This is Democracy – Episode 47: Government and Creativity in the Renaissance

Jeremi Suri 0:02
Welcome to This is Democracy on the road

Zachary Suri 0:06
discussions and interactions across the world.

Jeremi Suri 0:10
This summer we’re going to take our discussions far away from Austin, Texas, as we meet with and talk to exciting people around the world.

Zachary Suri 0:25
Hello and welcome to this new episode of This is Democracy. This is Zachary Siri speaking. Today we are discussing the history and legacy of the former Italian city state of Sienna located among these beautiful Tuscan hills. We are sitting here today with Jeremy sorry,

Jeremi Suri 0:42
hello, Zachary Cirie.

Zachary Suri 0:44
And Natalie. Sorry. Hello. How are you guys this morning?

Jeremi Suri 0:47
We are well we’re enjoying this beautiful hot day and sienna.

Zachary Suri 0:52
Yes. So Jeremy, you have been taking us through the many historical parts of this very ancient city. So why do we know so little about Sienna? And why do we focus so much on Florence when it comes to the Renaissance?

Jeremi Suri 1:09
Well, Zachary, it’s a great question. The winners write history. And the Florentines, even though they were the weaker, less wealthy city of the 13th century. By the 14th and 15th century, and particularly by the 16th century, the time of Michelangelo and Machiavelli and others, Florida become the wealthy or stronger city. And the Florentines, particularly Machiavelli, wrote the history of this period. And when they wrote the history of this period, they gave the Sienese their rivals to the south very little attention, they gave all the attention to themselves.

Zachary Suri 1:45
Yes, and this really highlights the point we’d like to make often, and this is democracy, that there are always different perspectives to the typical story. There are always new stories to tell, and new people to talk to when it comes to history. And that’s why the history of our world is ever changing.

Jeremi Suri 2:03
That’s right. And the way we write history is important, just as the way we live history is important. And we need to pay attention to the different ways that different groups write about their history, one of the most important developments of the last 50 years or so has been to bring more voices into the history of American society. We need to do that when we go back to earlier societies that are important for our democracy earlier societies like this beautiful city of Sienna and Tuscany that we’re sitting in right now.

Zachary Suri 2:30
So to focus more in on CNN itself, could you please describe for us what made CNS so unique, what made its form of republican government so unique during its height during the rest of

Jeremi Suri 2:43
the so this is a long time ago, this is about 700 years ago. But Sienna was a very small city, located on a trading route between Rome which is of course a major city and other parts of Europe, in particular France, Sienna developed as a very wealthy trading city and the CN ease wanted in their city to have a kind of government that was representative of the merchants and families that lived in the city, a government that serve their interests, a government that as they’ve immortalized in their city hall, they call the government that manifested good governing principles. So they created in a constitution of the 13th century, so so long ago, a constitution that created a system where there were no kings, but instead where you had representative assemblies people didn’t vote. But individuals were chosen for their expertise and their integrity from different parts of the city, to represent different interests in the city as part of a collective government that was designed to serve the interests of everyone in the city, not just a wealthy few.

Zachary Suri 3:52
Yes. And how were these, these goals and aspirations of the Sienese constitution? and government? How are they doing different from other cities states, such as Florence, and also our modern Republic? Well,

Jeremi Suri 4:04
many other cities states tried to do this. But the CNS for about 100 years from the mid 13th century to the mid 14th century succeeded and having a government that was representative and effective. Whereas for most other cities, including Florence, they devolved into dictatorships very quickly, when Machiavelli writes the prince, which is, I think, the most important work of Political Science ever. Machiavelli is writing to a prince who is almost a dictator, the dictator still has to care about the interests of his people, but the Medici family and others who will Florence, like the rulers of other societies in the early modern and medieval world, they became dictators, democracy was very fragile. Sienna provides a model, at least for a short period of a government that was representative and non dictatorial, a government that actually manifested many of the qualities that we associate democracy today, a

Zachary Suri 5:01
government that did not play to the whim of the masses, and do not play to the whims of the elite either. Was it supposed to be representative?

