(Piano music by Bach) - On behalf of Ralston College and The Cambridge Centre
for the Study of Platonism it's an immense honor to introduce two of the foremost intellectuals of our age. These thinkers, one a philosopher,
the other a psychologist, are spiritual writers
addressing the malaise of the soul in our culture. John Stuart Mill, in his magnificent essay on Coleridge wrote of
Bentham, Jeremy Bentham, who above all others men have been led to ask themselves in
regards to any ancient or received opinion, is it true? And by Coleridge, what is the meaning? With Coleridge, in contrast
to the utility of Bentham, the very fact that any
doctrine had been believed by thoughtful men and received by whole nations and
generations of mankind was part of the problem to be solved, was one of the phenomena
to be accounted for. This, I think, is true
of both Roger Scruton and Jordan Peterson. And I'd like to mention just a couple of points of convergence. One is an insistence on the
importance of imagination as conversion to truth in opposition to a mere fantasy. And an opposition to idolatry--ideology-- as well as idolatry. Especially, the idolatrous
ideology of the post-modern Foucault-derived consensus. And an urgent return to
questions about truth, beauty, and goodness. And of course part of this is linked to what both perceive
as the perilous position of the modern university. They both argue that continuity of esteem needs be regained in the humanities. And that the dominant
strands of the humanities are leading to an impoverishment
of the souls of students. Narratives, both argue, are
not just stories of power but these narratives persist
because of their truth. So the importance for both Ralston College and indeed for The Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism,
of both of these thinkers is their insistence upon the relationship between mythos and logos,
between story and reason, the insistence upon a hierarchy of values and their vision of education
as conversion to truth. This conversation will be moderated by the President of Ralston
College, Stephen Blackwood. - Thank you, Doug. (audience applauding) Thank you Douglas for those
inspiring and grounding words starting us off right in relation to the past that we wish to recover. Let me start, I think with
a very straightforward but perhaps difficult
question where we're gathered around the theme,
apprehending the transcendent. Loosely, to gather this conversation. And I'd like to begin
by asking each of you what is the transcendent? What does it mean for
something to be transcendent? - Well, if you let me start. I take a position which
I attribute also to Kant. That we have a very clear
negative understanding of it. We, as it were, advanced
to the edge of our thinking in so many areas knowing that although there's nothing further that we can say, that somehow the truth
has not, nevertheless, not run out. And that negative view I think needs to be combined with a more positive view which tells us that there are other ways, not just, maybe not
thinking but some other way of crossing that boundary and as it were, landing in the realm of the transcendent. And knowing it from inside. I think this is something
we understand very quickly in personal relations. That when I address you,
I know that I'm addressing something which addresses me too, but from a place where I could never be. I couldn't look at myself from those eyes. And I can't capture the
thing that is looking at me from those eyes. But nevertheless, there are
leaps of the imagination which can put me in your point of view and from that point of view I can come to understand exactly what I am. But in a completely different way from simply ordinary empirical knowledge that I have of myself. And I think that sort of
interpersonal understanding I would say we can adapt to all the other aspects of our world
which are mysterious to us. Music, for instance. Well, that's a beginning. - And I wanna return to
music a bit later, Jordan? - Well, I think it's useful
as an adjunct to that. So, Roger mentioned that the transcendent is what we bump up against
when we realize our ignorance. And so it's that which
transcends our ignorance and that in itself makes
it an implacable fact. Unless you believe you have no ignorance, in which case, there's
no point in furthering a discussion with you. So the transcendent is
a fact insofar as it's that which transcends our ignorance. But you can also think
about it technically. So, and I think we know enough about how the brain works now--
not that we know much-- so that useful things
can be said about that. You tend to represent the world in the simplest manner
that you possibly can that works for what you're doing. And so you don't actually see the world. You see sufficiently useful low resolution representations of the world. And if they work, then that's fine. There's no need to adjust them and they're relatively easy
to remember and to manipulate. But now and then you have a misapprehension about
someone, let's say. And you have a conversation with them and the conversation goes sideways. And what that means is that the thing that you thought that
you were conversing with is not the thing that
you're conversing with. And that manifests itself in error, right? So error is the place where the
transcendent reveals itself. And what is actually revealing itself is the reality that's outside and underneath your perceptions. And so what you see in
the world, in some sense, is a set of animated cartoons. And a lot of that is
actually a consequence of you seeing nothing but your memory. Because your brain is
organized so that instead of going through all of the difficulty of having to look at the thing in itself, you look at what you assume to be there. And if you can get away with
that, so much the better. But the thing in itself
is always much richer than your apprehension of it. Which is partly why you make mistakes but also partly why you can continue to garner wisdom in the world. There's always more
there than meets the eye. And god only knows how
much more there's there than meets the eye. And you can show this even in the religious sense to some degree. Because you can say
that there's an element to the transcendent that instills people with a sense of religious significance. You can do that by
immediately, scientifically, by feeding people chemicals, for example. That disrupt the inhibition
of perception by memory. And then that puts them in a place where the transcendent
tends to reveal itself. Sometimes in overwhelming force. So it's not some fiction that this exists. What's transcendent is
more real than the reality that you perceive. - Well, let's pick up on that because the ancients and the
medievals had a clear sense that it wasn't the world that was changing it was we ourselves as
we make an ascent towards deeper truths, higher
forms of the beautiful. As we ourselves become
more self conscious. So it's not the world
that's changing but us. I wonder if you could
say, how you understand the nature of that ascent, that movement, and what brings it about? - I would be a bit wary
of the metaphor of ascent. You know, I think in Plato
it's quite clear what he meant. That he wanted us actually to transcend our earthly perceptions and our
earthly way of seeing things and look on the world from
a god's eye perspective. And this could be done if we enter the world of the pure forms and so on, and leave empirical reality behind. I think actually,
insofar as the experience of the transcendent, as I understand it, is available to us modern people, it's not that way that we get it. Perhaps Jordan might be right. That there are these
drug-induced experiences where things open up to
us because old barriers are suddenly swept away. But in my own case, it
is the concentration on the empirical reality
which at a certain point flips from mere sensory understanding to a vision in that of its
communicating something to me. And I think this is what literature, and art, and music do at their best. They re-describe reality
so that it is actually communicating something to you. It's not just there as an
inert object before you. And that sense of the transcendence is like discovering yourself in a mirror, seeing in the world as
a whole that thing anew that you could never identify in words. You know, the subject
which is looking at it. And it's not a mystery but it's something that you can't then explain. So the difference between a good writer and a bad writer, of course,
is that a good writer will describe something in such a way that the thing described has
the soul of the reader in it. - So that might be a distinction in part between the thing and
the meaningful thing. And that's a very mysterious phenomenon. In fact, in some sense
the essence of phenomenon because that means to shine forth. Now as we're surrounded
by empirical facts, they're everywhere. There's more of them than
we can possibly count but some of them do emerge
and manifest themselves as that conjunction between
the factual and the meaningful. And then that's what's gripping. And if you're fortunate, I mean to me that's also partly what leads us onward. Maybe in something
approximating the ascent that you described is that the set of facts manifests itself
as implicitly meaningful and that means in some sense that there is a call to you that
isn't from within you. I mean, I don't know how else to put it exactly because you walk into a book store and a book
