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Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Brian Eno and making radical mind changes 

Much publicity in the Guardian and elsewhere about the New Years confessional exercise over on The “Edge” site: ‘Notable Thinkers’ explain when and why they changed their minds about something..

Edge's publisher, John Brockman, asked the intellectual cream what they had changed their mind about and why. "Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?" said the brief.
A common theme in the responses is that what distinguishes science from other forms of knowledge and from faith is that new ideas can rapidly overturn old ones as new evidence emerges. So there's nothing to be ashamed about in admitting an intellectual switch.


One contributor is Brian Eno, a name unexpectedly familiar in LibDem circles since Nick Clegg won the leadership poll.

He explains how he started his political journey as a Maoist, why he changed his views and where he is now:

Maoism, or my disappointment with it, also changed my feelings about how politics should be done. I went from revolutionary to evolutionary. I no longer wanted to see radical change dictated from the top — even if that top claimed to be the bottom, the 'voice of the people'. I lost faith in the idea that there were quick solutions, that everyone would simultaneously see the light and things would suddenly flip over into a wonderful new reality. I started to believe it was always going to be slow, messy, compromised, unglamorous, bureaucratic, endlessly negotiated — or else extremely dangerous, chaotic and capricious. In fact I've lost faith in the idea of ideological politics altogether: I want instead to see politics as the articulation and management of a changing society in a changing world, trying to do a half-decent job for as many people as possible, trying to set things up a little better for the future.
Perhaps this is why I've increasingly come to regard the determinedly non-ideological, ecumenical EU as the signal political experiment of our time…

Interesting…. a rather Popperian approach... wonder how this plays out with younger people?

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Comments:
I've lost faith in the idea of ideological politics altogether

Oh dear.
 
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