Conversation That Shapes Society

By Brian Smith

An Interview with Philip Coulter
Philip Coulter is a documentary producer with the CBC Radio program Ideas and also the producer of many of the prestigious Massey Lectures. The common thread in his work is his interest in the things that form us as societies and how we choose to live together. He has brought his considerable gifts to the exploration of topics as diverse as the contemporary Maya and Inca, the mystery of pain, landscape architecture, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and the contribution of individuals such as Jean Vanier. He is presently preparing a series on the people who live near Chernobyl and is also working with Margaret Somerville on the 2006 Massey Lectures.

Here's a quote to give you the flavour of this interview:

"As a documentary maker I’m interested in ideas that point to the larger work of civilization, how are we struggling forward, and where we might learn. In Becoming Human, Jean developed a set of ideas as to how we might better live together in a spiritual context. Parts of those ideas had spontaneously found secular expression outside of Jean’s influence. I wanted to readdress the question of the secular application of Jean’s ideas. One of Jean’s most profound insights was the realization that the encounter with the weak – not specifically the disabled, but anybody who is other, the poor, sick, dying, anybody whom our society puts outside of the norm – that such an encounter is life changing."

Here too is Jean Vanier, Excerpted from The Gift of Love, a twopart CBC Ideas program aired May 3 and 4, 2006...

We're in a society where for the first time [in human history] people are sensitive to the person as being important. …There's been enormous work done so that people of other cultures, or with disabilities, are seen as important. But we have to go further and to try to see that all people are finding life worth living. I go into old people's homes, and they are places of death, of loneliness. Our world is divided into those who succeed and those who are victims. How [do we] bring these [groups] together so as to make of our world places of celebration and happiness?… What is it that brings me out of a feeling of power and success – that will help me jump over the frontier that separates me from other people? The common ground will probably be suffering… What suffering do I have to go through to discover that other people are suffering also?