WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 When I first came to Adelaide, it was to meet Don Dunstan. 2 00:00:02.780 --> 00:00:06.120 He wanted to have a chat about plugging South Australia 3 00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:08.900 into what looked like a nascent film industry. 4 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:11.180 I was terribly excited and nervous, 5 00:00:11.740 --> 00:00:15.240 and I was ushered into this huge office about as big as this 6 00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:18.880 by Peter Ward, who was the first person I'd ever met 7 00:00:18.880 --> 00:00:20.480 who wore dark glasses at meetings. 8 00:00:22.160 --> 00:00:25.240 And Don was in the far corner, backlit, 9 00:00:26.380 --> 00:00:29.140 and he walked towards me with his hand extended 10 00:00:29.140 --> 00:00:31.180 and on which there was a huge turquoise ring, 11 00:00:31.240 --> 00:00:33.900 and I wasn't sure whether I was meant to shake the hand or kiss the ring. 12 00:00:36.580 --> 00:00:38.420 So I knelt and did both. 13 00:00:41.080 --> 00:00:46.220 And we cobbled together the South Australian Film Corporation that morning, 14 00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:47.940 which became the model for all the others. 15 00:00:48.100 --> 00:00:53.100 But my last duty with Don was to chair the Whitlam Lecture, 16 00:00:54.540 --> 00:00:57.760 where Don was, of course, the star turn. 17 00:00:58.220 --> 00:00:59.060 And we booked... 18 00:00:59.140 --> 00:01:00.420 We booked a modest hall, that filled. 19 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:02.000 We booked a larger hall, that filled. 20 00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:05.960 We booked the town hall, that filled to bursting. 21 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:08.200 And then we moved the whole thing over to the... 22 00:01:09.340 --> 00:01:12.120 Not the convention centre, the entertainment centre. 23 00:01:12.780 --> 00:01:15.720 And that filled, which is just wonderful. 24 00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:18.820 Anyway, dear Don, ain't with us anymore, 25 00:01:19.080 --> 00:01:21.920 but I'm on the board of the Don Dunstan Foundation. 26 00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:25.140 We've just been to a meeting next door, 27 00:01:25.320 --> 00:01:29.120 and the foundation's first thing they're going to do... 28 00:01:29.140 --> 00:01:31.180 is an evening with Beatrix Campbell, 29 00:01:31.380 --> 00:01:32.740 which seemed to me like a hell of a good idea. 30 00:01:33.120 --> 00:01:35.040 Once again, a modest hall was booked, 31 00:01:35.660 --> 00:01:37.120 sold out in a flash. 32 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:40.400 So it's being moved to this hall, 33 00:01:40.580 --> 00:01:42.860 which means there are 300 extra tickets. 34 00:01:43.040 --> 00:01:45.740 If anyone wants to hear Beatrix Campbell 35 00:01:45.740 --> 00:01:49.660 revealing the innermost secrets of Margaret Thatcher's life. 36 00:01:53.660 --> 00:01:55.440 I don't know that she's talking about that, 37 00:01:55.480 --> 00:01:57.000 but I'm sure she wouldn't mind ad-libbing. 38 00:01:57.480 --> 00:01:59.060 So where's my panel? 39 00:02:00.580 --> 00:02:01.800 Perhaps they're all still asleep. 40 00:02:02.920 --> 00:02:04.400 After the thing the other night, 41 00:02:04.460 --> 00:02:06.980 Beatrix and I were having coffee with Hanana Shwari, 42 00:02:07.180 --> 00:02:09.960 who revealed that Margaret Thatcher was dead nervous. 43 00:02:10.180 --> 00:02:13.460 She always shook like a leaf on public occasions. 44 00:02:13.540 --> 00:02:15.020 And I found that quite heartwarming, really, 45 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:19.540 that Attila the hen could be nervous. 46 00:02:19.660 --> 00:02:21.540 Apparently, you know, she would just sit there, 47 00:02:21.600 --> 00:02:22.740 trembling from head to foot, 48 00:02:22.760 --> 00:02:24.860 and had a little checklist of things to go through 49 00:02:24.860 --> 00:02:28.280 to dull her spiritual anxieties. 50 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:29.100 So, yeah. 51 00:02:29.100 --> 00:02:30.760 Well, we don't have a panel. 52 00:02:30.900 --> 00:02:32.680 Will we all go home, or will we...? 53 00:02:33.860 --> 00:02:36.820 Tori, have we spotted any of them? 54 00:02:38.940 --> 00:02:40.280 You're going to go out and find... 55 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:42.240 Just any four people will do. 56 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:53.960 I was once comparing a big, glitzy fundraiser for an earthquake 57 00:02:54.900 --> 00:02:55.820 at the... 58 00:02:55.820 --> 00:02:58.320 There's a huge news theatre complex 59 00:02:58.320 --> 00:02:59.060 in... 60 00:02:59.100 --> 00:02:59.280 ..in Victoria. 61 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:02.660 And it was a night in which the audience had been dragged 62 00:03:02.660 --> 00:03:04.940 along to this concert, which was like Noah's Ark. 63 00:03:04.980 --> 00:03:08.920 It was two ballet dancers, two opera singers, two comedians, 64 00:03:08.960 --> 00:03:12.080 you know, all of whom had been dragged in without fee. 65 00:03:13.060 --> 00:03:14.600 Meanwhile, across the other side of town, 66 00:03:14.660 --> 00:03:15.660 it was the Logies' night, 67 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:17.280 and the people really wanted to be there. 68 00:03:17.720 --> 00:03:19.760 So even the audience was resentful. 69 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:23.040 And it was made worse by the fact 70 00:03:23.040 --> 00:03:25.960 that it was an endless succession of boring politicians 71 00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:27.840 making boring fart politician speeches. 72 00:03:29.100 --> 00:03:31.360 And one of the most boring is a dear friend of mine 73 00:03:31.360 --> 00:03:32.520 called Rhys Matthews, 74 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:34.840 who runs the Fabian Society, 75 00:03:35.020 --> 00:03:36.980 which, as you all know, really runs Australia. 76 00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:40.160 Well, according to the conspiracy theorists, 77 00:03:40.840 --> 00:03:42.520 I've been a Fabian for 30 years 78 00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:44.780 and we couldn't raffle a duck in a country pub, but still. 79 00:03:46.100 --> 00:03:49.340 Anyway, Rhys is in the wings, waiting to go on and make his speech. 80 00:03:50.260 --> 00:03:52.560 And I thought, oh, look, I'll have a bit of fun. 81 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:55.920 Rhys worked with Whitlam, and so he adopted Whitlam's mannerisms. 82 00:03:55.940 --> 00:03:58.980 He didn't do a Whitlam impersonation. 83 00:03:58.980 --> 00:04:00.860 He was a Whitlam impersonation. 84 00:04:01.660 --> 00:04:03.840 And so I came out and said, look, I'm terribly sorry. 85 00:04:03.940 --> 00:04:05.100 We've got a bit of a problem here. 86 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:08.220 I said, as you know, there are two events occurring tonight. 87 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:11.660 Here, the great concert you're all enjoying so marvellously, 88 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:13.980 and over the other side of town, the Logies. 89 00:04:14.100 --> 00:04:18.120 And you can hear this ecstatic sigh of desire from the audience 90 00:04:18.120 --> 00:04:20.200 because there they would have been entertained by Burt Newton. 91 00:04:21.280 --> 00:04:23.500 And I said, and unfortunately, 92 00:04:24.260 --> 00:04:27.560 Rhys Matthews, the Minister for the Arts and Prisons, 93 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:28.960 I think were his two portfolios, 94 00:04:28.980 --> 00:04:33.040 I said, can't be with us because he's been caught at the Logies. 95 00:04:33.380 --> 00:04:35.980 And there's this sizzling hiss of resentment 96 00:04:36.740 --> 00:04:38.920 that he was having fun when they weren't. 97 00:04:39.020 --> 00:04:41.900 And I said, however, something wonderful has happened. 98 00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:44.860 I've just bumped into Campbell McComas in the foyer, 99 00:04:44.900 --> 00:04:47.420 and Campbell's going to do a Rhys Matthews impersonation. 100 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:50.520 Rhys Matthews heard none of this. 101 00:04:52.080 --> 00:04:55.140 He came out to the biggest ovation he's ever had in his life. 102 00:04:57.320 --> 00:04:58.960 And people laughed at everything he said. 103 00:05:02.660 --> 00:05:04.620 Wouldn't you have thought he would have been grateful, 104 00:05:04.740 --> 00:05:05.840 you know, when he found out? 105 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:09.820 I've spotted a guest. 106 00:05:10.220 --> 00:05:10.680 Hey! 107 00:05:11.900 --> 00:05:12.360 APPLAUSE 108 00:05:14.460 --> 00:05:15.380 Oh, dear. 109 00:05:17.660 --> 00:05:18.420 Are you in? 110 00:05:19.460 --> 00:05:20.260 No, I'm here. 111 00:05:22.740 --> 00:05:23.580 Peter here. 112 00:05:24.780 --> 00:05:25.700 Peter Sellers. 113 00:05:27.480 --> 00:05:28.560 Excellent to see you. Good morning. 114 00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:29.920 Good. Lovely to see you. 115 00:05:30.340 --> 00:05:32.140 And my dear old friend, the Professor. 116 00:05:33.060 --> 00:05:34.320 While they take their seats, 117 00:05:34.420 --> 00:05:36.000 I've got to tell you my Paul Davies story. 118 00:05:36.460 --> 00:05:39.440 I was working on a radio station which will remain nameless 119 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:43.160 with horrible colleagues who shall also remain nameless. 120 00:05:43.180 --> 00:05:47.800 John Laws, Alan Jones, Stan Zemanek and 2UE. 121 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:50.080 And I had a late-night program, 122 00:05:50.320 --> 00:05:51.900 which meant you could do just about anything you thought 123 00:05:51.900 --> 00:05:53.120 you all wanted and nobody cared. 124 00:05:53.240 --> 00:05:56.600 So I'd chat to Manning Clark for two hours, 125 00:05:57.100 --> 00:05:57.980 or to Paul. 126 00:05:57.980 --> 00:05:59.740 And I'd never met Paul before, 127 00:05:59.860 --> 00:06:02.480 but I was, you know, appropriately deferential and in awe. 128 00:06:03.340 --> 00:06:06.400 And after we'd discussed whether, you know, 129 00:06:06.400 --> 00:06:08.200 if there was a God and if so, 130 00:06:08.220 --> 00:06:11.400 what size and atomic density he might be, 131 00:06:11.540 --> 00:06:13.340 I drove him back to the pub. 132 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:16.160 Paul's heard this story so often, I'm sorry. 133 00:06:16.440 --> 00:06:19.060 And on the way back, you know, 134 00:06:19.060 --> 00:06:20.500 I was asking why he came to Australia, 135 00:06:20.620 --> 00:06:23.060 and he came here to flee Margaret Thatcher. 136 00:06:23.940 --> 00:06:26.460 I think there'd been an unhappy love affair and... 137 00:06:26.900 --> 00:06:27.300 LAUGHTER 138 00:06:29.020 --> 00:06:31.380 So he sought sanctuary from Dennis. 139 00:06:32.520 --> 00:06:32.960 And... 140 00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:35.000 LAUGHTER 141 00:06:36.020 --> 00:06:36.460 Ha! 142 00:06:37.420 --> 00:06:38.940 It's all right, you can deny it later. 143 00:06:39.640 --> 00:06:40.080 LAUGHTER 144 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:42.640 Anyway, driving back, 145 00:06:42.740 --> 00:06:44.920 I don't drive all my guests home, I have to tell you. 146 00:06:45.080 --> 00:06:46.760 He was the only one I'd ever driven back. 147 00:06:47.160 --> 00:06:49.940 And we were chatting away, and he said to me rather sadly, 148 00:06:50.500 --> 00:06:54.180 you know, there's only three people on earth 149 00:06:54.180 --> 00:06:55.740 who understand what I'm talking about. 150 00:06:56.400 --> 00:06:57.960 And I knew I wasn't one of them. 151 00:06:57.960 --> 00:06:58.340 LAUGHTER 152 00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:04.120 And years later, having done umpteen television shows together, 153 00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:04.880 a couple of books, 154 00:07:05.020 --> 00:07:07.220 I still don't know what he's talking about. 155 00:07:08.140 --> 00:07:08.620 LAUGHTER 156 00:07:08.620 --> 00:07:10.540 But he talks about it wonderfully. 157 00:07:11.640 --> 00:07:12.120 LAUGHTER 158 00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:14.280 OK, we're all gathered together, we'll get under way. 159 00:07:14.400 --> 00:07:16.580 Oh, we've got a new one, I forgot, Margaret Somerville. 160 00:07:16.660 --> 00:07:17.800 I'll introduce Margaret later. 