will reveal itself to you. Or you have a conversation and part of the conversation will trigger something in you, or you're reading
a scientific paper and much of it's dull
and then all of a sudden there's something that sparks outward that's like a portal. That's a portal into the transcendent. And that is a place where the fact and the meaning converge. And that's not a phenomena we
don't understand very well. It has something to do
with its convergence with the narrative that drives us, whatever that happens to be. - I think that's a good way of putting it. Actually, it connects
with the general problem of what the humanities
are in the university. I've always assumed that
in some way or another if you're teaching
literature, or musicology, or history of art, or anything,
you are opening young people to those moments when the world ceases to be a mere accumulation of facts and as it were, addresses you. And that requires literary criticism, it requires opening yourself to experience in a way that it requires
a serious education of a special kind. And think that if we
thought of the humanities as directed towards that we can see why they might be one way
to fill the moral void that grows so easily in people's lives. - So, Jung had this idea
which I really love. It's a very sophisticated idea. It's his idea of how
the self, first of all, so the self, for Jung, Christ
was a symbol of the self. So the logos was a symbol of the self. So that sort of, what would you say, it's the divine essence of humanity. And the image of that is
the symbol of the self and for Jung the self was the
totality of the individual across time and space. So it's whatever you are
as a transcendent object. That's a good way of thinking about it. And then you can imagine
that transcendent object also has to interact with you and the world moment by moment. And his belief was that
those times when that space of meaning opened up, so
there is that convergence between the fact and
the griping of the fact was the manifestation of the self which is this transcendent object
in the specific moment of time and space and
therefore a call forward to move towards revealing that totality as much as it can be revealed. And so, it would be partly, and that would be partly revealed by then following a meaningful pathway. And it would be the case
that if you're engaged in the teaching of
humanities and literature that you are trying to engage exactly that part of the person. It's to pull them into the story and to have that open up to them. And then that's a portal. It's not words on paper. It's a portal to their further
development towards this, the manifestation of this higher and more transcendent mode of being. - That's like the Hindu
idea of the transition from Samsara to Brahman, isn't it? That you pass through a barrier that can't actually be described because you can only know it when you're on the other side of it. But when you're on the other side of it, you're looking back at the thing that you've left and
seeing it, as it were, for the first time and
knowing what it means. I guess that connects a
little bit with what Douglas was saying about Coleridge. You know, that Coleridge was an advocate of a form of education,
a form of knowledge which shows the meaning
of things as opposed to the mere facts accumulated by Bentham and people like that. - Both of you have done quite deep dives into 20th century totalitarian ideologies. Both of you have been
very trenchant critics of the ideology, the
various forms of nihilism in our own culture. But I think all of us tire of a kind of negativity that has come to be very prevalent in our culture. Not simply the nihilism but then we can criticize the nihilism,
we ought to criticize it. Both of you have been
brilliant critics of it. But what I take to be
at work in both of your, in the work that both of you do, is not fundamentally criticism but a turn towards something positive. A recovery of a sense of the transcendent. I'd like to have a turn for a moment to, what does that recovery look like? Where do we start? - Well, if we're thinking intellectually the world of scholarship and education that we both belong to
has turned, as you say, in this negative direction. Always preferring debunking
explanations of everything. Reducing them to the lowest motive. That it's not truth but
power that we pursue and all that Foucauldian nonsense. And I think the only response to that is to come up with bunking
explanations, so to speak. (audience laughing) Try to put back into the subject matter one's own inherent belief in it. To recognize that we're not around on this earth for very long and we do have an obligation to find the things that we love and not the things that we reject. And that those things that we love, the best way towards them is to look at the things that
other people have loved. That's what a culture is. It's the residue of all the things that people have thought
worthwhile to preserve. And teaching that will again
reconnect us to what matters. - Well, and there's also ways of providing a pathway forward by making
the Foucauldian arguments let's say, about power
more high resolution. And one of the things
that I do in my lectures in my public lectures that I think is rather comical is to take and poke fun in some sense about the idea of power as the fundamental foundation for the hierarchical structures of the West. I think well, you can think of the West as one large-scale, low-resolution, totalitarian tyranny. A tyranny of the patriarchy. Or you can decompose that. Which in some sense is
to transcend the concept. And I think well, I ask my
audiences what they think about the tyranny of plumbers. Or the tyranny of massage therapists. Well, because it's dead relevant. It's like, let's say you need a plumber. And you do need a plumber, everyone agrees that you need a plumber. Because there's hell to pay otherwise. And then the question is, well how is it that you go about selecting a plumber? And the answer isn't that
there are roving bands of tyrannical plumbers
that go door to door telling house wives that if they don't use their services, the service
of the most tyrannical plumber that there'll be mafia-like consequences. What happens instead is that you look for the plumber who is most able, in your estimation, and in his reputation as distributed through the community for being able to fix
pipes and run a business, and engage in an honest
transaction with you. And that's competence, that's not power. You see, and what I see
as most corrosive about the post-modern types, especially those who've derived themselves
from Foucault, let's say, is that the idea that every hierarchy, or the hierarchy as such
is predicated on power is actually an assault on the
idea of competence itself. And that in turn is an assault on the idea that there are real problems
that can actually be solved. Well then if you dispense with all that and it's only power,
there's no real problems to be solved and there's no
noble ways of solving them. Even as concrete a manner as a good plumber would solve them. Which is not a trivial thing. And so then you deprive
people of that sense of purpose in their life, even at the high-resolution levels. You know, and I've insisted in my lectures that if you're the sort of person who runs a small diner that it's incumbent on you to run the highest quality small diner that you possibly can. Because what you're doing there is not merely providing
people with basic nutrition, there's way more to the
space than meets the eye. And your noble, what would you say? Acceptance of your limited responsibility is also simultaneously
a way to transcend that. That could be a place where
the neighborhood meets. That can be a place where tired
people revivify themselves before they go off to
do their difficult work. That can be a place where you can mentor your employees and help
them develop their life. It's a rich, it's an
unbelievably rich microcosm. And to take on the care and tending of that microcosm as a responsibility is also a great pathway to
meaning and a necessary. And meaning is something that's, well, not epiphenomenal and not dispensable but absolutely central to human thriving in the psychological and practical sense. - Yeah, we do have to try
and understand why it is that there is such a charm in
the Foucauldian position. Why is it that people want to believe that all the best things, what we think of the best things in human
relations are simply disguised forms of manipulation? You know, that the whole feminist view of the relations between
men and women, for instance, which is founded on this deep myth that men are exercising, exercise power as a gender, to use the fashionable word, over women and that all study of this is just a way of revealing that power and the capillaries
through which it flows. You know, I think there's
a will to believe this and why is one of the big questions that I think we have to try to understand. Is it that when people lose some kind of transcendental religious faith that they are automatically
fall into this great pit of resentment of the Nietzschean kind to try and find the oppressor
in every relationship? Or is there, are there truths
they're exploring as well? Is there, are there forms of power or forms of human relation
that look like power from one aspect, but are
perhaps also look like tenderness and dependence
from another aspect. And that they've just, are
emphasizing one half of it or something like that. I think there are real questions as to how it is that our culture has
