Translator: Bubby Fernandes Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Is this talk about ethics or about chocolate?
Those are two different problems, right? Lack of ethics and excess of chocolate.
Two different problems, but they bear some resemblance.
As I was presented, I am a philosopher.
and we philosophers have a very interesting feature: symbolic thinking.
It's awesome.
Maybe it's one of the biggest inventions - not ours, but nature's -
that we still haven't learned how to use.
Maybe on the one hand, we live in postmodernity,
and on the other hand, we live in pre-classical antiquity.
Because, perhaps, if you look at some of Plato's work,
you'll see his symbolic thoughts
were superior to those of 21st-century men.
There is a book called Bardo Thodöl, the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
and it says, amongst many other bombastic and very modern things,
that life is entirely pedagogical.
There is not a moment in your life that doesn't have something to teach you.
Because if it didn't have something to teach you,
it would have already been taken away from you.
So, can chocolate teach us about ethics?
I believe it can.
Let's see if I can sell this idea, or rather, the chocolate, to you.
Stop to think about chocolate.
To like it or not or not like it - it's unanimous about this product.
Since Spanish people introduced chocolate to Europe
and converted it into bars, added sugar to it, and blended it with milk -
chocolate became a fever, and now the army of chocolate addicts is huge.
You may notice we have a very interesting behavior:
When it comes to chocolate,
we don't have to be pressured by anyone to eat it.
"There's chocolate? Yippee!"
(Laughter)
No one threatens you, "If you don't eat this chocolate bar ... "
No, you just eat it before they finish the sentence.
Which means there's no fear and desire, no coercion or inducement.
I like chocolate, and that's that.
Now, look at this other friend of ours, the scarlet eggplant.
(Laughter)
Scarlet eggplant and their like played a morbid role in our childhood
because they were always accompanied by threats or deal-making.
"Eat the salad, boy, or there won't be any dessert."
"If you don't eat properly, Santa Claus won't bring you presents."
"Eat it, or you won't watch TV."
So, why did we eat this scarlet eggplant?
Nothing against it,
but the truth is that our relationship with it was one of prizes and punishments.
If I eat it, I'll get something.
If I don't, I'll lose something.
There was always coercion or inducement by external factors.
Well, think about it.
This is a very similar relationship
to what a philosopher named Immanuel Kant
called categorical imperative and hypothetical imperative.
Categorical,
"I do this because I am, because I love, because I fulfill myself doing this."
Hypothetical,
"If you do this, you'll get something. If not, you'll lose something."
We're heavily conditioned to be like that.
And you have to realize this conditioning comes from long ago.
It didn't get updated, and we haven't moved forward.
It's important we understand this.
We were back in Rome, riding a chariot. Today, we're flying in a jet plane.
Machines have evolved a lot.
But did the humans running them evolve at the same speed?
Stop to think about this.
And what about fundamental life problems -
loss, pain, emotional instability, coexistence?
Coexistence, for instance, is like hell -
you can't be with people and can't be without them .
That's madness.
Aren't our problems somewhat the same?
And do we have better answers for them today
than a chariot driver had back then?
Well, it's not likely.
It's possible that he was a more emotionally stable person than we are.
It's feasible that he knew how to deal with difficult life situations
better than we do!
So perhaps the machine evolved, but the man running it didn't.
We hear a lot, "Well, machines might take our places."
I think that's great. May they be welcome!
I don't believe they'll take our places.
We were the ones taking theirs!
Mechanicity is a machine's thing.
Humans are beings that have answers for life,
symbolic vision,
and can learn from each experience.
Someone here mentioned Plato's modernity.
I agree with them.
Most of the useful things I've learned in life came from Plato.
And he lived 2,400 years ago.
There was no postmodernity.
It was almost pre-antiquity, right?
And he still has a lot to teach us, even nowadays.
So, you see, this is a matter of chocolate and scarlet eggplant:
"I do this because I love it,"
and "I do this because, if I don't, I'll be punished
and if I do it, I'll be rewarded."
Well, carrying on with our story -
How do we choose things in our lives?
I've been a volunteer professor for 29 years.
Ethics is a very recurrent theme - I give lectures about this all the time.
I talk about the most beautiful ethical principles told in history,
and people always come to me with the same question,
"Professor, why aren't people ethical?
Because even knowing these principles,
when we bring them into our lives, we generally are not ethical.
Why isn't humanity ethical?"
I've thought of thousands of answers to that,
and I've come to the conclusion
that the answer as to why humanity isn't ethical
and to why we don't eat scarlet eggplant,
which appear to be two very different situations,
is the same single answer.
Do you know why? Because we don't like them!
