WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.240 Hello, I'm Craig Taylor from Flinders University Institute for Research in the Humanities. 2 00:00:04.300 --> 00:00:10.500 Welcome to the 2016 Adelaide Festival of Ideas and today's session, Humanity is a Verb. 3 00:00:11.120 --> 00:00:15.600 This session is presented by my institute, Flinders University Institute for Research 4 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:21.400 in the Humanities. So before we begin, I acknowledge that today we meet, we gather 5 00:00:21.400 --> 00:00:24.760 on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. 6 00:00:24.860 --> 00:00:28.760 We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, belief and relationships 7 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:32.840 with the land. We acknowledge the Israel continuing importance to the Kaurna people 8 00:00:32.840 --> 00:00:37.180 living today and we respect their elders past and present. 9 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:45.940 Our presenter for this session, Raymond Gator, is a colleague and friend of mine 10 00:00:45.940 --> 00:00:53.020 and he is a fellow, a professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne 11 00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:58.160 in the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts. He's also Emeritus Professor 12 00:00:58.160 --> 00:00:58.740 at the University of Melbourne. 13 00:00:58.740 --> 00:01:03.020 of moral philosophy at King's College, University of London. 14 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:08.160 Professor Gator's work will be probably familiar for many of you 15 00:01:08.160 --> 00:01:10.860 from the work particularly of his that you will know 16 00:01:10.860 --> 00:01:14.720 will perhaps be his award-winning biography of his father, 17 00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:18.380 Romulus, My Father, which was later turned into a motion picture 18 00:01:19.940 --> 00:01:22.180 with Eric Banner and others. 19 00:01:22.320 --> 00:01:26.400 And he is also something maybe not so many of you 20 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:28.100 would be necessarily aware of. 21 00:01:28.100 --> 00:01:32.200 He also has had a distinctive and extremely important voice 22 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:35.520 in moral philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition. 23 00:01:35.900 --> 00:01:40.600 And here his works include Good and Evil and Absolute Conception, 24 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:43.460 which is in its second edition now with Routledge, 25 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:49.700 also Humanity, A Common Humanity, and The Philosopher's Dog. 26 00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:56.780 So as time is short, it's my great pleasure to invite Ray 27 00:01:56.780 --> 00:01:58.080 to speak to us on Humanity. 28 00:01:58.100 --> 00:01:59.360 Humanity is a Verb. 29 00:01:59.460 --> 00:02:00.220 Please make him welcome. 30 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:04.080 Well, thank you, Craig. 31 00:02:04.180 --> 00:02:05.840 I'm very pleased to be here. 32 00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:10.400 Well, I owe my title to Greg. 33 00:02:11.300 --> 00:02:12.900 Before I start, I should apologise. 34 00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:15.140 This goes for about almost 35 minutes. 35 00:02:15.320 --> 00:02:18.680 I've tried desperately to make it shorter, but I couldn't. 36 00:02:19.720 --> 00:02:21.960 I owe my title to Greg Denning, 37 00:02:22.140 --> 00:02:24.040 the much-loved and admired historian. 38 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:27.540 When he reviewed my book, A Common Humanity, 39 00:02:28.100 --> 00:02:29.440 about love and truth and justice, 40 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:30.560 he wrote, 41 00:02:30.780 --> 00:02:34.800 For Gator, humanity is not a noun, it's a verb. 42 00:02:36.660 --> 00:02:39.840 It's striking how often we now speak of humanity 43 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:44.020 in ethically inflected registers or ethically resonant tones, 44 00:02:44.860 --> 00:02:47.660 as when, for example, we speak of seeing or failing to see 45 00:02:47.660 --> 00:02:49.820 the full humanity of people or peoples, 46 00:02:50.060 --> 00:02:53.240 of dehumanisation, of the common humanity 47 00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:54.760 of all the peoples of the earth, 48 00:02:54.960 --> 00:02:57.880 or that some ways of being and living are not worthy, 49 00:02:58.100 --> 00:02:58.820 of our humanity. 50 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:03.100 It's also striking how often we speak of our humanity 51 00:03:03.100 --> 00:03:06.100 as something not given to us once and for all, 52 00:03:06.180 --> 00:03:08.240 as species membership is, 53 00:03:08.440 --> 00:03:10.960 but something to which we're called upon to rise, 54 00:03:11.660 --> 00:03:14.100 not until such time as we achieve it, 55 00:03:14.200 --> 00:03:16.520 which could be different from one person to another, 56 00:03:16.760 --> 00:03:20.140 but unendingly, for all of us, until we die. 57 00:03:21.260 --> 00:03:24.440 Some people think of it as a gift we betray 58 00:03:24.440 --> 00:03:27.580 if we do not try to be lucid about things that matter, 59 00:03:27.620 --> 00:03:28.080 matter, matter. 60 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:31.040 Most of us are about what should matter to us. 61 00:03:31.760 --> 00:03:33.920 Socrates meant that, I think, when to explain 62 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:35.780 why he couldn't stop philosophising, 63 00:03:36.520 --> 00:03:37.680 even under the pain of death, 64 00:03:37.900 --> 00:03:41.640 he said that an unexamined life is not worthy of a human being. 65 00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:45.520 In the time available to me in this lecture, 66 00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:48.120 I want to explore the implications of Denning's remark 67 00:03:48.680 --> 00:03:50.500 for national and international politics. 68 00:03:50.860 --> 00:03:53.840 And I hope you'll excuse the huge gaps in the argument, 69 00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:57.100 if indeed what I say could be called an argument. 70 00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:00.500 But first, I must clear the conceptual ground 71 00:04:00.500 --> 00:04:03.180 in case we trip over obstacles to understanding. 72 00:04:04.440 --> 00:04:06.560 I don't equate ethics with morality. 73 00:04:07.560 --> 00:04:11.240 Though the distinction between morality and ethics is an old one, 74 00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:13.400 there's no agreement about how to draw it. 75 00:04:14.140 --> 00:04:17.860 I think of the ethical as a realm in which we think about how to live, 76 00:04:18.760 --> 00:04:20.680 about the meanings of things in our lives. 77 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:23.700 We then think about morality, of course, 78 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:26.700 but also about law, politics and other matters, 79 00:04:26.700 --> 00:04:30.860 about the demands intrinsic to love in its various forms, 80 00:04:31.080 --> 00:04:32.520 how to rise to them. 81 00:04:33.220 --> 00:04:36.480 I think of these as distinctive realms of value, 82 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:39.840 sui generis, in complex ways interconnected 83 00:04:39.840 --> 00:04:41.900 and sometimes in conflict. 84 00:04:42.700 --> 00:04:46.580 Love in all its forms has ethical standards intrinsic to it, 85 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:50.220 standards that distinguish love from its many false semblances. 86 00:04:50.940 --> 00:04:54.780 Love of one's friends may conflict with love of country, 87 00:04:54.940 --> 00:04:56.180 both with morality, 88 00:04:56.180 --> 00:05:01.580 morality with politics and both with law. 89 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:04.880 So though I speak in the singular of the ethical, 90 00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:07.640 I wouldn't do so with the values in its domain. 91 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:10.540 There are many conceptions of morality, 92 00:05:11.140 --> 00:05:14.440 not only of what to do but also what it is, 93 00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:17.940 what kind of place we can have or should have in our lives. 94 00:05:18.620 --> 00:05:21.200 The same is true of the other forms of the ethical, 95 00:05:21.400 --> 00:05:23.140 of what it is to love truly, 96 00:05:23.320 --> 00:05:25.100 of the distinctive responsibilities 97 00:05:25.100 --> 00:05:26.160 of being friendly with one's own words. 98 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:28.280 of a political vocation, for example. 99 00:05:28.660 --> 00:05:31.880 Second, I believe that the ethical inflections 100 00:05:31.880 --> 00:05:33.500 of the way we speak about humanity 101 00:05:33.500 --> 00:05:36.160 play their distinctive roles characteristically 102 00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:38.220 when we reflect on the human condition 103 00:05:38.220 --> 00:05:40.680 rather than on human nature 104 00:05:40.680 --> 00:05:44.480 or on the biological characteristics of the species. 105 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:47.280 Be a human being for once 106 00:05:47.280 --> 00:05:49.700 is evidently not an injunction 107 00:05:49.700 --> 00:05:52.900 to be more fully a member of the species Homo sapiens. 108 00:05:53.820 --> 00:05:56.400 Socrates did not mean that an unexamined life 109 00:05:56.400 --> 00:05:57.820 is not worthy of the species. 110 00:05:58.520 --> 00:06:00.020 And he's a monster. 111 00:06:00.340 --> 00:06:01.720 Sorry, he's not a monster. 112 00:06:01.860 --> 00:06:02.800 He's a human being. 113 00:06:03.140 --> 00:06:06.200 He's not a reminder that a terrible wrongdoer 114 00:06:06.200 --> 00:06:08.320 has not forfeited his species membership. 