got into this position. - Yeah, well that's the question
below the claim of power. And so, I mean I've thought
about that to some degree. And here's three possibilities. I mean one is the accusation
that all there is, is power, is the justification for use of power. - [Roger] Of course. - So that's handy, if
that's what you wanna use. So then, there's another problem, and that goes along with the failure, the willful failure to
distinguish competence from tyranny and power, let's say. Because we might think of
power as unearned authority or something like that. Because we need a definition of power. And I think that there's
a resentment at work there that's very, very deep. I think it's deep in the biblical sense which is that, there is
a proclivity for those who do not manifest
what they could manifest in the world and thereby
fail, to watch the success of those who do manifest
what they could manifest in the world and succeed and
become embittered by that. Tremendously embittered, and
then to label that as power and then to attempt to destroy it. Because it's simpler to do that than to do the radical, internal retooling that would be required to set
things straight internally. - I'm sure that's right. That's one explanation of why people are always tempted by the zero-sum vision of relations: his benefit
is my cost sort of thing. - Right. - I wanted to pick up on that. That the very wide spread
view that things are zero-sum. Which is of course, the language of power. What's the antidote to that? How does one overturn
the ideology of power? How does one transcend that
with a non zero-sum truth or approach to life? - I personally would
say that the first thing to recognize is that there
are positive-sum games. You know, that's what the real theory of the market tells us. That there are whole realms
of human transactions where both parties gain from
their shared engagement. And though that won't
drive away the real source of this difficulty. It has something to do with
what Jordan was referring to. You know, that people's
resentment at the success of others when they cannot match it, or cannot easily match it. - Or will not match it. - [Roger] Or will not match it. - Which is even worse. - Yes, exactly, yeah. And because of the labor of re-
conceiving your own position in such that you actually
have to do something about it. You know, there's something lazy about the zero-sum vision. But it's not a vision that
successful people have, you know. - It's not a vision that they have at any level of reality
and you can actually combat that to some degree by making
it high-resolution again. By making examples. It's like, because very
few people actually believe once they observe, that
all the relationships they've had with other
people have been zero-sum. Now, you might get some
very disadvantaged people and these people do exist,
who've been taken advantage by virtually everyone
they've ever encountered in their whole life. That does happen. But most of the time all you have to do is remind people, it's like, well think of someone that you loved, even briefly. Think of a friend that you've had. It's like well, you
successfully negotiated with that friend to do things together because otherwise it's not a friendship. And it has to be a successful negotiation which means your friend has to be happy with what you were doing
and you have to be happy. And so, and then wasn't it the case that you were both happier doing that than either of you would have been doing something else alone? And isn't that evidence in your own action and your life for the existence
of non zero-sum games. And they're dependent on
successful negotiation. We can both have more than
we would otherwise have if we can come to a consensus
about what we'll both pursue. And it's very few people, when you make it personal like that, and high-resolution again. It's very few people who are willing to pursue their ideology
of a zero-sum reality so far down that they'll actually use that to characterize their
most intimate relationships. Now, I would say that
someone who does that by temperament is literally psychopathic. Because the psychopathic view of the world is absolutely that it's a zero-sum game. - Yes, I think that's right. But of course we have a
whole body of literature about sexuality which is
trying to establish that. That sexuality is the exercise of power of one person over another. You get it already in Sartre's
"Being and Nothingness." Where he almost, it's almost by logic that serious sexual desire for him ends up as sado-masochism. Because you cannot extract from the other that gift of his freedom which
is what you're looking for. Because his freedom is his and not to be obtained by you. And therefore you can only do this by sort of tearing at
his flesh, getting him to confess in the extremes
of agony that he can't do it. You know, this kind of thing, I know that's a very perverted vision of what sexual relations are. But you get that image
used by Simone de Beauvoir and all kinds of feminists. Essentially to delegitimize the idea that there is such a thing
as love for the other sex. - I think it also masks a
more fundamental problem that's really a biological problem. Like it's a misapprehension
of a genuine problem. But part of what sex does
is temporarily subordinate the individual to nature and the species. And so there is a domination there. You know, and if a woman
decides to have a child then she is going to undergo a series of extraordinarily radical transformations and she's also going to
end up in a situation where in all likelihood, something else becomes fundamentally
more important than her. And so there is a sub, it
might be voluntary subjugation but there's a subjugation to nature. - [Roger] Of course. - And that's built into
the fabric of existence. And I think it's very easy not to want to grapple with that because
it's such a profound problem. And then to make that
a secondary consequence of something like unbalanced
power relationships between the genders. - Yes, but of course
our traditional religion offers you salves for this. The rite of passage,
which joins man to woman. The rite of passage which makes birth an experience that the whole
community, and death likewise. You know the sense also, that in these great
events one is occupying a position in a moral space
that has been occupied by generations before one, and so on. This normalizing of these huge transitions I think is something that
we have always depended upon religion to provide. - [Jordan] It's the sacrilizing of the- - Yes, I mean taking
that away, or ignored it, or try to live without,
exactly, without the idea of a sacrament. We're actually at a loss when
these great transitions occur. - And it is because it
is the case, in fact, that to engage in the integration of sexuality with your individual life is a series of sacrifices. So for example, if you get married that's a sacrifice
because it's a sacrifice of all other people. And so it's a sacrifice
of that possibility. And then to have a child is the sacrifice of all the things that you
could have done otherwise than having that child. And to, but to as you pointed out, to make that part of a broader tradition. To say that, well that is a sacrifice and there's a loss that
goes along with that but what you gain as a consequence is of immeasurable significance
in contrast to the loss. And one of the things
that's really struck me in this lecture tour that I've been doing. So, I've been in about 100 cities. And one of the things
that I've been talking to people about is meaning. And I suppose it's meaning in relationship to the transcendent. And the necessity of
meaning as an antidote to suffering and to malevolence. And the hypothesis is something like, well meaning is to be
found in responsibility. And this is, it's a revelation to people. Because they haven't
conceptualized it that way before. It's like meaning isn't,
it isn't happiness and it isn't self-esteem and
it isn't momentary pleasure. It isn't any of that. It's the bearing of a sacrificial burden. And that actually works to enrich and ennoble your life in ways that make the tragic element of it tolerable. And to keep you from bitterness. And so these things that are put forward as subjugation like the subjugation of woman to the catastrophe
of birth, let's say, or even the indignity
of patriarchal union. Is all of a sudden something
that you can take on as an aspirational goal
rather than something that's a mere imposition on
your moment to moment freedom. That's a relief to people
to hear that and to know it. - Of course, no I agree with that. But there is also the
sense that in the world in which we live where obviously people have been detached to a great extent from any continuous religious tradition. There still is a sense
of loss, isn't there? People, they know that
they're missing something but don't know quite how to identify it. And that's one reason for them thinking that it's been taken away, something's been stolen from them. And they look around at
the people who are at ease in the world and
successful, and seem to be on good terms with themselves and think of them as the one's
who've done the stealing. And that is a dangerous attitude and I think it's one, surely that is part of what erupts in all these
strange academic disciplines like gender studies, which
simply have as their goal the undermining of the existing order. Without anything positive
to put in it's place. And I don't know what, those