161 00:07:18.200 --> 00:07:19.860 I asked her to join the panel 162 00:07:19.860 --> 00:07:23.980 because she's the strangest of creatures, an ethicist. 163 00:07:25.160 --> 00:07:26.960 And she's a fascinating woman. 164 00:07:26.960 --> 00:07:29.980 Now, that's all that stuff. 165 00:07:30.180 --> 00:07:31.520 Now, let's get formal here. 166 00:07:32.640 --> 00:07:36.480 I know three people who've died and come back to talk about it. 167 00:07:37.020 --> 00:07:39.980 One of them is Robin Williams, who died on a number of occasions, 168 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:42.820 only to be kick-started by Norman Swan 169 00:07:43.700 --> 00:07:47.000 and dragged kicking and struggling back to the ABC. 170 00:07:47.700 --> 00:07:51.040 The second was a flight attendant on Air New Zealand. 171 00:07:51.460 --> 00:07:53.140 And the third was Kerry Packer. 172 00:07:55.420 --> 00:07:56.940 Now, I'd always been trying to get back to the ABC, 173 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:00.940 but I've been fascinated by the phenomenon of near-death experience. 174 00:08:01.420 --> 00:08:04.100 And so, needless to say, I've cross-examined these three people 175 00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:05.860 on what it was like. 176 00:08:06.520 --> 00:08:09.460 Was there really a shimmering angel by a gate? 177 00:08:10.360 --> 00:08:13.000 All of them reported it was pretty boring 178 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:14.460 and you just sort of died, actually. 179 00:08:14.840 --> 00:08:18.420 But Packer, who once said to me... 180 00:08:18.420 --> 00:08:19.600 How's this for an aphorism? 181 00:08:20.380 --> 00:08:24.660 Governments are there to do things for you, not to you. 182 00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:26.440 LAUGHTER 183 00:08:26.960 --> 00:08:28.800 Kerry came back from death and he rang me up. 184 00:08:28.980 --> 00:08:30.640 And he said, well, you want to know what it's like? 185 00:08:30.740 --> 00:08:31.140 I said, yeah. 186 00:08:31.480 --> 00:08:33.600 He said, there's nothing there. 187 00:08:34.700 --> 00:08:36.400 There's no-one there to judge you 188 00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:38.980 so you can do what your bloody will like. 189 00:08:39.740 --> 00:08:40.180 LAUGHTER 190 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:42.560 What a message from the afterlife. 191 00:08:43.980 --> 00:08:44.420 LAUGHTER 192 00:08:44.420 --> 00:08:45.160 Or the after-death. 193 00:08:45.260 --> 00:08:47.320 Well, today, we're going to try and work out 194 00:08:47.320 --> 00:08:51.620 how we judge good and evil in a post-religious society. 195 00:08:52.340 --> 00:08:53.920 Post-religious? Heavens above. 196 00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:56.580 The world seems to be crawling with... 197 00:08:56.960 --> 00:09:00.220 religious zealots of every known brand. 198 00:09:00.880 --> 00:09:03.760 But we'll accept this hypothesis for the sake of the morning. 199 00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:05.840 And this... 200 00:09:06.340 --> 00:09:09.160 You know, I was born into a world without meaning, 201 00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:10.780 without an author, without a purpose, 202 00:09:10.840 --> 00:09:13.700 and I could never find a user's manual. 203 00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:17.960 Others are very fortunate they've got this or that Bible, 204 00:09:18.580 --> 00:09:19.840 this or that biblical text. 205 00:09:20.420 --> 00:09:22.120 I've had to sort of work it out myself, 206 00:09:22.360 --> 00:09:24.960 which has made me, I have to say, rather morally relativistic 207 00:09:25.980 --> 00:09:26.860 and rather... 208 00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:29.760 I don't really believe in absolutes. 209 00:09:29.980 --> 00:09:33.400 But I think we'll have an interesting panorama of views this morning 210 00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:35.700 on how you cobble together a morality, 211 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:38.420 how you judge good and evil. 212 00:09:39.760 --> 00:09:43.540 And we'll do it, I think, in reverse order today, 213 00:09:43.640 --> 00:09:45.100 just to be... Now, you don't want to be Peter. 214 00:09:46.580 --> 00:09:47.360 It's unfair. 215 00:09:47.680 --> 00:09:49.960 Haven't you worked out a position on the subject yet? 216 00:09:50.760 --> 00:09:51.280 LAUGHTER 217 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:53.880 Alphabetical order, I think, is very important. 218 00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:55.960 We'll give Peter time to think. 219 00:09:57.340 --> 00:09:58.720 Well, to hell with it. 220 00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:00.820 Sure, let's plunge in. No, let's plunge in. 221 00:10:01.300 --> 00:10:04.480 I can't keep picking on B, because I'm barely awake. 222 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:07.700 And I think that means you, Paul. 223 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:11.320 And Paul, in fact, has thought a lot about this. 224 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:12.740 Like me, Paul started off... 225 00:10:12.740 --> 00:10:14.080 Now, you were never an atheist, were you? 226 00:10:14.100 --> 00:10:16.500 You were an agnostic. Really. 227 00:10:16.620 --> 00:10:17.700 It would take a while to explain. 228 00:10:17.960 --> 00:10:19.300 But then you've moved... 229 00:10:19.300 --> 00:10:21.500 You think you're working on the user's manual now. 230 00:10:21.580 --> 00:10:26.360 So Paul is moving towards God, and I think that's pretty exciting. 231 00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:30.580 So Paul Davies has to be one of the great megabrains in Australia. 232 00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:34.700 In fact, he, Barry Jones, both came to Earth with Clark Kent. 233 00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:36.320 LAUGHTER 234 00:10:39.020 --> 00:10:40.960 They are, in fact, triplets, and... 235 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:42.720 LAUGHTER 236 00:10:45.800 --> 00:10:48.820 Paul is one of the great writers on science. 237 00:10:48.900 --> 00:10:52.140 He makes it fairly intelligible, except to me. 238 00:10:52.280 --> 00:10:55.400 And his books, which continue to pile up, 239 00:10:55.400 --> 00:10:57.220 are all immense sellers. 240 00:10:57.480 --> 00:11:00.100 He's a great and generous communicator. 241 00:11:00.140 --> 00:11:02.740 I'm deeply fond of him, although he's wrong about God. 242 00:11:02.940 --> 00:11:06.700 And I'd ask him to start off on the topic 243 00:11:07.400 --> 00:11:10.740 of good and evil in a post-religious society. 244 00:11:10.880 --> 00:11:11.560 Ladies and gentlemen, 245 00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:14.320 the jewel of Adelaide's intellectual life, 246 00:11:14.660 --> 00:11:15.700 Paul Davies. 247 00:11:17.380 --> 00:11:18.040 APPLAUSE 248 00:11:18.040 --> 00:11:19.140 Thank you very much. 249 00:11:20.360 --> 00:11:21.020 APPLAUSE 250 00:11:21.020 --> 00:11:22.120 APPLAUSE 251 00:11:25.400 --> 00:11:28.260 Well, Philip, thank you very much for that very generous introduction. 252 00:11:28.680 --> 00:11:30.540 I'm really not sure what to say, 253 00:11:30.760 --> 00:11:33.420 not because I'm overwhelmed by the introduction, 254 00:11:34.100 --> 00:11:38.640 but because this is a subject that interests me greatly, 255 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:40.640 but also confuses me greatly. 256 00:11:40.780 --> 00:11:42.240 So I don't have a prepared position. 257 00:11:42.360 --> 00:11:43.360 No notes, notice. 258 00:11:43.580 --> 00:11:44.760 This is from the previous talk. 259 00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:50.060 I should perhaps explain my position, 260 00:11:51.080 --> 00:11:55.300 that a few years ago I won something called the Templeton Prize, 261 00:11:55.300 --> 00:11:56.560 for progress in religion. 262 00:11:56.740 --> 00:11:59.240 Now, I'm not a religious person in the conventional sense. 263 00:11:59.480 --> 00:12:03.720 I believe that there is a deeper meaning or purpose to our existence, 264 00:12:03.880 --> 00:12:05.340 something beyond the daily round. 265 00:12:05.560 --> 00:12:08.320 And I also think that, at least in Australia, 266 00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:10.200 we do live in a post-religious society, 267 00:12:10.400 --> 00:12:13.400 in the sense that even those people who say they're religious 268 00:12:13.400 --> 00:12:16.660 perhaps only go to church or synagogue or whatever 269 00:12:16.660 --> 00:12:18.500 as a token gesture. 270 00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:22.520 I think most people, through their lives, 271 00:12:23.680 --> 00:12:25.280 don't think too deeply about religion. 272 00:12:25.280 --> 00:12:26.760 They don't think too deeply about religious issues. 273 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:29.020 But I do think somewhere in the background 274 00:12:29.020 --> 00:12:32.780 is what John Polkinghorne calls a God-shaped hole in their lives. 275 00:12:32.900 --> 00:12:35.900 That is, that they have a genuine spiritual hunger. 276 00:12:37.140 --> 00:12:40.500 And very often they look to science, to scientists, 277 00:12:40.560 --> 00:12:42.420 to fill this God-shaped hole. 278 00:12:42.720 --> 00:12:45.620 And that places a tremendous burden on scientists. 279 00:12:45.980 --> 00:12:47.140 And they react in one of two ways. 280 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:50.560 One is that they flee from it and say, 281 00:12:52.020 --> 00:12:54.320 God doesn't exist, religion is nonsense, 282 00:12:54.320 --> 00:12:57.800 I heard a quotation yesterday from Cathy Sykes 283 00:12:57.800 --> 00:13:00.900 attributed to Richard Dawkins, 284 00:13:00.980 --> 00:13:02.740 that anyone who believes in God is ignorant. 285 00:13:03.580 --> 00:13:05.800 So you get that sort of extreme reaction. 286 00:13:06.140 --> 00:13:08.400 And then you get other scientists who say, 287 00:13:08.520 --> 00:13:12.500 well, there's religion over here and there's science over here 288 00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:13.700 and never the twain shall meet. 289 00:13:14.020 --> 00:13:16.480 And then there's a few hardy souls, 290 00:13:17.100 --> 00:13:19.160 and I number myself among them, 291 00:13:19.200 --> 00:13:23.200 who labour to try to find some sort of dialogue or accommodation 292 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:24.620 between these two realms. 293 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:28.180 And I feel that scientists do have a responsibility 294 00:13:28.180 --> 00:13:31.080 to cater for what we might broadly speaking call 295 00:13:31.080 --> 00:13:34.340 the genuine spiritual needs of people 296 00:13:34.340 --> 00:13:36.640 who have either abandoned religion 297 00:13:36.640 --> 00:13:42.280 or who follow religion just out of habit and practice 298 00:13:42.280 --> 00:13:43.980 rather than out of conviction. 299 00:13:44.660 --> 00:13:47.800 And that is the post-religious society. 300 00:13:48.140 --> 00:13:51.140 It's a society where we, generally speaking, 301 00:13:51.220 --> 00:13:52.900 subscribe to values, 302 00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:55.920 values which originate in religion. 303 00:13:56.100 --> 00:13:58.220 In the case of the UK and Australia, 304 00:13:58.320 --> 00:13:59.660 it's, of course, the Christian religion. 305 00:14:00.180 --> 00:14:03.920 Most of us lead what your average Christian would call 306 00:14:03.920 --> 00:14:05.420 good Christian lives, do we not? 307 00:14:06.140 --> 00:14:10.060 And we, generally speaking, well, we try to. 308 00:14:10.120 --> 00:14:11.400 At least we feel guilty if we don't. 309 00:14:11.900 --> 00:14:14.920 And yet I suppose most people would not... 310 00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:15.720 No? 311 00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:22.740 I think most of us subscribe to Christian values, generally, 312 00:14:23.200 --> 00:14:23.780 if we're not Christians. 313 00:14:25.740 --> 00:14:27.660 But as I go around the world more and more, 314 00:14:27.740 --> 00:14:31.020 I puzzle over this because it seems to me 315 00:14:31.020 --> 00:14:34.020 we're being faced increasingly with ethical decisions 316 00:14:34.020 --> 00:14:36.200 for which there is no guidance from the Bible 317 00:14:36.200 --> 00:14:37.620 or any of the other ancient scriptures. 