The cultural philosophy of Rob Riemen (Netherlands, 1962) scrutinizes today's light enunciations in search of a better foundation for European civilization. It is a certain idea of Europe. In 2008, he published his first book Nobility of Spirit, recently translated into Spanish. There Riemen emphasized the urgent need to recover the humanist values of high culture to combat the new fascist temptations, in all their variants, that are dangerously emerging throughout the West. For Riemen, who holds a degree in Theology from Tilburg University, the rise of the politics of resentment is a symptom of a deeper moral crisis. Since then, Riemen has published five books on the fundamental question, the latest being To Combat This Age (2018), where, based on the thought of Ortega, Mann, or Spinoza, he reflects on how to reverse the current propensity for democratic and cultural deterioration. Riemen is the founder and president of the Nexus Institute, a think tank and meeting point for debate that seeks to answer the ambitious question of how to learn to live better.
What does the idea of 'Nobility of spirit' encompass? It is a central idea within European humanism that reflects the essences of human dignity. It is a very democratic idea, as it does not require social status or large sums of money, or even higher education, to develop it. Nobility of spirit is what makes us human, what allows us to live with meaning. We can also define it based on Socrates' questions, which any civilized society must be able to answer: what does it mean to live a good life?, and what defines a good society? These are two paired questions; in a way, one cannot be answered without the other, and in both, the answer lies in this idea of nobility of spirit. It is, ultimately, what an advanced society should invest in. That is why it is so important to reflect on what makes a life well-lived, and what makes a society focused on the ideas of justice and truth. From this arise values, a way of understanding life, a scheme of political thought, an idea of how we educate our young people, or an idea of Europe.
At the same time, in your books, you warn about that populist trap of everyone having a right to everything. How do these two forces fit together? Taking historical perspective allows us to see the complexity of this relationship. Let's think about the 1930s. Then, very few would have been able to foresee the rise of fascism in an educated society like the Dutch, or the German, and the same can be said of generally cultured countries with a long Catholic tradition, like Italy or Spain. It is an idea that Thomas Mann lucidly describes in Doctor Faustus. We know for certain that the world of high culture and sciences, even monarchs and members of royalty, have been complicit in the past with fascism and Nazism. That is why I prefer to speak of spirituality rather than high culture, since the latter has shown in the past that it is no guarantee. Nobility of spirit is not so much the result of cultivating the mind, being able to solve complex problems or having erudite knowledge, but of knowing how to cultivate the soul, which is the path of wisdom. Everyone can cultivate the soul, and everyone should do so. That is why we say that it is something truly democratic, since it is an intimate and personal endeavor, not subject to any restriction. Part of Jesus' message consists of abandoning material wealth, adopting a low profile, and focusing on spiritual growth. Socrates makes a similar argument. Spinoza also points out the importance of this idea of nobility of spirit. Cultivating the soul is closely linked to the idea of liberalism in the sense that it is, ultimately, about being free from our own stupidity, from not being slaves to our own prejudices, emotions, feelings, superficial desires, or authoritarian instincts.
Nobility of spirit is not so much the result of cultivating the mind, being able to solve complex problems or having erudite knowledge, but of knowing how to cultivate the soul, which is the path of wisdom. Everyone can cultivate the soul, and everyone should do soIf cultivating the human soul is the pursuit of wisdom, where do we begin? In this quest, an immense treasure is the world of high culture; that is, the world of the classics. Today we can still read Plato's Dialogues, which have more than 2,000 years to their credit, as if they had been written yesterday. We can be moved by Bach's music just as generations long before ours were. What contains true wisdom endures, which is why the classics, so forgotten today, are essential for the cultivation of the soul. Today, however, we are going down the wrong path: neither data, nor omnipresent algorithms, nor Google, nor Ivy League universities, nor even the academic world will help you. In short, being clever is not the same as being wise. The language of music is probably the only tool to know and explore our emotions and feelings, also to transmit them better. Reading is the best way to develop imagination. Without imagination, nor a good sentimental education, it is impossible to be compassionate, empathetic, since one cannot get an idea of the feelings and emotions of others.
