An Evening with Alain de Botton

all my life all I've ever wanted was a hush to fall when I walked in front of a room and now I'm done thank you I didn't realize applause was also an ambition my name is Michael Williams and I'm the director of the wheeler Center and I'm really happy to see so many of you here tonight for what promises to be a very special and memorable evening I'd like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of this land we're on the land that was once known as the Kulin nation and I'd like to pay my respects to the war and right people their elders past and present and members of their community who are here tonight it's quite an unusual confluence of words to talk about a rockstar philosopher but luckily we can do that tonight which is a nice thing I don't need to introduce a lander baton at length because I know he's who you're all desperately here from but I will say that if rockstar philosophers an unusual combination a self-help book with literary criticism is an even more unusual combination and the book how Proust can change your life from back in 1997 was such a book in an extraordinary book following a number of novels it really marked the emergence of one of the most interesting thinkers and writers of our time he's written about any number of topics and I'm not going to rattle through the whole list but books such as the consolations of philosophy the art of travel status anxiety the architecture of happiness and the pleasures and sorrows of work have made him one of the thinkers to hear from and we're thrilled to have him here in Melbourne tonight his latest book is religion for atheists please give a big Rockstar crowd audience applause Alain de Botton well it thank you so much it's a huge pleasure for me to be back in Melbourne this is now my fifth visit and it gets better every time and it's really a delight for me what I want to talk about tonight is I want to begin really by talking about my approach in all of my books and you know in all of my books what I'm looking for in a sense is guidance is tips on how I and all of us can live in troublesome areas of life because it's never seemed obvious to me how we get through this life it seems to present all sorts of challenges and weirdly there's a lot of silence around what some of these challenges are so I looked at different disciplines I've looked at different disciplines for clues on how we might live a better more fulfilling less painful life I looked at philosophy in the consolations of philosophy I looked at literature in how proofs can change your life I looked at the visual arts and architecture in the architecture of happiness and so on and a few years ago it struck me that there is a resource that is a provider of wisdom and consolation and an ethical framework and that's rather fascinating and has dominated the mental landscape of human beings for thousands of years I'm thinking of course of religion the problem is I'm an atheist not just a bit of an atheist I really am an atheist I don't have any spiritual longings I never asked myself is there something out there I'm unsentimental towards a lot of these questions I'm very aware of all the horrors that have gone on in the name of religion so this doesn't in a way make me an ideal candidate to write about religion but at some point it did strike me that religions cannot be in the words of Christopher Hitchens the source of the poison of everything it's implausible they've been around for thousands of years they have reflect the collaborative intelligences and sensitivities of millions of people and the idea that every thing to do with them is false and wicked just didn't start to stand up to the scrutiny that I applied to it as as I thought more about the subject so that's really the fruit of my thinking and my my new book religion for atheists is a deliberate attempt to look at a number of areas where I believe that religions have things to offer for non-believers and perhaps believers know about these things already but for non-believers I wanted to to look at that it strikes me that at the moment the world is really divided into believers and non-believers and the debate has become at times very fierce there are people some of whom live in North Oxford who've suggested not only that religion is unbelievable but also that it's ridiculous and that people who who believe in anything are simpletons maniacs people who must be lectured at to remove the folly of their intellectual errors that's not really my approach I think such an approach is sterile I don't think one makes progress I've been in many debates where on the one hand you've got the religious feeling very sorry for the atheist that they're going to go to hell and on the other hand you've got the atheist feeling very sorry for the religious that they're so stupid it doesn't strike me that this is really a productive way to go forward so let me lay out my stall really simply and if you don't like it please leave you know quietly now I won't hold it against you but I'm going to lay out my stool in my stall is of course there's no God now as full stop that's it I'm not going to discuss that bit of it anymore as far as I'm concerned there just is no God but I think rather than that being the beginning of a massive debate on the existence or non-existence of God I think that's really a sideshow to a much more fundamental issue that I believe that we tonight and but perhaps more broadly Weiser society needs to tackle which is where do you go once you think that actually perhaps there is no God how do you live a good life outside of a religious structure this is the question facing modern society and we haven't necessarily answered it that well I think it's a legitimate question and my book is an attempt to answer that question and my starting point is to say that we should learn to steal from religions now stealing is not generally a nice thing to do but I think when it comes to looking at the field of religion we shouldn't feel that commitment is everything you know some people have accused me of advocating a pick-and-mix approach to religions and I say you know what you're absolutely right that's completely what I'm doing pick-and-mix approach some people have said religions are not a buffet from which you can go around choosing the best bits and my answer is yes they are and that's precisely what I'm doing so I've taken my plate and I've gone round the different faiths and I've done precisely that now I can understand that if you're a committed Catholic or Buddhist this attitude will seem impious and it's easy to accuse such a person of flightiness and as a lack of commitment but once you start to look at the world through agnostic or atheistic eyes and you start to recognize that works of the religion or essentially works of man that cultural works then it makes no more sense to think that you have to be committed to one religion and one strand than it does to say that one has to be committed to one kind of music or one kind of literature imagine if you like the Beatles and somebody said right so you like the Beatles you've got to listen to everything all the time even those slightly weird albums and you know you can't deviate an oh Joni Mitchell and no Whitney Houston for you that was seem bizarre you know we naturally accept a pick-and-mix approach to culture you know you can read Jane Austen but you can also read you know Michael Crichton or whatever you can shift across things and we accept that at different points we will require different things I think the same holds true for religion so this is a buffet and I'm going to take you now through some of the things that I'm going to put on my plate but really the book is an attempt to get you thinking there will be things that are not on my plate that you want to put on yours and that's fine the method that I'm advocating is very simple when you look at a religious practice or belief you can ask a very basic question which is is there anything in it for me now that's not selfish that's not a selfish question what it's trying to do is to connect up the needs of the