318 00:14:37.840 --> 00:14:39.680 And I mentioned at the outset the... 319 00:14:39.680 --> 00:14:41.860 How long do I get, by the way, for this little opening? 320 00:14:41.900 --> 00:14:42.960 Well, till you're boring. 321 00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:45.680 I won't witter on too much. 322 00:14:45.760 --> 00:14:48.420 I mentioned the temperate and proud. 323 00:14:48.700 --> 00:14:49.140 Oh, sorry. 324 00:14:50.260 --> 00:14:52.380 I should say that the temperate and foundation, 325 00:14:53.200 --> 00:14:56.980 generously funded by the financier and investment guru, 326 00:14:57.180 --> 00:14:57.980 Sir John Templeton, 327 00:15:00.060 --> 00:15:02.800 has something like $100 million US 328 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:07.320 to spend on projects in which... 329 00:15:07.320 --> 00:15:09.420 Well, to put it in Sir John's own words, 330 00:15:09.520 --> 00:15:11.780 which I think is remarkable for a man of 86, 331 00:15:12.260 --> 00:15:12.920 he says, 332 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:14.780 we may have respect for the ancient scriptures, 333 00:15:14.920 --> 00:15:15.940 but we've got to move on. 334 00:15:16.060 --> 00:15:17.720 We've got to look to the next 100 years, 335 00:15:17.820 --> 00:15:18.720 the next 1,000 years. 336 00:15:19.380 --> 00:15:20.880 We need to have progress. 337 00:15:21.080 --> 00:15:21.380 Progress. 338 00:15:21.380 --> 00:15:22.840 He doesn't like the word spirituality. 339 00:15:22.940 --> 00:15:23.980 He doesn't like the word religion. 340 00:15:24.060 --> 00:15:24.980 He doesn't like the word God. 341 00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:26.460 He can't think of anything else. 342 00:15:26.560 --> 00:15:27.280 He's always saying to me, 343 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:28.420 come up with a new word. 344 00:15:29.700 --> 00:15:31.280 And it's very hard to think. 345 00:15:31.380 --> 00:15:33.060 But there is clearly an area, 346 00:15:33.180 --> 00:15:36.800 which I define to be an area of genuine spiritual need, 347 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:38.480 that needs updating. 348 00:15:38.620 --> 00:15:39.420 It needs progress. 349 00:15:39.620 --> 00:15:41.460 And we need to find a framework of ideas 350 00:15:41.460 --> 00:15:42.800 which is rigorous scientifically, 351 00:15:43.280 --> 00:15:45.500 which doesn't flee from the results of science, 352 00:15:45.720 --> 00:15:49.260 but which addresses this genuine spiritual need, 353 00:15:49.360 --> 00:15:50.760 a set of rules. 354 00:15:50.760 --> 00:15:51.980 Now, it goes beyond ethics. 355 00:15:52.300 --> 00:15:53.700 Of course, it goes into the realm 356 00:15:53.700 --> 00:15:56.420 of whether we feel good about ourselves in the future. 357 00:15:57.300 --> 00:15:58.960 But even in the ethical realm, 358 00:15:59.140 --> 00:16:01.380 it's clear that we face all sorts of challenges 359 00:16:01.380 --> 00:16:05.720 because we do live largely in a post-religious society, 360 00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:08.020 and it's no good just appealing to an ancient scripture 361 00:16:08.020 --> 00:16:11.660 to tell us about cloning or genetically modified food 362 00:16:11.660 --> 00:16:13.300 or engineering the human genome. 363 00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:16.200 And can I just give you one example of a thing that I raise? 364 00:16:16.380 --> 00:16:17.940 It's a sort of frivolous thing, 365 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:19.620 and it probably is scientifically inaccurate, 366 00:16:19.680 --> 00:16:20.740 but it serves to focus on 367 00:16:20.760 --> 00:16:21.760 the discussion. 368 00:16:22.520 --> 00:16:24.200 Supposing we sequence the human genome, 369 00:16:24.300 --> 00:16:26.640 and we've got this wonderful printout on the internet, 370 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:29.060 and you look at it, 371 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:31.180 and all these three billion base pairs, 372 00:16:31.920 --> 00:16:33.660 this jumble of letters, 373 00:16:33.980 --> 00:16:34.660 what does it mean? 374 00:16:34.760 --> 00:16:35.980 Well, maybe we can start to identify 375 00:16:35.980 --> 00:16:37.080 this is the gene for this, 376 00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:37.920 and that's the gene for that. 377 00:16:38.140 --> 00:16:40.120 Suppose we find a gene for evil. 378 00:16:41.520 --> 00:16:42.980 Supposing there's a gene in there, 379 00:16:43.060 --> 00:16:44.460 and of course it's grossly simplistic, 380 00:16:44.760 --> 00:16:46.360 there would at the very least have to be a set of genes, 381 00:16:46.480 --> 00:16:47.820 but we found the evil gene. 382 00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:50.740 This is the gene that makes people do really terrible things. 383 00:16:50.740 --> 00:16:52.240 Like maybe it's happened in Kosovo, 384 00:16:52.360 --> 00:16:54.160 it's happened throughout the history 385 00:16:54.740 --> 00:16:58.360 of human life on Earth, 386 00:16:59.480 --> 00:17:02.080 where people don't just behave badly, 387 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:04.440 they behave in a manner which is so despicable 388 00:17:04.440 --> 00:17:06.240 it could only be described as evil. 389 00:17:06.520 --> 00:17:09.860 Supposing we identify that there's a genetic component there, 390 00:17:10.060 --> 00:17:11.560 would it be right or wrong 391 00:17:11.560 --> 00:17:13.520 to eliminate that from the human genome? 392 00:17:13.700 --> 00:17:16.620 In other words, is our capacity to do evil 393 00:17:16.620 --> 00:17:17.980 part of what makes us human, 394 00:17:18.140 --> 00:17:19.660 and therefore should it be conserved? 395 00:17:19.660 --> 00:17:21.460 That's a terrible ethical dilemma. 396 00:17:21.640 --> 00:17:23.620 You won't find anything in the Bible about that, 397 00:17:23.660 --> 00:17:25.480 because the people who've read the Bible 398 00:17:25.480 --> 00:17:26.660 don't know about genomes. 399 00:17:26.820 --> 00:17:28.300 Those are the sorts of problems 400 00:17:28.300 --> 00:17:30.820 that we need to confront in the coming decades, 401 00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:33.060 and I think we need to confront them 402 00:17:33.060 --> 00:17:34.660 in a post-religious sense, 403 00:17:34.780 --> 00:17:37.560 because there are many religions on this planet and none, 404 00:17:38.300 --> 00:17:40.840 and we need to come up with a universal framework 405 00:17:40.840 --> 00:17:44.460 to guide us in confronting these new ethical dilemmas. 406 00:17:44.700 --> 00:17:45.480 I'll stop there. 407 00:17:54.420 --> 00:17:57.780 Could you ring your friend, Sir John Templeton, 408 00:17:58.400 --> 00:18:00.820 and tell him that for an appropriate remuneration 409 00:18:00.820 --> 00:18:02.580 I'm willing to reconsider my position? 410 00:18:07.300 --> 00:18:09.000 It'd be silly not to, really, wouldn't it? 411 00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:11.100 Now, Margaret Somerville. 412 00:18:11.980 --> 00:18:13.660 Margaret Somerville holds professorships 413 00:18:14.180 --> 00:18:15.460 in both law and medicine, 414 00:18:16.100 --> 00:18:18.380 and of course is not only active as a sessi, 415 00:18:18.380 --> 00:18:19.640 but I would consider hyperactive, 416 00:18:19.660 --> 00:18:23.220 in the worldwide development of bioethics, etc. 417 00:18:23.720 --> 00:18:26.400 Now, Margaret and I had a lovely chat in the gardens yesterday, 418 00:18:26.560 --> 00:18:28.680 didn't we, with the birds twittering around us? 419 00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:32.480 And I found her an absolutely delightful human being, 420 00:18:33.620 --> 00:18:37.260 and we ran a few sort of ethical dilemmas past her, 421 00:18:37.320 --> 00:18:39.220 basically, in rapid succession, 422 00:18:39.340 --> 00:18:40.640 just to see how she'd tackle them, 423 00:18:40.680 --> 00:18:42.100 and she sorted them all out perfectly. 424 00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:45.620 So, apart from Gerard Henderson, 425 00:18:45.880 --> 00:18:47.260 I've now got Margaret Somerville 426 00:18:47.260 --> 00:18:48.900 to guide my tottering footsteps 427 00:18:48.900 --> 00:18:49.660 through life. 428 00:18:51.260 --> 00:18:52.640 I'll never need to think again. 429 00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:54.180 I'll just read Gerard and ring Margaret. 430 00:18:54.380 --> 00:18:57.940 Now, Margaret, I know that you've got three points 431 00:18:57.940 --> 00:18:58.660 you want to make, 432 00:18:58.740 --> 00:19:00.680 but first of all I want to throw to you, 433 00:19:00.720 --> 00:19:03.540 this is an extemporised little thing we've got going here, 434 00:19:04.280 --> 00:19:05.080 Paul's question. 435 00:19:05.460 --> 00:19:06.760 We find an evil gene. 436 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:09.500 Do we nip it in the bud, as it were, 437 00:19:09.640 --> 00:19:12.020 and produce a remarkably boring society, 438 00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:14.960 or do we avert our eyes 439 00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:16.700 from this precious piece of knowledge? 440 00:19:18.180 --> 00:19:20.400 Well, that's a very difficult question, 441 00:19:20.500 --> 00:19:23.960 and it goes to the basis of the first point 442 00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:25.200 that I wanted to make, 443 00:19:25.320 --> 00:19:28.700 and that is that we live in what's called a society 444 00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:32.300 that's based on situational ethics, 445 00:19:32.560 --> 00:19:36.300 and that says if you adhere to that school of ethics, 446 00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:39.360 what it says is nothing is inherently wrong, 447 00:19:39.600 --> 00:19:40.960 it all depends, 448 00:19:41.460 --> 00:19:44.340 and then you've got to work out what does it depend on, 449 00:19:44.420 --> 00:19:45.540 and in the given case, 450 00:19:45.580 --> 00:19:46.680 ought you to do it, 451 00:19:46.680 --> 00:19:46.920 and how do you do this? 452 00:19:47.020 --> 00:19:48.540 So taking Paul's example, 453 00:19:48.940 --> 00:19:50.580 you'd say, well, what we're doing there 454 00:19:50.580 --> 00:19:53.960 is interfering with what's called the human germ cell line, 455 00:19:54.140 --> 00:19:56.900 which means it gets passed on to all the future children 456 00:19:56.900 --> 00:19:59.420 of that embryo that you alter, 457 00:19:59.560 --> 00:20:00.380 and you'd have to say, 458 00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:03.300 are we ever justified in doing that? 459 00:20:03.500 --> 00:20:04.700 And some people, 460 00:20:04.840 --> 00:20:06.620 in fact a fairly large number of people, 461 00:20:06.700 --> 00:20:11.000 believe that we have to now create a concept 462 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:14.800 that we hold the human genome on trust 463 00:20:14.800 --> 00:20:17.660 for all future generations of humankind. 464 00:20:18.220 --> 00:20:19.960 Now we didn't need that in the past 465 00:20:19.960 --> 00:20:21.580 because there wasn't anything we could do 466 00:20:21.580 --> 00:20:22.780 to interfere with the genome. 467 00:20:23.040 --> 00:20:24.660 So if you took that view, 468 00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:29.320 you'd say, no, it is inherently wrong to do this, 469 00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:31.820 and no matter how much good could come out of it, 470 00:20:31.840 --> 00:20:34.160 for instance, we'd eliminate all the evil, 471 00:20:34.300 --> 00:20:36.080 we shouldn't do it. 472 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:40.200 So the first question really that I wanted to ask 473 00:20:40.200 --> 00:20:44.780 was does evil exist in our end of the 20th century? 474 00:20:44.800 --> 00:20:45.000 And I think that's a very important question. 475 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:45.480 in the end of the 20th century societies, 476 00:20:45.700 --> 00:20:46.440 and it's surprising 477 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:49.400 because it's a very unfashionable concept. 478 00:20:49.980 --> 00:20:55.140 And I think that's because of situational ethics. 479 00:20:55.260 --> 00:20:57.920 It's also very surprising when you do surveys, 480 00:20:58.060 --> 00:21:00.300 you find that a very large number of people 481 00:21:00.300 --> 00:21:02.700 believe in heaven or some afterlife, 482 00:21:02.960 --> 00:21:05.080 but a very small number of people 483 00:21:05.080 --> 00:21:07.200 now believe in hell or the devil. 