Author Margaret Atwood and Professor Randy Boyadega discuss democracy—and what lies in store for its future
On a chilly September evening, I and more than 100 other guests gathered in the Hart House Great Hall to attend The Story of Democracy: What’s Next?—a moderated panel discussion featuring two highly distinguished speakers sharing their takes on the merits and challenges of a democratic society. The first panelist, Margaret Atwood, is a world-renowned author of more than 50 books—including the hugely successful The Handmaid’s Tale—and recipient of more than 50 literary awards. The second featured panelist is UofT’s own Randy Boyagoda, president of St. Michael’s College, professor in the English department, regular contributor to literary magazines and journals, and the author of five acclaimed novels. Moderating the conversation was Munk School visiting fellow, journalist, and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus.
Professor Boyagoda begins the conversation by picturing democracy as “[a] place where incompatible realities sit side by side on the bus.” He points to the many places where incompatible realities exist together every day: in the classroom, in a cafeteria, in the very hall we were sitting in. “How do we live together with these incompatible realities? […] Is democracy as a system the best way to do it?”
Professor Boyagoda posits that our current society’s idea of the ‘intellectual’ is far too limited. The title need not be reserved for the select few who have the money and resources to attend elite academic institutions. Intellectualism, Boyagoda argues, is being “willing and capable of unnecessary thought.” It is exceedingly easy to stay entrenched in our own beliefs, never forcing ourselves to be challenged by critical thought. However, being open to considering the differing beliefs and opinions of others—justified by vastly different values—means making the deliberate choice to perhaps be proven wrong. “Democracy,” as Boyagoda puts it, is all about “having arguments, but still being in the same room. […] It is unnecessary that we are here. That’s why we’re here. Those are the ways that we counteract erosion.”
When comparing examples of threatened democracies in the past versus the present, Atwood revealed that the dystopian societies she writes of in her books contain nothing in them that hasn’t already happened somewhere before. When asked if she considers authors to be prophets, she echoed the sentiments of another renowned dystopian fiction writer, George Orwell. When rearranged, the title of his most well-known book, 1984, becomes 1948, a period where fascism ran rampant through much of Europe. Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ was not a mere character in a fictional techno-dystopic surveillance state, but a covert nod to Stalin’s calculated attempts to control the minds of Russian civilians at the time. Like Orwell, Atwood’s deliberate choice to weave truth into her fictions demonstrates the important role that writers and storytellers play in our collective moral consciousness. Through highlighting these stains in our history books, storytellers show us how easily the mistakes of our past can bleed through to our future.
If democracy is a story, what kind of book could possibly contain its multitudes? We are often taught to view democracy as one written on yellowed paper, sitting on an inaccessibly high shelf, its contents reserved for only a select few of its scribes (and the library’s biggest donors, of course). But perhaps the true nature of democracy is a lot messier: it’s the crossed-out and re-written scribbles of profundity on a café napkin, or maybe it’s the collection of centuries’ worth of annotations in the margins of a borrowed book. It may be a work in progress, yes, but a fundamentally important work all the same.
To emphasize the importance of free, democratic discourse with his students, Boyagoda presents a challenge—for everyone, but especially for those who call themselves intellectuals—to reintroduce a neglected word into their vocabulary: perhaps. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I hadn’t thought of it that way. Perhaps we may even have some things in common.
Instead of automatically shutting out an opinion different from ours or always seeing things in black and white, we could try to give others the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps we’ll agree on something after all. Perhaps not.
That’s what democracy is, after all,—a work in progress. We’ve all got to start somewhere.