Jeremi Suri 5:08
Both? Yeah, what what the citizens of Sienna struggled with was to develop a kind of government that was not too much beholden to the emotions of the masses, nor to beholden to a few elites, a government that balanced the need for expertise with the need for representative ready representativeness, a government that serve the people, even when the people didn’t know what was in their own best interest. That’s the problem in the challenge, right? Too much mass emotion, too much mass appeal, too much populism can be dangerous. And too much elitism can be dangerous. How do you find that balance in between, and that’s what the Sienese struggled with, about 700 years ago. And as we’ll talk about later, in this podcast that was really influential for the ways Americans thought about democracy in the 18th and 19th centuries as well.

Zachary Suri 5:56
And yet the CDs themselves did not have the sort of direct elections that we have for our representatives. Now,

Jeremi Suri 6:03
they didn’t trust elections, because they thought elections only produced a popularity contest. So they had a system, where in respected figures helps to choose representative figures from various groups within society, something similar to what a lot of governments and organizations did in 18th and 19th centuries as well.

Zachary Suri 6:24
Yes, and we talked about this as it is, in some ways, a model form of government. But what led to the downfall of this form of Sienese?

Jeremi Suri 6:33
So it only lasted for about 100 years. And one of the lessons for us is that these kinds of governments, these systems are very fragile. And we’ve had ours in the United States a different kind of system for more than 200 years. And maybe we’ve taken it for granted. And the CNS case, after about 100 years, is a group of wealthy merchant families took control of this system, this very intricate system. They use it for their own purposes. So it actually became corrupted by a small number of elites who dominated all the processes for choosing representatives to chose their own favorable representatives and made the system serve their interests, not the interests of the people. So it actually became corrupted after about 100 years, and the ways in which the founders of Sienna had feuded would become corrupted.

Zachary Suri 7:24
I feel like there’s a pattern with all governments and all places where it they always, they always go through a downfall after like they get to a height, and there’s never been a government that’s been strong enough to prevent adult downfall. So what do you think the Sienese should have done? Or could have done to prevent the nine merchant families from taking over?

Jeremi Suri 7:43
That’s a great question, Natalie, I think what the Sienese government could have done or what they should have done, was to provide more mechanisms for limiting the power of families that became very wealthy, and limiting the ways in which they could use their money to buy people off, when of the problems in Santa and the 13th and 14th centuries, which is the same problem we have today is that when people get very wealthy, they use their money, even in a system that works well to buy people off money corrupts even the best functioning system. And, and the fact that a small number of families became very rich, very fast in Seattle, because of the trade of the 13th century, allowed them to buy people off and create corruption that shouldn’t have been there. So perhaps one lesson, Natalie is that limiting money in politics might be essential for the protection of good government.

Zachary Suri 8:33
Yeah, and these are issues that are still under discussion today that that’s what makes CNS so interesting. These are the issues in our democracy today, are not ones that are new, they have been going on for centuries, even millennia. And so what more specifically, were these legacies of Sienese of the Sudanese Republic?

Jeremi Suri 8:51
Well, Zachary? It’s a great question. One of the most important legacies is for our own democracy, United States, the founders of our democracy, those who are involved with writing our Constitution, those who are involved with writing our bill of rights, were acutely conscious of the history of Santa and Rome that you mentioned before. So well, they read the histories of this period. They read about this period, because they wanted to create in the United States, what was becoming the United States in the late 18th century, a society it was representative that was not beholden to demagogues, nor beholden to tyrants. They were looking for the same balance between the interests of the people and the interests of good government, balancing against the tendency towards demagoguery with too much mass opinion, and the tendency towards elite corruption. And they wanted a society that would be creative and prosperous, like the Renaissance states of Sienna and Florence worse. So the history we’ve discussed the last few minutes was exactly the history that all of the founders Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, but they were all acutely conscious of as others like Abigail Adams, and those who were not allowed in the actual debates. This This was the conversation of the late 18th century in the United States. One historian, JJ Potok is called this the Machiavellian moment. It’s really the Sienese as well as the Florentine moment.

Zachary Suri 10:19
So Jeremy, what do you think young people can do to better understand the roots and origins of modern different because as you show us, this is really important in the creation and continuation?

