Salman Rushdie Full Interview. ON TRUTH, BEAUTY, THE ETHICS INSTINCT UNIVERSAL HUMANITY AND MORE

Albert Einstein once said that all religions Arts and Sciences are branches of the same tree as today's technology and global risks race ahead of our understanding and stretch the boundaries of humanity we face unprecedented ethical conundrums I believe that reaching beyond the sciences and religion to that third branch the Arts offers essential insight into these challenges I call ethical decision making on the borders of humanity s-six on the edge we all Teeter on the edge how do we define a life well lived in a partly virtual world where do we look for moral guidelines and truth when curated selves befriend each other through algorithms how do we make conscionable decisions in the uncharted territory of civilian space travel designer genetics and artificial intelligence and what about the problems that are still on the ethical edge which shouldn't be such as inequality or racism please join me in conversation with some of the world's leading artists and arts world pioneers as we explore some of today's most challenging ethical questions through the lens of the visual and performing arts architecture and literature [Music] you thank you so much for doing this it's really an honor to meet you in an honor to have the occasion to speak to you thank you supposed to be here before we get into some of the more ethics focused questions I'd like to look a little bit at how you've managed to achieve this extraordinary body of work and specifically how do you decide what you're going to write about you know it decides more than I do I mean what happens to me is it but I well I mean when I don't have a book to write in a way I work just as hard as what I do have a book to write I'm just I'm just some kicking stuff around you know and and most days I dislike what I wrote the previous day but what happens gradually is that something starts ticking in my head and then I have to ask myself why that is why am i why am I thinking about that and that's usually what turns into turns into a project and is that something in your head something external usually or something no it could be both it could be but it could be either or both and and I think what tends to happen in the end with these books is that they become they somehow exist on a kind of intersection point between something private that's something public something that comes from inside and something that is a response to what's happening outside those crossroads you know are interesting places and how do you make it so clear that everybody's stories intersect with everybody else's stories and I'm particularly fascinated by this in a social media world where the decisions we make and how ethical or not so ethical they are and being magnified by social media but in your works it's so clear that everybody sort of affects everybody else yeah I mean I just think that's the world we live in you know and I think it didn't used to be the case I mean if you if you look at novels from what's the sort of Golden Age of the novel limits or 18th 19th centuries they don't feel the need to suggest that because people's worlds were sealed off the end of the world you know Jane Austen's character you know release Madonna you know Madame Bovary is in a little world you know and that little world completely explains them you know and they don't have to look beyond but now we don't look at those bubbles you're doing all our all our little boxes collide with everybody else's little boxes so the question is how do you represent that and that's something I've been interested in for a long time do you think that to bring that to 2017 are you also interested in sort of the frontiers of humanity and sort of man-machine man-animal I wish I had a bit more science that I do I I'm interested in the whole kind of AI field and I mean I there's a part of my life which I was a big science-fiction freak and so there are a lot of science fiction foretold all of this and that so in a way if you if you grew up reading you know Arthur Clarke and and Ray Bradbury and people like that but you kind of you're ahead of the curve where you know because you know as we know Isaac Asimov developed the laws of robotics before they were robots and the problem now is if you're reaching the point which we seem to be reaching where we're a robot or an artificial intelligence might have an ethical sense would that interrupt or would that contradict the famous first law of robotics which is that a robot Carter can't harm a human being no but if if a robot were to ethically decide that a human being was evil would that override the first law of it this is the kind of area with reaching them also we're looking at sort of who decides so who's behind the algorithms that are telling you that you have a good fashion sense or that are driving your cars and at the moment the experts and I'm no expert in AI but the experts tell me that for example driverless cars don't have any judgment yeah so for the moment we're still dependent on human judgment even if it's being executed or operationalize through a machine it would take a lot to get me into a driverless car I think a grizzly would get a big leap of faith yeah I'd prefer to trust the worst driver I know so there is something about that feeling that I say to my students that or ethical decision-making tethers us to our humanity and there is something about that sort of feeling like you can't communicate with a machine we can't convince them that whatever might be its view of the right or wrong it hasn't quite taken into account no I don't think so I mean I do think that ethics is the hardest thing when you are talking about artificial intelligence how do you give a machine a moral sense and if you give it a moral sense for what are its morals well and also who has the capacity to give machines moral sense are we basically giving to society rather are certain individuals who have the technological or the scientific prowess now making all the decisions first yeah I guess one way you do it is just poor philosophy into the Machine and then see this you see what sense the machine makes of it I mean that's what that's what we do you know we pour ideas into ourselves and then we decide which ones well I'm going to be waiting for that book until then could we speak for a moment about fantasy yes it's really extraordinary what you do with fantasy throughout most of your books why fantasy is that something because I read that you grew up reading the Arabian Nights is that in part of who you are or is that to make a point no I mean it I think it starts in childhood in India because what you get given there's a kind of literary gift or the the so-called Wonder tales of these generator which the Thousand and One Nights is just one of them I mean in India there's lots of others as animal fables of the punch Tantra there's Kashmiri text which was originally in Sanskrit which is actually longer than the Thousand and One Nights and is more stories