484 00:21:14.800 --> 00:21:16.820 I think the other point that we need to make, 485 00:21:16.900 --> 00:21:18.940 and this comes from what Paul said too, 486 00:21:19.100 --> 00:21:22.580 is that it's true that society is post-religious. 487 00:21:22.680 --> 00:21:24.640 That is, we can't found our society 488 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:28.660 assuming that we've got a consensus on all our values 489 00:21:28.660 --> 00:21:30.880 that we want to found the society on 490 00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:33.600 because we all, as we did in the past, 491 00:21:33.700 --> 00:21:36.160 more or less belong to the same bunch of religions. 492 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:39.820 So we are, the society's post-religious, 493 00:21:39.860 --> 00:21:42.840 but many people are not post-religious. 494 00:21:43.020 --> 00:21:44.780 And I find that hardly anyone, 495 00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:47.940 hardly anybody is what I would call post-spiritual. 496 00:21:48.340 --> 00:21:50.900 I think there's, with the decline of religion, 497 00:21:51.120 --> 00:21:52.540 people have really found, 498 00:21:52.700 --> 00:21:55.860 or are seeking a spiritual dimension in their life. 499 00:21:56.280 --> 00:21:59.480 And for Daniel Yankovic's most recent survey, 500 00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:02.780 and he's the big values surveyor in the United States, 501 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:08.020 he found that the single fastest rising trend in values 502 00:22:08.020 --> 00:22:11.140 was people's deep longing to belong 503 00:22:11.140 --> 00:22:13.100 to something larger than themselves. 504 00:22:13.100 --> 00:22:17.100 And that's what we call having a sense of transcendence, 505 00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:20.980 that you're not just some little molecule individual 506 00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:23.120 or atomic individual that floats around, 507 00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:26.880 but you actually are in some way linked first to other people, 508 00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:30.140 so that there's been a huge decline in a sense of community 509 00:22:30.140 --> 00:22:32.000 and a sense of social cohesion. 510 00:22:32.220 --> 00:22:35.620 A lot of people are starting to talk about how do we restore that, 511 00:22:35.720 --> 00:22:38.480 how do we create that in the 21st century. 512 00:22:38.800 --> 00:22:41.520 And people are finding that lost. 513 00:22:41.620 --> 00:22:43.080 So it is, it's the goal. 514 00:22:43.100 --> 00:22:43.360 It's the God-hole. 515 00:22:43.580 --> 00:22:46.940 I think we also have to find a totally new vocabulary 516 00:22:46.940 --> 00:22:49.220 where we can talk about these things 517 00:22:49.220 --> 00:22:51.700 without either sounding religious necessarily 518 00:22:51.700 --> 00:22:54.920 or offending certain religious beliefs 519 00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:58.840 at the same time as that language will accommodate people 520 00:22:58.840 --> 00:23:00.300 who are religious. 521 00:23:00.560 --> 00:23:04.940 So for instance, sometimes the way I talk about the concept of God 522 00:23:04.940 --> 00:23:07.080 is as the mystery of the unknown. 523 00:23:07.400 --> 00:23:10.700 If we can all accept that there's lots of things that we don't know, 524 00:23:10.860 --> 00:23:13.080 then we can tend to think, 525 00:23:13.100 --> 00:23:14.040 we can tend to accept that. 526 00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:16.840 What is interesting though is our societies 527 00:23:16.840 --> 00:23:19.220 are very uncomfortable with mystery. 528 00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:24.060 In fact, what we tend to do is turn mysteries into problems 529 00:23:24.060 --> 00:23:26.660 and then find a solution for the problem. 530 00:23:26.820 --> 00:23:29.180 For instance, one way of looking at euthanasia 531 00:23:29.180 --> 00:23:32.460 is that if you say, well, there's a mystery in human death, 532 00:23:32.740 --> 00:23:35.020 well, if you turn the mystery of human death 533 00:23:35.020 --> 00:23:37.000 into the problem of human death 534 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:39.360 and then ask what's the solution to that problem, 535 00:23:39.580 --> 00:23:41.720 the fastest, well, as Geoff Kennett said, 536 00:23:41.720 --> 00:23:44.080 I was in Australia about a year ago 537 00:23:44.080 --> 00:23:45.820 and Geoff Kennett came on to comment 538 00:23:45.820 --> 00:23:47.900 about some of my views on euthanasia 539 00:23:47.900 --> 00:23:49.960 and he said as far as he was concerned, 540 00:23:50.120 --> 00:23:51.140 when you were past your, 541 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:54.260 and I never know whether it's best by or used before date, 542 00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:55.340 what is it in Australia? 543 00:23:55.680 --> 00:23:56.100 Used by date. 544 00:23:56.240 --> 00:23:56.800 Used by date. 545 00:23:56.920 --> 00:23:59.280 He said, well, when you're used by date, 546 00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:01.100 you ought to be disposed of as quickly, 547 00:24:01.180 --> 00:24:02.980 cheaply and efficiently as possible. 548 00:24:03.700 --> 00:24:04.100 So... 549 00:24:04.100 --> 00:24:05.060 He offered himself. 550 00:24:05.560 --> 00:24:10.680 No, but that's in totally no mystery of the unknown view. 551 00:24:10.680 --> 00:24:14.040 So that's the first point about what's happening in society 552 00:24:14.040 --> 00:24:15.100 with these concepts 553 00:24:15.100 --> 00:24:17.760 and we've got to be very careful about not being simplistic. 554 00:24:18.040 --> 00:24:20.560 It's enormously complex what's happening. 555 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:23.920 The second thing is a concept that is actually developed 556 00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:25.780 by a wonderful Indian professor 557 00:24:25.780 --> 00:24:27.820 who actually taught me jurisprudence 558 00:24:27.820 --> 00:24:29.600 at Sydney University Law School, 559 00:24:29.800 --> 00:24:31.420 Professor Upendra Bakshi, 560 00:24:31.600 --> 00:24:34.880 who talks about the functionalisation of evil. 561 00:24:35.120 --> 00:24:38.040 And what he says we do in our modern societies, 562 00:24:38.120 --> 00:24:40.660 instead of holding on to that concept, 563 00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:43.280 that this is evil and we shouldn't be doing it, 564 00:24:43.340 --> 00:24:47.820 we look for the good that we see coming out of the evil that we do 565 00:24:47.820 --> 00:24:50.140 and then we focus on that good. 566 00:24:50.240 --> 00:24:52.280 I mean, I think we could take some of the current wars 567 00:24:52.280 --> 00:24:54.340 that are going on and do exactly that. 568 00:24:54.500 --> 00:24:58.600 And so then we get desensitised to the evil that's present. 569 00:24:58.840 --> 00:25:02.920 And the third thing that I want to very briefly suggest to you 570 00:25:02.920 --> 00:25:05.120 is that we're searching at the moment 571 00:25:05.120 --> 00:25:07.860 for what's called a new societal paradigm, 572 00:25:08.020 --> 00:25:10.120 partly because we are post-religious. 573 00:25:10.120 --> 00:25:13.320 And a societal paradigm is simply the collection 574 00:25:13.320 --> 00:25:17.860 of attitudes, values, myths, beliefs, principles, concepts 575 00:25:17.860 --> 00:25:22.380 that form the shared story that we all have to buy into 576 00:25:22.380 --> 00:25:24.740 in order to form a society. 577 00:25:25.100 --> 00:25:27.740 And we used to use religion as the shared story. 578 00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:31.760 Now we've got to create one that I believe has to accommodate religion 579 00:25:31.760 --> 00:25:34.480 but won't be primarily based on that. 580 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:36.960 And I would propose to you that, 581 00:25:36.980 --> 00:25:38.940 and this is again oversimplified, 582 00:25:38.940 --> 00:25:41.740 that there are three competing world views 583 00:25:41.740 --> 00:25:43.400 to form that basic story. 584 00:25:44.260 --> 00:25:46.960 Two of them are I am right views, 585 00:25:47.160 --> 00:25:49.920 which is interesting for the words that were used in the program, 586 00:25:50.060 --> 00:25:52.920 and one of them is an am I right view. 587 00:25:53.240 --> 00:25:55.940 Now the first I am right view 588 00:25:55.940 --> 00:25:58.020 I think we can call the pure science view. 589 00:25:58.260 --> 00:25:59.940 And that's the guys who think, 590 00:25:59.980 --> 00:26:02.680 and it's the opposite of what Paul has been presenting to you, 591 00:26:02.840 --> 00:26:04.620 it's the guys who think genes are us, 592 00:26:04.680 --> 00:26:06.400 that we're gene machines, 593 00:26:06.700 --> 00:26:08.920 and that even our most profound fundamentalist 594 00:26:08.940 --> 00:26:10.700 and fundamental human characteristics, 595 00:26:10.840 --> 00:26:12.480 for instance such as altruism, 596 00:26:12.660 --> 00:26:15.940 the psycho-evolutionary biologists think that altruism 597 00:26:15.940 --> 00:26:17.840 is just a genetically inherited trait, 598 00:26:18.040 --> 00:26:20.440 that the animals that were nicer to other animals 599 00:26:20.440 --> 00:26:23.280 got protected by them, therefore their genes went on. 600 00:26:23.460 --> 00:26:26.200 So this is a very, very sort of fundamental view. 601 00:26:26.300 --> 00:26:29.120 And it's the Jeff Kennett type view, you could call it here. 602 00:26:29.620 --> 00:26:31.800 And that is a very much I am right, 603 00:26:31.980 --> 00:26:34.960 I know for absolutely certain this is all we are, 604 00:26:35.100 --> 00:26:38.840 and that sees the knowledge that we open up as explaining, 605 00:26:38.940 --> 00:26:39.560 meaning everything. 606 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:42.680 The second view is the pure mystery view, 607 00:26:42.800 --> 00:26:45.740 and it's the absolute opposite, but it's equally adamant. 608 00:26:45.860 --> 00:26:48.700 For instance it's the creationists in the United States 609 00:26:48.700 --> 00:26:50.700 who take the Bible literally and say, 610 00:26:50.840 --> 00:26:53.900 and usually it's very anti-scientific, 611 00:26:53.960 --> 00:26:56.440 so these two views sort of form the opposite ends. 612 00:26:56.640 --> 00:26:58.740 And these people sort of, they say, 613 00:26:58.840 --> 00:27:00.660 yes we know exactly how he came here, 614 00:27:00.680 --> 00:27:02.620 there was Eve, or there was Adam, 615 00:27:02.740 --> 00:27:04.320 bit of feminism there. 616 00:27:06.320 --> 00:27:07.960 And then there was Adam, 617 00:27:07.960 --> 00:27:09.420 and then we evolve from that. 618 00:27:09.500 --> 00:27:12.160 Now the third view, which is the one that I think 619 00:27:12.160 --> 00:27:13.860 some of us are trying to work on, 620 00:27:14.780 --> 00:27:16.840 is got a lot more doubt in it. 621 00:27:16.900 --> 00:27:19.980 It recognizes that there is a huge amount of uncertainty 622 00:27:19.980 --> 00:27:21.840 and we have to accommodate that. 623 00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:25.200 And it actually takes enormous courage to live with that, 624 00:27:25.200 --> 00:27:26.680 to choose to live with uncertainty. 625 00:27:27.100 --> 00:27:29.600 So these other two views are much more certain, 626 00:27:29.720 --> 00:27:30.840 they are I am right, 627 00:27:30.980 --> 00:27:34.140 and we can sort of get on with life in whatever way we see it. 628 00:27:34.200 --> 00:27:37.940 What I call the science and in brackets human spirit view, 629 00:27:37.940 --> 00:27:40.060 because if you just believe it's a human spirit, 630 00:27:40.160 --> 00:27:41.220 no religion, okay. 631 00:27:41.460 --> 00:27:44.540 If you're religious, you can add the more sort of 632 00:27:44.540 --> 00:27:46.480 religious spiritual dimension to it. 633 00:27:46.740 --> 00:27:49.440 It's much, much less certain. 634 00:27:49.540 --> 00:27:52.540 What it does is it accommodates science, 635 00:27:52.800 --> 00:27:56.520 but it sees the new science as completely wondrous. 636 00:27:56.800 --> 00:27:59.180 The Japanese have got a marvelous saying, 637 00:27:59.280 --> 00:28:02.100 they say that as the radius of knowledge expands, 638 00:28:02.700 --> 00:28:05.000 the circumference of ignorance increases. 639 00:28:05.360 --> 00:28:07.280 And I imagine that sometimes, 640 00:28:07.940 --> 00:28:11.900 it's like a laser beam going out into our dark unknowingness. 641 00:28:12.120 --> 00:28:15.260 And then we have this much greater unknown, 642 00:28:15.620 --> 00:28:18.360 so we capture the mystery of the unknown. 