[Music]
well on behalf
of ralston college and the cambridge
center for the study of platonism it's
an immense honor to introduce two of the
foremost intellectuals of our age
these thinkers one a philosopher
the other a psychologist
are spiritual writers addressing the
malaise of the soul in our culture
john stuart mill in his magnificent
essay on coleridge wrote of bentham
jeremy bentham who above all others men
have been led to ask themselves in
regards to any ancient or received
opinion is it true
and by coleridge
what is the meaning
with coleridge in contrast to the
utility of benton the very fact that any
doctrine had been believed by thoughtful
men
and received by whole nations and
generations of mankind was part of the
problem to be solved
was one of the phenomena to be accounted
for
this i think is true of both roger
scrutin and jordan peterson and i'd like
to mention just a couple of points of
convergence
one is an insistence on the importance
of imagination
as conversion to truth
in opposition
to a mere
fantasy
and an opposition
to idolatry
ideology
as well as idolatry
especially
the idolatrous ideology
of the post-modern foucault-derived
consensus
and an urgent
return to questions about truth
beauty and goodness
and of course part of this is linked to
what both perceive as the perilous
position of the modern university
they both argue that
continuity of esteem
needs to be
regained
in the humanities
and that the dominant strands of the
humanities are leading to an
impoverishment of the souls of students
narratives both argue are not just
stories of power
but these narratives persist
because of their truth
so the importance for both ralston
college and indeed for the cambridge
center for the study of platonism
of both of these thinkers is their
insistence upon the relationship between
muthos and logos between story and
reason
the insistence upon a hierarchy of
values
and their vision of education as
conversion to truth
this conversation
will be moderated by the president of
ralston college stephen blackwood
thank you
[Applause]
thank you douglas for those inspiring
and grounding
words starting us off right in relation
to the
past that we wish to recover
let me start i think with a very
straightforward but perhaps difficult
question where we're we're
gathered around the theme
apprehending the transcendent
loosely to gather this conversation
and i'd like to begin by asking each of
you
[Music]
what is the transcendent what does it
mean for something to be
transcendent
well if you let me start
i i take a position which i attribute
also to kant
that um
that we have a very clear negative
understanding of it we we as it were
advanced to the edge of our thinking in
so many areas
knowing that
although there's nothing further that we
can say
that somehow the truth has not
nevertheless not run out and and
that negative view i think needs to be
combined with a more positive view which
tells us that there are other ways not
just maybe not thinking but some other
way of
of crossing that boundary and as it were
landing in the realm of the transcendent
and knowing it from inside i think you
know
and that
this is something that we
understand very quickly in personal
relations you know that
when i
when i address you
i know that i'm addressing something
which addresses me too
but from a place where i could never be
i couldn't look at myself from those
eyes
and i can't capture the thing that is
looking at me from those eyes but
nevertheless there are leaps of the
imagination which can put me in your
point of view
and
from that point of view i can come to
understand exactly what i am
but in a completely different way from
simply the ordinary empirical knowledge
that i have of myself and i think that
that sort of interpersonal understanding
i would say
we can
adapt to all the other aspects of our
world which is mysterious to us
music for instance
but that's a beginning
and i want to return to music a bit a
bit later jordan well i think it's
useful
as an adjunct to that
so so
sir roger
mentioned that
the transcendent is what
we bump up against when we realize our
ignorance
and so it's that which transcends our
ignorance and and that in itself makes
it an implacable fact unless you believe
that you have no ignorance in which case
there's no point in
furthering a discussion with you
um so the transcendent is the fact in so
far as it's that which transcends our
ignorance but you can also think about
it technically so and and and i think we
know enough about how the brain works
now so that not that we know much
so that
useful things can be said about that
you tend to represent the world in the
simplest manner that you possibly can
that works for what you're doing
and so you don't actually see the world
you see
sufficiently useful low represent low
resolution representations of the world
and if they work then that's fine
there's no need to adjust them and
they're relatively easy to remember and
to manipulate but now and then you have
a misapprehension about someone let's
say
and you have a conversation with them
and the conversation goes sideways and
what that means is that the the thing
that you thought you were conversing
with is not the thing that you're
conversing with and that manifests
itself in error
right so error is the place where the
transcendent reveals itself
and what is actually revealing itself is
the reality that's
outside and underneath your perceptions
and so what you see in the world
in some sense is a set of animated
cartoons
and a lot of that is actually a
consequence of you seeing nothing but
your memory because your brain is
organized so that instead of going
through all of the difficulty of having
to look at the thing in
itself
you look at what you assume to be there
and if you can get away with that so
much the better
but
the thing in itself is always much
richer richer than your apprehension of
it which is partly why you make mistakes
but also partly why you can continue to
garner wisdom in the world there's
always more there than meets the eye and
god only knows how much more there is
there than meets the eye and
you can show this even in the religious
sense to some degree because you could
say that there's an element to the
transcendent that instills people with a
sense of religious significance you can
do that by immediately scientifically by
feeding people chemicals for example
that disrupt the inhibition of
perception by memory and then that puts
them in a place where the transcendent
tends to reveal itself sometimes an
overwhelming force so this it's not some
fiction that this exists it's
what's transcendent is more real than
the reality that you perceive well let's
pick let's pick up on that because the
the the ancients and the medievals had a
clear sense that it wasn't the world
that was changing it was we ourselves as
we make an ascent towards
deeper truths higher forms of the
beautiful
as we ourselves become more
self-conscious so it's not the world
that's changing uh but but us i wonder
if you could say
how you understand the nature of that
ascent that that that that that movement
and and what brings it about
i i would
be a bit wary of the metaphor of ascent
you know i i think
in plato it's quite clear what he meant
that he he wanted us to actually to
transcend our earthly perceptions and
our earthly way of seeing things and
look on the world from uh from a god's
eye perspective
um and this could be done if we enter
the world of the pure forms uh and so on
leave empirical reality behind
i think actually um
in so far as the experience of the
transcendent that i as i understand it
is available to us modern people
it's not that way that we get it perhaps
perhaps um jordan might be right that
that there are these drug induced
experiences where uh things open up to
us because old barriers are suddenly
swept away but in my own case
it is
the concentration on the empirical
reality which at a certain point flips
from mere um sensory understanding took
to a vision in that
uh of its communicating something to me
and i think this is what literature and
art and music do
at their best they they redescribe
reality so that it is uh actually
communicating something to you it's not
just there as an inert object before you
and
that sense of the transcendence is like
discovering yourself in a mirror
seeing in the world as a whole that
thing in you that you could never
identify in words you know the the
subject which is looking at it
and it's not a mystery but it's
something that you can't then explain
and it's the difference between a good
writer and a bad writer of course is
that a good writer will describe
something in such a way that the thing
described has the soul of the reader in
it
so so that might be that a distinction
in part between the thing and the
meaningful thing right and that's a mis
that's a very mysterious phenomenon in
fact in some sense the essence of
phenomena because that means to shine
forth
you know as we're surrounded by
empirical facts they're everywhere
there's more of them than we can
possibly count but some of them do
emerge and manifest themselves as that
as that conjunction between the factual
and the meaningful and then that's
what's gripping and if you're fortunate
i mean to me that's also partly what
what leads us onward and maybe in in
something approximating the ascent that
you described is that the set of facts
manifests itself as implicitly
meaningful and that means in some sense
that there is a call to you that isn't
from within you i mean i don't know how
else to put it exactly because you walk
into a bookstore and a book will will
will reveal itself to you you know or or
you have a conversation and part of the
conversation will trigger something in
you or you're reading a scientific paper