like that which is which is called the ocean of the streams of story and and then there are those the classic great mythologies of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and so on so you grow up with all this stuff and for me that was the first grounding you know and then as I say I became interested in science fiction and the literature of what I think is better now called speculative fiction the literature of imagining what might be yeah and then I got very interested in the kind of tradition of Western literature which crops up in every language now in that which is it the tradition of non-naturalistic fiction whether it's you know bull Gauchos and Gogol and Russian the paternal calf guard winter grass or the South Americans or you know etc so I became interested in that that all those things some in my head started talking to each other and that's where it came from I guess so just before we broaden the lens a little led to ethics you mentioned going to grass I read an interview where he said Germany I just kind of can't get it out of myself yeah and it's kind of always there and the politics of Germany do you feel that way I mean India Pakistan did you feel well I spent now a lot of my life not there and and my more recent books have not really been being set there but what I've completely failed to do up to now is is to write a novel which doesn't have an Indian Indian characters at the very center of them whether they're in New York or in Delhi or Bombay doesn't matter but I don't seem to be able to have a novel without Indian characters of it it has completely failed to do that more generally Einstein talks about religion the arts and science how do you think artists influence the ethics of their day or the ethics of subsequent generations whether it's literature or music or you know other performing art or visual arts well it's very difficult to say in terms of a direct effect you know because doesn't often what doesn't have a direct effect has an indirect effect read this as a has an effect on individual readers and collectively and you don't know what those effects are going to be and I guess I suppose the popular art something like popular music has an enormous impact on the way people think you know that the way the way in which fans of rock stars pop stars or rap stars you know with the way in which they respond to that even to the lifestyles of those characters I think has an effect on on social life certainly the way they respond to lyrics I mean some of the lyrics today of some of the rappers for example talking about very current ethical issues about gender identity or about you know I don't feel I'm enough if I don't have the right car and I'm not drinking the right beer and I'm not in the right place with the right girl and all this kind of thing yeah I mean I've got this worried about the way in which wrapped hip hop words are the kind of boastful blingy roots you know where the whole point was how much money you had and what followed for money you know I mean in the early days rattle were more socially conscious and I think that maybe a little bit of a return to that and I think that's not a bad thing well and some of the lyrics are showing that problem up if the rapper's themselves are sort of stuck from top to bottom and golden yeah driving Maserati success yeah but I think there is a strain of hip hop which is which is less boastful you know and I think that's any boastfulness is is a curse at the times you know that and we have to somehow I mean we have it in the white house so we have to somehow find a way to get beyond this chest-beating stuff we're going to come back to the white house in a minute but just on this topic of artists I read in an interview you said that you don't try to ascribe meaning you don't try to tell the reader yeah I don't like as a reader I don't like books that preach at me okay I don't like I don't like books that kind of way wag a finger at me and say this is what you should think I think I'll be the judge of that you know and I mean what I think is I don't like didacticism in fiction you know what I think the James Joyce had this this term he said that they should be static not dynamic and and I what he meant by that is that it shouldn't tell you things it should just be and I think that's not a bad guideline what you try and do it is to create a world an imaginative world for your reader to inhabit you know and then in that world they will face various kinds of challenges and choices and do like this or what do you think of that piece of behavior and you know you make up your own mind and you come you come out of the book the other end hopefully having had a good time in that world but you know the job is to create the world not to answer the questions I think this is really an important point about didacticism generally about the way ethics is perceived I think about it as problem-solving not judgment and not finger-pointing and I think we're in a lot of trouble because people shy away from ethics and saying I don't don't tell me what to do yes don't blame me but in your works we're constantly confronting choices and living them from different perspectives from different characters yeah I think that's what that's what that's what the novel can do it does it really well because it makes you enter the subjective reality of other people and the human reality yeah and often you know characters that you love are behaving in ways which are reprehensible you know and you have to I mean like I mentioned that I bother I mean there's a woman in provincial France bored with her life deciding to have an affair and the we're on her side really all the way through the book we're on her side but what she's doing is cheating on her husband so we have to work out what we think about that well and that's humanity yeah yeah and we all face those problems in our own lives and that's where you also get to this question of determining that someone is a good person quote/unquote for lock stock and barrel versus they made this decision well or this decision a little less well yes I mean anybody I'd certainly in a novel anybody who's a good person is unbearable and I mean actually a bad person is less unbearable well let's see if you still think that's true if we could come back to the white house for a minute oh yes via one question about truth in your own works truth is obviously a big theme today you've said a lot of the novel can be a way of exposing the truth even if it's fiction and sometimes fiction exposes the truth better than nonfiction or even in the case of something like her own in the case of a political leader who doesn't seem to have any credibility trying to speak the truth what is your take on the importance today a fiction given the crisis state of truth in our world today is fiction even more important in that regard it's I take a very very problematic time for anybody writing anything really because it's unprecedented I think in this country for there to be an attack on in a way on the nature