643 00:28:18.860 --> 00:28:22.400 And in that view, you can say that the more that we know, 644 00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:24.780 the more that we know that we don't know. 645 00:28:25.020 --> 00:28:27.400 One human embryologist said to me recently, 646 00:28:27.440 --> 00:28:31.420 we thought we knew everything about human embryology 15 years ago. 647 00:28:31.620 --> 00:28:35.320 Now we know so much that we know that we know hardly anything. 648 00:28:35.700 --> 00:28:37.920 And that view opens up the way 649 00:28:37.940 --> 00:28:38.060 that we can see the world. 650 00:28:38.060 --> 00:28:39.240 And that opens up a sense of wonder. 651 00:28:39.480 --> 00:28:43.400 And I think what we have to work to do is to protect and preserve 652 00:28:43.400 --> 00:28:46.820 and especially to hand that on to future generations. 653 00:28:47.260 --> 00:28:47.800 Thank you. 654 00:28:56.380 --> 00:29:02.060 Well, my mob's taken a real pounding so far. 655 00:29:03.360 --> 00:29:04.940 I can't bear mysteries, 656 00:29:05.060 --> 00:29:07.600 so I want to solve a problem here right now. 657 00:29:07.720 --> 00:29:10.140 I want a show of hands, show of minds really, 658 00:29:10.680 --> 00:29:11.840 on a couple of questions. 659 00:29:12.260 --> 00:29:16.080 Those of you who believe in some sort of God, 660 00:29:16.660 --> 00:29:17.600 hands up, please. 661 00:29:18.580 --> 00:29:20.060 Well, it is Sunday, yeah. 662 00:29:21.540 --> 00:29:24.000 Is there anyone in the hall that doesn't? 663 00:29:25.820 --> 00:29:27.760 About even-handed, I would have thought. 664 00:29:28.080 --> 00:29:30.820 But the next speaker will tip it one way or the other, 665 00:29:31.320 --> 00:29:33.160 because he's had time to think about it. 666 00:29:34.040 --> 00:29:35.260 This is Peter Sellers. 667 00:29:35.400 --> 00:29:37.000 I'd never met Peter till yesterday, 668 00:29:37.180 --> 00:29:40.860 and suddenly I saw this wonderfully ethereal creature 669 00:29:40.860 --> 00:29:42.380 bounding towards me outside, 670 00:29:42.560 --> 00:29:44.700 and I thought it was a one-man production of Godspell. 671 00:29:52.300 --> 00:29:54.100 And we met and we embraced, 672 00:29:54.340 --> 00:29:56.380 and then I found out who he was, 673 00:29:56.420 --> 00:29:57.560 and I thought that was lovely. 674 00:29:59.220 --> 00:29:59.860 It's beautiful. 675 00:29:59.860 --> 00:30:02.780 Well, such friendliness is very rare, I think, 676 00:30:02.780 --> 00:30:05.100 in a post-modernist world. 677 00:30:05.180 --> 00:30:06.860 Anyway, his credentials, his credits, 678 00:30:07.500 --> 00:30:08.760 are longer than Superman's. 679 00:30:08.980 --> 00:30:10.460 I won't go through them all again. 680 00:30:10.900 --> 00:30:12.100 They're almost infinite. 681 00:30:13.020 --> 00:30:16.040 I was particularly enchanted that he'd appeared in Miami Vice. 682 00:30:16.320 --> 00:30:17.800 Which vice were you, Peter? 683 00:30:19.480 --> 00:30:20.880 Well, you can tell us that later. 684 00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:26.020 And Peter, of course, is the new Grand Fromage 685 00:30:26.020 --> 00:30:27.240 at the Adelaide Festival. 686 00:30:27.760 --> 00:30:29.840 Well, it's going to be a very provocative festival, 687 00:30:29.860 --> 00:30:31.040 I can tell you that. 688 00:30:40.360 --> 00:30:43.360 Peter, please tip the balance towards Bertrand Russell. 689 00:30:45.660 --> 00:30:46.840 Not a chance. 690 00:30:47.120 --> 00:30:48.140 Or rather, not a prayer. 691 00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:54.680 No, basically, we're in a very interesting situation 692 00:30:54.680 --> 00:30:57.960 because this idea of post-religious 693 00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:00.080 is complicated. 694 00:31:01.380 --> 00:31:03.980 Organized religion has left a scar on so many people 695 00:31:03.980 --> 00:31:09.760 that it's not thought of as a positive quality 696 00:31:09.760 --> 00:31:12.380 for a lot of people in this generation. 697 00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:16.320 And yet, that doesn't mean that people have abandoned 698 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:18.160 their inner life. 699 00:31:18.440 --> 00:31:22.420 I think we're in an odd situation where we're in a culture 700 00:31:22.420 --> 00:31:25.620 that has primarily devoted itself to understanding 701 00:31:25.620 --> 00:31:31.520 and quantifying experience based on external appearances. 702 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:35.540 And of course, every major spiritual tradition is about 703 00:31:35.540 --> 00:31:39.320 the surface is the smallest part of reality. 704 00:31:39.880 --> 00:31:44.740 And there's an inner reality that is contradicting it 705 00:31:44.740 --> 00:31:46.040 at almost every moment. 706 00:31:46.280 --> 00:31:47.980 And if you're dwelling on the surface, 707 00:31:48.040 --> 00:31:50.360 and if you're just trying to respond to surface phenomena, 708 00:31:51.180 --> 00:31:53.960 then you're missing what's going on. 709 00:31:55.540 --> 00:32:00.200 And it's a terrible thing because these secular society, 710 00:32:00.420 --> 00:32:02.260 which is a marvelous thing, that is to say, 711 00:32:02.360 --> 00:32:04.540 and I come from the United States where we did figure out 712 00:32:04.540 --> 00:32:05.980 that church and state should be separated. 713 00:32:06.740 --> 00:32:12.060 At the same time, there's a problem because we have 714 00:32:12.060 --> 00:32:16.300 a whole lot of laws that are helpless to deal with 715 00:32:16.300 --> 00:32:17.800 very deep human conditions. 716 00:32:18.060 --> 00:32:22.240 And in fact, the remedy is worse than the disease 717 00:32:22.980 --> 00:32:23.940 in the world. 718 00:32:23.960 --> 00:32:30.280 And we're starting to realize at the end of our technological scientific age 719 00:32:30.280 --> 00:32:32.440 that there are a bunch of things we just don't know about. 720 00:32:33.320 --> 00:32:35.300 For example, what is a good death? 721 00:32:35.960 --> 00:32:37.880 What does it mean to die well? 722 00:32:38.940 --> 00:32:41.560 I've just been part of a working group at Berkeley 723 00:32:41.560 --> 00:32:46.340 of physicians and humanities people trying to work through this 724 00:32:46.340 --> 00:32:52.320 because people in a lot of very high-tech death wards, 725 00:32:52.360 --> 00:32:53.940 you know, 726 00:32:53.960 --> 00:32:56.440 finally there's a limit to what the machinery can offer. 727 00:32:58.080 --> 00:32:59.660 And finally you have to say, 728 00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:02.020 what are we missing? 729 00:33:03.260 --> 00:33:05.460 In a lot of cultures, it's not missing. 730 00:33:06.280 --> 00:33:11.120 A lot of cultures have actually devoted centuries and centuries 731 00:33:11.120 --> 00:33:17.720 to understanding scientifically the movements of the heart. 732 00:33:19.520 --> 00:33:21.420 What your heart is telling you. 733 00:33:22.280 --> 00:33:24.800 What is happening in your heart. 734 00:33:26.620 --> 00:33:32.880 For us in the West, it's frequently a vague, strange, fuzzy concept. 735 00:33:33.940 --> 00:33:37.460 In a lot of spiritual traditions, it's not vague at all. 736 00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:42.540 It's actually very clear and can be analyzed and understood. 737 00:33:43.660 --> 00:33:47.440 And I think we're at an amazing moment where at the end of the 20th century 738 00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:49.960 we've reached the limits of a certain type of scientific, 739 00:33:50.660 --> 00:33:54.320 both speculation and empiricist approach. 740 00:33:56.800 --> 00:33:58.800 And the world is in touch. 741 00:33:59.520 --> 00:34:02.120 And we're learning a lot about different traditions 742 00:34:02.120 --> 00:34:03.920 that different cultures have to offer us. 743 00:34:04.560 --> 00:34:09.020 Right and wrong is something that is culturally understood and intuited. 744 00:34:09.720 --> 00:34:14.620 If you're dealing with, and if I could say, a sense of the sacred, 745 00:34:15.420 --> 00:34:18.700 it's one of the only things that says there's something larger than yourself 746 00:34:18.700 --> 00:34:19.940 and you cannot violate it. 747 00:34:19.940 --> 00:34:21.120 You cannot violate certain things. 748 00:34:21.560 --> 00:34:26.740 I call attention to the image of the fabulous secular society of the Soviet Union 749 00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:33.920 where the environmental devastation created by that society, 750 00:34:34.940 --> 00:34:37.580 where there was nothing but pure self-interest 751 00:34:37.580 --> 00:34:40.560 considered in the most ruthless and short-term sense, 752 00:34:40.800 --> 00:34:44.360 that has resulted in the nuclear waste of Kazakhstan, 753 00:34:44.900 --> 00:34:49.420 that has resulted in rivers that are polluted forever, 754 00:34:51.100 --> 00:34:57.540 that has resulted in a kind of appalling, mendacious use 755 00:34:57.540 --> 00:35:01.140 of human beings and natural resources 756 00:35:02.500 --> 00:35:04.520 that is a blight in the history of the planet. 757 00:35:09.420 --> 00:35:14.160 How do we begin, as Margaret said, to find a vocabulary 758 00:35:15.580 --> 00:35:17.020 that is non-sectarian, 759 00:35:17.020 --> 00:35:19.160 that is inclusive, 760 00:35:19.360 --> 00:35:23.940 that has room for a range of points of view? 761 00:35:26.860 --> 00:35:29.680 For me, one of the important images, 762 00:35:31.680 --> 00:35:36.940 sadly, Western media has come up with the image of Islamic fundamentalism, 763 00:35:37.980 --> 00:35:40.160 which is a gross misnomer. 764 00:35:40.420 --> 00:35:43.140 You wish Islam would get a little more fundamental, 765 00:35:44.220 --> 00:35:46.080 because if you go back to the Koran, 766 00:35:46.080 --> 00:35:48.760 if you go back to any major religious text, 767 00:35:49.060 --> 00:35:52.420 the first step is human fallibility. 768 00:35:53.500 --> 00:35:56.580 And the answer to the question posed by this panel, 769 00:35:56.780 --> 00:35:58.180 am I right or am I right, 770 00:35:59.120 --> 00:36:01.760 from the point of view of any spiritual tradition is, 771 00:36:01.820 --> 00:36:02.720 you are wrong. 772 00:36:04.160 --> 00:36:05.240 Wake up. 773 00:36:06.280 --> 00:36:10.000 That human will is a destructive power in whatever guise, 774 00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:13.380 and you have to examine your own point of view, 775 00:36:13.500 --> 00:36:15.280 understand very deeply, 776 00:36:15.280 --> 00:36:17.420 the self-interest and cultural conditioning 777 00:36:17.420 --> 00:36:20.060 that is inside your notion of what is right, 778 00:36:20.180 --> 00:36:22.800 and begin to expand your notion of what is right, 779 00:36:22.900 --> 00:36:25.680 or to go to the opposite dimension, 780 00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:29.560 start to understand someone who you think is wrong. 781 00:36:31.800 --> 00:36:33.020 I work in theater, 782 00:36:33.180 --> 00:36:35.660 which is about putting yourself in the shoes of someone 783 00:36:35.660 --> 00:36:37.120 who is unlike yourself. 784 00:36:38.600 --> 00:36:43.980 What is it like to realize that you would think what they think, 785 00:36:43.980 --> 00:36:45.860 if you had grown up where they grew up, 786 00:36:45.940 --> 00:36:48.200 if you had had the experiences that they have had, 787 00:36:48.960 --> 00:36:51.100 that they are not more right or wrong than you, 788 00:36:51.220 --> 00:36:54.340 they have had a different set of life experiences. 789 00:36:55.620 --> 00:36:59.060 The task now, at this stage of the planet, 790 00:36:59.100 --> 00:37:00.720 where we are in contact, 791 00:37:02.440 --> 00:37:03.780 is a comparative one. 792 00:37:04.680 --> 00:37:07.380 And Paul and I were talking just before the session, 793 00:37:07.500 --> 00:37:10.800 and an image that I would propose, for example, 794 00:37:12.060 --> 00:37:13.740 what is very interesting is, you know, 795 00:37:13.740 --> 00:37:15.220 in all religions when they get underway, 796 00:37:15.740 --> 00:37:17.400 in the first 400 years, 797 00:37:17.560 --> 00:37:21.520 usually evolve to this horrifyingly complex, 798 00:37:23.520 --> 00:37:25.000 hierarchical, institutionalized state. 799 00:37:25.520 --> 00:37:27.440 And then there is usually a reaction. 800 00:37:29.080 --> 00:37:30.960 In the first centuries of Buddhism, 801 00:37:32.200 --> 00:37:34.360 in fact, the texts were never written down, 802 00:37:34.520 --> 00:37:35.720 they were always memorized. 803 00:37:36.080 --> 00:37:38.220 This is what Buddha said on the following occasion. 