individual with works of culture which is an attitude that I think can be practiced across all the arts it's not rude it's not trivial it's not vulgar I think it's the only way of taking art and culture seriously to say what can it do for me that's the way in which these things assume a place in our hearts rather than get worn lightly to help us to pass an exam so the first area that I look at is education I think religions can teach us can teach the secular world all sorts of rather interesting things about the world of Education now education is a field that secularists take really seriously if you think about the government local government national governments are always talking about the importance of education and if you analyze why the secular world thinks education is important there are tend to be two reasons firstly education is important because it's going to help us to acquire the skills that will make capitalism go better we'll learn to become accountants brain surgeons delivery analysts logistics specialists whatever it may be and that's going to help the economy grow so that's why we need education but there's another reason why we might need education and it sometimes creeps in during the more lyrical moments of politician speeches or during graduation ceremonies when you hear sentences like education makes us more fully human education is route to becoming a full citizen to becoming a proper adult now I think these lyrical moments are very they're onto something very important that education isn't just about technical skills it's more broadly about learning how to live and idea that education should help you to learn how to live is a relatively recent one it really gets his formulation in the middle of the nineteenth century and the middle of the 19th century in Western Europe was a fascinating time in relation to religion a moment occurred when religious attendance fell off a cliff people simply stopped going to church in large numbers and a panic ensued and a panic went like this people thought where are citizens going to get moral guidance consolation and an ethical framework where is this going to come if it's no longer coming from religion very valid question and there was a small group of influential voices in the UK that came up with an answer which i think is very persuasive and interesting though still sounds a bit weird I'm thinking of people at Matthew Arnold or John Stuart Mill and they said look once scripture goes there's one thing that can take its place and that thing is culture by which they meant philosophy history literature art that this storehouse of culture that was able to provide all sorts of things that religions had once provided that here one would be able to find guidance morality an ethical framework when the Gospel of st. John was no longer convincing you could turn to Plato you could look at the novels of Jane Austen you could look at the essays of Montaigne or whatever now this sounds like an odd idea but I think it's a very valid idea in fact it's the idea by which I and many of us live our lives today that's how we approach culture but there's a problem the problem is that that idea has not been taken very seriously by those who educate us I mean let's do a thought experiment imagine showing up at any University in Australia or going you know even to the best university in the world Harvard let's imagine going to Harvard and you say look I'm here for a simple reason I'm here because I need an ethical framework I need moral guidance and I need to learn how to live and to die could you help me they would be dialing up at the ambulance if not the insane asylum it's simply not something that our institutions of education think they're in the business of doing the reason why they don't is that there's an assumption that once you're past 18 or something once you're an adult you don't really need particular help of course there are mentally unsound people but there are hospitals for them they don't come to universities and things they're a small minority so we don't need to change the curriculum for them we just need to teach these things because they're very important please don't ask why they're important they're just very very important please don't ask us to make it relevant let's just keep it just important like it's always been so that's the that's the stance of the modern humanities department interestingly interestingly because of this continued stance but attendance at the humanities department is falling off a cliff now this is not at all the starting point of religions religions start from the point of view that all of us not just a minority all of us are a little bit out of our minds we are literally all of us broken broken is a word you find in Catholicism in Buddhism an idea that all of us have what the Buddha's call monkey minds in other words minds that are all over the place that can't concentrate that can't see things clearly we're all over the shop all of us are just holding it together but only just so what do we need well the first thing we need is guidance of course we need guidance how are we going to cope with you know falling in love finding a job dealing with other people living in a society having to deal with the illness and death of our loved ones and then having to die ourselves how are we going to get through it we need help and we need guidance and religions are on hand to provide it now I don't necessarily believe a lot of the guidance the specific guidance that religion brings but I like the model that perhaps it's going to be a very good idea to have some diamonds on hand this seems deeply important think of the way in which religions go about their business they deliver sermons the secular world delivers lectures what's the difference between a lecture and a sermon well a lecture is trying to impart some information and a sermon is trying to change your life from the view that they probably needs to be something to be changed about or some area in which in which you need help so there's a degree of urgency and didacticism which I find appealing even though the things that are being taught under the banner of religion are not necessarily and very often things that I directly approve of book form intrigues me a lot and I continue to believe that culture should replace Scripture and that in doing in this relief act of replacement the example of how religions function is going to be very important the other thing the other area that I think is very good when it comes to religion the other thing I want to put on my buffet plate is the way in which religions deliver education so not just the form of Education or the intention but also the the delivery the tools of delivery now religion starts from the point of view that all of us have Minds like SIVs you pour something in and it just flows out very very quickly and they don't mean this in an insulting way it's just their analysis of how humans work they're indebted in this sense to the analysis first done by the ancient Greeks that our minds suffer congenitally from what the Greeks called a crazier a crazier means weakness of will what's weakness of will well a weakness of will is basically you know something intellectually makes total sense you're buying into it intellectually but unfortunately your weak willed so when push comes to shove you know despite the fact that you believe in kindness and goodness and charity and all rest oh actually you're going to be in a really bad mood and you're going to be quite nasty and you're going to walk straight past an opportunity to help things along weakness of will dogs us every step of the way that's what the ancient Greeks believed and you find this concept right at the heart of most organised religions so what do you do with the fabula quilled well one of the first things you need to do is repetition you need to repeat things all the time the secular world believes that if you have something important to teach somebody take them in a classroom when they're about 19 and a half sit them down and just pour in some knowledge and miraculously it's going to stick