of reality itself you know that let's say that the things which all of us accepted we thought as so you know are now being questioned people in the Environmental Protection Agency who don't believe in climate change right and the idea of there being scientific fact the idea of there being evidence based reality is under a great deal of attack and experts have no credibility anymore yes the more you know the more suspect you are so you become an elite and of course there's something really ridiculous about this government and billionaires referring to scholars and journalists as elites when there's really never be in a government in this country in which more personal wealth has been concentrated into them everywhere the Treasury secretary the education secretary everywhere millionaires everywhere but we are the elites they're the people who have the who know about what ordinary life is like you know it asked Betsy DeVos what a what a liter of milk costs or the pints of milk cost no like we had a question on problem in France yes yeah you know so the world is upside down and I think there's a lot of questions that are in novelist that I know have been wrestling with which is in a world where we're surrounded on an almost daily basis my colossal lies so what are we where do we get off making up things that aren't true so and I mean it's a problem yeah and I think that you can only begin to get towards the answer my understanding that there is a difference between fiction and lies so for a start literature fiction tells you that it's made-up it honest about what it is yes it doesn't claim to be fact you know it says this is a different thing and through this different thing which is not factual we can understand truths about human human nature and about that about the kind of world we live in but we're not pretending that these are real people and that these things actually happen you know so just the upfront nurse of it is different whereas you know in the public sphere right now we have lies trying to insist that they are in fact true that that's a bigger that's a bigger moral problem that's a bigger moral problem but we also seem to have a complete disrespect for the truth as if it has no value so it's not even a question of we're pretending something's true is that whether something's true or not doesn't seem to have any importance unfortunately that's not just a problem coming out of the administration it's a larger problem in the culture you know because one of the things one of the side effects of the of the engine where all kinds of garbage is out there all the time existing at the same level of reality as as hard information it becomes very different I think for many people to to work that out what is what is garbage and what is truth well particularly when the ranking process is how many likes how many where is it on the Google hierarchy it's not a question of what's the quality ya know that there are some sites which which know about click mate you know and which therefore to get more clicks but doesn't mean that they are more truthful so I think there is a real problem in the culture which which this administration is is able to exploit that there is a real puzzlement confusion about about the nature of reality so what's the best defense against post truth or as you once said recently sort of the state armed and at war with the Fourth Estate well I think we just have to fight the fight you know and I one of the things I think is encouraging is the way in which quite large numbers of people are flocking back towards the so-called fake use towards the failed New York Times you know they are kind of getting a voice dinner yes I mean the circulation of The Times has gone up dramatically since the inauguration and you know Vanity Fair magazine is giving such a boost every time it's attacked by presidential tweet that they now use the presidential tweets in their advertising just not now that it away one of the few good things to arrives from the situation is that there seems to be a new energy in the world of news media you know people seem to be really charged up you know and that's good all of us I think just have to keep speaking you know and try it we have to we have to win this argument we have to persuade America that there are things which are so and there are other things we can also get around that but it's the truth is not simply what the president says it is and that the institutions that make this country as he says great yes depend on trees depend on to that he doesn't seem to understand which institutions those are that's to say you have a an administration which is passionate about the Second Amendment but appears to be less passionate about the first a First Amendment and one suspect said before we are done they might have to start taking the Fifth Amendment that's that's also likely to happen if you were to look at a project for a new book hypothetically and you would say I want to with or without fantasy I want spotlight a particular truth or a few truths that really need to be spotlighted in today's world what would those be well you know I mean any democracy relies on two things to begin with relies on freedom of expression and the rule of law I mean that but you know if you don't have those things you don't have a free society and right now we hear noises suggesting that they're thinking of tampering with the First Amendment and we see regular attacks on the law courts and if I was immigration balance yeah and I just saw the nature of judges you know Hawaiian judge described a city on a little island somewhere and you know neglecting to mention or that fertilizer business right so you know if you have a concerted attack both on the legal system and on the non free expression then that's how you destroy a democracy you know and that's what we have to focus on now I mean my area because I'm you know I'm not a lawyer I actually think I'm very grateful for the way in which the courts have been I think quite courageous have been holding the line you know I mean if we're supposed to live with these checks and balances you know that the legislature has been craven and the judiciary has been brave so without them we would be a lot more trouble so the judiciary has been quite brave and in the UK as well and before we get out of politics could you say order to both about brixon and also about the extreme and the populism that we're seeing left and will and right well brexit just overnight I mean I'm of the room camp which believes that this has been a historical mistake and I think just they're very stupid aspects to it but I think it's it's um David Cameron really oh then why why this referendum was called and wife was then conceded that a simple majority would carry the day and if you're changing the nature of the state you make you gigantic constitutional change to make a simple majority is not how people do it in this country if you want to make an amendment to the Constitution you need a two-thirds majority of both houses and so it's difficult