Modern upheaval has led readers to writers and thinkers who peered into earlier eras of turmoil. This is an important anniversary of one such writer – Hannah Arendt.
In 1951, Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism was published. In it she sought to understand how rule by domination became the choice of many. The answer: loneliness. Arendt argued that totalitarianism “bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all”. The loneliness of individuals can allow for governing that is so dominant that it “tries never to leave him alone except in the extreme situation of solitary confinement”.
Arendt, the fear of oppressive government and the value of collective effort are themes in Together, by the Turkish journalist and novelist Ece Temelkuran. Her earlier work, How to Lose a Country, incisively diagnosed the erosion of democratic values. It warned of the threats of governing that Arendt described 70 years ago.
The context of this book is decay and the decline of political order and environmental stability. Temeulkuran writes: “A collapsing system is threatening to drag us with it, along with our faith in all that humankind has put together.” She contends that horizons are darker, teeming with threat: “This is the beginning of a darker realm, where men eat men.”
Her earlier book suggested seven steps of decline. Together offers “10 Choices for a Better Now”. These choices include “Choose hope over faith”, “Choose Enough over Less” and “Choose to be Together”.
This is a forward-looking work. The loss of the country is likely but not inevitable. The possibility of positive change is constantly evoked as “our kind is in fact able to reinvent itself through even the smallest of things”.
The first choice is to have faith because “faith is and can be the only reason to act when all is lost”. Early chapters and choices make the case for acknowledging the world as it is. This is best achieved through a lens that prioritises the value of human dignity and the channelling of energies towards attention over anger.
Just fight
The author doubts the value of anger, concluding that “I am not sure anymore whether the anger of our times is sufficient to cut through the forests of complexity… to give us the just fight and finally the victory of the good, of the right”. This choice leads to an Irish encounter, after a lecture in Maynooth University.
A student is dissatisfied with her lack of anger. In response, the author argues for poise when confronting fear, for creating resilience as opposed to temporary power.
At times the argument underwhelms. The difference between hope and faith, let alone the relative strength of either, is not clear. A chapter arguing for sufficiency, contending that "enough is not only a transcendental matter, it is also a
mathematical fact for the economy" lacks heft.
Together is not a recipe of rage or a menu of policy prescriptions. This book offers choices for stepping inwards, for a stance of the self that is more aware of choices. Such selves can be the basis for a different social bond as “we will feel the need for a more sturdy connection to those of our ilk”. This is the Together that Temelkuran believes can be the basis for a new form of politics. It is an antidote to the loneliness that Arendt feared would spawn immersive and terrifying government.
The author is unequivocal about the risks of authoritarianism, but is no fan of political concepts associated with stable politics. The new politics of this book is very different to that which I advocate, for the value of the political centre in Irish and European politics.
In “Choose the reef over the wreck”, she concludes that “our political zeitgeist keeps telling us the same thing in different languages: the centre might be failing, but there is still a chance that the periphery can hold”.
How this holding will occur is not made clear; a mobile sovereignty “might need a temporary shelter in the junkyard of our wrecked institutions”. A call for more participative politics is not the same as an agenda as to how it could function.
So be it.
Every book need not be laden with detailed policy programmes. Temelkuran writes gorgeously about the human situations – from Turkey to Croatia – that demand new thinking.
The insights of this book, whose tone is a potent mix of fierce urgency but unyielding calmness, make Together an important contribution to how polities will evolve in the era of a pandemic. It can be read as a standalone argument. But, reading it as a sequel to How to Lose a Country might demonstrate to the reader that important manifestos have many volumes and are never fully concluded.
Paschal Donohoe is the Minister for Finance and president of the Eurogroup
