I read, with great admiration, a speech made by Britain's Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, over the weekend, in which she spoke of her ideas about the role of culture in people's lives, and of the role she felt her Government ought to play in supporting it.

She began by defining what she meant by culture. As she said, it can be a slippery concept.

She had in mind, she said, the cultural life of the nation, the intellectual and emotional engagement of the people with all forms of art, from the simplest to the most abstruse. Culture was not, she said, just a pleasurable hinterland for the public, something to fall back on after the important things of the day had been done. "It is at the heart of what it means to be a fully developed human being," she said.

And for culture to work its magic in human lives, she went on, "it should be understood on its own terms (where have I heard that before?), not dumbed down to be made accessible to the lowest common denominator. It should be of the highest standard it can possibly be, a bottom-up realisation of possibility and potential.

"Those," Ms Jowell said, "who have ?had the transcendent thrill of feeling ?the power of great art in any medium, have gained the use, however seldom or often they may use it, of a sense to add to those of touch, taste, smell, sound and sight.

"And grappling with the complexity is almost always the necessary condition of access to that enriching sixth sense.

"I am not saying that culture has to be complicated, or that what is not complicated cannot have cultural value. But I do believe that the rewards of grappling with great art in any medium are enormous. The reluctance of so many to attempt that challenge is a terrible waste of human potential, with a concomitant loss of human realisation."

Ms Jowell was saying those things about culture in a general sense, but they would be no less correct if applied in a narrower sense to art, as one of the components of culture.

And it seems to me that what she was saying backs up what Art in America critic Gregory Volk said to the Bermuda Sun the other day about art in Bermuda. They were both speaking, at least in part, of what might be called a failure of aspiration ? a lack of will to grapple with art as an important human endeavour.

To Ms Jowell, a failure of those with cultural talent to do the best work they are capable of doing is "a terrible waste of human potential, with a concomitant loss of human realisation."

To Mr Volk, a failure of those in Bermuda with talent to do the best work they are capable of doing is a disservice to themselves, a disincentive for talented young Bermudian artists, and a disservice to Bermuda's cultural life (defined by Ms Jowell as the intellectual and emotional engagement of people with all forms of art, you'll remember).

That both their statements are true is, to me, inescapable. I can't say that I'm surprised by the furious reaction of those who say they disagree with him, for reasons which I will explain as I go on, but it was a shock nonetheless.

Look at the world of sports for a moment. Everyone understands the necessity for sportsmen to compete internationally. Everyone understands that someone who squanders talent through laziness, or lack of will, has let him or herself down, and has let his country down. Everyone understands the responsibility the sports community has to encourage talent and to help those who possess it to get as far up the ladder as they can. I suggest it is the same with art.

No one can deny that Mr. Volk is eminently qualified to judge art in Bermuda ? a little research confirms quickly that he is a talented and respected critic of contemporary art, one of the best working in the United States, who has himself been the curator of a number of exhibitions.

In his criticism, he wasn't saying there is no place in Bermuda's cultural scene for those who see their art as no more than a pleasant hobby, or that those who simply want to sell pretty images to visitors ought not to be allowed to be part of it. He was saying that the local art community should resist being seduced by Bermuda's easy-money culture into becoming isolated and self-referential ?into creating the sort of artistic never-never land where making pretty, but intellectually empty art is the rule, not the exception.

Tessa Jowell did say that it is "the struggle with complexity that is almost always the necessary condition of access to that enriching sixth sense" that characterises the power of art in people's lives. If you accept that, you must also accept that where there is no complexity in an artist's work, there is almost always no art, either.

Mr. Volk certainly wasn't saying, in what I was able to read and hear about his remarks, that beauty should be suppressed, or that only ugly things were fit subjects for art, or that art must be confrontational, and he didn't seem to me to be a person full of anger.

He is an art expert who was invited to Bermuda to comment on Bermuda's art scene, and that's what he did. If some aren't prepared to give his opinions the respect they are due, they will be the poorer for it. But scorn for the advice of experts is something bred in the Bermudian bone, isn't it?

We all know about the bookshelves full of reports the country has commissioned, then sidelined or ignored. We all know how people in Bermuda feel about foreigners. We all know how acutely Bermudians are engaged in their own affairs, but how little they are prepared to engage in world affairs. We all know about the kind of coiled and vicious anger that is directed at those who fail to give proper obeisance to Bermudian shibboleths.

One of the strongest characteristics we have inherited from our past is fear ?fear of each other, fear of stepping out of line, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of not knowing what the right thing might be.

White people all know how difficult life was for blacks in the old days. What some blacks, especially the younger ones, may not know is how hard life was for many whites in the old days, unless you happened to be an establishment white.

Years ago, I had a conversation about discrimination with a white Bermudian, now dead, who came from a poor family. Poor whites, he said, had the hardest time of all in Bermuda. They had to behave in the way the establishment expected, or they suffered all the classic types of retribution people remember today.

For them, though, a couple of things made it worse. There was no such thing as a strong community of poor whites to close ranks around them and tend their wounds. Fear made even their friends and families shun them. There was no one to take up their cause ? no unions, no MCPs, no news media to appeal to for help.

The point I'm trying to illustrate is that it wasn't just one half of the community that came into the era of responsible government and universal adult suffrage still experiencing fear and looking over their shoulders.

All the water that has gone under the bridge since the 1960s has made nowhere near the difference it should have. Fear is easier to catch than the flu, so it has soaked into the community like a kind of dampness. You could say that without knowing why, we are all, still, white Bermudians and black, waiting to exhale in a major way as a result of 1968.

I'm not close enough to the art scene in Bermuda to be coming to any complicated conclusions about its inner life. But here's what its surface looks like from where I sit: some Bermudian artists (not all by any means) seem afraid to let themselves get too far away from a comfortably familiar base. It's almost as if they want to ask somebody's permission to try something new, or to take into account what goes on in the rest of the world.

When people like Gregory Volk come to Bermuda and offer criticism, there is often a furious reaction which dresses itself up as a denial of his views. In truth, though, his views are beside the point.

The reaction is really a function of not having properly understood that there's no one, any more, looking over our shoulders ?no one whose permission need be sought. There's no invisible line in the sand Bermudians aren't allowed to cross over. We're free to be whoever and whatever we want to be.

What is encouraging about the Volk affair, though, is that since it was the National Gallery that invited the man here in the first place, it follows that most of the arts community, probably, understands its freedom, and wants to be able to take advantage. Let's hope that's catching, too.