Finding the way

"Giving voice to the widest variety of cultures, music, and stories, because this is a time when we must reaffirm that human beings are made up of an immense diversity of cultures and ways of being..." Jordi Savall said this on Tuesday at the opening of the festival that bears his name and is being held this week, with Marco Polo's travels along the Silk Road as the centerpiece of the program.

The message the musician delivered from the Santes Creus monastery is reminiscent of what Pau Casals championed from Prada de Conflent beginning in the 1950s, amid the nascent Cold War. In those years, the cellist—often reduced to the phrase "I'm a Catalan" and the United Nations anthem—was a central figure in the opposition to the nuclear arms race, alongside figures such as Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. Next year, the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his birth will serve to better understand his significance and his connection with a broad network of intellectuals, especially European and North American.

The figure of the intellectual is in decline but is necessary to build

The figure of the intellectual is in decline. This has been contributed to by the emergence of social media, which allows anyone to produce content and reach its recipients without going through any filter. Some call it "democratization" because it circumvents the barriers and interests of traditional media. This, however, has eroded the survival of those media and, in turn, has diluted the voices with profound messages that inhabited them in an ocean of stupidity.

The intellectual, rather than being considered a generator of ideas, has often been understood as a signatory of manifestos. (And many signatories have been considered intellectuals simply for having a signature.) The intellectual has been degraded because he has championed some causes and been seen as a fraud in others, or because his voice alone has been expected to save the day. If a decade ago it was plausible for a reader to name half a dozen international figures, that is more difficult today.

Twenty years ago, Ralf Dahrendorf published Freedom on Trial: Intellectuals Facing the Totalitarian Temptation (translated in 2009). The pro-European philosopher and sociologist drew on the examples of Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Hannah Arendt, and Norberto Bobbio to explain that, in the middle years of the 20th century, these influential voices, like Pau Casals, had remained faithful to their moral principles and intellectual freedom while millions of citizens embraced totalitarianism.

After the storm, their ideas and determination, along with those of many others, allowed us to regain a direction that had been lost. One need only read the international section of this newspaper these days to understand how essential it is to find contemporary voices like those mentioned and make them heard. We will need them to build and emerge from this period of disorientation.