Greece (Brussels Morning Newspaper), In the middle of the third decade of the 21st century, the survival of our culture, taken as humanity as we know it, is faced with a number of challenges.
First of all, the primary goals set by the European Commission facing today’s challenges refer to the two major transitions, that is the green and the digital transition.
Regarding the green transition, we need to understand that in order to change our production and consumption patterns towards sustainability we need to change our ways of life, so eventually we need to change our culture.
Furthermore, culture and education is the means enabling the transition of our people in Europe towards our UN Sustainable Development Goals, through raising awareness not only about the environmental problems but also about the solutions and new practices. Consequently, culture is simultaneously the target of and the vehicle of the green transition and this is why in my work in the European Parliament I worked on mainstreaming culture in the context of the green transition, as well as in all European priority axes because it is the most effective enabler to peoples’ behavior change.
In parallel, environmental degradation and climate change constantly threaten our cultural heritage. Our monuments that lasted for centuries are daily eroded by acid rain, air pollution, and the devastating consequences of extreme weather phenomena. If we don’t act in coordination and collaboration, the erosion of our cultural heritage today will eventually lead to the loss of the next generation’s cultural heritage and hence, identity. This is why I worked in the European Parliament on issues regarding cultural heritage support, highlighting the connection between environment and culture.
Regarding the digital transition, apart from its benefits to our society, some say that technology threatens to dehumanize our human relationships. It also threatens to eliminate human creativity or even human knowledge. After all, for some critics, human involvement in producing knowledge will be hardly necessary since AI is already absolutely superior in rapidly processing vast information, producing, therefore, massive and labor-cost-free pieces of intellectual works, either cultural works such as songs, or works of scientific research.
Yet, we must not forget that this path leads to the loss of ethics and of our connection to our emotions, including joy and social skills, eventually setting risks to our mental health, which is currently on a sharp rise globally. And the only way to not risk our ethics, emotions, social relationships, and mental well-being, while still benefiting from technological progress, is through supporting and strengthening our human-made culture and intellectual development.
This is why in my work in the European parliament I focused on working for state-secured artistic and academic freedom and contemporary artistic production as well as the safeguard of artists’ and cultural workers’ well-being through the creation of an EU-wide context securing minimum standards in terms of social security coverage, health access, pension rights, and income. Failing that, we let our children’s culture and our future’s society, ethics, and well-being be defined by whatever AI criteria, out of our control.
Most of all, in my view, the ultimate challenge that transcends all others refers to globalization. Globalization is said to bring benefits but it is also among the threats to culture for various reasons. Firstly, it threatens cultural diversity because it promotes a kind of cultural homogenization and modernization, altering customs, beliefs, and traditions, our intangible cultural heritage.
For others, immigration, social exclusion, poverty, and social inequalities set further challenges to social cohesion, already challenged by globally rising social violence. At the same time and this is key, globalization sets a doctrine to completely free all markets including culture and therefore treating culture merely as a sector of the economy. I consider this as the most crucial of all challenges because, if we only consider culture as a private good, we condemn ourselves to be losing all its intangible benefits that shape our unique identities as individuals and the cohesion of societies, in our countries.
Indeed, there are aspects of culture that may be included in the market, but only through market regulation such as safeguarding copyright or international collaboration against illicit trafficking of heritage and cultural goods, some of the fields where I worked a lot in the European Parliament. Apart from that, we need to protect culture from the absolute competition of the market, because we need to realize that as a humanity, only together we go further and by no means against each other in competition.
In view of our estimations that especially youth violence will be sharply rising and multiply spreading to our children’s society, it is crucial to understand that we need more than ever to strengthen a culture that bridges our differences and brings social cohesion. This is why I worked in the European Parliament to highlight culture not as a private good, but as a public good with cultural rights for all.
Because if we have a society where not all have equal and free access to culture, then sooner or later there will be a day that we won’t have any society. UNESCO MONDIACULT 2022 highlighted culture as a public good and so did we, in the European Parliament in our resolutions, such as the resolution on the Implementation of the New European Agenda for Culture and the EU Strategy for International Cultural Relations.
Now we need to secure our cultural rights and culture as a public good. This will be our legacy. Without this, there will be no legacy. Yet there will be an environmentally, ethically, and mentally struggling, violent, and dehumanized society. There will not even be world peace. Culture is the key. This is why I need to keep working in the European Parliament. For Culture that is for Us. For our Children. For All.
#Culture4Society
#Culture4Peace
#Culture4All
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