there for the neck forty years during a career in management consultancy or whatever it'll be totally totally active all the time religions think no nonsense if you pour something in at nine o'clock by lunchtime it'll be mostly gone and by suppertime you're going to need another top-up you need to keep going round and round and round and you know that feeling you get when in the secular world when you read a brilliant book and you think wow that was amazing you know I really want to change my life in relation to this book or you see a fantastic film and you think wow those emotions I want to carry them through into my life to embed them in my life but of course by midday the next day by the time you having a sandwich for lunch it's just all gone because that's the way we are so religions know this about us they look this squarely in the face in the way the secular world doesn't and it says right so we're going to need to keep repeating everything if something's important you've got to go back and back and back the other thing that religions do is they arrange time for us now we believe in arranging time in the world of business we all have work Diaries you know most most of them you know adults who are in the workplace will have a diary that drops up every day and it says you know this is the acquisitions meeting that's the sales meeting that's this meeting that meeting at a particular point now all religions also have Diaries and calendars but they're watching out for something else not money or the social life they're trying to table they're trying to find a space in time for a variety of psychologically or if you like spiritually important moments so that in the course of a year we will have regular encounters with those ideas that are most important to us and they will find a more secure place in our hearts the secular world thinks look if an idea is important it'll come by I'll remember it it'll bubble up it'll be authentic that way don't tell me what to think at any particular point religions go no nonsense even if you want to feel these things you're gonna miss out because there'll be something good on TV Twitter will go and you know you'll abandon that intellectual commitment you might have had - an idea take the moon now all of us know when you look at the moon when you look up at the stars good things happen your relativized in space you can loom quite large in your own imagination you know we all we all take our problems very seriously we're all in the world of you other humans and which what they saying what they think looms very large and then occasionally you look up at the moon and you think wow the great thing about the moon is it doesn't know anything about me it doesn't care about me it's totally indifferent to that squabble I've had to that struggle I'm having etc it's indifference is strangely not humiliating but a source of comfort a source of consolation because in the kind of grand emptiness of space or time we find our own anxieties and percent and needs stilled and put into or put against a wider canvas and so some of the anxiety and egoism and selfishness that's endemic to life in a city starts to lessen that's why we need nature that's why we need the Stars we need the moon all religions know about this which is why they tend to put us in these positions but they don't only know about this theoretically they actually put this in the calendar so that we'll go off and do this stuff rather than just you know nod our heads sagely at the concept so if you're a Buddhist for example in the middle of September there's the festival of tsukimi and the festival tsukimi you've got to leave your office or your work or your home and you go and stand on specially made canonical platforms you look at the moon you recite poetry in honor of the fragility of life the importance of social bonds and the impermanence of everything made by man while you're eating some rice cakes and looking at the moon charming ritual religions have rituals now what is a ritual a ritual is a communal event that is trying to do something psychological for you something inner it's an outer event that is aiming to facilitate an inner change we don't do rituals very much if you want to look at something it's really disappeared from the contemporary world it's ritual rituals are have dissipated we have a really hard time doing this because we're obsessed with spontaneity because we think if something is spontaneous it's better than if it's ritualized I sort of agree except my experiences that if it always authentic it doesn't happen we just don't it doesn't happen so religions put things in our Diaries in Judaism for example is a lovely ceremony called beer cat hillier hot where around the dawn of a new year in springtime you're asked out by your rabbi to go and stand in a field and you look at the blossom that newly made blossom and you write some and you read some passages of the Bible and some poetry in honor of springtime now you could say you know Wordsworth tells us to do that as well problem is none of us have Reds Wordsworth since University and we're constantly forgetting about him so putting things in our diary the other thing that religions know about in terms of Education is that if you're trying to convince someone of something it's not enough just to have some good ideas you need to deliver them well oratory is fundamental to the success of ideas and education in the world my own hashing up of this is a demonstration of that we need people who speak well because otherwise if someone is speaking in a mediocre way about important things a crazy is going to kick in intellectually of the aeya that's that's good but it won't convince you so all religions have an obsession with the art of rhetoric they teach people how to speak in ways that the secular world just doesn't you know if you've ever the the church the religion that takes this most seriously is probably the pentecostal lists in the southern american states if any of you've ever been to a service there the most extraordinary thing you'll get a preacher standing on the stage and if people if he says something that people agree with people will just stand up randomly and go ah men are men are men and at the end of a really good point is convincing everyone people just stand up and cheer and hug and say thank you Jesus thank you Savior thank you Christ and the whole Hall is just in an absolute frenzy which makes things very very convincing now of course when you go to a modern say university everyone's just standing there taking notes checking their smartphones but imagine if you know there was a little bit more energy in in the talk and you know people stood up and went you know Thank You Montaigne thank you Plato thank you Jane Austen and there was a real rousing action then you know you'd know things were moving but you know with we're not picking up on that lesson the other area in which religions do really well to understand human beings is that they understand that humans are not merely brains that we're not just logical machines in a body that we are encased within a very powerful body that's full of emotions and full of senses and if you're trying to teach someone something it's no use just attacking their reason you need to touch them through the whole self so you need to involve the arts of art and architecture music and food and smell you need to involve everything which is why religions are involved in so many different activities that in secular education are quite weird I mean secular education is totally divorced from music from the arts from smell so imagine a university lecturer who lit up some smells in the corner and said look this is part of what I'm trying to do you know my my teaching will go better or who said look I'm going to rip up this classroom because this classroom is not helping the point I'm trying to make I'm going to remake I'm going to get some architects in because you know is if the classroom is right then you you know my ideas will be right this would be very weird we believe in a separation between the aesthetic and sensory realm and the