115 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:11.040 I'll try to explain why I distinguish 116 00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:12.580 reflection on human nature 117 00:06:12.580 --> 00:06:14.340 from reflection on the human condition, 118 00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:17.200 though the distinction is not a sharp one 119 00:06:17.200 --> 00:06:19.980 and there's plenty of back and forth between them. 120 00:06:20.760 --> 00:06:22.280 I think of human nature 121 00:06:22.280 --> 00:06:22.880 as a reflection of the human condition 122 00:06:22.880 --> 00:06:24.160 revealed to us in experience, 123 00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:26.520 corrected and deepened by the sciences. 124 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:30.440 Claims about it are characteristically empirical claims 125 00:06:30.440 --> 00:06:33.640 and when there's non-collusive agreement about them, 126 00:06:34.280 --> 00:06:36.380 certified by a community of relevant scholars, 127 00:06:36.700 --> 00:06:38.800 usually scientists of one kind or another, 128 00:06:39.120 --> 00:06:42.300 they find their ways into textbooks and encyclopedias 129 00:06:42.300 --> 00:06:44.680 and sometimes earn Nobel Prizes. 130 00:06:46.020 --> 00:06:48.340 Reflection on the human condition, by contrast, 131 00:06:49.180 --> 00:06:51.320 is on the meaning we human beings have made 132 00:06:51.320 --> 00:06:52.540 of the big facts of life, 133 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:54.880 birth, death, sexuality, 134 00:06:55.360 --> 00:06:58.540 our vulnerability to misfortune, most importantly. 135 00:06:59.340 --> 00:07:02.620 It's also a reflection on what we are to make ethically 136 00:07:02.620 --> 00:07:04.560 of the discoveries of the sciences, 137 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:07.100 how to take them into our lives. 138 00:07:08.260 --> 00:07:11.340 Reflection of this kind makes no groundbreaking discoveries. 139 00:07:11.880 --> 00:07:13.860 In fact, the concept of discovery 140 00:07:13.860 --> 00:07:16.780 in anything like the way it applies in science 141 00:07:16.780 --> 00:07:18.560 is for the most part alien to it. 142 00:07:19.960 --> 00:07:21.480 Aristotle's writings on biology 143 00:07:21.480 --> 00:07:22.860 are now only a reflection of the fact that 144 00:07:22.860 --> 00:07:24.000 we are not only a study of historical interests, 145 00:07:24.860 --> 00:07:26.220 but for as long as we're educated, 146 00:07:26.600 --> 00:07:29.100 we'll consider, engage with, and perhaps learn 147 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:32.240 from what he said about ethics, politics, and tragedy. 148 00:07:33.100 --> 00:07:34.860 Ditto for Socrates' affirmation 149 00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:38.120 that it's better to suffer evil than to do it. 150 00:07:38.540 --> 00:07:42.100 I could produce a very long list of artists of various kinds 151 00:07:42.100 --> 00:07:44.440 and philosophers of whom this is true. 152 00:07:45.440 --> 00:07:48.020 Thinking about them requires, of course, 153 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:51.320 conscientious attention to relevant evidence 154 00:07:51.320 --> 00:07:52.680 of a factual kind. 155 00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:52.840 So, I'm going to read a few of them. 156 00:07:52.860 --> 00:07:53.740 I'm going to read a few of them. 157 00:07:53.740 --> 00:07:56.340 It requires that we think logically, patiently careful 158 00:07:56.860 --> 00:07:59.280 about how we move from one thought to another. 159 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:03.560 But it requires also that we develop an ear for tone, 160 00:08:03.860 --> 00:08:06.940 for what rings false, for what is sentimental 161 00:08:06.940 --> 00:08:09.820 or has yielded to pathos, and so on. 162 00:08:10.320 --> 00:08:13.560 The development of such a sensibility is not optional 163 00:08:13.560 --> 00:08:15.880 in reflection about the human condition, 164 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:18.700 indeed about anything that really matters ethically. 165 00:08:19.240 --> 00:08:21.340 Without it, we lose our subject matter. 166 00:08:21.340 --> 00:08:23.780 Without it, reflection on ethics, 167 00:08:24.060 --> 00:08:27.340 in all its manifestations, isn't worth a cracker. 168 00:08:28.340 --> 00:08:31.700 In saying that, I don't want to revive a polemic about two cultures. 169 00:08:32.560 --> 00:08:35.480 The fundamental impact of science and our understanding 170 00:08:35.480 --> 00:08:37.960 of what it means to be human is undeniable. 171 00:08:38.460 --> 00:08:41.440 It's deepened immeasurably our understanding of ourselves 172 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:45.300 as creatures of the earth and as material beings in the universe. 173 00:08:46.620 --> 00:08:49.080 Neuroscience has altered our understanding of the mind, 174 00:08:49.140 --> 00:08:50.380 and evolutionary psychology 175 00:08:50.380 --> 00:08:54.060 has had considerable influence on moral psychology 176 00:08:54.060 --> 00:08:56.580 and through it, moral and political philosophy. 177 00:08:57.040 --> 00:09:01.640 It's also fed reductionist impulses in both real and pop philosophy, 178 00:09:01.860 --> 00:09:03.240 but that's another matter. 179 00:09:04.180 --> 00:09:06.840 Recent developments in technology have affected 180 00:09:07.380 --> 00:09:10.120 not only our lives directly in dramatic ways, 181 00:09:10.380 --> 00:09:13.920 but also, more to the point of this lecture, 182 00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:17.640 altered our ways of thinking about and imagining ourselves. 183 00:09:18.680 --> 00:09:23.040 Yet, only when it's engaged with moral, legal and political philosophies, 184 00:09:23.120 --> 00:09:28.060 historically informed and imaginatively engaged with art, 185 00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:30.900 can evolutionary theory, for example, 186 00:09:31.120 --> 00:09:34.020 deepen our understanding of the human condition. 187 00:09:34.760 --> 00:09:38.400 Earlier, I said that the requirement to make human beings of ourselves 188 00:09:38.400 --> 00:09:39.300 has no end. 189 00:09:40.060 --> 00:09:44.240 It's not a requirement that some of us could fulfil more quickly than others, 190 00:09:44.300 --> 00:09:47.460 because we're smarter or in other ways better at it. 191 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:51.480 Then, I was thinking about human beings as individuals. 192 00:09:52.320 --> 00:09:56.620 The same is true, I believe, of human beings in various forms of collectivities. 193 00:09:57.540 --> 00:10:01.900 Even in its collective uses, humanity is a verb. 194 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:06.420 The humanity we affirm when we speak of the common humanity 195 00:10:06.420 --> 00:10:09.220 of all the peoples of the earth is not fixed. 196 00:10:09.580 --> 00:10:12.240 It's not a discovery upon which we could settle, 197 00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:16.700 upon which reflection the peoples of the earth could... 198 00:10:16.700 --> 00:10:20.900 sorry, upon which reflection the peoples of the earth could converge, 199 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:23.660 as we hope they will on scientific matters. 200 00:10:24.420 --> 00:10:28.940 Our sense of our common humanity will be forever verbing, so to speak. 201 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:33.960 And this is a point of considerable importance, political importance. 202 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:37.580 I'll discuss it first in connection with national politics 203 00:10:37.580 --> 00:10:40.320 and turn later to international politics. 204 00:10:40.580 --> 00:10:43.600 It's uncontroversial that Australia's Aboriginal peoples 205 00:10:43.600 --> 00:10:46.180 think differently about what it means to be human, 206 00:10:46.700 --> 00:10:48.420 than do non-Aboriginal Australians. 207 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:51.640 The difference can be described most generally 208 00:10:51.640 --> 00:10:55.060 as lying in their attitude to the natural world and their place in it. 209 00:10:55.800 --> 00:10:58.720 That's vague, of course, but it's enough to sustain the point 210 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:02.020 that the difference has inevitably shown itself politically 211 00:11:02.700 --> 00:11:06.180 in, for example, disputes and court rulings about land and title, 212 00:11:06.340 --> 00:11:09.080 and in the many, sometimes angry, arguments 213 00:11:09.700 --> 00:11:11.640 about what counts truly as reconciliation, 214 00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:15.900 as opposed to merely symbolic gestures towards it. 215 00:11:16.700 --> 00:11:19.700 Perhaps the most bitter arguments were over whether genocide 216 00:11:19.700 --> 00:11:22.420 was at least sometimes, in some parts of Australia, 217 00:11:22.700 --> 00:11:25.040 committed against the Stolen Generations, 218 00:11:25.700 --> 00:11:27.540 as bringing them home alleges. 219 00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:31.320 Understanding of the wrongs committed against the Indigenous peoples 220 00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:34.900 of this country depends on an ethical understanding of what they suffered. 221 00:11:35.660 --> 00:11:39.000 Understanding of that can never be too distant from their stories 222 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:41.720 and other forms of art that express that suffering. 223 00:11:42.320 --> 00:11:45.800 If that's so, then it's obvious that for the most part, 224 00:11:45.800 --> 00:11:49.160 Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples of this country 225 00:11:49.160 --> 00:11:52.280 do not have a shared understanding of their suffering, 226 00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:57.300 and therefore of how it should inform the ethical characterisations 227 00:11:57.300 --> 00:11:59.140 of the crimes against them, 228 00:11:59.800 --> 00:12:03.900 ethical characterisations that make those crimes what they are. 229 00:12:04.900 --> 00:12:08.600 Given their ethically different conceptions of what it is to be human, 230 00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:12.380 how, for example, should the Aboriginal peoples understand 231 00:12:12.380 --> 00:12:14.820 the idea of a crime against humanity, 232 00:12:14.820 --> 00:12:17.520 as that's framed in international law, 233 00:12:17.700 --> 00:12:21.460 if the concept of humanity plays any serious role 234 00:12:21.460 --> 00:12:24.420 in the ethical characterisation of such crimes. 