It was the Norwegian Ambassador to Pakistan, Tore Nedrebø, who without knowing it contributed to the choice of title and topic of today’s article. Pakistan-Norway Association had a welcoming breakfast for him last Sunday, also marking the Christmas Season for All, with more Muslims in attendance than Christians, of course, including several of Pakistan origin, who had come to their parents’ homeland during the holiday time – and I hope they still observe Islam (unless they belonged to another religion when they migrated a generation or two ago).
But how did the Ambassador really help me to write this article? Let me say, he did it inadvertently I don’t make him a complicit to my opinions. First, he contributed by example, being a more academic soul than many ambassadors, including having completed his higher doctorate (Dr. Philos.) just five years ago, when he was into his fifties. He wrote about Norway and Europe, noting that Norway never joined the European Union (EU) since the people voted against membership in two referendums, although the establishment was pro-membership. But we have deep cooperation with our Nordic neighbours, Europe and the rest of the world. Let me not speak on the Ambassadors behalf; I shall not reveal his findings. Instead, I shall reveal another reason for the topic of my article; notably that Ambassador Nedrebø comes from Voss, a town of education, culture and more, near Bergen. Is that so important, one may wonder!
Professor Hans Skjervheim (1926-1999) also grew up there, on a farm on the outskirts of town. Skjervheim became one of the most influential political and educational philosophers from the late 1950s and a generation hence, indeed in Norway, but also in Germany, with which the Nordic countries used to have closer intellectual ties earlier than today (when we have all become British-Americans). Skjervheim never became a full-time farmer, although he lived in his hometown much of his life, commuting to work at university.
And there is a four reason for my article topic (but now I become very academic), and that has to do with Pakistan: the introduction of local government in the country has helped us have the foundation for developing a more democratic country than ever. People must be participants in their communities, within their own cultures and traditions, and looking outward, too. People must always make it their business to have opinions on what goes on where they live and try to influence decision-making and implementation. Then we are true members of the society and the communities, the small neighborhoods, villages, workplaces, schools, and so on.
We must be not just be observers; we must also be participants. Then our societies and communities can grow, be more productive, inclusive and democratic. It is especially important to realize this in industrial and post-industrial societies. As a matter of fact, many rural farming and fishing communities, where people were living in traditional settings (and some still are), had much of this, well, unless there were feudal landowners, the worst type of societies and ownership.
Large capitalists with transnational companies are not much better either, even if they give some peanuts to charity, and donate almost all of their profit at the end of their career (like Bill Gates and some few other super-capitalist do on their own terms). The way they made the money was never right. They had people doing ‘jobs’, all designed and planned by the owners, not the workers, who became as disposable as the machines and technology they used. Workers can never be participants in such organizations.
Skjervheim’s main contributions came early in his life; the famous essay I refer to is Participant and Observer (‘Deltakar og tilskodar’, written in New Norwegian). The essay became a foundation stone for much of the societal debate in the late 50s onwards, in academic, political and laypeople’s circles, and the latter was required; people had to be participants.
Skjervheim was not a literary writer, but he knew how to use language; he did not belong to the ‘poetocracy’, who earlier often laid the premises for learned public debate. He made philosophy and pedagogy to become key academic fields that could help ordinary people in understanding the world better, and participate in the debate, because it wasn’t theoretical and abstract only. This was at a time when the political debate was heated; it was when authoritarianism was attacked; when we seriously began to question the privilege and wisdom of the leaders, administrators, and experts to tell ordinary people that they should mainly ‘listen, learn and implement’.
In social sciences and the humanities, this was the initial step of the criticism of positivism, notably the rigid, often stale, scientific methods and thinking which many researchers had tried to use to make the social sciences to resemble natural sciences – otherwise social scientists feared they wouldn’t be taken seriously. But that is absurd; social sciences are by definition participatory.
In Norway the debate became particularly heavy and long – and Norwegian social sciences ‘got a place in the sun’ thanks to it. It is only today that we seem to begin lapsing back and believe in technical data and statistics rather than hermeneutical reasoning, debate, dialogue and thinking.
Skjervheim said that we should not just accept what authorizes and scientific data tell us. We should not only be observers; we should not allow the ‘authorized version’ of the world to be seen as objective and true. Observers distance themselves from ‘getting their hands dirty’; that is indeed harmful to the observers themselves, and it is harmful to those they disagree with them, and all become ‘neutral’ pillars of society.
It is only through dialogue, debate and engagement that we help making the world a better place; it is only through being participants that we fulfill our right and duty in society ourselves. We should not allow alienation and estrangement to rule, ‘Entfremdung’, as the leading German philosophers and thinkers called it.
Skjervheim was never a member of any political party. He was in-between parties; he was more on the left than on the right; he was a true liberal, questioning and being against all authoritarian tendencies, including those in the 1968 student revolution, which he originally supported.
In Pakistan, we can draw important lessons from Skjervheim, indeed when it comes to local government, which we rejoice that Pakistan finally has established. Local government is needed for people to be political participants in society. It is indeed a milestone, but it must be refined and people must learn how to participate.
Furthermore, in Pakistan, our region and the world, we should realize how important it is that we participate in society, today more than ever, to avoid that people become marginalized and radicalized. If we had more inclusive societies, ISIS and other extremist groups would not have thrived, or they would have been very small – and the terrible tragic terrorist attack at the Peshawar school a year ago, on 16 December 2014, could have been avoided. Extremists would have been pulled back into mainstream society and not become alienated, as most are. Yet, they should still be allowed to have critical opinions, but not drift outside society and become dark enemies, destroying their own lives and those of others.
We must engage in date about issues, especially with those we disagree with. That was a key message in Skjervheim’s philosophy and contribution to the world.
Have a good reading and let us all learn. But let us not read Skjervheim to be impressed; let us read to debate. If we think he was objective and neutral in his analysis, we haven’t understood his message. Besides, Pakistan is some distance away from Norway, also that town and rural villages where Skjerveheim and Nedrebø grew up.