and much of it's dull and then all of a
sudden there's something that sparks
outward that's like a port that's a
portal into the transcendent and that is
a place where the fact and the meaning
converge and that's a phenomena we don't
understand very well it has something to
do with its convergence with the
narrative that drives us whatever that
happens to be
yeah i think that's a good way of
putting it actually it connects with um
the general problem
of what the humanities are in the
university
i've i've always assumed that in some
way or another if you're teaching
literature or musicology or or history
of art or anything you are opening young
people to those moments
when the world
ceases to be a mere accumulation of
facts
and as it were addresses you and
that requires
literary criticism it requires
opening yourself to experience in a way
that um
it requires a serious education of a
special kind and i think that if we
thought of the humanities as directed
towards that we can see why
they might be one way to fill the
the moral void that that grows so easily
in people's lives
so jung had this idea which i really
love it's a very sophisticated idea um
it's it's it's his idea of how the self
first of all so the self
for jung this christ was a symbol of the
self so the logos was a symbol of the
self so that's sort of what would you
say it's the divine essence of humanity
and the image of that is a symbol of the
self and for jung
the self was
the totality of the individual across
time and space so it's whatever you are
as as a transcendent object that's a
good way of thinking about it
and then you can imagine that that
transcendent object also has to interact
with
you and the world moment by moment and
his belief was that those times when
that space of meaning opened up so there
was that convergence between the fact
and and the gripping of the fact was the
manifestation of the self which is this
transcendent object in the specific
moment of time and space and therefore a
call forward to
move towards revealing that totality as
much as it can be revealed and so that
it would be partly and that would be
partly revealed by then following a
meaningful pathway and it would be the
case that if you're engaged in the
teaching of humanities and and
literature that you are trying to engage
exactly that part of the person it's to
pull them into the story and to and have
that open up to them and then that's a
portal
it's not it's not words on paper it's a
it's a portal to their to their further
development towards this this
the manifestation of this higher
and more transcendent mode of being
that's like the hindu idea of the
transition from samsara to brahman isn't
it that
you suddenly you pass through
a barrier that can't actually be
described
because you can only know it when you're
on the other side of it and but when
you're on the other side of it you're
looking back at the thing that you left
and seeing it in
as it were for the first time
and knowing what it means i guess that's
a little connects a little bit with what
douglas was saying about about uh
coleridge
uh you know that that
coleridge was an advocate of a form of
education a form of knowledge which
shows the meaning of things as opposed
to the mere facts accumulated by bentham
and people like that
both of you have done quite deep dives
into uh 20th century totalitarian
ideologies
and both of you have been uh very
trenchant critics of the
ideology the various forms of nihilism
in in our own culture
um but i think all of us tire of of
uh
a kind of negativity that has uh come to
be very prevalent in in our culture not
simply the nihilism but then
we can criticize the nihilism we ought
to criticize it both of you have been
have been brilliant critics of it um
but i what i take to be at work in both
of your uh
in in in the work that both of you do
is is not fundamentally criticism but a
turn towards something positive a a
recovery of a sense of the transcendent
i'd i'd like to have it
have a
turn for a moment to what does that
recovery look like
where do we start
well
if we're thinking intellectually the
world of scholarship and education that
we both belong to has turned as you say
in this negative
direction
always preferring debunking explanations
of everything
reducing them to the lowest motive
that
it's not truth but power that we pursue
and all that foucauldian nonsense
and i think the only response that is to
come up with bunking explanations of so
to speak
try to put back into the subject matter
uh one's own inherent belief in it and
to recognize that you know that we're
we're not around on this earth for very
long
and we do have an obligation to find the
things that we love and not the things
that that we reject
and that those things that we love the
best way towards them is to look at the
things that other people have loved
that's what a culture is it's the
residue of all the things that people
have thought worthwhile to preserve and
teaching that
will again reconnect us to what matters
well and there's there's also ways of of
of providing a pathway forward
by
making the fucoin arguments let's say
about power more high resolution and one
of the things that i do in my lectures
in my public lectures that i think is
rather comical is to
take
and and poke fun in some sense about the
idea of power as the fundamental
foundation for the hierarchical
structures of the west i think well
you can think of the west as one large
scale low resolution totalitarian
tyranny the tyranny of the patriarchy or
you can decompose that and which is in
some sense is to transcend the concept
and i think well
i i i ask my audiences what they think
about the the tyranny of plumbers
or the tyranny of massage therapists
well because it's it's dead relevant
it's like
let's say you need a plumber and you do
need a plumber everyone agrees that you
need a plumber and because there's hell
to pay otherwise and so and then the
question is well how is it that you go
about selecting a plumber and the answer
isn't that there are roving bands of
tyrannical plumbers that go door to door
telling housewives that if they don't
uh
use their services the service of the
most tyrannical plumber that there'll be
mafia-like consequences
what what happens instead is that you
look for the plumber who is most able in
your estimation and in the in the uh in
his reputation as distributed through
the community for being able to fix
pipes
and run a business and
engage in an honest transaction with you
and that's competence that's not power
you see in what i see as most corrosive
about the post-modern types especially
those who've derived themselves from
foucault let's say is that
the idea that every hierarchy or the
hierarchy of such is predicated on power
is actually an assault on the idea of
competence itself and that in turn is an
assault on the idea that there are real
problems that can actually be solved
well then if you dispense with all that
and it's only power
there's no real problems to be solved
and there's no noble ways of solving
them even even as in even in as concrete
a manner as a good plumber would solve
them which is not not a trivial thing
and so then you deprive people of you
deprive people of that of that sense of
purpose in their life even even at the
high resolution levels you know and i've
insisted
in my lectures that you know if you're
the sort of person who runs a small
diner that it's incumbent on you to run
the highest quality small diner that you
possibly can because what you're doing
there is not merely providing people
with basic nutrition
there's way more to the space than meets
the eye and your
noble
what would you say acceptance of your
limited responsibility is also
simultaneously a way to transcend that
that can be a place where the
neighborhood meets that can be a place
where tired people revivify themselves
before they go off to do their difficult
work that can be a place where you can
mentor your employees and help them
develop their life like it's a rich it's
an unbelievably rich microcosm and to
take on the
the
care and and tending of that microcosm
as a responsibility is also a great
pathway to meaning and unnecessary and
meaning is something that's well not
epithelial and not
dispensable but absolutely central to to
human thriving in in the psychological
and practical sense
yeah but we do have to try and
understand why it is
that there is such a charm in the
fukodian position why is it that people
want to believe that all the best things
what we think of the best things in
human relations are simply disguised
forms of manipulation you know that uh
that the whole feminist view of the
relation between men and women for
instance which
is founded on this deep myth
that men are exercising exercise power
as
a agenda to use the fashionable world
the word over over women and that all
study of this uh is just a way of
revealing the that power and
and the capillaries through which it
it flows you know i think there's a a
will to believe this
and why is one of the big questions that
i think we try we have to try to
understand
is it that when people
lose some kind of transcendental
religious faith that they'll
automatically fall into this great pit
of of resentment as of the nietzschean
kind to try and find uh
the the oppressor in every relationship
or is there are there truths that
they're exploring as well
is there are there forms of power
or forms of human relation that look
like power from one aspect but are
perhaps also look like tenderness and
dependence from another aspect and that
they've just are emphasizing one half of
it or something like that i think there
are real questions as to how it is that
our culture has got into this position
yeah well that's the question below the
claim of power and so i mean i've