804 00:37:38.880 --> 00:37:40.880 And then after about 400 years, everybody said, 805 00:37:40.920 --> 00:37:42.520 well, actually, we should write this down. 806 00:37:44.880 --> 00:37:47.160 Then there was a 100-year discussion of that. 807 00:37:47.620 --> 00:37:49.400 Could we or could we not write it down? 808 00:37:51.460 --> 00:37:52.820 Then, finally, they did. 809 00:37:53.640 --> 00:37:55.720 And, of course, by then, 810 00:37:56.180 --> 00:37:58.300 the teachings had been so spread out, 811 00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:00.980 there were so many versions and variants of everything. 812 00:38:01.560 --> 00:38:03.940 There ended up being two major schools of texts, 813 00:38:04.040 --> 00:38:06.600 one from the south that was out of Sri Lanka, 814 00:38:06.680 --> 00:38:09.120 and the other in a northern route 815 00:38:09.120 --> 00:38:11.680 that went through India and ended up in Tibet and China. 816 00:38:13.740 --> 00:38:17.080 So, in Buddhist studies, one of the big tasks, 817 00:38:17.320 --> 00:38:19.160 in order to find out, you know, 818 00:38:19.820 --> 00:38:23.760 things that maybe predate different variants, 819 00:38:23.860 --> 00:38:25.640 misunderstandings or mistranslations, 820 00:38:25.680 --> 00:38:30.600 is if a certain passage occurs in the northern text 821 00:38:30.600 --> 00:38:34.520 and also occurs in the southern texts, 822 00:38:34.660 --> 00:38:37.680 there's a good chance that that was there 823 00:38:37.680 --> 00:38:41.820 before the schisms, the sectarian splits, 824 00:38:41.960 --> 00:38:43.340 and the arguments. 825 00:38:43.740 --> 00:38:44.400 That's where the discussion of the world's traditions began. 826 00:38:45.660 --> 00:38:48.640 I think we're in a very interesting situation right now 827 00:38:48.640 --> 00:38:51.660 in which we have to say no world religion 828 00:38:51.660 --> 00:38:53.280 or no spiritual tradition 829 00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:55.720 or no wisdom system 830 00:38:57.260 --> 00:38:59.040 has hegemony over another, 831 00:39:00.860 --> 00:39:03.760 where the discussion is now open, 832 00:39:03.880 --> 00:39:05.920 and it's a comparative one, 833 00:39:06.060 --> 00:39:09.960 is to begin to understand points of common 834 00:39:09.960 --> 00:39:11.960 among a range of spiritual traditions, 835 00:39:13.740 --> 00:39:15.140 a range of wisdom traditions, 836 00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:19.340 as a basis for a new conversation 837 00:39:19.340 --> 00:39:21.880 and a newly evolved vocabulary 838 00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:26.980 that is not privileging a single point of view, 839 00:39:27.740 --> 00:39:31.660 but is actually saying in the history of human beings on the planet, 840 00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:33.880 a few things have been figured out 841 00:39:34.740 --> 00:39:36.920 both in the Mesopotamian Valley 842 00:39:37.740 --> 00:39:39.400 and in the Bolivian rainforest. 843 00:39:40.680 --> 00:39:42.560 And if you compare 844 00:39:43.740 --> 00:39:45.200 a tribal cosmology 845 00:39:45.200 --> 00:39:48.240 with a creation story 846 00:39:48.240 --> 00:39:52.320 coming out of the Himalayas, 847 00:39:53.380 --> 00:39:56.800 you actually find certain points of contact 848 00:39:56.800 --> 00:39:59.580 which permit a conversation to go forward. 849 00:40:00.680 --> 00:40:04.080 And it is now the conversation that goes forward 850 00:40:04.740 --> 00:40:05.720 which is crucial. 851 00:40:06.780 --> 00:40:09.180 And it calls for everybody 852 00:40:09.180 --> 00:40:11.380 to lay down their claims to absolutism 853 00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:14.480 and to look instead 854 00:40:15.260 --> 00:40:16.680 for what is shared. 855 00:40:18.100 --> 00:40:19.520 And I'll end this quickly, 856 00:40:19.680 --> 00:40:21.660 but just to lay one more thing out, 857 00:40:21.720 --> 00:40:23.060 obviously as a culture worker, 858 00:40:23.220 --> 00:40:26.620 I feel that art has been used in this century 859 00:40:26.620 --> 00:40:27.860 as the alternative temple. 860 00:40:29.140 --> 00:40:31.320 And so the museum has all of the things 861 00:40:31.320 --> 00:40:32.920 that have usually been associated with, 862 00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:35.140 if I could say, some of the worst aspects 863 00:40:35.140 --> 00:40:35.940 of the Christian church. 864 00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:40.400 And so you're supposed to behave correctly, 865 00:40:40.400 --> 00:40:41.800 you know, all of, you know, 866 00:40:42.400 --> 00:40:44.220 silence is observed, the walls are white. 867 00:40:47.140 --> 00:40:49.940 And it's the so-called absolute value sign. 868 00:40:51.160 --> 00:40:55.120 And as I said, I think the need to resist absolutes 869 00:40:55.120 --> 00:40:57.320 is absolutely crucial right now. 870 00:40:58.460 --> 00:41:02.320 So I'd like to see museums get a lot dirtier 871 00:41:04.360 --> 00:41:08.400 and a lot more, less sacrosanct 872 00:41:08.980 --> 00:41:10.160 about their own mission. 873 00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:12.780 And a lot more humane, open, 874 00:41:13.400 --> 00:41:15.580 and interested in the mix 875 00:41:15.580 --> 00:41:17.740 that is inevitably going to be complicated 876 00:41:18.400 --> 00:41:21.100 and no single ideology gets to win. 877 00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:25.320 As a culture worker, 878 00:41:25.660 --> 00:41:27.300 I have to say these last few years 879 00:41:27.300 --> 00:41:30.240 I've been staging almost exclusively sacred topics 880 00:41:30.240 --> 00:41:32.440 because I feel that there is, 881 00:41:32.440 --> 00:41:34.520 it's what's missing from film 882 00:41:34.520 --> 00:41:36.900 and from television, from mass media, 883 00:41:37.140 --> 00:41:39.700 which has actually reduced human experience 884 00:41:39.700 --> 00:41:43.340 to a set of absurd, absurdly shallow surfaces 885 00:41:44.100 --> 00:41:46.740 and a series of ridiculous binaries 886 00:41:46.740 --> 00:41:48.060 that don't really obtain. 887 00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:53.480 And I'm tired of setting up dumb conflicts 888 00:41:53.480 --> 00:41:54.620 that lead to nothing. 889 00:41:54.980 --> 00:42:00.240 And instead, let's get to something again more inclusive. 890 00:42:00.320 --> 00:42:03.460 So for example, I've just got done staging in Amsterdam. 891 00:42:07.720 --> 00:42:09.640 Well, let me tell you my next project. 892 00:42:11.500 --> 00:42:14.260 Which is I'm about to embark on staging 893 00:42:14.260 --> 00:42:15.580 the Vimalakirti Sutra, 894 00:42:15.640 --> 00:42:16.920 one of the great Buddhist sutras 895 00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:22.020 from the kind of huge revolution in Buddhism 896 00:42:22.020 --> 00:42:23.560 after the fifth century of Buddhism, 897 00:42:24.120 --> 00:42:26.880 in the first century of our era. 898 00:42:27.100 --> 00:42:29.620 And the whole point is I'm going to stage this 899 00:42:29.620 --> 00:42:30.460 not in a theater, 900 00:42:30.640 --> 00:42:32.480 I mean not in a temple, 901 00:42:32.600 --> 00:42:33.040 but in a church, 902 00:42:33.040 --> 00:42:33.560 in a theater. 903 00:42:34.220 --> 00:42:36.480 And with a range of artists 904 00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:38.720 who come from many different cultural perspectives, 905 00:42:39.180 --> 00:42:41.180 many different philosophical viewpoints, 906 00:42:41.340 --> 00:42:42.460 many different skills, 907 00:42:42.840 --> 00:42:44.060 many different talents, 908 00:42:44.300 --> 00:42:46.280 and say what is it in this text 909 00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:47.680 that all of us can find 910 00:42:47.680 --> 00:42:50.680 as a basis to move forward from. 911 00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:04.880 You can see why he got the job. 912 00:43:04.940 --> 00:43:06.580 He would've done one hell of an interview. 913 00:43:09.660 --> 00:43:10.520 Very interesting. 914 00:43:11.560 --> 00:43:13.720 I've never asked Bea whether she believes in God, 915 00:43:13.800 --> 00:43:15.240 but if she does you can bet it's a woman. 916 00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:18.960 But Bea and I have frequently discussed 917 00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:20.520 the issue of evil, haven't we? 918 00:43:20.560 --> 00:43:23.440 Because Margaret thinks it's not fashionable. 919 00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:25.540 We think it's intensely fashionable 920 00:43:25.540 --> 00:43:27.800 and it comes up particularly, say, 921 00:43:27.860 --> 00:43:29.600 in the discussion of the James Bulger case, 922 00:43:29.660 --> 00:43:32.480 or any other time when a child's been involved in, 923 00:43:32.480 --> 00:43:39.020 in murder. So I think we'll get a very different view from Bea but before she 924 00:43:39.020 --> 00:43:42.640 starts I just want to ask her would she have put her hand up the first time or 925 00:43:42.640 --> 00:44:00.020 the second time? God or no God? No God. No God. Thank heavens! Well you've obviously 926 00:44:00.020 --> 00:44:06.340 reached the point where you can read my mind because I do indeed want to start 927 00:44:06.340 --> 00:44:17.480 from a very different place. I have to admit I can't talk about evil and 928 00:44:17.480 --> 00:44:23.820 rightness. I don't know how to think about these terms because I suppose I 929 00:44:23.820 --> 00:44:29.600 don't know how to think within a frame, a way of thinking that's got to do with 930 00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:29.880 religion. 931 00:44:30.020 --> 00:44:34.420 So this is by way of an apology if you don't mind. So I want to start from a very 932 00:44:34.420 --> 00:44:40.040 different direction and the direction I want to start from is exactly the 933 00:44:42.020 --> 00:44:47.860 event that you mentioned. In February 1993, this I'm going to start my case 934 00:44:47.860 --> 00:44:55.020 with a story. In February 1993 two ten-year-old boys in a shopping precinct 935 00:44:55.020 --> 00:44:59.520 went on a journey to find a baby, to steal it 936 00:44:59.520 --> 00:45:00.000 and to have it taken away from them. 937 00:45:00.020 --> 00:45:08.160 And then to kill it, which they did. It was because the place was under surveillance 938 00:45:10.080 --> 00:45:20.060 that it was seen that children had taken the boy. Had we not seen them do it, we would 939 00:45:20.060 --> 00:45:28.160 have assumed that somebody else did it, probably an adult, probably a man. When the boys were 940 00:45:28.160 --> 00:45:28.880 eventually arrested, 941 00:45:30.220 --> 00:45:36.180 and put on trial, only one question 942 00:45:36.180 --> 00:45:39.160 interested the adult community, 943 00:45:40.160 --> 00:45:43.640 which had decided that what the boys had done 944 00:45:43.640 --> 00:45:48.220 was very, very evil. In fact it removed the first two words, 945 00:45:48.380 --> 00:45:52.520 very, very. It was just evil. And 946 00:45:52.520 --> 00:45:56.700 two Christians, John Major 947 00:45:56.700 --> 00:45:57.320 and 948 00:45:58.700 --> 00:46:07.720 Tony Blair, took an extraordinary risk at that time, but with great confidence and 949 00:46:07.720 --> 00:46:12.900 great certainty. And the risk was that they would speak about this thing that 950 00:46:12.900 --> 00:46:22.040 they decided to not know anything about. The condition of not knowing was the 951 00:46:22.040 --> 00:46:25.820 condition of pronouncing that this was evil. 952 00:46:28.220 --> 00:46:35.740 Tony Blair set off and said in a speech that was a founding speech, it constituted a new 953 00:46:35.740 --> 00:46:36.560 moment in 954 00:46:37.940 --> 00:46:45.920 Labour's political discourse. He said that this event triggered thoughts in his mind 955 00:46:46.520 --> 00:46:52.400 to the effect that unless we taught the difference between right and wrong, very profound this, 956 00:46:52.500 --> 00:46:57.300 you might think, unless we taught the difference between right and wrong, we wouldn't be able 957 00:46:57.300 --> 00:47:00.520 we would all be engulfed by moral chaos. 958 00:47:03.540 --> 00:47:08.060 This was quickly succeeded by a little speech made by John Major, 959 00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:10.900 for which he will always be remembered. 