In your books, the political crisis, especially intense in Europe, is seen as a symptom of a deeper moral crisis. Whose fault is it? A first point to recognize is that we are facing a crisis of our civilization in general, which is partly the result of a dysfunctional, too often incompetent political elite, whose main criterion for action is usually its own survival. It is a completely widespread phenomenon with the probable exception of China which, as we know, has other problems. This story is not new. A similar dynamic is detected in corporate leadership. Let's think that the financial crisis, a crisis with a very high economic and social cost, especially intense in southern Europe, was caused by a relatively small number of people educated in top-tier universities. A financial elite that, in general, has been unable to assume its responsibilities. That has precedents. Then there is the chronic stupidity of the major media, which is a dynamic we have seen other times in the past.
In 'To Combat This Age', you speak of Ortega's "mass-man". Is part of this disorder also our fault? To understand the behavior of political and financial elites, we must understand their origin. Elites are a reflection of society itself. That is why they also have no interest in changing anything. Their incentives are basically to perpetuate the status quo that has elevated them to power. I highlight two major elements that explain the current situation: the betrayal of intellectuals and, consequently, the deep crisis in the field of education. We can only change society by having better ideas and better education. Let's go to Ortega y Gasset. The mass-man describes the gregarious mentality of those who have lost interest in the questions formulated by Socrates and which, for me, constitute the roots of the problem of this kitsch society, a society that forgets the moral dimension and spiritual values, this society where my identity is not determined by who I am, but by what I have, a society that is irremediably a slave to resentment. A society trapped by meaningless goals, slaves to spurious consumerism, increasingly dependent on more stupid things. This has a special impact on the academic, financial, and journalistic worlds.
Thomas Mann presciently warned in a lecture in Los Angeles that if fascism ever returned, it would do so under the convenient disguise of freedom. How do we then identify fascism? Fascism has no ideology. The key is to understand its origins. It is a rather prosaic idea, devoid of the utopian dimension of communism, and basically revolves around the conquest of power. It does not have an elaborate ideology. That is why the fascist needs to hide this void with external enemies, scapegoats, and rhetoric that seeks to fuel hatred, resentment, and confrontation. It is organized as a secular religion, hence this type of messianic leadership that demands worship from the masses. Fascism gains traction in morally disarticulated societies that can be easily manipulated by propaganda.
What has this dereliction of duty by intellectuals consisted of? Their responsibility is crucial. We limit everything to closed definitions and superficial political theory, which has pushed this Cartesian intellectual profile to look for something that was not there, and this has limited the reliability of the diagnosis. Thus arises the abuse of the term populist, today empty of real meaning. We face a new fascist threat. Populism is also a tradition with history, but it is something else: it is irritating, crude, annoying, but much more innocuous.
The moment we abandon the idea of the European Union and return to the previous stage from which we came, the most probable scenario is that of a Third World War. Europeans must be aware of our history and the value that the European project demands of all of us.This anti-democratic rhetoric is not only occurring on the right flank of the ideological spectrum in Spain, phenomena that fit this archetype described here, from Trump to Podemos in Spain, are also occurring in Italy.Unfortunately, I don't read Spanish, which makes my knowledge of the situation in Spain very limited. But it does seem important to me to point out that precisely because fascism is an empty current, we must identify it based on certain symptoms. There is the figure of a charismatic leader, usually a man, but it can also be a woman, as in the case of Marine Le Pen. The populist leader must know how to communicate in a way that pleases the masses. Then there is the central element of the external enemy, or scapegoat, omnipresent, which articulates the propaganda discourse. Lacking real proposals, all statements are against something or someone. Another clear element is the victimhood from which they then want to be saviors. All of it, usually varnished, by a materialistic and nationalist dialectic, traditional excuses that have served to compact the masses. When one has these elements in a dormant society, that is, a mass democracy and not a real democracy, democratic values deteriorate and a fascist dynamic ends up being imposed. I have no problem calling parties like the Northern League or the 5 Star Movement fascists, political forces that work to de facto weaken democratic values and engage in anti-politics.