thought about that to some degree and
here's three possibilities i mean one is
the accusation that all there is is
power is the justification for use of
power of course so that's that's handy
if that's what you want to use
so then
then there's another problem and that
goes along with the
the failure the willful failure to
distinguish competence from tyranny and
power let's say because we might think
of power as unearned authority something
like that because we need a definition
of power
and i think that
there's a resentment at work there
that's very very deep i think it's it's
deep in the biblical sense which is that
there is a proclivity for
those who do not manifest what they
could manifest in the world and thereby
fail
to watch the success of those who do
manifest what they could manifest in the
world and succeed and become embittered
by that tremendously embittered and then
to label that as power and then to
attempt to destroy it because it's
simpler to do that than to do the
radical internal retooling that would be
required to set things straight
internally i'm sure that's right that
that's one explanation of why people are
always tempted by the zero-sum vision of
relations his benefit is my cost sort of
thing right um yeah oh i wanted to pick
up on that the the the
the very widespread
view that things are zero-sum uh which
is of course the the language of power
um what's the antidote to that what is
that how does one overturn the uh the
ideology of power uh how does one
transcend that with a non-zero sum
uh
truth or approach to life well i i
personally would say that the first
thing to to recognize is that there are
positive some games you know that's what
the the real theory of the market tells
us that there are whole realms of human
transactions where both parties gain
uh from
from their shared
uh engagement and um
though that doesn't won't drive away
the real source of this this difficulty
um it has something to do with what
jordan was referring to
you know that people's
people's resentment at the
success of others when they cannot match
it or cannot easily match it will not
matter or will not match it which is
even worse yes exactly uh and because of
the labor of of re
uh reconceiving your own position in
such that you actually have to do
something about it you know that uh it's
there is some there's something lazy
about the zero-sum
vision yeah um but it's not a you know
it's not a vision that successful people
have
you know uh that's not a vision that
they have at any level of reality and
you can actually combat that to some
degree by make it high resolution again
by by making examples it's like because
very few people actually
believe once they observe that all the
relationships they've had with other
people have been zero sum now you might
get some very disadvantaged people
and and these people do exist who've
been
taken advantage by virtually everyone
they've ever encountered in their whole
life like that does happen but most of
the time all you have to do is remind
people it's like well think of someone
that you loved
even briefly think of a friend that
you've had it's like well you've you
successfully negotiated with that friend
to do things together because
otherwise it's not a friendship and it
has to be successful negotiation which
means your friend has to be happy with
what you were doing and you have to be
happy and so and then wasn't it the case
that you were both happy you're doing
that then either of you would have been
doing something else alone and and isn't
that evidence in your own action and
your life for the existence of
non-zero-sum games and they're dependent
on successful negotiation is we can both
have more than we would otherwise have
if we can come to a consensus about what
we'll both pursue and it's very few
people when you make it personal like
that and high resolution again it's very
few people who are willing to pursue
their ideology of zero sum
of a zero-sum reality so far down that
they'll actually use that to
characterize their most intimate
relationships now i would say that
someone who does that by temperament is
literally psychopathic because the
psychopathic view of the world is
absolutely that it's a zero-sum game yes
i think that's right but of course we
have a
whole body of literature
um
about sexuality which is trying to
establish that that sexuality is the
exercise of power of one person over
another you get it already in satan's
being and nothingness
where he
almost
it's almost by logic that that a
serious sexual desire for him ends up as
sadomasochism because
you cannot extract from the other that
gift of his freedom
which which is what you're looking for
because his freedom is his and not to be
obtained by you
and therefore you can only do this by
sort of tearing at his flesh
getting him to confess in the extremes
of agony that he can't do it you know
this kind of thing i know that's a very
perverted vision of what sexual
relations are but you get
that image used by simon de beauvoir and
all kinds of feminists to essentially to
delegitimize the idea that there is such
a thing as as love for the other sex
well there's a there's i think it also
masks a more fundamental problem that's
really a biological problem like it's a
misapprehension of a genuine problem but
part of what sex does is temporarily
subordinate the individual to nature and
the species and so there is a domination
there you know and if if if a woman
decides to have a child then she is
going to undergo a series of
extraordinarily radical transformations
and she's also going to end up in a
situation where in all likelihood
something else becomes fundamentally
more important than her and there's so
there is a there's a some it might be
voluntary subjugation but there's a
subjugation to nature and and that's
built into the fabric of existence and i
think it's very easy not to want to
grapple with that because it's such a
profound problem and then to to make
that a secondary consequence of
something like unbalanced power
relationships between the genders but of
course
our traditional religion offers you
salves for this that the right of
passage in which which joins man to
woman the right of passage which makes
birth
an experience of the whole community and
death likewise
and um
you know the sense also
in these great events
one is
occupying a position in the
in a moral space that has been occupied
by
generations before one and so on this
normalizing of these huge transitions i
think is something that that we've
always depended upon religion to provide
it's just sacralizing us yes and having
taken that away or or ignored it or
tried to live without uh exactly without
the idea of a sacrament
and
we're actually at a loss when these
great transitions occur well and it is
because it is the case in fact that to
to engage in the integration of
sexuality with your individual life is a
series of sacrifices so for example if
you get married that's a sacrifice
because it's a sacrifice of all other
people and so it's a sacrifice of that
possibility and then to have a child is
the sacrifice of all the things that you
could have done otherwise
than having that child and to
but to to uh as you pointed out to make
that part of a broader tradition to say
that well that is a sacrifice and there
is a loss that goes along with that but
what you gain as a consequences of if as
of immeasurable significance in contrast
to the loss and one of the things that's
really struck me in this lecture tour
that i've been doing so i've been in
about 100 cities and one of the things
that i've been talking to people about
is is meaning and i suppose it's meaning
in relationship to the transcendent and
and the necessity of meaning as an
antidote to suffering and to malevolence
and the hypothesis is something like
well meaning is to be found in
responsibility
and and this is a it's a revelation to
people because they haven't
conceptualized it that way before it's
like
meaning isn't um
it isn't happiness and it isn't
self-esteem and it isn't momentary
pleasure isn't any of that it's it's the
it's the bearing of a sacrificial burden
and that that actually works to enrich
and ennoble your life in ways that make
the tragic element of it tolerable and
to and to keep you from bitterness and
so these things that are put forward as
subjugation like the subjugation of
woman to the to the catastrophe of birth
let's say or even the the indignity of
of patriarchal union is all of a sudden
something that you can take on as an
aspirational goal rather than something
that's a mere imposition on your on your
moment-to-moment freedom it's a relief
to people to hear that and to know it of
course i agree with that um
but there is also the the sense that
in the world in which we live where
obviously people have been detached to a
great extent from the
any continuous religious tradition there
still is a sense of loss isn't there
people
they don't they know that they they're
missing something but don't know quite
how to identify it and that's one reason
for thinking for them thinking that it
it's been taken away something's been
stolen from them and they look around at
the people who are at ease in the world
and successful and seem to be
you know on good terms with themselves
and think of them as the ones who've
done the stealing and
that is a dangerous attitude and i think
it's well it's surely that is part of
what erupts in all these
strange academic disciplines like gender
studies which simply have as their goal
the undermining of the existing order
without anything positive to put in its
place and
i don't know what those those academic
studies recruit people all the time
from this fund of
of isolation this front of the
sense of of loss without an ability to
identify the thing that's been lost
