the cultural age. So that experience in economics and economies was invaluable in helping me to understand the economic age and make the argument that we should now be moving into a different kind of age, the cultural age we should now be moving into a different kind of age, the cultural age, the impetus to create the World Culture Project.
Speaker 2:can you kind of give like the building blocks of that and how that segued with the themes of your books over the years?
Speaker 1:Yes, I'd be pleased to do that. One of the things that just happened coincidentally, but at a very important time for me was that the United Nations and UNESCO had identified back in the 60s, a number of what they called decades of development, and these decades were designed to focus on particular global and national and local problems and issues, and they started, of course, with economic development, but they eventually got around to a world decade for environmental development, and that decade was followed by a decade on cultural development. And it was just coming about the time that decade was followed by a decade on cultural development, and it was just coming about the time that I was getting very immersed in culture, and so I decided that one of the things I wanted to do to commemorate and respect that decade of cultural development was to start a world culture project.
Speaker 1:That decade of cultural development was to start a World Culture Project and I was in contact with UNESCO about this and its colleagues and they thought it was a very good idea and eventually the World Culture Project became a officially designated project of the World Decade for Cultural Development by UNESCO. So it was really divided into two components. It was divided into an international component and a Canadian component and in the international component I was looking at general issues and problems in cultural development. In the Canadian component I was looking at a specific culture. So I'd take those general problems and then I'd apply them to Canadian culture and I wrote a number of monographs on different aspects of Canadian culture at that time and some monographs on the general problems. So what are the great cultural issues and problems in the world? This is still going strong and I'm now getting I'd be continuously adding. Over the last 40 years we started in 1988, so roughly 40 years I'd be continuously adding more and more material to the world culture project. It's it's free, anybody can access the project. They, they can use any of the articles that are in that listed. The links are listed in the project a variety of books and articles and all that is available free of charge and, just incidentally, they can access that on wwwworldcultureprojectorg and I'm now getting, uh happily, uh visits from uh probably 1500 uh individuals and organizations a month and they're coming from all over the world. So it really seems to be working now and generating interest in culture and cultures in different parts of the world, which was really the objective of the whole project.
Speaker 1:In that project, two things are important. One is that I've taken a very large view of culture rather than a narrow one, what I'll talk about later as the holistic view or definition of culture, and I think that is exceedingly difficult going forward into the future. And the other is that you know, we have to be careful about how we're going to be developing culture and cultures in the future. At the time of the World Decade for Cultural Development, a lot of the activity that was going on in the world was undertaken by anthropologists, sociologists and those types of people and their tendency, because one of the great problems in the world back in the 1970s and 80s was that a lot of cultures and civilizations from ancient and historical times were vanishing or disappearing or crumbling and breaking down and fewer and fewer of the remnants of those were left. So there was a lot of interest in looking back at culture and cultures. My interest with the World Culture Project was looking forward. I really felt very strongly that what we should be talking about here if I can put it in a short-term phrase is living cultural anthropology. It's sort of taking where we're at now and looking forward into the future to see where we should be going in the future with the development of the various and diverse culture and cultures in the world.
Speaker 1:So given that I was by that time we're getting now into the late 1990s I was more or less on my own and I had saved up a lot of money, so I decided that I really wanted to plunge in to trying to. I didn't have any education in culture and cultures, it was all in economics. So I had to educate myself about culture and cultures and the only way I could do that was to read extensively about that subject. And fortunately, when I was teaching at some universities in arts administration and cultural policy, they had excellent libraries there in culture and I had a fair amount of it on my weekends, just reading books and articles and publications that had been written by cultural scholars, cultural historians, people in the arts, humanities, heritage and history and so on, and I slowly started to build up an understanding of culture and cultures and broadening and deepening that understanding and knowledge, and I felt that I was getting ready to start to write about that subject. So I did write the first book that I wrote on this subject. It's Culture Beacon of the Future. Culture Beacon of the Future. And that book, which was published in 1998, really tried to provide an overview of what culture was all about. So it went into many of the different domains of culture, from heritage to humanities, the arts, to municipalities, towns and cities. On and on it went historical developments and so on. But I deliberately, based on the readings that I'd done, I called it the culture beacon to the future because I wanted to make the argument right at the outset that culture and cultures have their positive and negative dimensions. They could do a great deal of good or they can do a great deal of harm, and that's what I learned from my reading of all these works by cultural historians and scholars, and I felt it was so important to make that clear at the outset of what I was attempting to do, which is, you know, try and create more information in this particular area and make it accessible.