Because we don't like either one.
We live under ethics ruled by coercion, instead of conviction.
If you do something, you'll get something. If you don't, you'll lose something else.
Nobody identifies with ethics
as much as the delicious privilege of eating chocolate.
Do you realize that?
Stop to think about practical situations.
We drive at 40, 50, or 60 kilometers per hour at most.
Most people don't like it, so why do they comply with it?
Because they'll be fined, and it's expensive.
Or because others will think badly of them.
I carry a piece of paper trash with me until I find a garbage can,
if I even do that.
Why do I do it? Because if I don't, others will see me and say I'm mannerless.
But do I like doing it? If others weren't looking at me, would I do it?
I don't deceive others, I don't cheat and don't lie
because if someone discovered me, it would be bad.
But if I went unpunished, would I do it or not?
Do you see? What do we like, after all?
What's with us? Which of these things is like chocolate for us?
If we don't love ethics, it's rather like what Plato said about the social pact.
Do you know why I don't deceive anyone?
Because maybe they're smarter than me ...
and, in the end, they will take advantage of me!
So, let's make a social pact:
I don't deceive you, you don't deceive me. This way is safer.
But if I could deceive you and go unpunished.
Have you ever heard of a citizen named Gyges?
Gyges is one of Plato's most famous myths; it's ingenious.
Plato imagines a very honest Lydian shepherd,
righteous and socially responsible,
and, one day, he finds a certain ring that has a stone.
Here's the stunning ring of Gyges.
He finds this ring with a stone.
When he turns this stone to face into his hand, he becomes invisible.
When he turns the stone to face outside, everyone sees him.
Wow, that's genius.
And then Gyges, the most honest man in that region,
starts practicing all sorts of corruption you can imagine.
We're very imaginative when it comes to thinking about these things, right?
He starts practicing every type of dishonesty.
Was Gyges honest or not?
It was fake honesty, just so others could see.
Right?
Then, Plato continues his reflection.
What if Gyges had become invisible and continued to be honest?
And what if people knew about this?
He imagines, "Well, first, they would say,
'Wow! Gyges is exemplary! How good and admirable he is,'"
because they would be afraid, he could use his powers against them.
But privately, they would think,
"What an idiot, if such an opportunity were mine, I'd have it all."
Then he concludes, "People don't love ethics.
They practice ethics for a social pact, a game of convenience,
but when the last door closes behind them, they're not like that, not privately."
Do you know what this creates?
Coming back to the previous slide -
Coercion and conviction,
fear and desire.
This is the same as training.
It works pretty well with the little dog you have at home.
It works great with a seal in the circus.
It's the sardine or the whip of a tamer.
It's barbaric, but it happens.
It works well with a conditioned, animal mentality.
Conditioning in humans generates a type of varnish that doesn't cover much.
In any case of social exception -
"There was an earthquake!"
"There was a blackout!" -
you see those people who had that varnish,
so well treated, so shiny,
rush to the streets like a horde of Vandals, Suebi, or Visigoths.
Or have you never seen this?
Seemingly middle class people breaking shop windows,
stealing home appliances and electronics.
Recently I saw a photograph of a situation like that.
In Chile, in England, how many times have we seen that?
Do you know what this is?
A bad-fitting jacket, fake and superficial.
There are no roots, and there's no love for ethics.
It's always a game of manipulation.
We are used to a relationship of constant coercion,
a hypothetical imperative.
If I win, I'll get something; if I lose, then I'll avoid something.
It's always about fear and desire.
This is an equation for our animal selves; it's the whip or the sardine for the seal.
It works well with seals, not with human beings.
Either humans love ethics, or we won't have it at all.
You are what you do when the last door closes behind you.
How modern that is!
Although it was imagined 2,400 years ago,
how modern that is!
Think about how we play and manipulate.
Think about how our human role is vacant in society!
I think it's great that machines push us away from being mechanical
because the job of being human is currently vacant!
Someone has to occupy this position.
Nature needs humans, and humans love being,
not necessarily being someone who wins or loses.
We have reached such a level of manipulation
that, according to Plato, we even manipulate the divine.
He said, "It's not those who don't believe the gods who offend them.
It's those who believe and think they can buy them."
There is a saint of an ancient Sufi tradition, Rabia al-Adawiyya,
who made a prayer in which she talked about this matter,
"Oh Lord,
if I worship You because of Fear of Hell, then burn me in Hell.
If I worship You because I desire Paradise,
then exclude me from Paradise.
But if I worship You for Yourself alone, then deny me not your Eternal Beauty."
Do you understand this? For who you are, for who I am.
