Stephen Fry - Dealing with Prejudice

so recently you've had to come face-to-face with some individuals who are some of those outspoken and prejudiced people against the LGBT community on the planet I was wondering when you are face to face with that type of prejudice whether you found it more effective to argue logically and kind of exposed the barmy facts that they're using to justify their prejudices or whether you find it better to appeal to that the basic humanity that they should be recognizing in his people or you find it actually it's almost impossible to convince someone out of their present prejudices on a face-to-face meeting I think I can't remember exactly what occasion you're thinking of but obviously I have bumped into those who question to the point of bigotry other people's lifestyles are absolutely none of their business but I think that's why Nature gave us or enough of a percentage of us wit or at least what might pass for it because it is an enormous deflector an enormous deflector of arrogance brutality viciousness in the rest of it and I think I learned that at school amongst the many disadvantages there were some advantages of having been sent away at the age of seven 200 miles away from home to a prep school and then to go on to another boarding school what they call confusingly a public school which is far from public of course and and I remember the vague possibility of being bullied I discovered this brilliant line which I thought up and I hugged myself and I thought I going to try this out when that that wretched hutchinson if he comes anywhere near me with a stick or a stone or starts to starts to give me a half-nelson twist my armor something like that so I did and unfortunately was absolutely a full full quad the Little House quad where people played quad hockey on a bicycle which is a fabulous game you should put it in your college in the gardens before and so what you do is you wait them to come up to and stop Ritchie oh no no no no no don't touch me you'll give me an erection and it's Fanta but God saw Jesus like that so there is a necessity to take and of course not everybody has the competence to do that so those of us who can speak up and are at least outwardly brave enough to front confront a bully are kind of obliged to do so on behalf of those that aren't and I think I have some heroes some of whom become friends like dear Sarina and Miquelon who was here last week I think another is Zach Quinto who's a wonderful guy he played mr. Spock in the Star Trek movies and he played that horrible monster in Heroes who kept taking other people's powers which was really mean and he's an unbelievably great fellow and I know I've known who I am five years or something and I've always known he was gay and he was not out and this is a very puzzling thing with American film stars you know some who are gay and they don't come out and the agency who will be a you know given 10 Christmases at once will will say you can't dare come out if you come out you're not my client you are dead you're dead in the water it's just unspeakable and so but I it's not for me to judge it's never it's not you can't bully people into coming out it says it's as irresponsible as being bullied into going back into your shell really but he wrote a most beautiful blog about two years ago where he said I can no longer stand by when children are killing themselves because they are bullied but the word is still ringing in their ears this has just happened the day before child killed himself some school in middle America because he had been so tormented so unable to cope no heroes to look up to and Zach were at this fabulous piece it's just beautiful so he said I'm going to tell you now I'm gay and I'm so proud that means anything to any single child out there that I'm very proud and I see I'm Google tearing up this but it's so matters and and in the face of any amount of brute ignorant hostility as the ancient metaphor has it no matter how dark it is the smallest light is visible no matter how light it is a bit of dark is nothing and you have to remember that that it is worth doing the right thing not necessary for yourself or for brownie points to be admired but because somewhere out there is somebody who will want to hear it in fact talking of Star Trek and I'll finish on this because we are after all an Oxford University which for all of the Bullingdon Club and all the rest of it is a seat of learning and an estimable one we have to return to Nietzsche and I don't know if you've read about the read the birth tragedy one of his most excellent books but he argued that tragedy was born in ancient Greece out of a spirit that the had as they grew up as a special tribe that somehow managed to combine two qualities of their 12 Olympic deities I've also 12 God's is much better than one incidentally I've can't understand why you would just have one God it seemed so cute early odd but to have one of war and one of love and one of you know one of mischief like that means really anyway they they worshiped above all in Athens and you can see it in the freezes of the Parthenon and obviously the very name of the Parton and the very name of the city Pallas Athene II who in the Roman equivalent is Minerva who was the goddess of wisdom and they worshipped Apollo who was a goddess of the God of harmony and music and mathematics and rhetoric and the other God who was really really important to them whom they sort of made a joke of washing but that she was very serious was Dionysus the god of wine and festival and riot absolute riot and nature said what tragedies do is they look at the fact that all of us humans are torn in to a part of us is reasonable harmonious seeking the truth calculating using mathematics instruments of thought like algebra and philosophy instruments of governance like justice and democracy but another part of us wants to wrench our clothes off and dive into the grapes and make slurping horrible noises of love and discord and laugh at the harmony and be bestial because we are composed of those two qualities they didn't know that DNA but they kind of suss that that was true of us we were born to be like that and a Nietzsche very persuasively argue that that's what Greek tragedy is that it's like case of Oedipus for example is a very reasonable and extraordinary man it's constantly counting these very very perfect athenian qualities he has ruling is sit his city thebes and but who has a secret that he doesn't know that he's composed of incest he killed his father and he then bedded his wife to castor and it's an extraordinary mix of a man who when he discovers the truth about himself goes insane and stabs out his own eyes because he cannot bear the idea of being alive and seeing himself and and Nietzsche's idea is that that's what we like as humans in a sense that part of us cannot as a TS Eliot put it we the we cannot bear too much reality and and and my theory and this is where I'm going to go drive you a bit nuts is that this is what Star Trek is about and I have to take you back and of course you're also too old to remember the original Star Trek series but it's true of the next generation and it's kind of true of the films as well and that is that Gene Roddenberry who created it give us these characters Spock and bones who were absolutely opposed Spock was reason logic calculation science and then absolute inability to feel and indeed a sense that feeling was a weakness and you had Scotty who was all gut reaction why you green-blooded monster and sorry not Scotty bones I mean do green-blooded monster in constantly arguing and in the middle trying to be a perfect mix of two of them was Captain Kirk who wanted the humanity of bones but some of the reasoning judgment of Spock not only that the planets they visit are either so perfectly logical that we kill our children when they become twenty once we have harvested their seed because then we shall have the harmonious existence and Kirk says this is wrong you cannot live like this this is quite wrong and and and and all they go to a planet which is full of Klingons and it's just warlike and has no reason at all and he tries to mediate forced together what is beautiful and logical about us and what is horrific and best chilliness and each one of us if we examine ourselves knows there is a an inner beast who is capable of almost anything in mind at least and there is an inner monk and in a harmonious figure whether you posit them as a Tibetan monk or some sort of beautiful hippy with a flower in their ear doesn't matter but it's just all love and peace and reason and sweetness and and we know that sometimes one half gets the best of so in that sense we're all bipolar so we dedicate this to the lovely head mind your head charity yep you are drawing it together we're drawing together the threads of the evening so go forth be mad be utterly proud of who you are whatever you are and for God's sake try everything as Arnold Beck's the composer said in this life you try everything once except incest and country dancing so I leave you on that note thank you

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 494,841

Keywords: Union, Society, University, Debates, Debating, Interview, Stephen Fry (Celebrity), Prejudice

Id: fRwvAMeidz4

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2015