to do it it's right but it should be difficult to do oddly I think the British currently are in a state of denial they don't see what's going to happen you know I have this image of English is mainly England that but like a family having a picnic on a railway line okay except say this is a nice place for picnics you know what's the problem well why is everybody so worried I don't hear a trick what I don't know Tmax won't get elected and have him rush to Germany as yours rip is a head of state to try to every important Europe is looking boys'll distance oh it's just Alves but they don't know what's going to hit them and how badly their country will be damaged you know and it's horrifying to watch it and the extremes that we've been seeing the extreme populist are left and right what are you some of it has to do with what in Europe a lot of it has to do with the austerity regime which have which have put a lot of people into situations of great hardship and and here even though in the eight years of the Obama administration there was a kind of recovery economic recovery that recovery didn't spread equally across the country and there are large parts of the country in which people were in real hardship and the problem with real hardship is it allows the strongman argument to seem plausible you know and and that's what happened here and that's what fortunately did not quite happen in France I'm hoping that if you look at what's happened in Europe first in Austria then and now in France that there is a maybe a turning of the tide against this this this populism but it will require Western democracies which includes the United States to understand that they've got to do something about the conditions which allowed this morality factor and I think one of the most encouraging signs is that after the victory of McCoy in France you heard European Union figures saying now we have to help him which means that actually they have to change the austerity programs etc you know you can't just hope that every five years the French will make the right decision right and there's no question that Europe has is dysfunctional aspect brexit just doesn't happen to be the solution no no no I mean I think there is a real need for rethinking about how how these countries are wrong you know and there were people very unhappy very badly off and unfortunately those people many of whom voted for Trump other people who are going to be most damaged by his policies people who will lose health care the people who need it most and the idea that somehow the coal industry is going to return is it's just one of the stupidities of this thing that that people swallowed it actually these jobs many of these jobs were not lost - you know Mexico in Austria - wrote to robots I know they were lost in to automation and they're not coming back you have a president who makes his own clothes in China but but who tells us that everything has to be made in America unless he's making it so there's a great deal of hypocrisy and I wonder how long it will take for people to understand how badly they've been fooled there's hypocrisy and there's also a more fundamental credibility problem with someone who never tells the truth and I would struck at the end of the hundred days that many of the journalists the the proper mainstream media they were counting the life yes do you know the tally on his hundred days wasn't what are his achievement the problem with the bombardment of lies it's it becomes very difficult to keep up it's a some of them go by default because not all of them could be equally investigating - they do - many of them are video delivered this world means that there's a group of people which what must hope will be a dwindling group of people which just believe him whatever he says and distrust anyone who criticizes him whatever reason ma they have it's not in the end reality bites because in the end there actually is a thing called reality there actually is diminishing healthcare benefits there will be you know the states like cancers which tried to introduce the sort of tax cuts and so on which are now being proposed on a national basis are in dreadful trouble they're in dreadful trouble the people there are suffering terribly and they realize that this system isn't working you know so at some point what hopes people will understand that there is such a thing as reality and they've been calmed hopefully I mean there are two ways this can go either people stand up to it or as you say the onslaught of lies become so normalized that it starts not to bother people well that's the thing that lessens this is what you know those of us living in the so-called urban elites you know have to do we have to keep fighting this fight and academic institutions as well yeah exactly yeah you know there is a world which believes in truth and science and evidence and ethics and reality and and that what I mean I was giving a lecture in in Florida few weeks ago to very largely Trump audience a bit almost entirely and I know you can ask questions I was asked a question about climate change where well I had said something about how almost all the world scientists agree on the on the science you know and the question I said well when you said that that's not true and I said no I mean actually in is actually it's terrorism and he said no stuff and so I said look so we can't just go what go yes it is no it isn't because that's stupid I said but let me put it this way if you believe the world is flat he doesn't make the will flat you know the world doesn't need you to believe that it's round in order to be roughly value people if there is this other thing called science knowledge and evidence go have a look at that so well first I'd like to look at another theme that comes up in your books but that is also very much in the news and that is migration and I've read comments that you've made over the years about how when you yourself have gone from place to place you've sort of kept all the places with you and home is kind of where you are but all of those places are part of you is kind of home and who you are and your identity yes if I understood you correctly and I'm wondering how that might comfort if there is such a word the tremendous tragedy of the migration today Syrian refugees even the migration internally in China and many many other part of the world is changed I mean the point is that that because refugees are not the same thing as migrant and Refugee czar running away from something migrants usually are running towards right I think one of the things that I have felt long for the refugee crisis is that we live in a time which is in a way defined by migration in that this is the century let's say in which more people have moved across the world that in the previous complete history of the human race you know because it's first of all becomes possible you know we have we have airplanes and ships and so on and and then sometimes these are economic migrants and sometimes they're refugees but the fact is we live in a world