academic studies recruit people all the time from
this fund of isolation. This fund of- - Of hurt, too. - The sense of loss without an ability to identify the thing that's been lost. - That's the cult like element of them because they do, I would
say to some degree, prey on people who's
interpersonal relationships have been irreparably damaged. So, I have a hypothesis
about the feminist end of the post-modern
radical leftist movement. So, and this isn't something
I've talked about much in public but well, here goes. This should get me I lots of trouble. So, and there's a variety of things that are tangled together here. So, we don't know how female
biology would manifest itself politically. Male biology does, female
biology is going to and that's because
female political activity on the largest possible scale is a relatively new phenomenon. So, and it isn't obviously the case that men and women's views of the world are going to dovetail precisely. So here's a hypothesis. You tell me what you think about this. So, one thing that a
woman really wants to know about a man, or perhaps you might say, one thing that femininity
wants to know about masculinity is that it's
not a predatory tyrant. Okay, and here's why. I mean first of all, there's fragility in feminine sexuality to a greater degree than there is in male sexuality. Because women bear a higher price for sexual misadventure let's say. And are perhaps more prone
to exploitation by force. But more than that, part of being a woman is having the possibility
of bringing something extraordinarily fragile and vulnerable, and valuable into the world. And the first concern might
be, are you a predator? Fundamentally, are you a predator? And so what I see happening
in the feminist disciplines like gender studies is the politicization of that accusation. And the accusation is, prove to me that you're not a predator. Like in the fundamental
element of your masculinity. Not only historically, but now. Because the cost of you
being a predator is too high. Now, I feel that's an inappropriate, I think that's what's
driving the demolition of the idea of presumption
of innocence, for example. We'll start with presumption of guilt and prove, prove to me
that you're innocent. And I think the problem with that isn't that there are no predatory men. Because there are plenty of predatory men. The problem is that the courageous way to deal with the problem of the predator is to offer a hand in courageous trust and to invite forward a
partner from the monster. That's the mythological manner in which this is supposed to be undertaken. The courageous part of the
woman's journey, let's say, is to face the monstrosity of a man and to invite out of that
something more noble to emerge. And there's courage in
that, and genuine risk. And I think that's forgone
in the accusation process and then the other element of that seems to me to be that, well
if you are a predator and you're irredeemable
in your predatory nature then the best thing to do
is to render you harmless. And if we're going to
obscure the relationship between competence and power and assume that all of your striving upward is merely a manifestation of
power, than what we'll do is weaken you as much as possible so that harmlessness can replace virtue. And I see all of that driving
these resentful disciplines and their ideologies. - So the aim is the
emasculation of the man? - Yeah, that's the evil queen. - Yeah. - Yeah, because we have
the evil king, right? That's the tyrannical patriarchy. Well, the evil queen is
lurking somewhere, so. - Yes, the problem is,
and a lot of this is true. But our society does not seem to have the capacity to put that to one side and celebrate the normal. The fact that most men and most women are not like that. And that there is a natural desire and need of the sexes to love each other, to be united, and to
create children, and so on. And that the old stability that was built upon this has gone. So, I mean that's, nobody wants, nobody in the intellectual world wants to celebrate that. - So I just, I had this interview a few, a month ago or so, with a woman from GQ and she was fully on board the predatory male train, let's say. And you know, when people
like that interview me they start talking about
the patriarchy and I say, well I don't believe in the patriarchy. I don't buy that conceptual structure. And what's so interesting, and this has happened more and more over the years as they've developed this. First of all, the person
that I would be talking to had some idea that it was
hypothetically possible to reject the idea of the patriarchy. But now when I say I don't believe in it, that idea is met with stunned disbelief. It's like, well what do
you mean you don't believe in the tyrannical patriarchy? Everyone knows that's true. And I think well, so
here's your hypothesis. So this is the hypothesis
is that throughout history the fundamental relationship between man and woman is one of
parasitism and exploitation and that's it. And so, that's the
case, I guess until 1960 and the publication of
"The Feminine Mystique," or something like that. But that's the entire
course of human history. When it seems to me that
the appropriate story is that men and women labored mightily under their terrible constraints for uncounted centuries
cooperating together by and large to build
some modicum of security, and freedom, and stability so
that they could raise children and have a somewhat harmonious
and productive life. And all of a sudden it's
become not only questionable to put forth that as a proposition but somehow tyrannical in
essence just for positing it as a reality. - But that's partly because, isn't it because of this peculiar view that underlying all this there's a kind of social structure? That this is being
created, the distinction between men and women doesn't
have it's basis in nature. It's basis is in the institutions that we have created and since we created them we can change them. There's been a sort of,
almost hysterical invasion of everything by the idea of human choice. That if there is a
structure to the relation between men and women then we
ought to be able to change it. And of course, it might mean I have to change my sex in order to conform to the way things are, but
that also has become a choice. - Well, is not the very
constant focus on division whether between men and woman, or between left and right,
or between this race and that race, or any other way in which we might divide people
according to groups. Isn't that very polarized,
that fractured polarization a sign of a loss, of a
common human culture? Of a universal plane in which we all are as human beings. And so if that is so,
I suppose what I take to be so very urgent in our time, and I wonder, it might be
difficult to find anyone who at least when you go
down to a high enough level of resolution, as you say Jordan, would not think this is true. That we must recover
that sense of ourselves as entities that
participate in a universal and transcendent plane. That we have a common culture. That I see myself in the other as you were saying earlier, Roger. And I'd like to have both of your thoughts on what strategies or
means for that recovery. And perhaps we can focus
particularly on the questions that we started with. With art, music, you've
written extensively on architecture, of course, Roger. And you've thought long and hard about the humanities, Jordan. What is the character of a recovery? How do we bring that about? - Well, if I may begin,
I think that there are, well first of all you have to identify those aspects of the
human condition that move of their own accord
towards reconciliation. You know, rather than
conflict and division of the sort that you were referring to. And we are very familiar with them. It's not just love, which of course, is something which is a very complex thing and can't be just conjured from the skies. But there are other
aspects of our condition that we can educate through, first of all through setting examples
and then through imitation and then through self-discipline. Obviously forgiveness
is one of these things. And the habit of putting yourself in another person's perspective, looking at yourself from outside, and wondering whether you are as so-seen
acceptable to yourself. All those, of course again, religion, the Christian religion
at least, was built upon that kind of intellectual discipline. The discipline of seeing
your neighbor as yourself and seeing yourself
therefore as a mere neighbor. And I suspect that we have to revive those basic moral disciplines not for, for the use of people who don't have the overarching faith. The belief in the transcendental judgment to which we will be all called, but who nevertheless have to be shown that we do live our lives as an object of judgment nevertheless
and here are some guides. Just read "Anna Karenina" for example. I know it takes a long time for Facebook addicted youth to read "Anna Karenina" but there's still hope, you know. - And they're likely to listen to it if it becomes an audio book. So, well because maybe
more people can listen than can read. I mean, so let's think
about literature for a bit. So now, if you ready something
like a Dostoevsky novel or "Anna Karenina,"
you're not really reading the account of a single person's life. What you're reading is,
it's like the author has taken a variety of
lives and amalgamated them and unified them into something that's like a compilation of lives. So it's like life writ large. That's what fiction is. It's more true than