Jeremi Suri 10:32
Well, I mean, I think there are three things that young people that many of our listeners can do, whether young or not young, to contribute to using this knowledge and background for our own historical development today. First, they can read about this history and visit places if they have the opportunity that we’re having right now. visit these places, there’s no substitute for walking the streets and stepping in the steps that others walked in before. Second, we can think about these difficult issues about corruption, no system is perfect. No system is free of human frailties. How do we learn to address these issues? How can we be honest about the limitations of our systems, we have to be realistic and skeptical, as well as ideological? And then third, I think one of the real lessons from Sienna and Florence, is that good government requires good institutions and good people in those institutions, and finding good people, to be representative of us electing good people supporting good people. There’s no substitute for integrity. Intelligence is important, but there’s no substitute for integrity. Most of us choose our life partners, because we choose them for integrity, we should choose our representatives based on integrity as well. That’s a lesson from the Renaissance.

Zachary Suri 11:58
Yes, and these are the things same ideas that are memorialized so eloquently, on the walls of the city hall ups approval co here in Sienna, it a great mural of the Renaissance period, which shows the allegory of good government, as opposed to bad government. And that’s really what this discussion of Sienese republicanism brings forth. So Natalie, do you think that that young people your age, are interested in the roots of modern governance? What do you think should be done to better educate young people on these issues?

Natalie Suri 12:34
In my experience, obviously, there are lots of exceptions. But in my experience, and personally, until recently, I have not been interested and my friends are not interested, the people I hang out with. And with everything going on today, their parents have kind of convinced them to distance themselves from the political stuff going on with so in turn, they distance themselves for wanting to know about how our democracy works, because they’re just like, it’s failed us. So they don’t really they don’t really think seem to care. And it’s not really a common topic. A lot of the problem is more with teenagers and with the system, but there’s also problems with the system. But for example, like we’re always so focused on like our own grades, and like who we hang out with, and like other issues that will kind of living in our own bubble. So I think part of that is that learning about government isn’t seen as cool. Learning often isn’t really seen as cool. It’s just like

Zachary Suri 13:22
getting good grades. So how do you think we can make young people I think the broader out of their bubble?

Natalie Suri 13:27
Well, the broader problem is, teachers in general need to put more of an emphasis on learning how to learn and learning how to study for tests and stuff. Because everyone’s so focused on their grades, like they’ll do anything to get a good grade, whether it’s memorize like vocab terms like this year, they had us memorize different kinds of governments and like what each government did, I haven’t taken the government class yet. But when I’ve learned about government, it’s not been taught, and in interesting fashion, and I haven’t really understood how it was relevant to me. And I haven’t been interested in it. Because I, I oftentimes during the day, I forget the day is a government. Right, right.

Zachary Suri 14:01
How do we how can we make these issues more interesting for you? And how can you make young people like yourself more engaged in

Natalie Suri 14:09
these issues? For me, it would be helpful, because it would be helpful if there were options for like, there’s lots of articles in like the news and stuff, but they’re very pedantic and it’s hard to understand really what’s going on. So if there could be, it could be simplified a little for teenagers. The only stuff that teenagers know about is the really like crazy stuff, the stuff that’s like like the jacket that can’t remember name, millennia Trump or because it was crazy, but like, we don’t really know about the other little stuff. Because if we’re not interested, because it can’t be made into a big thing. And the articles are, we don’t want to read extra.

Zachary Suri 14:45
So to make society less focused on sensationalism, and I think that’s a real lesson of what we’re talking about today with Sienese republicanism, right? Because they wanted to avoid the sensational and focus more and how they could make a better form of cover. I think this is really why this discussion today is very important. And and that’s why this is democracy.

Hello, and welcome to this episode of This is Democracy. This is Zachary Siri. Today we are discussing the birth of creativity in the arts that’s centered on this beautiful city of Florence during what is known as the Renaissance. We’re sitting here today with Jeremy sorry, hello. And now, hello. Well, as this is our usual team, Jeremy, you have been taking us through the many parts of the city bursting with the remnants of artists and great thinkers past. So for all of our listeners who may not know exactly what the Renaissance is, what was the Renaissance? And when does it occur?