in which the human race has begun to move much more than it ever did you know that old idea of roots and of living in the place where you were born is no longer the nature of our cities I mean this look at this city you know New York City I mean most people living in this city were not born here the large majority and there is a combination of people coming to New York and running away from something else yeah so you know the the nature of modern certainly urban reality is that migration isn't this inescapable fact that's how that's how these cities would be made if you're in Los Angeles looking at the years the enormous Hispanic population a really quite large Asian population Korean and Chinese so that's what these cities are like and actually everywhere everywhere cities are like that so that's the new reality it seems to me that that to try and imagine a world in which that's not so it's where you could imagine it but ain't going to happen the world is not going to de globo lies so the question is how can we increase the amount of social justice in a globalized world and that is behind a lot of the populism that you were mentioning you know I mean I as a migrant from India to England I was a migrant from England to the United States and I spent my life being a migrant so obviously I'm a little bit biased I just really find I found that so moving if I can use that word and I was thinking to myself how can we take that sort of that idea that you take all of yourself with you and all of your connections to different places in your case but it's not just that it's also you face constant choices you face choices about what exactly do you keep with you it what do you discard about the world you came from and and what do you absorb from the world you come to and what do you resist in that world you know and I think migrant communities all have to ask themselves those really very profound questions which are about the nature of their own salford oh do you in the way that some migrant families insist that their children speak the language of the country they've come to you know and therefore those children lose mother time and other people insist on maintaining but sometimes that's one decision that you have to make how you know many many people in England for example many of the South Asian migrants come from very conservative communities and and there is a tension between parents and children about the degree of liberalism in the behavior allowed to young people there are very big issues that have to be faced at arguing about inside migrant communities and then between the migrant communities and the so-called host communities and so so it ain't easy but I think on the whole historically it has been enriching two countries to have new blood you know the literature of this country would not be what it is where it not for migrants that the way the way in which means it wouldn't be exactly the way in which you know Eastern European Jewish migration you know created one whole strand of American literature the way in which Italian migration created a whole strand of American literature and the way now you know in America you have people from everywhere you know you have are going to jump a Lahiri from South Asia you have male from Vietnam you have you know deals from the Dominican Republic they're your writers from everywhere being American writers you know I think you Amanda and a chair from Nigeria you know being seeing themselves as American writers and and enormous Lee enriching American literature as a result you know when I moved to New York 20 years ago there weren't any decent Indian vessels in Manhattan now that's going long so so all of this is good and I think it's enriches well I think that's certainly an important perspective with which to look at the refugees yeah II don't have a choice exactly about the refugees you know clearly this is to do with social generosity you know it's to do with with how open how we're going to open our arms or not what are we willing to put up barriers and clearly there also has to be a political solution of the other end because there can't be an endless refugee flow you know you can't have the entire Middle East ending up in Western Europe in North America so so there needs to be a solution to the problems which make people run you know nobody wants to run leave their home and run their well there are practical problems and then there it seems to be there a couple of other strands and I'm wondering your view I mean first of all we discussed earlier the today's New York Times you know a Syrian crematorium talking about killing where have we seen that before why how can the world stand by and watch that we just heard Bill Clinton it seems to me say Rwanda never again you know Nazi Germany isn't that far behind us how can we stand by and see that on the front page of the New York Times there's that aspect of it and then for me and this is a personal view there's there's the aspect of I'm not special there's no reason why I should be born in the u.s. in a democratic society and have the privilege of living in London any more than these poor people who are you know victims of the current tragedy in Syria well look there's all kinds of motivations to reject refugees and none of them are Noble one of them is I don't want you to have what I've got so yes we live in the rich part of the world why does that mean that you can cover now some of it so there's also just straightforward racism let's just old-fashioned racism and and and I think anybody who's watched the United States in the last couple of years knows how much of that racism has been unleashed of late I think it was unleashed by a black president you know I think there was a whole strand of America that could not stand it but a black man was in the White House and I think a lot of this comes from that so there's different there's racism there's the kind of haves and have-nots problem and then because of events in the world in the last couple of decades there's the terrorism fear which is easily stoked you know so suddenly if you have a brown skin you're a potential suicide bomber you know and I know a lot of people with brown skins my whole family has them and and so I'm not of that opinion you know many of us who don't have brown skin or not of that opinion either because exactly you know these are these are the motivations and they're all ungenerous whereas when you cross the border into into calendar you see another spirit that work and that actually seems to be working pretty well you know in Canada hasn't turned into the victim of mass terrorism by these poor refugee children you know it's it's actually seems like a more decent place more welcoming yeah I mean which better the better nature of human beings though is prioritized over the worst nature silver pigs the nature and also I wonder what you think about the values because one of the big reactions for example academic institution leaders the president of Harvard Dean of Columbia Law School many of the reactions