960 00:47:11.440 --> 00:47:14.480 It's the most memorable thing he ever said. 961 00:47:15.520 --> 00:47:16.560 He said, 962 00:47:17.600 --> 00:47:20.740 it's time for us to understand a little less 963 00:47:20.740 --> 00:47:23.140 and condemn a little more. 964 00:47:24.400 --> 00:47:25.860 These two Christians, 965 00:47:28.280 --> 00:47:32.960 both of whom have tried to remoralize British politics, 966 00:47:34.440 --> 00:47:36.740 decided to know nothing 967 00:47:37.640 --> 00:47:40.320 about the two children who murdered the baby. 968 00:47:41.760 --> 00:47:44.580 British society at that time was very, very odd, 969 00:47:44.720 --> 00:47:48.560 because we decided that these two boys were evil, 970 00:47:49.380 --> 00:47:51.840 even though we knew nothing about them. 971 00:47:52.200 --> 00:47:53.280 So my argument, 972 00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:54.760 my argument, 973 00:47:54.760 --> 00:47:55.200 my argument, 974 00:47:55.860 --> 00:47:56.720 this morning, 975 00:47:56.820 --> 00:47:57.920 is that the condition, 976 00:47:58.100 --> 00:48:01.880 the utility of the word evil, 977 00:48:03.180 --> 00:48:06.040 depends on knowing nothing. 978 00:48:09.200 --> 00:48:11.240 When the two boys were put on trial, 979 00:48:12.340 --> 00:48:15.240 we decided we weren't interested in the question, 980 00:48:15.400 --> 00:48:15.980 why? 981 00:48:17.140 --> 00:48:18.960 All we were interested in was, 982 00:48:19.100 --> 00:48:22.160 did they know the difference between right and wrong? 983 00:48:22.380 --> 00:48:25.220 So psychologists came and asked them, 984 00:48:25.220 --> 00:48:27.260 did they know the difference between right and wrong? 985 00:48:27.340 --> 00:48:28.480 And indeed, they did. 986 00:48:28.820 --> 00:48:31.560 So that gave us, the adult community, permission 987 00:48:31.560 --> 00:48:35.340 to put them on a raised kind of dais 988 00:48:36.180 --> 00:48:37.860 in a criminal court, 989 00:48:38.760 --> 00:48:41.100 because if we hadn't raised the dais, 990 00:48:41.120 --> 00:48:43.680 they'd have sat in the dock, hidden, 991 00:48:43.820 --> 00:48:46.680 because the wall, so to say, of the dock, 992 00:48:46.800 --> 00:48:48.100 they were too small, in other words, 993 00:48:48.160 --> 00:48:49.240 they'd have sunk below. 994 00:48:49.420 --> 00:48:50.780 And the crucial thing was, 995 00:48:50.920 --> 00:48:54.400 we needed to be able to stare at these boys. 996 00:48:56.540 --> 00:48:59.580 We needed to give them our look. 997 00:49:01.960 --> 00:49:03.600 We didn't give them any understanding. 998 00:49:03.880 --> 00:49:05.320 We didn't give them any empathy. 999 00:49:05.740 --> 00:49:07.820 We gave them our look. 1000 00:49:07.980 --> 00:49:09.880 It was a blank stare, 1001 00:49:10.040 --> 00:49:10.640 because of course, 1002 00:49:10.640 --> 00:49:12.860 no conversation took place in the court. 1003 00:49:13.420 --> 00:49:15.160 Nobody was interested in the question, 1004 00:49:15.340 --> 00:49:18.660 what on earth has happened to these children 1005 00:49:19.260 --> 00:49:21.900 that's taken them on a terrible journey, 1006 00:49:22.000 --> 00:49:23.660 a premeditated journey, 1007 00:49:24.600 --> 00:49:25.200 or a premeditated journey, 1008 00:49:25.200 --> 00:49:32.300 What on earth happened to them to make them want to do this thing that usually children don't do? 1009 00:49:33.040 --> 00:49:36.340 Insofar as people go around killing people, it's adults in the main. 1010 00:49:36.640 --> 00:49:41.740 So we relieved ourselves of the burden of the question, why? 1011 00:49:41.740 --> 00:49:55.240 The other important thing about that event was that it affected a metamorphosis in the moral and political status of children in British society at that point. 1012 00:49:55.660 --> 00:50:03.520 Instantly, the conversation changed from one that was curious about what it is that we give to children as experience, 1013 00:50:03.960 --> 00:50:09.520 into another one, which constituted children rather like minors. 1014 00:50:10.500 --> 00:50:11.720 Minors, M-I-N-E. 1015 00:50:11.740 --> 00:50:17.260 M-I-N-E-R-S in British politics as the new enemy within. 1016 00:50:17.920 --> 00:50:24.240 People to be not understood, people to be policed and patrolled and controlled. 1017 00:50:25.200 --> 00:50:28.440 That became the discourse of childhood. 1018 00:50:28.680 --> 00:50:34.380 Indeed, so successful was it that when Labour went into the general election in 1997, 1019 00:50:34.760 --> 00:50:39.560 it offered the adult community, because they're the only ones who can vote, 1020 00:50:40.600 --> 00:50:41.720 10.5%. 1021 00:50:41.740 --> 00:50:41.860 And that's what we did. 1022 00:50:41.860 --> 00:50:42.040 We gave children a lot of pledges. 1023 00:50:42.620 --> 00:50:54.540 One of which was that we would speed up, fast track the time that it took to prosecute and convict children in the criminal justice system. 1024 00:50:54.760 --> 00:51:06.040 So what I'm trying to suggest here is that the conversation about evil was contingent on emptying the term of any meaning. 1025 00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:10.520 Rendering the term absolutely elusive. 1026 00:51:10.780 --> 00:51:11.720 It was a very important thing. 1027 00:51:11.720 --> 00:51:12.880 It was about not knowing. 1028 00:51:14.180 --> 00:51:29.140 And of course, what that achieved, this condition of not knowingness, was a kind of righteous, condemnatory censorship that in turn depended upon a collapse of empathy. 1029 00:51:30.640 --> 00:51:33.160 We decided that these children were not like us. 1030 00:51:33.460 --> 00:51:41.420 It reminded me of another killing by children 30 years, was it 30 years earlier? 1031 00:51:41.720 --> 00:51:42.200 Yes, it was. 1032 00:51:42.300 --> 00:51:43.180 30 years earlier. 1033 00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:45.160 By a girl called Mary Bell. 1034 00:51:45.560 --> 00:51:49.080 Who's one of those figures like Myra Hindley. 1035 00:51:49.840 --> 00:51:52.980 I mean, these are iconic figures in British culture. 1036 00:51:53.060 --> 00:51:55.260 And you will have your versions of this. 1037 00:51:55.540 --> 00:52:00.940 Mary Bell killed two little boys when she was around about the same age. 1038 00:52:01.020 --> 00:52:03.040 And the same thing happened. 1039 00:52:03.140 --> 00:52:09.740 We decided to know nothing about Mary Bell in order to condemn her. 1040 00:52:09.740 --> 00:52:14.280 In order to designate what she'd done evil. 1041 00:52:15.480 --> 00:52:21.860 And in order to guarantee that we had a sense of ourselves as being not like Mary Bell. 1042 00:52:23.300 --> 00:52:31.940 30 years later, Gita Sereny tried to publish a book, which was her second book actually, on Mary Bell. 1043 00:52:32.060 --> 00:52:39.480 In which, for the first time, Mary Bell explained what she thought was happening to her. 1044 00:52:39.480 --> 00:52:43.360 That took her to the place where she killed two little boys. 1045 00:52:44.020 --> 00:52:47.500 What was fascinating about it was, and it was absolutely fascinating. 1046 00:52:47.820 --> 00:52:53.260 Was that first of all, the very publication of the book was condemned by the government. 1047 00:52:54.240 --> 00:52:59.960 Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, who said it was an outrage that this thing should be published. 1048 00:53:00.040 --> 00:53:02.220 And that somebody should profit from this terrible experience. 1049 00:53:02.540 --> 00:53:09.040 In other words, it was an outrage that we would struggle to understand what took a child to kill. 1050 00:53:09.140 --> 00:53:09.460 And that's what we did. 1051 00:53:09.480 --> 00:53:09.800 Right? 1052 00:53:10.040 --> 00:53:19.140 What emerged, however, was that the story that Mary Bell was able to tell us, told us something very, very terrible about her life. 1053 00:53:19.340 --> 00:53:24.100 And it kind of, at last, made sense of what she thought she was doing. 1054 00:53:24.280 --> 00:53:27.580 You see, what she thought she was doing wasn't killing children. 1055 00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:34.360 She was playing a game that, if you like, reiterated her own experience. 1056 00:53:34.640 --> 00:53:39.460 It was a dangerous game in which something was being expressed from her own experience. 1057 00:53:39.460 --> 00:53:46.720 Which was an experience of her own self, her selfhood, being in peril. 1058 00:53:47.240 --> 00:53:52.920 And what she explained was that the game was about what happens when people get suffocated. 1059 00:53:53.100 --> 00:53:53.900 Do they die? 1060 00:53:54.340 --> 00:53:55.640 Do they come alive? 1061 00:53:55.980 --> 00:53:56.840 Or what? 1062 00:53:57.080 --> 00:54:08.220 This came from her experience as a child whose very body, whose very physical integrity had been endlessly put at risk by the adults with whom she lived. 1063 00:54:08.220 --> 00:54:11.320 She lived, in other words, a deadly life. 1064 00:54:12.180 --> 00:54:18.640 Her deadly life took her on a journey in which her relationship to other children tested something out. 1065 00:54:18.820 --> 00:54:22.200 She was trying to sort something out, in other words. 1066 00:54:22.200 --> 00:54:23.340 She wasn't evil. 1067 00:54:23.500 --> 00:54:26.000 She was a child trying to sort something out. 1068 00:54:26.160 --> 00:54:36.720 However, because we decided to know nothing about these two children, we gave ourselves permission to censor, to condemn. 1069 00:54:36.720 --> 00:54:40.620 And in a sense, and I won't talk about it now because I've run out of time, 1070 00:54:40.680 --> 00:54:53.060 but it connects to the terms of the conversation in Britain at the moment about the war that we've recently waged against something very evil. 1071 00:54:53.860 --> 00:54:56.260 We called Milosevic evil. 1072 00:54:56.480 --> 00:55:06.400 That gave us permission to relieve ourselves of the conversation about what it was that we thought Milosevic was up to. 1073 00:55:06.400 --> 00:55:14.080 But more important than that, relieved ourselves of a conversation about what we thought we were doing in Serbia. 1074 00:55:14.980 --> 00:55:19.460 So we bombed Serbia, we bombed Kosovo, to bits. 1075 00:55:21.080 --> 00:55:25.580 From a height of 15,000 feet, as if we were God. 1076 00:55:25.940 --> 00:55:30.840 The crucial thing about the way that we waged that war, we who are NATO, 1077 00:55:32.060 --> 00:55:36.380 was that it enabled us to not see what was going on 15,000 feet. 1078 00:55:36.380 --> 00:55:42.440 And of course the terrible thing is that now that the war is over, 1079 00:55:42.580 --> 00:55:48.740 we've discovered that we created the conditions in which Serbs could, if you like, 1080 00:55:48.840 --> 00:55:55.120 take themselves to the extreme, excessive edges of their own humanity. 1081 00:55:56.660 --> 00:56:02.860 Crucially, though, because we've decided in the first place that they're evil, that Milosevic is evil, 1082 00:56:03.540 --> 00:56:06.200 we banned a conversation in Britain. 1083 00:56:06.380 --> 00:56:09.380 About what it was that we thought we were doing there. 1084 00:56:09.900 --> 00:56:17.820 We now know that what we did created a kind of interregnum between the sky and the earth. 1085 00:56:18.220 --> 00:56:30.000 And in that space, you know, people breathed, bits of bodies did things which were indeed unthinkable, 1086 00:56:30.060 --> 00:56:34.700 well apparently unthinkable because you don't have to think about it if you've decided it's just evil to be condemned. 1087 00:56:34.700 --> 00:56:41.260 But crucially, of course, what that notion of evil and that discipline of condemnation does 1088 00:56:41.260 --> 00:56:48.360 is to disconnect us from what it was that went on there. 1089 00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:52.740 I don't know whether I've quite got to that, to the point that I'm trying to make. 1090 00:56:52.880 --> 00:57:03.540 What I'm trying to suggest here is that we in NATO are fatally connected with the young Serbian soldiers who did their worst. 1091 00:57:03.540 --> 00:57:08.600 In the space between 15,000 feet, up there and down there. 1092 00:57:10.620 --> 00:57:18.180 But the function of the notion of evil, it seems to me, saves NATO from the question, 1093 00:57:18.360 --> 00:57:20.080 what on earth did we think we were doing? 1094 00:57:21.940 --> 00:57:28.200 Did we, in the end, create the conditions that enabled the Serbian soldiers to do their worst? 1095 00:57:28.420 --> 00:57:30.340 I think the answer to that is yes. 1096 00:57:31.700 --> 00:57:33.220 But the collapse of empathy, 1097 00:57:33.540 --> 00:57:36.040 and the insistence on the term evil, 1098 00:57:36.180 --> 00:57:40.620 which of course is a term that guarantees no connection, no sense of empathy, 1099 00:57:40.780 --> 00:57:44.700 no relationship to these activities which are deemed so absolutely other, 1100 00:57:44.840 --> 00:57:47.000 that all you can do is condemn, 1101 00:57:47.220 --> 00:57:51.240 means that we ourselves then are above scrutiny. 1102 00:57:51.520 --> 00:57:53.020 We're not part of the conversation. 1103 00:58:03.540 --> 00:58:04.580 We're part of the discussion. 1104 00:58:04.880 --> 00:58:05.140 We're part of the discussion. 