235 00:12:24.820 --> 00:12:27.240 The development of such an understanding, 236 00:12:27.400 --> 00:12:29.180 one that's truly shared, 237 00:12:29.960 --> 00:12:33.520 that truly represents an understanding common to the Aboriginal 238 00:12:33.520 --> 00:12:35.780 and non-Aboriginal members of this nation, 239 00:12:35.940 --> 00:12:40.560 would be unnerving, radical in the sense of going to the roots, 240 00:12:40.700 --> 00:12:44.560 and would almost certainly be novel to the classical traditions 241 00:12:44.560 --> 00:12:46.300 of Western political thought. 242 00:12:47.100 --> 00:12:50.220 The first step towards it would be to acknowledge 243 00:12:50.220 --> 00:12:53.720 that because the Aboriginal peoples were conquered by force 244 00:12:53.720 --> 00:12:55.780 to which they have never consented, 245 00:12:55.940 --> 00:12:57.500 in treaties, for example, 246 00:12:57.600 --> 00:12:59.320 they are under occupation, 247 00:12:59.720 --> 00:13:02.960 not as that is defined now in international law, 248 00:13:03.060 --> 00:13:04.520 but morally, nonetheless. 249 00:13:05.540 --> 00:13:07.820 If you think that's an exaggeration, 250 00:13:07.920 --> 00:13:10.440 listen to Pat Dodson, and I quote, 251 00:13:10.820 --> 00:13:14.080 While the 1788 invasion was unjust, 252 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:17.860 the real injustice was the denial by Governor Phillip 253 00:13:17.860 --> 00:13:21.460 and subsequent governments of our right to participate equally 254 00:13:21.460 --> 00:13:25.560 in the future of a land we had managed successfully for millenniums. 255 00:13:26.020 --> 00:13:28.600 Instead, the land was stolen, not shared, 256 00:13:28.880 --> 00:13:33.040 our political sovereignty was replaced by virulent forms of serfdom, 257 00:13:33.160 --> 00:13:35.900 our spiritual beliefs denied and ridiculed, 258 00:13:36.060 --> 00:13:38.520 our system of education undermined. 259 00:13:39.080 --> 00:13:42.380 We were no longer able to inculcate our young with a complex knowledge 260 00:13:42.380 --> 00:13:46.160 that is acquired from intimate engagement with the land and its waterways. 261 00:13:46.400 --> 00:13:49.720 The introduction of superior weapons, alien diseases, 262 00:13:50.200 --> 00:13:53.680 a policy of racism and enforced biogenetic practices 263 00:13:54.380 --> 00:13:57.580 created dispossession, a cycle of slavery, 264 00:13:57.760 --> 00:14:00.080 and attempted destruction of our society. 265 00:14:00.880 --> 00:14:04.100 The 1997 report bringing them home 266 00:14:04.100 --> 00:14:07.800 highlighted the infringement of the UN definition of genocide 267 00:14:08.380 --> 00:14:10.860 and called for a national apology and compensation. 268 00:14:10.860 --> 00:14:12.760 The report also said that the aborigines 269 00:14:12.760 --> 00:14:16.440 who had suffered under laws that destroyed indigenous societies 270 00:14:16.440 --> 00:14:22.260 and sanctioned biogenetic modification of the aboriginal people. 271 00:14:24.560 --> 00:14:27.640 Aboriginal peoples have no power of the kind 272 00:14:27.640 --> 00:14:31.640 that could force anything on the non-indigenous peoples of Australia, 273 00:14:31.920 --> 00:14:35.520 no power to force them to negotiate a treaty, for example. 274 00:14:36.740 --> 00:14:39.720 Humiliating though it must be for them to acknowledge this, 275 00:14:39.720 --> 00:14:43.440 the fact is that whatever further justice they are given 276 00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:47.300 will be a function of the openness of non-aboriginal Australians 277 00:14:47.300 --> 00:14:49.820 to seeing that justice must be done, 278 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:52.700 and most importantly, to the point I'm making, 279 00:14:52.920 --> 00:14:57.580 seeing what that comes to if it's true to the history of this land 280 00:14:57.580 --> 00:14:58.840 and their suffering. 281 00:14:59.700 --> 00:15:03.740 For that to happen, non-aboriginal peoples must come to see 282 00:15:03.740 --> 00:15:06.940 what is at issue from the perspective of the aboriginal peoples. 283 00:15:06.940 --> 00:15:10.460 That requires more than we usually mean by empathy, 284 00:15:10.700 --> 00:15:15.080 because it depends on acquiring new concepts or modifying old ones. 285 00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:19.220 And those concepts will determine the character and content of empathy. 286 00:15:19.520 --> 00:15:21.240 They will not be its product. 287 00:15:22.120 --> 00:15:25.620 The nature of compassion and empathy is always a function 288 00:15:25.620 --> 00:15:29.360 of the concepts under which we respond to other people's suffering 289 00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:31.420 or see the world as they do. 290 00:15:32.500 --> 00:15:35.940 Victims of injustice often suffer physical and psychological trauma, 291 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:40.140 but they also suffer the injustice of its infliction, 292 00:15:40.300 --> 00:15:43.800 which is often an irreducible focus of their torment 293 00:15:43.800 --> 00:15:47.320 and of their need that the injustice done to them 294 00:15:47.320 --> 00:15:50.780 be acknowledged in the spirit in which the physical 295 00:15:50.780 --> 00:15:53.600 and psychological damage is ameliorated. 296 00:15:54.520 --> 00:15:57.280 Apology, forgiveness, atonement or punishment 297 00:15:57.280 --> 00:16:00.880 are appropriate responses to that resentment and torment. 298 00:16:01.900 --> 00:16:05.600 Compassion and empathy must be informed by that realisation. 299 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:10.600 When people's souls have been lacerated by the wrongs done to them, 300 00:16:10.700 --> 00:16:15.720 individually or collectively, openness to their voices requires humbled attention. 301 00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:21.460 Such attention is growing in Australia, I believe, slowly, 302 00:16:21.640 --> 00:16:24.500 not at all surely, but growing nonetheless. 303 00:16:25.200 --> 00:16:29.300 The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber said that the basic difference 304 00:16:29.300 --> 00:16:32.980 between monologues and what he called fully valid conversation 305 00:16:32.980 --> 00:16:34.360 is, I quote, 306 00:16:34.500 --> 00:16:35.260 the otherness, 307 00:16:35.260 --> 00:16:38.080 or concretely, the moment of surprise. 308 00:16:38.620 --> 00:16:39.480 End of quote. 309 00:16:39.820 --> 00:16:43.940 His point is not merely that we must be open to hearing surprising things. 310 00:16:44.440 --> 00:16:48.120 We must be open to being surprised at the many ways 311 00:16:48.120 --> 00:16:50.900 we may justly and humanly relate to one another 312 00:16:50.900 --> 00:16:53.180 in a spirit of truthful dialogue. 313 00:16:54.040 --> 00:16:57.320 It's in conversation, rather than in advance of it, 314 00:16:57.460 --> 00:17:00.820 that we discover, never alone but always together, 315 00:17:01.080 --> 00:17:02.980 what it means really to listen 316 00:17:02.980 --> 00:17:05.240 and what tone may properly be used. 317 00:17:05.260 --> 00:17:09.380 In conversation, we discover, amongst other things, 318 00:17:09.640 --> 00:17:12.420 the many things that conversation can be. 319 00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:16.960 No one can say what would happen when, through such conversations, 320 00:17:17.320 --> 00:17:20.500 we understood better how Aboriginal peoples experienced 321 00:17:20.500 --> 00:17:22.580 the crimes committed against them, 322 00:17:22.700 --> 00:17:27.140 and therefore how that understanding should inform the ways 323 00:17:27.140 --> 00:17:31.740 that Aboriginals and non-Aboriginal peoples will be able to say, 324 00:17:31.780 --> 00:17:35.240 we, truthfully, justly, and humbly. 325 00:17:35.260 --> 00:17:36.280 In political fellowship, 326 00:17:37.020 --> 00:17:39.880 it might turn out not to be we, Australians. 327 00:17:40.580 --> 00:17:43.280 We might have to change the name of the country. 328 00:17:43.980 --> 00:17:44.740 Maybe not. 329 00:17:45.160 --> 00:17:47.980 But I can't see how one can respond with humility 330 00:17:47.980 --> 00:17:51.680 to Dodson's words and at the same time rule that out. 331 00:17:52.580 --> 00:17:54.700 I turn now to international politics, 332 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:57.280 or more precisely, to the place that the idea 333 00:17:58.080 --> 00:18:01.200 of a common humanity should have in international law 334 00:18:01.200 --> 00:18:04.160 and the importance of such law to the ideal 335 00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:06.720 that the peoples of the earth might form 336 00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:09.620 what could honestly be called a community of nations. 337 00:18:11.160 --> 00:18:13.640 Anyone who's taken an interest in the discussion 338 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:19.020 that international law is not only Eurocentric in its applications, 339 00:18:19.380 --> 00:18:21.400 which that's just obviously true, 340 00:18:21.700 --> 00:18:23.800 but also in its concepts, 341 00:18:24.100 --> 00:18:26.240 will be sympathetic to my claim 342 00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:30.260 that what I said about understanding the wrongs suffered by the Aboriginal peoples 343 00:18:30.260 --> 00:18:33.580 applies for the most part also to international law. 344 00:18:33.580 --> 00:18:39.140 There, too, ethically-inflected concepts of humanity are not fixed. 