to the immigration ban to president Trump's proposal were this doesn't represent our values of institutions you know and they sort of went on to explain what those values were and how they were going to make sure that they were planting those values stakes in the ground where where do you get your values where you at your TrueNorth is it from some of the stories you were reading is it from religion family I don't know that's a difficult question that because they evolved over a lifetime is what happens you know they're not you don't just get them in a little packet I mean when I was much younger I grew up in a very secular but also quite have conservative Indian family affluent conservative not religious Indian family and when I was at high schools on I was quite conservative politically you know and one of the big for me one of the Great Awakening moments was the protests against the war in Vietnam no and I mean even though I was in England and England was not sending soldiers tip to their pound that the British government was supporting the American position so there were big demonstrations in England as well and that was I suddenly began to it woke me up I began to see the world differently and then and these were the 60s also you know which they had their impact to you know I mean I was not immune to to both the foolishness of the 60s you know the sex drugs and rock and roll but but also the good things about the 60s like the civil rights movement to the feminist movements and you know so on and so I think you know I learned as a young person in a way to move away from the much more conservative ideas into which I had been born and into a more progressive kind of frame of mind and then it you know I just got older and it kind of hopefully learned a bit more you know one of the things you often hear from from religious people is that if you're not religious you can't have a moral sense because if you don't have you know an ultimate arbiter if you don't have somebody laying down right and wrong good and evil Commandments you know then how can you have a moral sense because you have no framework for it you know and actually I won't always thought would I get it upside down but that in a way religion is one of the early ways in which human beings tried to codify ideas of good and evil but they were interested in codifying them that maybe there is somewhere in the program so somewhere in the DNA there's a desire for ethics there's a desire for us to have you know that's say like there's an ethics instinct in the way this is you know in the way that Steven Pinker talks about a language instinct you know how do we learn language because we have an instinct for learning language maybe there's an ethics instinct that we have a desire to know good a good and bad we have a desire to know right action wrong action I mean it's how we bring up children but an organizing force yes exactly I think the problem with that argument I do say I think this probably is so that you know from the very earlier stage you know children need to know what is good and bad they need to know what is right and wrong and one of the things you look at your parents for is to put down those rights like yeah and and you want the framework you know you want kids push against the borders but they want to know where the borders are you know so that suggests to me that there is a desire for an ethical framework but the problem is that the DNA appears not to tell us what the ethical framework should be it doesn't say we don't we're not hardwired with with ideas of what is good and what is bad but only that there should be a description so as well as I put that that there should be sort of an ethics instinct together with your earlier comment that your values sort of you they evolved over time it leads me to one of those remarkable things I read that you had said which is basically that life teaches you who you are yeah and it's something that you know so your values are evolving over time and you're learning how this instinct works in the real world but you also learn the things that don't evolve you also learn that there are things which are immutable truths you know and I've been telling the truth is one of those things one of the biggest problems I think for us right now is that the idea of universal truth is something which has been seriously under attack not just a discovery around the world the ideas which were embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is that there are things which are the rights of all human beings by virtue must be given beings you know that applies everywhere in every country and every culture was something which almost every country of the United Nations signed up to at the time of the Universal Declaration now that has splintered and you hear from all over the world that what we say are universal rights you know China or Malaysia or Indonesia or the Philippines or Russia would say that we're being culturally imperialist that we're imposing a problem we've had hundreds of years to develop democracy and rule of law Pakistan needs more time all of our is all this is all this is always used by authoritarians to justify their authoritarianism they can leapfrog and learn from ya I mean it just always is you know because in fact every time human beings anywhere in the world have the choice between choosing liberty or authoritarianism they will no excuse everything always that suggests that there is something that human beings prefer you know which they're often not allowed to have by the circumstances of their lives of their societies but there are things they want you know when when the Arab Spring happened it succeed but you could see in the aspirations of those young people in Tahrir Square in Cairo what do they want they wanted lives like young people had elsewhere in the world they wanted to have a job they wanted to have ordinary lives and with with a larger degree of personal liberty than they were allowed this is what people want people want the same things everywhere and so that suggests to me that there is such a thing as a universal principle you know and that and actually one of the things you absolutely know as a novelist is that because human nature is the constant so that's to say that's why millions of people can relate to the various ethical conundrums and moral choices that your characters are make it which is why you wherever you come from in the world you can read a book about people from a remote part of the world and you understand it because human beings are human beings you know if you live if I read you know the tale of genji you know every eye I know exactly what's going on no when I first read when I first paired Russian literature when I first read Latin American literature I had never been to Russia or Latin America when I first read American literature I never been to the United States you know and yet literature opens those doors because it trusts he will it trusts the human scale for the human being in the middle and we're all the