Jeremi Suri 15:54
So the Renaissance Zachary is a general term we use to describe a period roughly from the four 14th through 16 centuries. Some data though a little earlier, some of them later, when there was a flowering of creativity, creativity in the arts, creativity in literature and architecture, and also the development of new political forms, particularly the city states of Florence, Sienna and various others, that helps to cultivate the arts, we think, quintessentially, of the Renaissance as a moment when human flourishing and creativity seem to have a golden period, in Europe and in other parts of the world as well.

Zachary Suri 16:38
So, um, what were some of the most important people and works that define this period of the Renaissance?

Jeremi Suri 16:44
Well, scholars have spent a long time studying these issues going all the way back to the 17th and 18th century, even to the period of the Renaissance itself when people like the sorry, and others wrote about great figures from their time they were men and women, they were artists, they were politicians. Some of the people we think about most are those like Michelangelo. And we could say the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s David, here in Florence, are some of the great examples of the Renaissance, we think of political figures like Niccolo Machiavelli and his complex and controversial book, The prince. But we also have to think about women and various non traditional figures from this period who played a very important role. When we think about the Renaissance, we were thinking about a wide range of artists, philosophers, writers, and the wonderful thing about studying this period is they’re always more of these figures to discover.

Zachary Suri 17:43
What determined when the Renaissance started, and what were the main things that led to it?

Jeremi Suri 17:48
It’s a great question, Natalie, historians for a long time have debated Why did this period lead to so much creativity, part of it was the aftermath, the plagues in Europe, the great deaths that were caused by, by a biological phenomenon that led to the deaths of in some cases, whole cities are most of the population in many cities, the city of Sienna, for example, lost about a third of its population, that led to a moment when there was a new push to reinvent society. So there was this sense of a need to reinvent society, there was a new optimism that arose from the uncovering of many texts that had been preserved by religious authorities by non European groups, texts from the ancient world. And most of all, there was a rise of commerce, particularly in Italy, and in France, that led to new wealth. And that new wealth was used to fund the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo and so many other figures we think of as quintessential Renaissance figures. All of these faces, years, the famous and the less famous, had patrons. The patrons were sometimes wealthy families, they were sometimes the Catholic Church. They were sometimes military and political leaders, the presence of money and the need for creativity. Those were the incentives and the resources in some ways that allow for this flowering to occur when it did.

Zachary Suri 19:19
Yes, and this really highlights a point we like to make often on This is Democracy, which is that the importance of investing in the arts and specifically in the humanistic studies cannot be overemphasized. It is something that is so important and so vital to the preservation of our democracy.

Jeremi Suri 19:36
I’m glad you emphasize that Zachary, because none of these Renaissance works would exist. If there wasn’t a sense that to fund the arts to fund something like the Sistine Chapel or to fund the great dome that Bruna leski built hearing in Florence in the 15th century on the dome, which was a real extraordinary work of engineering and artistry, a dome that’s still standing, that to find this was to glorify your city glorify your people, and that it was the highest achievement and that society would be better off with the public funding of these elements without patronage. And without the contribution of private and public money to the arts. In the Renaissance, we would not have a renaissance to speak of.

Zachary Suri 20:19
Yes. And to talk more specifically about this location we’re in right now of Florence. Why did the Renaissance seem to center on this city on the art?

Jeremi Suri 20:29
Well, it’s a great question because it follows from our discussion about Sienna and our previous podcast, CNN some ways, was the more prosperous and more artistic city, it was a rival of Florence is very close to Florence here in Tuscany, they had had in many ways been ahead in the 14th century, and some some of the 15th century and 1300s and 1400s, Florence leaped ahead, because of its victories on the battlefield, because of the growth of the willingness history in Florence, which provided more wealth, and because of its size. And so Florence became a Center for Creativity. And we know three things about creative people from that period, in our own creative people like to be around other creative people. So the existence of creativity and find a certain density of it increased creativity, Florence also was not under the control of a large Empire at the time. And so it was decentralized, and that allowed for more freedom. And Florence was jealous of displaying its freedom and thought of itself as the David biting the Goliath of France and where the Vatican. And third, Florence had a mixing of cultures and ideas. It was a trading city, so many different influences came in. So you have these three elements that are that are so important. You had the attraction of talent and the growth of talent, you had the resources and the recognition of how important this important this was. And you had the freedom to cultivate this kind of artistic outpouring. Those remain, I think, the essential elements, they would make creative cities what they are in the 21st century as much as they did in the 15th century.