that's the cult-like element of them
because they do i would say to some
degree degree prey on people whose
interpersonal relationships have been
irreparably damaged right i have a
hypothesis about about the feminist end
of the post-modern radical leftist
movement so and this isn't something
i've talked about much in public but but
well but here goes this should get me in
lots of trouble so
so and there's a variety of things that
are tangled together here so we don't
know how female biology would manifest
itself politically male biology does
female biology is going to and that's
because
female political activity on the largest
possible scale is a relatively new
phenomenon so so and it isn't
obviously the case that men and women's
views of the world are going to dovetail
precisely so here's a hypothesis you
tell me what you think about this
so
one thing that a woman really wants to
know about a man
or
perhaps you might say one thing that
femininity wants to know about
masculinity is that it's not a predatory
tyrant
okay so and here's why i mean first of
all
there's
fragility in feminine sexuality to a
greater degree than there is in male
sexuality because women bear a
higher price for sexual misadventure
let's say
and are perhaps more prone to
exploitation by force
but more than that
part of being a woman is having the
possibility of bringing something
extraordinarily fragile and vulnerable
and valuable into the world
and the first concern might be
are you a predator
fundamentally are you a predator and so
what i see happening in the in the
feminist disciplines like gender studies
is the politicization of that accusation
and the accusation is
prove to me that you're not a predator
like in in your fund in the fundamental
element of your masculinity not only
historically but now because the cost of
you being a predator is is too high
now i feel that that's an inappropriate
i think that's what's driving the
demolition of the idea of presumption of
innocence for example will start with
presumption of guilt and prove to you'll
be proved to me that you're innocent and
i think the problem with that isn't that
there are no predatory men because there
are plenty of predatory men the problem
is is that
the courageous way to deal with the
problem of the predator is to offer a
hand in courageous trust and to invite
forward a partner from the monster
that's the that's the mythological
manner in which this is supposed to be
undertaken the courageous a
courageous part of the woman's journey
let's say is to face the monstrosity of
a man and to invite out of that
something more noble to emerge and
there's courage in that and genuine risk
and i think that that's foregone in the
accusation process and then the the
other element of that seems to me to be
that well if you are a predator
and you're irredeemable in your
predatory nature then the best thing to
do is to
render you harmless and if we're going
to obscure the relationship between
competence and power and assume that all
of your striving upward is merely a
manifestation of power then what we'll
do is weaken you as much as possible so
that harmlessness can replace virtue and
i see all of that driving these
resentful disciplines in there and
they're idiots the aim is the
emasculation of the man yeah that's the
evil queen yeah yeah because we have the
evil king right that's the tyrannical
patriarchy well the evil queen is
lurking somewhere yes so
um but the problem is
a lot of this is true but um
our society does not seem to have the
capacity to put that to one side and
celebrate the normal
the the the fact that most men and most
women are not like that and that there
is there is a
a natural desire and need of the sexes
to love each other to be united and to
create children and so on and that that
that the old stability that
that was built upon this has gone so i
mean that's uh and nobody wants nobody
in the intellectual world wants to to
celebrate that so so i i just i had this
interview a few a month ago or so with a
woman from gq and she was um
fully on board the
the uh predatory mail train let's say
and you know when people like that
interview me they start talking about
the patriarchy and i say well i i don't
believe in the patriarchy i don't buy
that conceptual structure what's so
interesting and this has happened more
and more over the years as they've
developed this first of all
the person that i would be talking to
had some idea that it was hypothetically
possible to reject the idea of the
patriarchy but now when i say i don't
believe in it it's it's that idea is
meant with stunned disbelief it's like
what what do you mean you don't believe
in the tyrannical patron
everyone knows that's true and i think
well so here's your hypothesis so this
is the hypothesis is that throughout
history
the fundamental relationship between man
and woman is one of parasitism and
exploitation that's it and so and that's
the case i guess until 1960 and the
publication of the feminine mystique or
something like that but that's the
entire course of human history now when
the when it seems to me that the
appropriate story is that
men and women labored mightily under
their terrible constraints for for
uncounted centuries cooperating together
by and large to to build some modicum of
security and and freedom and stability
so that they could raise children and
have a somewhat harmonious and
productive life and all of a sudden it's
become not only questionable to put
forth that as a proposition but somehow
tyrannical in in in essence just for
positing it as a reality but that's
partly because isn't it because of this
peculiar view that
that underlying all this there's a kind
of social structure that this is being
created the distinction between men and
women doesn't have its basis in nature
it's its basis is in the institutions
that we have created and since we
created them we can change them that
there is there's been a sort of uh a
kind of
almost hysterical invasion of everything
by the idea of human choice that if if
there is if there is a
structure to the relation between men
and women then we ought to be able to
change it
and of course change we might mean that
i have to change my sex in order to to
conform to the way things are but that
also has become a choice well and is is
is not the very uh
very uh constant focus on division
whether between man and woman or between
left and right or between uh this race
and that race or any other way in which
we might uh we might divide people
according to groups isn't that very
polarized fracture
that fractured polarization
uh
a sign
of a loss of a common human culture of
of
of a universal plane in which we all
we all are as hu as as human beings and
and it is so if if if that that's if
that's if that is so
i suppose what i take to be so very
urgent in our time
and and i wonder
it might be difficult to find anyone
who at least when you go down to a high
enough level of resolution as you say
jordan would not think this is true that
we must recover that sense of
ourselves
as
entities
that participate in a universal and
transcendent plane that we have a common
culture that i see myself in the other
as you
were saying earlier roger and i'd like
to have both of your thoughts on what
strategies or means
for that recovery uh and perhaps we can
focus particularly on the the uh
the the the questions that we started
with with uh art
music uh you've written extensively in
architecture of course uh
uh
roger and you've thought long and hard
about the humanities jordan what is it
what is the character of recovery how do
we bring that about
well
um if i may begin i think that
there are
well first of all you have to identify
those aspects of the human condition
that move of their own accord towards
reconciliation
you know rather than conflict and
and division of the sort that you're
referring to
and
we are very familiar with them it's not
just that
just love which of course is something
which is a very complex thing and can't
be can't be just conjured from the skies
but there are there are other aspects of
our condition that we can
educate through
uh
first of all through studying examples
and then through imitation and then
through
self-discipline obviously forgiveness is
one of these things um and the habit of
putting yourself in another person's
perspective looking at yourself from
outside uh and wondering whether you
know you are
as so seen acceptable to yourself all
those you know of course again
religion of the christian religion at
least
was um built upon that kind of
intellectual discipline
the discipline of seeing your neighbor
as yourself and seeing yourself
therefore as a mere neighbor
and
i i
i suspect that you have we have to
revive those basic moral
disciplines
not for for the use of people who don't
have the overarching faith
the belief in the transcendental
judgment to which we will be all called
but who nevertheless have to be shown
that we do live our lives as an object
of judgment nevertheless and um here are
some guides
you know just read anna karenina for for
example um
i know it takes a long time for facebook
addicted youth to read an anna karenina
but there's still hope
you know
and and they're likely to listen to it
if it becomes an audiobook
so so um
well because maybe more people can
listen then can read i mean uh um so so
let's let's think about literature for
for a bit and so
now
if you read something like a dostoevsky
novel
or anna karenina
you're not really reading the account of
a single person's life
what you're reading is
it's like the author has
taken a variety of lives and amalgamated
them and unified them into something
that's like a it's like a compilation of
lives so it's life it's like life writ
large so that's what fiction is it's
