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Wealth of ideas

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 9th April 2008

The relentless downgrading of the News to a series of shocking revelations about child abuse, bearded terrorists and the ghastly incompetence of our Olympic pretensions sent me straight to the World Service where even the shortest of hourly bulletins contains enough information to remind us that life goes on beyond our own limited horizons.

Asne Seierstad’s ‘novels’ have provoked a global controversy. She began by reporting on the war in Afghanistan but turned to fiction when writing The Bookseller of Kabul, which is loosely based on her experiences of spending a year living within the family of a real Afghan bookseller. She claims that she decided to novelise her account of that year in order to tell a greater truth. Mere reportage, she says, would not have been enough. By embellishing her account with imagined details, she can convey something much deeper. But can we, should we, trust her? The Astronomer Royal, despite being the scientist on the panel, had no problem with this manipulation of the evidence. After all, even the literal truth is selective; it depends on what you select as that truth. In his line of work, nothing is certain. Now, for instance, with better telescopes we know that there’s nothing special about our sun; it’s merely one of many stars in just one of many zillions of galaxies.

He reminded us that our earth is a tiny speck within that cosmos; and yet we should also not forget that as far as our knowledge has yet ascertained our earth may be the only planet where there is advanced life. As a scientist, Rees is required to work only with certainty and yet he must also acknowledge that there is no certain knowledge. Of such conundrums is real discussion made.

Each week, Kendall will request that one of her guests come up with an original idea to change the world. Kishore Mahbubani, now a professor in the practice of public policy at the National University in Singapore, suggested that all university students, both in West and East, should be required to spend at least one semester studying overseas in an attempt to create a better understanding between different cultures and religions. As he argued, 99 per cent of women students at universities in Malaysia wear the hijab when out in public. Spending three months living alongside them will give students from the West more understanding of what is going on ‘within their soul’ than any amount of lecturing and reading of books.