Zachary Suri 22:14
Yes, but these ideas we speak of that that really, that really made the foundation of the Renaissance period did not come out of the blue. How did the idea the classical ideas of beauty and knowledge influence these Renaissance thinkers?

Jeremi Suri 22:30
Well, as I said, it’s a wonderful question, Zachary, as I said, the rediscovery of certain texts from the ancient Greeks and the Romans, texts that have been preserved, often by religious authorities, sometimes by non European, sometimes by Muslim scholars and others in the so called Dark Ages, the Dark Ages were not really dark, the preservation of texts, the preservation of that knowledge was crucial. And a desire to find that what Florentine and other other actors in the Renaissance are trying to do was find the wisdom of the past to guide them after this horrible period of death, due to due to the the arrival of the plagues in Europe, emerging from this death, and finding a new world with new resources and new opportunities. They were looking to the past to find wisdom, to guide them as they went forward. And they look to classical forms of beauty, to define what a good society should be, they thought that was a godly thing to do.

Zachary Suri 23:32
And this really shows us the importance of studying history, the importance of looking at the past, analyzing what happened, and using the same ideas and structures to build our own future. And this is something this going back to the past for new ideas is something that we really need to consider as we move into a moment of democratic renewal.

Jeremi Suri 23:52
I agree 100%, it is the past that provides us the guidelines, especially in difficult periods, for moving forward. And as you nicely imply, this is this is an important subject first dates. It’s of course, the new book that I’m writing and, and our discussions here help contribute to that.

Zachary Suri 24:08
So Jeremy, how did the political tensions and the fighting that we spoke of, particularly between Sienna and forest, this sort of very militaristic competition, how did that affect

Jeremi Suri 24:18
the Renaissance, the competition is the key word here. Competition encouraged Florence to further patronize the arts. Many of the great Renaissance thinkers, particularly Leonardo da Vinci, were often hired to help develop new military weapons Da Vinci worked for the Duke of Milan for quite a while on this, the Florentines develop new forms of city management and city security. So there was competition in the military center, there was also competition to show which city was the best. And that competition brought out the best in people. One of the other lessons from the Renaissance is that large empires, create monopolies and stifle stifle competition. Whereas decent realize city states like Florence, Sienna, and others can encourage competition and encourage creativity. And so the competition between Florence and CNA in particular, encouraged Florence to try to showcase the best of what it could do. That didn’t make it a very gentle society. It was a brutal world, there was a brutal form of competition competition, and many Florentines were exiled or tortured, including makki Valley, for what we’re seeing is sometimes treasonous activities. So we shouldn’t, you know, pretend this was a golden age, it was not. But it was a time when the creativity was encouraged and incentivized by the competition between city states.

Zachary Suri 25:38
How did these ideas and thinkers of the of this great period of the Renaissance, how did they influence the creation and the implementation of American democracy?

Jeremi Suri 25:47
Well, exactly what we’re talking about right now is Zachary and Natalie are the things that the founding fathers that men like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were thinking about, and reading about, they were very well read in this history. They knew this history of Florence and Sienna, as well as we did, if not better, they read deeply in it. And even those who are not involved in the formation of American society, but were part of the early American Republic, those who were not privileged enough to be political figures had some sense of this. So you see a discussion of the Florentine Republic, you see a discussion of the Renaissance, among non elite figures, you see it among educated women educated local officials, in the late 18th century. In the 19th century, this was the common dialogue, people who were educated at this time and thought about politics, thought about the ways in which the United States could take the best from the creativity of the Renaissance and apply it to our own world. They saw America as the Center for a new democratic Renaissance,

Zachary Suri 26:47
right. And people like Thomas Jefferson were called Renaissance men show it well, who, who the population look to, as people have promised were described in terms that came from the medicine,

Jeremi Suri 27:00
they meant precisely what we’ve been talking about here. And they meant the history of Laurin Sienna, and this part of the world at this time.