Do you know why I'm ethical? Because I'm human, I deserve it.
I fulfill myself there.
Well, this is a solid citizen,
a citizen who is ready to occupy the role of a human in society.
And citizens of this type, together, can build a human society,
can build a human world.
And nature awaits fervently for this because it needs this.
Well, moving on with our story,
there are some ingredients for learning how to like ethics.
Something I believe is fundamental -
First, as a philosopher,
I'm very concerned about how humans don't believe in themselves.
The disbelief in humanity is one of the worst things that can affect people
because change is hard, even when we believe in ourselves.
So, if we don't believe in ourselves, forget it, it's not happening.
And one of the elements of the "I don't believe in myself" package
is we think we don't change, we think we're finished products.
We believe we are rigid and can't change.
But we can change.
We can learn, for example, to like ethics.
We can learn to exchange scarlet eggplant ethics for chocolate ethics!
We can learn.
And this is interesting because there is a philosopher from last century,
Sri Ram,
who said evolution is nothing but refinement of taste.
Taste refinement.
Even from a viewpoint of physical taste, those who work with dietetics know
we can change our physical taste perception.
Now, imagine our emotional, mental taste.
How many situations have you rejected on a whim
that could have been nice?
How many relationships, experiences,
and how many bad things do we take on as principles because we like them
with complete childish affection?
Realize that sometimes we have this sort of anachronism
where we blend a 21st-century mind with prehistorical emotions.
We sometimes are childish and immature
from the viewpoint of something called character.
Then it's another complicated story.
One of the favorite insults we use nowadays:
"So-and-so doesn't have much character."
"So-and-so doesn't have good character."
Well, good character is a thing that's good from a human viewpoint,
that makes you grow when it comes to human ideals, values, virtues, wisdom.
Bad character is liking the things that make you animal-like and brutish.
Under that definition, who among us has such good character?
Have we been so well educated that what we like
is good for humans, and what we don't like is bad?
No, we haven't.
We have to believe that character can be reformed,
that we can reeducate ourselves.
This is the first element.
The second element of this solution that philosophy proposes
is having self-respect and an inner life.
Stop doing things because people see you,
or at least start imagining that they are inside you and deserve respect.
Kant said respect comes from "respiciō",
of knowing how to see, to look again, to look within yourself,
and consider that there's something inside you worthy of respect.
There is a tale, a Zen tale,
that says there was a very old monastery where a community of beggar monks lived,
and this monastery was almost falling apart.
At a certain point, the disciples address their master and say,
"Master, we need to rebuild this monastery,
or it will fall on our heads."
And the master decides to submit them to a test.
He says, "It's true, my disciples, it will fall down.
So, you will travel to the nearest town, because we don't have resources.
You go there and steal. You steal everything you can carry.
But there's a detail.
You can't let anyone see you because we're a traditional monastery.
If someone sees you, it will dishonor us.
Go and steal as much as you can, but don't let anyone see you."
They obey, thinking, "Fine, but is the master mad?
Has he turned Machiavellian?"
Machiavelli hadn't been born yet.
How can it be? Whatever ... Off they went.
And then, the master stands up, enters the monastery,
and sees a young man inside doing his chores normally.
He said, "Young man, why didn't you join the others?"
"Master, I am doing what you've told."
"What do you mean?"
"Yes, you said we shouldn't steal if someone was seeing us.
I am seeing myself. I am seeing myself all the time."
So, he couldn't steal.
Do you know what this means? Let's go there, to our monastery ...
[Who's watching you?]
Inner life. There's something inside me that deserves respect.
Something inside me that is watching me all the time.
And if I don't act differently because of it,
we have a society of scarlet eggplant ethics.
A society that works for a varnish,
but that will never be consistent enough to be an ethical world.
And, don't forget,
the fundamental factor of our suffering or our happiness
isn't whether we're traveling in a chariot or in a jet plane.
It's whether we're honest, we can coexist, we can have an inner life,
and if we know how to deal with our emotional instabilities.
This is the fundamental factor: being.
And "being" is a very old matter that we still haven't figured out.
Maybe it's history pushing us to vacate the machine's place
and occupy the human being's role.
Philosophers, you know, are pretty weird.
First, we have a symbolic view and seek to learn from everything in life.
Second, philosophers believe that humans are the greatest invention of nature,
an ingenious invention, better than chocolate.
And we also believe that when we learn how to use this invention,
it will compensate nature in many ways.
It will be good, the best good news we've ever heard about in history.
We believe that human beings can be constructed,
that humans are one of nature's excellent ideas.
We work for this.
And I hope you also believe in this idea and will work for it too.
Thank you.
(Applause)