Culture thrives on conflict and antagonism, not social harmony - a point made rather memorably by a certain Harry Lime, says philosopher John Gray.
“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
We know that art can flourish under despots, but we’re reluctant to admit it - if creativity and tyranny can co-exist, the value of freedom seems diminished. Welles’s lines seem to express a dangerous truth, one we’d like to forget but can’t banish from our minds.
Culture may not need democracy or peace, but it can’t develop without some measure of freedom - and that requires a diversity of centres of influence, working openly and at times in opposition to one another. Rightly, we’ve learnt to mistrust any directing cultural role for the state. When artists and writers rely solely on government, the result is at best nepotism and mediocrity.
But the processes through which culture is created and renewed are complex and variegated, and it’s just as silly to think that a thriving cultural scene can be produced entirely by market forces. A vital culture comes from competition and rivalry between institutions - state-funded arts councils and libraries, churches and campaigning groups as well as private and corporate sponsors.
This is the kernel of truth in Harry Lime’s famous lines. Culture thrives on contestation and antagonism, not some dreary fantasy of social harmony. Without such creative conflict, we really could end up with nothing but cuckoo clocks.
An interesting idea. Inspiration can emerge in many different circumstances. While it’s more likely to result from restlessness than slothfulness, there shouldn’t be a need to forsake democracy for dictatorship.