Speaker 1:We're experiencing, just as a sideline, that problem today with AI, artificial intelligence. It's very interesting that this has evolved so quickly that so many people have jumped on the bandwagon. Once the bandwagon got rolling, then people saw yeah, the corporations, governments, educational institutions are all taking this up very seriously. They're saying this is the future that we got to take in the future. So it was easy to hop on the bandwagon and say I better get in there and learn something about this too, and it's a very important area. It's a very important area Until Jeffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers in AI, about seven or eight years ago, I believe, made a public speech in which he said hold it, hold it, stop. There are going to be problems in the future about AI and not just benefits, because the road we're traveling now, if we're not very careful, we could get into a very difficult problem where eventually, robots became smarter than we were and they were governing us rather than us governing them. So from then on, I think now we're seeing that when AI is talked about, people are addressing much more carefully the positive and negative benefits and effects from that particular area concerned at the very outset to make it clear that culture. It was a beacon in the sense that it could shine a light on a very viable and enticing path to the future. But it could also warn of impending danger and make sure that we set up the safeguards and precautions to come to grips with those dangers. And of course, that's what a good beacon is all about. It's the two sides. They lighten and reveal and they tempt and indicate that we have to look very closely at both dimensions, not just one dimension.
Speaker 1:Having done that, about a decade later I was ready to move into the secondary, a second phase of my research and writing on the subject of culture and cultures and a cultural age. By this time and that book was Revolution or Renaissance, making the transition from an economic age to a cultural age. And that's where I drew on my research and writing on both economics and culture. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is the age of economics and it goes very carefully.
Speaker 1:This is a 300-page book. This is a 300-page book. It goes very carefully through how the economic age developed, from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1776, the classical economics, the neoclassical economics, the Marxian economics, all the way down to the present and it describes how this age developed. And then the final chapter is on the strengths and the shortcomings of the economic age and the balance sheet on the economic age, and in the balance sheet I say that probably the economic age is the greatest human achievement of all. Billions of people, first in the western part of the world, but increasingly in other parts of the world, have benefited from the economic age and all it's brought to us in terms of the creation of goods and services and material and monetary wealth creation of goods and services, and material and monetary wealth. But at the same time, by neglecting to examine some of these areas that were very important in the development of the economic age, like ignoring the natural environment, not placing the economic age in a human context rather than a material context, problems like this are now increasing, as we know, very rapidly. So there are shortcomings of the economic age and not only strengths of the economic age and not only strengths of the economic age. And my conclusion, taking everything into consideration about that, is that while the economic age has been a tremendous period in history and delivered so much, it's not viable going into the future because it's designed to create material and monetary wealth and goods and services. It's not designed to deal with the problems that we're confronted with today, like climate change, global warming, the environmental crisis, huge disparities in income and wealth, more wars and conflict in the world over resources and land, and things like that. So we need to move into a new age.
Speaker 1:The second part of the book, part two, is then devoted to the age of culture, and I go through the same process there that I did with the economic age, by identifying well, what are the signs that are bringing a cultural age into possible existence, what might it be like if cultural age was brought into existence, and what would the strengths and shortcomings of that be? So that was the next sort of major book I wrote in this process. This brings me to the third book. I only have this one and one more, so there were many more in the series, but these are the four most important books.