1105 00:58:06.820 --> 00:58:07.800 We're part of the discussion. 1106 00:58:11.540 --> 00:58:12.040 Remarkable. 1107 00:58:12.060 --> 00:58:13.920 We have only a few minutes together. 1108 00:58:14.200 --> 00:58:17.100 There won't really be a time for questions today. 1109 00:58:17.280 --> 00:58:23.120 So what I want you to do is argue amongst yourselves. 1110 00:58:23.620 --> 00:58:28.760 I would have thought that you're boiling and steaming with rage at each other. 1111 00:58:30.160 --> 00:58:32.600 And Margaret, you're obviously on the boil. 1112 00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:33.560 Yeah, I would. 1113 00:58:33.560 --> 00:58:36.080 Well, I disagree with you, B. 1114 00:58:37.500 --> 00:58:40.620 I think we've got to be very careful to separate. 1115 00:58:40.780 --> 00:58:42.620 In fact, you proved my point. 1116 00:58:42.720 --> 00:58:44.880 You proved that evil is very unfashionable. 1117 00:58:45.020 --> 00:58:49.400 You've given a very powerful argument about saying that anything is evil. 1118 00:58:49.540 --> 00:58:54.920 And we have to be very careful to separate the act which we see as evil 1119 00:58:54.920 --> 00:58:57.080 and continue to regard that as evil. 1120 00:58:57.160 --> 00:58:58.740 We've had terrible traumas. 1121 00:58:58.740 --> 00:59:01.140 We've had terrible trauma with this in both the United States and Canada 1122 00:59:01.140 --> 00:59:04.820 in the recent months because of the Colorado school killings. 1123 00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:09.080 And we've had the same thing happen in a tiny little town called Tabor, Alberta. 1124 00:59:09.940 --> 00:59:13.500 And we've been agonizing about why did these kids do this? 1125 00:59:14.060 --> 00:59:17.960 Fourteen to sixteen-year-old kids march into a school and just kill. 1126 00:59:18.140 --> 00:59:24.300 And in my sister university in Montreal, 13 young women killed by a gunman. 1127 00:59:24.400 --> 00:59:25.860 This is about six years ago. 1128 00:59:26.080 --> 00:59:28.720 And that, I don't think you can call that evil. 1129 00:59:28.740 --> 00:59:30.380 It's anything else than evil. 1130 00:59:30.680 --> 00:59:35.960 Now, whether you say that you might try to understand the people who did that, 1131 00:59:36.160 --> 00:59:39.820 yes, and I think that we do that and we try to do that partly 1132 00:59:39.820 --> 00:59:44.540 because we want to know why they did it and therefore try to avoid it in the future. 1133 00:59:44.700 --> 00:59:49.420 But I'm going to say something that's probably a bit sort of controversial. 1134 00:59:49.940 --> 00:59:56.640 I think that one of our current dangers is that much as I believe in compassion and tolerance, 1135 00:59:56.940 --> 00:59:58.720 like almost everyone, 1136 00:59:58.740 --> 01:00:05.680 everything else taken to an extreme where you would say that you should be totally compassionate and tolerant 1137 01:00:05.680 --> 01:00:09.560 towards that sort of action, I think is extremely harmful. 1138 01:00:09.800 --> 01:00:13.140 I know that that's probably not what you're suggesting, 1139 01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:16.360 that we've got to be compassionate and tolerant to the children. 1140 01:00:16.640 --> 01:00:22.280 But at the same time, what we have to recognize is those acts are not just individual acts. 1141 01:00:22.460 --> 01:00:27.320 I mean, again, there's a very strong focus here on what you would call intense individualism. 1142 01:00:27.320 --> 01:00:30.840 Just let's look at the individuals and try and understand them. 1143 01:00:30.980 --> 01:00:37.280 Those same acts set up enormously important values and symbolism for society as a whole. 1144 01:00:37.520 --> 01:00:43.080 And the fear, this fear which is there about what this means in terms of, 1145 01:00:43.140 --> 01:00:48.120 actually, I believe what it articulates is a fear of some very deep evil 1146 01:00:48.120 --> 01:00:50.520 in what I would call our collective psyche. 1147 01:00:50.840 --> 01:00:54.520 And that's why people have reacted so ferociously to this. 1148 01:00:54.840 --> 01:00:57.160 Has Margaret understood you? 1149 01:00:57.320 --> 01:00:58.920 What about the bullshit? 1150 01:00:59.080 --> 01:01:00.560 What about the bullshit? 1151 01:01:00.640 --> 01:01:03.460 What about the evil piece of white people? 1152 01:01:04.040 --> 01:01:05.020 Yes, sir! 1153 01:01:05.340 --> 01:01:07.160 What about killing our children? 1154 01:01:07.300 --> 01:01:07.500 No! 1155 01:01:10.900 --> 01:01:14.880 This is a panel member to whom I have not been introduced, but... 1156 01:01:19.440 --> 01:01:24.460 I pose the question again, Bea, has Margaret understood what you were saying? 1157 01:01:24.740 --> 01:01:25.620 No, I don't think so. 1158 01:01:27.400 --> 01:01:29.900 You're not into compassion in that sense, are you? 1159 01:01:30.040 --> 01:01:30.420 No. 1160 01:01:31.560 --> 01:01:33.280 Well, I'm trying to suggest something else. 1161 01:01:33.320 --> 01:01:39.640 I suppose I'm only trying to think about how we think about these events which... 1162 01:01:41.340 --> 01:01:44.480 which it seems to me, interestingly, are not mysterious. 1163 01:01:45.500 --> 01:01:47.340 That's the point. They are explicable. 1164 01:01:47.460 --> 01:01:52.120 If you decide, however, to not understand them, what does that do? 1165 01:01:52.500 --> 01:01:57.140 It places you outside, above and beyond those events. 1166 01:01:57.320 --> 01:02:00.320 The issue of compassion, in a sense, is neither here nor there. 1167 01:02:02.440 --> 01:02:05.160 Yeah, I mean, I agree with you that that's what we do. 1168 01:02:05.240 --> 01:02:08.120 What we do is we disidentify from the other. 1169 01:02:08.280 --> 01:02:12.800 And very often we bond through mutual guilt about our disidentification. 1170 01:02:13.240 --> 01:02:17.360 And then we've got a sort of a symbol out there that we can react against. 1171 01:02:17.640 --> 01:02:19.860 I mean, we're doing a lot of work looking at immigration, 1172 01:02:20.260 --> 01:02:23.800 whether that's the main way that we do it in our kinds of societies. 1173 01:02:24.260 --> 01:02:27.200 Now, it's very handy to have a bunch of others, 1174 01:02:27.320 --> 01:02:28.680 out there, that we can say, 1175 01:02:29.320 --> 01:02:31.720 we bond to each other because we're not them. 1176 01:02:31.880 --> 01:02:33.300 I mean, it's the them and us phenomenon. 1177 01:02:33.800 --> 01:02:37.020 I don't want this now to become simply a Huey-Jewy routine 1178 01:02:37.580 --> 01:02:39.720 between the two women panellists. 1179 01:02:39.960 --> 01:02:42.360 Paul, do you have another statement? 1180 01:02:42.440 --> 01:02:47.060 Yes, I want to contest Bea's suggestion, implication, 1181 01:02:47.200 --> 01:02:52.740 that somehow the NATO bombers made the Serb soldiers behave so badly, 1182 01:02:52.900 --> 01:02:54.500 in the cases when they did behave badly. 1183 01:02:54.620 --> 01:02:55.680 There are many examples, 1184 01:02:55.680 --> 01:02:57.760 in the history of warfare, 1185 01:02:57.960 --> 01:03:01.800 where the absence of intervention led to even worse successes. 1186 01:03:02.100 --> 01:03:05.400 And we only need to think of Rwanda and Cambodia 1187 01:03:05.940 --> 01:03:09.940 as examples where the rest of the world more or less looked the other way, 1188 01:03:10.120 --> 01:03:11.840 and it was pretty horrendous. 1189 01:03:12.180 --> 01:03:14.280 So I just don't buy the argument. 1190 01:03:14.440 --> 01:03:19.460 Of course, the military prosecution of that campaign, 1191 01:03:19.680 --> 01:03:22.140 with hindsight, could have been done better. 1192 01:03:22.980 --> 01:03:24.880 It's quite true that, 1193 01:03:27.280 --> 01:03:33.300 by adopting a policy of trying to minimise casualties within NATO, 1194 01:03:33.840 --> 01:03:35.740 it was a very remote campaign. 1195 01:03:36.160 --> 01:03:42.000 Ground troops sent in would probably have resulted in more deaths, 1196 01:03:42.140 --> 01:03:45.480 but may have prevented some of those atrocities taking place. 1197 01:03:45.600 --> 01:03:48.900 But I just don't think you can shift the blame onto the NATO bombers 1198 01:03:48.900 --> 01:03:49.980 for what happened on the ground. 1199 01:03:50.400 --> 01:03:51.500 It's very interesting. 1200 01:03:51.680 --> 01:03:53.960 I think you're very interested in blame. 1201 01:03:54.280 --> 01:03:55.100 I'm not. 1202 01:03:55.100 --> 01:03:57.440 I'm interested in what was it. 1203 01:03:57.520 --> 01:03:58.360 Or even causation. 1204 01:03:58.460 --> 01:04:01.200 Well, I suppose causation in the sense of providing an opportunity. 1205 01:04:01.440 --> 01:04:03.280 But we're trying to understand why do people do it? 1206 01:04:03.600 --> 01:04:05.460 Why, when people are given the opportunity, 1207 01:04:05.800 --> 01:04:08.140 will they resort to such terrible acts? 1208 01:04:08.340 --> 01:04:09.080 Well, that's what's interesting. 1209 01:04:09.080 --> 01:04:11.160 These are people like you, me, and everybody else. 1210 01:04:11.180 --> 01:04:11.740 Well, exactly. 1211 01:04:13.120 --> 01:04:15.780 Well, as somebody who stages Medea... 1212 01:04:19.900 --> 01:04:24.360 You know, I do think several things are going on here. 1213 01:04:24.360 --> 01:04:25.960 One, of course, is, as we've been saying, 1214 01:04:26.080 --> 01:04:29.960 and thank you, Bea, for discussing what is usually considered undiscussable 1215 01:04:29.960 --> 01:04:32.700 and actually quite the contrary needs to be discussed. 1216 01:04:33.000 --> 01:04:35.020 And thank you very much for that. 1217 01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:40.140 I would say in America, and if I could speak about this as an American, 1218 01:04:40.200 --> 01:04:42.760 because I think American culture was quite involved 1219 01:04:42.760 --> 01:04:46.120 with the way the Kosovo situation was prosecuted 1220 01:04:46.120 --> 01:04:48.800 and why certain options were taken and not others. 1221 01:04:49.040 --> 01:04:52.640 And so just to back a couple steps, 1222 01:04:52.640 --> 01:04:54.960 for example, the opening night of the Gulf War, 1223 01:04:55.080 --> 01:05:00.720 George Bush, you know, prayed to God on national television saying, 1224 01:05:00.980 --> 01:05:04.500 protect our troops, because God, being a righteous God, 1225 01:05:04.680 --> 01:05:06.640 was not interested in Islamic children. 1226 01:05:09.060 --> 01:05:10.860 And, okay, you be God. 1227 01:05:11.420 --> 01:05:15.460 Presumably Saddam Hussein is offering the same plea and prayer 1228 01:05:15.460 --> 01:05:17.700 on national Iraqi television. 1229 01:05:18.160 --> 01:05:19.740 You be God. Who are you picking? 1230 01:05:21.280 --> 01:05:22.620 So the way... 1231 01:05:22.640 --> 01:05:24.700 The way in which we choose to justify our actions 1232 01:05:24.700 --> 01:05:26.760 and, you know, the moral force and certainty 1233 01:05:26.760 --> 01:05:28.420 with which we announce our position 1234 01:05:28.420 --> 01:05:31.000 is already the act of violence. 1235 01:05:32.440 --> 01:05:33.480 And the... 1236 01:05:35.440 --> 01:05:37.620 And sacrilegious, among other things. 1237 01:05:38.720 --> 01:05:43.540 The next step is this culture of effects versus causes. 1238 01:05:43.860 --> 01:05:46.740 And if I could just take a very short... 1239 01:05:46.740 --> 01:05:49.320 No, I'm afraid you can't. That's a wrap. 1240 01:05:49.600 --> 01:05:52.440 Well, in the culture of special effects, all you're doing... 1241 01:05:52.640 --> 01:05:56.300 is responding to the effect afterwards, too late, punitively, 1242 01:05:56.300 --> 01:05:58.340 versus a culture of causes 1243 01:05:58.340 --> 01:06:01.820 where you're actually trying to intercept the root cause 1244 01:06:01.820 --> 01:06:04.580 of why something happens and address it from there. 1245 01:06:14.380 --> 01:06:17.040 Thank you, Margaret Somerville. 1246 01:06:17.540 --> 01:06:19.000 Thank you, Peter Sellers. 1247 01:06:19.380 --> 01:06:20.900 Thank you, Paul Davies. 1248 01:06:20.960 --> 01:06:22.240 Thank you, Beatrix Campbell. 1249 01:06:22.240 --> 01:06:24.780 It doesn't matter that I have to wind the conversation up here 1250 01:06:24.780 --> 01:06:27.840 because, of course, for the first time in thousands of years, 1251 01:06:27.980 --> 01:06:29.020 we've resolved the issues. 1252 01:06:31.380 --> 01:06:34.160 And that's considerably to the credit of the organisers 1253 01:06:34.160 --> 01:06:35.920 of the Festival of Ideas here in Adelaide. 1254 01:06:35.960 --> 01:06:37.220 Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. 1255 01:06:52.300 --> 01:06:55.240 That was a costly, costly, costly... 1256 01:06:55.240 --> 01:06:57.400 That was costly, costly, costly... 1257 01:06:57.400 --> 01:06:58.620 That was costly, costly, costly...