Natalie Suri 27:07
Oh, so um, the reason why so many tourists come is to see the the amazing, like the amazing works of art. And it’s, yeah, so besides like the amazing works of art that we have here in Italy? Yes. What were some of the other main legacies? I know, we talked about a few. But what were some of the other main legacies that the rent a

Jeremi Suri 27:23
terrific question. I think there are many legacies beyond simply American political governance. The Renaissance in some ways, created a standard in an ideal of beauty, that later artists would strive to maintain, and a vision of what a well ordered society would be. Before the Renaissance, the notion of a well ordered society really was much more hierarchical. And it was often less humanistic. The Renaissance produced what scholars have called a new humanism, an emphasis upon individuality, and human beings and certain value that human beings have compared anything by Michelangelo, with the wonderful artistry of those who came maybe two centuries earlier. And what you see in Michelangelo is a is a an investment in the human spirit and effort to capture the human spirit in the artwork that he produced, and so many like him, this effort to understand human beings, this effort to see value in the individual religious and secular value is such an important notion for us our ideas of human rights, our ideas of civil rights, our ideas of justice, are deeply influenced by the Renaissance. Now, the Renaissance had its limitations as well. It was very male dominated, that held up a particular idea with people who loved a particular way, it was very European centered. So again, it’s not that the Renaissance provided a model in every way for today. But it provided some of the foundations for many of the conceptual elements of how we think about human society and justice in our world today.

Zachary Suri 28:58
Yes. And as we talk about, right, the importance of the liberal arts, the importance of the humanistic studies, many of the many of the platforms from which these studies are built on stars in the Renaissance began with very important people like Machiavelli, and Michelangelo. So what brought out the end of the Renaissance? All

Jeremi Suri 29:19
right, so in some ways, when did the Renaissance end is I guess what you’re asking Zachary. And why did it end? In some ways, it never ended? Right. It’s it’s an ongoing dialogue. And and when we come, as Natalie pointed out so well, in such large numbers to places like Florence, we’re continuing to have a dialogue and a discussion with this work. When we go to see the David, then we go to the Sistine Chapel. And we go to these places when we are in dialogue with it. The historical period is generally seen as ending around the 18th century, the 1700s, probably a bit earlier, but certainly in the 18th century, because of the rise of more powerful militarized states in Europe, and a series of really religious and political wars in Europe. And those wars tore the societies apart during the Renaissance, during the 14th 15th and 16th century, the societies were at war, but war was on a much smaller scale, the rise of larger wars, particularly the 30 Years War, really created a context in which it was not possible for the flourishing of the arts, and that diverted resources and attention away. So one of the important lessons is that some competition and even military competition is compatible with artistic innovation, sometimes excessive military competition and excessive military spending, as Paul Kennedy and others have written, drains the resources that are necessary for innovation, and that’s the world of the 18th century. That’s why Great Britain began to tax its colonies more. And that’s why the Americans felt they had to those who came to call themselves Americans pulled out of the British Empire, because they felt that was not just taxing them heavily. But stifling David, independence, freedom and creativity.

Zachary Suri 31:02
Yes, and these, these very issues of big empires and militarism are what forced countries like Germany and Italy, which has bombed in a series of independent decentralized states that have thrived on creativity that forced them to centralize to get some nationalistic. Yeah. And, and, and these are the same issues that in many ways led to the, to the, to the issues of fascism in the early 20th century.

Jeremi Suri 31:26
Yeah, we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. These were not inevitable consequences. But there’s no doubt as, as Charles Tilly and others have written that the Modern Warfare of the 18th 17th and 18th centuries, the warfare that in some ways was possible because of the innovations of the Renaissance with the warfare that also undermine the Renaissance. That warfare made the modern state and modern states as we know, them mobilize resources to kill on a greater scale than ever before. And they use often ethnic and religious identity as a justification for killing, which is at the root of fat fascism and other forms of extreme militarism toward particular groups and other forms of modern racism and hatred.

Natalie Suri 32:07
Do you think that we’re going to have another Renaissance soon? And if so, how would technology influence because we have to remember as we look at that art, they didn’t have technology like they built? Michelangelo built all like the David without any use of technology? Yeah,

Jeremi Suri 32:22
no, you’re right. You’re right. The technology they use was was what we would consider primitive technology, right? Michelangelo’s technology was a chisel, and I guess,

Natalie Suri 32:30
the technology we have today, right?