345 00:18:39.540 --> 00:18:41.640 There, too, there is much to be learned 346 00:18:41.640 --> 00:18:45.100 about how different communities, different peoples and nations 347 00:18:45.100 --> 00:18:48.600 understand what it means to do and suffer the wrongs 348 00:18:48.600 --> 00:18:52.540 that are prescribed in important instruments of international law. 349 00:18:53.480 --> 00:18:56.000 Responding in 1948 to the Holocaust, 350 00:18:56.700 --> 00:18:59.640 the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 351 00:18:59.640 --> 00:19:01.080 spoke, I quote, 352 00:19:01.280 --> 00:19:03.500 of the contempt for human rights 353 00:19:03.580 --> 00:19:05.240 that have resulted in barbarous acts 354 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:07.380 which have outraged the conscience of mankind. 355 00:19:08.120 --> 00:19:09.040 End of quote. 356 00:19:09.580 --> 00:19:12.540 Two years earlier, the United Nations General Assembly 357 00:19:12.540 --> 00:19:14.080 resolution on genocide 358 00:19:14.840 --> 00:19:17.080 declared genocide to be, quote, 359 00:19:17.260 --> 00:19:19.220 a shock to the conscience of mankind, 360 00:19:19.940 --> 00:19:21.300 contrary to moral law 361 00:19:21.300 --> 00:19:24.040 and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. 362 00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:25.320 End of quote. 363 00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:26.360 And now another quote. 364 00:19:26.520 --> 00:19:29.480 And a crime which the civilized world condemns. 365 00:19:29.620 --> 00:19:30.500 End of quote. 366 00:19:31.160 --> 00:19:33.140 Yet at the time those words were written, 367 00:19:33.580 --> 00:19:34.960 by the peoples of European nations 368 00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:37.500 who drafted them and created international law, 369 00:19:37.860 --> 00:19:40.980 those peoples looked upon most of the peoples of the earth 370 00:19:41.580 --> 00:19:42.660 as primitive savages 371 00:19:42.660 --> 00:19:45.160 who of their very nature were incapable 372 00:19:45.160 --> 00:19:48.160 of the kind of understanding presupposed 373 00:19:48.160 --> 00:19:50.480 in what's meant by speaking of genocide 374 00:19:50.480 --> 00:19:53.180 as a shock to the conscience of mankind, 375 00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:56.060 even though some of them had been victims 376 00:19:56.060 --> 00:19:57.860 of colonial genocides. 377 00:19:58.460 --> 00:20:00.060 It's a small thing, perhaps, 378 00:20:00.340 --> 00:20:01.420 but revealing nonetheless, 379 00:20:01.420 --> 00:20:03.900 that like millions of other children, 380 00:20:04.120 --> 00:20:05.140 when I was a boy, 381 00:20:05.240 --> 00:20:07.180 I listened to Tarzan on the radio, 382 00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:08.760 read Tarzan comics, 383 00:20:08.800 --> 00:20:10.080 and watched Tarzan films. 384 00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:12.300 When I recall that, 385 00:20:12.460 --> 00:20:15.440 I'm astonished by the complacent racism 386 00:20:15.440 --> 00:20:17.240 that showed itself in the fact 387 00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:21.140 that I and others found nothing whatsoever objectionable 388 00:20:21.140 --> 00:20:23.880 in the contempt for black Africans 389 00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:25.060 that they often expressed. 390 00:20:25.740 --> 00:20:29.000 Those Africans were invisible to our moral faculties. 391 00:20:29.300 --> 00:20:30.960 More deeply, they were invisible 392 00:20:31.420 --> 00:20:34.620 to what it is that enables us to take for granted 393 00:20:34.620 --> 00:20:37.300 that other human beings have inner lives 394 00:20:37.300 --> 00:20:38.820 that can be deep or shallow, 395 00:20:39.060 --> 00:20:40.480 and if they're shallow, 396 00:20:40.680 --> 00:20:43.540 that they can be called upon to rise to something better. 397 00:20:44.120 --> 00:20:46.680 We didn't think those Africans were shallow. 398 00:20:46.840 --> 00:20:48.880 We thought they didn't even exist 399 00:20:49.420 --> 00:20:50.640 in a conceptual space 400 00:20:51.420 --> 00:20:53.160 that gives sense to attributions 401 00:20:53.160 --> 00:20:54.720 of depth and shallowness. 402 00:20:55.060 --> 00:20:57.360 But the moral of my discussion of the relations 403 00:20:57.360 --> 00:20:59.800 between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians 404 00:20:59.800 --> 00:21:03.300 is that when we acknowledge that racism against them 405 00:21:03.300 --> 00:21:04.900 is a denial of their full humanity, 406 00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:08.300 we should not think that that implies 407 00:21:08.300 --> 00:21:10.800 that we now fully acknowledge their humanity, 408 00:21:11.140 --> 00:21:15.060 that we know what the ethically inflected sense of humanity 409 00:21:15.060 --> 00:21:18.220 comes to in our relations to them. 410 00:21:19.020 --> 00:21:20.580 Rather, we must discover, 411 00:21:20.760 --> 00:21:23.040 rather than unilaterally assert, 412 00:21:23.840 --> 00:21:27.540 what we can make of the different conceptions of our humanity. 413 00:21:28.220 --> 00:21:29.780 We cannot assume that we are not 414 00:21:29.800 --> 00:21:30.540 and we cannot assume that in the end, 415 00:21:30.600 --> 00:21:33.880 if only we're patient, sensitive, generous, 416 00:21:33.940 --> 00:21:36.260 and attentive enough, we'll agree. 417 00:21:36.740 --> 00:21:38.360 We might not agree. 418 00:21:39.080 --> 00:21:42.940 We'll then have to see what we make politically of that fact 419 00:21:42.940 --> 00:21:45.680 for international politics. 420 00:21:46.460 --> 00:21:49.200 Token acknowledgement by the nations of the Earth, 421 00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:51.380 as they are represented in the UN, 422 00:21:52.040 --> 00:21:56.240 of the many prescriptions in international law 423 00:21:56.800 --> 00:21:59.560 and opportunistic use of them, 424 00:21:59.800 --> 00:22:02.700 has disguised how little real agreement there is 425 00:22:02.700 --> 00:22:04.020 about their ethical content 426 00:22:04.020 --> 00:22:06.760 of what it means to commit war crimes, 427 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:09.700 crimes against humanity, and even genocide. 428 00:22:11.180 --> 00:22:12.860 It's covered the many gaps 429 00:22:12.860 --> 00:22:15.100 in anything that might truthfully be called 430 00:22:15.100 --> 00:22:17.600 a shared understanding about these matters. 431 00:22:18.040 --> 00:22:21.740 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in its preamble, 432 00:22:21.880 --> 00:22:22.280 quote, 433 00:22:22.420 --> 00:22:24.880 that the recognition of the inherent dignity 434 00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:27.700 and of the equal and inalienable rights 435 00:22:27.700 --> 00:22:29.560 of all members of the human family 436 00:22:29.800 --> 00:22:33.220 is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world. 437 00:22:33.460 --> 00:22:34.280 End of quote. 438 00:22:34.860 --> 00:22:37.440 Many other preambles to important instruments 439 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:39.760 of international law speak the same language. 440 00:22:40.280 --> 00:22:42.740 The Convention Against Torture, for example, 441 00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:44.840 speaks of the inalienable rights 442 00:22:44.840 --> 00:22:48.520 that derive from the inherent dignity of the person. 443 00:22:49.460 --> 00:22:51.700 These preambles suggest that the idea 444 00:22:51.700 --> 00:22:52.860 of the dignity of humanity, 445 00:22:53.800 --> 00:22:56.480 of a dignity that one possesses simply by virtue 446 00:22:56.480 --> 00:22:58.000 of being a human being, 447 00:22:58.860 --> 00:23:01.140 underpins the concept of an inalienable right 448 00:23:01.140 --> 00:23:03.900 and is fundamental to an elaboration 449 00:23:03.900 --> 00:23:07.420 of what it means morally to violate such a right. 450 00:23:07.700 --> 00:23:10.160 The moral character of crimes against humanity 451 00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:12.480 is often rendered as an offence 452 00:23:12.480 --> 00:23:15.240 against the human dignity of those who suffer it. 453 00:23:15.880 --> 00:23:18.180 It's now almost second nature to us 454 00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:19.360 to speak of human rights 455 00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:21.480 and the dignity that's been offended 456 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:23.960 when a person's human rights are violated. 457 00:23:24.700 --> 00:23:26.800 The concepts of inalienable dignity 458 00:23:26.800 --> 00:23:29.840 and inalienable human rights as we use them 459 00:23:29.840 --> 00:23:31.980 are clearly of European origin. 460 00:23:32.580 --> 00:23:35.600 Indeed, the resonances they carry for us 461 00:23:35.600 --> 00:23:38.300 are the heroic resonances of Kant's moral 462 00:23:38.300 --> 00:23:39.380 and political philosophy. 463 00:23:40.300 --> 00:23:42.640 That's not of itself a bad thing. 464 00:23:43.560 --> 00:23:46.760 Cultures have existed in which there was not even a hint 465 00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:48.320 of those ethical concepts, 466 00:23:48.560 --> 00:23:52.140 and cultures now exist which regard them as absurd. 467 00:23:53.080 --> 00:23:55.980 Absurd to think that Saddam Hussein, for example, 468 00:23:55.980 --> 00:23:58.540 was owed a fair trial for his sake, 469 00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:01.080 rather than because it might place the integrity 470 00:24:01.080 --> 00:24:03.680 of the legal system on a slippery slope. 471 00:24:04.520 --> 00:24:06.740 That an imperative so sublime 472 00:24:06.740 --> 00:24:10.160 as the one that requires us to respect the humanity, 473 00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:13.880 even of those guilty of the foulest crimes, 474 00:24:14.260 --> 00:24:17.000 should show itself in ways as prosaic 475 00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:18.900 as observing courtroom procedures 476 00:24:18.900 --> 00:24:21.180 might seem paradoxical. 