intellectual realm let's say the Buddhists don't at all take take the lovely Zen Buddhists tea ceremony now Buddhism spends a lot of time talking about friendship and impermanence and fragility but it doesn't just deliver lectures on this it invents rituals that involve the senses so in something like the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony a beverage has been invited to support a philosophical lesson there are sort of synesthesia connections between the tea and the lesson and both are supporting one another in a way that makes both of them seem more plausible and and and raises their impact you find this in all religions in Judaism for example Judaism spends a lot of time talking about forgiveness but it doesn't again just deliver talks about forgiveness it gives us stuff to do that helps the process of forgiveness along so Orthodox Jewish communities all have at their centre a mikvah which is a ritual bath where every week every Friday you atone for your sins you discuss what you've done wrong you admit what you've done wrong you make promises about what how you'd like to live in the week ahead and then you plunge yourself from head to toe in some water you have a bath so you do a little bit of forgiveness then you have a bath now we all know from our own experiences of bathing that bathing is quite an important thing important things happen when we're bathing but on the whole in a secular world we don't take them seriously enough the prime justification for bathing in the modern world is to get clean now that's not necessarily the deepest associations we could have around bathing religions know that our contact with water can be accompanied about all sorts of inner psychological changes which we should harness and use and we tend not to okay moving on now one area that I want to to look at is the world of art now religions are very involved in in art and part of the reason they're so involved is they think that some things got to look really good before it becomes convincing all religions some extent or other hold this believe this and that's why religious art and architecture has been so astonishing down the ages religions always knew that you need to have the phone numbers of the leading artists choreographers clothes designers etc in the vicinity if you want to get your message across in the second in a secular world we've got a real division in one corner we've got the ideas people there in the ivory tower writing books etc and on the other hand we've got the kind of beauty people and they do interior design and they design hats and clothes and shoes and and make music and things like this but there are the two are not kind of talking it'll be very odd for a philosopher to Commission a fashion designer to design some clothes that would help the message along or to Commission you know a pop star to create a song that would help something along that's precisely what religions are doing all the time they are connecting the sensory with the intellectual in order to make it go and my problem with a lot of contemporary humanist associations is they forgotten that I remember a few years ago looking at the British Humanist website and I logged on and one of the first things I thought was I think a child has made this website because it didn't look very nice and then I clicked on they offer celebrants if you if someone has died or if if you want to get married etc you click on a picture and cetera and then two other things struck me I thought wow these people are really badly dressed and secondly I thought that they can't really write very well is about five spelling mistakes in the first few paragraphs now I'm not being superficial and I'm not bit merely being cynical this is a serious point and the point is there had not been a proper appreciation of the aesthetic as a tool in the intellectual and moral and this is something that religions don't forget you know whether it's Buddhism or Islam or Judaism or Christianity it's right in there you've got to have the finest words the finest systems of kind of aesthetic delivery now you could say that in the in the modern world we're not short of investment in the arts after all their museums new museums sprouting up all the time and sometimes here it's said indeed that museums are our new cathedrals our new churches they're the places where it's quiet you go there you have a reverent moment etc are new churches now I'd like to believe that and I think that art has got that power potentially but I think that that ambition a very good ambition has been undermined by some doctrines that reign in the world of art in the world of museum culture particularly and that get in the way of releasing what I think is the true full power of works of art to guide inspire console and just help us to be fully human there's two ideas the first idea is the notion that art should be for art's sake very popular idea first a device in the nineteenth century the idea that art should not be overly connected to life art is living in its own world the aesthetic world shouldn't get too dirty shouldn't muddle itself with politics with you know stuff of everyday life it exists in that privileged realm of art the other thing that rain the other kind of piece of ideology that rains around art is the notion that if a work of art is good it's a little bit mysterious ambiguity a lack of explanation is seen as a real hallmark of a quality work of art you know what I mean those catalogs in museums that you sometimes get and you read the catalogue and you think what I don't understand anything and indeed very often the dominant mode of a knightly dominant response of nice people like you when you go to a Contemporary Art Gallery is what's wrong with me I just didn't really understand that and and that's Kara it's not it feels like a personal response but really it's an institutional response that stems from the idea it's a modernist idea that good art is ambiguous now religions will have nothing to do with either of either of these two concepts and it's interesting to think about religions argue that there's a very simple point that art is for art is to help us to literally leave a good to lead a good life on the one hand and on the other it's there to warn us against a bad way of life it's there to inspire and to exhort and also to awarness away from from things draw us away from things very simple mission in other words art is moral art wants something of you art wants to change your life and the life of your society I think there's a very good ambition but we're at one that contemporary society is oddly conflicted about we both want to assert the huge importance of art and yet we're a little bit reluctant to say exactly on what basis that importance might be founded not it not at all at the case of a religious art you know take something like Rembrandt's Christ crossing the Sea of Galilee now what's that a painting abound it's very simple it's a piece of propaganda on behalf of the Christian Church in defense of the virtue of courage it's reminding you of what courage is we all know what courage is intellectually intellectually with all your courage is important to be courageous you know I'd like to try and have a good courage in my life and it seems really obvious is one of the things like love yeah it's good to be loved and loved nice you know all that kind of stuff the thing is that these are empty banal cliches until you come across a great work of art a fantastic song or a brilliant painting or a brilliant film and you go my goodness that's what courage feels like oh that's what being nice is or that's what love is it hits you in the senses and it makes a sterile intellectual idea come to life and that's why religions know that we need not just the intellectual stuff but the the colorful sensory art form I mentioned the word propaganda a minute ago now propaganda is one of the scariest words in the modern world because as soon as we hear the word propaganda we're not far away from thinking of Hitler and Stalin now there's a slippery slope and they are at the bottom of these guys but I want us