Speaker 1:This book is the World as Culture, and the subtit with this book is I've gone back to the beginning of history and I've traced the evolution, historically, of culture as an idea and reality from the early part of history right up to the present day, and there are a whole series of pretty definite periods in this historical evolution. It started, as far as most people in the cultural field could determine. It started back with Cicero in about 80 years before the birth of Christ, and he said culture is the philosophy or cultivation of the soul. I imagine somebody having that kind of vision or perception of what culture is going back more than 2,000 years. So he was the one that really started the discussion about it. It derives from an Italian word, culture, so he really started the discussion on what culture and cultures are really all about. Then there was a period in which culture was concerned. People working in the cultural field were concerned basically with the arts, humanities and heritage of history.
Speaker 1:So that was another definition of period, but that broadened the understanding of what culture and cultures are. Then, following that, we had a period closer to the present, with anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, who were looking at culture and cultures from their particular academic perspective and they tended to be even much broader again than the arts and the humanities and heritage and history. So you're getting more and more expansive understandings of culture and culture going forward. What we've had more recently in the world is the next period and the period we're in now, which has been governed more by the work of biologists, ecologists, zoologists, botanists, environmentalists, who've been looking at not only the cultures of the human species but cultures of other species, and so that makes it possible to say that culture now, in the present, has something to do with all living species as a minimum and the natural environment of course, behind that species as a minimum, and the natural environment, of course, behind that. So you can talk about and this is what I've done in the Great Cultural Awakening you can talk about the cultures of all species now and people get it, and they're starting to get it more and more. As we look into the cultures of plants and animals, we're learning about how they communicate, how they talk to each other, how they develop their each other, how they develop their own cultures, how their cultures are different than our cultures, and on and on it goes. And this is not only for animals but also for plants that are now. People in the horticultural area are saying plants communicate among themselves, they have their own means of communication, they have their cultures, they can warn other plants when they're impending dangers, and so on. So it's now a vast domain, and so what I have argued in this book in the conclusion, is that the real foundations of human and species existence in planet Earth and the world we're living in are culture and cultures and not economics and economies. These are the real foundations and the real essence of what life in the world is all about. And the economic argument that economics and economies are central. That's a kind of facade that we've developed during the economic age, largely through the arguments of economists like Adam Smith, david Ricardo and especially Karl Marx, who wrote the Economic Interpretation of History, which was based largely on a physical and material interpretation, and came to the conclusion that the world, in the final analysis, is all about economics and economies. I think what this book demonstrates, and in a well-documented form, is. That's not the case. The root of everything is culture and cultures, and not economics and economies. So that leads me to the final book here, the Great Cultural Awakening. The subtitle is Key to an Equitable, sustainable and Harmonious Age. Will there be others in this series? No, I really see this book, the Great Cultural Awakening.
Speaker 1:I've told you about the purpose of these other books. This book is really about the summation and culmination of all my work in the cultural field now over a period of some 40 or 50 years. It's really designed in my work in the cultural field. I'm not trying to come up with a separate cultural theory of some type. Many of the anthropologists, sociologists, cultural historians and so on that have written about subjects like this. They're interested in developing a particular theory of culture or cultures and there have been many books written that have very different theories about that. What I'm trying to do in my work in the cultural field and it's benefiting tremendously from the experience I've had in economics and the social sciences in my work I'm trying to pull everything together and put it in one place and try and make it accessible in a few books and the World Culture Project website. So people that are working in the cultural field or interested in the cultural field, they can go to those sources and everything is pulled together. They don't have to spend all the time that I spend necessarily reading the works of individual cultural scholars and cultural historians. They can have the overviews, I mean the overviews that underlie yeah, so that's what, now, this book is really designed.