same but in a sense you need the specific context whether you're reading kin drummer and tales of Genji or whatever it is you need the human context and they even the political context you're India or Pakistan oh yes so do you understand a human scale yes yes you can't be you can't be vague about that you have to be precise and actually in some ways the more precise you become the most specific you become in a strange way the more you know I am exactly known and but the point is that human beings are we understand human beings and then we understand the situation they're in because we can't imagine ourselves in that situation because that's what literature does it allows you to be that person in that place and so I think if you if you're a novelist that you have to believe in universal values because one of the things we know from the writing and reading of novels is that human nature is that universal thing and so for example in the matter of free expression we are the only creature on earth the tell stories that we have where this very weird creature that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is we we tell each other true stories your family stories communities have stories of the community nation and I say religion is stories yeah nations have national stories and of course religion is one of the grand narratives as well you know we all tell each other stories to try and understand who we are and so storytelling is not just the province of writers it's we all do it everybody does it you know and it's in our nature so to attack our freedom to do that is not just a First Amendment issue it's a First Amendment issue but it's not just that it's actually something more profound it's an existential problem you're attacking they are a nature as human beings and back to your point about ethical instinct the way I see decision-making or they how well are not so well we integrate ethics into our decision-making drives our stories yes and in a social media world it drives the stories of many people whose lives we touch whom we may never meet absolutely and I think one of the most alarming things about about the modern world is how much of the leadership of that world has no interest in ethics at all at all at all zero the interest is power for stuff you know and that's true in very large waves of the world and why do you think that is well because I mean you have to read Machiavelli it's not that you we live in a bit of in a world in which power has succeeded in supplanting the ethical principles you know I mean I mean in Europe after World War Two there was this enormous desire that the sort of never again desire you know and which is what led to things like the creation of the European Union is what and it's what led to generations and generations of um what would we would now call progressive government that even the conservative governments were progressive you know believed in I mean in England the welfare state which was brought into being immediately after World War Two believed that it was the duty of the state to ensure the health of the citizens the education of the citizens and the housing of the citizens so there was a large program of public housing a large program of public health you know and this was not controversial between the parties you know that even when there was a Conservative government they would all guarantee the National Health Service that ended with Margaret Thatcher and and now we don't live in that world in which there's a consensus about what is good and when there isn't a consensus about what is good it allows unscrupulous people to - to get inside it also makes more complicated this this sort of effort we talked about earlier that some people need to stand up and say the truth matters and there is such thing as things that are so in things that are not so because there isn't this consensus about what is true and what isn't you've lost the reference point it's very odd because you know one of the things it's true in literature I didn't and in society that in order to that between the writer and the reader that there needs to be some kind of consensus about what reality is okay so so the reader can see when the writer is playing by those rules and can see when the writer is not playing by those rules and then has to decide whether that's interesting or not interesting but you have to have that consensus you know between the writer and the reader about what is the case right one of the roles in the world yeah and when in literature or in the world we lose that consensus about what is the case and all you have is competing versions no that's a that's a sort of unhealthy situation and I mean we that's true of the world you know not just America if you one way of describing the Middle East is to say that there are competing narratives you know fighting for a very small piece of mind there's a Palestinian narrative and an Israeli narrative but they are in a way incompatible so you have you have two descriptions of the world which which almost can't be reconciled and what's the result of that result is war you know so so when you have competing narratives that can't be reconciled you're in a very unstable world and that's where we are and part of that instability I mean in listening to you seems to be that there are no common reference point there may be common humanity so it may be that the Israelis and the Palestinians could read your book and find common humanity but their reference point and certainly once we once we sort of you know set the truth adrift and we really don't have reference no I mean it's very difficult whether the truth becomes just what you what you believe what you know beliefs truths are not the same thing well and actually many other phenomenon society are colluding with this problem of post truth for example identity we're now in a society and I say this very respectfully where identity isn't male/female or in transition between the two it's a spectrum yeah I have a big problem with identity politics yeah and until it becomes I'm telling you what my truth is yeah you know I'm not I mean look this is your talk about gender identity and yes that's that's become very as you say it's become a broad spectrum and you can be one of seventeen things on that spectrum when that's that has its own difficulties you know but but leaving aside gender identity identity politics as we used around the world to divide people you know what's happening in India right now with this very having brutalist Hindu nationalist government is that is that it's beginning to redefine the nation not as the secular nation of their new and godly but as a Hindu religious state and therefore the identity of minorities of which the largest minority of course is Muslim minority it is being called inauthentic so if authenticity resides in being majoritarian you know then you're making the reality of very average like 15 percent of India is not Hindu 15 percent of 1.3 billion people is a lot of people it's a lot of people then what happens