477 00:24:21.620 --> 00:24:24.400 It might make us complacent, forgetful, 478 00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:27.360 of how wondrous it is that humanity 479 00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:30.600 should ever have come to that affirmation. 480 00:24:31.540 --> 00:24:33.820 In much of my work, I've tried to reclaim 481 00:24:33.820 --> 00:24:35.560 a sense of such wondrousness, 482 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:38.100 to create the right conceptual space 483 00:24:38.100 --> 00:24:40.940 in which one can find an authentic and compelling voice 484 00:24:40.940 --> 00:24:43.280 that could answer someone who says, 485 00:24:43.520 --> 00:24:46.040 if you want to be treated like a human being, 486 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:47.560 first you behave like one. 487 00:24:48.080 --> 00:24:51.280 That people like Saddam and many other fighters for ISIS 488 00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:52.460 are vermin. 489 00:24:52.460 --> 00:24:54.720 I just say in parenthesis, 490 00:24:54.720 --> 00:24:57.280 I'm now 70 and in my lifetime 491 00:24:57.280 --> 00:25:00.720 I don't remember an enemy that's been so dehumanised, 492 00:25:00.780 --> 00:25:03.260 but sort of quietly, as ISIS has been. 493 00:25:03.960 --> 00:25:05.380 I must add, though, 494 00:25:06.060 --> 00:25:08.800 that I would not trust someone 495 00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:11.760 who affirmed that even such people possess 496 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:14.120 inalienable dignity to which we owe 497 00:25:14.120 --> 00:25:15.360 an unconditional respect, 498 00:25:15.740 --> 00:25:17.680 unless they were tempted to believe, 499 00:25:17.960 --> 00:25:19.320 as many people do, 500 00:25:19.500 --> 00:25:22.440 as Churchill indeed did of the Nazi movement. 501 00:25:22.460 --> 00:25:22.720 I'm not sure that I would be so 502 00:25:22.720 --> 00:25:23.520 charged at Nuremberg 503 00:25:23.520 --> 00:25:25.920 that they should be shot like rabid dogs. 504 00:25:26.320 --> 00:25:28.740 But I dread the prospect of a world 505 00:25:28.740 --> 00:25:31.540 in which my grandchildren could no longer affirm, 506 00:25:32.460 --> 00:25:34.560 for it is an affirmation, an act of faith, 507 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:37.100 that reason and science cannot make secure, 508 00:25:38.460 --> 00:25:40.420 that even the most terrible evildoers, 509 00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:43.260 those whose characters appear to match their deeds, 510 00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:45.840 who are defiantly unremorseful 511 00:25:45.840 --> 00:25:47.400 and in whom we can find nothing 512 00:25:47.400 --> 00:25:49.020 from which remorse could grow, 513 00:25:49.300 --> 00:25:51.420 are owed an unconditional respect, 514 00:25:52.460 --> 00:25:55.720 are always and everywhere owed justice 515 00:25:55.720 --> 00:25:57.240 for their sake, 516 00:25:57.480 --> 00:25:59.740 rather than because we fear the consequences 517 00:25:59.740 --> 00:26:02.000 if we do not accord it to them. 518 00:26:02.740 --> 00:26:04.520 Nonetheless, though criminal governments 519 00:26:04.520 --> 00:26:07.720 have shamelessly responded to criticism 520 00:26:07.720 --> 00:26:09.100 of their criminal conduct 521 00:26:09.100 --> 00:26:12.660 as being Western impertinence, 522 00:26:12.880 --> 00:26:15.760 the protestations that talk of human rights 523 00:26:15.760 --> 00:26:18.040 as a Western imposition on the ethical traditions 524 00:26:18.040 --> 00:26:20.520 of other cultures sometimes has point. 525 00:26:21.520 --> 00:26:22.440 Indeed, we are not alone. 526 00:26:22.460 --> 00:26:25.260 One could say that the way we now speak of human rights 527 00:26:25.260 --> 00:26:28.800 has, paradoxically, made it difficult to identify 528 00:26:28.800 --> 00:26:30.720 the deepest of ethical reasons 529 00:26:30.720 --> 00:26:32.940 for inventing the idea in the first place. 530 00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:36.080 That, indeed, rather than supporting the idea 531 00:26:36.080 --> 00:26:36.980 of a common humanity, 532 00:26:37.300 --> 00:26:39.420 it undermines the prospect of it. 533 00:26:39.620 --> 00:26:42.960 I suspect that many of you will find that too paradoxical, 534 00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:44.220 even to be intelligible. 535 00:26:44.600 --> 00:26:47.040 So I'll try to explain why I say it, 536 00:26:47.060 --> 00:26:49.020 seeking help from Simone Weil, 537 00:26:49.300 --> 00:26:51.460 a French philosopher who died in 1944, 538 00:26:51.700 --> 00:26:53.880 at the age of 33. 539 00:26:54.920 --> 00:26:56.920 In a slightly unfair polemic 540 00:26:56.920 --> 00:26:59.700 against the moral importance we accord to human rights, 541 00:26:59.900 --> 00:27:01.600 she says, I quote, 542 00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:04.640 If someone tries to browbeat a farmer 543 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:06.520 to sell his eggs at a moderate price, 544 00:27:06.700 --> 00:27:07.700 the farmer can say, 545 00:27:07.860 --> 00:27:10.020 I have the right to keep my eggs 546 00:27:10.020 --> 00:27:11.680 if I don't get a good enough price. 547 00:27:12.420 --> 00:27:14.820 But every young girl is being forced into a brothel. 548 00:27:15.020 --> 00:27:16.880 She will not talk about her rights. 549 00:27:17.520 --> 00:27:18.960 In such a situation, 550 00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:21.060 the word would sound ludicrously inadequate. 551 00:27:23.260 --> 00:27:24.760 The reason why she says 552 00:27:24.760 --> 00:27:25.940 it would be ludicrously inadequate 553 00:27:25.940 --> 00:27:28.780 for the girl to protest that her rights had been violated 554 00:27:28.780 --> 00:27:31.880 is not because it would be pointless to do so, 555 00:27:31.960 --> 00:27:35.080 although, of course, it almost certainly would be. 556 00:27:35.760 --> 00:27:38.480 It's because she believes that the concept of rights 557 00:27:39.060 --> 00:27:42.000 is of itself radically incapable of 558 00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:43.820 taking us to an understanding 559 00:27:43.820 --> 00:27:46.660 of the moral terribleness of what the girl suffers. 560 00:27:47.640 --> 00:27:48.820 Imagine, for example, 561 00:27:48.820 --> 00:27:50.040 someone who said, 562 00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:52.720 My God, look at what that brute did to her. 563 00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:54.680 He's violated her human rights. 564 00:27:55.900 --> 00:27:59.080 What's terrible is not that he violated her rights, 565 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:00.840 it's that he violated her. 566 00:28:01.780 --> 00:28:04.400 I hope I won't be misunderstood about this. 567 00:28:04.860 --> 00:28:08.220 I'm not suggesting that we try to banish talk of human rights. 568 00:28:08.620 --> 00:28:11.180 The battles for human rights 569 00:28:11.180 --> 00:28:13.680 and for the acceptance that all the peoples of the earth 570 00:28:13.680 --> 00:28:16.860 share an inalienable dignity that defines their common humanity 571 00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:18.800 have been amongst the number of people 572 00:28:18.820 --> 00:28:20.000 who have been the noblest in Western history. 573 00:28:20.580 --> 00:28:23.260 God knows where we would have been had we not fought 574 00:28:23.260 --> 00:28:25.100 and won so many of them. 575 00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:29.180 However, talk of human rights needs to be embedded in, 576 00:28:29.320 --> 00:28:33.160 to draw on, to be richly mindful of, 577 00:28:33.400 --> 00:28:36.640 and always take us back to a richer vocabulary 578 00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:39.200 that reveals what it means ethically 579 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:42.480 for a person's human rights to have been seriously violated. 580 00:28:43.480 --> 00:28:45.500 If we rely on the concept of rights 581 00:28:45.500 --> 00:28:47.360 to do much of the ethical work alone, 582 00:28:47.360 --> 00:28:49.700 we will uproot it from its source 583 00:28:49.700 --> 00:28:52.100 and find ourselves ethically illiterate 584 00:28:52.100 --> 00:28:55.600 in the characterisation of the terrible wrongs people suffer, 585 00:28:56.320 --> 00:28:58.560 wrongs that, as the phrase human rights suggests, 586 00:28:58.940 --> 00:29:01.320 should be of concern to all human beings 587 00:29:01.320 --> 00:29:03.740 by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. 588 00:29:04.580 --> 00:29:07.760 Then talk of rights will undermine, rather than support, 589 00:29:08.120 --> 00:29:10.400 the hope that the peoples of the earth 590 00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:12.020 will acknowledge their common humanity 591 00:29:12.020 --> 00:29:15.700 and the profound ethical implications of that acknowledgement. 592 00:29:15.700 --> 00:29:19.620 We will undermine the prospects of the kind of conversation 593 00:29:19.620 --> 00:29:21.380 between the peoples of the earth 594 00:29:21.380 --> 00:29:23.560 that would give us reason to hope 595 00:29:23.560 --> 00:29:27.520 that we could become genuinely a community of nations, 596 00:29:27.880 --> 00:29:32.340 made such by rendering ourselves answerable to international law, 597 00:29:32.540 --> 00:29:36.200 at least in regard to war crimes and crimes against humanity. 598 00:29:37.620 --> 00:29:41.080 Just as a sense of fellow national feeling is sentimental 599 00:29:41.700 --> 00:29:43.180 unless we... 600 00:29:43.700 --> 00:29:45.660 unless it's supported by the 601 00:29:45.700 --> 00:29:46.980 institutions of justice 602 00:29:46.980 --> 00:29:49.720 that shows that it matters to us 603 00:29:49.720 --> 00:29:52.800 that our fellow citizens are wronged 604 00:29:52.800 --> 00:29:55.500 and that wrongdoers remain our fellow citizens, 605 00:29:56.260 --> 00:29:58.580 justly held to account but never banished. 606 00:29:59.020 --> 00:30:02.160 So the idea of a common humanity would be empty, 607 00:30:02.280 --> 00:30:04.640 as would the ideal of a community of nations, 608 00:30:04.940 --> 00:30:08.020 unless the peoples of those nations 609 00:30:08.020 --> 00:30:12.320 so concern for the grievous wrong done to other people in other nations. 