Speaker 1:If we want to go on now and talk a little bit about this book, this book is really designed to make the case that there is a cultural awakening taking place in the world today. I don't think it's certainly not fully recognized at present. It's partially recognized by particular groups and organizations and institutions, I believe. But some of the bigger institutions, like governments and corporations, this is not on their agenda now because, obviously, one reason they're caught up with AI and now all the economic problems we're experiencing in the world. So if somebody comes forward and says, well, there's a great cultural awakening going on in the world, so if somebody comes forward and says, well, there's a great cultural awakening going on in the world, uh, they would say, well, culture, culture it's, it's not a an important activity. And I think you'll find if you looked into, uh, what the big players in terms of uh, where the world should go in the future are talking about is not culture or cultures or the arts, or the humanities, or the socials or the heritage of history. For some very obvious reasons, which we'll talk about in a moment, they're looking at consciousness, changes in consciousness, the whole environmental situation and on it goes from there. So it's not being recognized, but I think that positive and meaningful changes are taking place in this area and I would suggest, in order to justify my argument, that it is going on and it is very important.
Speaker 1:Black peoples, indigenous peoples, oppressed people, marginalized people, people that have been colonized and we're talking here about a very large number of people in the world Asia, africa, north and South America, the Caribbean. A lot of those peoples are going back and connecting with their original cultures because they were either forced out or encouraged out, mostly forced out of their own cultures in order to adapt and adopt other cultures, mostly colonial cultures. What they're finding now is that they're going back to their own traditions. They're going back to their own customs, their rituals, their stories, especially their languages A lot of them are learning their languages now, as we know and the roots of their cultures. How did they start in the beginning. What's their cultural heritage? So that's one group and that's a lot of people, but that's not all.
Speaker 1:What's happening in addition to that is that a lot of organizations are now considering themselves to be cultural organizations in the holistic sense. A lot of the work for this was prepared by a scholar at, I think, mit and Harvard, edgar Schein, who wrote a book on organizational cultures and what he said? That organizations in the holistic sense, rather than the partial sense, are really cultures. They have values, they have traditions, they have ways of life, they have worldviews On and on it goes, and so this is very important, and we're now seeing that a lot of organizations in the world are starting to look at themselves as cultural organizations in the holistic sense, asking themselves in the future, what are our values going to be, what are our worldviews going to be, how are we going to interact with our clients, with our employees? What are our new directions for the future? How can we play a better role in the world? How can we make ourselves more successful in environmental and human terms, and not just in material terms? You see this happening in police forces, in hospitals, in corporate organizations, in non-profit organizations, and that's a large group as well.
Speaker 1:In addition to that, what we're also seeing in the tourist field which, as we know is very lucrative is the evolution and that's been going on over some time now of cultural tourism rather than just tourism in general, and the difference in that, of course, is that cultural tourism if you're a cultural tourist and you decide that you want to go to Asia, for example, you're probably going to do advanced reading about the histories and the cultures of the Asian countries that you're going to visit.
Speaker 1:You're probably then going to search out a lot of things that you read about before and you were preparing for your trip.
Speaker 1:You're probably going to document your experiences, not only by taking a few photos, but also by taking notes, and sometimes copious notes, and you're also going to come back home and you're probably going to think about those experiences and say, oh, there were some things there that were very helpful.
Speaker 1:I think I could change my life and make some improvements in my life from the things that I experienced in the Asian cultures I was in. So there's another area where the great cultural awakening is starting to come to the fore. It's going to take more time, I think, and it's not going to happen overnight and it's not without its difficulties. But I think it's going to evolve and evolve, and evolve and we're going to take more and more interest in this in the future, which is why I believe that we're standing on the threshold of a cultural age and if we really give the thought and consideration to it and the long-term development, I think it's inevitable that we might go in that direction. So this book is really designed to make the case that we should move into a cultural age. The first five or six chapters are all about well. There's a chapter initially on why we should enter a cultural age, reading the signs and signals.