to hang on in the middle of that slippery slope because I think we can there's a space I think there's nothing wrong with propaganda when it's propaganda on behalf of nice things people will say what what are nice things what it who are you to tell me what a nice thing is well let's make a shopping list that I think people won't disagree with love kindness to children generosity towards the elderly care of the community equality fairness justice a society where everyone can be fulfilled these are the things we all believe in we sometimes are told we don't believe in anything nowadays we live in a postmodern vacuumed nonsense we can all rally round these values and I think that an art form that made propaganda for this and was unembarrassed about this would help us to make ideas which can on a bad day just feel like limp cliches give them a bit of life and give them traction in our lives for the very same reasons religions believe in architecture if you want to convince someone of something you can't just put them in a really ugly building you need architecture to work with you to make a point you know there are some buildings that are so ugly that they make you feel that life is just a cruel joke and you might as well just give up and then there are other buildings which you know even if you're having a bad day the building seems to be whispering to come on it's all right it's gonna be okay you know there's there's resources when will you know we'll get through this essentially the building is telling you that buildings divided into them now in the modern secular world we abandoned construction almost always to property developers and their prime impulse is of course to make money and that's when most buildings are hideous and most buildings make us feel on the whole that life is a hopeless depressing process but every now and then someone puts up a building that seems to be offering hope many of these buildings are religious buildings and people who'd like nothing to do with religion and who a committed atheist will tend to admit those religious guys they're pretty good on the buildings and and I think you know my feeling as an atheist who loves architecture let's learn something from this are we really going to end up with a sterile system whereby on the one hand you've got the property developers doing the hideous towers and on the other hand you've got these fantastic Buddhist temples etc but that's it that's on the menu because a lot of us are gonna think look I'm really hang out in a Buddhist temple for a long time I mean at some point I'm gonna realize no I'm I'm an atheist I'm not part of Buddhism etc so where's want to go and I advocate in the book that we think about using the tremendous resources of contemporary architects to create spaces that do some of the things that religious spaces do religious spaces are very good for example at allowing us to get away from the hubbub of daily life and finding perspective they would say spaces in which we can talk to God I don't speak that kind of language I would say spaces in which we can speak to the most important bits of ourselves relatively close quite you know some similarities and we need some of these spaces and where are they you know people say well what about the library or the gym not quite it's not quite there so okay the other thing to bear in mind about religions that seems important is they are organized they are institutions we can sometimes forget this because people who want to attack religions will often write a book and if it's a bleep Ram that deliver lectures and write a book I'm thinking of my friend from North Oxford Richard Dawkins and they write books and I think right that's the way to attack religion and you want to go look however many books you sell it's not going to convince most people and the reason is that your so-called enemy doesn't just write books they're doing everything they're doing buildings they're doing songs they're doing schools they're doing the whole and you think you're going to come along with a book and the whole thing is going to fall down of course not it doesn't work like that so if you're having a serious crack either at attacking religion or learning from religion or being inspired by the example of religion think about organization in the modern world people who are interested in the soul side of the human being I'm not thinking religiously literally just the inner self the complex self the bit that isn't just eating and sleeping and chatting there that the deep self right the people who are interested in the deep self are on the whole in cottage industries they are tend to be lone practitioners I'm thinking of the poet in his bedroom me in my bedroom the guy playing the guitar the filmmaker the psychotherapist in their little room etc the people who are interested in the care of the modern soul are lone practitioners and they are incredibly weak and fragmented and that's why they don't reach ange very much a little moment of confession here they're very individual now religions are well organized they are multinational they are disciplined and they've got a lot of money ninety seven billion dollars the Catholic Church pulled in last year people sometimes good why is Catholicism still so popular the ideas are so strange they make no sense and you want to go what about that money helping things along so it's very well organized now there are some really organized things in the world nowadays and they're called multinational corporations and their enormous similarities between multinational corporations and really they're both interested in branding they're both interested in multi in operating in a variety of countries their workforce is a discipline they have uniforms they have set things to say to their customers at particular moments etc but of course the really big difference is you know McDonald's and Catholicism is that McDonald's is involved in the care of your body at a most basic level and this is what multinationals tend to be involved in they're involved in selling us hamburgers and shoes and cement and hair dryers and that sort of stuff whereas of course religions are involved in the sole space so we've got this weird thing on the one hand we've got corporations very powerful disciplined multinational but you know dealing with a hamburger side of life on the other hand you've got very well organized religions really like corporations dealing with the soul stuff but but for a secular person for an atheist a lot of what they're saying doesn't seem that plausible doesn't seem that you know not convincing and then you've got you know the guys in their bedrooms so my message the guys in their bedrooms is get out of your bedrooms some extent and take a leaf from both the multinationals and the religions if you're trying to change the world get organized we have this very powerful romantic idea that organizations are bad because we might might meet other people and others other people might have souls that are less fine and special than us we might have to we might have to make compromises we might have to read a spreadsheet all these horrible things so we don't really want to do that that's right let's stay alone and just write poetry problem is we're going to be weak and disorganized and our voice will get lost in the hubbub you know we could have a voice that's going to be as loud as CNN and sky etc you know so and and the Catholic Church okay I'm moving on only a few minutes let me let me end with a few things okay another thing that religions are really good at doing is creating communities now the modern world is a lonely place I'm a lonely person not that I have no one to see but I frequently feel disconnected from the mass of the people that I'm living among I live in a huge city as you do and the opportunities for coming together with strangers and turning strangers into friends is limited religions are fantastic at doing this on a regular basis once a week or so they'll take a group of people in a particular spot and they'll say right in this space it's okay to suggest that you're a nice person most the