Jeremi Suri 32:32
They did not have electricity, you have to remind yourself that they they put this huge dome, on the Duomo here in Florence in the 15th century, without any electricity without any mechanisms and without a large slave population as they did in Egypt centuries earlier. So, do we think that technology will help us to have a new Renaissance, I think we are approaching a new Renaissance for many of the reasons we’ve laid out here many different that we discussed, conditions in our world today. We live in a world today that’s that’s dealt with a lot of killing a lot of damage. And there’s a desire to move forward. And there are some really big, big challenges, we face challenges regarding climate change challenges regarding inequality, things we’ve talked about on this podcast repeatedly. And there are lots of young people who are not simply committed to using technology to make money. But I think they use technology to solve and address these problems. And there are sources of wealth, public and private, that are devoting themselves to fund these sorts of opportunities. So I think there is a good chance it’s not for certain we don’t know, that we will see around us either. When I look at cities like Austin, and the Bay Area and elsewhere, I see again, imperfections. But I see Renaissance like activities as people are coming together to support the arts to support humanistic uses of technology to improve the human condition and creative ways. I’m more interested in that, that I am in market creation. I’m interested in human flourishing and the creativity that allows for human flourishing, I think technology makes that possible. So I think it’s possible. And I think we should be thinking about creating the conditions to encourage more of a democratic renaissance in our world today.

Zachary Suri 34:17
And we need to remember that economic creation and the creation of capital is good in a capitalist society, but also that we need to remember the aims of the creation and the purposes What is it about?

Jeremi Suri 34:29
Yes? Are we simply trying to get rich? Are we trying to create a better human society?

Zachary Suri 34:34
So Jeremy, other than what we’ve just talked about, what are the major lessons that you think young people need to take away from this, this look at the Renaissance,

Jeremi Suri 34:43
I think there’s three lessons that inspire me every time I’m in Florence, and Sienna, and inspire me in these conversations that we’ve been having during our visit here, Natalie, and Zachary. First, I think young people need to find their passion. What you feel in the Renaissance that you feel in arts is the passion that moved the Michelangelo’s and others to produce these extraordinary works of art, find your passion. Second, think about your passion and the public role of your passion. How can your passion be used to help people, even if it’s something that seems non utilitarian, bringing beauty to the world helps everyone. And so combining your passion with the public sensibility, but Machiavelli called a civic spirit, I think it’s all important. And then third, when we have resources, devoting our resources to that, there are always new gadgets to buy, there’s always fancy stuff that we can spend our money on. But devoting ourselves to beauty, the arts and improving human condition, we should remind ourselves of that every day, every one of us should be using our energy and talent, our passion and our public mindedness to improve the human condition. And we should be talking about that and encouraging everyone else to talk about that it’s fine to make money. But money should be devoted to a higher purpose in our lives and the lives of others.

Zachary Suri 36:06
So now, I asked you again, what lessons Do you think young people need to learn, and, and should learn from these issues that we talked about?

Natalie Suri 36:15
Well, so um, it, it’s hard, like I’ve noticed with myself and with a lot of people around me that it’s really hard not to just think about what you’re going to do and how like, like on my basketball team, everyone’s just focused on their skill level, and not like bringing the team together and having like a relationship that could last forever. So I think it’s important to come outside yourself and make sure you’re helping the other people around you and not just making sure that you do well, because that’s not important. We need to have a good society in order to have a good basketball team. Everybody needs to want to do well and want to contribute. And if you don’t welcome them, because you’re so focused on yourself and what how much money you’re making, or how much you’re doing, it’s not going to be helpful.

Jeremi Suri 36:53
The limits of selfishness, right, yeah, and finding value, not just in oneself, but in the connections to others. Very well said,

Zachary Suri 37:01
and being a good citizen, a good teammate, in this large global society, fighting to make our societies better places for everyone. And I really think that now in a world filled with questions about the meaning and the importance of creativity and the liberal arts, it is really important for us to remember how deeply Our world is defined by the great free thinkers of centuries past. After all, to paraphrase Salman Rushdie, the past has drift into us, so we can’t ignore it. And that’s why this is democracy. This is Democracy signing off from Florence, or even if she had to.

Unknown Speaker 38:06
This podcast is produced by the liberal arts development studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at Harrison lemke.com.

Unknown Speaker 38:20
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