Speaker 1:Then there are about five or six chapters on culture, starting with people or cultures and the cultures of families Very important chapter in the book because you know, if children and parents and families do not educate themselves properly and if the children aren't taught properly, then we're going to have a lot of trouble in the future. So how culture and cultures are handled in families very, very important. How their parents provide the opportunities and resources for them to do that. There's city cultures, community cultures, regional cultures, national cultures, international cultures, and then finally the cultures, national cultures, international cultures and then finally the cultures of other species. So that's about five or six chapters of the book. Then there are about three chapters of the book on, well, what foundations have to be put in place in order to realize a cultural age, and here I've mentioned the importance of creating a cultural age. And here I've mentioned the importance of creating a cultural interpretation of history rather than the economic interpretation of history provided by Karl Marx, engels and the Marxists. The centrality of cultural policy and development rather than the marginalization of cultural policy and development, which is the case today. And what are the roles of the main stakeholders?
Speaker 1:I've identified three in this book. The first and most important are people in the arts, humanities, heritage of history, cultural industries and various other aspects of culture, as we mentioned in anthropology, sociology and so on. They have to provide the symbols, signals, the metaphors, the rituals that are necessary to move us into understanding what culture and cultures at any level geographically are all about. So I think their involvement in the initial stage, in a proactive way, is very fundamental to all this. The next stakeholders, in my view, are the governments. The next stakeholders, in my view, are the governments. If we don't get some recognition from governments at all levels I'm talking about, I guess now, from municipal to national and then international organizations working in political and governmental fields if the governments don't act to bring a cultural age into existence, that's going to, I think, provide a very serious block to moving forward with the entry into a cultural age and enabling a cultural age to flourish. And then, finally, I think, it's the general public.
Speaker 2:I think it's all up to us, in the longer term of schemes and final analysis, to understand why it's important a cultural age, as best I can and provide the documentation that's necessary for it, and I believe I've heard maybe another interview where you touched on this is that leaders going forward, talking about the point you're making about the governments needing to be involved in this, that leaders should be those that come from the arts and culture sector, and I really I had already been thinking about that myself, so it really resonated with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm glad to hear that, because I haven't heard anybody discuss that problem and I think it's a very critical problem now on the international stage. I think if we look at what types of people ended up in government or ended up in politics and initially, I think, when laws came into existence and for a long time thereafter, they were mostly lawyers, because there had to be people that understood the law and how the law functions and works, so they had to know very well all the legal constraints and problems that exist. So there was a long line of, I know. If I look at Canada, my own country, you go back, you know, a century or so, and basically three-quarters of them probably were lawyers. Maybe some people that were popular in communities, but a lot of lawyers, and for good reason.
Speaker 1:What we've experienced more recently is and this is understandable, living in an economic age is that more and more of the prime ministers and leaders in the political and governmental realm are from the corporate community. And obviously they're in the corporate community, from the corporate community, because they have seen through their work in corporations that there's a lot of power and capabilities in governments, and if you're in government, you might be in a better position to offer opportunities for economic growth and development than if you stayed in a corporation. Now, and what I've tried to do in the book is point out that in certain European countries, some of those presidents and prime ministers have come from artistic backgrounds, humanistic backgrounds in Poland and in Czechoslovakia and so on and these are people that have a cultural background. And the interesting thing about those people I didn't go into a lot of detail or research on this, but a good interesting thing about it is that they seem to govern very well and produce very positive results. And so I think that in the future because a lot of the issues in the world now are essentially cultural issues that have to do with interaction and intermingling of different peoples, different genders, different races, different races they're going to have to be people that have a background in culture and cultural development to understand what is needed and what I think the cultural domain and realm could provide more than anything else.