time in life you got to walk around the race Stern air look very busy quite you know a little bit grumpy that's the way to look at don't talk to anyone else set right now for once once a week you can actually you know you could actually be the human being that all of us are you can give a room to the sociability that is in all of us deep down and that sociability is made safe and how does that happen it happens because there is a good host now for anything to work well in a community you need a good host let's start with a party in England I think it doesn't happen so much in Australia but in England there are parties with really bad hosts where things go like this everybody's like this with a drink and everybody's like that and no one's talking literally no one's talking and it's painful and then someone suggests putting up the music so you don't hear the silence that happens a lot but then then sometimes sometimes often it's Australians living in the UK someone is a good host someone is a good host you know look you can meet the censor and you can be censor and you're single and you're interested in science and and suddenly everybody's talking and it's a community and what that's required is the host now religions are hosts essentially for all the talk of God in the supernatural etc etc at the level of community the reason why they work is they have a host function we don't do it we don't think okay well maybe social media will solve all this because if I join a group that's interested in Canadian ice hockey I'll meet other people in the world who are interested in Canadian ice hockey and they will have a little community and that's really great the difference between social media and the kind of communal organization of religions is that religions say look we're going to gather a group of people who've got nothing in common they won't have any shared interest at all they won't detect any of the same like boxes but the point is they'll be united by one thing they're all human beings and that the journey that the the host organization wants to take us on is turning people who look scary weird they just their skin colors different at taller smaller shorter ugly and more beautiful richer poorer than we and to turn that person into a human being to see the humanity in what looks like strangeness that is the spiritual journey of religion again something we're really really bad at doing and I think we need to learn to get better okay and I stopped it there but really what I want to do is what I want to sum up for you is that's just a brief tour through the buffet there's a lot else but what I want to really suggest to you is that there are all sorts of things in religions which are of interest to people who don't believe anything you know if you're in communal organization look at how religions do it if you're in the world of art look deeply at what really oh what museums and what churches and mosques and temples are up to if you're an education look at how religions teachers you know ultimately I think that religions are far too complex wise interesting full of richness to be abandoned simply to those who happen to believe in them that would seem a real shame they're there for all of us especially for non-believers like myself among us thank you very much now I think the house lights are going to come up a tiny bit now that's one way of phrasing they're the other ways let there be light but I didn't quite want to go that find out you will see on the ground floor and also up on the balcony a couple of Usher's with microphones if you have a question can you make your way to them and form an orderly queue behind it the reason I'm on the stage to do this as well is so that we can play good-cop bad-cop or in fact good philosopher bad cop I'm going to be trying to move you on fairly quickly so this time for as many of you as possible so once you get up to the microphone I can't even see what I'm looking at here to be honest anyone at all I'm going to open with a question myself while people are getting out there is someone's ready they're fast moving good work hello my name is Geraldine I'm very interested to hear about your views on paganism and indigenous cultures well I think that the word religion is a flexible one that can encompass more than just you know the big three the big four there are all kinds of faith systems belief systems to say a pagan systems you know the religions of ancient Greece and Rome that's where we get the word pagan from are deeply interesting and I think that every religion every belief system throws up some new ideas I I think there's no limit you know I wrote about a certain number of religions but I think that a similar exile exercise could be performed on any number of religions what I'm trying to highlight as a method of looking at things and the method is there's probably likely to be a lot in that belief system that is utterly implausible to you that is strange and alien and just leaves you cold but there's also likely to be a few things a few important concepts that you can take with you and that will speak to you and that could be integrated into your life thank you and I overhear you mentioned that religions are very good in the realm of education with repetition so for example if you consider something like compassion they're always banging on about it I was just wondering if you could answer for me whether you think that has actually worked for them has it worked for religions look the counter-argument to all this is to say clearly religions noting that religions do works because there are pedophile priests and there's the Inquisition and there's the way that the Spanish behaved in when they got to South America etc etc so none of this works I think that we can't really be scientific about this and we shouldn't attempt to be we all have empirical evidence of people who are living without any knowledge of anything to do with religion who would deal who are leading extremely noble and good lives and vice versa nevertheless I would like to suggest that whenever you see somebody who is living well they have elements of this they are recognizing that they need some reminders of things they probably remind themselves they probably look for perspective they probably look for some of the things that naturally occur in world religions because I don't think that anyone is born totally good and totally kind and totally compassionate takes a bit of work to get there and whether that work is done under the aegis of religion or under the aegis of literature or psychotherapy or just listening to your mum or your grandmother whatever it happens to be but something needs to come along to coalesce the kind of benevolent sides of human nature so all in all do I think it works I think it can help a lot in some areas with some people but we're talking here this is the great frustration of people like you and I who want stuff to work right you know I had this when I talked about architecture and I made a case I kept saying you know architecture is important and then when I want to give talks on this it was always with someone in the audience going but what the fact that Hitler loved architecture always be the Hitler an architecture and art moment to which my answer was always this I would say that art and architecture and religions in their best moments are suggestions they are not orders they are not magic bullets they're not like pills if you take a pill you you might not believe in paracetamol but you don't need to believe in paracetamol it by part it just works on your body these are suggestions that require the assent of the conscious mind and and so you do get these paradoxical situations where a priest who talks about love turns out to be a bully and a monster somebody who you know loves of bark and tartar and you know a building by you know Palladio turns out to have fun murdering children these are deeply paradoxical moments but I don't think we should ever come to the conclusion that oh so in that case the whole thing's baloney that's not that's not the point these are useful suggestions very important