more true than than reality because just
like a mathematical abstraction can be
more real than the thing that it
represents in some sense
the fiction is
it's like it's like a portrait if if you
sit for a portrait you'll sit and the
artist will paint you and then you'll
sit again and then you'll sit again and
then you'll sit again and so the
portrait is actually a composite of you
and so it's got a richness sometimes
that a photograph can't match and a
fictional character is actually a
composite of many people and so the
opportunity to read a great work of
fiction is the opportunity to place
yourself
in the perspective not of merely another
person like you do in normal discourse
in a mundane setting but to place
yourself in the perspective of a
compiled character so you i i've
experienced that extraordinarily
powerfully with dostoevsky's crime and
punishment to put myself in the position
of this student who was nihilistic and
who had every reason to commit murder
and it's an unbelievably intense novel
because everybody in the novel is hyper
real and we think of fiction as falsity
or or or or as as untruth and it's not
it's it's it's abstraction and
abstraction isn't untruth it's it's more
than truth often and so
the humanities can help us walk through
the souls of others and because we can
imitate and it's one of our primary
remarkable miraculous abilities we can
imitate the
the compiled characters that we
encounter in literature and mythology
and religion and that does help flesh us
out and ennoble us and we can we can
i just wrote the forward to
solzhenitsyn's 50th and anniversary
version of the gulag archipelago the
abridged version and i ran across
his fervent wish that
people could learn from what he
communicated all the horror and
suffering to put themselves in the
position of both the perpetrator and the
and the accused simultaneously and to
decide that that's not the road to walk
down
and so the advantage of placing yourself
in the position of other people is that
if they're good people then you can be
like them and if they're not good people
then you can avoid that pathway and then
you don't have to learn that through
through the agony of direct personal
experience in the short span of your
life there's nothing more there's
nothing greater than you can do for
people than to introduce them into those
patterned stories so that they can gain
from the catastrophes of the past
now i agree with that but of course uh
in fiction one's also
concerned to identify if you're writing
fiction identify with the character
in order to understand that character
because
it's not as though
you can
you can't actually grasp a character
from the outside you have to be able to
see
through his eyes what it what the world
is in which he is and that is i think an
exercise of the imagination which i
value greatly
and um
you don't necessarily come to the
conclusion that therefore i don't want
to be like that
it might be just enough to say now i see
that that that's a possible human being
and your knowledge of the possibilities
is amplified
and your sense your ability to position
yourself in those possibilities also i
think right so that's a matter of
differentiation as well as direction yes
and i i think sometimes in my more dire
moments that this opposition to cultural
appropriation
right so the idea that i'm not allowed
anymore to imagine myself say
fictionally as a woman or as or as a
character from another ethnicity or even
to play the role
that role as a as an actor i think that
it's it's part of the assault on the
idea of the individual and the non-zero
sum game because it precludes the
possibility that i can take on the role
of another in an understanding manner
and actually facilitate facilitated
dialogue and that undermines the claim i
would say that everything is only a
secondary consequence of power because
if i can actually bridge that gap well
then i'm not isolated in my group or my
ethnicity or whatever it is i can i can
become partly you and we can communicate
and i would say because of that
literature and art is a great threat to
ideology especially of the group
identity kind and of course they're
perfectly aware of that which is why the
radicals on that side of the equation
are doing everything they can to to i
had a reporter from the new york times
who wrote a rather skirless piece about
me she had done a literature degree at
at
columbia
a bright woman and she told me in all
honesty and apparent transparency that
she had no idea this is how deep this is
this has become saturated into our
culture she had no idea until she until
she had graduated from colombia
that there was any other way of reading
a work of literature except through the
post-modern lens and the post-modern
lens is well
who are the groups that are being
represented and what power games are at
play and who benefits
and i mean i don't know if because she
turned out to be quite a strange person
um but so i have no idea if that if that
was a ploy on her part or whether that
was like an like a naive um what would
you call confession but it's
increasingly the case that that is how
literature is taught in in my home
province of ontario the elementary
teachers federation of ontario wants to
start teaching literature from a
post-modern critical perspective in
elementary school
to demolish it
well
there we are i mean i'm in favor of
cultural
cultural appropriation i mean i'm a
product of it i i appropriated the idea
of the english gentleman and you know
and i try and make myself be it
and
i know it's a failure
because i i've that's part of doing it
well yeah yeah
but i've understood the world from the
inside in another way but in
i just wrote a book of stories which was
just reviewed by uh somebody who says
you know this these stories make
cultural appropriation into a virtue um
so i felt good about that but they
they begin with uh an inside view of the
psyche of a
of um a terrorist of an uh an arab
terrorist who's who has a legacy of
vengeance and um
who is a failure
and
whose loss i try to make real
in the in the feelings of the reader as
he as he reads it
and um
and then the subsequent stories show the
same kind of loss in completely
different people so i wanted to uh bring
up that uh book of stories actually uh
souls in twilight by sir roger scrutin
it's a series of five short stories five
i think is that five short stories each
which are portraits of a character at a
certain moment in time i think it's safe
to say roger that they're all tragic
stories in a sense um
what i found so moving about
those stories is that
these are individuals in states of
dislocation anchorless
seeking depth
meaning truth stability
uh and yet
in their confusion in their darkness
willing against that very thing that
they seek or you might say violating or
transgressing that
sacred thing that they're
longing for
that's not what's beautiful about the
book
what's beautiful is that in the reading
the reader
her or himself comes to a sense
of
what that longing is for positively a a
sense of the the
stability of love
or of
home or of relationship and and and i
suppose
what i want to ask following up on this
is that that seems to me a profoundly
redemptive vision that you have in that
uh in those beautiful stories roger that
that it's showing the persistence of the
beautiful and of the good
even in its absence that i can read that
story and have a perception of what
positively i am i am looking for and
just to to refer to something that you
say in one of your books jordan that
that even through an experience of of
evil one can
develop an apprehension of what the good
is i'm wondering if he could each say
something about
the
that
you know either either there is
a reality to these transcendent things
or there is not the condition either
just a construct goodness or beauty and
truth or they have a transcendent and
and sovereign
persistent reality and i'm wondering if
you can each say something about the
the persistence or sovereignty
of these things even amidst our darkness
and uh suffering
well i i would say that
in
tragedy when tragedy is really effective
uh there is a redemption offered
in this through suffering that the the
the
except we
we encounter the possibility in tragedy
that a human being
can through the most noble motives
also
uh
bring about on up down upon himself
destruction and
this destruction is no different from
the destruction it's going to afflict
all of us in the end anyway but here is
somebody who who has faced it down in
some way that his no his nobility of
nature and his ability to go out towards
others in a condition of of love and
reconciliation has not been taken away
from him
and the spectacle of that
is all the more intense because
nevertheless
uh the you know death intervenes and
takes him away as it will take you and
me away but without having had the
chance to reveal our nobility or even to
acquire it you know so i i think that um
for that reason
it's very important that
in literature
noble characters are seen in a condition
of loss sometimes that
and their
their redemption comes because even
though they've lost
what we all must in in the end lose
there is that in them which is
struggling towards reconciliation with
their own condition and with others it's
the sense that they are living
as another and not as a self you know
that's that's i think it's a crucial
thing that
the gulag archipelago
is often viewed as an endless
documentation of the horrors of the
soviet enterprise but it was an
investigation it was an experiment in
literary investigation
and that isn't what the book is about
the book is about solzhenitsyn's
observations of people in those terrible
situations
who did not contribute to the terror and
who transcended it and the unbelievably
power powerful impact observing that had