when other nations or other cultures look at that as a model and saying if India you know parliamentary democracy a very powerful nation with a lot of people do that well maybe that's the way we should be interpreting religion so this is the phenomenon of identity politics and I mean even leaving aside the question of gender identity just the question of communalist politics you know has become more and more powerful and that is something like marine lepen you know as it is basically pushing an idea of French identity which is at odds with French reality but but which has some kind of I guess nostalgic appeal full of past that never existed I mean when the President of the United States talks about making America great again you would ask when was that when was it that it was great was it when there were slaves was that person exactly where is that moment of greatness how are you defining great how are you defining greatness because you know you go back really relatively short periods of time you have enormous and justices in the structure of this country when was this Golden Age you know the point about the idea of the Golden Age which is what this is is that it's a fiction you know whatever countries look back to a golden age it wasn't there as you said earlier it's not an honest fiction it's not you as a writer saying this is fiction no no it's a dishonest asana fiction there's all this pressure yeah nobody would actually like to go back to the 18th century trust me but I think to anybody who thinks that was when America was great your Declaration of Independence all that I have just one word to say that is dentistry if you think you'd be happier the 18th century waking imagine yourself in a dentist's wait till you've got a toothache wait wait at that point you will wish you were not in the 18th century well I want to respect your time but I'm too more question to come back to the art who do you think and it doesn't have to be a literature but it can be who do you think are the greatest artists in terms of getting people to recognize this common humanity to which you referred and also to think about this ethics instinct or or at the very least of ethical responsibility I don't know really I mean I think there are many artists right enormously I mean I think what I weigh way is doing in China is enormously powerful and brave brave isn't necessarily the criterion when you're looking at art you know because you can be brave and idiotic it could be brave a talentless it's not only the geniuses who are brave you know but here's both a genius and brave and so I admire him very much and I'm no longer young enough frankly to know what's at the cutting edge of popular music in war I finally arrived at the age where I don't you know when we were kids that were the definitions of popular music was that your mother wouldn't like it and I can be loud and you know yeah I mean I remember when I was young and listening to Elvis but my mother wanted me listen to the Christian rock of Pat Boone you know really I could listen to how dog I asked my I asked my children to do a playlist for me because I'm completely technologically inept and they looked at me and they said you will not like anything we would put on it you know yes well that's what my that's what my 20 year old says he said this music isn't for you and he's right it is right so but I mean there are people out there who are enormously influential I mean the whole kind of jay-z Beyonce Kendrick Lamar I guess as far as u2 it heard I get I get that far and I remember be at other got a gig in Times Square which was u2 but also Kanye and that I could tell that even though given the enormous popularity of YouTube that the audience's response to Kanye was bigger than it was do you - so I thought oh something happened something has happened I'm a happy Tigers have to do so now those people have enormous influence but unfortunately so do no talents people whose names begin with K I think you know the problem of reality television in Anniston anything is a bath has also become colossal influential on young particularly young goes and I don't think in a constructive way really no actually I think there are a number of forces that I call them forces that drive contagious unethical behavior yeah and I think this quest for celebrity is most definitely very it's a great disease and the other problem I think is that social media make possible is anonymity so because everybody on Twitter is hiding behind imaginary names it allows them to be to behave in a way that they would not behave if they had their real name and they were sitting in the room with you so they can be rude or discourteous more racist or everything because they're hidden behind this cloak and so I fear sometimes if a generation of very rude people an irresponsible irresponsible people who are never held accountable accountable yeah I think that's becoming the great problem of social media so one last question if I may and we talked a lot about truth but aside from truth what really matters what are you really thinking about today what matters to you personally or professional what matters is beauty that's safe you're an artist you're in the beauty business you know you're trying to make beautiful things and now beautiful things don't have to be you know fashion quite beautiful so but beautiful because they're true beauty is truth truth beauty said Keats you're trying to make a thing which is beautiful and durable you know I mean you my friend Martin Amos had the dice phrase once what what he said what you hope is that you will leave behind a shelf of books you know you ought to be able to say like from here to here it's me you know and and you want those books to outlast you so and so the question is what creates enduring quality in a work of art you know and it has to be something to do with Beauty books survive any work of art survives because people love them you know scandal doesn't do it and actually commercial success doesn't do it you know the greatest the most successful American novel of the 1930s was a novel called the green hat by Michael Allen sold zillions of copies it hasn't been in print in forever haven't heard of it nobody said you know who reads Peyton Place no and yet the biggest selling American novel of the 50s and early sixties was Peyton Place so commercial success doesn't endure doesn't doesn't guarantee that you will endure it's only love it's only that people love the book you know and those are the books that survive so what you're trying to do is do that well I'm one of many millions who love your books and thank you so much again it's been truly an honor to speak with you it's been good really appreciate it

Channel: The Ethics Incubator

Views: 15,972

Rating: 4.8016529 out of 5

Keywords: Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, Brooker Prize, Literature, Arts, Beauty, Truth, Brexit, Populism, Rushdie, Freedom of Expression

Id: NJ-atgJaAzk

Length: 59min 6sec (3546 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2017