Speaker 1:Going forward into the future is a holistic view of things rather than a partial view. The economic view perspective is a partial view. It sees things through the lens of economics. What the argument is in my literature and in this book is we need a lens that permits us to see the big picture, and there may be some lenses beyond our knowledge that could do this, but as far as I know, the lens at present that provides the biggest portrait or picture results from the holistic definition of culture and cultures, even more than AI, and I think eventually and hopefully we'll come to realize that. But this is a big perspective that we need now going forward.
Speaker 2:What is the feedback you've received thus far from this book?
Speaker 1:The feedback has been very good. There hasn't been a lot of it. I've been working very hard to bring the book to the attention of others and it's going to take time, but the feedback that I've had has been very positive. The reviews that I have that are on the back cover of the book have been very positive. I haven't had many reviews on Amazon, but I'm working on that now and other reviews, but I'm very happy with the reviews that have been provided. There was one thing, one of the questions you asked, which I thought was a very interesting question, and I don't know whether you'd like me to proceed with an answer to it or not, but you asked the question just before what you've asked now about can you read something from the Great Cultural Awakening?
Speaker 2:yes, yes if you would. You've already given such a rich taste for the book, but if you would want to share an excerpt, that would be lovely I'd love to do that and I'll take a couple of minutes with this just to explain what's happened.
Speaker 1:When I was doing my research, one of the things that hit me on a few occasions was that the, the research in writing, what I'm doing for this book, you know it's consistent in many ways with Charles Dickens and a lot of Charles Dickens novels, because Dickens, he really was so humanly concerned about the welfare and well-being of people and country and people and countries that a lot of his books have to do with this, whether it's the, you know, the Christmas Carol or any of the other books that he's written that deal with the subject.
Speaker 1:So, and I was really thinking more and more as I worked on this book about the similarities between Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and my tale of two ages, the economic age and the cultural age, which is the last chapter, chapter 14 in the book. Chapter 14 in the book Because Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. It moves back between England and France, paris and London, and in many ways Paris and France are indicative of the economic age. When we think of Paris and France, we think the arts, we think cultural things. When we think of London and England, we think very often of economics. I mean they control the world at one time on the basis of their economic ingenuity. And so I thought you know like he's going back and forth between these two areas in the age of the Tale of Cities, and I'm going back and forth in the last chapter about the tale of two ages. So here's what I would like to read.
Speaker 1:That chapter starts, the tale of two ages, from a quote. It's the first quote in the book by charles dickens. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. And I thought, boy, you know, I mean the endurance of some literature to transcend space and time and be relevant for all time and all spaces is quite remarkable. So that's how it the last chapter starts. Then this is how the last chapter starts, then this is how the last chapter ends.
Speaker 1:Without doubt, culture and cultures possess everything that is needed for all people and all countries to live full, fulfilling and constructive lives, to produce a great deal of more joy, happiness, well-being and equality in the world, and to contribute to making the world a better, safer and more stable place for everybody and everything. In the final analysis, this is what systemic cultural change and participating in the great cultural awakening are all about and designed to accomplish. The doors are opening on a cultural age. It is time we realize this, cross over the threshold to this age and enjoy all the profuse opportunities and benefits that can arise from it. Will all come to echo the words that end Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities.
Speaker 1:For in entering a cultural age, each of us might well say and this is the last sentence in Dickens' book it is a far, far better thing than I do, than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known. I just think that says so much about the compassion, the spirituality, the human goodness that Dickens had in all his work. And I think this is one of the dimensions of a cultural age that maybe is more important than any of the others bringing out that humanity and that compassion and that humility in, in, in human and humane ways thank you, thank you for reading that.
Speaker 2:I agree, and it kind of highlights the link and importance between the arts and human rights. Absolutely, absolutely. This is a thread, I think, throughout your work that we've been talking about the power of art to address issues like social injustice.