on him and the personal transformation
he underwent as a consequence of
observing those people and the decision
he made because of seeing them in their
ultimately tragic circumstances
transcend that to to to transform his
life from the bottom up and to write
this great book and to reveal the utter
catastrophe of that entire ideological
movement and so
you do see the light most clearly when
it's superimposed against the darkest
possible background
and so and great literature which pulls
people way down into the depths and in
in this in this in this compiled
fictional manner then it also does at
the same time highlight what's what's
what's the opposite of that
so
in my reading of of your your
your your work
both of you
there's an implicitly theological
character here and we can't speak about
the transcendent in a certain sense
without uh being theological
uh
why is it that we can't just the lights
just can't be completely shut out i mean
if if if if
if
evil and darkness were the sovereign
principles uh as you know as it might
say metaphysically well they could it
could just be all the lights could just
be completely blackened
and yet that's not what we see and i'm
wondering if you would each comment on
the
what you take to be the i think what
might what might be a theological
articulation
of
the facts on the ground if the facts are
that you can't shut the lights right out
that they're still there what uh
what's going on there
i totally agree with what um jordan said
about the gulag archipelago um
and that goes back to
dostoevsky's
uh from the house of the dead you know
his account of being an osiris
much milder
kind of imprisonment but nevertheless it
was full of almost a vacation
in comparison now i agree but
nevertheless he described these
characters who
for whom
everything had been taken away
but he also
notes that in each of them
you i can find the spark of god
uh something which janacek
repeated when he made this into uh into
that wonderful libretto for his opera
and uh
and janacek try to show in music how
these derelict characters will suddenly
shine with that with that light from
another source
but it doesn't come
just from what they are in that those
circumstances but from something higher
and i think um
you know
i would say one is always obliged to use
metaphors when we get to this point but
it is true that that you can find
in someone even in the most deprived and
desolate
circumstances that on which you can blow
to to cause the spark once again to to
light up inside him and that is as far
as we get to meeting god
but um
there is no reason to think that we need
to get any further
in my view um
that's what peop everybody saw in
maximilian cold bay when he
um offered himself in in the in
auschwitz
you know to as a sacrifice
and why he was um
canonized you know that suddenly you see
that there is something else in all of
us in which in
in
circumstances however severe and
deprived will will shine from a with a
different light and make those
circumstances worthwhile because they
produced that line and it could be in
some sense the mercy of god that keeps
him hidden from us
because if you imagine that your
sacred duty is to blow on those embers
that you described even among people who
are in desolate straits
then every time you fail to take that
opportunity then you tilt things badly
towards what they shouldn't be tilted
towards and it could be that the
revelation of your inadequacy in the
face of that moral duty which would be
in some sense equivalent to an encounter
with god would be enough to tear you
into pieces and so maybe you get
glimpses of that now and then because
that's that's all you and your current
depraved moral state could stand of
seeing of the face of god
and i think there's something to that
that's right
simon vay says things to that effect i
think yeah and um
yes i i often heard in the old communist
days when i used to travel around
eastern europe and meet people who are
in really dire straits they said similar
things you know that that um
that god would reveal himself
but uh in these circumstances the
revelation will be something too strong
for what i could bear
[Music]
it's a beautiful image you've given us
roger of blowing on the embers
within blowing on the embers of
transcendence um
i'd ask you both about the forms of
culture
and institutional life that
produce that blowing on the embers in
the individual it seems to me both of
you have a very
deep sense
of the dignity of the human individual
of the individual's
connection to the transcendent the
grounding
fact of our existence
what would be the forms of culture
that we would say to be necessary or
most uh most inclined to foster
in the individual
that
blowing
of the flame
i think the most accessible um
form for for most people is music
and music to me is the most
representational form of art because i
think that the world is made out of
patterns
and we perceive some patterns as objects
but fundamentally it's patterns and
what you want is
all the patterns of the world to
interact harmoniously in in something
where every element is related
intelligibly to every other element and
i think that when your life is in
harmony that you can feel that and when
you're dancing to beautiful music you're
acting that out it's the music is is the
is the music of the spheres and you're
participating in the patterning of your
being in accordance with that structure
and that gives you an intimation of of
transcendence and and it's it's not
criticizable that's the thing that's so
lovely about it is even as our society
has become more cynical and more
self-destructive and more
deconstructionist the power of music has
in fact grown because it speaks to that
eternal harmony and the reality of that
eternal harmony in a way that that mere
intellect cannot deny and i mean i was
always amused i went to this show the
ramones a punk band from new york it was
the loudest concert i'd ever heard by by
a good factor of ten my ears rang for
like three days afterwards and they were
all these like nihilistic punk rockers
all crammed into this theater and below
me there was a mosh pit and it was like
ants on a frying pan they were just
smashing into each other and
throwing people around up
above them and it was quite rough and
they were all having this beautifully
transcendent musical experience which
belied all of their nihilism and it was
and they absolutely thrived on it it was
like and even the lyrics were harsh and
nihilistic but it didn't matter because
the music even if it's right even if it
in its rough form was something that
united them in the sense of this like
patterned beauty and brought them
together and so exposure to music that's
people die without music it's like music
is everything
i mean it's not everything but i beg to
disagree about about the beauty of this
uh particular experience
um
i i think actually dancing is an
extremely important phenomenon
partly because
traditionally dancing was dancing with
someone uh the width has been taken out
of dancing and uh
the the head bashing and so on that goes
on with heavy metal and the right is
dancing against someone you know the the
witness of the dances i think there's
something real we see it in scottish
reels and things like that where the
whole community is dancing in an orderly
way recognizing that their need for law
and order
and taking pleasure in it and i find
that a
very near to a transcendent experience
um i i feel a kind of narcissism has
crept into the
the dance through recent forms of
dance music but i mean that's my old
giza
attitude
or or or is or is um
or is it simply to say that they're that
that
the principle itself is sovereign uh if
everyone thinks about the logic for
example of of dante's inferno um
uh which be has ever more degraded forms
of knowing and loving um
that uh
that
the the mechanism of the the nature you
might say the nature of the soul
is the same uh at the top of paradise as
it is at the at the bottom of inferno
but it it has uh these infinite
gradations of wholeness and so i don't
think we have to say that that that the
the mosh pit is uh is is is is is
equivalent as a work of art to to
beethoven or palestrina or janacek um
but rather that perhaps what's going on
in in in that is nonetheless a longing
for the pattern and the the recognition
of the other that you you say but yes
but your original question was how do we
how do we
uh coax people back into that into a
life uh which is based on the
recognition of the other rather than the
gratification of the self because that's
essentially what we're talking about i
think within
today at least and i i would say
teaching people
how to help
others
the role of the teacher
is a very dignified one
but it it is only so if the teacher
actually thinks that he is helping
the pupil to a body of knowledge that he
has access to and that sense of helping
other people
is a very rare thing and it's it's made
more rare by the
the welfare state and the ready
availability of uh subsidies for uh
subsidized life without um leaning on
any particular person you know
and i think
relations of dependence are actually
very positive if they're accepted on
both sides you know and i think um
it's something that we don't teach with
the boy scouts movement and all that
they used to teach
young people these things teach people
how to go out and help
those who needed them and how to make
those little day-to-day sacrifices
and eventually
through the process of imitation and
imagination
a character grows based on that
and i i feel that there isn't any
obstacle to this it's a very simple form
of education all of us can do it and all
of us who have children do do it i'm
sure jordan
does it with his children the same as i
with mine of course
you know you're always disappointed they