610 00:30:13.660 --> 00:30:15.680 Admittedly, the sense in which such a sense 611 00:30:15.700 --> 00:30:17.900 of community exists is still rather thin, 612 00:30:18.060 --> 00:30:20.640 and so therefore is the sense in which 613 00:30:20.640 --> 00:30:22.840 derogation of some international obligations 614 00:30:23.700 --> 00:30:25.560 as defined in international law 615 00:30:25.560 --> 00:30:28.020 is an offence against humanity. 616 00:30:28.620 --> 00:30:30.400 It's not meaningless though. 617 00:30:30.780 --> 00:30:35.800 The ethical core of the concept of crimes against humanity, 618 00:30:36.220 --> 00:30:36.980 I suggest, 619 00:30:37.300 --> 00:30:41.100 is that they are crimes against the constituency of humankind. 620 00:30:42.140 --> 00:30:45.180 Crimes that must be the concern of all human beings, 621 00:30:45.180 --> 00:30:47.940 in their capacity as political beings. 622 00:30:48.840 --> 00:30:50.360 That, as I said earlier, 623 00:30:50.580 --> 00:30:53.980 is a precondition for the existence of a community of nations 624 00:30:53.980 --> 00:30:56.120 answerable to international law. 625 00:30:56.580 --> 00:30:59.380 They are crimes of concern to all human beings 626 00:30:59.380 --> 00:31:02.200 for whom it matters that their political identity 627 00:31:02.200 --> 00:31:04.660 is partly formed by the fact 628 00:31:04.660 --> 00:31:07.980 that they belong to such a community of nations. 629 00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:12.380 Racism and ugly forms of nationalism 630 00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:15.020 are again resurgent in many parts of the world, 631 00:31:15.020 --> 00:31:15.880 including Australia, 632 00:31:16.740 --> 00:31:19.180 who would have believed even a couple of months ago 633 00:31:19.180 --> 00:31:23.640 that 49% of Australians would ban Muslim immigration, 634 00:31:24.720 --> 00:31:27.940 and who could doubt that the figure would be much smaller 635 00:31:27.940 --> 00:31:29.760 if most Muslims were white. 636 00:31:30.400 --> 00:31:32.500 Some Australians are ashamed of this, 637 00:31:32.620 --> 00:31:34.900 of our cruel treatment of asylum seekers 638 00:31:34.900 --> 00:31:37.900 and of course our treatment of the Aboriginal peoples. 639 00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:40.640 Shame is an interesting concept 640 00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:42.380 when applied to national politics. 641 00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:44.420 It's a way of acknowledging 642 00:31:45.020 --> 00:31:46.080 the responsibility for something 643 00:31:46.080 --> 00:31:48.240 that one has become caught up in, 644 00:31:48.360 --> 00:31:51.320 even though one may not be guilty by deed or admission. 645 00:31:52.060 --> 00:31:53.660 Though of course one might be. 646 00:31:54.360 --> 00:31:56.380 The shame felt by many Australians 647 00:31:57.020 --> 00:31:58.620 is of a kind that presupposes 648 00:31:58.620 --> 00:32:00.460 that their identities have been formed 649 00:32:01.020 --> 00:32:02.300 by their attachment to, 650 00:32:03.020 --> 00:32:04.800 sometimes love of, the country. 651 00:32:05.580 --> 00:32:08.540 They express that identity when they use the word we 652 00:32:08.540 --> 00:32:10.640 to express national fellowship, 653 00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:13.300 rather than merely to record the fact 654 00:32:13.300 --> 00:32:14.940 that they belong with others. 655 00:32:15.020 --> 00:32:16.740 They are not Australians to a national group. 656 00:32:17.600 --> 00:32:19.380 Paul Keating's Redfern speech 657 00:32:19.380 --> 00:32:20.720 is one of the most powerful 658 00:32:20.720 --> 00:32:22.320 and well-known expressions of it. 659 00:32:23.260 --> 00:32:24.380 We, quote, 660 00:32:24.560 --> 00:32:26.880 we brought the diseases and the alcohol. 661 00:32:27.160 --> 00:32:28.380 We committed the murders. 662 00:32:28.700 --> 00:32:30.980 We took the children from their mothers. 663 00:32:31.140 --> 00:32:33.620 We practiced discrimination and exclusion. 664 00:32:33.980 --> 00:32:34.780 End of quote. 665 00:32:36.020 --> 00:32:37.280 Many people were moved to agree, 666 00:32:37.560 --> 00:32:39.640 even though they were not even alive 667 00:32:39.640 --> 00:32:42.060 at the time when most of those things were done. 668 00:32:42.820 --> 00:32:44.420 And that sense of fellowship, 669 00:32:45.020 --> 00:32:47.100 goes deeper than pride or shame 670 00:32:47.100 --> 00:32:48.680 that people can feel collectively 671 00:32:48.680 --> 00:32:50.600 considered only as citizens. 672 00:32:51.340 --> 00:32:54.260 In part because it's historically deeper 673 00:32:54.260 --> 00:32:56.460 than citizenship sometimes is, 674 00:32:56.640 --> 00:32:59.060 and because it involves attachment to, 675 00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:00.700 sometimes love of, 676 00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:02.300 aspects of the country 677 00:33:02.300 --> 00:33:04.560 in which even the most dutiful citizen 678 00:33:04.560 --> 00:33:06.220 need have no interest whatsoever. 679 00:33:06.620 --> 00:33:08.680 The countryside, the light, 680 00:33:08.920 --> 00:33:11.560 the literature and the song, for example. 681 00:33:11.980 --> 00:33:14.900 Such people for whom shame is a painful form 682 00:33:15.020 --> 00:33:16.280 of love for, 683 00:33:16.520 --> 00:33:19.760 rather than a reason to reject their country, 684 00:33:19.960 --> 00:33:22.840 try to awaken in us, their fellow citizens, 685 00:33:23.240 --> 00:33:25.660 an acknowledgement that we share a common humanity 686 00:33:25.660 --> 00:33:27.720 with asylum seekers and their families, 687 00:33:27.920 --> 00:33:29.700 and to make such an acknowledgement 688 00:33:29.700 --> 00:33:32.560 inseparable from the we of national fellowship. 689 00:33:33.340 --> 00:33:35.580 Hoping that most Australians will embrace, 690 00:33:35.800 --> 00:33:37.560 rather than resist the fact 691 00:33:37.560 --> 00:33:40.380 that Australia belongs to a community of nations 692 00:33:41.020 --> 00:33:43.660 constituted as such by international law. 693 00:33:44.820 --> 00:33:47.080 Conservative politicians speak more often 694 00:33:47.080 --> 00:33:48.060 of love of country, 695 00:33:48.220 --> 00:33:52.440 of pride in what the nation has achieved, 696 00:33:52.780 --> 00:33:54.440 and what our soldiers have done 697 00:33:54.440 --> 00:33:55.820 to protect the national interest, 698 00:33:56.120 --> 00:33:57.760 than politicians of the left. 699 00:33:58.700 --> 00:34:00.540 Talk of national shame, however, 700 00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:02.920 and worse, the suggestion that our soldiers, 701 00:34:03.100 --> 00:34:05.160 like the soldiers of all nations, 702 00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:07.600 should be answerable to international criminal courts, 703 00:34:07.840 --> 00:34:09.360 is anathema to them. 704 00:34:09.760 --> 00:34:11.240 But by the same token, 705 00:34:11.420 --> 00:34:13.140 the refusal of many on the left 706 00:34:13.660 --> 00:34:16.500 to take seriously the need most human beings have 707 00:34:16.500 --> 00:34:19.300 of roots realised in national forms 708 00:34:19.300 --> 00:34:21.720 has been one of the reasons for Brexit, 709 00:34:21.980 --> 00:34:24.860 and the development of right-wing national paranoia 710 00:34:24.860 --> 00:34:25.660 more generally. 711 00:34:26.820 --> 00:34:29.320 Because the left generally has not been prepared 712 00:34:29.320 --> 00:34:31.600 to take seriously talk of love of country, 713 00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:34.040 fearing that we'll always decline 714 00:34:34.040 --> 00:34:36.340 into ugly, often murderous forms, 715 00:34:36.660 --> 00:34:39.000 it's not taken seriously the questions, 716 00:34:39.280 --> 00:34:41.980 how can we prevent love of country 717 00:34:41.980 --> 00:34:43.640 from degenerating into a crime, 718 00:34:43.660 --> 00:34:44.560 and from turning into jingoism? 719 00:34:45.660 --> 00:34:47.400 And what kind of road can we build 720 00:34:47.400 --> 00:34:50.840 on which jingoism might find its way back to love? 721 00:34:51.760 --> 00:34:54.740 The obligation to think hard about this 722 00:34:54.740 --> 00:34:56.060 is fundamental and urgent, 723 00:34:56.260 --> 00:34:58.560 because the need people have for roots, 724 00:34:58.740 --> 00:35:01.120 and the military means to protect them, 725 00:35:01.260 --> 00:35:03.260 will not go away any time soon. 726 00:35:04.220 --> 00:35:06.120 And the reason for that goes deep. 727 00:35:06.400 --> 00:35:08.240 Here is Simone Weil again. 728 00:35:08.480 --> 00:35:09.180 I quote, 729 00:35:09.800 --> 00:35:11.700 We owe a cornfield respect, 730 00:35:11.700 --> 00:35:13.000 not because of itself, 731 00:35:13.240 --> 00:35:15.560 but because it's food for human beings. 732 00:35:16.280 --> 00:35:17.480 In the same way, 733 00:35:17.480 --> 00:35:19.180 we owe respect to a collectivity, 734 00:35:19.300 --> 00:35:21.800 country, family, or any other, 735 00:35:21.900 --> 00:35:24.180 not for itself, but because it's food 736 00:35:24.180 --> 00:35:26.120 for a certain number of human souls. 737 00:35:27.040 --> 00:35:29.700 One sack of corn can always be substituted 738 00:35:29.700 --> 00:35:31.000 by another sack of corn. 739 00:35:31.520 --> 00:35:33.640 The food that a collectivity supplies 740 00:35:33.640 --> 00:35:36.320 for the souls of those who form part of it 741 00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:39.240 has no equivalent in the entire universe. 742 00:35:39.740 --> 00:35:40.660 End of quote. 743 00:35:41.700 --> 00:35:43.720 Real love of country can be identified 744 00:35:43.720 --> 00:35:45.120 by at least two markers. 745 00:35:45.900 --> 00:35:47.960 By the desire to love truthfully, 746 00:35:48.020 --> 00:35:50.860 and by the desire to love without the shame, 747 00:35:51.020 --> 00:35:53.080 that would be the only truthful response 748 00:35:53.080 --> 00:35:56.260 to the wrongs done on behalf of the nation, 749 00:35:56.420 --> 00:35:59.120 by our leaders, or in time of war, 750 00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:00.100 by our soldiers. 