Has Europe returned to the twenties? The political dynamic is dangerously similar to how fascism began then. Hitler and Mussolini were not the only fascists in Europe then. There were millions of them. What made it possible for millions of people to be in favor of fascism even though many were educated people? The key element was a policy that worked in favor of confrontation, not in defense of concord. A policy that fueled nationalism, the poison of Europe. Nothing good will ever come from nationalism.
It seems these are problems of cyclical recurrence. Europe's great challenge is to overcome the aggregation of nation-states. There is a certain immaturity in the political class and the way we face problems. An immaturity similar to that denounced in their day by figures like Albert Camus or Mann himself, when they warned that the war had ended but not the politics of resentment characteristic of the mass-man, which kept the threat of fascism alive. This democratic devaluation, if we look at the global scenario, is a widespread phenomenon: we see it in Europe, we see it clearly in Russia and Turkey, we see it in the United States, and the list could go on.
Are our leaders aware of the threats we face? Precisely in my story "The Princess of Europe" —in To Combat This Era— I am very critical of what I consider a lack of real leadership on the part of European elites. This is a pro-European text that makes the reminder, fundamental for me, that the moment we abandon the idea of the European Union and return to the previous stage from which we came, the most probable scenario is that of a Third World War. Europeans must be aware of our history and the value that the European project demands of all of us. It wasn't that long ago that we had the Balkan War.Do you believe a Third World War is possible? War, whether we like it or not, is part of our nature. The idea of civilization, of liberal democratic order, is the exception to the rule. A society at peace has been, one only needs to look at European history, an exception to the rule. That is why the political discourse in favor of resentment and fear, the feeding of our most primal instincts, is so worrying, because it is not that difficult to provoke a scenario from which there is no turning back. We are on very dangerous ground; once the fire starts, it is impossible to stop the destructive dynamic. The First World War started out of nowhere. One day two powers declared war over a nationalist stupidity and a few months later the whole world blew up. It is a real risk.
How do we reduce these risks? First, it is important to recognize that this is a task that concerns all of us. It is useless to delegate everything to the elites because they are a fundamental part of the crisis itself. We must step out of our comfort zone, especially young people and students, and accept our responsibility within society. It is never easy to say things as they are; often there are social pressures, but it is what needs to be done. We are at a point where too many alarms have already gone off for the majority of people to continue to be carried away by the current. Europe still has a chance. Europe, unlike Russia or Turkey, is not a police state; we have separation of powers and free societies with an efficient legal protection system. We can still reverse this situation of degeneration without reaching a potentially violent scenario.
How? Significant changes must occur. An essential change is the educational system. We need to recover high culture in education. In my next book, I am addressing the topic of technological change and its limits. In the second essay, I am addressing the critique of everything related to transhumanism. I do not question that perhaps one day the technical capacity to download a person's thoughts into a computer will exist, as techno-evangelist Ray Kurzweil defends. But the core of the matter is that at that moment we will cease to be human and will be something else. We will no longer speak of human societies: there will be no values, no morality, no ethics, no human dignity.
Harari, another techno-evangelist, goes further by stating that we will not only be robots, but we will be gods. Not long ago I participated in a debate on the BBC with Steven Pinker, partly one of the new ideologues of Silicon Valley, where a new Holy Trinity is being imposed: science, technology, and money. With these three magic wands, we can face all the problems of the world. Thus new gods appear, like Bill Gates. I have come to the conclusion that this way of thinking, devoid of a solid basis from the point of view of morality and humanism, is also very dangerous. Harari's great skill is to package all this new belief in a digestible way and help popularize it. To a certain extent, fascism has become the new religion of the "losers," and technology and science, the new religion of the "winners." We are forgetting the intermediate layer, of revitalizing that European humanism, and we must strive to reinforce the cultural structure that allows us to recover values. Bill Gates has done a magnificent job fighting against malaria and other endemic evils like climate change, but we must not forget the cultivation of the soul. In fact, we will not be able to effectively fight against environmental erosion if we are not first able to recover the idea of nobility of spirit.
You can read more stories like this in F, the magazine of thought and analysis published by Fomento del Trabajo and giving historical continuity to a publication that began in 1849.