always go away into their corner with
their
with their wretched little iphones and
so on but nevertheless
um it some of it rubs off and you know
that in the long run they will be
capable not just of finding love but
also of offering forgiveness and and
working for re reconciliation
i don't think
in the sort of narcissistic
culture which is propagated by the media
and by the universities
that um that they're being pointed in
that direction that is true but then um
it's up to us to point them in another
direction
i think as an academic we talked already
about that place where the meaning and
the fact are conjoined
and that's the proper place to lecture
from
because people who lecture
constantly
make the presumption that they're there
to deliver a set of facts but there's an
infinite set of facts and so at the very
least you have to select the facts and
there's a mechanism that selects the
facts and
what what you want to do as an academic
is
is tell your students through
through direct discourse and also
through action
about something that you've encountered
that's that you've fallen in love with
and to and to communicate the love that
you have for that the love for
literature and and not to say well you
should read this book but to say well
here's this book and here's what it can
open up for you and this is how it does
it and and this is what you'll gain from
it it's an inestimable gain and there's
some struggle in it but but there's a
there's something in it that's of
of unbelievable utility and you have to
believe that in order to communicate it
and then that's hope that opens one of
those doors you know and maybe some
students will step through that and
think well maybe that sounds like
something i need i'm in this dire
situation and i need something i need a
life raft i need a i need something to
buy me upward and it's going to take
some effort obviously because nothing
worthwhile comes without effort
to communicate that commitment you have
to these to these
to these phenomena phenomena that we
already talked about to beauty and to
truth and to literature and enter the
classics in the humanities it isn't
enough just to say what they are and to
transmit them it's to
it's to manifest yourself as a living
part of that tradition and to and to
show yourself thereby as a model for
living out as much as you can what that
tradition represents and to show that
that's so much better than like a
short-term pleasure-seeking nihilism
that they're not even in the same
conceptual universe and people are far
more open to that they know already
people know especially when they're hurt
they know that
happiness is fleeting and that suffering
requires a sustaining meaning
everyone who's lived knows that and so
to say well here's some bomb for the
suffering and it's profound and deep and
and here's what it's meant to me and
here's how you can incorporate it into
your life it's like people are
absolutely starving for that or dying of
thirst for that i mean this connects
with what you earlier said about the
curriculum
that that the
old way of teaching the humanities was
in that manner
as objects of love this is what i have
loved what previous generations have
loved too and handed on to me uh here
try it out and you will love it too
uh whereas the postmodern
curriculum
is a curriculum of hatred it's it's
a directed against our cultural
inheritance one after another the works
are paraded before us stripped naked and
thrashed you know um
by what by revealing whatever ideology
or power structure is being concealed
within them and that of course is not
why they were written and it's not how
they should be understood it's not why
they survived exactly
it's like this is the best that the best
of us could produce and it's nothing why
should you bother doing it well exactly
and it means that uh students who go
through that curriculum come out with a
sense of the hopelessness of everything
and um and thus are successfully
educated by post-modernist standards
yeah yeah i suppose that's right
but um
you know there's no reason why one
should
one should accept this one
all
all good things begin
in the in small areas because because
two or three people
uh you know well as christ said two or
three are gathered in my name you know
there am i with you but the same is um
is in all cultural activities it's a
perhaps a
friendship will
uh will be gate but we'll
start up a reading group and out of that
reading group there'll be others come in
gradually if it's founded on love of the
thing that's being studied and offered
it will always triumph in the long run
over this negativity the problem is the
negativity is subsidized it's subsidized
by universities who are paid for by
governments who are paid for by
taxpayers and so on
and the the answer is to take away those
subsidies and
and deprive education completely of
money and it will be back with us again
that's right
i suppose i suggested something like
that
in public in canada not so long ago to
cut the budgets of the universities
across the board by 25 and let them sort
themselves out
because but the the no subsidy idea at
least forces those who provide education
to do it purely on its merits and the
fact that these counterproductive
disciplines let's say have been
subsidized for so long has given them a
power that's far far outstrips their
their credibility and their
attractiveness all right
now i wanted to to
point out well this this this chat may
be seen by a few people online at some
point
and uh draw attention to the fact that
we're all wearing uh poppies which of
course is a
is a is a is a symbol of respect and
memory uh for an inheritance of our own
past
uh for the
the suffering uh
that has given us
or at least protected and given us
so much that we hold dear
i'd like to ask you both about
memory and
the inheritance of the past
and and what it means to have a pedagogy
what it means to have a pedagogy of the
transcendent
uh in relation to our past um how do you
open open those those those doorways and
and perhaps
if if the spirit moves you to speak
about works that you love
that you've uh been able to open up to
others
one of the reasons for remembering
you know in the way that we remember the
armistice in the first world war one of
the reasons is is gratitude
uh and gratitude is in short supply in
our societies today and um it's the it's
the the greatest gift that we can offer
in fact
the people who are dead because
what else can we do
except to acknowledge what their
sacrifice
so um i think that gratitude is a
fundamental part of memory
there are of course accumulations of
guilt and
and so on
and those are being emphasized all the
time in the post-modern curriculum all
the all the ways in which we are not
entitled to our inheritance but i would
think in the face of that we have to
insist on the ways that we are entitled
to that inheritance if people have died
for it for and for our sake you know
that is a fantastic entitled that we
enjoy and we should feel grateful to
them uh for that i mean when it comes to
you know actual works
or
of art or whatever which have
opened the sense of the depth of one's
own inheritance
that i think is um
a very interesting question there's so
many of them but but just
to mention only one
um the bach b minor mass
to me that's a door into the into the
the whole
the whole european inheritance going
back
to the crucifixion there it is there it
all is encapsulated in music music of
you know celebrating the universal
claims of the roman catholic church but
written by a protestant
you know that it's um
and offered as a gift you know to to
mankind and there it is and
that such things
so transcend any
any minor historical details
that one recognizes that that is what
the past really is for one that great
depth
of of inheritance that can't be
enumerated but just enjoyed just to
follow up before we turn to jordan
roger at the beginning you talked about
how a great literature
great writing is writing in which the
reader
finds
himself finds herself um
taking box mass and b minor
um
you've spoken about the this unfolding
of the self
that is found in these great works or
the reflection of the self
i know at least i think you've written
about the the unfolding of the theme uh
in in in
of that mass in particular but certainly
in other of your writings the unfolding
of the theme and music
could you say something about
the
i know that's a huge question
but the way in which the unfolding uh of
the theme in music is an unfolding of
the self
so really um
provocative way of putting it it is true
that
when you listen to a theme
in music you you're not listening to a
sequence of notes
something begins in that first note
and endures to the final note
and it goes on all the way through even
though there are spells of silence it's
still going on in the silence
so that our ability to hear
something as a theme is already
a contribution that we make it comes out
of us so we've identified with that
movement that movement is it's there in
the world because it's there in us
but but
in so many ways all our inner life
is
uh interrupted and unfulfilled and it's
full of things that start up and then
peter out
and i think that is one of the
fundamental experiences of human beings
that there's an inner disorder that
things never actually come to a
conclusion but here uniquely movements
begin
and come to a conclusion this is a and
that conclusion is is complete it's a
satisfaction of
of the uh
unsaturated nature of the first movement
of the first
beginning theme
and
it's an experience why do we value that
i think we value value it in the same
way as we value tragedy because it gives
completion and closure to things that
otherwise wouldn't ever have them
and things that are transient as well
because it does have a beginning and an