Speaker 1:Well, I think there are many. As you know, I've just written an article on the arts. On the arts, one of the chapters in this book is a chapter on harmonizing crucial cultural relationships, and it mentions a number of those different polarizations, if you like the arts and the sciences, human rights and human responsibilities, war and peace, material and non-material development. There are about 10 or 12 that I've mentioned, but there are many others, and most of those cultural relationships get polarized over time and with polarization, as we know, you get imbalance and disharmonies and there's a great disharmony at the present time between the arts and the sciences, because the sciences are surging ahead very rapidly because of phenomenal innovations and inventions in technologies, digital devices, industrial practices, space exploration, ai, on and on it goes, but the sciences in the last four or five decades have just been surging ahead very rapidly. Five decades have just been surging ahead very rapidly. Unfortunately, the price that's being paid for that is that in educational institutions and in governmental and corporate and foundation work, a lot of the funding for activities has gone to science rather than the arts, and this has put the arts in a very dreadful position, the position that they're in at the present time, because not only are they considered to be marginal activities, largely recreational and leisure time activities, but I think a lot of people would feel that well, they don't have any concrete substance or practical outputs, so they're good to enjoy ourselves with, but they don't have any really important relevance to what's going on in the world. I think we're making a big mistake here, and that article is about how we are desperately needed at the present time to double down on the development of the arts and humanities and heritage of history so that that imbalance, which has always gone on to a certain extent throughout the world between the arts and the sciences, it can be more stabilized and made harmonious.
Speaker 1:So I'm for advocating spending much more money on the arts, helping artists, arts organizations and the arts generally going forward into the future, because I think those are the organizations that, through their works, bring the humanity, the compassion, the concern, the feeling, the emotions that are necessary not only to deal with general problems but also to deal with some very difficult problems today, particularly conflicts and wars, where it seems to be that there is very little humanity now in the way wars and conflicts are conducted. So the role that artists could play in that is very powerful but not being used. And I think that you know, through the arts and their ability to develop the signs and symbols and metaphors and rituals and so on we were talking about earlier, they can shine a lot of light on the need for the kind of social justice that we need in the future and bringing an end to social injustices. And the biggest injustice of all, as you and I know, working in the arts and cultural field is the way artists and arts organizations are treated in most societies and countries today.
Speaker 1:Societies and countries today Low wages, poor working conditions, very little concern for their, their futures, where their income is going to come from in the future, the present laws that exist with respect to their inventions and innovations, and collective goods and services they provide in society. The list goes on and on. But one positive message, I think, in all that is we're beginning to see that more and more arts, icons and cultural treasures are being restored to the countries of origin. So that, to me, is a very positive sign that has to do with social justice rather than injustice. But definitely I think we have to focus our attention. If we focus more attention on the artists and more funding, I think some of those real injustices that artists and arts organizations experience will be dealt with, and they have to be dealt with by corporations and governments and foundations. They've done everything that I think they can possibly do from within to confront those injustices in their protests and protest movement. It's now time for governments and corporations, foundations, to ante up and help them in that field, deal with their injustices.
Speaker 2:Has there been for you, over the course of your career, a definition of how you view justice?
Speaker 1:that it is, but I don't think that I've ever gone into any depth in terms of looking at what you know different groups and organizations in society and particular artistic and humanistic and heritage groups are confronted with in terms of justice or injustice. I mean, I dealt with that very specifically when I was teaching arts administration and cultural policy, because those problems were problems that we had to deal with when we were training arts administrators and cultural policymakers, but it's not a subject to date that I've really looked at intensively.
Speaker 1:Is there though a personal view that you have either how'm concerned about is in my work. The most important objective in my work has been to provide research and writing that can make a contribution to evolving a different path in the future, and in my case it's a path that is based on the centrality of culture and cultures and entering a cultural age. If it turns out that you know that's not possible, then I guess my follow-up objective would be breaking the marginalization of the arts and the humanities and the heritage of history in the world. If nothing else can be accomplished from what I've researched and written, it would be my hope that we could at least will and the desire and the fortitude to bring the and this is something you asked about different cultural scholars and historians that have been influenced by research and writing.
