In an age of data retention, average speed cameras and breathalysers in bars, an Orwellian punishment for thought crime doesn't seem as far-fetched as it perhaps may have in 1949 when 1984 was first published. Thankfully it is not the world, or at least the country, yet, in which we live.
Nevertheless, when Victor Hugo argues that "No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come", an idea becomes a weapon. A dangerous idea is perilous, risky, hazardous and unsafe; it poses a threat. In years past the cache contained a motley and assorted arsenal — things liked by white people, free range children, ecstasy vs equines, perversion, conspiracy — and platoons were populated by Julian Assange, Germaine Greer, Salman Rushdie, Mona Eltahawy, Jonathan Safran Foer, Steven Pinker and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein among others.
The most dangerous idea of all is not to think for yourself (perhaps Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman can tell you a little more about the danger of bad ideas, and why they tend to gain traction in the appropriately — if unimaginatively — titled Bad Ideas) and with that bleak caveat in mind, here are some picks from the upcoming seventh Festival Of Dangerous Ideas. They're organised according to the particular quality of their danger: the environment, the economy, the individual, the web and the state.
KEY Environment = E; Economy = $; Individual = I; World Wide Web = W; State = S
Capitalism & The Climate - E $
Canadian author, activist and documentary filmmaker Naomi Klein asks whether capitalism is now at war with our planet. Klein first shot to fame with her 1999 book No Logo: Taking Aim At The Brand Bullies, which examined the negative impacts of brand-oriented corporate activity. Her fourth and most recent book, This Changes Everything, argues that neo-liberal market fundamentalism, or the free market, constitutes a near-impenetrable barrier to serious assessments of and action towards climate change. "There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming, but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed," she argues in the book. "Which is surely the best argument there has ever been for changing those rules," she helpfully adds, which is as perfect a pitch for this idea as one could hope for.
Incarceration: A Vice Panel - S
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Chris Munro is a former editor at both Tracker Magazine (once Australia's most read Aboriginal Affairs publication before being shut down last year) and the National Indigenous Television news team based at Parliament House, and a reporter for the National Indigenous Times newspaper. In this panel, chaired by the irreplaceable John Safran, Munro and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser discuss the purpose of prisons and the danger of their becoming a growth industry.
China's Censorship - S I W
Murong Xuecun is the pen name of the Chinese writer Hao Qun, and if the pseudonym doesn't suggest at least a little about the state of censorship in China perhaps the following quote from his banned acceptance speech for the People's Literature Prize in 2010, will: "The only truth is that we cannot speak the truth. The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint. We cannot criticise the system, we cannot discuss current affairs..."
That banned speech and his breakout work, Leave Me Alone: A Novel Of Chengdu, are distributed almost exclusively online, earning Xuecun an uneasy stardom and providing him with a platform for the casting of these necessary and aggressive aspersions. He argues that China's new "Great Wall", a firewall whose function is to attempt to control access to a world wide web from and in a large corner of the globe, no matter how rigorously built or maintained, cannot stop the exchange of ideas.
What I Believe - I
A veritable who's who of thinkers — Indigenous advocate, professor of law and writer Frank Brennan; radio presenter and author Helen Razer; Jon Ronson, the genius who wrote The Men Who Stare At Goats and who, most recently, has been investigating public humiliation; philosopher AC Grayling; Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher Peter Doherty — discuss the what and the why of their most important and fundamental beliefs.
The Right To Die - I S
International editor of The Economist (a publication that has shown strong support for doctor-assisted dying) Helen Joyce asks why assisted suicide is supported by so many — not least of whom is Stephen Hawking — and yet remains illegal in a majority of countries. You may be surprised to know there was a brief moment when the practice was legal here in Australia, though only in the Northern Territory and no longer.
Radical Fat Acceptance - I
Sarai Walker earned her PhD with research focused on normative femininity of the body, the fat female body, consciousness-raising and the 'personal is political' in feminist practice and as a literary aesthetic, and the critical theories of Michel Foucault. Her debut novel, Dietland, deftly and deceptively combines her findings under the guise of 'chick lit'. Walker's dangerous idea is that the time for us to accept that fat is fine is long overdue.
Cybersexism - W I
Clementine Ford received a lot of attention recently when banned from Facebook for publicly sharing the unsolicited abusive messages and requests sent to her by men following a topless selfie she posted in protest of the victim-blaming angle taken by Channel 7's Sunrise in a nude photo hacking scandal. In this panel Ford is joined by academic, author and media commentator Emma Jane, who is currently running a three-year, federally funded research project into the impact of gendered cyberhate, and feminist, journalist and author Laurie Penny, who developed the theory of 'cybersexism' in an eBook of the same name and has penned a book titled Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, And Revolution. Ford, Jane and Penny will discuss how the internet became so unsafe for women.
After Luck - E $ S
Founding Executive Director of left-wing think tank, the Centre For Policy Development, writer and commentator Miriam Lyons asks the question greenies, some politicians and everyone who's paid more than $8 for a schooner in Perth are wondering: Should we welcome the end of the mining boom?
Nanny State - I S
Chris Berg is a Senior Fellow at the Institute Of Public Affairs, where he specialises in civil liberties, the political economy of regulation, and media and technology policy. You may have seen his baby-face dropping bombs on ABC's The Drum or read something by him in just about every Australian newspaper. Berg's dangerous idea? If we — quite rightly — don't think our fellow citizens are capable of making the right choices about what they eat and drink (who are you to tell me how big my Dr Pepper can be?), why on earth do we think they're capable of voting? It will likely be the most well-reasoned discussion about the right of prime ministers of this fine-if-troubled country to scull beer that you'll witness this year. One for the country, Robert.
Learning Addiction - I, S
If Tom Tilley's recent live discussion Australians On Drugs showed us anything it was that the people of this country find drugs interesting, even if no one, those on or abstaining from them, knows how to have a real discussion about them. That may change with the visit from Marc Lewis, a professor of neuroscience at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and a former drug addict. His 2012 book, Memoirs Of An Addicted Brain, details his addiction to drugs as a young man, but also the neurobiological processes underlying various drug experiences and the process of addiction itself. These themes return in his new book, The Biology Of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not A Disease, which informs this talk to be chaired by Johann Hari.
Knowledge Wars - I, S, E $
Peter Doherty, a dude with a Nobel Prize, debunks just about every myth perpetrated by conspiracy theorist keyboard warriors ever by using facts like an absolute boss.