reality because just like a mathematical abstraction
can be more real than the thing that it
represents in some sense, the fiction is, it's like a portrait. If you sit for a portrait you'll sit and the artist will paint you
and then you'll sit again, and then you'll sit again,
and then you'll sit again. And so the portrait is
actually a composite of you and so it's got a richness sometimes that a photograph can't match. And a fictional character
is actually a composite of many people. And so the opportunity to
read a great work of fiction is the opportunity to place yourself in the perspective, not
of merely another person, like you do in normal
discourse, in a mundane setting. But to place yourself in the perspective of a compiled character. So you, I've experienced that
extraordinarily powerfully with Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment." To put myself in the
position of this student who was nihilistic and
who had every reason to commit murder. And it's an unbelievably intense novel because everybody in
the novel is hyper real. And we think of fiction
as falsity or as untruth and it's not, it's abstraction. And abstraction isn't untruth,
it's more than truth often. And so the humanities
can help us walk through the souls of others. And because we can imitate and it's one of our primary, remarkable,
miraculous abilities. We can imitate the compiled characters that we encounter in literature
and mythology, and religion. And that does help flesh
us out and ennoble us. And we can, I just wrote the forward to Solzhenitsyn's 50th anniversary version of "The Gulag Archipelago"
the abridged version. And I ran across his
fervent wish that people could learn from what he communicated. All the horror and suffering. To put themselves in the position of both the perpetrator and the
accused, simultaneously, and to decide that's not
the road to walk down. And so, the advantage of placing yourself in the position of other people is that if they're good people
than you can be like them and if they're not good people than you can avoid that pathway. And then you don't have
to learn that through the agony of direct personal experience in the short span of your life. There's nothing more,
there's nothing greater than you can do for
people than to introduce them into those patterned stories so that they can gain from
the catastrophes of the past. - No, I agree with that. But of course, in fiction
one's also concerned to identify, if you're writing fiction, identify with a character in order to understand that character. Because it's not as though you can. You can't actually grasp a
character from the outside. You have to be able to
see through his eyes what the world is in which he is and that is I think, an
exercise of the imagination which I value greatly. And you don't necessarily
come to a conclusion, therefore I don't want to be like that. It might be just enough to say, now I see that's a possible human being. And your knowledge of the possibilities is amplified and your sense, your ability to position yourself in those possibilities also, I think. - Right, so that's a
matter of differentiation as well as direction. - Yes. - And I think sometimes
in my more dire moments that this opposition to
cultural appropriation, right, so the idea that
I'm not allowed anymore to imagine myself, say
fictionally, as a woman or as a character from another ethnicity. Or even to play the role,
that role as an actor. I think that it's part of
the assault on the idea of the individual and
the non zero-sum game. Because it precludes the
possibility that I could take on the role of another in
an understanding manner. And actually facilitate a dialogue. And that undermines
the claim, I would say, that everything is only a
secondary consequence of power. Because if I could
actually bridge that gap, well then, I'm not isolated in my group or my ethnicity, or whatever it is. I can become partly you
and we can communicate. And I would say because of that literature and art is a great threat to ideology. Especially of the group identity kind. And of course, they're
perfectly aware of that. Which is why the radicals on that side of the equation are doing
everything they can to. I had a reporter from the New York Times who wrote a rather
scurrilous piece about me. She had done a literature
degree at Columbia, a bright woman, and she
told me in all honesty and apparent transparency
that she had no idea, this is how deep this has become saturated into our culture, she
had no idea until she had graduated from Columbia that there was any other way of reading a work of literature except through
the post-modern lens. And the post modern lens
is, well who are the groups that are being represented
and what power games are at play, and who benefits? And I mean, I don't know
if, because she turned out to be quite a strange
person, so I have no idea if that was a ploy on her part or whether that was like a naive, what would you call, confession. But it's increasingly the case that is how literature is taught. In my home province of Ontario the Elementary Teacher's
Federation of Ontario wants to start teaching literature from a post-modern critical
perspective in elementary school. To demolish it. - Well, there we are. I mean, I'm in favor of
cultural appropriation. I mean, I'm a product of it. I appropriated the idea
of the English gentleman and I try and made myself be it. (audience chuckling) And I know it's a failure. - That's part of doing it well. - Yeah, yeah, but I've
understood the world from the inside in another way. But I just wrote a book of stories which was just reviewed
by somebody who says, these stories make cultural
appropriation into a virtue. So, I felt good about that. They begin with an
inside view of the psyche of a terrorist, of an Arab terrorist, who has a legacy of vengeance
and who is a failure. And whose loss I try to make real in the feelings of the
reader as he reads it. And then the subsequent stories show the same kind of loss in
completely different people, so. - I wanted to bring up that
book of stories, actually. "Souls in Twilight" by Sir Roger Scruton. It's a series of five short stories. Five I think, is it? Five short stories,
each which are portraits of a character at a
certain moment in time. I think it's safe to say, Roger, that they're all tragic
stories in a sense. What I found so moving about those stories is that these are individuals in states of dislocation, anchorless, seeking depth, meaning, truth, stability and yet in their confusion, in their darkness, willing against that very
thing that they seek, or you might say
violating or transgressing that sacred thing that
they're longing for. That's not what's
beautiful about the book. What's beautiful is that in the reading the reader her or himself comes to a sense of what that longing is for positively. A sense of the stability of love or of home, or of relationship. And I suppose what I want to
ask, following up on this, is that seems to me a
profoundly redemptive vision that you have in those
beautiful stories, Roger. That it's showing the
persistence of the beautiful and of the good, even in it's absence. That I can read that story
and have a perception of what positively I am looking for. And just to refer to
something that you say in one of your books, Jordan, that even through an experience
of evil one can develop an apprehension of what the good is. I wondering if you
could each say something about the, that, you know. Either there is a reality
to these transcendent things or there is not. It's either just a
construct, goodness or beauty and truth, or they have a transcendent and sovereign persistent reality. I'm wondering if you
can each say something about the persistence or
sovereignty of these things even amidst our darkness and suffering. - Well, I would say that in tragedy, when tragedy is really effective there is a redemption offered
in this through suffering. That the accept, we
encounter the possibility in tragedy that a human being can, through the most noble motives, also bring down upon themself destruction. And this destruction is no different from the destruction
that's going to afflict all of us in the end, anyway. But here is somebody who has
faced it down in some way. That his nobility of
nature and his ability to go out towards others
in a condition of love and reconciliation has not
been taken away from him. And the spectacle of that
is all the more intense because nevertheless, death
intervenes and takes him away. As it will take you and me away but without having had
the chance to reveal our nobility or even to acquire it. So, I think that for that reason it's very important that in literature noble characters are seen in
a condition of loss sometimes. And their redemption
comes because even though they've lost what we all
must in the end lose, there is that in them which is struggling towards reconciliation
with their own condition and with others. It's the sense that they
are living as an other and not as a self. You know that's, I think
it's a crucial thing that- - "The Gulag Archipelago" is often viewed as an endless documentation of the horrors of the Soviet enterprise,
but it was an investigation, it was an experiment in
literary investigation and that isn't what the book is about. The book is about
Solzhenitsyn's observations of people in those terrible situations who did not contribute to the terror and who transcended it. And the unbelievably