end and the end doesn't invalidate the
utility of the of the entity that's
right
so in gratitude i mean that was the that
was exactly the theme that sprung to
mind for me as soon as you asked that
question i mean one of the things that i
find profoundly disquieting about the
modern
radical
what would you call it ideology that is
so no
so
unfortunately dominant on campuses among
young people is that it's unbelievably
ungrateful
and when i
when i walk outside and there's not a
riot and death in the streets i'm having
a good day
that's my sense of history it's like i'm
constantly staggered by the fact that so
much works all the time it's absolutely
i met this guy a while back
he'd been in a motorcycle accident he
really got hurt man he was he was pretty
much half destroyed and he worked as a
telephone lineman he worked with this
guy who had parkinson's disease who had
was equally destroyed in a slightly
different way and the two of them
together could climb up a telephone pole
and continue their job and i thought
this unbelievable infrastructure we have
that is just an absolute bloody ongoing
ongoing miracle is sustained by people
exactly like that you know they're
having very difficult lives in a country
like canada they go out in the middle of
the bloody winter where you die it's
frigid and something breaks and they fix
it and the lights are on the lights are
on all the time and i come to somewhere
like europe and to me it's an
absolutely
overwhelming experience to see king's
chapel today to wander around this city
i'm just
staggered that people produced this and
so
amazed that we could do it and so
grateful that it exists we were talking
about king's chapel the people who
started it didn't live to see its
completion they were they were driven by
this nobility of transcendent vision and
they produced these enduring forms and
out of the bloody misery of history
we've erected all this spectacular
infrastructure that we're so fortunate
to be part of and
none of that gratitude is taught and
it's partly not taught because people
have no sense of the absolute
catastrophe of history i mean for me the
hobbs it's like nasty brutish and short
that the simplest and most likely social
circumstances
catastrophe punctuated by hell and to
see that not happening in a sustained
manner constantly and to see things
improving around us and and to be
reliable in that manner and then not to
be grateful for that it's like it's an
unbelievable combination of ignorance
and wealth ignorance and gratitude and
willful blindness and it does no one's
soul any good it's so good to walk down
the streets of a beautiful town like
this and to be open-mouthed in
non-ironic amazement at what's here and
so and to not instill that sense in
young people to for them to understand
that they are standing on the bones of
generations of people who suffered to
make this possible despite all their
errors and have brought this forward
it's like yeah well
hobbs is a very uh sanitary lesson
actually because he did look into the
abyss
and stepped back from it and reported on
it
and
and we and as did solzhenitsyn
and um
we uh
post-war
baby boomers haven't had that experience
i i had a little glimpse of it in the
old communist days but we only saw the
edge of it then you know um but uh
still the scent the sense that it is
there always beneath your feet and and
that the crust is is as thin as it it
can be in certain places that i think is
something that that young people do need
to be taught without making them get
gloomy about it
but to to recognize that they're lucky
a last question before we open up for a
few questions here
seems to me that the the backward
looking that we've talked about you had
a wonderful phrase a wide-eyed
open-mouthed uh non-ironic
amazement i think you said walking
around this
transcendentally beautiful town of
cambridge which houses this
august and ancient and beautiful
institution
which you mentioned jordan was seeing
the king's chapel earlier today
that
those who started the work knew they
wouldn't be those who would finish and
those who finished knew they had
inherited the work that they had not
themselves begun
and so i suppose i want to ask um we've
talked about the
the necessity to turn back with
gratitude to the past to our inherited
uh past but i want to talk also about
the possibility of of building in a
creation uh
these chapels and buildings were built
at some time you yourself are a composer
both of you uh authors of books that
many many people have uh found depth and
truth in so i want to uh to ask about uh
the possibilities for
for for renaissance for rebuilding or or
building a new
new buildings new
uh forms of community new forms of art
perhaps new buildings of old forms of
architecture new colleges and
universities uh new
more healthy and beautiful forms of of
course new forms of uh flourishing arts
and music uh
it seems to me so important that that we
not lose sight of the fact that
precisely
the abiding truth of the transcendent in
us gives us hope to
to answer that call
yeah it must be the case that when
when describing
our cultural inheritance we are not just
describing something that's gone
we must be describing something of which
we are still apart
and which we which has to change as we
are changing to accommodate us and all
this was said by elliot in tradition and
the individual talent you know that um
that the artist
uh
must be constantly trying to say that
new thing that that he came into the
world to say
but he can only say it if he adapts
his style to the uh the inheritance of
the tradition uh thereby transforming
the tradition and transforming himself
and
we all
we there there is no formula for doing
this because a formula is precisely what
what destroys the creative act um but
we have to
assume that new things will come
and they will come through
as as they always did in the past
through fasting and prayer
you know
and the occasional glass of wine in my
case
jordan
well we could concentrate i suppose on
building the future instead of
criticizing the past
i mean it's necessary to
decompose to reconstruct you know those
those acts can't be separated but the
decomposition is the prerequisite for
the reconstruction and you know what
i've been recommending to people is that
they
they start on whatever scale they can
start on with whatever's in front of
them because they have more in front of
them than they think these these these
these circumscribed areas that these
small places that people can call their
own even if it's only their room
you can start to do something creative
and beautiful there i mean i've
suggested to people that they start by
putting the room in order and that
implies a purpose it's like well your
room is somewhere that you exist it's
it's it's a place that surrounds you
that tells you how to be is put it in
order so at least it isn't
screaming chaos at you in a
soul-destroying manner make it pristine
and
and and orderly in in a fashion that
suits what you're aiming at so have an
aim and then
this is perhaps a chapter in my next
book well maybe you start by putting
your room in order and then you make it
beautiful and then you learn how to make
something beautiful and to make
something beautiful is to make it
worthwhile and to participate in that
transcendent
in that transcendence maybe you need one
certainly and for your future self which
is also others you know this idea that
people are fed even of of of
self-gratification let's say as an
antidote to nihilism well take your
pleasure in the moment it doesn't even
work for you because you're stuck with
you tomorrow and you next week and so
even to treat yourself properly is to
treat yourself as part of an ongoing
community but i would say
start by you start in the world if you
have
some wisdom and some humility
by
taking the potential that lies dormant
in front of you
and interacting with it in the
logos-like manner with truth and with
love and by transforming that potential
into whatever you can create out of it
that's good and even if it's it won't be
small if you do that you can transform
your whole household by transforming
your room you can transform your whole
neighborhood by transforming your house
like these things spread very very
rapidly and that is right there in front
of you you know and people think they're
impoverished now that they don't have
any opportunity and that and the
opportunity is hidden from them by their
by their by their unwillingness to take
the steps that are necessary to put what
they could put in front of them in order
and and and to and to produce the beauty
instead of the ugliness where they could
do that and i don't think there is
anything more powerful than that that
works i've had thousands of people tell
me that it works you know personally and
come and talk to me every day now on the
street and say my life was in terrible
disorder i had no vision i wasn't
abiding by the truth my relationships
were fragmented i've decided to make
something of myself whatever that might
be i've decided to adopt more
responsibility and to tell the truth and
things are
incomparably better
and so that's that's there for everyone
to take and regardless of your
circumstances and i know that some
people have what appear to be larger
opportunities and more privilege in
front of them but that also makes their
commensurate moral responsibility larger
so there's a certain balancing that's a
natural consequence of that
so
now recognizing the nature of the finite
uh there's a train one of us needs to
catch we're going to have to draw this
conversation to a close but not before
we've all had a chance
to thank both of you for everything
you do
to fan the flames of the transcendent
for your readers for your listeners for
all of us thank you very much both of
you