Speaker 1:One of the ones that's done this most is Johann Huizinga, who wrote the Waning of the Middle Ages, and he was a cultural historian that was very much concerned about the harmonization of economic and material and corporate values on the one hand, and artistic, aesthetic, humanistic and philosophical activities on the other hand.
Speaker 1:Much of his writing is concerned about, you know, rather having imbalances and disharmonies and polarities and polarizations between those two things His concern was about how do we bring them together to create a value system, worldview and way of life that integrates both of those dimensions with the same value and the same importance and same priority. That to me, I guess, is what I would like to see in terms of creating the justices that are necessary for people in this particular area the arts, humanities, heritage of history and culture generally that have received second billing in most parts of the world because of the prominence of other values and worldviews. And I think now there could be no better time in the world than now to produce those justices by bringing those two things together and working out lifestyles and ways of life that compromise and compare and coalesce those two sets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I'm just curious also and you seem to have already kind of answered this but is there with all of this amazing wealth of resources that you've created and the work that you're doing, that you've created and the work that you're doing?
Speaker 1:is there a legacy that you are aiming to create with your work? No, I can't, you know. I mean it would be nice if there was a legacy to the work that I've been working on. I mean, as I said at the beginning, you know I had this experience with Marco Polo and how he interacted with so many different cultures and thought the world would be a better place if we could do that and create the educational systems and political and social and economic and other activities that are necessary for that. So I mean, if it happens that what I've been working on proves useful in the future, then I would be very happy about that.
Speaker 1:But the real challenge, I think, is to get it down in the clearest and most basic terms that I can in trying to make this case so that it will be available to President and future generations and it would be there. And I guess that's why I appreciate so much your willingness to take the time going into depth about my experiences throughout life that arose from my experience and reading about Marco Polo and how I made that my life's work and you know what some of the vehicles are available now as a result of that that people can access readily and say, well, I take it or I leave it, but they're there. And that's why I say my work has not been on creating a particular theory, but rather just trying to pull everything together that's been written about a certain subject that I feel is very important and hasn't been done up to the present time subject that I feel is very important and hasn't been done up to the present time, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Is there a project or are there?
Speaker 1:projects that you're currently working on that we can look for going forward.
Speaker 1:I think probably we're all.
Speaker 1:I've been spending more and more of my time as you may know from information that I've written in the Great Cultural Awakening with a variety of organizations in the arts and cultural field that are working on activities and projects that are of interest to me, and I'm trying to provide more of my time and my attention to people that are now, you know, coming to the conclusion that they'd like to work in the arts or cultural field and provide them with some help with that.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to do a lot more of that in the future, but it may be that I'll try and sort of pull everything together in some kind of book on the. It's been a very fascinating cultural journey over the course of my life and I may well try and sort of put it into some kind of form where it might be useful to other people. But it's all about getting out of the self and getting into the other, isn't it? I mean, this is such an important part of what culture and a cultural awakening are all about is getting out of our own skin and providing the help and support that's needed by other people, other organizations, other countries.
Speaker 2:That brings to mind for me the individual who brought us together, ashvak ishak, who focuses so much of his work on empathy, and you touch on that in the great cultural awakening, so it's such a perfect point to end on. Thank you for bringing that up. Well, is there anything else that I have not asked you that you would like to share?
Speaker 1:no I. I think you've been very generous with your time and attention and given me an opportunity to get a lot out that I've been anxious to get out for a long period of time. All I can say in conclusion is thank you very, very much indeed for this opportunity. A heartfelt thanks, because it's been so enjoyable doing this program with you and I hope it serves a useful purpose going forward.
Speaker 2:There will be links in the show notes to learn more. If you were intrigued by this podcast, it would be much appreciated if you could leave a rating or review and tag warfare of art and law podcast until next time. This is stephanie drotty bringing you warfare of art and law. Thank you so much for listening and remember injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.