751 00:36:01.140 --> 00:36:02.920 Because it fastens onto something 752 00:36:02.920 --> 00:36:05.380 that is inevitably a mixture of good and evil, 753 00:36:05.680 --> 00:36:07.740 love of country is always a mixture 754 00:36:07.740 --> 00:36:11.560 of gratitude, pain, joy, sorrow, pride, shame, 755 00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:13.200 and sometimes guilt. 756 00:36:14.220 --> 00:36:16.780 In the circumstances that make them appropriate, 757 00:36:17.100 --> 00:36:19.800 each can be a form of love of country. 758 00:36:20.280 --> 00:36:22.760 Just as severe criticism of one's country 759 00:36:22.760 --> 00:36:25.520 can be a form of loyalty to it, 760 00:36:25.620 --> 00:36:28.060 and the desire to love without shame 761 00:36:28.060 --> 00:36:31.220 and without lies a form of concern 762 00:36:31.220 --> 00:36:32.260 for its welfare. 763 00:36:33.080 --> 00:36:35.560 If I'm right that the need to love one's country 764 00:36:35.560 --> 00:36:37.040 without shame should be intrinsic 765 00:36:37.040 --> 00:36:39.600 to an enriched conception of the national interest, 766 00:36:39.900 --> 00:36:41.660 and if the desire for a true love 767 00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:44.320 of country is partly, but essentially, 768 00:36:44.460 --> 00:36:46.580 what distinguishes genuine love of country 769 00:36:46.580 --> 00:36:49.660 from jingoism, then the need for truth 770 00:36:49.660 --> 00:36:51.800 and the need for trust when truth 771 00:36:51.800 --> 00:36:55.720 is justifiably withheld is fundamental 772 00:36:55.720 --> 00:36:58.060 to an ethically enriched conception 773 00:36:58.060 --> 00:36:59.340 of the national interest. 774 00:37:00.120 --> 00:37:02.420 Whatever one thinks of Julian Assange 775 00:37:02.420 --> 00:37:07.380 and or Edward Snowden, it is, I think, 776 00:37:07.400 --> 00:37:09.720 uncontroversial, or should be uncontroversial, 777 00:37:09.760 --> 00:37:11.580 that they have shown that most governments 778 00:37:11.680 --> 00:37:13.920 including ours have betrayed that trust, 779 00:37:14.680 --> 00:37:16.720 insisting upon degrees of secrecy 780 00:37:16.720 --> 00:37:18.000 that rots democracy. 781 00:37:18.620 --> 00:37:21.260 In the periodic table, Primo Levi spoke 782 00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:23.600 of his disgust and his despair 783 00:37:23.600 --> 00:37:26.420 at the degree to which the fascists polluted 784 00:37:26.420 --> 00:37:29.140 the political life of Italy with their lies 785 00:37:29.680 --> 00:37:30.760 during World War II. 786 00:37:31.500 --> 00:37:33.140 Polluted is his words. 787 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:36.860 We speak naturally of the ways lies may pollute, 788 00:37:36.860 --> 00:37:39.400 poison, defile, or degrade things 789 00:37:39.400 --> 00:37:40.660 that are precious to us. 790 00:37:41.480 --> 00:37:43.960 Relationships, institutions such as universities, 791 00:37:44.200 --> 00:37:47.980 or the press, and sometimes the entire political life 792 00:37:47.980 --> 00:37:48.600 of a nation. 793 00:37:49.400 --> 00:37:51.880 In such ways of speaking, we show something 794 00:37:51.880 --> 00:37:53.980 about the way truth can matter to us. 795 00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:57.340 You can describe something as polluted or defiled 796 00:37:57.340 --> 00:37:59.120 only if you think it's precious. 797 00:38:00.040 --> 00:38:02.120 The need for truth amongst people 798 00:38:02.120 --> 00:38:03.740 for whom truthfulness is fundamental 799 00:38:03.740 --> 00:38:06.200 to their conception of political dignity, 800 00:38:07.180 --> 00:38:10.640 for them, truth and the political dignity 801 00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:12.160 of a nation are two critical things 802 00:38:12.160 --> 00:38:15.040 that are distorted by lies can be precious. 803 00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:17.760 But it can be precious to them too 804 00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:19.240 as individual human beings. 805 00:38:20.220 --> 00:38:22.920 In times of conflict, when citizens are killed 806 00:38:22.920 --> 00:38:24.500 in battle or by terrorists, 807 00:38:24.820 --> 00:38:27.140 we grieve as citizens for them, 808 00:38:27.260 --> 00:38:29.900 and some of us though, just as human beings 809 00:38:29.900 --> 00:38:30.880 who love them. 810 00:38:31.980 --> 00:38:34.920 No one wants to grieve in Cloud Cuckoo land, 811 00:38:35.200 --> 00:38:38.440 just as no one wants their pride or their love 812 00:38:38.440 --> 00:38:40.620 to be based on truth. 813 00:38:40.640 --> 00:38:40.800 No one wants to grieve in the land 814 00:38:41.780 --> 00:38:44.140 And that's why truth is both a need 815 00:38:44.140 --> 00:38:47.540 of the political realm, of lucid patriotism, 816 00:38:47.640 --> 00:38:49.700 and also of the individual soul. 817 00:38:50.260 --> 00:38:51.060 Thank you. 818 00:38:54.260 --> 00:38:55.180 Thank you. 819 00:38:55.180 --> 00:38:56.040 Thank you, Ray. 820 00:38:56.220 --> 00:38:58.300 We have some time for questions. 821 00:38:58.600 --> 00:39:01.100 So just let me point out that there's a microphone 822 00:39:01.100 --> 00:39:03.900 in the middle if someone wants to ask questions 823 00:39:03.900 --> 00:39:05.780 from the floor, and there's a microphone 824 00:39:05.780 --> 00:39:09.060 on this side of the balcony. 825 00:39:09.160 --> 00:39:10.620 So, Ray. 826 00:39:10.620 --> 00:39:12.460 If you want to, if someone has a question, 827 00:39:12.520 --> 00:39:15.240 they can make their way to the podium. 828 00:39:15.980 --> 00:39:17.460 My name's Michael Jacobs. 829 00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:22.760 About 12 years ago, I had the pleasure of trying 830 00:39:23.720 --> 00:39:26.440 to articulate to the readers of the Adelaide Review 831 00:39:27.240 --> 00:39:31.060 my limited understanding of your quarterly essay 832 00:39:31.740 --> 00:39:32.600 on truth. 833 00:39:35.500 --> 00:39:39.520 Compared to then, how do you think we're going now? 834 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:41.840 Oh, much worse. 835 00:39:43.320 --> 00:39:44.240 Much worse. 836 00:39:46.360 --> 00:39:48.600 I mean, the authoritarianism... 837 00:39:49.560 --> 00:39:50.760 Can you hear? 838 00:39:52.860 --> 00:39:57.180 The authoritarianism of many democratic governments 839 00:39:57.180 --> 00:40:02.320 here, Britain, and the United States, for example, 840 00:40:03.060 --> 00:40:03.580 is... 841 00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:07.040 At the time I wrote that essay, nobody could have believed, 842 00:40:07.120 --> 00:40:09.860 for example, that you could be jailed for a couple of years 843 00:40:09.860 --> 00:40:13.400 for writing some truthful things about Manus or Nauru 844 00:40:13.400 --> 00:40:16.180 or for picketing a mine up in Queensland. 845 00:40:17.080 --> 00:40:22.280 And the secrecy around asylum seekers is just... 846 00:40:23.040 --> 00:40:25.340 Again, I think that would have been unbelievable. 847 00:40:25.640 --> 00:40:28.260 I can't remember 10 years ago whatever it was 848 00:40:28.260 --> 00:40:29.520 when I read that essay. 849 00:40:31.100 --> 00:40:34.300 And what strikes me as obvious is that, 850 00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:37.400 together with that change, there's been an increase 851 00:40:37.400 --> 00:40:38.340 in cynicism. 852 00:40:39.320 --> 00:40:40.340 Not just disillusionment. 853 00:40:41.000 --> 00:40:43.560 I think there's always justification for disillusionment. 854 00:40:43.680 --> 00:40:45.860 There's never justification for cynicism. 855 00:40:46.460 --> 00:40:47.340 Though the difference... 856 00:40:47.880 --> 00:40:50.340 I mean, the difference is really that disillusionment... 857 00:40:50.860 --> 00:40:52.340 There's that old saying about hypoxia, 858 00:40:53.040 --> 00:40:56.700 that it's a tribute that pays to virtue. 859 00:40:57.160 --> 00:41:00.080 And disillusionment is the tribute that... 860 00:41:01.320 --> 00:41:06.280 ..a sorrowful despair over certain kinds of values. 861 00:41:06.580 --> 00:41:08.320 It's a tribute to the truth. 862 00:41:08.320 --> 00:41:08.920 It's a tribute to those values. 863 00:41:09.780 --> 00:41:13.100 It pays tribute to the values that inform the disillusionment. 864 00:41:14.080 --> 00:41:16.360 Whereas cynicism says to hell with those values. 865 00:41:16.500 --> 00:41:16.940 That was all. 866 00:41:18.360 --> 00:41:21.220 But it's obvious that there's a real deepening cynicism 867 00:41:21.220 --> 00:41:23.420 in so many parts of the world. 868 00:41:24.520 --> 00:41:26.520 There can be a counter to that, I might say. 869 00:41:26.680 --> 00:41:28.960 I don't know if this is just naive on my part, 870 00:41:29.080 --> 00:41:32.340 but I did write to many of my friends in England 871 00:41:32.340 --> 00:41:33.780 where I spent a lot of my time, 872 00:41:34.420 --> 00:41:37.080 who were despairing of the Brexit vote. 873 00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:43.700 They said that since so many of the people who voted to go, 874 00:41:43.820 --> 00:41:45.480 to leave the European Union, 875 00:41:45.820 --> 00:41:47.380 had said that this was... 876 00:41:47.380 --> 00:41:51.060 I mean, their vote was an expression of what they... 877 00:41:51.060 --> 00:41:55.580 ..of the values they wanted their national life to express. 878 00:41:56.400 --> 00:41:58.380 And so I said to my friends, 879 00:41:58.500 --> 00:42:00.540 well, now you have the opportunity, really, 880 00:42:00.640 --> 00:42:01.920 to fight for other values. 881 00:42:02.140 --> 00:42:04.020 It's not just managerialism anymore. 882 00:42:04.280 --> 00:42:07.440 There's a real struggle for which kind of values 883 00:42:07.440 --> 00:42:09.980 might be accepted by one's fellow citizens. 884 00:42:10.360 --> 00:42:11.840 And that might be a good thing. 885 00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:18.200 You have talked about the development of human rights 886 00:42:18.200 --> 00:42:21.560 and of a society that you dreamt of 887 00:42:21.560 --> 00:42:25.140 and how it has declined in the last 10 years. 