The latest round of violence and intolerance has led to a period of sustained reflection here in Unreason. The hypocrisy and anger on display over the past weeks have led me to ponder my own values and where I, as a 'culture worker', stand. I find myself being either unreasonably reasonable or reasonably unreasonable - but most of all simply unreasoning.
While pondering the consultation that the UK's Museums Association is undertaking on it's code of ethics, I was drawn back to the I Ching or Book of Changes. My new found soul has persuaded me to remove our 'original' manuscripts from the wall above the gents urinals intended as inspiring reading. They have been replaced with advertising for up-coming events.
Let me start with a Confucian analect, 'Cultivated people foster what is good in others, not what is bad. Petty people do the opposite.' I've been hanging onto that idea recently.
From a conversation with a disciple, he unpicks what it is to be human and humane.
"You are humane if you can practice five things in the world: respectfulness, magnanimity, truthfulness, acuity, and generosity. If you are respectful, you won't be despised. If you are magnanimous, you will win people. If you are truthful you will be trusted. If you are acute, you will be successful. If you are generous, you will be able to employ people."
If the point of 'culture' is that it cultivates humanity and the well-being of society, then museums have a very powerful role to play in the regeneration of that society through education and understanding.
Are we prepared and able to step forward and take on that responsibility? Perhaps not (yet) but let us try. Then we are properly preserving the past in the present to enable a better future.
Put this idea into action and you can sit back and you can not only say, "Je suis Charlie" but "Je suis un droit Charlie."
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