suggestions and on the whole on the whole on a good day they do work and that's why we should keep going with them however this said here I think it's kind of in the same vein you ever find yourself even now with the ideas that you're proposing find yourself in that kind of vein a very hitch and esque anger a religion and what religion does and the idea that it poisons everything that you maintained do you still feel those kinds of emotions at religion even now and what do you do when you're in those kinds of situations to to actually get past that look that's a really interesting question because I've observed particularly the publication of this book that there are some people who you know don't just think religion is wrong they think it's evil they think it's poison they think it poisons everything etc and they're often very angry when I've had book I've had emails things from people saying things like you have betrayed atheism you have come too close you've said too many things that are a bit too nice about religion and so you can now no longer be an atheist and things like that so you know the debate is heated look I think it's really I don't know I don't want to be patronizing because I don't know but I suspect that a lot of this anger is to do with people who've been traumatized by religion at some point in their life they might literally been physically traumatized they might have had something in them killed or nearly killed at the hands of something religious something important and they are angry and they're militant and perhaps they have every right to be but at the same time there are other people like myself who have had the privilege to grow up in a world where nothing bad ever happened to me at the hands of religion you know I grew up in Britain one of the most tolerant countries at the level of religion ever invented you know this is the country that applauded the life of Brian when it was May you know religion is kind of at the Life of Brian level in in the UK when it is kind of a joke like as a friendly joke in the corner but obviously you know if you're a if you're a woman who grew up grows up in Saudi Arabia you're going to find unifying laughter a little bit more challenging and I really accept that but I'd also invite those who do feel very angry do feel that religion poisons everything to recognize that maybe even though it poisoned everything for them there are other people perhaps in their own societies or in societies nearby who will not have had that experience and who will be able to take a slightly different view and a more benevolent view of aspects of religion up on the balcony oh I can't oh all right fair enough I've got my own microphone stand good evening if your friend from the north our Oxford Richard Dawkins started to organize and called himself the brights and Christopher Hitchens God rest his soul when when he heard of this wanted to disassociate himself from this organization of the brights and so on and I just wanted your opinion on this this thought if we sort of organize and and and so on is is this not becoming like a religion in and of itself which is Vlad Hitchens was kind of concerned about yeah can I hear your thoughts on this absolutely I think one of the fascinating things that that's happened is that atheists have started to divide and the division is between a very hard cornice and a softer movement I'm at the softer end but let me give you this all the the hard core believes that everything to do with Raju's utterly poisonous from beginning to end and that a lot of things that an atheist might do could start to smack of religion and it might be something as simple as getting people in a room and singing a song together that might start to smell a bit religious or look for soap so let me give you a concrete example Richard Dawkins a few years ago decided to do these things called that equal nature trails where he invited people to go for walks in the countryside to look at nature and to use nature as a resource for putting things in perspective and appreciate a lovely touching idea one of these nature trails this became an unbelievable problem for another faction within atheism such a problem the Dawkins has since disassociated himself entirely with the nature trail movement he won't go on anything although although it is really so almost Jesuitical at this point I was sent an email by somebody who goes that secretly he's still funding them and that they that they go on but look it's it's funny but it's sad as well because what it's showing is intolerance and there is that comedic thing that sometimes you know atheists will go you must be tolerant you know and you know you you must be skeptical and allow room for doubt and you're thinking oh wow the tone in which you said that made me a little bit questioning whether that was really your intention so fundamentalism roams across human disciplines and it can find the home under all ideologies weirdly even those ideologies that are ostensibly committed to free inquiry up in the goats firstly thanks for being my facebook friend thank you secondly sport seems to be something that unites Australia do you think you could classify sport as a religion look there are lots of things that unite people I mean not just you know not just sport but but all kinds of things you know we're going for a walk or having a dog unites people or liking to cook French food or Italian food these things all unite people I guess the religious answer to this and I'm not committed to this but let's just give what the religious answer to this would be the religious answer would be we're not trying to gather people around any old thing particularly a narrow concern like you know the exercise of the body you're trying to get people to gather around the vaguest biggest but most important thing which is we're all human and the more the gathering is around something abstract and big like that the nobler it is you see because you start to exclude I mean if you go look all of us Australians are really you know really big on a community based around sport I bet there are Australians a bit like me nerds who actually really don't like sport very much and get a bit scared you know basically I don't think there's anyone like that in this room no no I think she turned into a confessional we could go we could go deep into this but you know the old structure there's like the Australian guy who you know likes a bit of swimming but only a bit you know and wants to rush back to their towel and you know although I'm sure this exists I'm sure this exists and if you're telling them hey Australians it's a country that loves sport how they going to feel it's like oh wow so that means a I'm not human and B I'm not an Australian so all because I don't like swimming very much so you know I think we have to be careful about these pseudo gatherings around things because they quickly become tribal and I think the noblesse the moments when you really are swimming in the sea of humanity is when the entry level is not fantastic swimmer or Australian or you know belongs to this hockey club or whatever but the entrance requirement is human being human all right you're a human fine join our group that when it's like that that's true community now obviously religions themselves don't go there and here in their most hideous moments they will say oh you're not of our precise denomination you know you have not taken this version of Holy Orders or eaten that biscuit or drunk that thing at the right moment so out with you and that's religion at its most tribal in its most hideous but in its more generous moment and it's in most generous moments in all the face there are moments when they go look the the finest thing is to show hospitality to all and community with all is there not so I'm just going to take a limit of and asking a quick follow-up question is there not an equal danger in replacing scripture with culture in the way you talk about that culturally we're often guilty of doing the same kind of thing of not having read the right books or knowing the right artwork or how do you how do you