888 00:42:26.060 --> 00:42:30.240 Would you consider maybe we wanted too much of the humans? 889 00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:35.960 As globalization spread and other cultures came on, 890 00:42:35.960 --> 00:42:42.620 that those values that you held as precious and good 10 years ago 891 00:42:42.620 --> 00:42:45.420 might have been too high for everybody? 892 00:42:47.220 --> 00:42:52.000 Well, I feel in a way what I'm doing 893 00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:56.540 is describing the values under which I see things. 894 00:42:56.840 --> 00:43:01.540 And the obligations I think we have 895 00:43:01.540 --> 00:43:05.740 independently of pessimism or optimism. 896 00:43:05.960 --> 00:43:12.000 Let's say that I often think of pessimism and optimism 897 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:14.700 as relatively superficial features of personality. 898 00:43:15.140 --> 00:43:17.140 Some people are pessimistic, some are optimistic. 899 00:43:18.120 --> 00:43:20.400 But whether you're pessimistic or optimistic, 900 00:43:20.860 --> 00:43:23.540 there are obligations to fight for certain things. 901 00:43:23.800 --> 00:43:26.920 And the energy to fight for them 902 00:43:26.920 --> 00:43:29.420 shouldn't be determined by your assessment 903 00:43:29.420 --> 00:43:31.620 of how things turn out. 904 00:43:32.740 --> 00:43:35.120 And that's not entirely psychologically realistic, 905 00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:35.940 I have to say. 906 00:43:35.960 --> 00:43:39.260 Because energy comes from things other than a sense of obligation. 907 00:43:39.940 --> 00:43:42.480 But I think it is important to remember 908 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:47.140 that people who are pessimistic, 909 00:43:47.960 --> 00:43:51.720 their pessimism might not be in any way 910 00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:55.580 seen by them as a reason not to continue fighting 911 00:43:55.580 --> 00:43:58.120 for the values that they hope. 912 00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:01.800 The values in the light of which they hope 913 00:44:01.800 --> 00:44:03.820 their fellow citizens will see things. 914 00:44:05.020 --> 00:44:05.940 Because those values are not the values of the people. 915 00:44:05.940 --> 00:44:09.960 Because whether they're realized or not, 916 00:44:10.960 --> 00:44:13.680 it's important to retain a sense of those values. 917 00:44:14.760 --> 00:44:16.580 Okay, Barry, would you want to come up here? 918 00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:19.460 I think central to many of the issues that you've raised 919 00:44:19.460 --> 00:44:23.520 is that sense of the breakdown of community, 920 00:44:23.860 --> 00:44:27.100 that various groups, tribes, if you like, 921 00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:28.760 are talking different languages. 922 00:44:29.020 --> 00:44:33.020 Two factors really struck me in recent months. 923 00:44:33.200 --> 00:44:35.480 One was if you look at the Brexit figures 924 00:44:35.940 --> 00:44:37.700 in Britain, you might say, 925 00:44:37.740 --> 00:44:40.040 oh, the aggregate vote, there wasn't much difference. 926 00:44:40.420 --> 00:44:42.940 What is so striking is that if you look at the votes 927 00:44:42.940 --> 00:44:46.020 of the constituencies that voted to leave, 928 00:44:46.360 --> 00:44:48.120 of those who voted to remain, 929 00:44:48.840 --> 00:44:51.380 the votes are overwhelming in each case. 930 00:44:51.540 --> 00:44:54.080 I mean, it's not as if you had a whole lot of electorates 931 00:44:54.080 --> 00:44:56.820 in Britain where the vote was pretty close. 932 00:44:57.060 --> 00:44:57.960 You weren't. 933 00:44:57.960 --> 00:45:00.180 You simply had a fundamental division 934 00:45:01.180 --> 00:45:04.360 between people who are overwhelmingly in favour of staying 935 00:45:04.360 --> 00:45:05.820 and overwhelmingly not. 936 00:45:05.940 --> 00:45:08.320 And I was struck by something the other day 937 00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:12.280 about the US election that was pointing out 938 00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:16.040 that an overwhelming proportion of the people 939 00:45:16.040 --> 00:45:19.180 who are voting for Clinton simply don't know anyone 940 00:45:19.180 --> 00:45:21.040 who's voting for Trump. 941 00:45:22.180 --> 00:45:23.560 And the people who are voting for Trump 942 00:45:23.560 --> 00:45:26.480 simply don't know anyone who's voting for Clinton. 943 00:45:26.660 --> 00:45:28.520 They live in completely different areas. 944 00:45:28.900 --> 00:45:32.320 How can we resolve that democratic tension 945 00:45:32.320 --> 00:45:34.400 when it's all highly democratic, 946 00:45:34.620 --> 00:45:35.920 but it means you can't. 947 00:45:35.940 --> 00:45:39.440 It can't form a common view on issues. 948 00:45:40.980 --> 00:45:42.260 I agree. 949 00:45:42.320 --> 00:45:43.920 I think that's very true. 950 00:45:46.260 --> 00:45:49.560 In regard to what I was saying, for example, 951 00:45:49.680 --> 00:45:53.600 I actually said specifically that I think one of the reasons 952 00:45:53.600 --> 00:46:00.780 for Brexit is that many people felt that they had been 953 00:46:00.780 --> 00:46:03.940 mightily condescended to by, let's say, 954 00:46:03.960 --> 00:46:05.360 the intelligentsia of London, 955 00:46:05.940 --> 00:46:07.620 or the big cities, for example, 956 00:46:08.860 --> 00:46:13.200 in respect of their sense of national feeling. 957 00:46:13.580 --> 00:46:16.060 I don't, for a minute, want to say that's all there was to it. 958 00:46:16.380 --> 00:46:18.620 So in regard to the talk I gave, 959 00:46:18.680 --> 00:46:23.660 I want to say we have to think very hard, again, 960 00:46:24.420 --> 00:46:28.840 about what we make of the simple fact 961 00:46:28.840 --> 00:46:31.920 that the attachments to country, 962 00:46:32.120 --> 00:46:34.720 which are now expressed in nation states, 963 00:46:35.080 --> 00:46:35.920 isn't going to continue to be the same. 964 00:46:35.920 --> 00:46:36.380 They're going to go away. 965 00:46:37.300 --> 00:46:42.740 And as I said, we have to find a way of thinking about 966 00:46:42.740 --> 00:46:46.020 how to prevent that from degenerating, 967 00:46:46.080 --> 00:46:50.760 as it so easily and often does to ugly forms of nationalism, 968 00:46:50.840 --> 00:46:53.740 which exclude other nations and other people, 969 00:46:53.840 --> 00:46:56.680 and when it's not racist, declines into xenophobia. 970 00:46:57.040 --> 00:46:58.860 So I think that's very important. 971 00:47:00.340 --> 00:47:02.580 And I actually think attached to that, 972 00:47:02.660 --> 00:47:04.960 because one of the reasons that people are so suspicious, 973 00:47:05.120 --> 00:47:05.900 is that they're not going to be able to do anything about it. 974 00:47:05.900 --> 00:47:07.720 I think that's the reason why I think that the idea of love of country 975 00:47:07.720 --> 00:47:10.460 is because they think it, amongst other things, 976 00:47:10.640 --> 00:47:12.340 it leads to war. 977 00:47:12.580 --> 00:47:15.400 I mean, after all, one of the great reasons for Europe 978 00:47:15.400 --> 00:47:19.020 was the desire for Europe never to go to war again. 979 00:47:20.400 --> 00:47:22.300 But there it's very important. 980 00:47:22.620 --> 00:47:24.480 One of the things that have struck me about my life 981 00:47:24.480 --> 00:47:27.740 is that we sort of go into a war. 982 00:47:27.960 --> 00:47:30.180 For me, Vietnam was the first one. 983 00:47:30.360 --> 00:47:33.720 And people protest this injustice if they think that. 984 00:47:33.880 --> 00:47:35.260 And then when it's over, 985 00:47:35.260 --> 00:47:37.020 we don't think any more about it. 986 00:47:37.080 --> 00:47:38.420 And then there's another one. 987 00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:40.720 People get to the streets and protest the injustice 988 00:47:40.720 --> 00:47:41.800 if they think that. 989 00:47:41.900 --> 00:47:43.480 And it's over, they don't think any more. 990 00:47:43.780 --> 00:47:47.560 We don't think, for example, 991 00:47:48.260 --> 00:47:53.440 about how we might render it less likely than is usually the case 992 00:47:53.440 --> 00:47:55.880 that if our soldiers go to war, 993 00:47:56.060 --> 00:47:57.520 if justice were done, 994 00:47:57.680 --> 00:48:00.080 they would be up before an international criminal court. 995 00:48:00.280 --> 00:48:01.660 We don't think about that. 996 00:48:01.940 --> 00:48:05.240 And yet it's extremely important. 997 00:48:05.240 --> 00:48:07.680 And the other thing to Barry's point 998 00:48:07.680 --> 00:48:11.560 is the kind of illiteracy, a political illiteracy. 999 00:48:11.560 --> 00:48:15.560 It's not just illiteracy about the idea of community 1000 00:48:15.560 --> 00:48:17.040 and the civic good. 1001 00:48:17.660 --> 00:48:23.340 I was struck by the fact that when Obama was fighting 1002 00:48:23.340 --> 00:48:24.720 the election against Romney, 1003 00:48:24.920 --> 00:48:28.120 it never seemed to have occurred to him or anybody else 1004 00:48:28.120 --> 00:48:33.500 to say, why on earth do you think that anybody should be impressed 1005 00:48:33.500 --> 00:48:35.220 by the fact that you're a sexist? 1006 00:48:35.240 --> 00:48:36.520 You're a successful businessman. 1007 00:48:37.620 --> 00:48:39.800 Well, the reason people are impressed by that 1008 00:48:39.800 --> 00:48:42.400 is because of this phrase, running the country, 1009 00:48:43.380 --> 00:48:45.320 as though it were some kind of enterprise 1010 00:48:45.320 --> 00:48:46.740 or some kind of business. 1011 00:48:47.140 --> 00:48:49.120 But being a successful businessman 1012 00:48:49.120 --> 00:48:52.940 is no reason to think that anybody could even be good as a treasurer, 1013 00:48:54.380 --> 00:48:56.580 let alone a prime minister. 1014 00:48:59.060 --> 00:49:02.520 OK, well, on that note, I think we have to conclude. 1015 00:49:02.720 --> 00:49:04.640 Can we thank our speaker, Professor Evan Gator, 1016 00:49:04.760 --> 00:49:05.220 and the audience. 1017 00:49:05.240 --> 00:49:05.860 And thank you for coming.