Fatal Mistake

I became an anthropologist based on an assumption to which the rise of the Mad King has put paid: that ignorance gives rise to much of the world’s injustice. If that was true, I mistakenly reasoned, then so was the converse: that enlightenment, the act shining a light on what people don’t know, gives rise to justice. If only we could see, if only we could understand, then we would change course. So much of anthropology is about the act of uncovering. “Articulating hidden histories,” a festschrift for one of the discipline’s great revealers, as one pompous title puts it.

George Monbiot reports a similar shift in worldview in a recent piece. He entered journalism for the same reason: to help plug the information deficit and hit the skis when he realized that money was more powerful.