powerful impact observing that had on him and the
personal transformation he underwent as a consequence of observing those people and the decision he made because of seeing them in their ultimately tragic circumstances transcend that to transform
his life from the bottom up and to write this great book and to reveal the utter catastrophe of that
entire ideological movement. And so you do see the light most clearly when it's superimposed against the darkest possible background. And so, and great literature,
which pulls people way down into the depths in this
compiled fictional manner. And it also does, at the same time, highlight what's the opposite of that. So. - In my reading of your work, both of you, there's an implicitly
theological character here and we can't speak about the transcendent in a certain sense
without being theological. Why is it that we can't just, the lights just can't
be completely shut out? I mean, if evil and darkness
were the sovereign principles as we say, metaphysically,
well it could just be all, the lights could just
be completely blackened. And yet that's not what we see. And I'm wondering if
you would each comment on the, what you take to be
the... I think what might be a theological articulation
of the facts on the ground. If the facts are that you can't shut the lights right out,
that they're still there. What's going on there? - I totally agree with
what Jordan said about "The Gulag Archipelago." And that goes back to Dostoevsky's, "From the House of the Dead." You know, his account of being a czarist a much milder kind of imprisonment, but nevertheless it was full of- - [Jordan] Almost a vacation home. - Yeah, yeah, in comparison. No, I agree, but nevertheless he described these characters for whom
everything had been taken away. But he also notes that in each of them I can find the spark of God. Something which Janacek repeated when he made this into
that wonderful libretto for his opera. And Janacek tried to show in music how these derelict characters
would suddenly shine with that light from another source. That doesn't come just from what they are in those circumstances,
but from something higher. And I think, you know, I would say one is always obliged to use metaphors when we get to this point. But it is true that you
can find in someone, even in the most deprived
and desolate circumstances, that on which you can blow
to cause a spark once again, to light up inside him. And that is as far as
we get to meeting God. But there is no reason to think that we need to get any
further, in my view. That's what everybody
saw in Maximilian Kolbe when he offered himself in
Auschwitz as a sacrifice. And why he was canonized, you know. Suddenly you see that
there is something else in all of us, in which in
circumstances however severe and deprived will shine
with a different light and make those circumstances worthwhile because they produced that light. - It could be, in some sense, the mercy of God that keeps him hidden from us. Because if you imagine
that your sacred duty is to blow on those
embers that you described even among people who
are in desolate straights then every time you fail
to take that opportunity then you tilt things badly towards what they shouldn't be tilted towards. And it could be that the revelation of your inadequacy in the face of that moral duty, which would be
in some sense equivalent to an encounter with God, would be enough to tear you into pieces. And so maybe you get
glimpses of that now and then because that's all you in your current depraved moral state could
stand of seeing the face of God. - [Roger] Yes. - And I think there's something to that. - That's what Simone Weil says, things to that affect, I think, yeah. And yes, I often heard
in the old communist days when I used to travel
around Eastern Europe and meet people who were
in really dire straights say similar things. You know, that God would reveal himself. But in these circumstances the revelation would be something too
strong for what I could bear. - It's a beautiful image
you've given us, Roger, of blowing on the embers. Within, blowing on the
embers of transcendence. I'd like to ask you both about the forms of culture and institutional
life that produce that blowing on the
embers in the individual. It seems to me both of
you have a very deep sense of the dignity of the human individual, of the individual's connection
to the transcendent. The grounding fact of our existence. What would be the forms of culture that we would say to be
necessary, or most inclined to foster in the individual
that blowing of the flame? - I think the most accessible form for most people is music. And music to me, is the most
representational form of art because I think that the world is made out of patterns and we perceive
some patterns as objects but fundamentally it's patterns. And what you want is all the patterns of the world to interact harmoniously in something where every element is related intelligibly
to every other element. And I think that when your life is harmony then you can feel that. And when you're dancing to beautiful music you're acting that out. The music is the music of the spheres and you're participating in the patterning of your being in accordance
with that structure and that gives you an
intimation of transcendence. And it's not criticizable. That's the thing that's so lovely about it is that even as our society
has become more cynical and more self-destructive,
and more deconstructionist the power of music has in fact grown because it speaks to that eternal harmony and the reality of that eternal harmony in a way that mere intellect cannot deny. And I mean, I was always amused. I went to this show, the Ramones, a punk band from New York. It was the loudest concert I'd ever heard by a good factor of 10. My ears rang for like
three days afterwards and they were all these
nihilistic punk rockers all crammed into this theater and below me there was a mosh pit and it was like ants on a frying pan. They were just smashing into each other and throwing people around up above them. And it was quite rough
and they were all having this beautifully transcendent
musical experience which belied all of their nihilism. And it was, and they
absolutely thrived on it. It was like, and even
the lyrics were harsh and nihilistic, but it didn't matter because the music, even
if it, in its rough form was something that united them in the sense of this patterned beauty and brought them together. And so, exposure to music
that's, people die without music. It's like, music is everything. I mean it's not everything, but. - I beg to disagree about the beauty of this particular experience. (audience laughing) I think actually dancing is an extremely important phenomenon. Partly because traditionally dancing was dancing with someone. The with has been taken out of dancing and the headbashing and so on that goes on with heavy metal and the like is dancing against someone. You know, the with-ness
of the dance I think, is something really, we
see it in Scottish reels and things like that
where the whole community is dancing in an orderly way. Recognizing that their
need for law and order and taking pleasure in it. And I find that very near
to a transcendent experience. I feel a kind of narcissism
has crept into the dance through recent forms of dance music. But I mean, that's my old geezer attitude. - Or is it simply to say that the principle itself is sovereign. If one thinks about
the logic, for example, of Dante's "Inferno," which
has ever more degraded forms of knowing and loving. That the mechanism of
the nature, you might say the nature of the soul is the same at the top of paradise
as it is at the bottom of inferno, but it has these infinite gradations of wholeness. And so I don't think we have to say that the mosh pit is equivalent as a work of art to Beethoven or
Palestrina or Janacek. But rather that perhaps what's going on in that is nonetheless a
longing for the pattern and the recognition of
the other, that you say. - Yes, but your original question was how do we coax people back into that. Into a life which is
based on the recognition of the other rather than the
gratification of the self. Because essentially what
we're talking about, I think. But then, today at least. And I would say, teaching
people how to help others. The role of the teacher
is a very dignified one but it is only so if the
teacher actually thinks that he is helping the
pupil to a body of knowledge that he has access to. And that sense of helping other people is a very rare thing
and it's made more rare by the welfare state and
the ready availability of subsidies for a subsidized life without leaning on any
particular person, you know. And I think relations of dependence are actually very positive
if they're accepted on both sides, you know. And I think it's something
that we don't teach. The Boy Scouts movement and all that, they used to teach young
people these things. Teach people how to go out and
help those who needed them. And how to make those little
day-to-day sacrifices. And eventually through the process of imitation and imagination a character grows based on that. And I feel that there
isn't any obstacle to this. It's a very simple form of education. All of us can do it and all
of us who have children do it. I'm sure Jordan does it with his children the same as I with mine. Of course, you know you're
always disappointed. They always go away into their corner with their wretched