prioritize a certain love of excellence in that stuff without it becoming exclusive well I think the real big advantage that we have is that works of culture are by nature diffuse constantly evolving and do not belong to a stable Canon there isn't a stable Canon it's constantly changing and so works of art often as saying the same things but they keep being said in different slightly different ways in slightly different idiom one time it might be a film it might be a pop song etc so you know in my view well subculture say a lot of what let's say the Gospels will tell you whereas the Gospels are a stable text which show no change for thousands of years culture is allows for change allows for multiple voices and what's fascinating is that the same morals can be drawn from very different material let's say the moral of being nice you can find morals of being nice in Aboriginal culture in you know John Lennon's songs in the essays of Virginia Woolf in high and in low in North and in southeastern West there's stuff in there that you can use and that's why culture seems to me to be a far better replacement as a source of ethical guidance consolation etc than a holy book time for one more question from each of the microphones I just want to ask you a sort of a people question in my experience in religion there's sort of four classifications there's the quietly practical who do good and tend to the needs of others there's the rational who sometimes verge on the secular there are the law types who want to impose and they and they squabble and then there's the intuitive and mystical and I was wondering if you'd like to comment on that and you might like to say does your approach to this fit any of those characteristics hmm look I'm drawn to you know bits of all of them I quite like the first one the ones that just sort of you know quietly kind of get on with stuff I think that's that's a nice approach I'm look I'm not you know I'm not that mystical as I said at the beginning that's not what I instinctively understand and sometimes people say things like you know but don't you feel the mystery and I go No not feeling not feeling that mystery at all but really you don't you don't feel is like a power I go no no I just I don't know I don't so I'm really genuinely bit cut off from the but I can go quite far so they'll they might say something like but you know what about the night sky and that sense with tiny full of the mysteries of knowing where we came from where we're headed I'm totally with with them on that that's fine yeah I'm with them it's the moment they go so then there's a spirit I go no no no I leave yeah so there's a kind of there is a sort of moment of divide but but otherwise I I can see the point of all these for you know very useful categories thank you I take your point about art and music and how religion has been very influential in those but how do you reconcile something like Christian rock like it in what sense oh that seems to be devolution rather than evolution I'm not familiar with not too familiar not soon as I should be with Christian rock just tell us a little bit about what you mean by Christians is really bad okay right right so so we're saying you know we've gone from bus cantatas to Christian rock and and what's going on yes look in many ways in the modern world that original lesson which Catholicism knew really well in about 1600 about the importance of aesthetics sometimes gets lost and yeah you know side Bend in service and I thought listen if you guys don't shape up in the musical front you're not going to have anyone coming next week you know you need to you need to raise this and at the same time you know you get some fantastic musicians who you know whose songs and listen to the lyrics it's like oh my goodness it's romantic love again it's like am I going to get my baby is my baby gonna call and you want to go look it's really want you to get that baby but all of us at a certain point at a certain point we do get the baby and then and then what how you know is there anything in the Canon of modern music that's going to help us through those more complex themes and you know so so so if I was in charge of pop music you know I would go look you know do us a bit of romantic love stuff that's fine but what about those other emotions the emotions of war or friendship or the longing for something deeper or the experience of death etc let's get these into some of those I have a sneaking fondness for the prog rock of the 1970s people at Peter Gabriel and wonderful albums like trick of the tail that went on for hours and it would be trying to do a cycle of life and etc etc and Phil Collins came along and rescued them from some of those successes and then things went awry but but any but but you know there is room I think for contemporary music to take on really deep themes and and and look we're not disagreeing what we're really saying I think you and I is we're saying music really matters and the themes that music is both the material that music addresses needs to be good and the that the kind of rendition of these themes needs to be good and we've got time for one more question up on the thing I'm sorry everyone who missed out who had a question or the Ilan has very kindly said that he will be signing copies of his book the good folk of readings are out in the foyer and religion for atheists is out now from penguin and you can get a copy and get it signed but we'll take one more question from up on the balcony hi Elaine your lectures presupposes some degree of voluntary engagement in either religion or atheism or whichever franchise you subscribe to some recent studies have suggested that religion or any set of beliefs is actually a function of an over enlarged limbic system in the base of the brain what what is your view with respect to whether religion or any franchise is just a genetic mutation and none of us actually have any choice about where we belong look my starting point is not with religion or atheism at all my starting point is with the individual who lives and suffers and dies that's my starting point it's my son appointed all my work and what I'm interested in is the possible resources that an ordinary suffering loving hoping human can find out there in the world and one of those resources is a religion but there are other secular varieties as I say in the works of culture in the words of our friends etc all of these things are important to a good life so I'm still not quite getting you on the limbic system but let me end by saying that it's really up to all of us to deal with the problems of everyday life by those resources that are out there there are resources that are ways in which our own experiences can be illuminated by the thinking of other people that's what it is to be part of an intellectual or psychological community's got nothing to do with attending a fancy university or anything ultimately it's got to say I want to find other voices that can teach me things about stuff I feel that I'm not getting from just going out for dinner with friends that's the that's the commitment that's at the root of my life to try and find some of these voices that can do that illuminating work and for this book I found some of these voices in the work of religion even though paradoxically I happen not to believe in any religions that's my point for today thank you so much all of you for coming it's been such a pleasure thank you you

Channel: WheelerCentre

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Keywords: Ideas, Melbourne, Australia, Conversation, The Wheeler Centre, Victoria, Writing, Alain de Botton, Religion, Religion for Atheists, Philosophy (Field Of Study), Atheism (Religion), Agnosticism (Religion), Secularism (Political Ideology), Education, Time, Ritual, Oration, Aesthetics (Field Of Study), Art, Religious Art (Visual Art Genre), Propaganda (Quotation Subject), Michael Williams, Fanaticism (Literature Subject), Book, Books, Library, Reading, The Arts (Broadcast Genre), Author

Id: pm3JuCTss60

Length: 64min 57sec (3897 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 23 2015