little iPhones and so on. But nevertheless, some of it rubs off and you know that in the long run they will be capable,
not just of finding love, but also of offering forgiveness and working for reconciliation. I don't think in the sort
of narcissistic culture which is propagated by the media and by the universities,
that they're being pointed in that direction, that is true. But then it's up to us to point them in another direction. - I think as an academic we talked already about that place where the meaning and the fact are conjoined. And that's the proper
place to lecture from. Because people who lecture constantly make the presumption that they're there to deliver a set of facts,
but there's an infinite set of facts and so at the very least you have to select the facts. And there's a mechanism
that selects the facts. What you wanna do as an
academic is tell your students through direct discourse
and also through action, about something that you've encountered that you've fallen in love with. And to communicate the love
that you have for that. The love for literature. And not to say well, you
should read this book but to say, well here's this book and here's what it can open up for you, and this is how it does it, and this is what you'll gain from it. It's an inestimable gain and
there's some struggle in it but there's something in
it of unbelievable utility. And you have to believe that
in order to communicate it. And then, so, that opens one
of those doors, you know. And maybe some students will step through that and think, well, maybe that sounds like something I need. I'm in this dire situation
and I need something. I need a life raft. I need something to buoy me upward. It's gonna take some effort, obviously, because nothing worthwhile
comes without effort. To communicate that commitment you have to these phenomena that
we already talked about. To beauty, and to truth,
and to literature, and to the classics and the humanities. It isn't enough to say what they are and to transmit them. It's to manifest yourself as a living part of that tradition and
to show yourself thereby as a model for living
out, as much as you can, what that tradition represents. And to show that's so much better than like a short term
pleasure seeking nihilism that they're not even in the
same conceptual universe. And people are far more open to that. They know already, people know, especially when they're hurt. They know that happiness is fleeting and that suffering requires
a sustaining meaning. Everyone who's lived knows that. And so to say, well here's
some bomb for the suffering and it's profound, and deep,
here's what it's meant to me and here's how you can incorporate it into your life. It's like people are
absolutely starving for that. Or dying of thirst for that. - This connects with what you earlier said about the curriculum. That the old way of
teaching the humanities was in that manner, as objects of love. This is what I have loved,
what previous generations have loved too and handed onto me. Here, try it out. And you will love it too. Whereas the post-modern curriculum is a curriculum of hatred. It's directed against
our cultural inheritance. One after another the works are paraded before us, stripped naked, and thrashed. You know, by revealing whatever ideology or power structure is being
concealed within them. And that of course is
not why they were written and it's not how they
should be understood. - It's not why they survived
and are remembered, either. - Exactly. - It's like, this is the best that the best of us could produce. And it's nothing. Well, why should you
bother doing anything then. - [Roger] Well exactly,
and it means that students who go through that curriculum come out with a sense of the
hopelessness of everything and. - And thus are successfully educated by post-modernist standards. - Yes, yeah, yeah, I suppose that's right. But you know there's no reason
why one should accept this. All good things begin in small areas because two or three people, you know, well as Christ said, two or
three are gathered in my name there am I with you. But the same is in all
cultural activities. It's perhaps a friendship. We'll start up a reading group
and out of that reading group there'll be others come in gradually. If it's founded on love of the thing that's being studied and offered. It will always triumph in the long run over this negativity. The problem is, the
negativity is subsidized. It's subsidized by universities who are paid for by governments, who are paid for by taxpayers, and so on. And the answer is to
take away those subsidies and deprive education completely of money and it will be back with us again. That's my view. - I suggested something like
that in public in Canada not so long ago. To cut the budgets of
the universities across the board by 25% and let
them sort themselves out. But the no subsidy idea at least forces those who provide
education to do it purely on it's merits. And the fact that these
counterproductive disciplines, let's say, have been
subsidized for so long has given them a power
that far, far outstrips their credibility and
their attractiveness. - Right. - Now, I wanted to point out, well this chat may be seen by a few people online at some point and draw attention to the fact that we're all wearing poppies which of course is a symbol of respect and memory for an
inheritance of our own past. For the suffering that has given us, or at least protected and given us so much that we hold dear. I'd like to ask you both about memory and the inheritance of the past. And what it means to have a pedagogy. What it means to have a
pedagogy of the transcendent in relation to our past. How do you open those doorways and perhaps if the spirit moves you, to speak about works that you love. That you've been able
to open up to others. - One of the reasons for remembering in the way that we remember the armistice in the First World War. One of the reasons is gratitude. And gratitude is in short
supply in our societies today and it's the greatest gift
that we can offer, in fact, to people who are dead
because what else can we do except to acknowledge
what they have sacrificed? So, I think gratitude is a
fundamental part of memory. There are, of course,
accumulations of guilt and so on, those are being
emphasized all the time in the post-modern curriculum. All the ways in which we are not entitled to our inheritance. But I think in the face
of that we have to insist on the ways that we are
entitled to that inheritance. If people have died for
it, and for our sake, that is a fantastic entitle that we enjoy and we should feel
grateful to them for that. I mean, when it comes
to actual works of art or whatever which have opened the sense of the depth of one's own inheritance that I think, is a very
interesting question. There are so many of them. But just to mention only one. The Bach B Minor Mass to me, that's a door into the whole European
inheritance going back to the crucifixion. There it all is, encapsulated in music. Music celebrating the universal claims of the Roman Catholic Church but written by a protestant. You know, it's offered
as a gift to mankind. And there it is. Though such things so transcend
any minor historical details that one recognizes that is what the past really is, for one. That great depth of inheritance that can't be enumerated but just enjoyed. - Just to follow up
before we turn to Jordan. Roger, at the beginning
you talked about how a great literature, a great
writing is writing in which the reader finds himself, finds herself. Taking Bach's Mass in B minor. You've spoken about this
unfolding of the self that is found in these great works. Or the reflection of the self. I know, or at least I think you've written about the unfolding of the theme in, of that mass in particular, but certainly in other of your writings. The unfolding of the theme in music. Could you say something about the, and I know this is a huge question, but the way in which the
unfolding of the theme in music is an unfolding of the self. - It's a really provocative
way of putting it. It is true that when you listen to a theme in music you're not listening
to a sequence of notes. Something begins in that first note and endures to the final note. And it goes on all the
way through even though there are spells of silence. It's still going on in the silence. So that our ability to hear something as a theme is already a contribution that we make, it comes out of us. So we've identified with that movement. That movement is there in world because it's there in us. But in so many ways all our inner life is interrupted and unfulfilled. And it's full of things that start up and then peter out. And I think that is one of
the fundamental experiences of human beings, that
there's an inner disorder. That things never actually
come to a conclusion. But here, uniquely, movements begin and come to a conclusion. And that conclusion is complete. It's a satisfaction of
the unsaturated nature of the first movement, of
the first beginning theme. And it's an experience,
why do we value that? I think we value it in the same way as we value tragedy. Because it gives completion and closure to things that otherwise
wouldn't ever have them. - And things that are transient as well. Because it does have a
beginning and an end. And the end doesn't invalidate the utility of the entity. - [Roger] That's right. - So in the gratitude, that was exactly the theme that sprung to mind for me as soon as you asked that question. I mean, one of the things that I find profoundly disquieting about the modern radical, what
would you call it, ideology that is so unfortunately
dominant on campuses among young people is that
it's unbelievably ungrateful. And when I walk outside
and there's not a riot and death in the streets,
I'm having a good day. That's my sense of history. It's like, I'm constantly staggered by the fact that so
much works all the time. It's absolutely, I met
this guy awhile back and he'd been in a motorcycle accident. He really got hurt. Man, he was pretty much half destroyed. And he worked as a telephone lineman. He worked with this guy
who had Parkinson's disease who had, was equally destroyed
in a slightly different way. And the two of them
together could climb up a telephone pole and continue their job. And I thought, this unbelievable
infrastructure we have that is just an absolute
bloody ongoing miracle is sustained by people
exactly like that, you know. They're having very difficult lives. In a country like Canada
they go out in the middle of the bloody winter where
you die, it's frigid. And something breaks and they fix it and the lights are on. The lights are on all the time. And I come to somewhere like Europe and to me it's an absolutely
overwhelming experience to see King's Chapel today,
to wander around this city. I'm just staggered that
people produced this and so amazed that we could do it, and so grateful that it exists. We were talking about King's Chapel, the people who started it didn't live to see it's completion. They were driven by this nobility of transcendent vision and they produced these enduring forms
out of the bloody misery of history we've erected
all this spectacular infrastructure that we're
so fortunate to be part of. None of that gratitude is taught and it's partly not taught because people have no sense of the absolute
catastrophe of history. I mean for me the Hobbs, its
like nasty, brutish, and short. The simplest and most
likely social circumstances. Catastrophe punctuated by hell. And to see that not happening
in a sustained manner constantly and to see
things improving around us and to be reliable in that manner. And then not to be grateful for that. It's like, it's an
unbelievable combination of ignorance and willful,
ignorance in gratitude and willful blindness. And it does no one's soul any good. It's so good to walk down the
streets of a beautiful town like this and to be openmouthed
in non-ironic amazement at what's here. And so, and to not instill
that sense in young people for them to understand
that they are standing on the bones of generations of people who suffered to make this possible. Despite all their errors and
have brought this forward. It's like. - Yeah well, Hobbs is a very
salutary lesson actually because he did look into
the abyss and stepped back form it and reported on it. And that, and as did Solzhenitsyn. And we as postwar, baby boomers, haven't had that experience. I had a little glimpse of
it in the old communist days but we only saw the edge of it then. You know, but still the
sense that it is there always beneath your
feet and that the crust is as thin as it can be in certain places. That, I think is something
that young people do need to be taught without making them get gloomy about it. But to recognize that they're lucky. - The last question before we open up for a few questions here. It seems to me that the backward looking that we've talked about. You had a wonderful phrase,
wide eyed, opened mouth and non-ironic amazement,
I think you said, walking around this transcendently beautiful town of Cambridge which houses this august and ancient,
beautiful institution. You mentioned, Jordan,
seeing the King's Chapel earlier today that those who started the work knew they wouldn't
be those who would finish. And those who finished knew that they had inherited a work that
they had not themselves begun. And so I suppose I want to ask. We've talked about the
necessity to turn back with gratitude to the past,
to our inherited past. But I wanna talk also
about the possibility of building and of creation. These chapels and buildings
were built at sometime. You yourself are a composer. Both of you authors of
books that many, many people have found depth and truth in. So I want to ask about the possibilities for renaissance, for
rebuilding, or building anew. New buildings, new forms of community. New forms of architecture,
perhaps new buildings of old forms of architecture. New colleges and universities. New, more healthy and
beautiful forms of courtship. New forms of flourishing arts and music. It seems to me so important
that we not lose sight of the fact that precisely
the abiding truth of the transcendent in us gives us hope to answer that call. - Yeah, it must be the
case that when describing our cultural inheritance
we are not just describing something that's gone. We must be describing something of which we are still a part. Which has to change as we are changing to accommodate us. All this was said by Eliot in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." You know, that artist
must be constantly trying to say that new thing that he
came into the world to say. But he can only say it
if he adapts his style to the inheritance of the tradition. Thereby transforming the tradition
and transforming himself. And we all, there's no
formula for doing this because a formula is precisely what destroys the creative act. But we have to assume
that new things will come and they will come through, as
they always did in the past, through fasting and prayer, you know. And an occasional glass
of wine, in my case. (audience laughing) - Jordan? - Well, we could concentrate, I suppose on building the future instead
of criticizing the past. I mean, it's necessary to
decompose to reconstruct. Those acts can't be separated
but the decomposition is the prerequisite
for the reconstruction. You know, what I've been
recommending to people is that they start on whatever
scale they can start on with whatever's in front of them. Because they have more in
front of them than they think. These circumscribed areas
that these small places that people can call their own
even if it's only their room. You can start to do something
creative and beautiful there. I mean, I've suggested to people that they start by putting
their room in order. And that implies a purpose. It's like, well, your room
is somewhere that you exist. It's a place that surrounds you, that tells you how to be. Put it in order so at least
it isn't screaming chaos at you in a soul-destroying manner. Make it pristine and orderly and in a fashion that
suits what your aiming at. So have an aim. And then, this is perhaps
a chapter in my next book. Well, maybe you start by
putting your room in order and then you make it beautiful. And then you learn how to
make something beautiful. And to make something beautiful is to make it worthwhile and to participate in that transcendence. Maybe you need one- - [Roger] Make it worthwhile for others. - Certainly, and for your future self which is also others. You know, this idea
that people are fed even of self-gratification, let's say, as an antidote to nihilism. Well, take your pleasure in the moment. It doesn't even work for you because you're stuck with you tomorrow and you next week. So, even to treat yourself properly is to treat yourself as a
part of an ongoing community. But I would say, start
by, you start in the world if you have some wisdom and some humility. By taking the potential that
lies dormant in front of you and interacting with it
in the logos-like manner with truth and with love. And by transforming that potential into whatever you can create
out of it that's good. And even if it's, it won't
be small if you do that. You can transform your whole household by transforming your room. You can transform your whole neighborhood by transforming your house. Like these things spread
very, very rapidly. And that is right there
in front of you, you know. And people think they're impoverished now that they don't have any opportunity and the opportunity is hidden from them by their unwillingness to take the steps that are necessary to put what they could put in
front of them in order and to produce the beauty instead of the ugliness where they could do that. And I don't there is anything
more powerful than that. That works. I've had thousands of people
tell me that it works. You know, personally. And they come and talk to me
everyday now on the street and say, my life was in terrible disorder. I had no vision. I wasn't abiding by the truth. My relationships were fragmented. I've decided to make something of myself. Whatever that might be. I've decided to adopt more responsibility and to tell the truth. And things are incomparably better. And so that's there for everyone to take. And regardless of your circumstances. I know that some people have what appear to be larger opportunities
and more privilege in front of them, but that also makes their commensurate moral
responsibility larger. So there's a certain balancing that's a natural consequence of that, so. - Now recognizing the
nature of the finite. There's a train one of us needs to catch. We're gonna have to draw
this conversation to a close, but not before we've all had a chance to thank both of you for everything you do to fan the flames of the transcendent. For your readers, for your
listeners, for all of us. Thank you very much, both of you. (audience applauding)
